When Leo the Isaurian had secured his empire against foreign enemies, he set himself resolutely to convert heretics. He issued a decree that Jews and Montanists should be forcibly baptised. In 724 he issued his first decree against the superstitious use of images, which made the monks and John of Damascus so furious. When Leo died in 741, his son, Constantine Copronymus, so called from his having polluted the baptismal font, succeeded him, and reigned thirty-four years. He was also a resolute enemy of image worship. He procured a council of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops to sit in 754, and resolve unanimously that all pictures and sculptures of sacred subjects were Pagan and idolatrous, and that all images must be removed out of churches. They pronounced anathemas against John of Damascus and other champions of images. Constantine, on the strength of this council, ordered paintings on church walls to be effaced, and paintings of birds and fruits to be substituted. The monks were furious; and he ordered, in retaliation, monasteries to be destroyed and turned into barracks. One of his governors, named Lachanadraco, put many rebellious monks to death. He anointed the beards of some of these with oil and wax, and set them on fire; he burnt the monasteries, the books, and the relics. The relics of St. Euphemia at Chalcedon, which used to exude a fragrant balsam, were thrown into the sea, though the monks afterwards narrated that these were miraculously preserved. One monk, named Stephen, exasperated by these brutalities, boldly defied the Emperor, and to show his contempt produced a coin stamped with the Emperor's head, threw it on the ground, and trod on it. The Emperor ordered him to prison; but noticing that some sympathy seemed to be shown by his attendants, exclaimed, "Am I or is this monk emperor of the world?" The courtiers in turn, in their zeal to defend the Emperor, rushed to the prison where Stephen was kept, brought him out, and, tying a rope round his neck, dragged the body through the streets, and then tore it to pieces. The patriarch being also charged with abetting the monks, was stripped of his robes, set upon an ass with his face towards the tail, led through the streets, jeered by the mob, and then beheaded. Constantine died in 775, a resolute enemy of images to the last. THE EMPRESS IRENE RESTORING IMAGES (A.D. 780).