Although the building of Justinian has never had a patriarch like Gregory or Chrysostom, it has been the scene of many important events. At the altar of St. Sophia the emperor Heracleios was compelled by the citizens to swear to remain in Constantinople when, terrified by the attacks of the Alans in the North and the Persians in the East, he was thinking of transferring the seat of the Roman empire to the city of Carthage. In the ambo, Heracleonas, his younger son by the intriguing Martina, was forced to exhibit the true heir to the throne, his nephew Constans. "Christians, to St. Sophia!" was the order of Leontius, who led the revolt against the cruel Justinian II., and "This is the day of the Lord," the text of the sermon from the ambo to the insurgents. In the same spot, after five years of cruel captivity, the five sons of Constantine Copronymus took refuge. Nicephorus, the eldest, had been deprived of sight: the others had their tongues cut out. The blind spoke for the dumb: "Countrymen and Christians, behold the sons of your emperor, if you can recognize our features! We throw ourselves on your compassion." From A.D. 726 there reigned the iconoclastic emperors, who banished all images from the churches, but the year A.D. 842 saw the sacred icons again restored by Theodora. Her patronage raised to the patriarchate Ignatius, a son of the emperor Michael Rhaagabe. He excommunicated the cæsar Bardes for an incestuous marriage, and in revenge the cæsar forcibly expelled him from his church, and then endeavored to extort a confession of resignation by stripes and cruelty. From the high character of Ignatius it was necessary that his successor should be equal to him in reputation: the cæsar selected for the office a man of great firmness, unblemished integrity and immense erudition, the celebrated Photius, whose invaluable work, the _Myriobiblion_, is still a treasure-house for the scholar. At the time of his election Photius was a layman, combining the somewhat discordant titles of proto-a-secretis, or chief-justice, and protospathaire, or captain of the guards. The first day witnessed his transformation from a layman to a monk; the second day he was made a reader; the third day, a subdeacon; the fourth, a full deacon; the fifth, a priest, the sixth, Christmas Day, A.D. 858, beheld him placed in the throne of Chrysostom. But this new patriarch was not left undisturbed by the friends of Ignatius. They appealed to the pope, Nicholas I., who excommunicated Photius, his legates depositing on the altar of St. Sophia a solemn anathema enumerating the seven heresies of the Greeks, and devoting teacher and disciple to the eternal society of the devil and his angels. "From this thunder-bolt may be dated the schism of the Eastern Church." Photius in turn excommunicated and deposed Pope Nicholas. It is hard to say how often Photius was banished and restored. He was banished by Basil the Macedonian, and Ignatius restored.