Constantine Kopronymus had succeeded his father Leo III. in 740. An insurrection arose against him in his own house. It was put down with terrible severity.(208) These were his doings in Constantinople in the same year 754, when Pipin was crowned by the Pope. He had surpassed his father in the cruelty with which he attempted to alter the existing worship of the Church. He had obtained some advantage in war against the Saracens, who were divided by the contest between the Ommaiads and the Abbassides, but he thought not the least of saving Italy from the Lombards, much more he desired to deliver the churches from the sacred images. For this purpose he caused many assemblies to be held and addressed the people, moving them to destroy the images. At last he held a Council at Constantinople of 338 bishops. At their head stood Gregory, bishop of Neocesarea, Theodosius, archbishop of Ephesus, a son of the emperor Apsimar, Sisinnius, bishop of Perge in Pamphylia. There was no patriarch, no representative from the sees of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The see of Constantinople was vacant, as Anastasius had just died. The Council met on the Asiatic side, opposite Constantinople, on the 10th February, 754, and sat six months. Then on the 8th August it passed over to the Church of Blachernæ. There the emperor presented himself at the ambon holding by the hand the monk Constantine, bishop of Sylæum, and cried with a loud voice, “Many years to the ecumenical patriarch Constantine.” At the same time he invested him with the patriarchal robes and the pallium. The Council ended that day, and nothing of it remains to us except a so-called confession of faith in the acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, the second of Nicæa, in 787, where it was refuted and rejected.