It seems that neither a bishop nor a secular priest in the eastern empire ventured to oppose the decree of this Council. But monks suffered the most fearful persecution.(209) They were driven away and their monasteries destroyed. Nor were these the worst blows which the emperor dealt upon their institution. He invented truly devilish means to make them contemptible and abhorred. Some who had been banished from Constantinople yielded to his will, subscribed the edict against images, quitted their dress and married. Thereupon they returned to the city, recovered all their civil rights, were marked with favour, received the emperor’s personal attention. But those who remained true to their faith and their habit experienced his utmost severity. A month after his return from the war, the 24th August, 766, on which day he had appointed a chariot-race, he caused the monks in the neighbourhood of Constantinople to be brought together into the racecourse. There, as the rows of seats were crowded with people, he compelled each monk to pass in procession with a woman of bad life beside him. Thus they suffered every indignity which an excited populace could put upon them. The bad courtiers saw that it was an evil stroke of the emperor. Those who had not the secret thought that they had been taken in company with these women. This spectacle so pleased the emperor that, four days afterwards, he repeated it with nineteen of his chief officers, whom he charged with a conspiracy against him. The real offence was the maintenance of the right belief, the having had relation with the banished Stephen in his exile at Proconnesus, and more than once to have praised his constancy in suffering. He caused them to be led round the racecourse, and made the crowd spit on them and revile them. The two of highest account were beheaded: two patricians, brothers, Constantine, who had been controller-general of the posts, and Strategius, officer in the life guards; the rest were blinded and banished to an island, nor did Kopronymus forget every year that he lived to send thither executioners to inflict on each a hundred strokes of oxhide. When he found that the people grieved over the execution of Constantine and Strategius, had not forborne tears, and even murmured, he put down this to the fault of the prefect Procopius, who ought to have suppressed these seditious cries; he had him scourged and deprived.