The deposed patriarch Constantine had endured the hardest treatment at Prince’s Island during thirteen months. The emperor had learnt that this unhappy prelate had told to others an impious remark concerning the Mother of God, which the emperor had made, and enjoined silence about it. Furious in his wrath he ordered him to be brought to Constantinople; he had him beaten till he could not stand, and had him carried in a litter to Sancta Sophia to be degraded. He was cast down on the steps of the sanctuary. A court-secretary read in presence of the whole assembly, called together by the emperors order, a detailed accusation with loud voice, and as he read each detail struck him with it in the face. In the meantime Nicetas had mounted the patriarchal chair, and presided over each insult which his benefactor suffered. When the reading was finished, Nicetas took the act of accusation, had Constantine carried to the tribune, where he was held upright by several, that the people might see him, made one of his suffragans go up to pronounce the anathema, to take off the episcopal robes, and with insulting expressions to expel him from the church, from which he had to go backwards. The next day, a day of games in the circus, his beard, eye-brows, and hair were torn out; he was dressed in a short woollen smock without sleeves, put backwards on an ass, and led through the circus by a nephew whose nose had been cut off. The parties of the circus reviled him and spat on him. At the end of the circus he was thrown down, trodden under foot, and put upon the stone which terminated the circus to be exposed there, so long as the games lasted, to the jeers of the riders as they passed. He was then thrown into prison, where he lay almost forgotten to the 15th August of the following year, 768. That day was the last of his sufferings. The emperor sent two patricians to him to ask what he thought of the emperor’s belief and the doctrine of the council. The sufferer, to the last a courtier, thought by a submissive answer to alleviate his punishment. He replied: “The emperor’s belief is holy, and the council has issued a holy confession”. The patricians said at once: “That is just the admission which we wished to have from thy godless mouth. Nothing more remains for thee but death.” They then pronounced his condemnation, and led him into the amphitheatre, where his head was struck off. It was fastened by the ears to the mile-stone, where it served the mob three days for a spectacle. The body was dragged to the Pelagium, a spot where the church of St. Pelagia had stood, which the emperor had pulled down, to make a court where the bodies of the condemned were thrown after execution; in the same way as on the other side the water he had pulled down St. Andrew’s church to make a place of execution. The body was also said to have been dissected for the good of science.(210) This was the reward which the patriarch received for having sacrificed his faith and