The Byzantine people rose in protest. Lucas Notaras, a relative of the emperor and the last Megadux, or Great Admiral, shouted at his cousin angrily. “Better a Turkish turban than a papal miter!” he cried. Although a huge Turkish cannon was already battering the walls, the mob shouted its approval. “The Latins are trying to destroy the Greek city, the Greek religion, the Greek race, even the Greek language!” the people roared. Even before there had been riots with the “democracy in rags,” the poor people, joining the monks and abbots to make certain that the old-time religion of the Byzantines was kept true and pure even if this made the empire fall. Nevertheless the old-time Orthodox Byzantine faith did not come into being just as it was and all at once. Since religion was so important, and since the Greeks loved to argue, the whole history of the Byzantines is filled with violent discussions and bitter differences of opinion about exactly what a man was supposed to believe. Some of the arguments were so complicated that it does not seem that the Byzantines themselves always understood them, even though they were willing to rush into the streets and fight about them. The arguments are even more hard to understand today. One of the most bitter disputes was about the use of the single letter _i_. There is a Greek word _homoios_ which means “similar,” and another Greek word _homos_ which means “same.” Men and women were sent to distant sunless provinces or shipped to lonely islands; they were locked in damp, rat-infested cells; and volume after volume was written and published over whether the Saviour was _homoi-ousion_ (similar to God) or _homo-ousion_ (the same as God). But this was only one of many arguments and discussions. It would be impossible to tell you even a small part of them. But that does not mean that these differences were not important. Many people think that the reason the Arabs conquered Egypt and Syria so easily and converted the inhabitants to Islam was that most of the emperors were Orthodox Christians who tried to make the Egyptians and Syrians Orthodox, too. The most important controversy that troubled the Byzantines is easier to understand. It is called the Iconoclast (image breaker) controversy, and it agitated the empire for more than a hundred years. Although the early Christians had opposed images and paintings, calling them heathen idols, most Byzantines attached great importance to them. In fact, some of their finest art went into the making of statues, portraits, and even small portable mosaics of saints, apostles, and other holy persons. They called these _eikons_, and they certainly paid them great reverence. Their enemies said they even worshiped them.