The figure scheme, so far as it can be traced, closely agrees with the Byzantine Manual of Painting: and the subjects and treatments can be associated with work in other churches of the ninth and tenth centuries which have in several cases almost identical designs. Altogether it may be doubted if a single figure belongs to a time anterior to the iconoclastic period of the eighth century. We believe the original scheme of decoration is best accounted for without figures, and even if this were not so, we can hardly believe that in the Patriarchal Church at the door of the Palace figures would have lasted through the reigns of the iconoclastic emperors and patriarchs, as they may well have done in remoter churches where the clergy were on the other side. Leo issued his first decree against images in 726. Its purport was not, as is often stated, that pictures should be hung higher in the churches in order that people should not adore them by kissing: “it commanded that they should be totally abolished.”[398] [Illustration: FIG. 70.--Mosaic of small Vault Compartment next the Bema.] It is well known that a figure of Christ over the entrance to the palace was destroyed by Leo the Isaurian. Dr. Walsh, who was chaplain to our embassy at the Porte about 1820, writes, “There stood till very lately in Constantinople an inscription over the gate of the palace called Chalces. Under a large cross sculptured over the entrance to the palace were the following words:-- “‘The emperor cannot endure that Christ should be represented (_graphes_) a mute and lifeless image graven on earthly materials. But Leo and his young son Constantine have at their gates engraved the thrice-blessed representation of the cross, the glory of believing monarchs.’”[399] In 768 Nicetas, the patriarch under Constantine, Leo’s son, is said to have destroyed “the images of gold mosaic and wax encaustic” in all the churches of Constantinople.[400] And in the life of Theophilus we read, “throughout every church the figures of the saints were destroyed, and the forms of beasts and birds were painted in their places.”[401]