During these years of peace Irene was maturing her plans for the restoration of image-worship. In 784, Paul the Patriarch of Constantinople resigned his great office and became a monk, acknowledging to all the world that his conscience was troubled by the isolation of Constantinople from all the other Patriarchates on the ground of Iconoclasm. Nothing could have suited Irene’s plans better than this resignation. Her secretary Tarasius, though a layman, was made patriarch in the room of Paul, evidently on the understanding that images were to be restored. In August, 785, an imperial letter from Constantine and Irene was addressed to Pope Hadrian begging him to fix a time for the convocation of a general council at Constantinople to settle the question of Iconoclasm. The pope of course gladly consented, though he took advantage of the re-opened intercourse with Constantinople to demand the restoration of the “patrimonies” (probably in Sicily) which had been taken away from St. Peter’s see by the first Iconoclastic emperor: and though he also held up to the Byzantine rulers the admirable example of Charles, “King of the Franks and Lombards, and patrician of Rome, who had in all things obeyed the admonitions of the pope his spiritual father, had subdued to himself the barbarous nations of the west, and had given back to the church of St. Peter many estates, provinces, and towns, of which it had been despoiled by the faithless Lombards.” The general council was opened at Constantinople in August, 786, but failed of its purpose. The Iconoclastic spirit was still too strong among the soldiers who were quartered in Constantinople, old comrades of Leo III. and his son. The church was invaded by them, and the image-worshipping bishops departed in fear. Next year, however, care having been taken to dispose of the Iconoclastic troops elsewhere, a general council was held at Nicæa (24th September to 23d October, 787), and there the _cultus_ of images was re-established in full glory, only with one of those distinctions dear to theologians which defined “that it was right to salute and grovel in adoration before the holy images, but not to give them that peculiar worship which is due to God alone.”