A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

This Second of Nice, or Pseudo-Synod of the Greeks, as it is called by the Council of Frankford, whereunto we are sent by the Tridentine Fathers to be instructed in the due Worship of Images, was assembled by the Authority of Irene the Empress, a proud imperious woman, & her Son Constantine, whose eyes she afterwards put out, and thrust him into a Monastery in the year, 490. Tharasius was then Patriarch of Constantinople's and Hadrian the first Bishop or Pope of Rome. This ⟨p. 482⟩man most zealously or superstitiously addicted unto the worship of Images, and that contrary to the judgement of most of the Western Churches, as soon afterwards appeared in the Council holden at Frankford, by the Authority of Charles the Great, had a particular advantage both over the Empress and the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Eastern Empire being then greatly weakened by its own intestine divisions, and pressed on all sides by the Saracens, the Empress began to entertain some hopes of relies from the French in the West, whose power was then grown very great: and to that end solicited a marriage for her Son with the daughter of Charles the great; and supposed that she might be helped therein by the mediation of Hadrian: the Bishops of Rome having no small hand in the promotion of the attempt of Pipin and Charles the Great for the Crown of France, and afterwards for the conquest of Italy and Germany. And besides, she was a woman her self zealously addicted to that kind of superstition which Hadrian had espoused, as having in the time of Leo her Husband kept her Images in private, contrary unto what she had solemnly sworn unto her Father, as Credenus relates in his Annals. As for Tarasius, he was contrary to all Ecclesiastical Canons, of a mere Lay-man at once per saltum made Patriarch of Constantinople, which Hadrian upon his first hearing of, greatly exclaimed against, and refused to receive him into the society of Patriarchs upon his sending of his significatory Epistle. This is fully declared in the Epistle of Hadrian extant in the Acts of the Council.

This Second of Nice, or Pseudo-Synod of the Greeks, as it is called by the Council of Frankford, whereunto we are sent by the Tridentine Fathers to be instructed in the due Worship of Images, was assembled by the Authority of Irene the Empress, a proud imperious woman, & her Son Constantine, whose eys she afterwards put out, and thrust him into a Monastery in the year, 490. Tharasius was then Patriarch of Constantinoples and Hadrian the first Bishop or Pope of Rome. This