LEO III AND THE ISAURIAN DYNASTY (717-802)
By
CHARLES DIEHL
THE history of the Byzantine Empire
under the rule of the Isaurian dynasty is one of the periods in the prolonged
evolution of the monarchy least easy of comprehension. The work of the
sovereigns usually called the Iconoclast Emperors has been, in fact, recorded
for us practically only by opponents or victims, and their impassioned reports
have obviously no claim to be considered strictly impartial. On the other hand,
the writings defending and justifying the policy of the Emperors have nearly
all disappeared in the fierce reaction which followed the defeat of the
Iconoclasts, and we are thus but imperfectly acquainted with the real objects
which the Isaurian Emperors set before themselves. Further, the true aspect of
their rule has been completely obscured and distorted by the hatred and
prejudice excited against them. The nature of their religious policy has been,
and still is, frequently misconceived. In truth, the controversy as to images
was only a part of the great work of political, social, and economic
reconstruction undertaken by Leo III and Constantine V on the emergence of the
Empire from the serious dangers which it had passed through in the seventh
century. It would thus be a misunderstanding of the meaning and scope of this
religious strife to consider it apart from the vast aggregate of which it
merely forms a portion, just as it would be a wrong estimate of the Isaurian
Emperors to find in them mere sectaries and heretics. The striking testimony
rendered them by their very detractors at the Council of 787 should not be
forgotten by any who undertake to relate their history. While severely
condemning the religious policy of a Leo III or a Constantine V, the bishops
assembled at Nicaea recall "their great deeds, the victories gained over
enemies, the subjugation of barbarous nations," and further, "the
solicitude they showed for their subjects, the wise measures they took, the
constitutions they promulgated, their civil institutions, and the improvements
effected by them in the cities." "Such", the Fathers in Council
add, "is the true title of the dead Emperors to fame, that which secures
to them the gratitude of all their subjects."
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I
The reign of Leo IIII
When on 25 March 717 Leo III was
crowned by the Patriarch Germanus, the exterior
circumstances of the monarchy were notably difficult. For ten years, thanks to
the anarchy laying waste the Empire, the Arabs had been persistently advancing
in Asia Minor; in 716 they laid siege to Amorium, in
717 they took Pergamus; and Maslamah,
the most distinguished of their generals, who had pushed his way nearly into
the Opsician theme, was, with his lieutenant Sulaiman, making ready for a great attack upon
Constantinople itself. But the new Emperor was equal to defending the Empire.
Of Asiatic origin, an Isaurian, according to Theophanes,
but more probably descended from a family of Germanicea in Commagene, he had, since the time of Justinian II,
displayed remarkable qualities in the shaping of his career. On a mission to
the Caucasus he had shown himself a wary diplomatist, and had given proofs also
of energy, courage, presence of mind, and the power of disentangling himself
from the most embarrassing situations. As strategus of the Anatolics since 713, he had held the Arabs in check with some success in Asia Minor,
proving himself at once a good general and a skilful diplomatist; he was well
acquainted with the Musulman world and perhaps even
spoke Arabic. In short, eager as he was to vindicate the high ambitions he
cherished, he appreciated order and was desirous of restoring strength and
security to the Empire; a good organiser, a man of
resolute will and autocratic temper, he had all the best qualities of a
statesman. In the course of his reign of twenty-three years (717-740) he was
to show himself the renowned artificer of the reorganisation of the Empire.
Barely a few months from his
accession the Arabs appeared before Constantinople, attacking it by land and
sea (15 August 717). During the whole year which the siege lasted (August 717
to August 718) Leo III dealt firmly with every difficulty. He was as successful
in stimulating the defection of a portion of the crews composed of Egyptian
Christians serving in the Arab fleet as he was in prevailing on the Bulgars to intervene on behalf of the Byzantines. He showed himself as well able to destroy the Musulman ships with Greek fire as to defeat the Caliph's
armies on land and secure the revictualling of the
besieged city. When at last Maslamah decided upon
retreat, he had lost, it is said, nearly 150,000 men, while from a storm which
burst upon his fleet only ten vessels escaped. For Leo III this was a glorious
opening to his reign, for Islam it was a disaster without precedent. The great
onrush of Arab conquest was for many years broken off short in the East as it
was to be in the West by the victory of Charles Martel at Poitiers (732). The
founder of the Isaurian dynasty stood out as the saviour of the Empire, and pious Byzantines declared in the words of Theophanes "that God and the most blessed Virgin Theotokos ever protect the city of the Christian Empire,
and that God does not forsake such as call upon Him faithfully."
In spite of this great success,
which contributed powerfully to establish the new dynasty, the Arabs remained
formidable. After some years respite, they again took the offensive in Asia
Minor (726), and the struggle with them lasted until the end of the reign.
However, the victory of Leo III and his son Constantine at Acroinon was a stern lesson to the Musulmans. The successes of
the reign of Constantine V, facilitated by the internal quarrels which at that
time disturbed the Empire of the Caliphs, were to crown these happy
achievements, and to avert for many years the Arab danger which in the seventh
century had so seriously threatened Constantinople.
Domestic administration: the themes
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The domestic administration of Leo
III was no less fortunate in its consequences to the Empire. After twenty years
of anarchy and revolution the monarchy was left in a very distracted state. In
718, while the Arabs were besieging Constantinople, the strategus of Sicily, Sergius, proclaimed an Emperor in the West. In 720 the
ex-Emperor Anastasius II, who was interned at Thessalonica, attempted, with the
support of the Bulgars and the complicity of several
high officials, to regain the throne. Both these movements were firmly
suppressed. Meanwhile, Leo III was planning how he might give permanence to his
dynasty. At the time of his accession, having no sons of his own, he had
married his daughter Anne to Artavasdus, strategus of
the Armeniac theme, and formerly his chief supporter
in his revolt against Theodosius III, conferring on him the high rank of curopalates. When
in December 718 a son, Constantine, was born to him, an even better prospect of
length of days was opened to his house. By 25 March 720 Leo had secured the
throne to the child, having him solemnly crowned by the Patriarch. Thus master
of the situation, he was able to give himself up wholly to the great task, so
urgently necessary, of reconstituting the State.
Above all things it was imperative
to provide for the defence of the frontiers. Leo III
set about this by completing and extending the system of themes. He cut off the Western part of the immense government of
the Anatolics to form the Thracesian theme. He likewise divided the Maritime theme, in order to constitute the two
governments of the Cibyrrhaeots and the Dodecanese.
The military reasons, which dictated the creation of provinces less extensive
and more easily defended, were reinforced by political considerations. Leo III
knew by his own experience how dangerous it was to leave too large stretches of
territory in the hands of all-powerful strategi, and
what temptations were thus offered them to revolt and lay claim to the Empire.
For the same reasons Constantine V pursued his father's policy, reducing the
area of the Opsician theme, and forming out of it the Bucellarian theme, and, perhaps, the Optimatian. Thus under the Isaurian Emperors was completed
the administrative organization sketched out in the seventh century. Leo III
and his son made a point of nominating to be governors of these provinces men
of worth, good generals and capable administrators, and, above all, devoted to
the person and the policy of their master. The Military Code, which probably dates from the reign of Leo III, was
designed to provide these rulers with well-disciplined troops, and to secure
the formation of an army with no care or interest apart from its work, and
strictly forbidden to concern itself with agriculture or commerce. Out of this
force Constantine V, by throwing into one body contingents drawn from every
theme in the Empire, was to set himself to create a truly national army, ever
more and more removed from the influence of local leaders and provincial
patriotism.
If the administration and the army
were to be reorganized, it was of the first necessity to restore order to the
finances. At all costs, money must be found. To secure this, Leo III hit upon a
highly ingenious expedient, known as doubling the indiction. The fiscal year
from 1 September 726 to 1 September 727 was the tenth in the period of fifteen
years called the indiction. The Emperor ordered that the following year,
reckoning from 1 September 727 to 1 September 728, instead of being the
eleventh year of the indiction, should be the twelfth, and consequently in one
year he levied the taxes which should have been paid in two years. The
Exchequer officials received orders to get in all contributions with rigorous
exactness; and the Popes complained bitterly of the tyranny of the fiscal
authority (725). In spite of this, new taxes were devised. In 732 Leo III
increased the capitation tax, at least in the provinces of Sicily, Calabria,
and Crete, and seized the revenues of the pontifical patrimonies in the south
of Italy for the benefit of the treasury. Finally in 739, after the destructive
earthquake in Constantinople, in order to rebuild the walls of the capital, he
raised existing imposts by one twelfth (i.e. two keratia upon the nomisma, or
golden solidus, which was worth
twenty-four keratia, whence the name Dikeraton given to the new tax).
Thus it was that the chroniclers of the eighth century accused Leo III of an
unrestrained passion for money and a degrading appetite for gain. As a fact,
his careful, often harsh, administration of the finances supplied the treasury
with fresh resources.
The Codes and the Ecloga
Leo was at no less pains to restore
economic prosperity to the Empire. The Rural
Code, which appears to date from this period, was an endeavour to restrain the disquieting extension of large estates, to put a stop to the
disappearance of small free holdings, and to make the lot of the peasant more
satisfactory. The immigration of numerous Slav tribes into the Balkan peninsula
since the end of the sixth century had brought about important changes in the
methods of land cultivation. The colonate, if it had
not completely disappeared, at any rate had ceased to be the almost universal
condition. Instead were to be found peasants much less closely bound to the
soil they cultivated than the former adscriptitii, and paying a fixed rent to the owner, or else
communities of free peasants holding the land in collective ownership, and at
liberty to divide it up among the members of the community in order to farm it
profitably. The Rural Code gave legal
sanction to existing conditions which had been slowly evolved: it witnesses to
a genuine effort to revive agriculture and to restore security and prosperity
to the husbandman; apparently this effort was by no means wasted, and the moral
and material condition of the agricultural population was greatly improved. The Maritime Code, on the other hand,
encouraged the development of the mercantile marine by imposing part of the
liability for unavoidable losses on the passengers, thus diminishing the risk
of freight-owner and captain.
Finally, an important legislative
reform brought the old laws of Justinian up to date in relation to civil causes;
namely, the publication of the code promulgated in 739 and known as the Ecloga. In the
preface to the Ecloga Leo III has plainly pointed out the object aimed at in his reform; he intended
at once to give more precision and clearness to the law, and to secure that
justice should be better administered, but, above all, he had at heart the
introduction of a new spirit into the law, more humane—the very title expressly
mentions this development—and more in harmony with Christian conceptions. These
tendencies are very clearly marked in the provisions, much more liberal than
those in Justinian's code, of the laws dealing with the family and with
questions of marriage and inheritance. In this code we are sensible that there
is at once a desire to raise the intellectual and moral standard of the people,
and also a spirit of equal justice, shown by the fact that henceforth the law,
alike for all, takes no account of social categories. And there is no better
proof than the Ecloga of the vastness of the projects of
reform contemplated by the Iconoclast Emperors and of the high conception they
had formed of their duty as rulers.
Leo III's work of administrative reorganization
was crowned by a bold attempt at religious and social reform. Thence was to
arise the serious conflict known as the Iconoclastic struggle, which for more
than a century and a half was profoundly to disturb the interior peace of the
Empire, and abroad was to involve the breach with Rome and the loss of Italy.
Religion: the cult of images
The long struggle of the seventh
century had brought about far-reaching changes in the ideas and morals of
Byzantine society. The influence of religion, all-powerful in this community,
had produced results formidable from the moral point of view. Superstition had
made alarming progress. Everybody believed in the supernatural and the marvellous. Cities looked for their safety much less to
men's exertions than to the miraculous intervention of the patron saint who
watched over them, to St Demetrius at Thessalonica, St Andrew at Patras, or the Mother of God at Constantinople. Individuals
put faith in the prophecies of wizards, and Leo III himself, like Leontius or Philippicus, had been
met in the way by one who had said to him: "Thou shalt be King." Miracle seemed so natural a thing that even the Councils used
the possibility of it as an argument. But, above all, the cultus offered to images, and the belief in their miraculous virtues, had come to
occupy a surprisingly and scandalously large place in the minds of the
Byzantines. Among the populace, largely Greek by race, and in many cases only
superficially Christianized, it seemed as though a positive return to pagan
customs were in process.
From early times, Christianity in
decorating its churches had made great use of pictures, looking upon them as a
means of teaching, and as matter of edification for the faithful. And early
too, with the encouragement of the Church, the faithful had bestowed on
pictures, especially on those believed to have been "not made by human
hands", veneration and worship. In the eighth century this devotion was
more general than ever. Everywhere, not merely in the churches and monasteries,
but in houses and in shops, on furniture, on clothes, and on trinkets were
placed the images of Christ, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints. On these
cherished icons the marks of respect and adoration were lavished: the people
prostrated themselves before them, they lighted lamps and candles in front of
them, they adorned them with ribbons and garlands, burned incense, and kissed
them devoutly. Oaths were taken upon images, and hymns were sung in their honour; miracles, prodigies, and marvellous cures were implored and expected of them; and so absolute was the trust in
their protection that they were sometimes chosen as sponsors for children. It
is true that, in justification of these aberrations, theologians were
accustomed to explain that the saint was mystically present in his material
image, and that the respect shown to the image penetrated to the original which
it represented. The populace no longer drew this distinction. To them the
images seemed real persons, and Byzantine history is full of pious legends, in
which images speak, act, and move about like divine and supernatural beings.
Everybody was convinced that by a mystic virtue the all-powerful images brought
healing to the soul as well as to the body, that they stilled tempests, put
evil spirits to flight, and warded off diseases, and that to pay them the honour due to them was a sure means of obtaining all
blessings in this life and eternal glory in the next.
Many devout minds, however, were
hurt and scandalized by the excesses practiced in the cult of images. As early
as the fifth and sixth centuries, Fathers of the Church and Bishops had seen
with indignation the Divine Persons thus represented, and had not hesitated to
urge the destruction of these Christian idols. This iconoclastic tendency had
grown still more powerful towards the end of the seventh century, especially in
the Asiatic provinces of the Empire. The Paulicians,
whose heresy had spread rapidly in Asia Minor during the second half of the
seventh century, proscribed images, and were opposed to the adoration of the
Cross, to the cult of the Virgin and the Saints, and to everything which was
not "worship in spirit and in truth." The Messalians of Armenia also rejected image-worship, and the clergy of that province had
succeeded in gradually purifying popular religion there. It must by no means be
forgotten that the Jews, who were very numerous in Christendom, and at this
time showed great zeal in proselytizing, were naturally hostile to images, and
that the Musulmans condemned them no less rigorously,
seeing in the devotion paid to them an actual revival of polytheism. Leo III
himself, Asiatic in origin and subjected from childhood to the influence of an
iconoclastic atmosphere, would as a matter of course sympathies with this
opposition to images. Like many Asiatics, and like a
section even of the superior clergy of the orthodox party, he seems to have
been alarmed by the increase of idolatry among the people, and to have resolved
on a serious effort to restore to Christianity its primitive loftiness and
purity.
Mistakes have often been made about
the character of the religious policy of the Isaurian Emperors, and its end and
scope have been somewhat imperfectly understood. If faith is to be reposed in
contemporaries, very hostile, be it said, to Leo III, the Emperor was actuated
by strangely petty motives. If Theophanes is to be
trusted, he was desirous of pleasing the Musulmans with
whom he was in close intellectual agreement, and the Jews, to whom he had, as
was related, promised satisfaction on this head if ever the predictions which
bade him expect the throne should be realized. These are mere legends; it would
be difficult to believe that a prince who had just won so resounding a victory
over Islam should have been so anxious to spare the feelings of his
adversaries, and that a ruler who in 722 promulgated an edict of persecution
against the Jews should have been so much affected by their views.
The historians of our day have
credited the iconoclasts with other intentions, and have attributed a much
wider scope to their policy. They have seen in them the champions of the lay
power, the opponents of the interference of the Church with the affairs of the
State. They have represented them as rationalists who, many centuries before
Luther, attempted the reformation of the Church, as freethinkers, aspiring to
found a new society on "the immortal principles" destined to triumph
in the French Revolution. These are strange errors. Leo III and his son were
men of their time, sincerely pious, convinced believers, even theologians, very
anxious, in accordance with the ideas of the age, to cast out everything which
might bring down the Divine anger upon the Empire, very eager, in sympathy with
the feelings of a section of their people and their clergy, to purify religion
from what seemed to them idolatry.
But they were also statesmen, deeply
concerned for the greatness and the safety of the Empire. Now the continuous
growth of monasticism in Byzantine society had already produced grave results
for the State. The immunity from taxation enjoyed by Church lands, which every
day became more extensive, cut down the receipts of the Treasury; the
ever-increasing numbers who entered the cloister withdrew soldiers from the
army, officials from the public services, and husbandmen from agriculture,
while it deprived the nation of its vital forces. The monks were a formidable
element of unrest owing to the influence they exercised over souls, which often
found its opportunities in image-worship, many convents depending for
subsistence on the miraculous icons they possessed. Unquestionably, one of the
objects which the Iconoclast Emperors set before themselves was to struggle
against this disquieting state of things, to diminish the influence which the
monks exercised in virtue of their control of the nation's education and their
moral guidance of souls. In proscribing images they aimed also at the monks,
and in this way the religious reform is intimately connected with the great
task of social rebuilding which the Isaurian Emperors undertook.
It is true that by entering on the
struggle which they thus inaugurated the iconoclast sovereigns ushered in a
long period of unrest for the monarchy; that out of this conflict very serious
political consequences arose. It would, nevertheless, be unjust to see in the
resolution to which they came no more than a caprice of reckless and fanatical
despots. Behind Leo III and his son, and ready to uphold them, stood a whole
powerful party of iconoclasts. Its real strength was in the Asiatic population
and the army, which was largely made up of Asiatic elements, notably of
Armenians. Even among the higher clergy, secretly jealous of the power of the
monks, many bishops, Constantine of Nacolea, Thomas
of Claudiopolis, Theodosius of Ephesus, and, later
on, Constantine of Nicomedia and Sisinnius of Perge, resolutely espoused the imperial policy, and among
the Court circle and the officials high in the administration many, less
perhaps from conviction than from fear or from self-interest, did likewise,
although among these classes several are to be found laying down their lives
for their attachment to images. And even among the people of Constantinople a
violent hostility to monks showed itself at times. But in the opposite camp the
Isaurian Emperors found that they had to reckon with formidable forces, nearly
the whole of the European part of the Empire: the monks, who depended upon
images and were interested in maintaining the reverence paid them; the Popes,
the traditional and passionate champions of orthodoxy; the women, bolder and
more fervent than any in the battle for the holy icons, whose vigorous efforts
and powerful influence cannot be too strongly emphasized; and, finally, the
masses, the crowd, instinctively faithful to time-honoured religious forms, and instinctively opposed to the upper classes and ready to
resist all change. These elements of resistance formed the majority in the
Empire, and upon their tenacious opposition, heightened by unwearying polemics, the attempted reforms were finally to be wrecked.
Edict against images (726)
Leo III was too capable a statesman
and too well aware of the serious consequences, which, in the Byzantine Empire,
any innovation in religion would involve, not to have hesitated long before
entering upon the conflict. His course was decided by an incident which shows
how thoroughly he was a man of his time. In 726 a dangerous volcanic eruption
took place between Thera and Therasia,
in which phenomenon the Emperor discerned a token of the wrath of God falling
heavily upon the monarchy. He concluded that the only means of propitiation
would be to cleanse religion finally from practices which dishonoured it. He resolved upon the promulgation of the edict against images (726).
It has sometimes been thought, on
the strength of a misunderstood passage in the life of St Stephen the Younger,
that the Emperor ordered, not that the pictures should be destroyed, but that
they should be hung higher up, in order to withdraw them from the adoration of
the faithful. But facts make it certain that the measures taken were very much
more rigorous. Thus keen excitement was aroused in the capital and throughout
the Empire. At Constantinople, when the people saw an officer, in the execution
of the imperial order, proceed to destroy the image of Christ placed above the
entrance to the Sacred Palace, they broke out into a riot, in which several
were killed and injured, and severe sentences necessarily followed. When the
news spread into the provinces worse things happened. Greece and the Cyclades
rose and proclaimed a rival Emperor, who, with the support of Agallianus, turmarch of the Helladics, marched upon Constantinople, but the rebel fleet
was easily destroyed by the imperial squadrons. In the West results were more
important. Pope Gregory II was already, owing to his opposition to the fiscal
policy of Leo III, on very bad terms with the Government. When the edict
against images arrived in Italy, there was a universal rising in the peninsula
in favour of the Pope, who had boldly countered the
imperial order by excommunicating the exarch and
denouncing the heresy (727). Venice, Ravenna, the Pentapolis,
Rome, and the Campagna rose in revolt, massacred or
drove out the imperial officers, and proclaimed new dukes; indeed, matters went
so far that the help of the Lombards was invoked, and a plan was mooted of
choosing a new Emperor to be installed at Constantinople in the place of Leo
III. The Emperor took energetic measures against the insurgents. The new exarch Eutychius, who received
orders to put down the resistance at all costs, marched upon Rome (729) but did
not succeed in taking it.
And it may be that imperial rule in
Italy would now have come to an end had not Gregory II, like the prudent
politician that he was, discerned the danger likely to arise from the
intervention of the Lombards in Italian affairs and used his influence to bring
back the revolted provinces to their allegiance. Thus peace was restored and
Italy conciliated, her action being limited to a respectful request that the honour due to images should again be paid to them.
Meanwhile opposition was growing in
the East. The clergy, with Germanus, Patriarch of
Constantinople, at their head, had naturally condemned the imperial policy
openly. Leo III determined on breaking down resistance by force. The Church schools
were closed, and a later legend even relates that the Emperor burned the most
famous of them, along with its library and its professors. In January 730 he
caused the deposition of the Patriarch Germanus, who
refused to condemn images, and in his place he had the Syncellus Anastasius elected, a man wholly devoted to the iconoclast doctrine. This
caused fresh disturbances in the West. Gregory II refused to recognize the
heretical Patriarch. Gregory III, who succeeded in 731, relying on the
Lombards, assumed an even bolder and more independent attitude. The Roman Synod
of 731 solemnly excluded from the Church those who opposed images. This was to
go too far. The Emperor, who now saw in Gregory merely a rebel, sent an
expedition to Italy with the task of reducing him to obedience; the Byzantine
fleet, however, was destroyed by a tempest in the Adriatic (732). Leo III was
obliged to content himself with seizing the Petrine patrimonies within the limits of the Empire, with detaching from the Roman
obedience and placing under the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople
the dioceses of Calabria, Sicily, Crete, and Illyricum, and with imposing fresh
taxes on the Italian population. The breach between the Empire and Italy seemed
to be complete; in 738 Gregory III was to make a definite appeal to Charles
Martel.
Even outside the Empire orthodox
resistance to the iconoclast policy was becoming apparent. St John Damascene, a
monk of the Laura of St Sabas in Palestine, wrote
between 726 and 737 three treatises against "those who depreciate the holy
images," in which he stated dogmatically the principles underlying the
cult of icons, and did not hesitate to declare that "to legislate in
ecclesiastical matters did not pertain to the Emperor". Legend relates that
Leo III, to avenge himself on John, had him accused of treason to the Caliph,
his master, who caused his right hand to be cut off, and it adds that the next
night, by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, the hand was miraculously
restored to the mutilated arm, that it might continue its glorious labours in defense of orthodoxy.
In reality, despite certain harsh
acts, dictated for the most part by political necessity, it seems plain that
the edict of 726 was enforced with great moderation. Most of the churches and
the Patriarch's palace were still, at the end of the reign, in undisturbed
possession of the frescoes and mosaics which adorned them. Against persons
there was no systematic persecution. Even the chronicler Theophanes,
who cannot sufficiently reprobate "the impious Leo," acknowledges
that the deposed Patriarch, Germanus, withdrew to his
hereditary property of Platonion and there peacefully
ended his days. If his writings were burnt by the Emperor's orders, he himself
was never, as legend claims, subjected to measures of violence. The rising in
Greece was suppressed with great mildness, only the two leaders being condemned
to death. Finally, the Ecloga, promulgated in 740, inflicted no punishment on
iconodules. Nevertheless, when Leo died in 740, a serious struggle had been
entered on, which was to become fatally embittered as much by the very heat of the combat and the desperate resistance of the
monks as by the formidable problems which it was soon to raise. In the quarrel
over images the real collision was between the authority of the Emperor in
religious matters and the desire of the Church to free herself from the
tutelage of the State. This became unmistakable when Constantine V succeeded
his father.
II
Constantine V Copronymus
Constantine V (740-775) has been
fiercely attacked by the iconodule party. They surnamed him "the
Stable-boy" and "Copronymus" (named
from dung), on account of an unlucky accident which, they said, had occurred at
his christening. They accused him of nameless debaucheries, of vices against
nature, and attributed to him every kind of infamy. "On the death of
Leo," says the deacon Stephen, "Satan raised up in his stead a still
more abandoned being, even as to Ahab succeeded Ahaziah,
and to Archelaus Herod, more wicked than he." In
the eyes of Nicephorus he outdid in cruelty those
tyrants who have most tormented the human race. For Theophanes he is "a monster athirst for blood,"
"a ferocious beast," an "unclean and bloodstained magician
taking pleasure in evoking demons," in a word "a man given up from
childhood to all that is soul-destroying," an amalgam of all the vices,
"a precursor of Antichrist."
It would be childish to take these
senseless calumnies literally. In fact, if we consider the events of his reign,
Constantine V appears as an able and energetic ruler, a great warrior and a
great administrator, who left behind him a glorious and lasting reputation. He
was the idol of the army, which long remembered him and many years after his
death was still the determined champion of his life-work. He was, in the eyes
of the people, "the victorious and prophetic Emperor," to whose tomb
in 813 they crowded, in order to implore the dead Caesar to save the city which
was threatened by the Bulgars. And all believed
themselves to have seen the prince come forth from his tomb, mounted on his
warhorse and ready once more to lead out his legions against the enemy. These
are not facts to be lightly passed over. Most certainly Constantine V was, even
more than his father, autocratic, violent, passionate, harsh, and often
terrifying. But his reign, however disturbed by the quarrel concerning images,
appears, none the less, a great reign, in which religious policy, as under Leo
III, merely formed part of a much more important achievement.
Crushing of the revolt of Artavasdus
It must be added that the early
occurrences of the reign were by no means such as to incline the new prince to
deal gently with his opponents. In 741 the insurrection of his brother-in-law Artavasdus united the whole orthodox party against
Constantine V. The Emperor had just left Constantinople to open a campaign
against the Arabs; while the usurper was making an unlooked-for attack on him
in Asia, treason in his rear was handing over the capital to his rival, the
Patriarch Anastasius himself declaring against him as suspected of heretical
opinions. A year and a half was needed to crush the rebel. Supported by Asia,
which, with the exception of the Opsician theme where Artavasdus had been strategus, ranged itself
unanimously on the side of Constantine, the rightful Emperor defeated his
competitor at Sardis (May 742) and at Modrina (August
742) and drove him back upon Constantinople, to which city he laid siege. On 2
November 742 it was taken by storm. Artavasdus and
his sons were blinded; the Patriarch Anastasius was ignominiously paraded round
the Hippodrome, mounted on an ass and exposed to the mockery of the crowd;
Constantine, however, maintained him in the patriarchal dignity. But we may well
conceive that the Emperor felt considerable rancour against his opponents, and continually distrusted them after events which so
plainly shewed the hatred borne him by the supporters
of images.
Yet Constantine showed no haste to
enter upon his religious reforms. More pressing matters demanded his attention.
As with Leo III, the security of the Empire formed his chief preoccupation.
Profiting by the dissensions which shook the Arab Empire, he assumed the
offensive in Syria (745), reconquered Cyprus (746), and made himself master of Theodosiopolis and Melitene (751). Such was his military reputation that in 757 the Arabs retreated at the
bare rumour of his approach. To the end of the reign
the infidels were bridled without the necessity for any further personal
intervention of Constantine.
The Bulgars presented a more formidable danger to the Empire. In 755 Constantine began a
war against them which ended only with his life. In nine successive campaigns
he inflicted such disastrous defeats on these barbarians, at Marcellae (759) and at Anchialus (762), that by 764 they were terror-stricken, made no attempt at resistance,
and accepted peace for a term of seven years (765). When in 772 the struggle
was renewed, its results proved not less favourable;
the Emperor, having won the victory of Lithosoria,
re-entered Constantinople in triumph. To the last day of his life, Constantine
wrestled with the Bulgars, and if he did not succeed
in destroying their kingdom, at least he restored the prestige of Byzantine
arms in the Balkan Peninsula. Elsewhere he repressed the risings of the Slays
of Thrace and Macedonia (758), and, after the example of Justinian II, he
deported part of their tribes into Asia, to the Opsician theme (762).
At home also, Constantine gloriously
carried on the work of his father. We have already seen how he continued and
completed the administrative and military organization set on foot by Leo III;
he bestowed equal care on restoring the finances of the Empire, and his
adversaries accuse him of having been a terrible and merciless exactor, a
hateful oppressor of the peasants, rigorously compelling the payment of
constantly increasing taxes. In any case, at this cost was secured the
excellent condition in which he certainly left the imperial finances (Theophanes speaks of the vast accumulations which his son,
on his death, found in the treasury). Also, despite the havoc caused by the
great pestilence of 747, the Empire was prosperous. The brilliancy of the
Court, the splendour of buildings—for Constantine V,
while battling against images, encouraged the production of secular works of
art intended to replace them—are a proof of this prosperity. And the Emperor,
who from as early as 750 had shared the throne with his son Leo, and who in
768, in order to increase the stability of his house, had associated his four
other sons in the imperial power with the titles of Caesar and Nobilissimus, might flatter himself that he had secured the
Isaurian dynasty unshakably in the imperial purple, and restored to the Empire
security, cohesion, and strength.
Reopening of the iconoclastic struggle
Constantine V had no hesitation, in
order to complete his work, in re-opening the religious struggle. The Emperor
had received the education of a Byzantine prince; he was therefore a
theologian. He had composed sermons which he ordered to be read in churches; an
important theological work, which the Patriarch Nicephorus made it his business to refute, had been published under his name, and he had
his own doctrine and his personal opinion on the grave problems which had been
raised since 726. Not only was he, like Leo III, the enemy of images, but he
condemned the cultus of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, he considered prayers addressed to them
useless, and punished those who begged for their intercession. All the writers
tell us of the want of respect which the Emperor showed to the Theotokos; all the authorities represent him as charging
the upholders of images with idolatry, and the Fathers of the Council of 753
congratulate him on having saved the world by ridding it of idols. Further, he
was deeply sensible of the perils of monasticism. He reproached the monks with
inculcating a spirit of detachment and of contempt of the world, with
encouraging men to forsake their families and withdraw from the court and from
official life to fling themselves into the cloisters. Thus, as with Leo III,
political considerations added weight to religious ones in Constantine V's
mind. But, more passionate and fanatical than his father, he was to carry on
the struggle by different methods, with greater eagerness in propaganda, and
with a more unyielding and systematic bitterness in the work of repression.
Yet up to 753 the Emperor confined
himself to enforcing Leo III's edicts in no very harsh spirit. At the most, it
may be thought that he was preparing the ground for his future action when in
745 or 751 he removed to Thrace a number of Syrians and Armenians hostile to
images, and when in 747, after the pestilence, he practically re-peopled
Constantinople with men not less devoted to his opinions. But he waited until
his power had been consolidated by eleven years of glory and prosperity before
resolving on any decisive step. Towards the end of 752 Constantine had made
sure of the devotion of the army, and of the sympathy, or at least the
acquiescence, of a large proportion of the secular clergy. The people of the
capital had become very hostile to the monks. Finally, the patriarchal chair
was vacant since the death of Anastasius (752). The Emperor convoked a Council
to decide the question of image-worship; on 10 February 753 three hundred and
thirty-eight bishops met in the palace of Hieria on
the Bosphorus.
The Council intended to deal
seriously with the task entrusted to it. Its labours were long and onerous, lasting without interruption from 10 February to the end
of August 753. It does not at all appear that the prelates in their
deliberations were subjected to any pressure from the imperial authority. They
in no wise accepted all the opinions professed by Constantine V; they
resolutely maintained the orthodox doctrine concerning the intercession of the
Blessed Virgin and the Saints, and anathematized all who should deny to Mary
the title of Theotokos. But they solemnly condemned
the worship of images "as a thing hateful and abominable," and
declared that whoever persisted in adoring them, whether layman or monk,
"should be punished by the imperial laws as a rebel against the
commandments of God, and an enemy of the dogma of the Fathers." And after
having excommunicated the most illustrious champions of the icons, and
acclaimed in the persons of the Emperors "the saviours of the world and the luminaries of orthodoxy," and hailed in Constantine V
"a thirteenth apostle," they separated.
The decrees of the Council involved
one serious consequence. Heretofore the iconodules had only been proceeded
against as contravening the imperial ordinances. They were, for the future, to
be treated as heretics and rebels against the authority of the Church. By
entrusting to the imperial power the task of carrying the canons into effect,
the bishops were putting a terrible weapon into Constantine's hands, and one
specially fitted to strike at the priests and monks. Any spiritual person
refusing to support the dogma promulgated by the Council might, in fact, be
condemned with pitiless rigour.
Yet the Emperor, it would seem, was
in no haste to make use of the means put at his disposal. During the years that
followed the Council, two executions at most are mentioned (in 761). The
sovereign appears to have been bent rather on negotiating with his opponents in
order to obtain their submission by gentle methods. Also, at this moment the
Bulgarian war was absorbing his whole attention. It was not until peace had
been signed in 765, and he realized the futility of his controversy with the
most famous of the monks, that Constantine decided on crushing resistance by
force. The era of martyrs then set in.
Defeat of the monks
"In that year" (September
764—September 765), writes Theophanes, "the
Emperor raged madly against all that feared God." The oath to renounce
images was imposed upon all subjects, and at the ambo of St Sophia the
Patriarch Constantine was forced to be the first to swear to abandon the
worship of the forbidden "idols." Thereupon persecution was let loose
throughout the Empire. At Constantinople all the still numerous images left in
the churches were destroyed; the frescoes were blotted out, the mosaics broken,
and the panels, on which figures of the Saints were painted, scraped bare.
"All beauty," says a contemporary, "disappeared from the
churches." All writings in support of images were ordered to be destroyed.
Certain sacred buildings, from which the relics were removed, were even secularized;
the church of St. Euphemia became an arsenal. And
everywhere a scheme of decoration secular in spirit took the place of the
banished pictures.
Measures no less harsh were taken
against persons. The great officials, and even the bishops, eagerly hunted down
everyone guilty of concealing an image or of preserving a relic or amulet. The
monks especially were proceeded against with extreme violence. Constantine V
seems to have had a peculiar hatred of them; "he called their habit,"
says one authority, "the raiment of darkness, and those who wore it he called
“those who are no more to be spoken of”. "He set himself," says
another witness, "to destroy the monastic order entirely." The
Fathers of the later Council of 787 recall with indignation "the tortures
inflicted on pious men," the arrests, imprisonments, blows, exile, tearing
out of eyes, branding of faces with red-hot irons, cutting off of noses and
tongues. The Emperor forbade his subjects to receive communion from a monk; he
strove to compel the religious to lay aside their habit and go back to civil
life. The property of convents was confiscated, the monasteries secularized and
bestowed as fiefs on the prince's favourites; some of
them were converted into barracks. The Emperor, to effect the suppression of
the monastic orders, scrupled at no expedient. There were terror-striking
executions, such as that of St Stephen the Younger, Abbot of Mount St Auxentius, whom Constantine, after vainly attempting to
bring him over to his side, allowed to be done to death by the crowd in the
streets of Constantinople (20 November 764). Scandalous and ridiculous
exhibitions took place in the Hippodrome, where, amidst the hootings of the crowd, monks were forced to file past, each holding a woman by the hand.
In the provinces the governors employed the same measures with equal zeal.
Michael Lachanodraco, strategus of the Thracesians, assembled all the monks and nuns of his
province in a square at Ephesus, giving them the choice between marriage and
death. And the Emperor, writing to congratulate him, says: "I have found a
man after my own heart: you have carried out my wishes."
The monks stubbornly resisted the
persecution. If, acting on the advice of their leaders, many left
Constantinople to seek a refuge in the provinces, the leaders themselves, with
courageous insolence, defied the Emperor to his face, and, in spite of the
edicts, carried on their propaganda even among those nearest to his person.
This was conduct which Constantine V would not tolerate. On 25 August 765,
nineteen great dignitaries were paraded in the Circus as guilty of high
treason, and in particular, says Theophanes, of
having kept up intercourse with St Stephen and glorified his martyrdom. Several
of them were executed, others were blinded and exiled. Some days later the
Patriarch Constantine was, in his turn, arrested as having shared in the plot,
exiled to the Princes Islands, and superseded in the patriarchal chair. In the
following year he was brought back to Constantinople, and, after long and
ignominious tortures, was finally beheaded (15 August 767). During the five or
six years from 765 to 771 persecution raged furiously, so much so, that, as was
said by a contemporary, no doubt with some exaggeration, "Byzantium seemed
emptied of the monastic order" and "no trace of the accursed breed of
monks was to be found there."
Without accepting literally all that
chroniclers and hagiographers have related, it is certain that the struggle
gave occasion for deeds of indescribable violence and nameless acts of
harshness and cruelty; but it is certain also that several of the party of
resistance, by the provocations they offered, drew down upon themselves the
severity of those in power and let loose the brutal hostility of the populace.
It must also be remarked that, if there were some sensational condemnations,
the capital executions were, taken altogether, somewhat rare. The harsh
treatment and the punishments usual under Byzantine justice undoubtedly struck
down numerous victims. The government was even more bent on making the monks
ridiculous than on punishing them, and frequently tried to rid itself of them
by banishing them or allowing them to flee. Many of them crossed over to Italy,
and the Emperor was well pleased to see them go to strengthen Byzantine
influence in the West. Many also gave way. "Won over by flattery or
promises or dignities," writes the Patriarch Nicephorus,
"they forswore their faith, adopted lay dress, allowed their hair to grow,
and began to frequent the society of women." "Many," says
another authority, "preferred the praise of men to the praise of God, or
even allowed themselves to be entangled by the pleasures of the flesh." On
the other hand, in the provinces many communities had resigned themselves to
accept the decrees of the Council, and although in Constantinople itself many
monks still lived in hiding, Constantine V might on the whole flatter himself
that he had overcome the opponents upon whom he had declared war.
Alienation of Italy and the Papacy
In Italy this victory had cost the
Empire dear. We have seen that from the beginning of the eighth century the
people of the peninsula were becoming more and more alienated from
Constantinople. At Rome, and in the duchy of which it was the capital, the real
sovereign was in fact the Pope rather than the Emperor. Yet since in 740
Gregory III had been succeeded by a Pope of Greek origin, Zacharias, relations
between the Empire and its Western provinces had been less strained. Zacharias,
at the time of the revolt of Artavasdus, had remained
loyal to the cause of the legitimate sovereign, and during the subsequent years
he had put his services at the disposal of the Empire, to be used, with some
success, in checking the progress of the Lombards (743 and 749). But when in
751 Aistulf obtained possession of Ravenna and the
Exarchate, Zacharias' successor, Stephen II, was soon induced to take up a
different attitude. He saw the Lombards at the gates of Rome, and, confronted
with this imminent danger, he found that the Emperor, to whom he made desperate
appeals for help, only replied by charging him with a diplomatic mission to the
Lombard king (who proved obdurate) and perhaps also to the King of the Franks,
Pepin, whose military intervention in Italy, for the advantage of the Emperor,
was hoped for at Constantinople. Did Stephen II, realizing that no support was
to be expected from the East, consider it wiser and more practical to recur to
the policy of Gregory III, and did he take the initiative in petitioning for other
help? Or else, though the Emperor's mandatory in France, did he forget the
mission entrusted to him, and, perhaps influenced by accounts received from
Constantinople (the Council of Hieria was at that
very moment condemning images), allow himself to be tempted by Pepin's offers, and, treacherously abandoning the Byzantine
cause, play for his own hand? The question is a delicate one, and not easy of
solution. A first convention agreed to with Pepin at Ponthion (January 754) was, at the Assembly of Quierzy (Easter
754), followed up by more precise engagements. The Frankish king recognized the
right of the Pope to govern in his own name the territories of Rome and
Ravenna, whereas, up to then, he had administered Rome in the name of the
Emperor, and when Pepin had reconquered them from the Lombards, he did in fact
solemnly hand them over to Stephen II (754).
It was not till 756 that the real
meaning of the Frankish king's intervention was understood at Constantinople,
when, on the occasion of his second expedition to Italy, Pepin declared to the
ambassadors of Constantine V that he had undertaken the campaign in no wise to
serve the imperial interest, but on the invitation of the Pope. The Frankish
king's language swept away the last illusions of the Greeks. They understood
that Italy was lost to them, and that the breach between Rome and
Constantinople was final.
The Emperor had no other thought
henceforth than to punish one in whom he could only see a disloyal and
treacherous subject, unlawfully usurping dominion over lands which belonged to
his master. On the one hand, from 756 to 774 he did his utmost to break off the
alliance between Pepin and the Papacy, and to induce the Frankish king to
forsake his protégé; but in this he met with no success. On the other hand, he
sought by every means to create difficulties for the Roman Pontiffs in the
peninsula. His emissaries set themselves to rouse resistance to the Pope, at
Ravenna and elsewhere, among all who were still loyal to the imperial
authority. In 759 Constantine V joined forces with Desiderius,
King of the Lombards, for the reconquest of Italy and
a joint attempt to recover Otranto. And, in fact, in 760 a fleet of three
hundred sail left Constantinople to reinforce the Greek squadron from Sicily,
and to make preparations for a landing. All these attempts were to prove
useless. When in 774 Charlemagne, making a fresh intervention in Italy, annexed
the Lombard kingdom, he solemnly at St Peter's confirmed, perhaps even increased,
the donation of Pepin. The Byzantines had lost Italy, retaining nothing but
Venice and a few places in the south of the peninsula. Again, too, the Synod of
the Lateran (769), by anathematizing the opponents of images, had completed the
religious separation between Rome and the East. When in 781 Pope Hadrian ceased
to date his official acts by the regnal year of the
Emperor, the last link disappeared which, on the political side, still seemed
to bind Italy to the Empire.
The Greeks of the eighth century
appear to have been little concerned, and the Emperor himself seems to have
regarded with some indifference, the loss of a province which had been
gradually becoming more detached from the Empire. His attention was now
bestowed rather on the Eastern regions of the Empire which constituted its
strength, and whose safety, unity, and prosperity he made every effort to
secure. Perhaps also the intrinsic importance which he had come to attach to
his religious policy made him too forgetful of perils coming from without. When
on 14 September 775 the old Emperor died, he left the Empire profoundly
disturbed by internal disputes; under Constantine V's successors the
disadvantages of this state of discontent and agitation, and of his
over-concentration on religious questions, were soon to become evident.
III
Reign of Leo IV the Chazar
Leo IV succeeded his father at the age of twenty-five. His mother, Irene, was the daughter of the emperor or chagan of the Khazars, then a powerful people, through whose territories the greater part of the commercial intercourse between the Christians and the rich countries in eastern Asia was carried on. Leo inherited from his mother a mild and amiable disposition; nor does he appear to have been destitute of some portion of his father's talents, but the state of his health prevented him from displaying the same activity.
Constantine V before his death had drawn from his son and successor a promise to carry on his policy. Leo IV, surnamed the Chazar, during his short reign (775-780) exerted himself to this end. Abroad he resumed, not ingloriously, the struggle with the Arabs; in 778 an army of 100,000 men invaded Northern Syria, besieged Germanicea, and won a brilliant victory over the Musulmans. The Emperor gave no less attention to the affairs of Italy; he welcomed to Constantinople Adelchis, son of Desiderius, the Lombard king dethroned by Charlemagne, and in concert with him and with the Duke of Benevento, Arichis, he meditated an intervention in the peninsula. At home, however, in spite of his attachment to the iconoclast doctrines, he judged it prudent at first to show himself less hostile to images and to the monks. He dreaded, not without reason, the intrigues of the Caesars, his brothers, one of whom he was in the end forced to banish to Cherson.
Constantine V had selected an Athenian lady, of great beauty and accomplishments, named Irene, to be his son's wife, and Leo had a son named Constantine, who was born in the year 771. The indefinite nature of the imperial succession, and the infancy of Leo's child, gave the two half-brother of the emperor, who had been invested by their father with the rank of Cæsar, some hope of ascending the throne on their brother's death.
Feeling himself in bad health, to give stability to the throne
of his young son Constantine, at the Easter festival of 776 Leo
conferred on his infant son the title of Emperor, in order to secure his
succession; and this was done in a more popular manner than usual, at the
express desire of the senate, in order to give the ceremony all the character
of a popular election. The young emperor's five uncles -the two Cæsars, and the three who bore the title of Nobilissimi- were compelled to take the same oath of
allegiance as the other subjects. Yet, shortly after this, the Cæsar Nicephorus
formed a conspiracy to render himself master of the government. Leo, who felt
that he was rapidly sinking into the grave, referred the decision of his
brother's guilt to a Silention, which condemned all
the conspirators to death. Nicephorus was pardoned, but his partisans were
scourged and banished to Cherson. Leo IV, however, ended by becoming tired of
his policy of religious tolerancea and towards the end of his reign (April 780) persecution set in afresh: executions took place even in the circle round the Emperor;
certain churches, besides, were despoiled of their treasures, and this relapse
of the sovereign into "his hidden malignity," as Theophanes expresses it, might have led to consequences of some gravity, but for the death
of the Emperor on 8 September 780, leaving the throne to a child of ten, his
son Constantine, and the regency to his widow the Empress Irene.
Regency of Irene
Irene was born in a province
zealously attached to the worship of images, and she was devout. There was thus
no question where her sympathies lay. She had indeed towards the end of the
preceding reign somewhat compromised herself by her iconodule opinions; once at
the head of affairs her first thought would be to put an end to a struggle
which had lasted for more than half a century and of which many within the
Empire were weary. But Irene was ambitious also, and keenly desirous of ruling;
her whole life long she was led by one dominating idea, a lust for power
amounting to an obsession. In pursuit of this end she allowed no obstacle to
stay her and no scruple to turn her aside. Proud and passionate, she easily
persuaded herself that she was the instrument to work out the Divine purposes,
and, consequently, from the day that she assumed the regency in her son's name,
she worked with skill and with tenacious resolution at the great task whence
she expected the realization of her vision.
In carrying out the projects
suggested by her devotion and in fulfilling the dreams of her ambition, Irene,
however, found herself faced by many difficulties. The Arabs renewed their
incursions in 781; next year Michael Lachanodraco was
defeated at Dazimon, and the Musulmans pushed on to Chrysopolis, opposite the capital. An
insurrection broke out in Sicily (781), and in Macedonia and Greece the Slavs
rose. But above all, many rival ambitions were growing round the young Empress,
and much opposition was showing itself. The Caesar, her brothers-in-law, were
secretly hostile to her, and the memory of their father Constantine V drew many
partisans to their side. The great offices of the government were all held by
zealous iconoclasts. The army was still devoted to the policy of the late
reign. Finally the Church, which was controlled by the Patriarch Paul, was full
of the opponents of images, and the canons of the Council of Hieria formed part of the law of the land.
The conflict between the image-worshippers and the Iconoclasts soon commenced. The Cæsar Nicephorus, who was as ambitious as his sister-in-law, was eager to drive her from the regency. He organized a conspiracy, in which several ministers and members of the senate took part. Irene obtained full proof of all its ramifications before the conspirators were prepared to act, seized her five brothers-in-law, and compelled them to enter the priesthood. In order to make it generally known that they had assumed the sacerdotal character, they were obliged to officiate during the Christmas ceremonies at the high altar of St. Sophia's, while the young emperor and his mother restored to the church the rich jewels of which it had been deprived by the Iconoclast emperors. The intendantgeneral of posts, the general of the Armeniac theme, the commander of the imperial guard, and the admiral of the Archipelago, who had all taken part in the conspiracy, were scourged, and immured as monks in distant monasteries. Helpidios, the governor of Sicily, assumed the title of emperor as soon as he found that his participation in the plot was known at court; but he was compelled to seek shelter among the Saracens, in whose armies he afterwards served. Nicephorus Doukas, another conspirator, fled also to the Mohammedans. Some years later, when Constantine VI had assumed the government into his own hands, a new conspiracy was formed by the partisans of his uncles (A.D. 792). The princes were then treated with great severity. The Cæsar Nicephorus was deprived of sight; and the tongues of the others were cut out, by the order of their nephew.
The influence of the clergy in the ordinary
administration of justice, and the great extent to which ecclesiastical legislation
regulated civil rights, rendered councils of the church an important feature in
those forms and usages that practically circumscribed the despotic power of the
emperor by a frame-work of customs, opinions, and convictions which he could with
difficulty alter, and rarely oppose without danger. The political ambition of
Irene, the national vanity of the Greeks, and the religious feelings of the
orthodox, required the sanction of a constitutional public authority, before
the laws against image-worship could be openly repealed.
Irene contrived very skillfully to
prepare her way. Some of her adversaries she overthrew, and others she thrust
on one side. She dismissed
the old servants of Constantine V from favour, and
entrusted the government to men at her devotion, especially to eunuchs of her
household. One of them even became her chief minister: Stauracius,
raised by Irene's good graces to the dignity of Patrician and the functions of Logothete of the Dromos, became
the undisputed master of the Palace; for twenty years he was to follow the
fortunes of his benefactress with unshaken loyalty.
Meanwhile, in order to have her
hands free, Irene made peace with the Arabs (783); in the West she was drawing
nearer to the Papacy, and made request to Charlemagne for the hand of his
daughter Rotrude for the young Constantine VI. Sicily
was pacified. Stauracius subdued the Slav revolt. The
Empress could give herself up completely to her religious policy.
From the very outset of her regency
she had introduced a system of toleration such as had been long unknown. Monks
reappeared in the capital, resuming their preaching and their religious
propaganda; amends were made for the sacrilegious acts of the preceding years;
and the devout party, filled with hope, thanked God for the unlooked-for
miracle, and hailed the approaching day when "by the hand of a widowed
woman and an orphan child, impiety should be overthrown, and the Church set
free from her long enslavement."
A subtle intrigue before long placed
the Patriarchate itself at the Empress' disposal. In 784 the Patriarch Paul, a decided
Iconoclast, was induced to resign, and declare that he repented of his
hostility to image-worship, because it had cut off the church of Constantinople
from communion with the rest of the Christian world. This declaration pointed
out the necessity of holding a general council, in order to establish that communion.
The crisis required a new Patriarch, of stainless character, great ability, and
perfect acquaintance with the party connections and individual characters of
the leading bishops. No person could be selected from among the dignitaries of
the church, who had been generally appointed by Iconoclast emperors. The choice
of Irene fell on a civilian. Tarasios, the chief
secretary of the imperial cabinet - a man of noble birth, considerable
popularity, and a high reputation for learning and probity - was suddenly
elevated to be the head of the Greek church, and allowed to be not unworthy of
the high rank. The orthodox would probably have raised a question concerning
the legality of nominating a layman, had it not been evident that the objection
would favour the interests of their opponents. The
empress and her advisers were not bold enough to venture on an irretrievable declaration
in favour of image-worship, until they had obtained a
public assurance of popular support. An assembly of the inhabitants of the
capital was convoked in the palace of Magnaura, in
order to secure a majority pledged to the cause of Tarasios.
The fact that such an assembly was considered necessary, is a strong proof that
the strength of the rival parties was very nearly balanced, and that this
manifestation of public opinion was required in order to relieve the empress
from personal responsibility. Irene proposed to the assembly that Tarasios should be elected Patriarch, and the proposal was
received with general acclamation. Tarasios, however,
refused the dignity, declaring that he would not accept the Patriarchate unless
a general council should be convoked for restoring unity to the church. The
convocation of a council was adopted, and the nomination of Tarasios ratified. Though great care had been taken to fill this assembly with imageworshippers, nevertheless several dissentient voices
made themselves heard, protesting against the proceedings as an attack on the
existing legislation of the empire.
Three hundred and sixty-seven members attended, of whom,
however, not a few were abbots and monks, who assumed the title of confessors
from having been ejected from their monasteries by the decrees of the
Iconoclast sovereigns.
The Empress wrote
to this effect to Pope Hadrian, who entered into her views, and with the
support of these two valuable allies she summoned the prelates of Christendom
to Constantinople for the spring of 786.
The Iconoclasts were still strong in the capital, and the opposition of the soldiery was excited by the determination of Tarasios to re-establish image-worship. On the opening of the Council (17 August 786) in the church of the Holy Apostles, the soldiers of the guard disturbed the gathering by a noisy demonstration and dispersed the orthodox. Irene herself, who was present at the ceremony, escaped with some difficulty from the infuriated zealots. They openly declared that they would not allow a council of the church to beheld, nor permit the ecclesiastics of their party to be unjustly treated by the court. The whole of her work had to be begun over again. It was found necessary to disperse the Iconoclastic soldiery in distant provinces, and form new cohorts of guards devoted to the court, before any steps could be publicly taken to change the laws of the church.
The
experience of Tarasios as a minister of state was
more useful to Irene during the first period of his patriarchate than his
theological learning. Some of the provincial troops were
dexterously won over; then a pretext was found for removing from the capital
and disbanding such regiments of the guard as were ill-disposed. It required nearly three years to smooth the way for the
meeting of the council. Finally; the
Council was convoked at Nicaea in Bithynia; it was opened in the presence of
the papal legates on 24 September 787. This was the seventh Ecumenical Council.
In November 787 the Fathers of the
Church betook themselves to Constantinople, and in a solemn sitting held in the Magnaura palace the Empress signed with her own hand
the canons restoring the beliefs which she loved. And the devout party, proud
of such a sovereign, hailed her magniloquently as the "Christ-supporting
Empress whose government, like her name, is a symbol of peace".
Irene and Constantine VI
Irene's ambition was very soon to
disturb the peace which was still insecure. Constantine VI was growing up; he
was in his eighteenth year. Between a son who wished to govern and a mother
with a passion for supreme power a struggle was inevitable. To safeguard her
work, not less than to retain her authority, Irene was to shrink from nothing,
not even from crime.
Formerly, at the outset of the
reign, she had, as a matter of policy, negotiated a marriage for her son with
Charlemagne's daughter. She now from policy broke it off, no doubt considering
the Frankish alliance less necessary to her after the Council of Nicaea, but,
above all, dreading lest the mighty King Charles should prove a support to his
son-in-law against her. She forced another marriage upon Constantine (788) with
a young Paphlagonian, named Maria, from whom she knew
she had nothing to fear. Besides this, acting in concert with her minister Stauracius, the Empress kept her son altogether in the
background. But Constantine VI in the end grew tired of this state of pupilage
and conspired against the all-powerful eunuch (January 790). Things fell out ill
with him. The conspirators were arrested, tortured, and banished; the young
Emperor himself was flogged like an unruly boy and put under arrest in his
apartments. And Irene, counting herself sure of victory, and intoxicated,
besides, with the flatteries of her dependents, required of the army an oath
that, so long as she lived, her son should never be recognized as Emperor,
while in official proclamations she caused her name to be placed before that of
Constantine.
She was running great risks. The army, still devoted to the memory of Constantine V, was further in very ill humour at the checks which it had met with through Irene's foreign policy. The Arab war, renewed by the Caliph Härfin ar-Rashid (September 786), had been disastrous both by land and sea. In Europe the imperial troops had been beaten by the Bulgars (788). In Italy the breach with the Franks had led to a disaster. A strong force, sent to the peninsula to restore the Lombard prince, Adelchis, had been completely defeated, and its commander slain (788). The troops attributed these failures to the weakness of a woman's government. The regiments in Asia, therefore, mutinied (790) and marched to the capital to deliver Constantine. On the way they were joined by other legions, and Irene found herself compelled to release her son, who immediately hastened to the advancing army. A total revolution was effected at court. The ministers and creatures of Irene were removed from office, and some who had displayed particular animosity against Constantine were scourged and beheaded.
The young Emperor seems to have had some really valuable qualities. He was of an energetic temper and martial instincts; he boldly resumed the offensive against the Arabs (791-795) and against the Bulgars (791). Though the latter in 792 inflicted a serious defeat on him, he succeeded in 796 during a fresh campaign in restoring the reputation of his troops. All this recommended him to the soldiers and the people. Unfortunately his character was unstable: his education had been neglected in a disgraceful manner, and his mind was perhaps naturally fickle. Barely a year after the fall of Irene, yielding to her pressing requests, he restored to her the title of Empress and associated her in the supreme power. At the same time he took back Stauracius as his chief minister.
Irene came back thirsting
for vengeance and more eager than ever in pursuit of her ambitious designs. She
spent five patient years working up her triumph, and with diabolical art bred
successive quarrels between her son and all who were attached to him, lowering
him in the eyes of the army, undermining him in the favour of the people, and finally ruining him with the Church.
At the very beginning she used her newly regained influence to rouse Constantine's suspicions against Alexius Muselé, the general who had engineered th