MEDIEVAL HISTORY-THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE
CHAPTER I
LEO III AND THE ISAURIAN DYNASTY
(717-802)
I
The reign of Leo IIII
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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 organizer, 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 reorganization 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 savior 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 endeavor
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.
Religion: the cult of images
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.
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 marvelous.
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 shall 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 honor; miracles, prodigies, and
marvelous 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 honor 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-honored 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 dishonored 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 favor 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
honor due to images should again be paid to them.
Opposition in East
and West
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 labors 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
rancor against his opponents, and continually distrusted them after events
which so plainly showed 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 rumor 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 favorable; 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 splendor 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 labors 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 saviors 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 rigor.
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.
Persecution of
image-worshippers
“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 favorites; 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
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; he was anxious feeling himself in bad health, to give
stability to the throne of his young son Constantine, whom at the Easter
festival of 776 he had solemnly admitted to a share in the
imperial dignity; and, finally, he was much under the influence of his wife Irene, an Athenian by origin, who was
secretly devoted to the party of the
monks. Leo IV, however, ended by becoming tired of his policy of tolerance. 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.
Irene
contrived very skillfully to prepare her way. Some of her adversaries she overthrew, and others she thrust on one side. A
plot formed to raise her
brothers-in-law to the throne was used by her to compel them to enter the priesthood (Christmas 780). She
dismissed the old servants of
Constantine V from favor, 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
re-appeared 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 abruptly resigned his office. In his place
Irene procured the appointment of a man of her own, a layman, the imperial secretary Tarasius. The latter,
on accepting, declared that it was
time to put an end to the strife which disturbed the Church, and to the schism which separated her from Rome;
and while repudiating the
decisions of the synod of 753 as tainted with illegality, he skillfully put forward the project of an Ecumenical
Council which should restore peace
and unity to the Christian world. 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.
But Irene had
been too precipitate. She had not reckoned with the hostility of the army and even of some of the Eastern
bishops. 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. The whole of
her work had to be begun over again. 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. 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.
Three hundred
and fifty bishops were present, surrounded by a fervent crowd of monks and igumens. The assembly found a month
sufficient for the decision of all
the questions before it. The worship of images was restored, with the single restriction that adoration
should not be claimed for them,
but only veneration; the doctrine concerning images was
established on dogmatic foundations; finally, under the influence of Plato, Abbot of Sakkudion, ecclesiastical discipline and Christian ethics were restored in all their
strictness, and a strong breeze of
asceticism pervaded the whole Byzantine world. The victorious monks had even higher aims in view; from
this time Plato and his nephew, the
famous Theodore of Studion, dreamed of claiming for the Church absolute independence of the State, and
denied to the Emperor the right to
intermeddle with anything involving dogma or religion. This was before long to produce fresh
conflicts graver and of higher importance
than that which had arisen out of the question of images.
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'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 humor at the
checks which it had met with through
Irene’s foreign policy. The Arab war, renewed by the Caliph Harun 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), demanding the recognition of Constantine VI, and from the troops in
Armenia the insurrection spread to the other
themes. Irene took the alarm and abdicated (December 790). Stauracius and her other favorites
fell with her, and Constantine VI,
summoning round him the faithful counselors of his grandfather and his father, took power into his own
hands.
Constantine VI sole
ruler: intrigues of Irene
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: he was devoid of lasting suspicion or resentment. 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 favor 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 the pronunciamento of 790, succeeding so well that the Emperor disgraced him and had him blinded. On learning this
usage of their leader the
legions in Armenia mutinied, and the Emperor was obliged to go in person to crush the revolt (793).
This he did with great harshness, thus
alienating the hearts of the soldiers who were his best support. At the same time, just as on the morrow of
the Bulgar defeat (792), the Caesars,
his uncles, again bestirred themselves. Irene persuaded her son to put out the eyes of the eldest and to cut
out the tongues of the four others, an
act of cruelty which availed little, and made the prince extremely unpopular with the iconoclasts. Then, to
excite public opinion against him, she
devised a last expedient.
Constantine
VI had become enamored of one of the Empress-mother’s maids of honor, named Theodote,
and Irene had lent herself complaisantly to this passion. She even counseled her son to put
away his wife in order to marry the
girl—as she was well aware of the scandal which would follow. The Emperor lent a ready ear to this
advice. In spite of the opposition of the
Patriarch Tarasius, who courageously refused a demand to facilitate the divorce, he dismissed Maria to a
convent and married Theodote (September 795).
There was a general outburst of indignation throughout the religious party at this adulterous
connection. The monks, especially those of
the Sakkudion with Plato and Theodore at their head, abounded in invective against the bigamous Emperor,
the ‘new Herod’, and condemned the
weakness of the Patriarch in tolerating this abomination. Irene surreptitiously encouraged their resistance. In
vain did Constantine VI flatter himself
that, by courtesy and calmness, he could allay the excitement of his opponents, even going so far as
to pay a visit in person to the monks
of the Sakkudion (796) and coolly replying to their insults “that he did not intend to make martyrs”. At
last, however, in the face of their
uncompromising mood, he lost patience. He caused the monks of the Sakkudion to be
arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and exiled. These severities only exasperated public opinion,
which Irene turned to her own advantage.
While the court was at the baths of Prusa, she worked up the plot which was to restore her to power.
It burst forth 17 July 797. The Emperor was
arrested and imprisoned at the Palace, in the Porphyry Chamber where he had
been born, and by his mother’s orders his eyes were put out. He was allowed,
with his wife Theodote, to end his days in peaceful
obscurity. Irene was Empress.
The devout party were determined
to see in this odious crime of a mother against her son nothing but the just
punishment of an adulterous and persecuting Emperor, and traced the hand of
Providence in an event which brought back to power the most pious Irene, the
restorer of orthodoxy. She, quite unmoved, boldly seized upon the government,
and, as though intoxicated with her omnipotence and with the delight of having
realized her dreams, did not hesitate—such a thing had never been seen and
never was to be seen again in Constantinople—to assume, woman as she was, the
title of Emperor. Skillfully, too, she secured her authority and maintained her
popularity. She banished to Athens the Caesars, her brothers-in-law, who were
again conspiring (797), and a little later she had the four younger blinded
(799). To her friends the monks she gave tokens of favor, building new
monasteries and richly endowing the famous convents of the Sakkudion in Bithynia and the Studion in Constantinople. In order to win over the people,
she granted large remissions of taxation, lowering the customs duties and the
taxes on provisions. The delighted capital greeted its benefactress with
acclamations.
Meanwhile, secret intrigues were
being woven around the Empress, now aged and in bad health. Irene’s favorites,
Stauracius and Aetius, had dreams of securing the throne for one of their
relatives, there being now no legitimate heir. And for more than a year there
raged round the irritated and suspicious Irene a heated and merciless struggle.
Stauracius was the first to die, in the middle of 800. While the Byzantine
court wore itself out in these barren disputes, the Arabs, under the rule of
Harun ar-Rashid, again took the offensive and forced
the Empire to pay them tribute (798). In the West, peace was signed with the
Franks, Benevento and Istria being ceded to them (798). Soon an event of graver
importance took place. On 25 December 800, in St Peter’s at Rome, Charlemagne
restored the Empire of the West, a deep humiliation for the Byzantine monarchy
which claimed to be the legitimate heir of the Roman Caesars.
It is said that a sensational
project was conceived in the brains both of Charlemagne and Irene—that of a
marriage which should join their two monarchies under one scepter, and restore,
more fully than in the time of Augustus, Constantine, or Justinian, the ancient
unity of the orbis Romanus. In spite of the distinct
testimony of Theophanes, the story lacks verisimilitude. Intrigues were,
indeed, going on round the old Empress more eagerly than ever. Delivered from
his rival Stauracius, Aetius was pushing his advantage hotly. Other great lords
were opposing him, and the Logothete-General, Nicephorus, was utilizing the
common dissatisfaction for his own ends. The iconoclasts also were secretly
planning their revenge. On 31 October 802 the revolution broke out. The palace
was carried without difficulty, and Nicephorus proclaimed Emperor. Irene, who
was absent at the Eleutherian Palace, was arrested
there and brought back to the capital; she did nothing in her own defence. The
people, who were attached to her, openly showed themselves hostile to the
conspirators, and the coronation, at which the Patriarch Tarasius had no
scruple in officiating, was somewhat stormy. Irene, “like a wise woman, beloved
of God”,' as a contemporary says, submitted to accomplished facts. She was
exiled, first to the Princes Islands, and then, as she still seemed too near,
to Lesbos. She died there soon afterwards (August 803).
Her contemporaries forgave
everything, even her crimes, to the pious and orthodox sovereign, the restorer
of image-worship. Theophanes, as well as Theodore of Studion, overwhelm with
praise and flattery the blessed Irene, the new Helena, whose actions “shine
like the stars”. In truth, this famous sovereign was essentially a
woman-politician, ambitious and devout, carried away by her passion for empire
even into crime, one who did more injury than service to the interests of the
monarchy. By her too exclusive absorption in the work of restoring images, she
weakened the Empire without and left it shrunken territorially and shaken
morally. By the exaggerated deference which she showed to the Church, by the
position which, thanks to her, that Church, with strength renewed by the
struggle, assumed in the Byzantine community, by the power which the devout and
monastic party under such leaders as Theodore of Studion acquired as against
the State, the imperial authority found itself seriously prejudiced. The deep
divisions left by the controversy over images produced a dangerous state of
discontent and unrest; the defeated iconoclasts waited impatiently, looking for
their revenge. Finally, by her intrigues and her crime, Irene had made a
perilous return to the period of palace revolutions, which her glorious
predecessors, the Isaurian Emperors, had brought to a close for nearly a
century.
The achievements of the Isaurian Emperors
And yet at the dawn of the ninth
century the Byzantine Empire still held a great place in the world. In the
course of the eighth century, through the loss of Italy and the restoration of
the Empire of the West, and also through the preponderance in the Byzantine
Empire of its Asiatic provinces, that Empire became an essentially Oriental
monarchy. And this development in a direction in which it had for a long time
been tending, finally determined its destiny and the part it was to play. One
of the greatest services rendered by the Isaurian Emperors had been to put a
period to the advance of Islam; the Empire was to be thenceforward the champion
of Europe against the infidel. In the same way, as against barbarism, it was to
remain throughout the East of Europe the disseminator of the Christian Faith
and the guardian of civilization.
Despite the bitterness of the
quarrel over images, the Byzantine State came forth from the ordeal with youth
renewed, full of fervor and vigour. The Church, not only stronger but also
purer for the conflict, had felt the need of a moral reformation which should
give her fresh life. Between 797 and 806, in the Studion monastery, the Abbot
Theodore had drawn up for his monks that famous rule which, with admirable
feeling for practical administration, combines manual work, prayer, and regard
for intellectual development. In lay society, taught and led by the preaching
of the monks, we find a like stress laid on piety, chastity, and renunciation.
No doubt among these devoted and enthusiastic spirits a strange hardness may
sometimes be noticed, and the heat of the struggle occasionally generated in
them a singular perversion of the moral sense and a forgetfulness of the most
elementary ideas of justice, to say nothing of a tendency to superstition. But
these pious souls and these holy women, of whom the eighth century offers so
many examples, lent an unparalleled luster to the Byzantine Church; and since
for some years it was they who were the leaders of opinion, that Church drew
from them and kept throughout the following century a force and a greatness
never equaled.
The opponents of images, on their
side, have contributed no less to this splendor of Byzantine civilization.
Though making war upon icons, the Isaurian Emperors were anything but Puritans.
In place of the religious pictures which they destroyed they caused secular and
even still-life subjects to be portrayed in churches and palaces alike—scenes
of the kind formerly affected by Alexandrine art, horse-races, hippodrome
games, landscapes with trees and birds, and also historical scenes depicting
the great military events of the time. In the style of this Iconoclastic art,
especially in its taste for the decorative, there is a genuine return to
antique traditions of the picturesque, mingled with influences derived from the
Arab East. This was by no means all to be lost. The renascence of the tenth
century owed more than is generally thought to these new tendencies of the
Iconoclastic period.
The same character is traceable
in the thoroughly secular and oriental splendor with which the Byzantine court
surrounded itself, in the luster of its fetes, which were still almost pagan,
such as the Brumalia, in which traditions of
antiquity were revived, in the taste for luxury shown by private individuals
and even by churchmen. With this taste for elegance and art there was a
corresponding and very powerful intellectual advance. It will suffice to recall
the names of George Syncellus and Theophanes, of John Damascene and Theodore of
Studion, of the Patriarchs Tarasius and Nicephorus, to notice the wide
development given to education, and the breadth of mind and tolerance to be met
with among certain men of the day, in order to realize that here also the
Iconoclastic period had been far from barren. Certainly the Empire in the ninth
century had still many years to go through of disaster and anarchy. Yet from
the government of the Isaurian Emperors a new principle of life had sprung,
which was to enrich the world for ever.
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