BOOK I - CHAPTER I

Section III

CONSTANTINE V COPRONYMUS

AD 741-775

Constantine V, called Copronymus, ascended the throne at the age of twenty-two, but he had already borne the title of emperor as his father’s colleague one and twenty years, for the Byzantine empire preserved so strictly the elective type of the Roman imperial dignity, that the only mode of securing the hereditary transmission of the empire was for the reigning emperor to obtain his son’s election during his own lifetime. Historians tell us that Constantine was a man possessing every vice disgraceful to humanity, combined with habits and tastes which must have rendered his company disgusting and his person contemptible. Yet they record facts proving that he possessed great talents, and that, even when his fortunes appeared desperate, he found many devoted friends. The obloquy heaped on his name must therefore he ascribed to the blind passion inspired by religious bigotry. The age was not one of forbearance and charity. The wisest generally con­sidered freedom of opinion a species of anarchy incompatible with religious feeling, moral duty, and good government; con­sequently, both iconoclasts and image-worshippers approved of persecution, and practised calumny in favor of what each considered the good cause. Constantine tortured the image-worshippers—they revenged themselves by defaming the emperor. But the persecutions which rendered Constantine a monster in the eyes of the Greeks and Italians, elevated him to the rank of a saint in the opinion of a large body of the population of the empire, who regarded the worship of pictures as a species of idolatry abhorrent to Christianity. His religious zeal, political success, courage, military talents, together with the prosperity that attended his government, all conspired to make him the idol of the Iconoclasts, who regarded, his tomb as a sacred shrine until it was destroyed by Michael the orthodox drunkard.

Constantine was able, prudent, active, and brave; but he was not more tender of human suffering than monarchs generally are. The Patriarch Nicephorus justly accuses him of driving monks from their monasteries, and converting sacred buildings into barracks. In modern times, orthodox papist sovereigns have frequently done the same thing, without exciting much ecclesiastical indignation. But when the Patriarch assures us that the emperor’s mind was as filthy as his name, we may be allowed to suspect that his pen is guided by orthodoxy instead of truth; and when we find grave historians recording that he loved the odour of horse-dung, and carried on amours with old maids, we are reminded of the Byzantine love of calumny which could delight in the anecdotes of Procopius, and believe that the Emperor Justinian was a man of such diabolical principles, that he was not ashamed to walk about his palace for many hours of the night without his head. An account of the reign of Constantine by an intelligent Iconoclast, even if he represented the emperor as a saint, would be one of the most valuable illustrations of the history of the eighth century which time could have spared. He was accused of rejecting the practice of invoking the intercession of the Virgin Mary, though it is admitted he called her the Mother of God. He was also said to have denied the right of any man to be called a saint; and he had even the audacity to maintain, that though the martyrs benefited themselves by their sufferings, their merit, however great it might be, was not a quality that could be transferred to others. His enemies regarded these opinions as damnable crimes. Few reputations, however, have passed through such an ordeal of malice as that of Constantine, and preserved so many undeniable virtues.

Rebellion of Artavasdos. AD 743

Shortly after his succession, Constantine lost possession of Constantinople through the treachery of his brother-in-law Artavasdos, who assumed the title of emperor, and kept possession of the throne for two years. Artavasdos was an Armenian noble who had commanded the troops of the Armeniac theme in the reign of Theodosius III, and aided Leo to mount the throne. He was rewarded with the hand of Anna, the Isaurian’s only daughter, and with the dignity of caropalates, second, only to that of Caesar, a rank then usually reserved, for the imperial blood. Artavasdos had increased his influence by favoring the orthodox; his long services in the highest administrative offices had enabled him to attach many partisans to his personal cause in every branch of the public service. The manner in which Constantine was engaged in a civil war with his brother-in-law reflected no dishonor on the character of the young emperor.

The Saracens had pushed their incursions into the Opsikian theme, where the imperial guards, under the command of Artavasdos, were stationed. Constantine took the field in person to oppose the enemy, and advanced to the plains of Krasos. Here he ordered Artavasdos, who was at Dorylaeum, to join him with the troops of the Opsikian theme. The order alarmed Artavasdos, who seems to have been already engaged in treasonable intrigues. Instead of obeying, he assumed the title of emperor, and attacked Constantine so unexpectedly, that the imperial army was easily dispersed, and the young emperor could only avoid being taken prisoner by galloping off alone. When his own horse sank from fatigue Constantine was compelled to seize a post-horse, which he happened to find ready saddled, in order to continue his flight. He was fortunate enough to reach Amorium in safety.

Artavasdos marched to Constantinople, where, it appears from coins, he affected for some time to act as the colleague of Constantine; and it is possible that some treaty may have been concluded between the brothers-in-law. The usurper, however, soon considered himself strong enough, with the support of the orthodox, to set Constantine aside. The pope acknowledged him as emperor, pictures were replaced in the churches, a strong body of Armenian troops was collected, and Nicephorus, the eldest son of Artavasdos, was crowned as his father's colleague; while Niketas, the second, took the command of the Armeniac theme, where the family possessed great influence. All persons suspected of favoring Constantine were persecuted as heretics hostile to picture-worship.

In the following year (742) Constantine assembled an army composed chiefly of the troops of the Thrakesian and Anatolic themes. With this force he marched to Chrysopolis, (Scutari), hoping that a party in Constantinople would declare in his favor; but, being disappointed, he was compelled to withdraw to Amorium, where he passed the winter. In spring, Artavasdos marched to dislodge him, ordering his son Niketas to bring up the Armenian troops to operate on the right flank of the young emperor. All the country in the usurpers line of march was ravaged, as if it was a territory he never hoped to govern. Constantine, whose military genius had been cultivated by his father, formed a daring plan of campaign, and executed it in the most brilliant manner. While his enemies believed that they were advancing to attack him with superior forces, he resolved to move forward with such celerity as to become the attacking party, before they could approach near enough to combine any simultaneous movements. His first attack was directed against Artavasdos, whose numerous army was inferior in discipline to that of Niketas, and over which he expected an easier victory. A general engagement took place near Sardis, on quitting the Kelvian plain, watered by the Kaister. The victory was complete. The usurper was closely pursued to Cyzicus, from whence he escaped by sea to Constantinople. Constantine then moved forward to meet Niketas, who was defeated in a bloody battle fought at Modrina, in the Boukellarian theme, to the east of the Sangarius. The Armenian auxiliaries and the troops of the Armeniac theme sustained their high reputation, and long disputed the victory.

The emperor then marched to invest Constantinople, crossing the Bosphorus with one division of his army, and sending another, under the command of Sisinnios, the general of the Thrakesian theme, to cross the Hellespont at Abydos, and reduce the cities on the shores of the Propontis. The fleet of the Kibyrraiot theme was ordered to blockade the capital by sea. All communications with Greece, one of the strongholds of the image-worshippers, were thus cut off. Constantine repulsed every sally by land, and famine quickly made frightful ravages in the dense population of the capital, where no preparations had been made for a siege. Constantine acted on this occasion in a very different manner from Artavasdos during the campaign in Asia Minor. He felt that the people suddenly besieged were his own subjects; and his enemies record that he allowed all the starving population to seek refuge in his camp.

Niketas quickly reassembled the fugitives of his own and his father’s army, and made an attempt to cut off Constantine’s communications in Bithynia; but the emperor left the camp before Constantinople, and, putting himself at the head of the troops in Asia, again defeated Niketas near Nicomedia. Niketas and the orthodox archbishop of Gangra were both prisoners. The belligerent prelate was immediately beheaded as a traitor; but Niketas was carried to Constantinople, where he was exhibited before the walls laden with fetters. Artavasdos still rejected all terms of capitulation, and Constantine at last ordered a general assault, by which he captured the city on the 2nd November, 743. Artavasdos escaped by sea to a fortress called Pyzanitis, in the Opsikian theme, where he was soon after taken prisoner. His eyes, and those of his sons, Nicephorus and Niketas, were put out; and in this condition they were exhibited as a triumphal spectacle to the inhabitants of Constantinople, at the chariot races given by the emperor to celebrate his re-establishment on the throne. His brother-in-law and nephews were then immured in a monastery. Some of their principal adherents were beheaded. The head of Vaktageios, the principal minister of the usurper, was exhibited for three days in the Augusteon—a custom perpetuated by the Ottoman emperors in similar circumstances until our own times, the heads of rebel viziers having adorned the gate of the Serail during the reign of the late sultan. The Patriarch Anastasios was pardoned, and allowed to remain in possession of his dignity; yet Theophanes says that his eyes were put out, and he was exhibited in the circus, mounted on an ass, and exposed to the scorn of the mob. Sisinnios, who had commanded one division of the emperor’s army, was soon found to be engaged in treasonable intrigues, and lost his eyes forty days after he entered the capital in triumph with his sovereign.

Saracen War. AD 746-769

Constantine no sooner found himself firmly established on the throne, than he devoted his attention to completing the organization of the empire traced out by his father. The constant attacks of the Saracens and Bulgarians called him frequently to the head of his armies, for the state of society rendered it dangerous to entrust large forces to the command of a subject. In the Byzantine empire few individuals had any scruple of violating the political constitution of their country, if by so doing they could increase their own power.

The incursions of the Saracens first required to be repressed. The empire of the caliphs was already distracted by the civil wars which preceded the fall of the Ommiad dynasty. Constantine took advantage of these troubles. He reconquered Germanicia and Doliche, and occupied for a time a considerable part of Commagene; but as he found it impossible to retain possession of the country, he removed the Christian population to Thrace, where he founded several flourishing colonies, long distinguished by their religious opinions from the surrounding population, AD 746.

The Saracens attempted to indemnify themselves for these losses by the conquest of Cyprus. This island appears to have been reconquered by Leo III, for it had been abandoned to the Mohammedans by Justinian II. The fleet of the caliph sailed from Alexandria, and landed an army at the port of Kerameia; but the fleet of the Kibyrraiot theme arrived in time to blockade the enemy’s ships, and of a thousand Mohammedan vessels three only escaped, AD 748. The war was continued.

In 752 the imperial armies took the cities of Melitene and Theodosiopolis, but some years later the caliph Mansour recovered Melitene and Germanicia: he seems, however, to have considered the tenure of the last so insecure, that he transported the inhabitants into Palestine. The Saracens invaded the empire almost every summer, but these incursions led to no permanent conquests. The agricultural population along the frontiers of the two empires must have been greatly diminished during these successive ravages; for farm-buildings and fruit-trees were constantly destroyed, and slaves formed the most valuable booty of the soldiers. The mildness and tolerant government of the emperor of Romania (for that name began now to be applied to the part of Asia Minor belonging to the Byzantine empire) was so celebrated in the East, in spite of his persecution of the image-worshippers at Constantinople, that many Christians escaped by sea from the dominions of the Caliph Al Mansour to settle in those of Constantine. In the year 769 an exchange of prisoners took place, but without interrupting the course of hostilities, which were continued, almost incessantly on the frontiers of the two empires,

Bulgarian War. AD 757-755

The vicinity of the Bulgarians to Constantinople rendered them more dangerous enemies than the Saracens, though their power was much inferior. The Bulgarians were a people who looked on war as the most honorable means of acquiring wealth, and they had long pursued it with profit: for as long as the Byzantine frontiers were populous, they obtained booty and slaves by their incursions: while, as soon as it became depopulated by their ravages, they were enabled to occupy new districts with their own pastoral hordes, and thus increase their numbers and strength. To resist their incursions, Constantine gradually repaired all the fortifications of the towns on the northern frontier, and then commenced fortifying the passes, until the Bulgarians found their predatory incursions attended with loss instead of gain. Their king was now compelled to make the cause of the predatory bands a national question, and an embassy was sent to Constantinople to demand payment of an annual tribute, under the pretext that some of the fortifications erected to guard the passes were situated in the Bulgarian territory, but, in reality, to replace the loss of the plunder which had enabled many of the warlike Bulgarians to live in idleness and luxury. The demands of the king were rejected, and he immediately invaded the empire with a powerful army. The Bulgarians carried their ravages up to the long wall; but though they derived assistance from the numerous Slavonian colonies settled in Thrace, they were defeated, and driven back into their own territory with great slaughter, AD 757.

Constantine carried on a series of campaigns, systematically planned, for the purpose of weakening the Bulgarian power. Instead of allowing his enemy to make any incursions intothe empire, he was always ready to carry the war into their territory. The difficulties of his enterprise were great, and he suffered several defeats; but his military talents and persevering energy prevented the Bulgarians from profiting by any partial success they obtained, and he soon regained the superiority. In the campaigns of 760, 763, and 765, Constantine marched far into Bulgaria, and carried off immense booty. In the year 766 he intended to complete the conquest of the country, by opening the campaign at the commencement of spring. His fleet, which consisted of two thousand six hundred vessels, in which he had embarked a considerable body of infantry in order to enter the Danube, was assailed by one of those furious storms that often sweep the Euxine. The force which the emperor expected would soon render him master of Bulgaria was suddenly ruined. The shores of the Black Sea were covered with the wrecks of his ships and the bodies of his soldiers. Constantine immediately abandoned the thought of continuing the campaign, and employed his whole army in alleviating the calamity to the survivors, and in securing Christian burial and funeral honors to the dead. A. truce was concluded with the enemy, and the Roman army beheld the emperor as eager to employ their services in the cause of humanity and religion, as he had ever been to lead them to the field of glory and conquest. His conduct on this occasion gained him as much popularity with the people of Constantinople as with me troops.

In the year 774 he again assembled an army of eighty thousand men, accompanied by a fleet of two thousand transports, and invaded Bulgaria. The Bulgarian monarch concluded a treaty of peace—which, however, was broken as soon as Constantine returned to his capital. But the emperor was not unprepared, and the moment he heard that the enemy had laid siege to Verzetia, one of the fortresses he had constructed to defend the frontier, he quitted Constantinople in the month of October, and, falling suddenly on the besiegers, routed their army with great slaughter. The following year his army was again ready to take the field; but as Constantine was on his way to join it he was attacked by a mortal illness, which compelled him to retrace his steps. Having embarked at Selymbria, in order to reach Constantinople with as little fatigue as possible, he died on board the vessel at the castle of Strongyle, just as he reached the walls of his capital, on the 23rd September, 775.

Organized Brigands

The long war with the Bulgarians was carried on rather with the object of securing tranquility to the northern provinces of the empire, than from any desire of a barren conquest. The necessity of reducing the Slavonian colonies in Thrace and Macedonia to complete obedience to the central administration, and of secluding them from all political communication with one another, or with their countrymen in Bulgaria, Servia, and Dalmatia, imposed on the emperor the necessity of maintaining strong bodies of troops, and suggested the policy of forming a line of Greek towns and Asiatic colonies along the northern frontier of the empire. When this was done, Constantine began to root out the brigandage, which had greatly extended itself during the anarchy which preceded his father’s election, and which Leo had never been able to exterminate.

Numerous bands lived by plunder, in a state of independence, within the bounds of the empire. They were called Skamars, and, like the Bagauds of Gaul, formed organized confederacies of outlaws, originally consisting of men driven to despair by the intolerable burden of taxation, and the severity of the fiscal legislation. When the incursions of the Bulgarians had wasted the fields of the cultivator, the government still called upon him to pay the full amount of taxation imposed on his estate in prosperous times : his produce, his cattle, his slaves, and his seed-corn were carried away by the imperial officers. He could then only live by plundering his fellow-subjects, who had hitherto escaped the calamities by which he had been ruined, and thus the oppression of the imperial government was avenged on the society that submitted to it without striving to reform its evils. Constantine rooted out these bands.

A celebrated chief of the Skamars was publicly executed at Constantinople with the greatest barbarity, his living body being dissected by surgeons after the amputation of his hands and feet. The habitual barbarity of legal punishments in the Byzantine empire can hardly relieve the memory of Constantine from the reproach of cruelty, which this punishment proves he was ready to employ against the enemies of his authority, whether brigands or image-worshippers. His error, therefore, was not only passing laws against liberty of conscience—which was a fault in accordance with the spirit of the age—but in carrying these laws into execution with a cruelty offensive to human feelings. Yet on many occasions Constantine gave proofs of humanity, as well as of a desire to protect his subjects.

The Slavonians on the coast of Thrace, having fitted out some piratical vessels, carried off many of the inhabitants of Tenedos, Imbros, and Samothrace, to sell them as slaves. The emperor on this occasion ransomed two thousand five hundred of his subjects, preferring to lower his own dignity, by paying a tribute to the pirates, rather than allow those who looked to him for protection to pine away their lives in hopeless misery. No act of his reign shows so much real greatness of mind as this. He also concluded the convention with the Saracens for an exchange of prisoners, which has been already mentioned—one of the earliest examples of the exchanges between the Mohammedans and the Christians, which afterwards became frequent on the Byzantine frontiers. Man was exchanged for man, woman for woman, and child for child. These conventions tended to save the lives of innumerable prisoners, and rendered the future wars between the Saracens and Romans less barbarous.

Internal Policy

Constantine was active in his internal administration, and his schemes for improving the condition of the inhabitants of his empire were carried out on a far more gigantic scale than modern governments have considered practicable. One of his plans for reviving agriculture in uncultivated districts was by re-peopling them with colonies of emigrants, to whom he secured favorable conditions and efficient protection. On the banks of the Artanas in Bithynia, a colony of two hundred thousand Slavonians was formed. The Christian population of Germanicia, Doliche, Melitene, and Theodosiopolis was established in Thrace, to watch and restrain the rude Slavonians settled in that province; and these Asiatic colonists long continued to flourish and multiply. They are even accused of spreading the heretical opinions which they had brought from the East throughout great part of western Europe, by the extent of their commercial relations and the example of their prosperity and honesty.

It is not to be supposed that the measures of Constantine's administration, however great his political abilities might be, were competent to remove many of the social evils of his age. Agriculture was still carried on in the rudest manner; and as communications were difficult and insecure, and transport expensive, capital could hardly be laid out on land to any extent with much profit. As usual under such circumstances we find years of famine and plenty alternating in close succession. Yet the bitterest enemy of Constantine, the abbot Theophanes, confesses that his reign was one of general abundance. It is true, he reproaches him with loading the husbandmen with taxes; but he also accuses him of being a new Midas, who made gold so common in the hands of all that it became cheap. The abbot's political economy, it must be confessed, is not so orthodox as his calumny. If the Patriarch Nicephorus, another enemy of Constantine, is to be believed, grain was so abundant, or gold so rare, that sixty measures of wheat, or seventy measures of barley, were sold for a nomisma, or gold Byzant. To guard against severe drought in the capital, and supply the gardens in its immediate vicinity with water, Constantine repaired the great aqueduct of Valens. The flourishing condition of the towns in Greece at the time is attested by the fact, that the best workmen in cement were sought in the Hellenic cities and the islands of the Archipelago.

The time and attention of Constantine, during his whole reign, were principally engaged m military occupations. In the eyes of his contemporaries, he was judged by his military conduct. His strategic abilities and indefatigable activity were the most striking characteristics of his administration. His campaigns, his financial measures, and the abundance they created, were known to all; but his ecclesiastical policy affected comparatively few. Yet by that policy his reign has been exclusively judged and condemned in modern times. The grounds of the condemnation are unjust. He has not, like his father, the merit of having saved an empire from ruin; but he may claim the honor of perfecting the reforms planned by his father, and of reestablishing the military power of the Roman empire on a basis that perpetuated Byzantine supremacy for several centuries. Hitherto historians have treated the events of his reign as an accidental assemblage of facts; but surely, if he is to be rendered responsible for the persecution of the image-worshippers, in which he took comparatively little part, he deserves credit for his military successes and prosperous administration, since these were the result of his constant personal occupation. The history of his ecclesiastical measures, however, really possesses a deep interest, for they reflect with accuracy the feelings and ideas of millions of his subjects, as well as of the emperor.

Policy regarding Image-Worship

Constantine was a sincere enemy of image-worship, and in his age sincerity implied bigotry, for persecution was considered both lawful and meritorious. Yet with all his energy, he was prudent in his first attempts to carry out his father's policy. While he was struggling with Artavasdos, and laboring to restore the discipline of his troops, and re-establish the military superiority of the Byzantine arms, he left the religious controversy concerning image-worship to the two parties of the clergy who then disputed for pre-eminence in the church. But when his power was consolidated, he steadily pursued his father’s plans for centralizing the ecclesiastical administration of the empire. To prepare for the final decision of the question, which probably, in his mind, related as much to the right of the emperor to govern the church, as to the question whether pictures were to be worshipped or not, he ordered the metropolitans and archbishops to hold provincial synods, in order to discipline the people for the execution of the edicts he proposed to carry in a general council of the Eastern church.

This general council was convoked at Constantinople in the year 754. It was attended by 338 bishops, forming the most numerous assembly of the Christian clergy which had ever been collected together for ecclesiastical legislation. Theodosius, metropolitan of Ephesus, son o the Emperor Tiberius III, presided, for the patriarchal chair had been kept vacant since the death of Anastasios in the preceding year. Neither the Pope nor the patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem sent representatives to this council, which was solely composed of the Byzantine clergy, so that it had no right to assume the rank of an ecumenical council. Its decisions were all against image-worship, which it declared to be contrary to scripture. It proclaimed the use of images and pictures in churches to be a pagan and antichristian practice, the abolition of which was necessary to avoid leading Christians into temptation. Even the use of the crucifix was condemned, on the ground chat the only true symbol of the incarnation was the bread and wine which Christ had commanded to be received for the remission of sins. In its opposition to the worship of pictures, the council was led into the display of some animosity against painting itself; and every attempt at embodying sacred subjects by what it styled the dead and accursed art, foolishly invented by the pagans, was strongly condemned. The common people were thus deprived of a source of ideas, which, though liable to abuse, tended in general to civilize their minds, and might awaken noble thoughts and religious aspirations. We may fully agree with the Iconoclasts in the religious importance of not worshipping images, and not allowing the people to prostrate themselves on the pavements of churches before pictures of saints, whether said to be painted by human artists or miraculous agency; while at the same time we think that the walls of the vestibules or porticoes of sacred edifices may with propriety be adorned with pictures representing those sacred subjects most likely to awaken feelings of Christian charity. It is by embodying and ennobling the expression of feelings common to all mankind, that modern artists can alone unite in their works that combination of truth with the glow of creative imagination which gives a divine stamp to many pagan works. There is nothing in the circle of human affairs so democratic as art. The council of 754, however, deemed that it was necessary to sacrifice art to the purity 01 religion. “The godless art of painting” was proscribed. All who manufactured crucifixes or sacred paintings for worship, in public or private, whether laymen or monks, were ordered to be excommunicated by the church and punished by the state. At the same time, in order to guard against the indiscriminate destruction of sacred buildings and shrines possessing valuable ornaments and rich plate and jewels, by Iconoclastic zeal, or under its pretext, the council commanded that no alteration was to be made in existing churches, without the special permission of the patriarch and the emperor —a regulation bearing strong marks of the fiscal rapacity of the central treasury of the Roman empire. The bigotry of the age was displayed in the anathema which this council pronounced against three of the most distinguished and virtuous advocates of image-worship, Germanos, the Patriarch of Constantinople, George of Cyprus, and John Damascenus, the last of the fathers of the Greek church.

The ecclesiastical decisions of the council served as the basis for penal enactments by the civil power. The success of the emperor in restoring prosperity to the empire, many of his subjects to believe that he was destined to reform the church as well as the state, and few thinking men could doubt that corruption had entered deep into both. In many minds there was a contest between the superstitions of picture-worship and the feeling of respect for the emperors administration; but there were still in the Roman empire many persons of education, unconnected with the church, who regarded the superstitions of the people with aversion. To them the reverence paid by the ignorant to images said to have fallen from heaven, to pictures painted by St. Luke, to virgins who wept, and to saints who supplied the lamps burning before their effigies with a perpetual fountain of oil, appeared rank idolatry. There were also still a few men of philosophic minds who exercised the right of private judgment on public questions, both civil and ecclesiastical, and who felt that the emperor was making popular superstition the pretext for rendering his power despotic in the church as in the state. His conduct appeared to these men a violation of those principles of Roman law and ecclesiastical legislation which tendered the systematic government of society in the Roman empire superior to the arbitrary rule of Mohammedan despotism, or the wild license of Gothic anarchy. The Greek church had not hitherto made it imperative on its members to worship images;—it had only tolerated popular abuse in the reverence paid to these symbols—so that the ignorant monks who resisted the enlightened Iconoclasts might, by liberal-minded men, be considered as the true defenders of the right of private judgment, and as benefactors of mankind. There is positive evidence that such feelings really existed, and they could not exist without producing some influence on society generally. Less than forty years after the death of Constantine, the tolerant party was so numerous that it could struggle in the imperial cabinet to save heretics from persecution, on the ground that the church had no authority to ask that men should be condemned to death for matters of belief, as God may always turn the mind of the sinner to repentance. Theophanes has recorded the existence of these humane sentiments in his eagerness to blame them.

Many of the clergy boldly resisted the edicts of Constantine to enforce the new ecclesiastical legislation against images and pictures. They held that all the acts of the council of Constantinople were void, for a general council could only be convoked by an orthodox emperor; and they took upon themselves to declare the opinions of Constantine heterodox. The monks engaged with eagerness in the controversy which arose. The Pope, the patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, replied to the excommunications of the council by condemning all its supporters to eternal perdition. The emperor, enraged at the opposition he met with, enforced the execution of his edicts with all the activity and energy of his character; his political as well as his religious views urged him to be a persecutor. It is evident that policy and passion were as much connected with his violence against the image-worshippers as religious feeling, for he treated many heretics with toleration who appeared to be quiet and inoffensive subjects, incapable of offering any opposition to his political and ecclesiastical schemes. The Theopaschites, the Paulicians, and the Monophysites enjoyed religious toleration during his whole reign.

In the year 766 the edicts against image-worship were extended in their application, and enforced with additional rigor. The use of relics and the practice of praying to saints were prohibited. Many monks, and several members of the dignified clergy, were banished; stripes, loss of the eyes and of the tongue, were inflicted as legal punishments for prostration before a picture, or praying before a relic. Yet, even at this period of the greatest excitement, the emperor at times displayed great personal forbearance; when, however, either policy or passion prompted him to order punishment to be inflicted, it was done with fearful severity.

Two cases may be mentioned as affording a correct elucidation of the personal conduct of Constantine. A hermit, named Andreas the Kalybite, presented himself before the emperor, and upbraided him for causing dissension in the church. “If you are a Christian, why dost you persecute Christians?” shouted the monk to his prince, with audacious orthodoxy. Constantine ordered him to be carried off to prison for insulting the imperial authority. He was then called upon to submit to the decisions of the general council; and when he refused to admit the validity of its canons, and to obey the edicts of the emperor, he was tried and condemned to death. After being scourged in the hippodrome, he was beheaded, and his body, according to the practice of the age, was cast into the sea.

Stephen, the abbot of a monastery near Nicomedia, was banished to the island of Proconnesus, on account of his firm opposition to the emperor’s edicts; but his fame for piety drew numerous votaries to his place of banishment, who flocked thither to hear him preach. This assembly of seditious and pious persons roused the anger of the civil authorities, and Stephen was brought to Constantinople to be more strictly watched. His eloquence still drew crowds to the door of his prison; and the reverence shown to him by his followers vexed the emperor so much, that he gave vent to his mortification by exclaiming—“It seems, in truth, that this monk is really emperor, and I am nothing in the empire”. This speech was heard by some of the officers of the imperial guard. Like that of Henry II concerning Thomas a Becket, it caused the death of Stephen. He was dragged from his prison by some of the emperor's guard, and cruelly murdered. The soldiery and the people joined in dragging his body through the streets, and his unburied remains were left exposed in the place destined to receive those of the lowest criminals. Both Stephen and Andreas were declared martyrs, and rewarded with a place in the calendar of Greek saints.

Orthodox zeal and party ambition combined to form a dangerous conspiracy against Constantine. Men of the highest rank engaged in the plot, and even the Patriarch Constantinos, though himself an Iconoclast, appears to have joined the conspirators. He was removed from the patriarchate, and the dignity was conferred on a Slavonian prelate, named Niketas.

The deposed Patriarch was brought to trial and condemned to death. Constantinos, after his condemnation, and apparently with the hope of having his life spared, signed a declaration that he believed the worship of images to be idolatry, that the decrees of the council of Constantinople contained the true doctrines of the orthodox church, and that the faith of the emperor was pure. This last article was added because the patriarch was accused of having countenanced reports charging the emperor with heterodox opinions concerning the Virgin. If Constantinos expected mercy by his pliancy, he was mistaken. His sentence was carried into execution in the cruellest manner. The head of the Greek church was placed on an ass, with his face towards the tail, and conducted through the streets of the capital, while the mob treated him with every insult. On reaching the amphitheatre his head was struck off. It may easily be supposed that, when the highest ecclesiastic in the empire was treated in this manner in the capital, the severity of the imperial agents in the distant provinces was often fearfully tyrannical.

The spirit of ecclesiastical bigotry which has so often led popes, princes, and Protestants to burn those who differed from them in matters of opinion, gave the image-worshippers as much fortitude to resist as it gave their opponents cruelty to persecute. The religious and political reforms of the Isaurian emperors were equally a subject of aversion to the Pope and the Italians; and all the possessions of the emperors in central Italy had been rendered virtually independent, even before Constantine convoked the council of Constantinople. His struggle with the Saracens and Bulgarians had prevented his making any effort in Italy. At Rome, however, the Popes continued to acknowledge the civil and judicial supremacy of the emperor of the East, even after the Lombards had conquered the exarchate of Ravenna. But the impossibility of receiving any support from Constantine against the encroachments of the Lombards, induced Pope Stephen to apply to Pepin of France for assistance. Pope Paul afterwards carried his eagerness to create a quarrel between Pepin and Constantine so far, that he accused the emperor of hostile designs  against Italy, which he was well aware Constantine had little time or power to execute. Pepin, who was anxious to gain the aid of papal authority in his projects of usurpation, made a donation of the exarchate of Ravenna to the papal see in the year 755, though he had not the smallest right to dispose of it. The donation, however, supplied the Pope with a pretext for laying claim to the sovereignty over the country; and there can be no doubt that the papal government was at this very popular among the Italians, for it secured them the administration of justice according to the Roman law, guaranteed to them a considerable degree of municipal independence, and permitted them to maintain their commercial relations with the Byzantine empire. The political dependence of many of the cities in central Italy, which escaped the Lombard domination, was not absolutely withdrawn from the empire of the East until a new emperor of the West was created, on the assumption of the imperial crown by Charlemagne, to whom the allegiance of the Italians, who threw off Constantine's authority, was at last transferred.

Physical Phenomena

Some remarkable physical phenomena occurred during the reign of Constantine. An unnatural darkness obscured the sun from the 10th to the 15th of August in the year 746. It terrified the inhabitants of Constantinople at the time it occurred; and when the great pestilence broke out in the following year, it was regarded as a prognostic of that calamity. In the year 750, violent earthquakes destroyed whole towns in Syria. In the month of October, 763, a winter of singular severity commenced long before severe cold generally sets in at Constantinople. The Bosphorus was frozen over, and men passed on foot between Europe and Asia in several places. The Black Sea was covered with ice from the Palus Maeotic to Mesembria. When the thaw began in the month of February, 764, immense mountains of ice were driven through the Bosphorus, and dashed with such violence against the walls of Constantinople as to threaten them with ruin. These icebergs were seventy feet in thickness; and Theophanes mentions that, when a boy, he mounted on one of them with thirty of his young companions.

One great calamity in the age of Constantine appears to have travelled over the whole habitable world; this was the great pestilence, which made its appearance in the Byzantine empire as early as 745. It had previously carried off a considerable portion of the population of Syria, and the Caliph Yezid III perished of the disease in 744. From Syria it visited Egypt and Africa, from whence it passed into Sicily. After making great ravages in Sicily and Calabria, it spread to Greece; and at last, in the year 749, broke out with terrible violence in Constantinople, then probably the most populous city in the universe. It was supposed to have been introduced, and dispersed through Christian countries, by the Venetian and Greek ships employed in carrying on a contraband trade in slaves with the Mohammedan nations, and it spread wherever commerce extended. Monemvasia, one of the commercial cities at the time, received the contagion with the return of its trading vessels, and disseminated the disease over all Greece, and the islands of the Archipelago. On the continent, this plague threatened to exterminate the Hellenic race.

Plague at Constantinople. AD 747

Historians have left us a vivid picture of the horrors of this fearful visitation, which show us that the terror it inspired disturbed the fabric of society. Strange superstitions preoccupied men’s minds, and annihilated every sense of duty. Some appeared to be urged by a demoniacal impulse to commit heinous but useless crime, with the wildest recklessness. Small crosses of unctuous matter were supposed to appear suddenly, traced by an invisible hand on the clothes of persons as they were engaged in their ordinary pursuits; examples were narrated of their having appeared suddenly visible to the eyes of the assembled congregation on the vestments of the priest as he officiated at the altar. The individual thus marked out was invariably assailed by the disease on his return home, and soon died. Crosses were constantly found traced on the doors and outer walls of buildings; houses, palaces, huts, and monasteries were alike marked. This was considered as an intimation that some of the inmates were ordered to prepare for immediate death. In the delirium of fear and the first paroxysms of the plague, many declared that they beheld hideous specters wandering about; these apparitions were seen flitting through the crowded streets of the city, at times questioning the passengers, at times walking into houses before the inmates, and then driving the proprietors from the door. At times it was said that these specters had even attacked the citizens with naked swords. That these things were not reported solely on the delusion of the fancy of persons rendered insane by attacks of disease, is asserted by a historian who was born about ten years later, and who certainly passed his youth at Constantinople.

 The testimony of Theophanes is confirmed by the records of similar diseases in other populous cities. The uncertainty of life offers additional chances of impunity to crime, and thus relaxes the power of the law, and weakens the bonds of moral restraint. Danger is generally what man fears little, when there are several chances of escape. The bold and wicked, deriding the general panic, frequently made periods of pestilence times of revelry and plunder; the very individuals charged as policemen to preserve order in society, finding themselves free from control, have been known to assume the disguise of demons, in order to plunder the terrified and superstitious with impunity. The predominant passions of all find full scope when the feeling of responsibility is removed; shame is thrown aside, the most unfeeling avarice and the wildest debauchery are displayed. But, at the same time, it is on such fearful occasions that we see examples of the noblest courage, the most devoted self-sacrifice and the purest charity. Boccaccio and Defoe, in describing the scenes which occurred at Florence in 1348, and at London in 1665, afford a correct picture of what happened at Constantinople in 747.

The number of dead was so great, that when the ordinary means of transporting the bodies to interment were insufficient, boxes were slung over the pack-saddles of mules, into which the dead were cast without distinction of rank. When the mules became insufficient, low chariots were constructed to receive piles of human bodies, and these frightful hearses were drawn through the streets to receive their loads, by a crowd of men who received a fixed sum of money with each body. Long trenches were prepared without the walls to serve as graves for hundreds of bodies, and into these the aged beggar and the youthful noble were precipitated side by side. When all the cemeteries around the capital were filled, and the panic kept the mass of the population shut up in their dwellings, bodies were interred in the fields and vineyards nearest to the city gates, or they were cast into vacant houses and empty cisterns. The disease prevailed for a year, and left whole houses tenantless, having exterminated many families. We possess no record of the number of deaths it caused, but if we suppose the population of Constantinople at the time to have exceeded a million, we may form an estimate of the probable loss it sustained, by observing that, during the great plague at Milan, in 1630, about eighty-six thousand persons perished in the course of a year, in a population hardly exceeding one hundred and fifty thousand souls.

After the plague had completely disappeared, the capital required an immense influx of new inhabitants. To fill up the void caused by the scourge, Constantine induced many Greek families from the continent and the islands to emigrate to Constantinople. These new citizens immediately occupied a well-defined social position; for whether artisans, tradesmen, merchants, or householders, they became members of established corporations, and knew how to act in their new relations of life without embarrassment. It was by the perfection of its corporate societies and police regulations, that the Byzantine empire effected the translocation of the inhabitants of whole cities and provinces, without misfortune or discontent. By modifying the fiscal seventy of the "Roman government, by relieving the members of the municipality from the ruinous obligation of mutual responsibility for the total amount of the land-tax, and by relaxing the laws that fettered children to the profession or handicraft of their parents, the Byzantine administration infused new energy into an enfeebled social system. It still preserved, as an inheritance from Rome, an intimate knowledge of the practical methods of regulating the relative supplies of labor, food, and population in the manner least likely to inconvenience the government, though undoubtedly with little reference to the measures best calculated to advance the happiness of the people.

This memorable pestilence produced as great changes in the provinces as in the capital. While the population of Constantinople lost much of its Roman character and traditions by the infusion of a large number of Greek emigrants, Greece itself lost also much of its Hellenic character and ancient traditions, by the departure of a considerable portion of its native middle classes for Constantinople, and the destruction of a large part by the plague itself. The middle classes of the Hellenic cities flocked to Constantinople, while an inferior class from the villages crowded to supply their place, and thus a general translocation of the population was effected; and though this emigration may have been confined principally to the Greek race, it must have tended greatly to separate the future traditions of the people from those of an earlier period. The Athenian or the Lacedemonian who settled at Constantinople, lost all local characteristics; and the emigrants from the islands, who supplied their place at Athens and Lacedemon, mingled their traditions and dialect with the Attic and Doric prejudices of their new homes; ancient traditions were thus consigned to oblivion. The depopulation on the continent and in the Peloponnesus was also so great that the Slavonian population extended their settlements over the greater part of the open country; the Greeks crowded into the towns, or into the districts immediately under the protection of their walls. The Slavonian colonies, which had been gradually increasing ever since the reign of Heraclius, attained at this time their greatest extension; and the depopulation caused by this pestilence is said by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who wrote two centuries later, to have been so great, that the Slavonians occupied the whole of the open country in Greece and the Peloponnesus, and reduced it to a state of barbarism. The emperor perhaps confounded in some degree the general translocation of the Greek population itself with the occupation of extensive districts, then abandoned to Slavonian cultivators and herdsmen. It is certain, however, that from this time the oblivion of the ancient Hellenic names of villages, districts, rivers, and mountains became general; and the final extinction of those dialects, which marked a direct affiliation of the inhabitants of particular spots with the ancient Hellenic population of the same districts, was consummated. The new names which came into use, whether Slavonian or Greek, equally mark the loss of ancient traditions.

In closing the history of the reign of Constantine V it is necessary to observe that he deserves praise for the care with which he educated his family. The most bigoted image-worshippers inform us that he was so mild in his domestic circle that he permitted his third wife to protect a nun named Anthusa, who was a most devoted worshipper of images; and one of the emperor’s daughters received from this nun both her name and education. The Princess Anthusa was distinguished for her benevolence and piety; she is said to have founded one of the first orphan asylums established in the Christian world; and her orthodox devotion, to pictures obtained for her a place among the saints of the Greek church, an honor granted also to her godmother and teacher.