No More Learning

Leo III's work of administrative re-organisation was crowned by a
bold
attempt at religious and social reform. Thence was to arise the
serious confict known as the Iconoclustic 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
Cf. on the laws established by the Ecloga, infra, Chapter xxii, pp. 708–10.
CH, I,


## p. 6 (#48) ###############################################

6
Religion: the cult of images
יל
formidable from the moral point of view. Superstition had made alarming
progress. Everybody believed in the supernatural and the marvellous.
Cities looked for their safety much less to men's exertions than to the
miraculous intervention of the patron saint who watched over them, to
St Demetrius at Thessalonica, St Andrew at Patras, or the Mother of
God at Constantinople. Individuals put faith in the prophecies of
wizards, and Leo III himself, like Leontius or Philippicus, had been met
in the way by one who had said to him: “Thou shalt be King. ” Miracle
seemed so natural a thing that even the Councils used the possibility
of it as an argument. But, above all, the cultus offered to images, and
the belief in their miraculous virtues, had come to occupy a surprisingly
and scandalously large place in the minds of the Byzantines. Among the
populace, largely Greek by race, and in many cases only superficially
Christianised, 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 encourage-
ment of the Church, the faithful had bestowed on pictures, especially on
those believed to have been “not made by human hands” (axelpotointoi),
veneration and worship. In the eighth century this devotion was more
general than ever. Everywhere, not merely in the churches and monas-
teries, but in houses and in shops, on furniture, on clothes, and on trinkets
were placed the images of Christ, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints. On
these cherished icons the marks of respect and adoration were lavished:
the people prostrated themselves before them, they lighted lamps and
candles in front of them, they adorned them with ribbons and garlands,
burned incense, and kissed them devoutly. Oaths were taken upon images,
and hymns were sung in their honour; miracles, prodigies, and marvellous
cures were implored and expected of them; and so absolute was the trust
in their protection that they were sometimes chosen as sponsors for
children. It is true that, in justification of these aberrations, theologians
were accustomed to explain that the saint was mystically present in his
material image, and that the respect shewn to the image penetrated to
the original which it represented. The populace no longer drew this dis-
tinction. 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 fight, and warded
off diseases, and that to pay them the honour due to them was a sure means
of obtaining all blessings in this life and eternal glory in the next.
Many devout minds, however, were hurt and scandalised by the
excesses practised in the cult of images. As early as the fifth and sixth
centuries, Fathers of the Church and Bishops had seen with indignation


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Religious origins of iconoclasm
7
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 Ar-
menia 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 Christen-
dom, and at this time shewed great zeal in proselytising, 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 child-
hood to the influence of an iconoclastic atmosphere, would as a matter of
course sympathise 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 contem-
poraries, 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 intel-
lectual agreement (oaparnvóopwv), 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 realised. These are mere
it would be difficult to believe that a prince who had just won
so resounding a victory over Islām 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 repre-
sented 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 every-
legends ;
CH. I.


## p. 8 (#50) ###############################################

8
Political advantages of iconoclasm
thing 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 con-
vents 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 inaugu-
rated the iconoclast sovereigns ushered in a long period of unrest for
the monarchy; that out of this conflict very serious political conse-
quences 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, Constan-
tine of Nicomedia and Sisinnius of Perge, resolutely espoused the imperial
policy, and among the Court circle and the officials high in the ad-
ministration 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 shewed 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


## p. 9 (#51) ###############################################

Edict against images (726)
9
strongly emphasised; and, finally, the masses, the crowd, instinctively
faithful to time-honoured religious forms, and instinctively opposed to
the upper classes and ready to resist all change. These elements of
resistance formed the majority in the Empire, and upon their tenacious
opposition, heightened by unwearying polemics, the attempted reforms
were finally to be wrecked.
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 shews
how thoroughly he was a man of his time. In 726 a dangerous volcanic
eruption took place between Thera and Therasia, in which phenomenon
the Emperor discerned a token of the wrath of God falling heavily upon
the monarchy. He concluded that the only means of propitiation would
be to cleanse religion finally from practices which dishonoured it. He
resolved upon the promulgation of the edict against images (726).
It has sometimes been thought, on the strength of a misunderstood
passage in the life of St Stephen the Younger, that the Emperor
ordered, not that the pictures should be destroyed, but that they should
be hung higher up, in order to withdraw them from the adoration of
the faithful. But facts make it certain that the measures taken were
very much more rigorous. Thus keen excitement was aroused in the
capital and throughout the Empire. At Constantinople, when the people
saw an officer, in the execution of the imperial order, proceed to destroy
the image of Christ placed above the entrance to the Sacred Palace, they
broke out into a riot, in which several were killed and injured, and severe
sentences necessarily followed. When the news spread into the pro-
vinces worse things happened. Greece and the Cyclades rose and pro-
claimed a rival Emperor, who, with the support of Agallianus, turmarch
of the Helladics, marched upon Constantinople, but the rebel fleet was
easily destroyed by the imperial squadrons. In the West results were
more important. Pope Gregory II was already, owing to his opposition
to the fiscal policy of Leo III, on very bad terms with the Government.
When the edict against images arrived in Italy, there was a universal
rising in the peninsula in favour of the Pope, who had boldly countered
the imperial order by excommunicating the exarch and denouncing the
heresy (727). Venice, Ravenna, the Pentapolis, Rome, and the Cam-
pagna 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.
CB, I.


## p. 10 (#52) ##############################################

10
Opposition in East and West
And it may be that imperial rule in Italy would now have come to an
end had not Gregory II, like the prudent politician that he was, discerned
the danger likely to arise from the intervention of the Lombards in
Italian affairs and used his influence to bring back the revolted provinces
to their allegiance. Thus peace was restored and Italy conciliated, her
action being limited to a respectful request that the honour due to images
should again be paid to them!
Meanwhile opposition was growing in the East. The clergy, with
Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, at their head, had naturally con-
demned 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 depo-
sition 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 recognise 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 be-
tween 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” (ου βασιλέων εστι νομοθετείν τη εκκλησία). Legend relates
that Leo III, to avenge himself on John, had him accused of treason to
the Caliph, his master, who caused his right hand to be cut off, and it adds
that the next night, by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, the hand
was miraculously restored to the mutilated arm, that it might continue
its glorious labours in defence 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
1 Cf. Vol. 11, Chapter viui A.
כל


## p. 11 (#53) ##############################################

Constantine V Copronymus
11
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, pro-
mulgated 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.
וי
Constantine V (740-775) has been fiercely attacked by the icono-
dule party. They surnamed him “the Stable-boy” (kapálivos)
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 attri-
buted 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 Theo-
phanes 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 war-
ול
СВ. І.


## p. 12 (#54) ##############################################

12
Crushing of the revolt of Artavasdus
horse and ready once more to lead out his legions against the enemy.
These are not facts to be lightly passed over. Most certainly Con-
stantine 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.
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 oppo-
nents. 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 Anas-
tasius himself declaring against him as suspected of heretical opinions.
A year and a half was needed to crush the rebel. Supported by Asia,
which, with the exception of the Opsician theme where Artavasdus had
been strategus, ranged itself unanimously on the side of Constantine,
the rightful Emperor defeated his competitor at Sardis (May 742) and
at Modrina (August 742) and drove him back upon Constantinople, to
which city he laid siege. On 2 November 742 it was taken by storm.
Artavasdus and his sons were blinded; the Patriarch Anastasius was
ignominiously paraded round the Hippodrome, mounted on an ass and
exposed to the mockery of the crowd; Constantine, however, maintained
him in the patriarchal dignity. But we may well conceive that the
Emperor felt considerable rancour against his opponents, and con-
tinually distrusted them after events which so plainly shewed the
hatred borne him by the supporters of images.
Yet Constantine shewed no haste to enter upon his religious reforms.
More pressing matters demanded his attention. As with Leo III, the
security of the Empire formed his chief preoccupation. Profiting by
the dissensions which shook the Arab Empire, he assumed the offensive
in Syria (745), reconquered Cyprus (746), and made himself master of
Theodosiopolis and Melitene (751). Such was his military reputation
that in 757 the Arabs retreated at the bare rumour of his approach.
To the end of the reign the infidels were bridled without the necessity
for any further personal intervention of Constantine.
The Bulgars presented a more formidable danger to the Empire. In
755 Constantine began a war against them which ended only with his
life. In nine successive campaigns he inflicted such disastrous defeats
on these barbarians, at Marcellae (759) and at Anchialus (762), that
by 764 they were terror-stricken, made no attempt at resistance, and
accepted peace for a term of seven years (765). When in 772 the
struggle was renewed, its results proved not less favourable; the Emperor,


## p. 13 (#55) ##############################################

Successes at home and abroad
13
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 Slavs 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 organisation set on foot by Leo III ; he
bestowed equal care on restoring the finances of the Empire, and his
adversaries accuse him of having been a terrible and merciless exactor,
a hateful oppressor of the peasants, rigorously compelling the payment
of constantly increasing taxes. In any case, at this cost was secured
the excellent condition in which he certainly left the imperial finances
(Theophanes speaks of the vast accumulations which his son, on his
death, found in the treasury). Also, despite the havoc caused by the
great pestilence of 747, the Empire was prosperous. The brilliancy of
the Court, the splendour of buildings-for Constantine V, while battling
against images, encouraged the production of secular works of art in-
tended 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.
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 IIÌ, 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 shewed 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
For details of the Arab and Bulgar wars, see infra, Chapters v(A), pp. 121-3,
and vili, pp. 231–2.
СВ. І.


## p. 14 (#56) ##############################################

14
Reopening of the iconoclastic struggle
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 Vis 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 Constan-
tinople 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 Constan-
tine had made sure of the devotion of the army, and of the sympathy,
or at least the acquiescence, of a large proportion of the secular clergy.
The people of the capital had become very hostile to the monks. Finally,
the patriarchal chair was vacant since the death of Anastasius (752).
The Emperor convoked a Council to decide the question of image-
worship; on 10 February 753 three hundred and thirty-eight bishops
met in the palace of Hieria on the Bosphorus.
The Council intended to deal seriously with the task entrusted to it.
Its labours were long and onerous, lasting without interruption from
10 February to the end of August 753. It does not at all appear
that the prelates in their deliberations were subjected to any pressure
from the imperial authority. They in no wise accepted all the opinions
professed by Constantine V; they resolutely maintained the orthodox
doctrine concerning the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints,
and anathematised all who should deny to Mary the title of Theotokos.
But they solemnly condemned the worship of images “as a thing hateful
and abominable," and declared that whoever persisted in adoring them,
whether layman or monk,“ should be punished by the imperial laws as a
rebel against the commandments of God, and an enemy of the dogma
of the Fathers. ” And after having excommunicated the most illustrious
champions of the icons, and acclaimed in the persons of the Emperors
“the saviours of the world and the luminaries of orthodoxy,” and hailed
in Constantine V “a thirteenth apostle," they separated.
The decrees of the Council involved one serious
Here-
tofore the iconodules had only been proceeded against as contravening
the imperial ordinances. They were, for the future, to be treated as
consequence.
וי


## p. 15 (#57) ##############################################

Persecution of image-worshippers
15
heretics and rebels against the authority of the Church. By entrusting
to the imperial power the task of carrying the canons into effect, the
bishops were putting a terrible weapon into Constantine's hands, and
one specially fitted to strike at the priests and monks. Any spiritual
person refusing to support the dogma promulgated by the Council might,
in fact, be condemned with pitiless rigour.
Yet the Emperor, it would seem, was in no haste to make use of the
means put at his disposal. During the years that followed the Council,
two executions at most are mentioned (in 761). The sovereign appears to
have been bent rather on negotiating with his opponents in order to
obtain their submission by gentle methods. Also, at this moment the
Bulgarian war was absorbing his whole attention. It was not until peace
had been signed in 765, and he realised the futility of his controversy
with the most famous of the monks, that Constantine decided on crush-
ing resistance by force. The era of martyrs then set in.
“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
removed, were even secularised; 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
a peculiar hatred of them; "he called their habit,” says one authority,
“the raiment of darkness, and those who wore it he called åuvnuóveutou
(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
secularised and bestowed as fiefs on the prince's favourites; some of
them were converted into barracks. The Emperor, to effect the suppres-
were
had
CH. I.


## p. 16 (#58) ##############################################

16
Defeat of the monks
sion 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 ridicu-
lous 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 propa-
ganda 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 Con-
stantine 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”
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 provoca-
tions 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
לל
and «


## p. 17 (#59) ##############################################

Alienation of Italy and the Papacy
17
also gave way. “Won over by Hattery 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 com-
munities 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.
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, realising 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 solu-
tion. 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 recognised the right of the Pope
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,
to
1 See Vol. 11, pp. 231-232 and 576–580.
C. MEN, H. VOL. IV. CH. I.
2


## p. 18 (#60) ##############################################

18
Italy lost to the Empire
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 for-
sake 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 re-conquest 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 use-
less. 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 con-
cerned, 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
Perhaps also the intrinsic importance which he had come to
attach to his religious policy made him too forgetful of perils coming
secure.
1 See, for details of these events, Vol. 11, pp. 582–589.
2 See Vol. 11, pp. 590-592 and 597-600.


## p. 19 (#61) ##############################################

Reign of Leo IV the Chazar
19
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.
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 re-
sumed, 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 attach-
ment to the iconoclast doctrines, he judged it prudent at first to shew
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 in-
fluence 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) per-
secution 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 Theo-
phanes 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.
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
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
for
CH. 1.
2-2


## p. 20 (#62) ##############################################

20
Regency of Irene
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 realisation
of her vision.
In carrying out the projects suggested by her devotion and in ful-
filling 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 shewing itself. The Caesars, her brothers-in-
law, were secretly hostile to her, and the memory of their father Con-
stantine 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 skilfully to prepare her way. Some of her ad-
versaries 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 favour, and entrusted the government to
men at her devotion, especially to eunuchs of her household. One of them
even became her chief minister: Stauracius, raised by Irene's good graces
to the dignity of Patrician and the functions of Logothete of the Dromos,
became the undisputed master of the Palace; for twenty years he was to
follow the fortunes of his benefactress with unshaken loyalty.
Meanwhile, in order to have her hands free, Irene made peace with
the Arabs (783); in the West she was drawing nearer to the Papacy, and
made request to Charlemagne for the hand of his daughter Rotrude for
the young Constantine VI. Sicily was pacified. Stauracius subdued the
Slav revolt. The Empress could give herself up completely to her reli-
gious 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


## p. 21 (#63) ##############################################

Restoration of images
21
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 skilfully 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 pre-
sent 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 (Natpeia) should not
be claimed for them, but only veneration (Tipoo kúvnois); the doctrine
concerning images was established on dogmatic foundations; finally,
under the influence of Plato, Abbot of Sakkudion, ecclesiastical dis-
cipline 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 govern-
ment, like her name, is a symbol of peace” (xplotopópos Eipnun,
φερωνύμως βασιλεύουσα).
).
יל
CH. I.


## p. 22 (#64) ##############################################

22
Irene and Constantine VI
Irene's ambition was very soon to disturb the peace
which was still
insecure. Constantine VI was growing up; he was in his eighteenth
year. Between a son who wished to govern and a mother with a passion
for supreme power a struggle was inevitable. To safeguard her work, not
less than to retain her authority, Irene was to shrink from nothing, not
even from crime.
Formerly, at the outset of the reign, she had, as a matter of policy,
negotiated a marriage for her son with Charlemagne's daughter. She now
from policy broke it off, no doubt considering the Frankish alliance less
necessary to her after the Council of Nicaea, but, above all, dreading lest
the mighty King Charles should prove a support to his son-in-law
against her. She forced another marriage upon Constantine (788) with a
young Paphlagonian, named Maria, from whom she knew she had nothing
to fear. Besides this, acting in concert with her minister Stauracius, the
Empress kept her son altogether in the background. But Constantine VI
in the end grew tired of this state of pupilage and conspired against the
all-powerful eunuch (January 790). Things fell out ill with him. The
conspirators were arrested, tortured, and banished; the young Emperor
himself was Aogged 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 recognised as
Emperor, while in official proclamations she caused her name to be placed
before that of Constantine.
She was running great risks. The army, still devoted to the memory
of Constantine V, was further in very ill humour at the checks which it
had met with through Irene's foreign policy. The Arab war, renewed by
the Caliph Hārūn 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 govern-
ment. The regiments in Asia, therefore, mutinied (790), demanding the
recognition of Constantine VI, and from the troops in Armenia the in-
surrection spread to the other themes. Irene took the alarm and abdicated
(December 790). Stauracius and her other favourites fell with her, and
Constantine VI, summoning round him the faithful counsellors of his
grandfather and his father, took power into his own hands.
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


## p. 23 (#65) ##############################################

Constantine VI sole ruler: intrigues of Irene
23
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 favour of the people, and finally ruin-
ing 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 Em-
peror 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 enamoured of one of the Empress-mother's
maids of honour, named Theodote, and Irene had lent herself complai-
santly to this passion. She even counselled 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 connexion. 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 abomina-
tion. Irene surreptitiously encouraged their resistance. In vain did Con-
stantine 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.