HISTORY OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE FROM A.D. 717 TO 1453

BOOK I

THE CONTEST WITH THE ICONOCLASTS, A.D. 717-867

 

CHAPTER I

THE ISAURIAN DYNASTY, A.D. 717-797

 

Sect. I

CHARACTERISTICS OF BYZANTINE HISTORY

 

 

The institutions of Imperial Rome had long thwarted, the great law of man’s existence which impels him to better his condition, when the accession of Leo the Isaurian to the throne of Constantinople suddenly opened a new era in the history of the Eastern Empire. Both the material and intellectual progress of society had open deliberately opposed by the imperial legislation. A spirit of conservatism persuaded the legislators of the Roman Empire that its power could not decline, if each order and profession of its citizens was fixed irrevocably in the sphere of their own peculiar duties by hereditary succession. An attempt was really made to divide the population into castes. But the political laws which were adopted to maintain mankind in a state of stationary prosperity by these trammels, depopulated and impoverished the empire, and threatened to dissolve the very elements of society. The Western Empire, under their operation, fell a prey to small tribes of northern nations; the Eastern was so depopulated that it was placed on the eve of being repeopled by Slavonian colonists, and conquered by Saracen invaders.

Leo III mounted the throne, and under his government the empire not only ceased to decline, but even began to regain much of its early vigour. Reformed modifications of the old Roman authority developed new energy in the empire. Great political reforms, and still greater changes in the condition of the people, mark the eighth century as an epoch of transition in Roman history, though the improved condition of the mass of the population is in some degree concealed by the prominence given to the disputes concerning image-worship in the records of this period. But the increased strength of the empire, and the energy infused into the administration, are forcibly displayed by the fact, that the Byzantine armies began from this time to oppose a firm barrier to the progress of the invaders of the empire.

When Leo III was proclaimed Emperor, it seemed as if no human power could save Constantinople from falling as Rome had fallen. The Saracens considered the sovereignty of every land, in which any remains of Roman civilization survived, as within their grasp. Leo, an Isaurian, and an Iconoclast, consequently a foreigner and a heretic, ascended the throne of Constantine, and arrested the victorious career of the Mohammedans. He then reorganized the whole administration so completely in accordance with the new exigencies of Eastern society, that the reformed empire outlived for many centuries every government contemporary with its establishment.

The Eastern Roman Empire, thus reformed, is called by modern historians the Byzantine Empire, and the term is well devised to mark the changes effected in the government, after the extinction of the last traces of the military monarchy of ancient Rome. The social condition of the inhabitants of the Eastern Empire had already undergone a considerable change during the century which elapsed from the accession of Heraclius to that of Leo, from the influence of causes to be noticed in the following pages; and this change in society created a new phase in the Roman Empire. The gradual progress of this change has led some writers to date the commencement of the Byzantine Empire as early as the reigns of Zeno and Anastasius, and others to descend so late as the times of Maurice and Heraclius. But as the Byzantine Empire was only a continuation of the Roman government under a reformed system, it seems most correct to date its commencement from the period when the new social and political modifications produced a visible effect on the fate of the Eastern Empire. This period is marked by the accession of Leo the Isaurian.

The administrative system of Rome, as modified by Constantine, continued in operation, though subjected to frequent reforms, until Constantinople was stormed by the Crusaders, and the Greek church enslaved by papal domination. The General Council of Nicaea, and the dedication of the imperial city, with their concomitant legislative, administrative, and judicial institutions, engendered a succession of political measures, whose direct relations were uninterrupted until terminated by foreign conquest. The government of Great Britain has undergone greater changes during the last three centuries than that of the Eastern Empire during the nine centuries which elapsed from the foundation of Constantinople in 330 to its conquest in 1204.

Yet Leo III has strong claims to be regarded as the first of a new series of emperors. He was the founder of a dynasty, the saviour of Constantinople, and the reformer of the church and state. He was the first Christian sovereign who arrested the torrent of Mohammedan conquest; he improved the condition of his subjects; he attempted to purify their religion from the superstitious reminiscences of Hellenism, with which it was still debased, and to stop the development of a quasi-idolatry in the orthodox church. Nothing can prove more decidedly the right of his empire to assume a new name than the contrast presented by the condition of its inhabitants to that of the subjects of the preceding dynasty. Under the successors of Heraclius, the Roman Empire presents the spectacle of a declining society, and its thinly-peopled provinces were exposed to the intrusion of foreign colonists and hostile invaders. But, under Leo, society offers an aspect of improvement and prosperity; the old population revives from its lethargy, and soon increases, both in number and strength, to such a degree as to drive back all intruders on its territories. In the records of human civilization, Leo the Isaurian must always occupy a high position, as a type of what the central power in a state can effect even in a declining empire.

Before reviewing the history of Leo’s reign, and recording his brilliant exploits, it is necessary to sketch the condition to which the Roman administrative system had reduced the empire. It would be an instructive lesson to trace the progress of the moral and mental decline of the Greeks, from the age of Plato and Aristotle to the time of the sixth ecumenical council, in the reign of Justinian II; for the moral evils nourished in Greek society degraded the nation, before the oppressive government of the Romans impoverished and depopulated Greece. When the imperial authority was fully established, we easily trace the manner in which the intercommunication of different provinces and orders of society became gradually restricted to the operations of material interests, and how the limitation of ideas arose from this want of communication, until at length civilization decayed. Good roads and commodious passage-boats have a more direct connection with the development of popular education, as we see it reflected in the worlds of Phidias and the writings of Sophocles, than is generally believed. Under the jealous system of the imperial government, the isolation of place and class became so complete, that even the highest members of the aristocracy received their ideas from the inferior domestics with whom they habitually associated in their own households—not from the transitory intercourse they held with able and experienced men of their own class, or with philosophic and religious teachers. Nurses and slaves implanted their ignorant superstitions in the households where the rulers of the empire and the provinces were reared; and no public assemblies existed, where discussion could efface such prejudices. Family education became a more influential feature in society than public instruction; and though family education, from the fourth to the seventh century, appears to have improved the morality of the population, it certainly increased their superstition and limited their understandings. Emperors, senators, landlords, and merchants, were alike educated under these influences; and though the church and the law opened a more enlarged circle of ideas, from creating a deeper sense of responsibility, still the prejudices of early education circumscribed the sense of duty more and more in each successive generation. The military class, which was the most powerful in society, consisted almost entirely of mere barbarians. The mental degradation, resulting from superstition, bigotry, and ignorance, which forms the marked social feature of the period between the reigns of Justinian I and Leo III, brought the Eastern Empire to the state of depopulation and weakness that had delivered the Western a prey to small tribes of invaders.

The fiscal causes of the depopulation of the Roman Empire have been noticed in a prior volume, as well as the extent to which immigrants had intruded themselves on the soil of Greece. The corruption of the ancient language took place at the same time, and arose out of the causes which disseminated ignorance. At the accession of Leo, the disorder in the central administration, the anarchy in the provincial government, and the ravages of the Slavonians and Saracens, had rendered the condition of the people intolerable. The Roman government seemed incapable of upholding legal order in society, and its extinction was regarded as a proximate event. All the provinces between the shores of the Adriatic and the banks of the Danube had been abandoned to Slavonian tribes. Powerful colonies of Slavonians had been planted by Justinian II in Macedonia and Bithynia, in the rich valleys of the Strymon and the Artanas. Greece was filled with pastoral and agricultural hordes of the same race, who became in many districts the sole cultivators of the soil, and effaced the memory of the names of mountains and streams, which will be immortal in the world’s literature. The Bulgarians plundered all Thrace to the walls of Constantinople. Thessalonica was repeatedly besieged by Slavonians. The Saracens had inundated Asia Minor with their armies, and were preparing to extirpate Christianity in the East. Such was the crisis at which Leo was proclaimed emperor by the army, in Amorium AD 716.

Yet there were peculiar features in the condition of the surviving population, and an inherent vigour in the principles of the Roman administration, that still operated powerfully in resisting foreign domination. The people felt the necessity of defending the administration of the law, and of upholding commercial intercourse. The ties of interest consequently ranged a large body of the inhabitants of every province round the central administration at this hour of difficulty. The very circumstances which weakened the power of the court of Constantinople, conferred on the people an increase of authority, and enabled them to take effectual measures for their own defence. This new energy may be traced in the resistance which Ravenna and Cherson offered to the tyranny of Justinian II. The Orthodox Church, also, served as an additional bond of union among the people, and, throughout the wide extent of the imperial dominions, its influences connected the local feelings of the parish with the general interests of the church and the empire. These misfortunes, which brought the state to the verge of ruin, relieved commerce from much fiscal oppression and many monopolies. Facilities were thus given to trade, which afforded to the population of the towns additional sources of employment. The commerce of the Eastern Empire had already gained by the conquests of the barbarians in the West, for the ruling classes in the countries conquered by the Goths and Franks rarely engaged in trade or accumulated capital. The advantage of possessing a systematic administration of justice, enforced by a fixed legal procedure, attached the commercial classes and the town population to the person of the emperor, whose authority was considered the fountain of legal order and judicial impartiality. A fixed legislation, and an uninterrupted administration of justice, prevented the political anarchy that prevailed under the successors of Heraclius from ruining society in the Roman Empire; while the arbitrary judicial power of provincial governors, in the dominions of the caliphs, rendered property insecure, and undermined national wealth.

There was likewise another feature in the Eastern Empire which deserves notice. The number of towns was very great, and they were generally more populous than the political state of the country would lead us to expect. Indeed, to estimate the density of the urban population, in comparison with the extent of territory from which it apparently derived its supplies, we must compare it with the actual condition of Malta and Guernsey, or with the state of Lombardy and Tuscany in the middle ages. This density of population, joined to the great difference in the price of the produce of the soil in various places, afforded the Roman government the power of collecting from its subjects an amount of taxation unparalleled in modern times, except in Egypt. The whole surplus profits of society were annually drawn into the coffers of the state, leaving the inhabitants only a bare sufficiency for perpetuating the race of tax-payers. History, indeed, shows that the agricultural classes, from the labourer to the landlord, were unable to retain possession of the savings required to replace that depreciation which time is constantly producing in all vested capital, and that their numbers gradually diminished.

After the accession of Leo III, a new condition of society is soon apparent; and though many old political evils continued to exist, it becomes evident that a greater degree of personal liberty, as well as greater security for property, was henceforth guaranteed to the mass of the inhabitants of the empire. Indeed, no other government of which history has preserved the records, unless it be that of China, has secured equal advantages to its subjects for so long a period. The empires of the caliphs and of Charlemagne, though historians have celebrated their praises loudly, cannot, in their best days, compete with the administration organized by Leo on this point; and both sank into ruin while the Byzantine Empire continued to flourish in full vigour. It must be confessed that eminent historians present a totally different picture of Byzantine history to their readers. Voltaire speaks of it as a worthless repertory of declamation and miracles, disgraceful to the human mind. Even the sagacious Gibbon, after enumerating with just pride the extent of his labours, adds, “From these considerations, I should have abandoned without regret the Greek slaves and their servile historians, had I not reflected that the fate of the Byzantine monarchy is passively connected with the most splendid and important revolutions which have changed the state of the world”. The views of byzantine history, unfolded m the following pages, are frequently in direct opposition to these great authorities. The defects and vices of the political system will be carefully noticed, but the splendid achievements of the emperors, and the great merits of the judicial and ecclesiastical establishments, will be contrasted with their faults.

The history of the Byzantine Empire divides itself into three periods, strongly marked by distinct characteristics.

The first period commences with the reign of Leo III in 716, and terminates with that of Michael III in 867. It comprises the whole history of the predominance of the Iconoclasts in the established church, and of the reaction which reinstated the orthodox in power. It opens with the efforts by which Leo and the people of the empire saved the Roman law and the Christian religion from the conquering Saracens. It embraces a long and violent struggle between the government and the people, the emperors seeking to increase the central power by annihilating every local franchise, and even the right of private opinion, among their subjects. The contest concerning image-worship, from the prevalence of ecclesiastical ideas, became the expression of this struggle. Its object was as much to consolidate the supremacy of the imperial authority, as to purify the practice of the church. The emperors wished to constitute themselves the fountains of ecclesiastical as completely as of civil legislation.

The long and bloody wars of this period, and the vehement character of the sovereigns who filled the throne, attract the attention of those who love to dwell on the romantic facts of history. Unfortunately, the biographical sketches and individual characters of the heroes of these ages he concealed in the dullest chronicles. But the true historical feature of this memorable period is the aspect of a declining empire, saved by the moral vigour developed in society, and of the central authority struggling to restore national prosperity. Never was such a succession of able sovereigns seen following one another on any other throne. The stern Iconoclast, Leo the Isaurian, opens the line as the second founder of the Eastern Empire. His son, the fiery Constantine, who was said to prefer the door of the stable to the perfumes of his palaces, replanted the Christian standards on the banks of the Euphrates. Irene, the beautiful Athenian, presents a strange combination of talent, heartlessness, and orthodoxy. The finance minister, Nicephoras, perishes on the field of battle like an old Roman. The Armenian Leo falls at the altar of his private chapel, murdered as he is singing psalms with his deep voice, before day-dawn. Michael the Amorian, who stammered Greek with his native Phrygian accent, became the founder of an imperial dynasty, destined to be extinguished by a Slavonian groom. The accomplished Theophilus lived in an age of romance, both in action and literature. His son, Michael, the last of the Amorian family, was the only contemptible prince of this period, and he was certainly the most despicable buffoon that ever occupied a throne.

The second period commences with the reign of Basil I in 867, and terminates with the deposition of Michael VI in 1057. During these two centuries the imperial sceptre was retained by members 01 the Basilian family, or held by those who shared their throne as guardians or husbands. At this time the Byzantine Empire attained its highest pitch of external power and internal prosperity. The Saracens were pursued into the plains of Syria. Antioch and Edessa were reunited to the empire. The Bulgarian monarchy was conquered, and the Danube became again the northern frontier. The Slavonians in Greece were almost exterminated. Byzantine commerce filled the whole Mediterranean, and legitimated the claim of the emperor of Constantinople to the title of Autocrat of the Mediterranean Sea. But the real glory of this period consists in the power of the law. Respect for the administration of justice pervaded society more generally than it had ever done at any preceding period of the history of the world—a fact which our greatest historians have overlooked, though it is all-important in the history of human civilization.

The third period extends from the accession of Isaac I Comnenus in 1057, to the conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the Crusaders, in 1204. This is the true period of the decline and fall of the Eastern Empire. It commenced by a rebellion of the great nobles of Asia, who effected an internal revolution in the Byzantine empire by wrenching the administration out of the hands of well-trained officials, and destroying the responsibility created, by systematic procedure. A despotism supported by personal influence soon ruined the scientific fabric which had previously upheld the imperial power. The people were ground to the earth by a fiscal rapacity, over which the splendour of the house of Comnenus throws a thin veil. The wealth of the empire was dissipated, its prosperity destroyed, the administration of justice corrupted, and the central authority lost all control over the population, when a band of 20,000 adventurers, masked as crusaders, put an end to the Roman empire of the East.

In the eighth and ninth centuries the Byzantine Empire continued to embrace many nations differing from the Greeks in language and manners. Even in religion there was a strong tendency to separation, and many of the heresies noticed in history assumed a national character, while the Orthodox Church circumscribed itself more and more within the nationality of the Greeks, and forfeited its ecumenical characteristics. The empire still included within its limits Romans, Greeks, Rumenians, Isaurians, Lycaonians, Phrygians, Syrians, and Gallo-Grecians. But the great Thracian race, which had once been inferior in number only to the Indian, and which, in the first century of our era, had excited the attention of Vespasian by the extent of the territory it occupied, was now exterminated. The country it had formerly inhabited was peopled by Slavonian tribes, a diminished Roman and Greek population only retaining possession of the towns, and the Bulgarians, a Turkish tribe, ruling as the dominant race from Mount Hemus to the Danube. The range of Mount Hemus generally formed the Byzantine frontier to the north, and its mountain passes were guarded by imperial garrisons. Slavonian colonies had established themselves over all the European provinces, and had even penetrated into the Peloponnesus. The military government of Strymon, above the passes in the plain of Heraclea Sintica, was formed to prevent the country to the south of Mounts Orbelos and Skomios from becoming an independent Slavonian province.

The provincial divisions of the Roman Empire had fallen into oblivion. A new geographical arrangement into Themes appears to have been established by Heraclius, when he recovered the Asiatic provinces from the Persians: it was reorganized by Leo, and endured as long as the Byzantine government. The number of themes varied at different periods. The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, writing about the middle of the tenth, century, counts sixteen in the Asiatic portion of the empire, and twelve in the European.

Seven great themes are particularly prominent in Asia Minor, Optimaton, Opsikion, the Thrakesian, the Anatolic, the Bukellarian, the Kibyrraiot, and the Armeniac. In each of these a large military force was permanently maintained, under the command of a general of the province, and in Opsikion, the Thrakesian, and the Kibyrraiot, a naval force was likewise stationed under its own officers. The commanders of the troops were called Strategoi, those of the navy Drangarioi. Several subordinate territorial divisions existed, called Tourms, and separate military commands were frequently established for the defence of important passes, traversed by great lines of communication, called Kleisouras. Several of the ancient nations in Asia Minor still continued to preserve their national peculiarities, and this circumstance has induced the Byzantine writers frequently to mention their country as recognized geographical divisions of the empire.

The European provinces were divided into eight continental and five insular or transmarine themes, until the loss of the exarchate of Ravenna reduced the number to twelve. Venice and Naples, though they acknowledged the suzerainty 01 the Eastern Empire, acted generally as independent cities. Sardinia was lost about the time of Leo’s accession, and the circumstances attending its conquest by the Saracens are unknown.

The ecclesiastical divisions of the empire underwent frequent modifications; but after the provinces of Epirus, Greece, and Sicily were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Pope, and placed under that of the Patriarch of Constantinople by Leo III, that patriarchate embraced the whole Byzantine Empire. It was then divided into 52 metropolitan dioceses, which were subdivided into 649 suffragan bishoprics, and 13 archbishoprics, in which the prelates were independent but without any suffragans. There were, moreover, 34 titular archbishops.

 

Sect. II

REIGN OF LEO III THE ISAURIAN, A.D. 717-741

 

When Leo was raised to the throne, the empire was threatened with immediate ruin. Six emperors had been dethroned within the space of twenty-one years. Four perished by the hand of the public executioner, one died in obscurity, after being deprived of sight, and the other was only allowed to end his days peacefully in a monastery, because Leo felt the imperial sceptre firmly fixed in his own grasp. Every army assembled to encounter the Saracens had broken out into rebellion. The Bulgarians and Slavonians wasted Europe up to the walls of Constantinople; the Saracens ravaged the whole of Asia Minor to the shores of the Bosphorus.

Amorium was the principal city of the theme Anatolikon. The Caliph Suleiman had sent his brother, Moslemah, with a numerous army, to complete the conquest of the Roman Empire, which appeared to be an enterprise of no extraordinary difficulty, and Amorium was besieged by the Saracens. Leo, who commanded the Byzantine troops, required some time to concert the operations by which he hoped to raise the siege. To gain the necessary delay, he opened negotiations with the invaders, and, under the pretext of hastening the conclusion of the treaty, he visited the Saracen general engaged in the siege with an escort of only 500 horse. The Saracens were invited to suspend, their attacks until the decision of Moslemah—who was at the head of another division of the Mohammedan army—could be known. In an interview which took place with the bishop and principal inhabitants of the Amorium, relating to the proffered terms, Leo contrived to exhort them to continue their defence, and assured them of speedy succour. The besiegers, nevertheless, pressed forward their approaches. Leo, after his interview with the Amorians, proposed that the Saracen general should accompany him to the headquarters of Moslemah. The Saracen readily agreed to an arrangement which would enable him to deliver so important a hostage to the commander-in-chief. The wary Isaurian, who well knew that he would be closely watched, had made his plan of escape. On reaching a narrow defile, from which a cross road led to the advanced posts of his own army, Leo suddenly drew his sabre and attacked the Saracens about his person; while his guards, who were prepared for the signal, easily opened a way through the two thousand hostile cavalry of the escort, and all reached the Byzantine camp in safety. Leo’s subsequent military dispositions and diplomatic negotiations induced the enemy to raise the siege of Amorium, and the grateful inhabitants united with the army in saluting him Emperor of the Romans. But in his arrangements with Moslemah, he is accused by his enemies of having agreed to conditions which facilitated the further progress of the Mohammedans, in order to secure his own march to Constantinople. On this march he was met by the son of Theodosius III, whom he defeated. Theodosius resigned his crown, and retired into a monastery, while Leo made his triumphal entry into the capital by the Golden Gate, and was crowned by the Patriarch in the church of St. Sophia on the 25th of March, 717.

The position of Leo continued to be one of extreme difficulty. The Caliph Suleiman, who had seen one private adventurer succeed the other in quick succession on the imperial throne, deemed the moment favourable for the final conquest of the Christians; and, reinforcing his brother’s army, he ordered him to lay siege to Constantinople. The Saracen Empire had now reached its greatest extent. From the banks of the Sihun and the Indus to the shores of the Atlantic in Mauretania and Spain, the orders of Suleiman were implicitly obeyed. The recent conquests of Spain in the west, and of Fergana, Cashgar, and Sind in the East, had animated the confidence of the Mohammedans to such a degree that no enterprise appeared difficult. The army Moslemah led against Constantinople was the best appointed that had ever attacked the Christians: it consisted of eighty thousand fighting men. The caliph announced his intention of taking the field in person with additional forces, should the capital of the Christians offer a protracted resistance to the arms of Islam. The whole expedition is said to have employed one hundred and eighty thousand; and the number does not appear to be greatly exaggerated, if it be supposed to include the sailors of the fleet, and the reinforcements which reached the camp before Constantinople.

Moslemah, after capturing Pergamus, marched to Abydos, where he was joined by the Saracen fleet. He then transported his army across the Hellespont, and, marching along the shore of the Propontis, invested Leo in his capital both by land and sea. The strong walls of Constantinople, the engines of defence with which Roman and Greek art had covered the ramparts, and the skill of the Byzantine engineers, rendered every attempt to carry the place by assault hopeless, so that the Saracens were compelled to trust to the effect of a strict blockade for gaining possession of the city. They surrounded their camp with a deep ditch, and strengthened it with a strong dyke. Moslemah then sent out large detachments to collect forage and destroy the provisions, which might otherwise find their way into the besieged city. The presence of an active enemy and a populous city required constant vigilance on the part of a great portion of his land forces.

The Saracen fleet consisted of eighteen hundred vessels of war and transports. In order to form the blockade, it was divided into two squadrons: one was stationed on the Asiatic coast, in the ports of Eutropius and Anthimus, to prevent supplies arriving from the Archipelago; the other occupied the bays in the European shore of the Bosphorus above the point of Galata, in order to cut off all communication with the Black Sea and the cities of Cherson and Trebizond. The first naval engagement took place as the fleet was taking up its position within the Bosphorus. The current, rendered impetuous by a change of wind, threw the heavy ships and transports into confusion. The besieged directed some fire-ships against the crowded vessels, and succeeded in burning several, and driving others on shore under the walls of Constantinople. The Saracen admiral, Suleiman, confident in the number of his remaining ships of war, resolved to avenge his partial defeat, by a complete victory. He placed one hundred chosen Arabs, in complete armour, in each of his best vessels, and, advancing to the walls of Constantinople, made a vigorous attempt to enter the place by assault, as it was entered long after by Doge Dandolo. Leo was well prepared to repulse the attack, and, under his experienced guidance, the Arabs were completely defeated. A number of the Saracen ships were burned by the Greek fire which the besieged launched from their walls. After this defeat, Suleiman withdrew the European squadron of his fleet into the Sosthenian bay.

The besiegers encamped before Constantinople on the 15th August, 717. The Caliph Suleiman died before he was able to send any reinforcements to his brother. The winter proved unusually severe. The country all round Constantinople remained covered with deep snow for many weeks. The greater part of the horses and camels in the camp of Moslemah perished; numbers of the best soldiers, accustomed to the mild winters of Syria, died from having neglected to take the requisite precautions against a northern climate. The difficulty of procuring food ruined the discipline of the troops. These misfortunes were increased by the untimely death of the admiral, Suleiman. In the meantime, Leo and the inhabitants of Constantinople, having made the necessary preparations for a long siege, passed the winter in security. A fleet, fitted out at Alexandria, brought supplies to Moslemah in spring. Four hundred transports, escorted by men-of-war, sailed past Constantinople, and, entering the Bosphorus, took up their station at Kalos Agros. Another fleet, almost equally numerous, arrived soon after from Africa, and anchored in the bays on the Bithynian coast. These positions rendered the current a protection against the fire-ships of the garrison of Constantinople. The crews of the new transports were in great part composed of Christians, and the weak condition of Moslemah’s army filled them with fear. Many conspired to desert. Seizing the boats of their respective vessels during the night, numbers escaped to Constantinople, where they informed the emperor of the exact disposition of the whole Saracen force. Leo lost no time in taking advantage of the enemy's embarrassments. Fire-ships were sent with a favourable wind among the transports, while ships of war, furnished with engines for throwing Greek fire, increased the confusion. This bold attack was successful, and a part of the naval force of the Saracens was destroyed. Some ships fell a prey to the flames, some were driven on shore, and some were captured by the byzantine squadron. The blockade was now at an end, for Moslemah’s troops were dying from want, while the besieged were living in plenty; but the Saracen obstinately persisted in maintaining possession of his camp in Europe. It was not until his foraging parties were repeatedly cut off, and all the beasts of burden were consumed as food, that he consented to allow the standard of the Prophet to retreat before the Christians. The remains of his army were embarked in the relics of the fleet, and on the 15th August, 718, Moslemah raised the siege, after ruining one of the finest armies the Saracens ever assembled, by obstinately persisting in a hopeless undertaking. The troops were landed at Proconnesus, and marched back to Damascus, through Asia Minor; but the fleet encountered a violent storm in passing through the Archipelago. The dispersed ships were pursued by the Greeks of the islands, and so many were lost or captured, that only five of the Syrian squadron returned home.

Few military details concerning Leo’s defence of Constantinople have been preserved, but there can be no doubt that it was one of the most brilliant exploits of a warlike age. The Byzantine army was superior to every other in the art of defending fortresses. The Roman arsenals, in their best days, could probably have supplied no scientific or mechanical contrivance unknown to the corps of engineers of Leo’s army, for we must recollect that the education, discipline, and practice of these engineers had been perpetuated in uninterrupted succession from the times of Trajan and Constantine. We are not to estimate the decline of mechanical science by the degradation of art, nor by the decay of military power in the field. The depopulation of Europe rendered soldiers rare and dear, and a considerable part of the Byzantine armies was composed of foreign mercenaries. The army of Leo, though far inferior in number to that of Moslemah, was its equal in discipline and military skill; while the walls of Constantinople were garnished with engines from the ancient arsenals of the city, far exceeding in power and number any with which the Arabs had been in the habit of contending. The vanity of Gallic writers has magnified the success of Charles Martel over a plundering expedition of the Spanish Arabs into a marvellous victory, and attributed the deliverance of Europe from the Saracen yoke to the valour of the Franks. A veil has been thrown over the talents and courage of Leo, a soldier of fortune, just seated on the imperial throne, who defeated the long-planned schemes of conquest of the caliphs Walid and Suleiman. It is unfortunate that we have no Isaurian literature.

The catastrophe of Moslemah’s army, and the state of the caliphate during the reigns of Omar II and Yesid II, relieved the empire from all immediate danger, and Leo was enabled to pursue his schemes for reorganizing the army and defending his dominions against future invasions. The war was languidly carried on for some years, and the Saracens were gradually expelled from most of their conquests beyond Mount Taurus. In the year 726, Leo was embarrassed by seditions and rebellions, caused by his decrees against image-worship. Hescham seized the opportunity, and sent two powerful armies to invade the empire. Caesarea was taken by Moslemah; while another army, under Moawyah, pushing forward, laid siege to Nicaea. Leo was well pleased to see the Saracens consume their resources in attacking a distant fortress; but though they were repulsed before Nicaea, they retreated without serious loss, carrying on immense plunder. The plundering excursions of the Arabs were frequently renewed by land and sea. In one of these expeditions, the celebrated Sid-al-Battal carried on an individual who was set up by the Saracens as a pretender to the Byzantine throne, under the pretext that he was Tiberius, the son of Justinian II. Two sons of the caliph appeared more than once at the head of the invading armies. In the year 739, the Saracen forces poured into Asia Minor in immense numbers, with all their early energy. Leo, who had taken the command of the Byzantine army, accompanied by his son Constantine, marched to meet Sid-al-Battal, whose great fame rendered him the most dangerous enemy. A battle took place at Acroinon, in the Anatolic theme, in which the Saracens were totally defeated. The valiant Sid, the most renowned champion of Islamism, perished on the field; but the fame of his exploits has filled many volumes of Moslem romance, and furnished some of the tales that have adorned the memory of the Cid of Spain, three hundred years after the victory of Leo. The Western Christians have robbed the Byzantine empire of its glory in every way. After this defeat the Saracen power ceased to be formidable to the empire, until the energy of the caliphate was revived by the vigorous administration of the Abassides.

Leo’s victories over the Mohammedans were an indispensable step to the establishment of his personal authority. But the measures of administrative wisdom which rendered his reign a new era in Roman history are its most important feature in the annals of the human race. His military exploits were the result of ordinary virtues, and of talents common in every age; but the ability to reform the internal government of an empire, in accordance with the exigencies of society, can only be appreciated by those who have made the causes and the progress of national revolutions the object of long thought. The intellectual superiority of Leo may be estimated by the incompetence of sovereigns in the present century to meet new exigencies of society. Leo judiciously availed himself of many circumstances that favoured his reforms. The inherent vigour which is nourished by parochial and municipal responsibilities, bound together the remnants of the free population in the eastern Roman Empire, and operated powerfully in resisting foreign domination. The universal respect felt for the administration of justice, and the general deference paid to the ecclesiastical establishment, inspired the inhabitants with energies wanting in the West. Civilization was so generally diffused, that the necessity of upholding the civil and ecclesiastical tribunals, and defending the channels of commercial intercourse, reunited a powerful body of the people in every province to the central administration, by the strongest ties of interest and feeling.

The oppressive authority of the court of Constantinople had been much weakened by the anarchy that prevailed throughout the empire in the latter part of the seventh century. The government had been no longer able to inundate the provinces with those bands of officials who had previously consumed the wealth of the curia; and the cities had been everywhere compelled to provide for their own defence by assuming powers hitherto reserved to the imperial officers. These new duties had inspired the people with new vigour, and developed unexpected talents. The destructive responsibility of fiscal guarantees and personal services, imposed by the administration of imperial Rome as a burden on every class of its subjects, from the senator to the ticket-porter, was lightened when the Western Empire fell a prey to foreign conquerors, and when the Eastern was filled with foreign colonists. The curiales and the corporations at last relieved themselves from the attempt of the Roman government to fix society in a stationary condition, and the relief was followed by immediate improvement.

Troubled times had also made the clergy more anxious to conciliate public opinion than official favour. A better and more popular class of bishops replaced the worldly priest satirized by Gregory Nazianzenos. The influence of this change was very great, for the bishop, as the defender of the curia, and the real head of the people in the municipality, enjoyed extensive authority over the corporations of artisans and the mass of the labouring population. From a judge he gradually acquired the power of a civil governor, and the curia became his senate. The ordinary judicial tribunals being cut off from direct communication with the supreme courts, peculiar local usages gained force, and a customary law arose in many provinces restricting the application of the code of Justinian. The Orthodox Church alone preserved its unity of character, and its priests continued to be guided by principles of centralization, which preserved their connection with the seat of the patriarchate at Constantinople, without injuring the energetic spirit of their local resistance to the progress of the Mohammedan power. Throughout the wide extent of the Eastern Empire, the priesthood served as a bond to connect the local feelings of the parish with the general interests of the Orthodox Church. Its authority was, moreover, endeared to a large body of the population from its language being Greek, and from its holy legends embodying national feelings and prejudices. Repulsive as the lives of the saints now appear to our taste, they were the delight of millions for many centuries.

From the earnest period to the present hour, the wealth of most of the cities in the East has been derived from their importance as points of commercial communication. The insane fury of the Emperor Justinian II, in devastating the nourishing cities of Ravenna and Cherson, failed to ruin these places, because they were then the greatest commercial entrepôts of the trade between India and Europe. But the alarm felt for the ruin of commerce throughout the Christian world, during the anarchy that existed in the last years of the seventh, and early years of the eighth centuries, contributed much to render men contented with the firm government of Leo, even though they may have considered him a heretic. On the other hand, the prevailing anarchy had relieved commerce both from much fiscal oppression and many official monopolies. The moment the financial burdens of the commercial classes were lightened, they experienced an the advantage of possessing a systematic administration of justice, enforced by a fixed legal procedure, and consequently they very naturally became warm partisans of the imperial authority, as, in their opinion, the personal influence of the emperor constituted the true fountain of legal order and judicial impartiality. A fixed legislation saved society from dissolution during many years of anarchy.

The obscure records of the eighth century allow us to discern through their dim atmosphere a considerable increase of power in popular feelings, and they even afford some glimpses of the causes of this new energy. The fermentation which then pervaded Christian society marks the commencement of modem civilization, as contrasted with ancient times. Its force arose out of the general diminution of slave labour. The middle classes in the towns were no longer rich enough to be purchasers of slaves, consequently the slave population henceforward became a minority in the Eastern Empire; and those democratic ideas which exist among free labourers replaced the aristocratic caution, inseparable from the necessity of watching a numerous population of slaves. The general attention was directed to the equal administration of justice. The emperor alone appeared to be removed above the influence of partiality and bribery; under his powerful protection the masses hoped to escape official and aristocratic oppression, by the systematic observance of the rules of Roman law. The prosperity of commerce seemed as directly connected with the imperial supremacy as judicial equity itself, for the power of the emperor alone could enforce one uniform system of customs from Cherson to Ravenna. Every trader, and indeed every citizen, felt that the apparatus of the imperial government was necessary to secure financial and legal unity. Above all, Leo, the conqueror of the hitherto victorious Saracens, seemed the only individual who possessed the civil as well as the military talents necessary for averting the ruin of the empire. Leo converted the strong attachment to the laws of Rome prevalent in society into a lever of political power, and rendered the devotion felt for the personal authority of the sovereign the means of increasing the centralization of power in the reformed fabric of the Roman administration. The laws of Rome, therefore, saved Christianity from Saracen domination more than the armies. The victories of Leo enabled him to consolidate his power, and constitute the Byzantine Empire, in defiance of the Greek nation and the Orthodox Church; but the law supplied him with this moral power over society.

As long as Mohammedanism was only placed in collision with the fiscality of the Roman government and the intolerance of the Orthodox Church, the Saracens were everywhere victorious, and found everywhere Christian allies in the provinces they invaded. But when anarchy and misfortune had destroyed the fiscal power of the state, and weakened the ecclesiastical intolerance of the clergy, a new point of comparison between the governments of the emperors and the caliphs presented itself to the attention. The question, how justice was administered in the ordinary relations of life, became of vital interest. The code of Justinian was compared with that of the Koran. The courts presided over by judges and bishops were compared with those of the Moolahs. The convictions which arose in the breasts of the subjects of the Byzantine emperors changed the current of events. The torrent of Mohammedan conquest was arrested, and as long as the Roman law was cultivated in the empire, and administered under proper control in the provinces, the invaders of the Byzantine territory were everywhere unsuccessful .The inhabitants boasted with a just pride, that they lived under the systematic rule of the Roman law, and not under the arbitrary sway of despotic power.

Such was the state of the Roman Empire when Leo commenced his reforms. We must now proceed to examine what history has recorded concerning this great reformer. Some fables concerning his life and fortunes owe their existence to the aversion with which his religious opinions were regarded by the Greeks, and they supply us with the means of forming a corrector view of the popular mind than of the emperor’s life. At the same time, it must be recollected that they embody the opinions of only a portion of his subjects, adopted towards the close of his reign. 

Leo was born at Germanicia, a city of Armenia Minor, in the mountains near the borders of Cappadocia and Syria. Germanicia was taken by the Saracens, and the parents of Leo emigrated with their son to Mesembria in Thrace. They were persons of sufficient wealth to make the Emperor Justinian II a present of five hundred sheep, as he was advancing to regain possession of his throne with the assistance of the Bulgarians. This well-timed gift gained young Leo the rank of spatharios, the personal favour of the tyrant, and a high command on the Lazian frontier. His prudence and courage raised him, during the reign of Anastasius II, to the command of the Anatolic theme.

But another history of his life, unknown to the early historians, Theophanes and Nicephorus, though both these orthodox writers were his bitter enemies and detractors, became current in after times, and deserves notice as presenting us with a specimen of the tales which then fed the mental appetite of the Greeks. Prodigies, prophecies, and miracles were universally believed. Restricted communications and neglected education were conducting society to an infantine dotage. Every unusual event was said to have been predicted by some prophetic revelation; and as the belief in the prescience of futurity was universal, public deceivers and self-deceivers were always found acting the part of prophets. It is said to have been foretold to Leontius that he should ascend the throne, by two monks and an abbot. The restoration of Justinian II had been announced to him while he was in exile by a hermit of Cappadocia. Philippicus had it revealed in a dream, that he was to become emperor; and he was banished by Tiberius II, (Apsimar,) when this vision became publicly known. It is not, therefore, wonderful that Leo should have been honoured with communications from the other world; though, as might have been expected from his heretical opinions, and the orthodoxy of his historians, these communications are represented to have been made by agents from the lower rather than the higher regions.

A circumstance which it was believed had happened to the Caliph Yezid I, proved most satisfactorily to the Greeks that Satan often transacted business publicly by means of his agents on earth. Two Jews—for Jews are generally selected by the orthodox as the fittest agents of the demon—presented themselves to the caliph claiming the gift of prophecy. They announced that, if he should put an end to the idolatrous worship of images throughout his dominions, fate had predestined him to reign for forty years over a rich and flourishing empire. Yezid was a man of pleasure and a bigot, so that the prophecy was peculiarly adapted to flatter his passions. The images and pictures winch adorned the Christian churches were torn down and destroyed throughout the caliph’s dominions. But Yezid was occupied carrying his decree into execution when he died. His son, Moawyah II, sought the Jewish prophets in vain. The prince of darkness concealed them from his search, and transported them into the heart of Asia Minor, where they had new services to perform.

A young man named Conon, who had quitted his native mountains of Isauria, to gain his living as a pedlar in the wealthier plains, drove his ass, laden with merchandise, to a grove of evergreen oaks near a bubbling fountain, to seek rest during the heat of the day, and count his recent gains. The ass was turned loose to pasture in the little meadow formed by the stream of the fountain, and Conon sat down in the shade, by the chapel of St. Theodore, to eat his frugal meal. He soon perceived two travellers resting like himself, and enjoying their noontide repast. These travellers entered into conversation with young Conon, who was a lad of remarkable strength, beauty, and intelligence. They allowed the fact to transpire that they were Jews, prophets and astrologers, who had recently quitted the court of the caliph at Damascus, which very naturally awakened in the mind of the young pedlar a wish to know his future fortune, for he may have aspired at becoming a great post-contractor or a rich banker. The two Jews readily satisfied his curiosity, and, to his utter astonishment, informed him that he was destined to rule the Roman Empire. As a proof of their veracity, the prophets declared that they sought neither wealth nor honours for themselves, but they conjured Conon to promise solemnly that, when he ascended the throne, he would put an end to the idolatry which disgraced Christianity in the East. If he engaged to do this, they assured him that his fulfilling the will of Heaven would bring prosperity to himself and to the empire. Young Conon, believing that the prophets had revealed the will of God, pledged himself to purify the Christian Church; and he kept this promise, when he ascended the throne as Leo the Isaurian. But as the prophets had made no stipulation for the free exercise of their own creed, and their interest in Christianity pointed out the true faith, Leo did not consider himself guilty of ingratitude, when, as emperor, he persecuted the Jewish religion with the greatest severity.

Such is the fable by which the later Byzantine historians explain Leo’s hostility to image-worship. This adventure appeared to them a probable origin of the ecclesiastical reforms which characterize Leo’s domestic policy. In the bright days of Hellenic genius, such materials would have been woven into an immortal tale; the chapel of St Theodore, its fountain, and its evergreen oaks, Conon driving his ass with the two unearthly Jews reclining in the shade, would have formed a picture immortal in the minds of millions; but in the hands of ignorant monks and purblind chroniclers, it sinks into a dull and improbable narrative. Unfortunately it is almost as difficult to ascertain the precise legislative and executive acts by which Leo reformed the military, financial, and legal administration, as it is to obtain an impartial account of his ecclesiastical measures.

The military establishment of the empire had gradually lost its national character, from the impossibility of recruiting the army from among Roman citizens. In vain the soldier’s son was fettered, to his father’s profession, as the artisan was bound to his corporation, and the proprietor to his estate. Yet the superiority of the Roman armies seems to have suffered little from the loss of national spirit, as long as strict discipline was maintained in their ranks. For many centuries the majority of the imperial forces consisted of conscripts drawn from the lowest ranks of society, from the rude mountaineers of almost independent provinces, or from foreigners hired as mercenaries; yet the armies of all invaders, from the Goths to the Saracens, were repeatedly defeated in pitched battles. The state maxims which separated the servants of the emperor from the people, survived in the Eastern provinces after the loss of the Western, and served as the basis of the military policy of the Byzantine Empire, when reformed by Leo. The conditions of soldier and citizen were deemed incompatible. The law prevented the citizen from assuming the position of a soldier, and watched with jealousy any attempt of the soldier to acquire the rights and feelings of a citizen. An impassable barrier was placed between the proprietor of the soil, who was the tax-payer, and the defender of the state, who was an agent of the imperial power. It is true that, after the loss of the Western provinces, the Roman armies were recruited from the native subjects of the empire to a much greater degree than formerly; and that, after the time of Heraclius, it became impossible to enforce the fiscal arrangements to which the separation of the citizen from the soldier owed its origin, at least with the previous strictness. Still the old imperial maxims were cherished in the reign of Leo, and the numerous colonies of Slavonians, and other foreigners, established in the empire, owed their foundation to the supposed necessity of seeking for recruits as little as possible from among the native population of agriculturists. These colonies were governed by peculiar regulations, and their most important service was supplying a number of troops for the imperial army. Isauria and other mountainous districts, where it was difficult to collect any revenue by a land-tax, also supplied a fixed military contingent.

Whatever modifications Leo made in the military system, and however great were the reforms he effected in the organization of the army and the discipline of the troops, the mass of the population continued in the Byzantine empire to be excluded from the use of arms, as they had been in the Roman times; and this circumstance was the cause of that unwarlike disposition, which is made a standing reproach from the days of the Goths to those of the Crusaders.

The state of society engendered by this policy opened the Western Empire to the northern nations, and the empire of Charlemagne to the Normans. Leo’s great merit was that without any violent political change he infused new energy into the Byzantine military establishment, and organized a force that for five centuries defended the empire without acquiring the power of domineering in the state. As the army was destitute of patriotic feeling, it was necessary to lessen the influence of its commanders. This was done by dividing the provinces into themes, appointing a general of division for each theme, and grouping together in different stations the various corps of conscripts, subject nations, and hired mercenaries. The adoption likewise of different arms, armour, and manoeuvres in the various corps, and their seclusion from close intercommunication with the native legions, guarded against the danger of those rebellious movements which in reality destroyed the Western Empire. As much caution was displayed in the Byzantine Empire to prevent the army from endangering the government by its seditions, as to render it formidable to the enemy by its strength.

The finances are soon felt to be the basis of government in all civilized states. Augustus experienced the truth of this as much as Louis XIV. The progress of society and the accumulation of wealth have a tendency to sink governments into the position of brokers of human intelligence, wealth, and labour; and the finances form the symbol indicating the quantity of these which the central authority can command. The reforms, therefore, which it was in the power of Leo III to effect in the financial administration, must have proceeded from the force of circumstances rather than from the mind of the emperor. To this cause we must attribute the durability of the fabric he constructed. He confined himself to arranging prudently the materials accumulated to his hand. But no sovereign, and indeed no central executive authority, can form a correct estimate of the taxable capacity of the people. Want of knowledge increases the insatiable covetousness suggested by their position; and the wisest statesman is as likely to impose ruinous burdens on the people, if vested with despotic power, as the most rapacious tyrant. The people alone can find ways of levying on themselves an amount of taxation exceeding any burdens that the boldest despot could hope to impose; for the people can perceive what taxes will have the least effect in arresting the increase of the national wealth.

Leo, who felt the importance of the financial administration as deeply as Augustus, reserved to himself the immediate superintendence of the treasury; and this special control over the finances was retained by his successors, so that, during the whole duration of the Byzantine empire, the emperors may be regarded as their own ministers of finance. The grand Logothetes, who was the official minister, was in reality nothing more than the emperor’s private secretary for the department. Leo unquestionably improved the central administration, while the invasions of the Saracens and Bulgarians made him extremely cautious in imposing heavy fiscal burdens on the distant cities and provinces of his dominions. But his reforms were certainly intended to circumscribe the authority of municipal and provincial institutions. The free cities and municipalities which had once been entrusted with the duty of apportioning their quota of the land-tax, and collecting the public burdens of their district, were now deprived of this authority. All fiscal business was transferred to the imperial officers. Each province had its own collectors of the revenue, its own officials charged to complete the registers of the public burdens, and to verify all statistical details. The traditions of imperial Rome still required that this mass of information should be regularly transmitted to the cabinet of the Byzantine emperors, as at the birth of our Saviour.

The financial acts of Leo’s reign, though they show that he increased the direct amount of taxation levied from his subjects, prove nevertheless, by the general improvement which took place in the condition of the people, that his reformed system of financial administration really lightened the weight of the public burdens. Still, there can be no doubt that the stringency of the measures adopted in Greece and Italy, for rendering the census more productive, was one of the causes of the rebellions in those countries, for which his Iconoclastic decrees served as a more honourable war-cry. In Calabria and Sicily he added one-third to the capitation; he confiscated to the profit of the treasury a tribute of three talents and a half of gold which had been remitted annually to Rome, and at the same time he ordered a correct register to be kept of all the males born in his dominions. This last regulation excites a burst of indignation from the orthodox historian and confessor Theophanes, who allows neither his reason nor his memory to restrain his bigotry when recording the acts of the first Iconoclast emperor. He likens Leo’s edict to Pharaoh’s conduct to the children of Israel, and adds that the Saracens, Leo’s teachers in wickedness had never exercised the like oppression—forgetting, in his zeal against taxation, that the Caliph Abdelmelik had established the haratch or capitation of Christians as early as the commencement of the reign of Justinian II, AD 692.

An earthquake that ruined the walls of Constantinople, and many cities in Thrace and Bithynia, induced Leo to adopt measures for supplying the treasury with a special fund for restoring them, and keeping their fortifications constantly in a state to resist the Bulgarians and Saracens. The municipal revenues which had once served for this purpose had been encroached upon by Justinian I, and the policy of Leo led him to diminish in every way the sphere of action of all local authorities.

The care of the fortifications was undoubtedly a duty to which the central government required to give its direct attention; and to meet the extraordinary expenditure caused by the calamitous earthquake of 740, an addition of one-twelfth was made to the census. This tax was called the dikeraton because the payment appears to have been generally made in the silver coins called keratia, two of which were equal to a miliaresion, the coin which represented one-twelfth of the nomisma, or gold Byzant. Thus a calamity which diminished the public resources increased the public burdens. In such a contingency it seems that a paternal government and a wise despot ought to have felt the necessity of diminishing the pomp of the court, of curtailing the expenses of ecclesiastical pageants, and of reforming the extravagance of the popular amusements of the hippodrome, before imposing new burdens on the suffering population of the empire. Courtiers, saints, and charioteers ought to have been shorn of their splendour, before the groans of the provinces were increased. Yet Leo was neither a luxurious nor an avaricious prince; but, as has been said, already, no despotic monarch can wisely measure the burden of taxation.

The influence of the provincial spirit on the legislation of the empire is strongly marked in the history of jurisprudence during Leo’s reign. The anarchy which had long interrupted the official communications between the provinces and the capital lent an increased authority to local usages, and threw obstacles in the way of the regular administration of justice, according to the strict letter of the voluminous laws of Justinian. The consequence was that various local abridgments of the law were used as guide-books, both by lawyers and judges, in the provincial tribunals, where the great expense of procuring a copy of the Justinianean collection prevented its use. Leo published a Greek manual of law, which by its official sanction became the primary authority in all the courts of the empire. This imperial abridgment is called the Ecloga: it affords some evidence concerning the state of society and the classes of the people for which it was prepared. Little notice is taken of the rights of the agriculturists; the various modes of acquiring property and constituting servitudes are omitted. The Ecloga has been censured for its imperfections by Basil I, the founder of a legislative dynasty, who speaks of it as an insult to the earlier legislators; yet the orthodox lawgiver, while he pretended to reject every act of the heretical Isaurian, servilely imitated all his political plans. The brevity and precision of Leo’s Ecloga were highly appreciated both by the courts of law and the people, in spite of the heterodox opinions of its promulgator. It so judiciously supplied a want long felt by a large portion of society, that neither the attempt of Basil I to supplant it by a new official manual, nor the publication of the great code of the Basilika in Greek, deprived it of value among the jurisconsults of the Byzantine Empire.

The legislative labours of Leo were not circumscribed to the publication of the Ecloga. He seems to have sanctioned various minor codes, by which the regulations in use relating to military, agricultural, and maritime law were reduced into systematic order. The collections which are attached to the copies of the Ecloga, under the heads of military, agricultural, and Rhodian laws, cannot, however, be considered as official acts of his reign; still, they are supposed to afford us a correct idea of the originals he published. Some abstract of the provisions contained in the Roman legislation on military affairs, was rendered necessary by the practice of maintaining corps of foreign mercenaries in the capital. A military code was likewise rendered necessary, in consequence of the changes that took place in the old system, as the Asiatic provinces were gradually cleared of the invading bands of Saracens. The agricultural laws appear to be a tolerably exact copy of the enactments of Leo. The work bears the impress of the condition of society in his time, and it is not surprising that the title which perpetuated the merits and the memory of the heterodox Leo was suppressed by orthodox bigotry. The maritime laws are extremely interesting, from affording a picture of the state of commercial legislation in the eighth century, at the time when commerce and law saved the Roman Empire. The exact date of the collection we possess is not ascertained. That Leo protected commerce, we may infer from its reviving under his government; whether he promulgated a code to sanction or enforce his reforms, or whether the task was completed by one of his successors, is doubtful.

The whole policy of Leo’s reign has been estimated by his ecclesiastical reforms. These have been severely judged by all historians, and they appear to have encountered a violent opposition from a large portion of his subjects. The general dissatisfaction has preserved sufficient authentic information to allow of a candid examination of the merits and errors of his policy. Theophanes considers the aversion of Leo to the adoration of images as originating in an impious attachment to the Unitarianism of the Arabs. His own pages, however, refute some of his calumnies, for he records that Leo persecuted the unitarianism of the Jews, and the tendency to it in the Montanists. Indeed, all those who differed from the most orthodox acknowledgment of the Trinity, received very little Christian charity at the hands of the Isaurian, who placed the cross on the reverse of many of his gold, silver, and copper coins and over the gates of his palace, as a symbol for universal adoration. In his Iconoclast opinions, Leo is merely a type of the more enlightened laymen of his age. A strong reaction against the superstitions introduced into the Christian religion by the increasing ignorance of the people, pervaded the educated classes, who were anxious to put a stop to what might be considered a revival of the ideas and feelings of paganism. The Asiatic Christians, who were brought into frequent collision with the followers of Mahomet, Zoroaster, and Moses, were compelled to observe that the worship of the common people among themselves was sensual, when compared with the devotion of the infidels. The worship of God was neglected, and his service transferred to some human symbol. The favourite saint was usually one whose faults were found to bear some analogy to the vices of his worshipper, and thus pardon was supposed to be obtained for sin on easier terms than accords with Divine justice, and vice was consequently rendered more prevalent. The clergy had yielded to the popular ignorance; the walls of churches were covered with pictures which were reported to have wrought miraculous cures; their shrines were enriched by paintings not made with hands; the superstitions of the people were increased, and the doctrines of Christianity were neglected. Pope Gregory II, in a letter to Leo, mentions the fact, that men expended their estates to have the sacred histories represented in paintings.

In a time of general reform, and in a government where ecclesiastics acted as administrative officials of the central authority, it was impossible for Leo to permit the church to remain quite independent in ecclesiastical affairs, unless he was prepared for the clergy assuming a gradual supremacy in the state. The clergy, being the only class in the administration of public affairs connected with the people by interest and feelings, was always sure of a powerful popular support. It appeared, therefore, necessary to the emperor to secure them as sincere instruments in carrying out all his reforms, otherwise there was some reason to fear that they might constitute themselves the leaders of the people in Greece and Asia, as they had already done at Rome, and control the imperial administration throughout the whole Eastern Empire, as completely as they did m the Byzantine possessions in central Italy.

Leo commenced his ecclesiastical reforms in the year 726 by an edict ordering all pictures in churches to be placed so high as to prevent the people from kissing them, and prohibiting prostration before these symbols, or any act of public worship being addressed to them. Against this moderate edict of the emperor, the Patriarch Germanos and the Pope Gregory II made strong representations. The opposition of interest which reigned between the church and the state impelled the two bodies to a contest for supremacy which it required centuries to decide, and both Germanos and Gregory were sincere supporters of image-worship. To the ablest writer of the time,—the celebrated John Damascenus, who dwelt under the protection of the caliph at Damascus, among Mohammedans and Jews,—this edict seemed to mark a relapse to Judaism, or a tendency to Islamism. He felt himself called upon to combat such feelings with all the eloquence and power of argument he possessed, the empire was thrown into a ferment; the lower clergy and the whole Greek nation declared in favour of image-worship. The professors of the university of Constantinople, an institution of a Greek character, likewise declared their opposition to the edict. Liberty of conscience was the watchword against the imperial authority. The Pope and the Patriarch denied the right of the civil power to interfere with the doctrines of the church; the monks everywhere echoed the words of John Damascenus: “It is not the business of the emperor to make laws for the church. Apostles preached the gospel; the welfare of the state is the monarch’s care; pastors and teachers attend to that of the church”. The despotic principles of Leo’s administration, and the severe measures of centralization which he enforced as the means of reorganizing the public service, created many additional enemies to his government.

The rebellion of the inhabitants of Greece, which occurred in the year 727, seems to have originated in a dissatisfaction with the fiscal and administrative reforms of Leo, to which local circumstances, unnoticed by historians, gave peculiar violence, and which the edict against image-worship fanned into a flame. The unanimity of all classes, and the violence of the popular zeal in favour of their local privileges and superstitions, suggested the hope of dethroning Leo, and placing a Greek on the throne of Constantinople. A naval expedition, composed of the imperial fleet in the Cyclades, and attended by an army from the continent, was fitted out to attack the capital. Agallianos, who commanded the imperial forces destined to watch the Slavonians settled in Greece, was placed at the head of the army destined to assail the conqueror of the Saracens. The name of the new emperor was Kosmas. In the month of April the Greek fleet appeared before Constantinople. It soon appeared that the Greeks, confiding in the goodness of their cause, had greatly overrated their own valour and strength, or strangely over­looked the resources of the Iconoclasts. Leo met the fleet as it approached his capital, and completely defeated it. Agallianos, with the spirit of a hero, when he saw the utter ruin of the enterprise, plunged fully armed into the sea rather than surrender. Kosmas was taken prisoner, with another leader, and immediately beheaded. Leo, however, treated the mass of the prisoners with mildness.

Even if we admit that the Greeks displayed considerable presumption in attacking the Isaurian emperor, still we must accept the fact as a proof of the populous condition of the cities and islands of Greece, and of the flourishing condition of their trade, at a period generally represented as one of wretchedness and poverty. Though the Peloponnesus was filled with Slavonian emigrants, and the Greek peasantry were in many districts excluded from the cultivation of the land in the seats of their ancestors, nevertheless their cities then contained the mercantile wealth and influence, which passed some centuries later into the possession of Venice, Amalfi, Genoa, and Pisa.

The opposition Leo encountered only confirmed him in his persuasion that it was indispensably necessary to increase the power of the central government in the provinces. As he was sincerely attached to the opinions of the Iconoclasts, he was led to connect his ecclesiastical reforms with his political measures, and to pursue both with additional zeal. In order to secure the active support of all the officers of the administration, and exclude all image-worshippers from power, he convoked an assembly, called a silention, consisting of the senators and the highest functionaries in the church and state. In this solemn manner it was decreed that images were to be removed from all the churches throughout the empire. In the capital the change met with no serious opposition. The population of Constantinople of every period of its history has consisted of a mixed multitude of different nations; nor has the majority ever been purely Greek for any great length of time. Nicetas, speaking of a time when the Byzantine Empire was at the height of its power, and when the capital was more a Greek city than at any preceding or subsequent period, declares that its population was composed of various races. The cause of image-worship was, however, generally the popular cause, and the Patriarch Germanos steadily resisted every change in the actual practice of the church until that change should be sanctioned by a general council.

The turn now given to the dispute put an end to the power of the Eastern emperors in central Italy. The Latin provinces of the Roman Empire, even before their conquest by the barbarians, had sunk into deeper ignorance than the Eastern. Civilization had penetrated farther into society among the Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians, than among the Italians, Gauls, and Spaniards. Italy was already dissatisfied with the Constantinopolitan domination, when Leo’s fiscal and religious reforms roused local interests and national prejudices to unite in opposing his government. The Pope of Rome had long been regarded by orthodox Christians as the head of the church; even the Greeks admitted his right of inspection over the whole body of the clergy, in virtue of the superior dignity of the Roman see. From being the heads of the church, the popes became the defenders of the liberties of the people. In this character, as leaders of a lawful opposition to the tyranny of the imperial administration, they grew up to the possession of immense influence in the state. This power, having its basis in democratic feelings and energies, alarmed the emperors, and many attempts were made to circumscribe the papal authority. But the popes themselves did more to diminish their own influence than their enemies, for instead of remaining the protectors of the people, they aimed at making themselves their masters. Gregory II, who occupied the papal chair at the commencement of the contest with Leo, was a man of sound judgment, as well as an able and zealous priest. He availed himself of all the advantages of his position, as political chief of the Latin race, with prudence and moderation; nor did he neglect the power he derived from the circumstance that Rome was the fountain of religious instruction for all western Europe. Both his political and ecclesiastical position entitled him to make a direct opposition to any oppressive measure of the emperor of Constantinople, when the edicts of Leo III concerning image-worship prompted him to commence the contest, which soon ended in separating central Italy from the Byzantine Empire.

The possessions of the Eastern emperors in Italy were still considerable. Venice, Rome, Ravenna, Naples, Bari, and Tarentum were all capitals of well-peopled and wealthy districts. The province embracing Venice and Rome was governed by an imperial viceroy or exarch who resided at Ravenna, and hence the Byzantine possessions in central Italy were called the Exarchate of Ravenna. Under the orders of the exarch, three governors or dukes commanded the troops in Ravenna, Rome, and Venice. As the native militia enrolled to defend the province from the Lombards formed a considerable portion of the military force, the popular feelings of the Italians exercised some influence over the soldiery. The Constantinopolitan governor was generally disliked, on account of the fiscal rapacity of which he was the agent; and nothing but the dread of greater oppression on the part of the Lombards, whom the Italians had not the courage to encounter without the assistance of the Byzantine troops, preserved the people of central Italy in their allegiance. They hated the Greeks, but they feared the Lombards.

Gregory II sent Leo strong representations against his first edicts on the subject of image-worship, and after the silention he repeated these representations, and entered on a more decided course of opposition to the emperor’s ecclesiastical reforms, being then convinced that there was no hope of Leo abandoning his heretical opinions. It seems that Italy, like the rest of the empire, had escaped in some degree from the oppressive burden of imperial taxation during the anarchy that preceded Leo’s election. But the defeat of the Saracens before Constantinople had been followed by the establishment of the fiscal system. To overcome the opposition made to the financial and ecclesiastical reforms, the exarch Paul was ordered to march to Rome and support Marinus, the duke, who found himself unable to contend against the papal influence. The whole of central Italy burst into rebellion at this demonstration against its civil and religious interests. The exarch was compelled to shut himself up m Ravenna; for the cities of Italy, instead of obeying the imperial officers, elected magistrates of their own, on whom they conferred, in some cases, the title of duke. Assemblies were held, and the project of electing an emperor of the West was adopted; but the unfortunate result of the rebellion of Greece damped the courage of the Italians; and though a rebel, named Tiberius Petasius, really assumed the purple in Tuscany, he was easily defeated and slain by Eutychius, who succeeded Paul as exarch of Ravenna. Luitprand, king of the Lombards, taking advantage of these dissensions, invaded the imperial territory, and gained possession of Ravenna; but Gregory, who saw the necessity of saving the country from the Lombards and from anarchy, wrote to Ursus, the duke of Venice, one of his warm partisans, and persuaded him to join Eutychius. The Lombards were defeated by the Byzantine troops, Ravenna was recovered, and Eutychius entered Rome with a victorious army. Gregory died in 731. Though he excited the Italian cities to resist the imperial power, and approved of the measures they adopted for stopping the remittance of their taxes to Constantinople, he does not appear to have adopted any measures for declaring Rome independent. That he contemplated the possibility of events taking a turn that might ultimately lead him to throw off his allegiance to the Emperor Leo, is nevertheless evident, from one of his letters to that emperor, in which he boasts very significantly that the eyes of the West were fixed on his humility, and that if Leo attempted to injure the Pope, he would find the West ready to defend him, and even to attack Constantinople. The allusion to the protection of the king of the Lombards and Charles Martel was certainly, in this case, a treasonable threat on the part of the Bishop of Rome to his sovereign. Besides this, Gregory II excommunicated the exarch Paul, and all the enemies of image-worship who were acting under the orders of the emperor, pretending to avoid the guilt of treason by not expressly naming the Emperor Leo in his anathema. On the other hand, when we consider that Leo was striving to extend the bounds of the imperial authority in an arbitrary manner, and that his object was to sweep away every barrier against the exercise of despotism in the church and the state, we must acknowledge that the opposition of Gregory was founded in justice, and that he was entitled to defend the municipal institutions and local usages of Italy, and the constitution of the Romish church, even at the price of declaring himself a rebel. The election of Gregory III to the papal chair was confirmed by the Emperor Leo in the usual form; nor was that pope consecrated until the mandate from Constantinople reached Rome. This was the last time the emperors of the East were solicited to confirm the election of a pope. Meanwhile Leo steadily pursued his schemes of ecclesiastical reform, and the opposition to his measures gathered strength. Gregory III assembled a council in Rome, at which the municipal authorities, whose power Leo was endeavouring to circumscribe, were present along with the nobles; and in this council the whole body of the Iconoclasts were excommunicated. Leo now felt that force alone could maintain Rome and its bishops in their allegiance. With his usual energy, he despatched an expedition under the command of Manes, the general of the Kibyrraiot theme, with orders to send the pope a prisoner to Constantinople, to be tried for his treasonable conduct. A storm in the Adriatic, the lukewarm conduct of the Greeks in the imperial service, and the courage of the people of Ravenna, whose municipal institutions enabled them to act in an organized manner, caused the complete overthrow of Manes. Leo revenged himself for this loss by confiscating all the estates of the papal see in the eastern provinces of his empire, and by separating the ecclesiastical government of southern Italy, Sicily, Greece, Illyria, and Macedonia, from the papal jurisdiction, and placing these countries under the immediate authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople.

From this time, AD 733, the city of Rome enjoyed political independence under the guidance and protection of the popes; but the officers of the Byzantine emperors were allowed, to reside in the city, justice was publicly administered by Byzantine judges, and the supremacy of the Eastern Empire was still recognized. So completely, however, had Gregory III thrown off his allegiance, that he entered into negotiations with Charles Martel, in order to induce that powerful prince to take an active part in the affairs of Italy. The pope was now a much more powerful personage than the Exarch of Ravenna, for the cities of central Italy, which had assumed the control of their local government, entrusted the conduct of their external political relations to the care of Gregory, who thus held the balance of power between the Eastern emperor and the Lombard king. In the year 742, while Constantine V, the son of Leo, was engaged with a civil war, the Lombards were on the eve of conquering Ravenna, but Pope Zacharias threw the whole of the Latin influence into the Byzantine scale, and enabled the exarch to maintain his position until the year 751, when Astolph, king of the Lombards, captured Ravenna. The exarch retired to Naples, and the authority of the Byzantine emperors in central Italy ended.

The physical history of our globe is so intimately connected with the condition of its inhabitants, that it is well to record those remarkable variations from the ordinary course of nature which strongly affected the minds of contemporaries. The influence of famine and pestilence, during the tenth and eleventh centuries, in accelerating the extinction of slavery, has been pointed out by several recent writers on the subject, though that effect was not observed by the people who lived at the time. The importance of the late famine in Ireland, as a political cause, must be felt by anyone who attempts to trace the origin of that course of social improvement on which the Irish seem about to enter. The seventy of the winter of 717 aided Leo in defeating the Saracens at Constantinople. In the year 726, a terrific irruption of the dormant submarine volcano at the island of Thera (Santorini) in the Archipelago, was regarded by the bigoted image-worshippers as a manifestation of divine wrath against Leo’s reforms. For several days the sea between Thera and Therasia boiled up with great violence, vomiting forth flames, and enveloping the neighbouring islands in clouds of vapour and smoke. The flames were followed by showers of dust and pumice-stone, which covered the surface of the sea, and were carried by the waves to the shores of Asia Minor and Macedonia. At last a new island rose out of the sea, and gradually extended itself until it joined the older rocky islet called Hieron.

In the year 740 a terrible earthquake destroyed great part of the walls of Constantinople. The statue of Arcadius, on the Theodosian column in Xerolophon, and the statue of Theodosius over the golden gate, were both thrown down. Churches, monasteries, and private buildings were ruined: the walls of many cities in Thrace and Bithynia, particularly Nicomedia, Praenetus, and Nicaea, were so injured as to require immediate restoration. This great earthquake caused the imposition of the tax already alluded to, termed the dikeration.

Leo has been accused as a persecutor of learning. It is by no means impossible that his Asiatic education and puritanical opinions rendered him hostile to the legendary literature and ecclesiastical art then cultivated by the Greeks; but the circumstance usually brought forward in support of his barbarism is one of the calumnies invented by his enemies, and re-echoed by orthodox bigotry. He is said to have ordered a library consisting of 33,000 volumes, in the neighbourhood of St. Sophia’s, to be burned, and the professors of the university to be thrown into the flames. A valuable collection of books seems to have fallen accidentally a prey to the flames during his reign, and neither his liberality nor the public spirit of the Greeks induced them to display any activity in replacing the loss.

Leo III died in the year 741. He had crowned his son Constantine emperor in the year 720, and married him to Irene, the daughter of the Khan of the Khazars, in 733.

 

Sect. III

CONSTANTINE V COPRONYMUS, A.D. 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 favour 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.

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 curopalates, second, only to that of Caesar, a rank then usually reserved, for the imperial blood. Artavasdos had increased his influence by favouring 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 dishonour 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 favouring 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 favour; 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.

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.

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 honourable 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 into the 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 honours 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.

The long war with the Bulgarians was carried on rather with the object of securing tranquillity 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, Serbia, 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.

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 favourable 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 honour of perfecting the reforms planned by his father, and of re-establishing 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.

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 labouring 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 Anastasius 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 of 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.

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.

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 spectres 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 spectres 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 severity 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 labour, 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 honour granted also to her godmother and teacher.

 

Sect. IV

REIGNS OF LEO IV THE KHAZAR, CONSTANTINE VI AND IRENE

A.D. 775-802

 

Leo IV succeeded his father at the age of twenty-five. His mother, Irene, was the daughter of the emperor or chagan of the Khazars, then a powerful people, through whose territories the greater part of the commercial intercourse between the Christians and the rich countries in eastern Asia was carried on. Leo inherited from his mother a mild and amiable disposition; nor does he appear to have been destitute of some portion of his father’s talents, but the state of his health prevented him from displaying the same activity. His reign lasted four years and a half, and his administration was conducted in strict accordance with the policy of his father and grandfather; but the weak state of his health kept the public attention fixed on the question of the imperial succession. Constantine V had selected an Athenian lady, of great beauty and accomplishments, named Irene, to be his son’s wife, and Leo had a son named Constantine, who was born in the year 771. The indefinite nature of the imperial succession, and the infancy of Leo's child, gave the two half-brothers of the emperor, who had been invested by their father with the rank of Caesar, some hope of ascending the throne on their brother’s death. Leo conferred on his infant son the title of Emperor, in order to secure his succession; and this was done in a more popular manner than usual, at the express desire of the senate, in order to give the ceremony all the character of a popular election. The young emperor’s five uncles—the two Caesars, and the three who tore the title of Nobilissimi—were compelled to take the same oath of allegiance as the other subjects. Yet, shortly after this, the Caesar Nicephorus formed a conspiracy to render himself master of the government. Leo, who felt that he was rapidly sinking into the grave, referred the decision of his brother’s guilt to a Silention, which condemned all the conspirators to death. Nicephorus was pardoned, but his partisans were scourged and banished to Cherson. The death of Leo IV happened on the 8th of September, 780.

Constantine was ten years old when his father died, so that the whole direction of the empire devolved on his mother, Irene, who had received the imperial crown from Constantine V; for that emperor seems to have felt that the weak state of Leo’s health would require the assistance of Irene’s talents. The virtues Irene had displayed in a private station were insufficient to resist the corrupting influence of irresponsible power. Ambition took possession of her own soul, and it was the ambition of reigning alone, not of reigning well. The education of her son was neglected—perhaps as a means of securing her power; favour was avowedly a surer road to preferment than long service, so that the court became a scene of political intrigue, and personal motives decided most public acts. As no organ of public opinion possessed the power of awakening a sense of moral responsibility among the officers of state, the intrigues of the court ended in conspiracies, murder, and treason.

The parties struggling for power soon ranged themselves under the banners of the ecclesiastical factions that had long divided the empire. Little, probably, did many of the leaders care what party they espoused in the religious question; but it was necessary to proclaim themselves members of an ecclesiastical faction in order to secure a popular following. The Empress Irene was known to favour image-worship; as a woman and a Greek, this was natural; yet policy would have dictated to her to adopt that party as the most certain manner of securing support powerful enough to counterbalance the family influence of the Isaurian dynasty, which was now wielded by the uncles of the young emperor. The conflict between the image-worshippers and the Iconoclasts soon commenced. The Caesar Nicephorus, who was as ambitious as his sister-in-law, was eager to drive her from the regency. He organized a conspiracy, in which several ministers and members of the senate took part. Irene obtained full proof of all its ramifications before the conspirators were prepared to act, seized her five brothers-in-law, and compelled them to enter the priesthood. In order to make it generally known that they had assumed the sacerdotal character, they were obliged to officiate during the Christmas ceremonies at the high altar of St Sophia's, while the young emperor and his mother restored to the church the rich jewels of which it had been deprived by the Iconoclast emperors. The intendant-general of posts, the general of the Armeniac theme, the commander of the imperial guard, and the admiral of the Archipelago, who had all taken part in the conspiracy, were scourged, and immured as monks in distant monasteries. Helpidioss the governor of Sicily, assumed the title of emperor as soon as he found that his participation in the plot was known at court; but he was compelled to seek shelter among the Saracens, in whose armies he afterwards served. Nicephorus Doukas, another conspirator, fled also to the Mohammedans. Some years later, when Constantine VI had assumed the government into his own hands, a new conspiracy was formed by the partisans of his uncles (AD 792). The princes were then treated with great severity. The Caesar Nicephorus was deprived of sight; and the tongues of the others were cut out, by the order of their nephew, not long before he lost his own eyes by the order of his mother.

The influence of the clergy in the ordinary administration of justice, and the great extent to which ecclesiastical legislation regulated civil rights, rendered councils of the church an important feature in those forms and usages that practically circumscribed the despotic power of the emperor by a framework of customs, opinions, and convictions which he could with difficulty alter, and rarely oppose without danger. The political ambition of Irene, the national vanity of the Greeks, and the religious feelings of the orthodox, required the sanction of a constitutional public authority, before the laws against image-worship could be openly repealed. The Byzantine Empire had at this time an ecclesiastical, though not a political constitution. The will of the sovereign was alone insufficient to change an organic law, forming part of the ecclesiastical administration of the empire. It was necessary to convoke a general council to legalize image-worship; and to render such a council a fit instrument for the proposed revolution, much arrangement was necessary. No person was ever endued with greater talents for removing opposition and conciliating personal support than the empress. The Patriarch Paul, a decided Iconoclast, was induced to resign, and declare that he repented of his hostility to image-worship, because it had cut off the church of Constantinople from communion with the rest of the Christian world. This declaration pointed out the necessity of holding a general council, in order to establish that communion. The crisis required a new Patriarch, of stainless character, great ability, and perfect acquaintance with the party connections and individual characters of the leading bishops. No person could be selected from among the dignitaries of the church, who had been generally appointed by Iconoclast emperors. The choice of Irene fell on a civilian. Tarasios, the chief secretary of the imperial cabinet—a man of noble birth, considerable popularity, and a high reputation for learning and probity—was suddenly elevated to be the head of the Greek church, and allowed to be not unworthy of the high rank. The orthodox would probably have raised a question concerning the legality of nominating a layman, had it not been evident that the objection would favour the interests of their opponents. The empress and her advisers were not bold enough to venture on an irretrievable declaration in favour of image-worship, until they had obtained a public assurance of popular support. An assembly of the inhabitants of the capital was convoked in the palace of Magnaura, in order to secure a majority pledged to the cause of Tarasios. The fact that such an assembly was considered necessary is a strong proof that the strength of the rival parties was very nearly balanced, and that this manifestation of public opinion was required in order to relieve the empress from personal responsibility. Irene proposed to the assembly that Tarasios should be elected, Patriarch, and the proposal was received with general acclamation. Tarasios, however, refused the dignity, declaring that he would not accept the Patriarchate unless a general council should be convoked, for restoring unity to the church. The convocation of a council was adopted, and the nomination of Tarasios ratified. Though great care had been taken to fill this assembly with image-worshippers, nevertheless several dissentient voices made themselves heard, protesting against the proceedings as an attack on the existing legislation of the empire.

The Iconoclasts were still strong in the capital, and the opposition of the soldiery was excited by the determination of Tarasios to re-establish image-worship. They openly declared that they would not allow a council of the church to be held, nor permit the ecclesiastics of their party to be unjustly treated by the court. More than one tumult warned the empress that no council could be held at Constantinople. It was found necessary to disperse the Iconoclastic soldiery in distant provinces, and form new cohorts of guards devoted to the court, before any steps could be publicly taken to change the laws of the church. The experience of Tarasios as a minister of state was more useful to Irene during the first period of his patriarchate than his theological learning. It required nearly three years to smooth the way for the meeting of the council, which was at length held at Nicaea, in September, 787. Three hundred and sixty-seven members attended, of whom, however, not a few were abbots and monks, who assumed the title of confessors from having been ejected from their monasteries by the decrees of the Iconoclast sovereigns. Some of the persons present deserve to be particularly mentioned, for they have individually conferred greater benefits on mankind by their learned labours, than they rendered to Christianity by their zealous advocacy of image-worship in this council. The secretary of the two commissioners who represented the imperial authority was Nicephorus the historian, subsequently Patriarch of Constantinople. His sketch of the history of the empire, from the year 602 to 770, is a valuable work, and indicates that he was a man of judgment, whenever his perceptions were not obscured by theological and ecclesiastical prejudices. Two other eminent Byzantine writers were also present. George, called Syncellus, from the office he held, under the Patriarch Tarasios. He has left us a chronological work, which has preserved the knowledge of many important facts recorded by no other ancient authority. Theophanes, the friend and companion of the Syncellus, has continued this work; and his chronography of Roman and Byzantine history, with all its faults, forms the best picture of the condition of the empire that we possess for a long period. Theophanes enjoyed the honour of becoming, at a later day, a confessor in the cause of image-worship; he was exiled from a monastery which he had founded, and died in the island of Samothrace, AD 817.

The second council of Nicaea had no better title than the Iconoclast council of Constantinople to be regarded as a general council of the church. The Pope Hadrian, indeed, sent deputies from the Latin Church; but the churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, whose patriarchs were groaning under the government of the caliphs, did not dare to communicate with foreign authorities. An attempt was nevertheless made to deceive the world into a belief that they were represented, by allowing two monks from Palestine to present themselves as the syncelli of these patriarchs, without scrutinizing the validity of their credentials. Pope Hadrian, though he sent deputies, wrote at the same time to Tarasios, making several demands tending to establish the ecclesiastical supremacy of the papal See, and complaining in strong terms that the Patriarch of Constantinople had no right to assume the title of ecumenic. The hope of recovering the estates of the patrimony of St. Peter in the Byzantine provinces, which had been sequestrated by Leo III, and of re-establishing the supremacy of the See of Rome made Hadrian overlook much that was offensive to papal pride.

The second council of Nicaea authorized the worship of images as an orthodox practice. Forged passages, pretending to be extracts from the earlier fathers, and genuine from the more modern, were quoted in favour of the practice. Simony was already a prevailing evil in the Greek Church. Many of the bishops had purchased their sees, and most of these naturally preferred doing violence to their opinions rather than lose their revenues. From this cause, unanimity was easily obtained by court influence. The council decided, that not only was the cross an object of reverence, but also that the images of Christ, and the pictures of the Virgin Mary—of angels, and holy men, whether painted in colours, or worked in embroidery in sacred ornaments, or formed in mosaic in the walls of churches—were all lawful objects of worship. At the same time, in order to guard against the accusation of idolatry, it was declared that the worship of an image, which is merely a sign of reverence, must not be confounded with the adoration due only to God. The council of Constantinople held in 754 was declared heretical, and all who maintained its doctrines, and condemned the use of images, were anathematized. The patriarchs Anastasius, Constantinos, and Niketas were especially doomed to eternal condemnation.

The Pope adopted the decrees of this council, but he refused to confirm them officially, because the empress delayed restoring the estates of St. Peter’s patrimony. In the countries of Western Europe which had formed parts of the Western Empire, the superstitions of the image-worshippers were viewed with as much dissatisfaction as the fanaticism of the Iconoclasts; and the council of Nicaea was as much condemned as that of Constantinople by a large body of enlightened ecclesiastics. The public mind in the West was almost as much divided as in the East; and if a general council of the Latin Church had been assembled, its unbiassed decisions would probably have been at variance with those supported by the Pope and the council of Nicaea.

Charlemagne published a refutation of the doctrines of this council on the subject of image-worship. His work, called the Caroline Books, consists of four parts, and was certainly composed under his immediate personal superintendence, though he was doubtless incapable of writing it himself. At all events, it was published as his composition. This work condemns the superstitious bigotry of the Greek image-worshippers in a decided manner, while at the same time it only blames the misguided zeal of the Iconoclasts. Altogether it is a very remarkable production, and gives a more correct idea of the extent to which Roman civilization still survived, in Western society, and counterbalanced ecclesiastical influence, than any other contemporary document. In 794 Charlemagne assembled a council of three hundred bishops at Frankfort; and, in the presence of the papal legates, this council maintained that pictures ought to be placed in churches, but that they should not be worshipped, but only regarded with respect, as recalling more vividly to the mind the subjects represented. The similarity existing at this time in the opinions of enlightened men throughout the whole Christian world must be noted as a proof that general communications and commercial intercourse still pervaded society with common sentiments. The dark night of medieval ignorance and local prejudices had not yet settled on the West; nor had feudal anarchy confined the ideas and wants of society to the narrow sphere of provincial interests. The aspect of public opinion alarmed Pope Hadrian, whose interests required that the relations of the West and East should not become friendly. His position, however, rendered him more suspicious of Constantine and Irene, in spite of their orthodoxy, than of Charlemagne, with all his heterodox ideas. The Frank monarch, though he differed in ecclesiastical opinions, was sure to be a political protector. The Pope consequently laboured to foment the jealousy that reigned between the Frank and Byzantine governments concerning Italy, where the commercial relations of the Greeks still counterbalanced the military influence of the Franks. When writing to Charlemagne, he accused the Greeks and their Italian partisans of every crime likely to arouse the hostility of the Franks. They were reproached, and not unjustly, with carrying on an extensive trade in slaves, who were purchased in Western Europe, and sold, to the Saracens. The Pope knew well that this commerce was carried on in all the trading cities of the West, both by Greeks and Latins; for slaves then constituted the principal article of European export to Africa, Syria, and Egypt, in payment of the produce of the East, which was brought from those countries. The Pope seized and burned some Greek vessels at Centumcellae, (Civita-Vecchia), because the crews were accused of kidnapping the people of the neighbourhood. The violent expressions of Hadrian, in speaking of the Greeks, could not fail to produce a great effect in Western Europe, where the letters of the Popes formed the literary productions most generally read and studied by all ranks. His calumnies must have sunk deep into the public mind, and tended to impress on Western nations that aversion to the Greeks, which was subsequently increased by mercantile jealousy and religious strife.

The extinction of the last traces of the supremacy of the Eastern Empire at Rome was the most gratifying result of their machinations to the Popes. On Christmas-day, A.D. 800, Charlemagne revived the existence of the Western Empire, and received the imperial crown from Pope Leo III in the church of St. Peter’s. Hitherto the Frank monarch had acknowledged a titular supremacy in the Eastern Empire, and had borne the title of Patrician of the Roman Empire, as a mark of dignity conferred on him by the emperors of Constantinople; but he now raised himself to an equality with the emperors of the East, by assuming the title of Emperor of the West. The assumption of the title of emperor of the Romans was not an act of idle vanity. Roman usages, Roman prejudices, and Roman law still exercised a powerful influence over the minds of the most numerous body of Charlemagne’s subjects; and by all the clergy and lawyers throughout his dominions the rights and prerogatives of the Roman emperors of the West were held to be legally vested in his person by the fact of his election, such as it was, and his coronation by the Pope. The political allegiance of the Pope to the emperor, which was then undisputed, became thus transferred from the emperor of the East to the emperor of the West as a matter of course; while the papal rights of administration over the former exarchate of Ravenna, the Pentapolis, and the dukedom of Rome, acquired, under the protection of the Franks, the character of a decided sovereignty. Many towns of Italy at this time acquired a degree of municipal independence which made them almost independent republics. The influence of Roman law in binding society together, the military weakness of the papal power, and the rapid decline of the central authority in the empire of the Franks, enabled these towns to perpetuate their peculiar constitutions and independent jurisdictions down to the French Revolution.

A female regency in an absolute government must always render the conduct of public affairs liable to be directed by court intrigues. When Irene wished to gain Charlemagne as an ally, in order to deprive the Iconoclasts of any hope of foreign assistance, she had negotiated a treaty of marriage between her son and Rotrud, the eldest daughter of the Frank monarch, AD 781. But when the question of image-worship was settled, she began to fear that this alliance might become the means of excluding her from power, and she then broke off the treaty, and compelled her son to marry a Paphlagonian lady of the court named Maria, whom the young emperor soon regarded with aversion. Constantine, however, submitted quietly to his mother's domination until his twentieth year. He then began to display dissatisfaction at the state of tutelage in which he was held, and at his complete seclusion from public business. A plan was formed by many leading men in the administration to place him at the head of affairs, but it was discovered before it was ripe for execution. Irene on this occasion displayed unseemly violence, in her eagerness to retain a power she ought immediately to have resigned. The conspirators were seized, scourged, and banished. When her son was conducted into her presence, she struck him, and overwhelmed him with reproaches and insults. The young emperor was then confined so strictly in the palace that all communication with his friends was cut off.

This unprincipled conduct of the regent-mother became the object of general reprobation. The troops of the Armeniac theme refused to obey her orders, and marched to the capital to deliver Constantine. On the way they were joined by other legions, and Irene found herself compelled to release her son, who immediately hastened to the advancing army. A total revolution was effected at court. The ministers and creatures of Irene were removed from office, and some who had displayed particular animosity against Constantine were scourged and beheaded. Constantine ruled the empire for about six years, (790-797). But his education had been neglected, in a disgraceful manner, and his mind was perhaps naturally fickle. Though he displayed the courage of his family at the head of his army, his incapacity for business, and his inconstancy in his friendships, soon lost him the support of his most devoted partisans. He lost his popularity by putting out the eyes of his uncle, Nicephorus, and cutting out the tongues of his four uncles, who were accused of having taken part in the plots of their brother. He alienated the attachment of the Armenian troops by putting out the eyes of their general, Alexis Mouselen, who had been the means of delivering him from confinement. The folly of this last act was even greater than the ingratitude, for it was done to gratify the revengeful feelings of his mother. These acts of folly, cruelty, and ingratitude destroyed his influence, and induced his sincerest friends to make their peace with Irene, whom it was evident her son would ultimately allow to rule the empire.

The unhappy marriage into which Constantine had been forced by his mother, she at last converted into the cause of his ruin. The emperor fell in love with Theodota, one of his mother’s maids of honour, and determined to divorce Maria in order to marry her. Irene, whose ambition induced her to stoop to the basest intrigues, flattered him in this project, as it seemed likely to increase her influence and ruin his reputation. The Empress Maria was induced to retire into a monastery, and the emperor expected to be able to celebrate his marriage with Theodota without difficulty. But the usage of the Byzantine Empire required that the Patriarch should pronounce the sentence of divorce, and this Tarasios, who was a devoted partisan and active political agent of Irene, long refused to do. The imprudence of Constantine, and the insidious advice of Irene, soon involved the emperor in a dispute with the whole body of monks, who had an overwhelming influence in society. The Patriarch at last yielded to the influence of Irene, so far as to allow his catechist to give the veil to the Empress Maria, whom he pronounced divorced, and then to permit the celebration of the emperors marriage with Theodota by Joseph, one of the principal clergy of the patriarchal chapter, and abbot of a monastery in the capital.

In the Byzantine Empire, at this time, constant religious discussions and pretensions to superior sanctity, had introduced a profound religious spirit into the highest ranks of society. Numbers of the wealthiest nobles founded monasteries, into which they retired. The manners, the extensive charity, and the pure morality of these abbots, secured them the love and admiration of the people, and tended to disseminate a higher standard of morality than had previously prevailed in Constantinople. This fact must not be overlooked in estimating the various causes which led to the regeneration of the Eastern Empire under the Iconoclast emperors. Security of life and property, and all the foundations of national prosperity, are more closely connected with moral purity than the ruling classes are inclined to allow. It may not be quite useless, as an illustration of the state of the Byzantine empire, to remind the reader of the violence, injustice, and debauchery which prevailed at the courts of the west of Europe, including that of Charlemagne. While the Pope winked at the disorders in the palace of Charlemagne, the monks of the East prepared the public mind for the dethronement of Constantine, because he obtained an illegal divorce, and formed a second marriage. The corruption of morals and the irregularities prevalent in the monasteries of the West contrast strongly with the condition of the Eastern monks.

The habit of building monasteries as a place of retreat, from motives of piety, was also adopted by some as a mode of securing a portion of their wealth from confiscation, in case of their condemnation for political crimes, peculiar privileges being reserved in the monasteries so founded for members of the founder’s family. At this time Plato, abbot of the monastery of Sakkoudion, on Mount Olympus in Bythinia, and his nephew Theodore, who was a relation of the new empress Theodota, were the leaders of a powerful party of monks possessing great influence in the church. Theodore (who is known by the name Studita, from having been afterwards appointed abbot of the celebrated monastery of Studion) had founded a monastery on his own property, in which he assembled his father, two brothers, and a young sister, and, emancipating all his household and agricultural slaves, established them as lay brethren on the farms. Most of the abbots round Constantinople were men of family and wealth, as well as learning and piety; but they repaid the sincere respect with which they were regarded by the people, by participating in popular prejudices, so that we cannot be surprised to find them constantly acting the part of demagogues. Plato separated himself from all spiritual communion with the Patriarch Tarasios, whom he declared to have violated the principles of Christianity in permitting the adulterous marriage of the emperor. His views were warmly supported by his nephew Theodore, and many monks began openly to preach both against the Patriarch and the emperor. Irene now saw that the movement was taking a turn favourable to her ambition. She encouraged the monks, and prepared Tarasios for quitting the party of his sovereign. Plato and Theodore were dangerous enemies, from their great reputation and extensive political and ecclesiastical connections, and into a personal contest with these men Constantine rashly plunged.

Plato was arrested at his monastery, and placed in confinement under the wardship of the abbot Joseph, who had celebrated the imperial marriage. Theodore was banished to Thessalonica, whither he was conveyed by a detachment of police soldiers. He has left us an account of his journey, which proves that the orders of the emperor were not carried into execution with undue severity. Theodore and his attendant monks were seized by the imperial officers at a distance from the monastery, and compelled to commence their journey on the first horses their escort could, procure, instead of being permitted to send for their ambling mules. They were hurried forward for three days, resting during the night at Kathara in Liviana, Lefka, and Phyraion. At the last place they encountered a melancholy array of monks, driven from the great monastery of Sakkoudion after the arrest of Plato; but with these fellow-sufferers, though ranged along the road, Theodore was not allowed to communicate, except by bestowing on them his blessing as he rode past. He was then carried to Paula, from whence he wrote to Plato that he had seen his sister, with the venerable Sabas, abbot of the monastery of Studion. They had visited him secretly, but had been allowed by the guards to pass the evening in his society. Next night they reached Loupadion, where the exiles were kindly treated by their host. At Tilin they were joined by two abbots, Zacharias and Pionios, but they were not allowed to travel in company. The journey was continued by Alberiza, Anagegrammenos, Perperina, Parium, and Horkos, to Lampsacus. On the road, the bishops expressed the greatest sympathy and eagerness to serve them; but the bigoted Theodore declared that his conscience would not permit him to hold any communication with those who were so unchristian as to continue in communion with Tarasios and the emperor.

From Lampsacus the journey was prosecuted by sea. A pious governor received them at Abydos with great kindness, and they rested there eight days. At Eleaus there was again a detention of seven days, and from thence they sailed to Lemnos, where the bishop treated Theodore with so much attention that his bigotry was laid asleep. The passage from Lemnos to Thessalonica was not without danger from the piratical boats of the Slavonians who dwelt on the coast of Thrace, and exercised the trades of robbers and pirates as well as herdsmen and shepherds. A favourable wind carried the exiles without accident to Kanastron, from whence they touched at Pallene before entering the harbour of Thessalonica, which they reached on the 25th March, 797. Here they were received by a guard, and conducted through the city to the residence of the governor. The people assembled in crowds to view the pious opponents of their emperor; while the governor received them with marks of personal respect, which showed him more anxious to conciliate the powerful monks than to uphold the dignity of the weak emperor. He conducted. Theodore to the cathedral, that he might return thanks to God publicly for his safe arrival; he then waited on him to the palace of the archbishop, where he was treated to a bath, and entertained most hospitably. The exiles were, however, according to the tenor of the imperial orders, placed in separate places of confinement; and even Theodore and his brother were not permitted to dwell together. The day of their triumph was not far distant, and their banishment does not appear to have subjected them to much inconvenience. They were martyrs at a small cost.

As soon as Irene thought that her son had rendered himself unpopular throughout the empire, she formed her plot for dethroning him. The support of the principal officers in the palace was secured by liberal promises of wealth and advancement: a band of conspirators was then appointed to seize Constantine, but a timely warning enabled him to escape to Triton on the Propontis. He might easily have recovered possession of the capital, had he not wasted two months in idleness and folly. Abandoned at last by every friend, he was seized by his mother’s emissaries and dragged to Constantinople. After being detained some time a prisoner in the porphyry apartment in which he was born, his eyes were put out on the 19th August, 797. Constantine had given his cruel mother public marks of that affection which he appears really to have felt for her, and to which he had sacrificed his best friends. He had erected a statue of bronze to her honour, which long adorned the hippodrome of Constantinople.

Irene was now publicly proclaimed sovereign of the empire. She had for some time been allowed by her careless son to direct the whole administration, and it was his confidence in her maternal affection which enabled her to work his ruin. She of course immediately released all the ecclesiastical opponents of her son from confinement, and restored them to their honours and offices. The Patriarch Tarasios was ordered to make his peace with the monks by excommunicating his creature, the abbot Joseph; and the closest alliance was formed between him and his former opponents, Plato and Theodore, the latter of whom was shortly after rewarded for his sufferings by being elevated to the dignity of abbot of the great monastery of Studion,

The Empress Irene reigned five years, during which her peace was disturbed by the political intrigues of her ministers. Her life offers a more interesting subject for biography than for history, for it is more striking by its personal details, than important in its political effects. But the records of private life in the age in which she lived, and of the state of society at Athens, among which she was educated, are so few, that it would require to be written by a novelist, who could combine the strange vicissitudes of her fortunes with a true portraiture of human feelings, collared with a train of thought, and enriched with facts gleaned from contemporary lives and letters of Greek saints and monks. Born in a private in a provincial, though a wealthy and populous city, it must have required a rare combination of personal beauty, native grace, and mental superiority, to fill the rank of empress of the Romans, to which she was suddenly raised, at the court of a haughty sovereign like her father-in-law Constantine V, not only without embarrassment, but even with universal praise. Again, when vested with the regency, as widow of an iconoclast emperor, it required no trifling talent, firmness of purpose, and conciliation of manner, to overthrow an ecclesiastical party which had ruled the church for more than half a century. On the other hand, the deliberate way in which she undermined the authority of her son, whose character she had corrupted by a bad education, and the callousness with which she gained his confidence in order to deprive him of his throne, and send him to pass his life as a blind monk in a secluded cell, proves that the beautiful empress, whose memory was cherished as an orthodox saint, was endowed with the thoughts and feelings of a demon. Strange to say, when the object of Irene's crimes was reached, she soon felt all the satiety of gratified ambition. She no longer took the interest she had previously taken in conducting the public business of the empire, and abandoned the exercise of her power to seven eunuchs, whom she selected to perform the duties of ministers of state. She forgot that her own elevation to the throne offered a tempting premium to successful treason. Nicephorus, the grand treasurer, cajoled her favourite eunuchs to join a plot, by which she was dethroned, and exiled to a monastery she had founded in Prince’s Island; but she was soon after removed to Lesbos, where she died in a few months, almost forgotten. Her fate after her death was as singular as during her life. The unnatural mother was canonized by the Greeks as an orthodox saint, and at her native Athens several churches are still pointed out which she is said to have founded, though not on any certain authority.

Under the government of Constantine VI and Irene, the imperial policy, both in the civil administration and external relations, followed the course traced out by Leo the Isaurian. To reduce all the Slavonian colonists who had formed settlements within the bounds of the empire to complete submission was the first object of Irene’s regency. The extension of these settlements, after the great plague in 747, began to alarm the government. Extensive districts in Thrace, Macedonia, and the Peloponnesus, had assumed the form of independent communities, and hardly acknowledged allegiance to the central administration at Constantinople. Irene naturally took more than ordinary interest in the state of Greece. She kept up the closest communications with her family at Athens, and shared the desire of every Greek to repress the presumption of the Slavonians and restore the ascendancy of the Greek population in the rural districts. In the year 783 she sent Stavrakios at the head of a well-appointed army to Thessalonica, to reduce the Slavonian tribes in Macedonia to direct dependence, and enforce the regular payment of tribute. From Thessalonica, Stavrakios marched through Macedonia and Greece to the Peloponnesus, punishing the Slavonians for the disorders they had committed, and carrying off a number of their able-bodied men to serve as soldiers or to be sold as slaves. In the following year Irene led the young Emperor Constantine to visit the Slavonian settlements in the vicinity of Thessalonica, which had been reduced to absolute submission. Berrhoea, like several Greek cities, had fallen into ruins; it was now rebuilt, and received the name of Irenopolis. Strong garrisons were placed in Philippopolis and Auchialos, to cut off all communication between the Slavonians in the empire, and their countrymen under the Bulgarian government. The Slavonians in Thrace and Macedonia, though unable to maintain their provincial independence, still took advantage of their position, when removed from the eye of the local administration, to form bands of robbers and pirates, which rendered the communications with Constantinople and Thessalonica at times insecure both by land and sea.

After Irene had dethroned her son, the Slavonian population gave proofs of dangerous activity. A conspiracy was formed to place one of the sons of Constantine V on the throne. Irene had banished her brothers-in-law to Athens, where they were sure of being carefully watched by her relations, who were strongly interested in supporting her cause. The project of the partisans of the exiled princes to seize Constantinople was discovered, and it was found that the chief reliance of the Isaurian party in Greece was placed in the assistance they expected to derive from the Slavonian population. The chief of Velzetia was to have carried off the sons of Constantine V from Athens, when the plan was discovered and frustrated by the vigilance of Irene's friends. The four unfortunate princes, who had already lost their tongues, were now deprived of their sight, and exiled with their brother Nicephorus to Panormus, where they were again made tools of a conspiracy in the reign of Michael I.

The war with the Saracens was carried on with varied success during the reigns of Leo IV, Constantine VI, and Irene. The military talents of Leo III and Constantine V had formed an army that resisted the forces of the caliphs under the powerful government of Mansur; and even after the veterans had been disbanded by Irene, the celebrated Haroun Al Rashid was unable to make any permanent conquests, though the empire was engaged in war with the Saracens, the Bulgarians, and the troops of Charlemagne at the same time.

In the year 782, Haroun was sent by his father, the Caliph Mahdy, to invade the empire, at the head of one hundred thousand men, attended by Rabia and Jahja the Barmecid. The object of the Mohammedan prince was, however, rather directed to pillaging the country and carrying off prisoners to supply the slave-markets of his father's dominions, than to effect permanent conquests. The absence of a considerable part of the Byzantine army, which was engaged in Sicily suppressing the rebellion of Helpidios, enabled Haroun to march through all Asia Minor to the shores of the Bosphorus, and from the hill above Sutari to gaze on Constantinople, which must then have presented a more imposing aspect than Bagdad. Irene was compelled to purchase peace, or rather to conclude a truce for three years, by paying an annual tribute of seventy thousand pieces of gold, and stipulating to allow the Saracen army to retire unmolested with all its plunder; for Haroun and his generals found that their advance had involved them in many difficulties, of which an active enemy might have taken advantage. Haroun Al Rashid is said to have commanded in person against the Byzantine Empire in eight campaigns. Experience taught him to respect the valour and discipline of the Christian armies, whenever able officers enjoyed the confidence of the court of Constantinople; and when he ascended the throne, he deemed it necessary to form a permanent army along the Mesopotamian frontier, to strengthen the fortifications of the towns with additional works, and add to their means of defence by planting in them new colonies of Mohammedan inhabitants. During the time Constantine VI ruled the empire, he appeared several times at the head of the Byzantine armies, and his fickle character did not prevent his displaying firmness in the field. His popularity with the soldiers was viewed with jealousy by his mother, who laboured to retard his movements, and prevent him from obtaining any decided success. The Saracens acknowledged that the Greeks were their superiors in naval affairs; but in the year 792 they defeated the Byzantine fleet in the gulf of Attalia with great loss. The admiral, Theophilos, was taken prisoner, and solicited by the caliph to abjure Christianity and enter his service. The admiral refused to forsake his religion or serve against his country, and Haroun Al Rashid was mean enough to order him to be put to death.

When the Saracens heard that Constantine had been dethroned, and the empire was again ruled by a woman whom they had already compelled to pay tribute, they again plundered Asia Minor up to the walls of Ephesus. Irene, whose ministers were occupied with court intrigues, took no measures to resist the enemy, and was once more obliged to pay tribute to the caliph. The annual incursions of the Saracens into the Christian territory were made in great part for the purpose of carrying away slaves; and great numbers of Christians were sold throughout the caliph’s dominions into hopeless slavery. Haroun, therefore, took the field in his wars with the Byzantine Empire more as a slave-merchant than a conqueror. But this very circumstance, which made war a commercial speculation, introduced humanity into the hostile operations of the Christians and Mohammedans: the lower classes were spared, as they were immediately sold for the price they would bring in the first slave-market; while prisoners of the better class were retained, in order to draw from them a higher ransom than their value as slaves, or to exchange them for men of equal rank who had fallen into the hands of the enemy. This circumstance had at last brought about a regular exchange of prisoners as early as the reign of Constantine V, A.D. 769. In the year 797, a new clause was inserted in a treaty for the exchange of prisoners, binding the contracting parties to release all supernumerary captives, on the payment of a fixed sum for each individual. This arrangement enabled the Christians, who were generally the greatest sufferers, to save their friends from death or perpetual slavery, but it added to the inducements of the Saracens to invade the empire. The Byzantine, or, as they were still called, the Roman armies, were placed at a disadvantage in this species of warfare. Their discipline was adapted to defensive military operations, or to meet the enemy on the field of battle, but not to act with rapidity in plundering and carrying off slaves; while the state of society in Christian countries rendered the demand for slaves less constant than in countries where polygamy prevailed, and women were excluded from many of the duties of domestic service.

The war on the Bulgarian frontier was carried on simultaneously with that against the Mohammedans. In the year 788, a Bulgarian army surprised the general of Thrace, who had encamped carelessly on the banks of the Strymon, and destroyed him, with the greater part of the troops. In 791 Constantine VI took the field in person against Cardam, king of the Bulgarians, but the campaign was without any result: in the following year, however, the Emperor was defeated in a pitched battle, in which several of the ablest generals of the Roman armies were slain. Yet, in 796, Constantine again led his troops against the Bulgarians: though victorious, he obtained no success sufficient to compensate his former defeat. The effects of the military organization of the frontier by Constantine V are visible in the superiority which the Byzantine armies assumed, even after the loss of a battle, and the confidence with which they carried the war into the Bulgarian territory.

The Byzantine Empire was at this period the country in which there reigned a higher degree of order, and more justice, than in any other. This is shown by the extensive emigration of Armenian Christians which took place in the year 787. The Caliph Haroun Al Rashid, whose reputation among the Mohammedans has arisen rather from his orthodoxy than his virtues, persecuted his Christian subjects with great cruelty, and at last his oppression induced twelve thousand Armenians to quit their native country, and settle in the Byzantine Empire. Some years later, in the reign of Michael III the drunkard, orthodoxy became the great feature in the Byzantine administration; and, unfortunately, Christian orthodoxy strongly resembled Mohammedanism in the spirit of persecution. The Paulicians were then persecuted by the emperors, as the Armenians had previously been by the caliphs, and fled for toleration to the Mohammedans.

 

 

CHAPTER II

THE REIGNS OF NICEPHORUS I, MICHAEL I, AND LEO V THE ARMENIAN.