The reigns of Leo III (the Isaurian) and Constantine V

Almost immediately upon Leo’s accession, the empire’s fortunes improved markedly. With the aid of the Bulgars, he turned back the Muslim assault in 718 and, in the intervals of warfare during the next 20 years, addressed himself to the task of reorganizing and consolidating the themes in Asia Minor. Thanks to the assistance of the traditional allies, the Khazars, Leo’s reign concluded with a major victory, won again at the expense of the Arabs, at Acroenos (740). His successor, Constantine, had first to fight his way to the throne, suppressing a revolt of the Opsikion and Armeniakon themes launched by his brother-in-law Artavasdos. During the next few years, internal disorder in the Muslim world played into Constantine’s hands as the ʿAbbāsid house fought to seize the caliphate from the Umayyads. With his enemy thus weakened, Constantine won noteworthy victories in northern Syria, transferring the prisoners he had captured there to Thrace in preparation for the wars against the Bulgars that were to occupy him from 756 to 775. In no fewer than nine campaigns, he undermined Bulgar strength so thoroughly that the northern enemy seemed permanently weakened, if not crushed. Even the venom used by the iconodule chroniclers of Constantine’s reign cannot disguise the enormous popularity his victories won him.

In later centuries, the folk of Constantinople would stand by his tomb, seeking his aid against whatever enemy imperiled the city’s defenses.

Constantine’s weak successors

His successors all but let slip the gains won by the great iconoclast. Constantine’s son Leo IV died prematurely in 780, leaving to succeed him his 10-year-old son, Constantine VI, under the regency of the empress Irene. Not much can be said for Constantine, and Irene’s policies as regent and (after the deposition and blinding of her son at her orders) as sole ruler from 797 to 802 were all but disastrous. Her iconodule policies alienated many among the themal troops, who were still loyal to the memory of the great warrior emperor, Constantine V. In an effort to maintain her popularity among the monkish defenders of the icons and with the population of Constantinople, she rebated taxes to which those groups were subject, and she reduced the customs duties levied outside the port of Constantinople, at Abydos and Hieros. The consequent loss to the treasury weighed all the more severely, since victories won by the Arabs in Asia Minor (781) and by the Bulgars (792) led both peoples to demand and receive tribute as the price of peace. A revolt of the higher palace officials led to Irene’s deposition in 802, and the so-called Isaurian dynasty of Leo III ended with her death, in exile, on the isle of Lesbos.

In the face of the Bulgar menace, none of the following three emperors succeeded in founding a dynasty. Nicephorus I (ruled 802–811), the able finance minister who succeeded Irene, reimposed the taxes that the empress had remitted and instituted other reforms that provide some insight into the financial administration of the empire during the early 9th century. In the tradition of Constantine V, Nicephorus strengthened the fortifications of Thrace by settling, in that theme, colonists from Asia Minor.

Taking arms himself, he led his troops against the new and vigorous Bulgar khan, Krum, only to meet defeat and death at the latter’s hands. His successor, Michael I Rhangabe (811–813), fared little better; internal dissensions broke up his army as it faced Krum near Adrianople, and the resulting defeat cost Michael his throne. In only one respect does he occupy an important place in the annals of the Byzantine Empire. Michael was the first emperor to bear a family name, and his use of the patronymic, Rhangabe, bears witness to the emergence of the great families, whose accumulation of landed properties would soon threaten the integrity of those smallholders upon whom the empire depended for its taxes and its military service. The name Rhangabe seems to be a Hellenized form of a Slav original (rokavu), and, if so, Michael’s ethnic origin and that of his successor, Leo V the Armenian (ruled 813–820), provide evidence enough of the degree to which Byzantium in the 9th century had become not only a melting-pot society but, further, a society in which even the highest office lay open to the man with the wits and stamina to seize it. Leo fell victim to assassination, but before his death events beyond his control had improved the empire’s situation. Krum died suddenly in 814 as he was preparing an attack upon Constantinople, and his son, Omortag, arranged a peace with the Byzantine Empire in order to protect the western frontiers of his Bulgar empire against the pressures exerted by Frankish expansion under Charlemagne and his successors. Since the death of the fifth caliph, Hārūn ar-Rashīd, had resulted in civil war in the Muslim world, hostilities from that quarter ceased. Leo used the breathing space to reconstruct those Thracian cities that the Bulgars had earlier destroyed. His work indicates the degree of gradual Byzantine penetration into the coastal fringes of the Balkan Peninsula, as does the number of themes organized in that same region during the early 9th century: those of Macedonia, Thessalonica, Dyrrhachium, Dalmatia, and the Strymon.

The new emperor, Michael II, was indeed able to establish a dynasty—the Amorian, or Phrygian—his son Theophilus (829–842) and his grandson Michael III (842–867) each occupying the throne in turn, but none would have forecast so happy a future during Michael II’s first years. Thomas the Slavonian, Michael’s former comrade in arms, gave himself out to be the unfortunate Constantine VI and secured his coronation at the hands of the Patriarch of Antioch. That was accomplished with the willing permission of the Muslim caliph under whose jurisdiction Antioch lay. Thomas thereupon marched to Constantinople at the head of a motley force of Caucasian peoples whose sole bonds were to be found in their devotion to iconodule doctrine and their hatred of Michael’s Iconoclasm. Assisted by Omortag and relying upon the defenses of Constantinople, Michael defeated his enemy, but the episode suggests the tensions beneath the surface of Byzantine society: the social malaise, the ethnic hostility, and the persisting discord created by Iconoclasm. All those may explain the weakness displayed throughout Theophilus’s reign, when a Muslim army defeated the emperor himself (838) as a prelude to the capture of the fortress of Amorium in Asia Minor. It may also explain the concurrent decline of Byzantine strength in the Mediterranean, manifest in the capture of Crete by the Arabs (826 or 827) and in the initiation of attacks upon Sicily that secured the island for the world of Islam. Iconoclasm certainly played its part in the further alienation of East from West, and a closer examination of its doctrines will suggest why this may have been.

The Iconoclastic controversy

Iconoclasts and iconodules agreed on one fundamental point: a Christian people could not prosper unless it assumed the right attitude toward the holy images, or icons. They disagreed, of course, on what that attitude should be. Each could discover supporting arguments in the writings of the early church, and it is essential to remember that the debate over images is as old as Christian art. The fundamentals of Iconoclasm were by no means an 8th-century discovery. The ablest defender of the iconodule position was, however, the 8th-century theologian St. John of Damascus. Drawing upon Neoplatonic doctrine, John suggested that the image was but a symbol, and the creation of the icon was justified, since, by virtue of the Incarnation, God had himself become human.

The iconoclasts responded by pointing to the express wording of the Second Commandment. The condemnation therein of idolatry seems to have weighed heavily with Leo III, who may have been influenced by Islam, a religion that strictly prohibited the use of religious images. The latter point is debatable, as is the contention that Iconoclasm was particularly an expression of sentiment to be found in the eastern themes of the empire. Syrian miaphysitism may also have influenced the ideas of Constantine V and, through him, the course of debate during the last half of the 8th century. The Syrian churches gave icons less prominence than did other non-Chalcedonian churches, in part because of the influence of and pressure from Islam but also because of different interpretations of the biblical warrant for making images of Jesus Christ. Still another consideration favouring Iconoclasm may be found in the intimate connection of iconoclastic doctrine with the emperor’s conception of his role as God’s vicegerent on earth. During the late 6th and 7th centuries, iconodule emperors had viewed themselves in a pietistic fashion, emphasizing their devotion and subservience to God. Constantine V, on the other hand, pridefully replaced the icons with imperial portraits and with representations of his own victories. Viewed in that light, Iconoclasm signaled a rebirth of imperial confidence; so deservedly great was Constantine’s reputation, and so dismal were the accomplishments of his successors, that a Leo V, for one, could easily believe that God favoured the iconoclastic battalions.

Under Constantine V, the struggle against the icons became a struggle against their chief defenders, the monastic community. The immediate destruction wrought by Constantine and his zealous subordinates is, however, of less moment than the lasting effect of the persecution on the Orthodox clergy. Briefly put, the church became an institution rent by factions, wherein popular discontent found a means of expression. Intransigent iconodules looked for their leaders among the monks of Studion, the monastery founded by Studius, and they found one in the person of the monastery’s abbot, St. Theodore Studites (759–826). In the patriarch Ignatius (847–858; 867–877) they discovered a spokesman after their own hearts: one drawn from the monastic ranks and contemptuous of all the allurements that the world of secular learning seemed to offer. More significant than the men to be found on the other extreme, iconoclast patriarchs, including Anastasius and John Grammaticus, were the representatives of the moderate party, composed of the patriarchs Tarasius, Nicephorus, Methodius, and Photius. Although iconodule in sympathy, the group enjoyed little rapport with the monastic zealots. Unlike the average monk, they were often educated laymen, trained in the imperial service and ready to compromise with imperial authority.

Not only was Iconoclasm a major episode in the history of the Byzantine, or Orthodox, Church, but it also permanently affected relations between the empire and Roman Catholic Europe. The Lombard advance, it may be remembered, had restricted Byzantine authority in Italy to the exarchate of Ravenna, and to that quarter the popes of the 7th century, themselves ordinarily of Greek or Syrian origin, turned for protection against the common enemy. During the 8th century, two issues alienated Rome from Constantinople: Iconoclasm and quarrels stemming from the question of who should enjoy ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Illyricum and over Calabria in southern Italy. Pope Gregory II refused to accept the iconoclastic doctrines of Leo III, and his successor, Gregory III, had to openly condemn them at a council. Once Ravenna fell to the Lombards, and the exarchate ceased to exist in 751, the papacy had to seek a new protector. That was found in the person of the Frankish leader Pippin III, who sought some form of sanction to legitimize his seizure of the crown from the feeble hands of the last representative of the Merovingian dynasty. Thus, Pope Stephen II (or III) anointed Pippin as king of the Franks in 754, and the latter entered Italy to take arms against the Lombard king. Even the restoration of icon veneration in 787 failed to bridge the differences between Orthodox Byzantium and Catholic Europe, for the advisers of Pippin’s son and successor, Charlemagne, condemned the iconodule position as heartily as an earlier generation had rejected the iconoclast decrees of Leo III. Nor could the men of Charlemagne’s time admit that a woman—the empress Irene—might properly assume the dignity of emperor of the Romans. For all those reasons, Charlemagne, king of the Franks and Lombards by right of conquest, assented to his coronation as emperor of the Romans on Christmas Day, 800, by Pope Leo III. No longer a barbarian king, Charlemagne became, by virtue of the symbolism of the age, a new Constantine. This the Byzantine chancery could not accept, for, if there were one God, one faith, and one truth, then there could be but one empire and one emperor; surely that emperor ruled in Constantinople, not in Charlemagne’s Aachen. Subsequent disputes between Rome and Constantinople seemed often to centre on matters of ecclesiastical discipline. Underlying those differences were two more powerful considerations, neither of which could be ignored. According to theory, there could be but one empire; clearly, there were two. And between Rome and Constantinople there stood two groups of peoples open to conversion: the Slavs of central Europe and the Bulgars in the Balkans. From which of the two jurisdictions would those people accept their Christian discipline? To which, in consequence, would they owe their spiritual allegiance?

The reign of Michael III (ruled 842–867) draws together those and other threads from the past. Veneration of the icons was definitely rehabilitated in 843, and it was done in so diplomatic a fashion that the restoration, in itself, produced no new rifts, although old factionalisms persisted with the appointment of a monk, Ignatius, as patriarch. The latter’s intransigent zealotry found little favour with Caesar Bardas, Michael’s uncle, who had seized power from the empress regent in 856. Two years later Ignatius was deposed and replaced by a moderate: the scholar and layman Photius. No single person better exemplified the new age, nor, indeed, did any other play a larger part in the cultural rebirth and missionary activity among the Slavs, Bulgars, and Russians, which mark the middle of the 9th century. The same aggressive and enterprising spirit is manifest in the military successes won on the Asia Minor frontier, culminating in Petronas’s victory at Poson (863) over the Muslim emir of Melitene.

In Sicily and throughout the Mediterranean, Byzantine arms were less successful, but, thanks to Photius’s diplomatic skill, the see of Constantinople maintained its position against Rome during the so-called Photian Schism. When Pope Nicholas I challenged Photius’s elevation to the patriarchate, deploring as uncanonical the six days’ speed with which he had been advanced through the successive ranks of the hierarchy, the Byzantine patriarch refused to bow. He skillfully persuaded Nicholas’s delegates to a council summoned at Constantinople to investigate the matter that he was the lawful patriarch despite the persisting claims of the rival Ignatian faction. Nicholas, alleging that his men had been bribed, excommunicated Photius; a council at Constantinople responded (867) by excommunicating Nicholas in turn. The immediate issues between the two sees were matters of ecclesiastical supremacy, the liturgy, and clerical discipline; behind those sources of division lay the question of jurisdiction over the converts in Bulgaria. And behind that question may be found centuries of growing separation between the minds and institutions of the eastern and the western Mediterranean worlds, symbolized in the roles assumed by two among the major protagonists in the Photian Schism. It was the supreme spiritual authority, the pope, who hurled anathemas from the West, but it was God’s vicegerent on earth, the emperor Michael III, who presided at the council of 867.

Michael did not long survive that moment of triumph. Later that year he was murdered by his favourite, Basil, who, on his bloody path to the throne, had earlier disposed of Caesar Bardas. As had Heraclius and Leo III before him, Basil came to found a dynasty, in this instance the Macedonian house. Unlike his predecessors, he came not as a saviour but as a peasant adventurer to seize an already sound empire whose next centuries were to be its greatest (see also Eastern Orthodoxy: History).