CHAPTER VII

LEO THE ISAURIAN TO JOANNES ZIMISCES

[717-969 A.D.]

With the accession of Leo the Isaurian to the throne of Constantinople a new era opens in the history of the Eastern Empire. The progress of society had been deliberately opposed by imperial legislation. The legislators of the empire were persuaded that each order and profession of its citizens should be fixed by hereditary succession, and an attempt had been made to divide the population into castes. But the political laws not only impoverished but depopulated the empire, and threatened the dissolution of the very elements of society. Under their operation the Western Empire became the prey of the smaller northern nations, and the Eastern Empire was on the verge of being overrun by the Saracen invaders.[a]

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.

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 civilisation survived, as within their grasp. Leo, an Isaurian,[42] and an iconoclast, consequently a foreigner and a heretic, ascended the throne of Constantine, and arrested the victorious career of the Mohammedans. He then reorganised 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.

This change 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.[43] 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 Nicæa, 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 civilisation, 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.

Thus after the accession of Leo III, a new condition of society is 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 organised 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,[g] 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 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 lie 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 odour 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, Nicephorus, 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 two centuries the imperial sceptre was retained by members of 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 seems to have been completely overlooked by some of our greatest historians, though it is all-important in the history of human civilisation.

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 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 a 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.

LEO III (LEO THE ISAURIAN), 717-741 A.D.

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. Of these, 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 Bosporus.

Amorium was the principal city of the theme Anatolicum. 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 five hundred 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 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;[44] while Leo made his triumphal entry into the capital by the Golden Gate, and was crowned by the patriarch in the church of 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, Kashgar, 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 warriors. 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 180,000 men; 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.

THE SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE (717-718 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [717-718 A.D.]]

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.[45] 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 dike. 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 base in the European shore of the Bosporus 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 Bosporus. 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 of August, 717. The caliph Suleiman[46] 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 the spring. Four hundred transports, escorted by men-of-war, sailed past Constantinople, and, entering the Bosporus, 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 of 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.

[Sidenote: [718-739 A.D.]]

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 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 Welid and Suleiman. It is unfortunate that we have no Isaurian literature.[n]

The world-historical importance of this event cannot be too highly esteemed. The Arabian onslaught had reached its climax. Byzantium, and its emperor who had thrown it off, had rescued Christianity and Western civilisation. Still to-day in the Acathistus-hymn the orthodox church thanks the three great heroes Heraclius, Constantine IV, and Leo III for the rescues from the Avara, the Persian, and the Arab dangers.[d]

The catastrophe of Moslemah’s army, and the state of the caliphate during the reigns of Omar II and Yazid II, relieved the empire from all immediate danger, and Leo was enabled to pursue his schemes for reorganising 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. Hisham seized the opportunity, and sent two powerful armies to invade the empire. Cæsarea was taken by Moslemah; while another army, under Moawyah, pushing forward, laid siege to Nicæa. Leo was well pleased to see the Saracens consume their resources in attacking a distant fortress; but though they were repulsed before Nicæa, they retreated without serious loss, carrying off 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 off 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 Abbassides, who succeeded the Omayyads in 750.

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.

REVOLT AGAINST LEO

[Sidenote: [726-729 A.D.]]

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.

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,[47] 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 Germanus and the pope Gregory II made strong representations. The despotic principles of Leo’s administration, and the severe measures of centralisation which he enforced as the means of reorganising the public service, created many additional enemies to his government, as is hereafter more fully shown.

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. Agallianus, who commanded the imperial forces stationed 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 Cosmas. 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. Agallianus, with the spirit of a hero, when he saw the utter ruin of the enterprise, plunged fully armed into the sea rather than surrender. Cosmas was taken prisoner, with another leader, and immediately beheaded. Leo, however, treated the mass of the prisoners with mildness.

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 silentium, 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.

[Sidenote: [729-751 A.D.]]

Gregory II sent Leo strong representations against his first edicts on the subject of image-worship, and after the silentium 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 re-establishment of the fiscal system. To overcome the opposition now 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 in 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. Liutprand, 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.

From 733 A.D., 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 recognised. 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 Aistulf, king of the Lombards, captured Ravenna. The exarch retired to Naples, and the authority of the Byzantine emperors in central Italy ended.[n]

Leo III died in 741.[48] He was succeeded by his son Constantine V, called Copronymus, whom he had crowned emperor in the year 720, and married to Irene, the daughter of the khan of the Khazars, thirteen years later. Before proceeding with the later reigns, we must pause to consider that great and bloody controversy which brought Christianity into contempt as idolatrous before the Mohammedans, and split the church, or rather split the laity from the church. It was the laity which was non-idolatrous; it was the church that clung to the sanctity and active power of images and even of relics. The subject is considered at more length under the history of the papacy, but cannot be omitted here, since it had its rise in that enlightened and fearless Leo Isauricus, who dared to be consistent even to the point of barbarity.[a]

THE ICONOCLASTS

[Sidenote: [717-723 A.D.]]

Since the twelfth year of the Hegira (634 A.D.) the hand of Ishmael had lain heavily on the world, nevertheless the rod of the taskmaster had in certain respects been useful to the Byzantine Empire, especially in the interior. Senseless despotism, careless dissimulation, and utter incompetence could not assert themselves for long on the throne. This resulted in a succession of brave soldiers ascending the throne--Byzantine autocrats since the time of Islam had on an average really been stronger than their predecessors--and in the reigning families rapidly detaching themselves. When one or the other dynasty tended to the Merovingian type, it only lasted for a short time. Amongst the families which under Islam wore the crown of Byzantium, the one founded by Leo Isauricus (717-741) occupied a prominent position; after Justinian it was second in the order of Byzantine dynasties.

Leo Isauricus, a man of humble birth, who rose from the rank of a common soldier to that of a general, and his son Constantine V on whom party feeling bestowed the opprobrious nickname of Copronymus, were brave men, but they reduced the church and the people to servitude as their predecessors had done, and perhaps even more ruthlessly, as is proved by their iconoclastic proceedings. Certainly in the beginning of the agitation now in question, they were not wanting in a motive which appeared just, and perhaps was so for a time. In consequence of the terrible oppression exercised by the government authorities, and the spiritual stagnation which generally arises from this source, the Byzantine nation had grown accustomed to superficiality in religion and, as a consequence, to a worship of images which reached a point at which Christianity seemed about to sink back into Hellenism.

On this important matter, which was frequently a source of great danger in the course of the century, Pope Gregory I established an unalterable rule. Bishop Serenus of Massilia (Marseilles), having observed that many of his parishioners worshipped the images which had been brought into the cathedral, cast them out and destroyed them. Gregory I commended the zeal with which Serenus had forbidden divine honours to be paid to the work of human hands, but at the same time censured him for having destroyed the images. He also referred to the reason given by other Fathers before him, and by Paulinus of Nola in particular; he writes, “the churches are decorated with images so that those who do not know the alphabet may see represented on the wall that which they cannot read in the Scriptures.”

This is the rule of the Catholic church--the places of worship must be decorated and these decorations respected. Woe betide him who lays hands on them. But the image must not be mistaken for that which it represents, it must not be treated as a thing divine. But according to reliable proofs still extant, the Greeks of the eighth and ninth centuries did not confine themselves within these limits; they became iconodules, as the majority of them remain to this day.

[Sidenote: [723-729 A.D.]]

The abuse just referred to aroused the calculating ambition of a very powerful and hostile neighbour, according to the chronicler Theophanes. The caliph Yazid II, son of Abdul-Malik (720-724), successor to Omar II, issued a decree that all images should be forcibly removed from the Christian churches of his empire. This occurred in 723, three years before Leo Isauricus first prohibited the use of them. Up to that time the Moslem ruler had not interfered in the worship of his Christian subjects, who had enjoyed without molestation the same privileges as the Jews. The conduct of Yazid, on the contrary, gave rise to the idea that henceforth the caliphs would treat iconolatry as idolatry, and that those who adhered to the practice would fall under his displeasure, whether within or beyond the dominions of the caliphate. The above command therefore contained a hidden declaration of war against the Byzantine Empire.

Such was the state of affairs when Leo Isauricus determined to take the lead and to wrest from the hereditary enemy of the Byzantine crown the weapons which he wished to use against it. In 726 he issued his first decree against images; it was moderate in tone, prostration before them being alone prohibited. A few bishops, partisans of Leo, began to remove the images from their churches. When this became known the people rebelled, but Leo subdued them by force.

After this, under Leo and under his son Constantine Copronymus (741-775), blow after blow was dealt. In 729 Leo summoned a conclave and invited the patriarch Germanus, a man who had almost reached the extreme limit of human age, to attend. A law was submitted ordering that the images should be removed from all churches and the painted walls whitewashed. When required to ratify it, the patriarch declared he would rather resign his office. He was taken at his word, exiled to a neighbouring state, and the vacant see was conferred on the priest Anastasius, a willing tool. All bishops of the realm were obliged to submit to the new law; the few who resisted were deposed.

Presently no sacred images were to be seen in the churches or in any other places. Over the iron gates of the imperial palace was a beautiful image of Christ, reputed to perform miracles, which was specially revered. The emperor ordered its removal. Blood was shed in the execution of this order. When a soldier at Leo’s command mounted on the castle gate, and was about to deal the first blow at the image,[49] a crowd of furious women flung themselves upon him, and pulled down the ladder on which he was standing. The soldier fell to the ground and was immediately murdered by the mob. Thereupon the rioters rushed to the archbishop’s residence, bent on destroying it, and on stoning the patriarch Anastasius; but the latter fled to the imperial palace. Meanwhile Leo had taken the necessary precautions: the body-guard rushed out and attacked the insurgents; those who resisted were killed or taken prisoners. Leo had gained the victory, and until his death in 741, no one dared to disturb the public peace.

ICONOCLASM AFTER LEO

[Sidenote: [741-842 A.D.]]

After Leo’s death, conspiracies broke out against Constantine, his successor. These he defeated though with difficulty, and his discovery that a party in the church, the Byzantine monks, were defending the ancient custom with invincible obstinacy and thus supporting his adversaries, changed his struggle against iconolatry into ceaseless strife with the monasteries and all other typical forms of Christianity, and with the church itself and its mysteries. Events such as occurred at the time of the Reformation and in the eighteenth century now took place. The magistrates received orders to suppress all monasteries, many were demolished, others were converted into stables for the cavalry and camps for the infantry; the few that remained were not allowed to receive novices. The expelled monks had to lay aside their distinctive garb and dress like other people; the emperor compelled some to marry, nor did he spare them the weapon of ridicule. On one occasion he caused a number of monks, each leading a nun by the hand, to march up and down the hippodrome, where they were met by the jeers of the multitude.

Under the influence of such proceedings a peculiar spirit developed in the court, which was composed not only of soldiers and officials but also of the wealthy and pleasure-loving classes, a spirit which we can only compare to the freemasonry of a later day, or to the Bavarian _illuminati_ of the eighteenth century.

The throne was everything, the church apparently nothing. For the second time the popedom of the Cæsars had reached a climax, not, as in the days of Justinian, under the form of piety, but under that of enlightenment. The Greek bishops patiently bore their yoke, there were no more monks, the glory of the empire dazzled the world, for Constantine was a fortunate ruler and a soldier crowned with glory, having overcome the Saracens and the Bulgarians, the enemies of the empire, in many battles. During his long reign there arose a race who were acquainted with cloisters and monks only by hearsay, and had experience of nothing but freemasonry and _illuminati_.

Nevertheless, after having asserted its authority for half a century, the iconoclastic party succumbed and finally disappeared without leaving a trace.

Two causes were mainly instrumental in bringing about this remarkable conclusion. First, the influence of the head of Christendom. In 726 and 729, when Leo proceeded to take steps against the icons, he had been vigorously opposed by Pope Gregory II (715-731). Gregory’s successors continued the opposition and, when the house of Isauricus obstinately refused justice, a breach ensued with Byzantium. The discovery that in spite of all display of violence the Byzantine court must end by yielding, as soon as the Eastern church or even part of it sided in earnest with the see of St. Peter, first made in the dogmatic disputes of the fourth and fifth centuries, once more stood revealed.

Now for the second cause. Amongst the Byzantines there arose a great man, capable of gathering all elements favourable to the cause of ecclesiastical liberty, hitherto dispersed over the whole of the Eastern Empire, into one centre, and thus bringing them into practical touch with Rome. This was Theodore, abbot of the monastery of Studion, in Constantinople. With the exception of a brief victory, embittered by that unworthy woman, the empress Irene, under whose dominion it took place (789-802), and in which the adherents of iconolatry, or rather the defenders of ecclesiastical independence, were unable to exert any political influence, the life of Theodore was spent in a perpetual struggle, in which he displayed incomparable stoicism and the highest ability. He died in 826.

The cause which he had espoused with all the strength of a great soul, triumphed after his death and through the seed which he had sown. In one respect its triumph was complete, in another, partial only. On the 19th of February, 842, the patriarch Methodius of Constantinople set the final seal on the right of images in places of worship, by the institution of the feast of Orthodoxy. With the icons, unfortunately, the deplorable abuse already mentioned returned. Meanwhile it must be noted that in the course of the contest the Frankish church had repeatedly and energetically upheld the principles laid down by Pope Gregory I with regard to church discipline.

Opposition to the power which the emperor exercised on the subject of images, was only part of the plan which Theodore Studita pursued; the church and the people were also to be protected from the tyranny of the throne. The empress Irene, no doubt at the instigation of the party of Theodore, without whose support she would never have maintained her power, remitted some of the most oppressive taxes; and the emperor Nicephorus, by whom Irene was overthrown in 802, and who, although out of fear of Irene’s legislation he tolerated the images, evidently trod from the first in the steps of Leo Isauricus and his son Constantine Copronymus, forthwith restored the full weight of the old taxation.[l]

THE REIGN OF CONSTANTINE V (COPRONYMUS) (741-775 A.D.)

In a long reign of thirty-four years, the son and successor of Leo, Constantine V, surnamed Copronymus, attacked with less temperate zeal the images or idols of the church. Their votaries have exhausted the bitterness of religious gall, in their portrait of this spotted panther, this antichrist, this flying dragon of the serpent’s seed, who surpassed the vices of Elagabalus and Nero. His reign was a long butchery of whatever was most noble, or holy, or innocent in his empire. In person the emperor assisted at the execution of his victims, surveyed their agonies, listened to their groans, and indulged, without satiating, his appetite for blood; a plate of noses was accepted as a grateful offering, and his domestics were often scourged or mutilated by the royal hand. His surname was derived from his pollution of his baptismal font. The infant might be excused; but the manly pleasures of Copronymus degraded him below the level of a brute.

In his religion, the iconoclast was a heretic, a Jew, a Mohammedan, a pagan, and an atheist; and his belief of an invisible power could be discovered only in his magic rites, human victims, and nocturnal sacrifices to Venus and the demons of antiquity. His life was stained with the most opposite vices, and the ulcers which covered his body anticipated before his death the sentiment of hell torture. Of these accusations, which we have so patiently copied, a part is refuted by its own absurdity; and in the private anecdotes of the life of princes, the lie is more easy as the detection is more difficult. Without adopting the pernicious maxim, that where much is alleged, something must be true, we can however discern, that Constantine V was dissolute and cruel. Calumny is more prone to exaggerate than to invent; and her licentious tongue is checked in some measure by the experience of the age and country to which she appeals. Of the bishops and monks, the generals and magistrates, who are said to have suffered under his reign, the numbers are recorded, the names were conspicuous, the execution was public, the mutilation visible and permanent.

GOVERNMENT OF COPRONYMUS; THE SARACEN WARS

[Sidenote: [741-775 A.D.]]

The Catholics hated the person and government of Copronymus; but even their hatred is a proof of their oppression. They dissemble the provocations which might excuse or justify his rigour; but even these provocations must gradually inflame his resentment, and harden his temper in the use or the abuse of despotism. Yet the character of the fifth Constantine was not devoid of merit, nor did his government always deserve the curses or the contempt of the Greeks. From the confession of his enemies, we are informed of the restoration of an ancient aqueduct, of the redemption of twenty-five hundred captives, of the uncommon plenty of the times, and of the new colonies with which he repeopled Constantinople and the Thracian cities. They reluctantly praise his activity and courage; he was on horseback in the field at the head of his legions; and although the fortune of his arms was various, he triumphed by sea and land, on the Euphrates and the Danube, in civil[50] and barbarian war. Heretical praise must be cast into the scale, to counterbalance the weight of orthodox invective. The iconoclasts revered the virtues of the prince; forty years after his death, they still prayed before the tomb of the saint. A miraculous vision was propagated by fanaticism or fraud; and the Christian hero appeared on a milk-white steed, brandishing his lance against the pagans of Bulgaria: “An absurd fable,” says the Catholic historian, “since Copronymus is chained with the demons in the abyss of hell.”[g]

Constantine had no sooner found himself firmly established on the throne than he devoted his attention to completing the organisation 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 in 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 Omayyad dynasty. Constantine took advantage of these troubles. He reconquered Germanicia and Doliche, and occupied for a time a considerable part of Commagene. 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 Cerameia; but the fleet of the Cibyraiot theme arrived in time to blockade the enemy’s ships, and of a thousand Mohammedan vessels three only escaped (748 A.D.). The war was continued. The Saracens invaded the empire almost every summer, but these incursions led to no permanent conquests. 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 Almansur to settle in those of Constantine.

WARS WITH BULGARIA

The vicinity of the Bulgarians to Constantinople rendered them more dangerous enemies than the Saracens, though their power was much inferior. 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. The king [Kormisos] 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 (757 A.D.).[51]

Constantine 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 twenty-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 all 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 the 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 [Telerig] 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 of September (775).

The long war with the Bulgarians had been 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, Servia, and Dalmatia, imposed on the emperor the necessity of maintaining strong bodies of troops, and suggested the policy of forming a line of Greek towns and Asiatic colonies along the northern frontier of the empire. When this was done, Constantine began to root out the brigandage, which had greatly extended itself during the anarchy which preceded his father’s election, and which Leo had never been able to exterminate. Numerous bands lived by plunder, in a state of independence, within the bounds of the empire. They were called Skamars. 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 twenty-five hundred of his subjects, preferring to lower his own dignity by paying tribute to the pirates, rather than allow those who looked to him for protection to pine away their lives in hopeless misery. No other 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 the 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. 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 that it became cheap. The abbot’s political economy, it must be confessed, is not so orthodox as his calumny.

The time and attention of Constantine, during his whole reign, were principally engaged in 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.

THE COUNCIL OF 754

[Sidenote: [754-775 A.D.]]

When his power was consolidated, he steadily pursued his father’s plans for centralising 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.

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 anti-Christian practice, the abolition of which was necessary to avoid leading Christians into temptation. Even the use of the crucifix was condemned, on the ground that 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 civilise 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, Germanus, the patriarch of Constantinople, George of Cyprus, and John Damascenus, the last of the fathers of the Greek church. The acts of this council, however, are only known from the garbled portions preserved by its enemies in the acts of the second council of Nicæa and the hostile historians.[n]

LEO IV AND CONSTANTINE VI (775-797 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [775-797 A.D.]]

Leo IV, the son of the fifth, and the father of the sixth Constantine, was of a feeble constitution both of mind and body, and the principal care of his reign was the settlement of the succession. The association of the young Constantine was urged by the officious zeal of his subjects; and the emperor, conscious of his decay, complied, after a prudent hesitation, with their unanimous wishes. The royal infant, at the age of five years, was crowned with his mother Irene; and the national consent was ratified by every circumstance of pomp and solemnity that could dazzle the eyes, or bind the conscience, of the Greeks. An oath of fidelity was administered in the palace, the church, and the hippodrome, to the several orders of the state, who adjured the holy names of the son and mother of God.

The first to swear, and the first to violate their oath, were the five sons of Copronymus by a second marriage; and the story of these princes is singular and tragic. The right of primogeniture excluded them from the throne; the injustice of their elder brother defrauded them of a legacy of about £2,000,000 [$10,000,000]; some vain titles were not deemed a sufficient compensation for wealth and power; and they repeatedly conspired against their nephew, before and after the death of his father (780). The first attempt was pardoned; for the second offence they were condemned to the ecclesiastical state; and for the third treason, Nicephorus, the eldest and most guilty, was deprived of his eyes, and his four brothers, Christopher, Nicetas, Anthemeus, and Eudoxas, were punished, as a milder sentence, by the amputation of their tongues.

For himself, the emperor had chosen a barbarian wife, the daughter of the khan of the Khazars; but in the marriage of his heir, he preferred an Athenian virgin, an orphan, seventeen years old, whose sole fortune must have consisted in her personal accomplishments. The nuptials of Leo and Irene were celebrated with royal pomp; she soon acquired the love and confidence of a feeble husband, and in his testament he declared the empress guardian of the Roman world, and of their son Constantine VI, who was no more than ten years of age. During his childhood Irene most ably and assiduously discharged, in her public administration, the duties of a faithful mother; and her zeal in the restoration of images has deserved the name and honours of a saint, which she still occupies in the Greek calendar. But the emperor attained the maturity of youth; the maternal yoke became more grievous; and he listened to the favourites of his own age, who shared his pleasures and were ambitious of sharing his power. Their reasons convinced him of his right, their praises of his ability to reign; and he consented to reward the services of Irene by a perpetual banishment to the isle of Sicily. But her vigilance and penetration easily disconcerted their rash projects; a similar, or more severe, punishment was retaliated on themselves and their advisers; and Irene inflicted on the ungrateful prince the chastisement of a boy. After this contest the mother and the son were at the head of two domestic factions; and instead of mild influence and voluntary obedience, she held in chains a captive and an enemy. The empress was overthrown by the abuse of victory; the oath of fidelity which she exacted to herself alone, was pronounced with reluctant murmurs; and the bold refusal of the Armenian guards encouraged a free and general declaration that Constantine VI was the lawful emperor of the Romans. In this character he ascended his hereditary throne, and dismissed Irene to a life of solitude and repose.

THE EMPRESS IRENE

A powerful conspiracy was formed for the restoration of Irene; and the secret, though widely diffused, was faithfully kept above eight months, till the emperor, suspicious of his danger, escaped from Constantinople, with the design of appealing to the provinces and armies. By this hasty flight, the empress was left on the brink of the precipice; yet before she implored the mercy of her son, Irene addressed a private epistle to the friends whom she had placed about his person, with a menace that unless they accomplished, she would reveal, their treason. Their fear rendered them intrepid; they seized the emperor on the Asiatic shore, and he was transported to the porphyry apartment of the palace where he had first seen the light. In the mind of Irene, ambition had stifled every sentiment of humanity and nature; and it was decreed in her bloody council that Constantine should be rendered incapable of the throne. The blind son of Irene survived many years, oppressed by the court, and forgotten by the world; the Isaurian dynasty was silently extinguished; and the memory of Constantine was recalled only by the nuptials of his daughter Euphrosyne with the emperor Michael II.[g]

IRENE AND ICONOCLASM

The empress was known to favour image-worship. 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 legalise 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 re-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--Tarasius, the chief secretary of the imperial cabinet,--a man of noble birth, considerable popularity, and a high reputation for learning and probity.

The iconoclasts were still strong in the capital, and the opposition of the soldiery was excited by the determination of Tarasius 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 required nearly three years to smooth the way for the meeting of the council, which was at length held at Nicæa 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. 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 years 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 Tarasius. 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, in 817 A.D.

[Sidenote: [754-787 A.D.]]

The second council of Nicæa had no better title than the iconoclast council of Constantinople to be regarded as a general council of the church. The pope Adrian, 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.

The second council of Nicæa authorised the worship of images as an orthodox practice. Forged passages, pretending to be extracts from the earlier fathers, and genuine quotations from the modern, were cited 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, saints, 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 anathematised. The patriarchs Anastasius, Constantinus, and Nicetas 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 Nicæa 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 Nicæa.

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.

The dark night of mediæval 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 Adrian, 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. 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.

END OF BYZANTINE AUTHORITY AT ROME

[Sidenote: [797-802 A.D.]]

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, 800 A.D., Charlemagne revived the existence of the Western Empire, and received the imperial crown from Pope Leo III in the church of St. Peter. 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.[n]

On earth, the crimes of Irene were left five years unpunished; her reign was crowned with external splendour;[52] and if she could silence the voice of conscience, she neither heard nor regarded the reproaches of mankind. The Roman world bowed to the government of a female; and as she moved through the streets of Constantinople, the reins of four milk-white steeds were held by as many patricians, who marched on foot before the golden chariot of their queen. But these patricians were for the most part eunuchs; raised, enriched, entrusted with the first dignities of the empire, they basely conspired against their benefactress; the great treasurer Nicephorus was secretly invested with the purple; her successor was introduced into the palace, and crowned at St. Sophia by the venal patriarch. In their first interview, she recapitulated with dignity the revolutions of her life, gently accused the perfidy of Nicephorus, insinuated that he owed his life to her unsuspicious clemency, and, for the throne and treasures which she resigned, solicited a decent and honourable retreat. His avarice refused this modest compensation; and in her exile on the isle of Lesbos, the empress earned a scanty subsistence by the labours of her distaff.

NICEPHORUS (802-811 A.D.) AND MICHAEL I (812-813 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [802-813 A.D.]]

Many tyrants have reigned undoubtedly more criminal than Nicephorus, but none perhaps have more deeply incurred the universal abhorrence of their people. His character was stained with the three odious vices of hypocrisy, ingratitude, and avarice; his want of virtue was not redeemed by any superior talents, nor his want of talents by any pleasing qualifications. Unskilful and unfortunate in war, Nicephorus was vanquished by the Saracens, and slain by the Bulgarians; and the advantage of his death overbalanced, in the public opinion, the destruction of a Roman army. His son and heir Stauracius escaped from the field with a mortal wound: yet six months of an expiring life were sufficient to refute his indecent, though popular, declaration, that he would in all things avoid the example of his father.

On the near prospect of his decease, Michael, the great master of the palace, and the husband of his sister Procopia, was named by every person of the palace and city, except by his envious brother. Tenacious of a sceptre now falling from his hand, he conspired against the life of his successor, and cherished the idea of changing to a democracy the Roman Empire. But these rash projects served only to inflame the zeal of the people, and to remove the scruples of the candidate: Michael I accepted the purple, and before he sank into the grave, the son of Nicephorus implored the clemency of his new sovereign. Had Michael in an age of peace ascended an hereditary throne, he might have reigned and died the father of his people: but his mild virtues were adapted to the shade of private life, nor was he capable of controlling the ambition of his equals, or of resisting the arms of the victorious Bulgarians. While his want of ability and success exposed him to the contempt of the soldiers, the masculine spirit of his wife Procopia awakened their indignation.

Even the Greeks of the ninth century were provoked by the insolence of a female who, in the front of the standards, presumed to direct their discipline and animate their valour; and their licentious clamours advised the new Semiramis to reverence the majesty of a Roman camp. After an unsuccessful campaign, the emperor left, in their winter quarters of Thrace, a disaffected army under the command of his enemies; and their artful eloquence persuaded the soldiers to break the dominion of the eunuchs, to degrade the husband of Procopia, and to assert the right of a military election. They marched towards the capital; yet the clergy, the senate, and the people of Constantinople adhered to the cause of Michael; and the troops and treasures of Asia might have protracted the mischiefs of civil war. But his humanity (by the ambitious it will be termed his weakness) protested, that not a drop of Christian blood should be shed in his quarrel, and his messengers presented the conquerors with the keys of the city and the palace. They were disarmed by his innocence and submission; his life and his eyes were spared; and the imperial monk enjoyed the comforts of solitude and religion above thirty-two years after he had been stripped of the purple and separated from his wife.

LEO THE ARMENIAN (813-820 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [813-820 A.D.]]

A rebel in the time of Nicephorus, the famous and unfortunate Bardanes, had once the curiosity to consult an Asiatic prophet, who after prognosticating his fall, announced the fortunes of his three principal officers, Leo the Armenian, Michael the Phrygian, and Thomas the Cappadocian, the successive reigns of the two former, the fruitless and fatal enterprise of the third. This prediction was verified, or rather was produced, by the event. Ten years afterwards, when the Thracian camp rejected the husband of Procopia, the crown was presented to the same Leo, the first in military rank and the secret author of the mutiny. As he affected to hesitate--“with this sword,” said his companion Michael, “I will open the gates of Constantinople to your imperial sway; or instantly plunge it into your bosom, if you obstinately resist the just desires of your fellow-soldiers.” The compliance of the Armenian was rewarded with the empire, and he reigned seven years and a half under the name of Leo V.[g]

Six days after his coronation, the Bulgarian king, Crumn, assailed Constantinople; a plot to assassinate the Bulgarian failed, but ample revenge was taken in the widespread pillage and the carrying off to Bulgaria of fifty thousand prisoners. Crumn died while preparing a new invasion; Leo destroyed his army at Mesembria and ravaged Bulgaria (814).[a]

Educated in a camp, and ignorant both of laws and letters, he introduced into his civil government the rigour and even cruelty of military discipline; but if his severity was sometimes dangerous to the innocent, it was always formidable to the guilty. His religious inconstancy was taxed by the epithet of chameleon, but the Catholics have acknowledged, by the voice of a saint and confessors, that the life of the iconoclast[53] was useful to the republic. The zeal of his companion Michael was repaid with riches, honours, and military command; and his subordinate talents were beneficially employed in the public service. Yet the Phrygian was dissatisfied at receiving as a favour a scanty portion of the imperial prize, which he had bestowed on his equal; and his discontent, which sometimes evaporated in a hasty discourse, at length assumed a more threatening and hostile aspect against a prince whom he represented as a cruel tyrant. That tyrant, however, repeatedly detected, warned, and dismissed the old companion of his arms, till fear and resentment prevailed over gratitude; and Michael, after a scrutiny into his actions and designs, was convicted of treasons, and sentenced to be burned alive in the furnace of the private baths. The devout humanity of the empress Theophano was fatal to her husband and family. A solemn day, the twenty-fifth of December, had been fixed for the execution; she urged that the anniversary of the Saviour’s birth would be profaned by this inhuman spectacle, and Leo consented with reluctance to a decent respite.

On the great festivals, a chosen band of priests and chanters was admitted into the palace by a private gate, to sing matins in the chapel; and Leo, who regulated with the same strictness the discipline of the choir and of the camp, was seldom absent from these early devotions. In the ecclesiastical habit, but with swords under their robes, the conspirators mingled with the procession, lurked in the angles of the chapel, and expected, as the signal of murder, the intonation of the first psalm by the emperor himself. The imperfect light, and the uniformity of dress, might have favoured his escape, while their assault was pointed against a harmless priest; but they soon discovered their mistake, and encompassed on all sides the royal victim. Without a weapon and without a friend, he grasped a weighty cross, and stood at bay against the hunters of his life; but as he asked for mercy,--“This is the hour, not of mercy, but of vengeance,” was the inexorable reply. The stroke of a well-aimed sword separated from his body the right arm and the cross, and Leo the Armenian was slain at the foot of the altar.

THE AMORIAN DYNASTY (820-867 A.D.)

MICHAEL II (820-829 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [820-829 A.D.]]

A memorable reverse of fortune was displayed in Michael II, who, from a defect in his speech, was surnamed the Stammerer. He was snatched from the fiery furnace to the sovereignty of an empire; and as in the tumult a smith could not readily be found, the fetters remained on his legs several hours after he was seated on the throne of the Cæsars. The royal blood, which had been the price of his elevation, was unprofitably spent; in the purple he retained the ignoble vices of his origin; and Michael lost his provinces with as supine indifference as if they had been the inheritance of his fathers.[54] His title was disputed by Thomas, the last of the military triumvirate, who transported into Europe fourscore thousand barbarians from the banks of the Tigris and the shores of the Caspian. He formed the siege of Constantinople; but the capital was defended with spiritual and carnal weapons; a Bulgarian king assaulted the camp of the Orientals, and Thomas had the misfortune, or the weakness, to fall alive into the power of the conqueror. The hands and feet of the rebel were amputated; he was placed on an ass, and, amidst the insults of the people, was led through the streets, which he sprinkled with his blood. After the death of his first wife, the emperor, at the request of the senate, drew from her monastery Euphrosyne, the daughter of Constantine VI. Her august birth might justify a stipulation in the marriage contract that her children should equally share the empire with their elder brother. But the nuptials of Michael and Euphrosyne were barren; and she was content with the title of mother of Theophilus, his son and successor.

THEOPHILUS (829-842 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [829-854 A.D.]]

The character of Theophilus is a rare example in which religious zeal has allowed, and perhaps magnified, the virtues of a heretic and a persecutor. His valour was often felt by the enemies, and his justice by the subjects, of the monarchy; but the valour of Theophilus was rash and fruitless, and his justice arbitrary and cruel. He displayed the banner of the cross against the Saracens; but his five expeditions were concluded by a signal overthrow (838); Amorium, the native city of his ancestors, was levelled with the ground, and from his military toils, he derived only the surname of the Unfortunate. The wisdom of a sovereign is comprised in the institution of laws and the choice of magistrates, and while he seems without action, his civil government revolves round his centre with the silence and order of the planetary system. But the justice of Theophilus was fashioned on the model of the oriental despots, who, in personal and irregular acts of authority, consult the reason or passion of the moment, without measuring the sentence by the law, or the penalty by the offence. For some venial offences, some defect of equity or vigilance, the principal ministers, a prefect, a quæstor, a captain of the guards, were banished, or mutilated, or scalded with boiling pitch, or burned alive in the hippodrome; and as these dreadful examples might be the effects of error or caprice, they must have alienated from his service the best and wisest of the citizens.

Theophilus might inflict a tardy vengeance on the assassins of Leo and the saviours of his father; but he enjoyed the fruits of their crime; and his jealous tyranny sacrificed a brother and a prince to the future safety of his life. A Persian of the race of the Sassanidæ died in poverty and exile at Constantinople, leaving an only son, the issue of a plebeian marriage. At the age of twelve years, the royal birth of Theophobus was revealed, and his merit was not unworthy of his birth. He was educated in the Byzantine palace, a Christian and a soldier; advanced with rapid steps in the career of fortune and glory; received the hand of the emperor’s sister; and was promoted to the command of thirty thousand Persians, who, like his father, had fled from the Mohammedan conquerors.

THEODORA AND MICHAEL THE DRUNKARD (842-867 A.D.)

These troops, doubly infected with mercenary and fanatic vices, were desirous of revolting against their benefactor, and erecting the standard of their native king: but the loyal Theophobus rejected their offers, disconcerted their schemes, and escaped from their hands to the camp or palace of his royal brother. A generous confidence might have secured a faithful and able guardian for his wife and his infant son, to whom Theophilus, in the flower of his age, was compelled to leave the inheritance of the empire. But his jealousy was exasperated by envy and disease: he feared the dangerous virtues which might either support or oppress their infancy and weakness; and the dying emperor demanded the head of the Persian prince. With savage delight he recognised the familiar features of his brother: “Thou art no longer Theophobus,” he said; and sinking on his couch, he added with a faltering voice, “Soon, too soon, I shall be no more Theophilus!”

Yet his last choice entrusted his wife Theodora with the guardianship of the empire and her son Michael, who was left an orphan in the fifth year of his age. The restoration of images, and the final extirpation of the Iconoclasts,[55] has endeared her name to the devotion of the Greeks; but in the fervour of religious zeal, Theodora entertained a grateful regard for the memory and salvation of her husband. After thirteen years of a prudent and frugal administration, she perceived the decline of her influence; but the second Irene imitated only the virtues of her predecessor. Instead of conspiring against the life or government of her son, she retired, without a struggle, though not without a murmur, to the solitude of private life, deploring the ingratitude, the vices, and the inevitable ruin of the worthless youth.

[Sidenote: [854-867 A.D.]]

Among the successors of Nero and Elagabalus, we have not hitherto found the imitation of their vices, the character of a Roman prince who considered pleasure as the object of life, and virtue as the enemy of pleasure. Whatever might have been the maternal care of Theodora in the education of Michael III, her unfortunate son was a king before he was a man. If the ambitious mother laboured to check the progress of reason, she could not cool the ebullition of passion; and her selfish policy was justly repaid by the contempt and ingratitude of the headstrong youth. At the age of eighteen he rejected her authority, without feeling his own incapacity to govern the empire and himself. With Theodora, all gravity and wisdom retired from the court: their place was supplied by the alternate dominion of vice and folly; and it was impossible, without forfeiting the public esteem, to acquire or preserve the favour of the emperor. The millions of gold and silver which had been accumulated for the service of the state, were lavished on the vilest of men, who flattered his passions and shared his pleasures; and in a reign of thirteen years, the richest of sovereigns was compelled to strip the palace and the churches of their precious furniture. Like Nero, he delighted in the amusements of the theatre, and sighed to be surpassed in the accomplishments in which he should have blushed to excel. Yet the studies of Nero in music and poetry betrayed some symptoms of a liberal taste; the more ignoble arts of the son of Theophilus were confined to the chariot race of the hippodrome.

But the most extraordinary feature in the character of Michael is the profane mockery of the religion of his country. The superstition of the Greeks might indeed excite the smile of a philosopher; but his smile would have been rational and temperate, and he must have condemned the ignorant folly of a youth who insulted the objects of public veneration. A buffoon of the court was invested in the robes of the patriarch; his twelve metropolitans, among whom the emperor was ranked, assumed their ecclesiastical garments; they used or abused the sacred vessels of the altar; and, in their bacchanalian feasts, the holy communion was administered in a nauseous compound of vinegar and mustard. Nor were these impious spectacles concealed from the eyes of the city. On the day of a solemn festival, the emperor, and his bishops or buffoons, rode on asses through the streets, encountered the true patriarch at the head of his clergy, and, by their licentious shouts and obscene gestures, disordered the gravity of the Christian procession.[56] The devotion of Michael appeared only in some offence to reason or piety; he received his theatrical crowns from the statue of the Virgin; and an imperial tomb was violated for the sake of burning the bones of Constantine the Iconoclast. By this extravagant conduct the son of Theophilus became as contemptible as he was odious; every citizen was impatient for the deliverance of his country; and even the favourites of the moment were apprehensive that a caprice might snatch away what a caprice had bestowed. In the thirtieth year of his age, and in the hour of intoxication and sleep, Michael III was murdered in his chamber by the founder of a new dynasty, whom the emperor had raised to an equality of rank and power.[g]

It was in his reign that Photius was illegally made Patriarch and such a dissension created that the Roman pope was appealed to, as is described in the next volume under the Papacy. In 865 also the Russians made a raid on Constantinople. This was their first appearance to the civilized world, and though they were driven off, they made a deep impression by their savagery.[a]

THE BASILIAN OR MACEDONIAN DYNASTY (867-1057 A.D.)

BASIL (867-886 A.D.)

The Arsacides, the rivals of Rome, possessed the sceptre of the East near four hundred years, a younger branch of these Parthian kings continued to reign in Armenia; and their royal descendants survived the partition and servitude of that ancient monarchy. Two of these, Artabanus and Chlienes, escaped or retired to the court of Leo I, his bounty seated them in a safe and hospitable exile, in the provinces of Macedonia; Hadrianopolis was their final settlement.

[Sidenote: [835-886 A.D.]]

During several generations they maintained the dignity of their birth; and their Roman patriotism rejected the tempting offers of the Persian and Arabian powers, who recalled them to their native country. But their splendour was insensibly clouded by time and poverty; and the father of Basil was reduced to a small farm, which he cultivated with his own hands; yet he scorned to disgrace the blood of the Arsacides by a plebeian alliance; his wife, a widow of Hadrianopolis, was pleased to count among her ancestors the great Constantine; and their royal infant was connected by some dark affinity of lineage or country with the Macedonian Alexander. No sooner was he born than the cradle of Basil, his family, and his city, were swept away by an inundation of the Bulgarians; he was educated a slave in a foreign land; and in this severe discipline he acquired the hardiness of body and flexibility of mind which promoted his future elevation. In the age of youth or manhood he shared the deliverance of the Roman captives, who generously broke their fetters, marched through Bulgaria to the shores of the Euxine, defeated two armies of barbarians, embarked in the ships which had been stationed for their reception, and returned to Constantinople, from whence they were distributed to their respective homes. But the freedom of Basil was naked and destitute; his farm was ruined by the calamities of war. After his father’s death, his manual labour or service could no longer support a family of orphans; and he resolved to seek a more conspicuous theatre, in which every virtue and every vice may lead to the paths of greatness.

The first night of his arrival at Constantinople, without friends or money, the weary pilgrim slept on the steps of the church of St. Diomede; he was fed by the casual hospitality of a monk, and was introduced to the service of a cousin and namesake of the emperor Theophilus, who, though himself of a diminutive person, was always followed by a train of tall and handsome domestics. Basil attended his patron to the government of Peloponnesus; eclipsed, by his personal merit, the birth and dignity of Theophilus, and formed a useful connection with a wealthy and charitable matron of Patras. Her spiritual or carnal love embraced the young adventurer, whom she adopted as her son. Danielis presented him with thirty slaves; and the produce of her bounty was expended in the support of his brothers, and the purchase of some large estates in Macedonia. His gratitude or ambition still attached him to the service of Theophilus; and a lucky accident recommended him to the notice of the court.

A famous wrestler, in the train of the Bulgarian ambassadors, had defied, at the royal banquet, the boldest and most robust of the Greeks. The strength of Basil was praised; he accepted the challenge, and the barbarian champion was overthrown at the first onset. A beautiful but vicious horse was condemned to be hamstrung; it was subdued by the dexterity and courage of the servant of Theophilus; and his conqueror was promoted to an honourable rank in the imperial stables. But it was impossible to obtain the confidence of Michael without complying with his vices; and his new favourite, the great chamberlain of the palace, was raised and supported by a disgraceful marriage with a royal concubine, and the dishonour of his sister who succeeded to her place.

The public administration had been abandoned to the cæsar Bardas, the brother and enemy of Theodora; but the arts of female influence persuaded Michael to hate and to fear his uncle; he was drawn from Constantinople, under the pretext of a Cretan expedition, and stabbed in the tent of audience, by the sword of the chamberlain and in the presence of the emperor. About a month after this execution, Basil was invested with the title of Augustus and the government of the empire. He supported this unequal association till his influence was fortified by popular esteem. His life was endangered by the caprice of the emperor; and his dignity was profaned by a second colleague, who had rowed in the galleys. Yet the murder of his benefactor must be condemned as an act of ingratitude and treason; and the churches which he dedicated to the name of St. Michael were a poor and puerile expiation of his guilt.

But the most solid praise of Basil is drawn from the comparison of a ruined and a flourishing monarchy, that which he wrested from the dissolute Michael, and that which he bequeathed to the Macedonian dynasty.[57] The evils which had been sanctified by time and example were corrected by his master-hand; and he revived, if not the national spirit, at least the order and majesty of the Roman Empire. His application was indefatigable, his temper cool, his understanding vigorous and decisive; and in his practice he observed that rare and salutary moderation, which pursues each virtue at an equal distance between the opposite vices. His military service had been confined to the palace; nor was the emperor endowed with the spirit or the talents of a warrior. Yet under his reign the Roman arms were again formidable to the barbarians.[58] As soon as he had formed a new army by discipline and exercise, he appeared in person on the banks of the Euphrates, curbed the pride of the Saracens, and suppressed the dangerous though just revolt of the Manichæans.[59]

[Sidenote: [867-886 A.D.]]

But his principal merit was in the civil administration of the finances and of the laws. To replenish an exhausted treasury, it was proposed to resume the lavish and ill-placed gifts of his predecessor; his prudence abated one moiety of the restitution, and a sum of £1,200,000 [$6,000,000] was instantly procured to answer the most pressing demands, and to allow some space for the mature operations of economy. Among the various schemes for the improvement of the revenue, a new mode was suggested of capitation, or tribute, which would have too much depended on the arbitrary discretion of the assessors. A sufficient list of honest and able agents was instantly produced by the minister; but, on the more careful scrutiny of Basil himself, only two could be found who might be safely entrusted with such dangerous powers; and they justified his esteem by declining his confidence. But the serious and successful diligence of the emperor established by degrees an equitable balance of property and payment, of receipt and expenditure; a peculiar fund was appropriated to each service; and a public method secured the interest of the prince and the property of the people. After reforming the luxury, he assigned two patrimonial estates to supply the decent plenty of the imperial table; the contributions of the subject were reserved for his defence; and the residue was employed in the embellishment of the capital and provinces.

In the character of a judge he was assiduous and impartial, desirous to save, but not afraid to strike; the oppressors of the people were severely chastised, but his personal foes, whom it might be unsafe to pardon, were condemned, after the loss of their eyes, to a life of solitude and repentance. The change of language and manners demanded a revision of the obsolete jurisprudence of Justinian. The voluminous body of his _Institutes_, _Pandects_, _Code_, and _Novels_ was digested under forty titles, in the Greek idiom; and the _Basilica_,[60] which were improved and completed by his son and grandson, must be referred to the genius of the original founder of their race. This glorious reign was terminated by an accident in the chase. A furious stag entangled his horns in the belt of Basil, and raised him from his horse; he was rescued by an attendant, who cut the belt and slew the animal; but the fall or the fever exhausted the strength of the aged monarch, and he expired in the palace amidst the tears of his family and people. If he struck off the head of the faithful servant for presuming to draw his sword against his sovereign, the pride of despotism, which had lain dormant in his life, revived in the last moments of despair, when he no longer wanted or valued the opinion of mankind.

Of the four sons of the emperor, Constantine died before his father, whose grief and credulity were amused by a flattering impostor and a vain apparition.[61] Stephen, the youngest, was content with the honours of a patriarch and a saint; both Leo and Alexander alike were invested with the purple, but the powers of government were solely exercised by the elder brother.[g]

LEO VI THE PHILOSOPHER (886-911 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [886-911 A.D.]]

The Saracen War continued during his reign; the chief evils suffered being the loss of the second city of the empire, Thessalonica, which was taken after a bitter siege, 904, and sacked with great ruthlessness. Over twenty thousand of the inhabitants, escaping death, were sold into slavery. The Romans also suffered naval defeat in 912. The Bulgarians in 893 had forced a shameful peace on Leo.[a]

The name of Leo VI has been dignified with the title of philosopher, and the union of the prince and the sage, of the active and speculative virtues, would indeed constitute the perfection of human nature. But the claims of Leo are far short of this ideal excellence.

If we still inquire the reason of his sage appellation, it can only be replied that the son of Basil was less ignorant than the greater part of his contemporaries in church and state; that his education had been directed by the learned Photius; and that several books of profane and ecclesiastical science were composed by the pen, or in the name, of the imperial philosopher. But the reputation of his philosophy and religion was overthrown by a domestic vice, the repetition of his nuptials.

In the beginning of his reign Leo himself had abolished the state of concubines, and condemned, without annulling, third marriages; but his patriotism and love soon compelled him to violate his own laws and to incur the penance which in a similar case he had imposed on his subjects. In his first three alliances, his nuptial bed was unfruitful; the emperor required a female companion and the empire a legitimate heir. The beautiful Zoe was introduced into the palace as a concubine; and after a trial of her fecundity and the birth of Constantine, her lover declared his intention of legitimating the mother and the child by the celebration of his fourth nuptials. But the patriarch Nicholas refused his blessing; the imperial baptism of the young prince was obtained by a promise of separation, and the contumacious husband of Zoe was excluded from the communion of the faithful. Neither the fear of exile, nor the desertion of his brethren, nor the authority of the Latin church, nor the danger of failure or doubt in the succession to the empire, could bend the spirit of the inflexible monk. After the death of Leo, he was recalled from exile to the civil and ecclesiastical administration; and the edict of union which was promulgated in the name of Constantine condemned the future scandal of fourth marriages, and left a tacit imputation on his own birth.

CONSTANTINE VII PORPHYROGENITUS (911-919 A.D.) (944-959 A.D.)

In the Greek language purple and porphyry are the same word; and as the colours of nature are invariable, we may learn that a dark deep red was the Tyrian dye which stained the purple of the ancients. An apartment of the Byzantine palace was lined with porphyry; it was reserved for the use of the pregnant empresses; and the royal birth of their children was expressed by the appellation of porphyrogenite, or born in the purple. Several of the Roman princes had been blessed with an heir; but this peculiar surname was first applied to Constantine VII. His life and titular reign were of equal duration; but of fifty-four years, six had elapsed before his father’s death; and the son of Leo was ever the voluntary or reluctant subject of those who oppressed his weakness or abused his confidence. His uncle Alexander, who had long been invested with the title of Augustus, was the first colleague and governor of the young prince; but in a rapid career of vice and folly, the brother of Leo already emulated the reputation of Michael; and when he was extinguished by a timely death, he entertained a project of castrating his nephew, and leaving the empire to a worthless favourite.

ROMANUS LECAPENUS (919-944 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [919-944 A.D.]]

The succeeding years of the minority of Constantine were occupied by his mother Zoe, and a succession or council of seven regents,[62] who pursued their interest, gratified their passions, abandoned the republic, supplanted each other, and finally vanished in the presence of a soldier. From an obscure origin, Romanus Lecapenus had raised himself to the command of the naval armies; and in the anarchy of the times, had deserved, or at least had obtained, the national esteem. With a victorious and affectionate fleet,[63] he sailed from the mouth of the Danube into the harbour of Constantinople, and was hailed as the deliverer of the people, and the guardian of the prince. His supreme office was at first defined by the new appellation of father of the emperor; but Romanus soon disdained the subordinate powers of a minister, and assumed with the titles of Cæsar and Augustus the full independence of royalty, which he held near five-and-twenty years. His three sons, Christopher, Stephanus, and Constantine VIII, were adorned with the same honours, and the lawful emperor was degraded from the first to the fifth rank in this college of princes. Yet, in the preservation of his life and crown, he might still applaud his own fortune and the clemency of the usurper.

The examples of ancient and modern history would have excused the ambition of Romanus; the powers and the laws of the empire were in his hand; the spurious birth of Constantine would have justified his exclusion; and the grave or the monastery was open to receive the son of the concubine. But Lecapenus does not appear to have possessed either the virtues or the vices of a tyrant. The studious temper and retirement of Constantine disarmed the jealousy of power: his books and music, his pen and his pencil, were a constant source of amusement; and, if he could improve a scanty allowance by the sale of his pictures, if their price was not enhanced by the name of the artist, he was endowed with a personal talent, which few princes could employ in the hour of adversity.

The fall of Romanus was occasioned by his own vices and those of his children. After the decease of Christopher, his eldest son, the two surviving brothers quarrelled with each other, and conspired against their father. At the hour of noon, when all strangers were regularly excluded from the palace, they entered his apartment with an armed force, and conveyed him, in the habit of a monk, to a small island in the Propontis, which was peopled by a religious community. The rumour of this domestic revolution excited a tumult in the city; but Porphyrogenitus alone, the true and lawful emperor, was the object of the public care; and the sons of Lecapenus were taught, by tardy experience, that they had achieved a guilty and perilous enterprise for the benefit of their rival. Their sister Helena, the wife of Constantine, revealed, or supposed, their treacherous design of assassinating her husband at the royal banquet. His loyal adherents were alarmed; and the two usurpers were prevented, seized, degraded from the purple, and embarked for the same island and monastery where their father had been so lately confined. Old Romanus met them on the beach with a sarcastic smile, and, after a just reproach of their folly and ingratitude, presented his imperial colleagues with an equal share of his water and vegetable diet.

[Sidenote: [944-963 A.D.]]

In the fortieth year of his reign, Constantine VII obtained the possession of the Eastern world, which he ruled, or seemed to rule, near fifteen years. But he was devoid of that energy of character which could emerge into a life of action and glory; and the studies which had amused and dignified his leisure were incompatible with the serious duties of a sovereign. The emperor neglected the practice to instruct his son Romanus in the theory of government; while he indulged the habits of intemperance and sloth, he dropped the reins of the administration into the hands of Helena his wife; and, in the shifting scene of her favour and caprice, each minister was regretted in the promotion of a more worthless successor. Yet the birth and misfortunes of Constantine had endeared him to the Greeks; they excused his failings; they respected his learning, his innocence and charity, his love of justice; and the ceremony of his funeral was mourned with the unfeigned tears of his subjects (959). The body, according to ancient custom, lay in state in the vestibule of the palace; and the civil and military officers, the patricians, the senate, and the clergy, approached in due order to adore and kiss the inanimate corpse of their sovereign. Before the procession moved towards the imperial sepulchre, a herald proclaimed this awful admonition: “Arise, O king of the world, and obey the summons of the King of kings!”

ROMANUS II (959-963 A.D.)

The death of Constantine was imputed to poison; and his son Romanus, who derived that name from his maternal grandfather, ascended the throne of Constantinople. A prince, who, at the age of twenty, could be suspected of anticipating his inheritance, must have been already lost in the public esteem; yet Romanus was rather weak than wicked; and the largest share of the guilt was transferred to his wife, Theophano, a woman of base origin, masculine spirit, and flagitious manners. The sense of personal glory and public happiness, the true pleasures of royalty, were unknown to the son of Constantine; and while the two brothers, Nicephorus and Leo, triumphed over the Saracens, the hours which the emperor owed to his people were consumed in strenuous idleness.

In strength and beauty he was conspicuous above his equals; tall and straight as a young cypress, his complexion was fair and florid, his eyes sparkling, his shoulders broad, his nose long and aquiline. Yet even these perfections were insufficient to fix the love of Theophano; and, after a reign of four years, Theophano mingled for her husband the same deadly draught which she was thought to have composed for his father.

By his marriage with this impious woman, Romanus the Younger left two sons, Basil II and Constantine IX, and two daughters, Theophano and Anne. The elder sister was given to Otto II emperor of the West; the younger became the wife of Vladimir, grand duke and apostle of Russia, and, by the marriage of her granddaughter with Henry I, king of France, the blood of the Macedonians, and perhaps of the Arsacides, still flows in the veins of the Bourbon line.

After the death of her husband the empress aspired to reign in the name of her sons, the elder of whom was five, and the younger only two years of age; but she soon felt the instability of a throne which was supported by a female who could not be esteemed, and two infants who could not be feared. Theophano looked around for a protector, and threw herself into the arms of the bravest soldier; her heart was capacious; but the deformity of the new favourite rendered it more than probable that interest was the motive and excuse of her love.

NICEPHORUS PHOCAS (963-969 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [963-969 A.D.]]

Nicephorus Phocas united, in the popular opinion, the double merit of a hero and saint. In the former character, his qualifications were genuine and splendid: the descendant of a race illustrious by their military exploits, he had displayed in every station and in every province the courage of a soldier and the conduct of a chief; and Nicephorus was crowned with recent laurels, from the important conquest of the isle of Crete. His religion was of a more ambiguous cast; and his hair-cloth, his fasts, his pious idiom, and his wish to retire from the business of the world, were a convenient mask for his dark and dangerous ambition. Yet he imposed on a holy patriarch, by whose influence, and by a decree of the senate, he was entrusted, during the minority of the young princes, with the absolute and independent command of the oriental armies. As soon as he had secured the leaders and the troops, he boldly marched to Constantinople, trampled on his enemies, avowed his correspondence with the empress, and, without degrading her sons, assumed, with the title of Augustus, the pre-eminence of rank and the plenitude of power. But his marriage with Theophano was refused by the same patriarch who had placed the crown on his head; by his second nuptials he incurred a year of canonical penance; a bar of spiritual affinity was opposed to their celebration; and some evasion and perjury were required to silence the scruples of the clergy and people. The popularity of the emperor was lost in the purple; in a reign of six years he provoked the hatred of strangers and subjects, and the hypocrisy and avarice of the first Nicephorus were revived in his successor. In the use of his patrimony, the generous temper of Nicephorus had been proved, and the revenue was strictly applied to the service of the state; each spring the emperor marched in person against the Saracens, and every Roman might compute the employment of his taxes in triumphs, conquests, and the security of the Eastern barrier.[g]

THE WARS OF NICEPHORUS

The darling object of Nicephorus was to break the power of the Saracens, and extend the frontiers of the empire in Syria and Mesopotamia. In the spring of 964, he assembled an army against Tarsus, which was the fortress that covered the Syrian frontier. Next year (965), Nicephorus again formed the siege of Tarsus with an army of forty thousand men. The place was inadequately supplied with provisions; and though the inhabitants were a warlike race, who had long carried on incursions into the Byzantine territory, they were compelled to abandon their native city, and retire into Syria, carrying with them only their personal clothing. A rich cross, which the Saracens had taken when they destroyed the Byzantine army under Stypiotes in the year 877, was recovered and placed in the church of St. Sophia at Constantinople. The bronze gates of Tarsus and Mopsuestia, which were of rich workmanship, were also removed and placed by Nicephorus in the new citadel he had constructed to defend the palace. In the same year Cyprus was reconquered by an expedition under the command of the patrician Nicetas.

[Sidenote: [965-968 A.D.]]

For two years the emperor was occupied at Constantinople by the civil administration of the empire, by a threatened invasion of the Hungarians, and by disputes with the king of Bulgaria; but in 968 he again resumed the command of the army in the East. Early in spring he marched past Antioch at the head of eighty thousand men, and without stopping to besiege that city, he rendered himself master of the fortified places in its neighbourhood, in order to cut it off from all relief from the caliph of Baghdad. He then pushed forward his conquests; Laodicea, Hierapolis, Aleppo, Arca, and Emesa were taken, and Tripolis and Damascus paid tribute to save their territory from being laid waste. In this campaign many relics were surrendered by the Mohammedans. In consequence of the approach of winter, the emperor led his army into winter quarters, and deferred forming the siege of Antioch until the ensuing spring. He left the patrician Burtzes in a fort on the Black Mountain, with orders to watch the city and prevent the inhabitants from collecting provisions and military stores. The remainder of the army, under the command of Peter, was stationed in Cilicia. As he was anxious to reserve to himself the glory of restoring Antioch to the empire, he ordered his lieutenants not to attack the city during his absence. But one of the spies employed by Burtzes brought him the measure of the height of a tower which it was easy to approach, and the temptation to take the place by surprise was not to be resisted. Accordingly, on a dark winter night while there was a heavy fall of snow, Burtzes placed himself at the head of three hundred chosen men, and gained possession of two of the towers of Antioch. He immediately sent off a courier to Peter, requesting him to advance and take possession of the city; but Peter, from fear of the emperor’s jealousy, delayed moving to the assistance of Burtzes for three days. During this interval, however, Burtzes defended himself against the repeated attacks of the whole population, though with great difficulty. The Byzantine army at length arrived, and Antioch was annexed to the empire after having remained 328 years in the power of the Saracens. The emperor Nicephorus, instead of rewarding Burtzes for his energy, dismissed both him and Peter from their commands.

The Fatimite caliph Moëz reigned at Kairowan, and was already contemplating the conquest of Egypt. Nicephorus not only refused to pay him the tribute of eleven thousand gold byzants, stipulated by Romanus I, but even sent an expedition to wrest Sicily from the Saracens. The chief command was entrusted to Nicetas, who had conquered Cyprus; and the army, consisting chiefly of cavalry, was more particularly placed under the orders of Manuel Phocas, the emperor’s cousin, a daring officer. The troops were landed on the eastern coast, and Manuel rashly advanced, until he was surrounded by the enemy and slain. Nicetas also had made so little preparation to defend his position that his camp was stormed and he himself taken prisoner and sent to Africa.

[Sidenote: [965-969 A.D.]]

The affairs of Italy were, as usual, embroiled by local causes. Otto, the emperor of the West, appeared at the head of an army in Apulia, and having secured the assistance of Pandulf, prince of Beneventum, called Ironhead, carried on the war with frequent vicissitudes of fortune. Ironhead was taken prisoner by the Byzantine general, and sent captive to Constantinople. But the tyrannical conduct of the Byzantine officials lost all that was gained by the superior discipline of the troops, and favoured the progress of the German arms. Society had fallen into such a state of isolation that men were more eager to obtain immunity from all taxation than protection for industry and property, and the advantages of the Byzantine administration ceased to be appreciated.

The European provinces of the empire were threatened with invasion both by the Hungarians and Bulgarians. In 966 Nicephorus was apprised of the intention of the Hungarians, and he solicited the assistance of Peter, king of Bulgaria, to prevent their passing the Danube. Peter refused, for he had been compelled to conclude a treaty of peace with the Hungarians, who had invaded Bulgaria a short time before. It is even said that Peter took advantage of the difficulty in which Nicephorus appeared to be placed, by the numerous wars that occupied his troops, to demand payment of the tribute Romanus I had promised to Simeon. Nicephorus, in order to punish the insolence of one whom he regarded as his inferior, sent Calocyres, the son of the governor of Cherson, as ambassador to Russia, to invite Sviatoslaff, the Varangian prince of Kieff, to invade Bulgaria, and entrusted him with a sum of fifteen hundred pounds’ weight of gold, to pay the expenses of the expedition. Calocyres proved a traitor: he formed an alliance with Sviatoslaff, proclaimed himself emperor, and involved the empire in a bloody war with the Russians.

With all his defects, Nicephorus was one of the most virtuous men and conscientious sovereigns that ever occupied the throne of Constantinople. Though born of one of the noblest and wealthiest families of the Eastern Empire, and sure of obtaining the highest offices at a proud and luxurious court, he chose a life of hardship in pursuit of military glory; and a contemporary historian, Leo Diaconus,[o] who wrote after his family had been ruined by proscription and his name had become odious, observes, that no one had ever seen him indulge in revelry or debauchery even in his youth.[n]

Among the warriors who promoted his elevation, and served under his standard, a noble and valiant Armenian had deserved and obtained the most eminent rewards. The stature of Joannes Zimisces was below the ordinary standard; but this diminutive body was endowed with strength, beauty, and the soul of a hero. By the jealousy of the emperor’s brother, he was degraded from the office of general of the East, to that of director of the posts, and his murmurs were chastised with disgrace and exile. But Zimisces was ranked among the numerous lovers of the empress. On her intercession he was permitted to reside at Chalcedon, in the neighbourhood of the capital; her bounty was repaid in his clandestine and amorous visits to the palace; and Theophano consented with alacrity to the death of an ugly and penurious husband. Some bold and trusty conspirators were concealed in her most private chambers; in the darkness of a winter night Zimisces, with his principal companions, embarked in a small boat, traversed the Bosporus, landed at the palace stairs, and silently ascended a ladder of ropes, which was cast down by the female attendants. Neither his own suspicions, nor the warnings of his friends, nor the tardy aid of his brother Leo, nor the fortress which he had erected in the palace, could protect Nicephorus from a domestic foe, at whose voice every door was opened to the assassins. As he slept on a bearskin on the ground, he was roused by their noisy intrusion, and thirty daggers glittered before his eyes.

It is doubtful whether Zimisces imbrued his hands in the blood of his sovereign; but he enjoyed the inhuman spectacle of revenge. The murder was protracted by insult and cruelty; and as soon as the head of Nicephorus was shown from the window, the tumult was hushed, and the Armenian was emperor of the East. On the day of his coronation, he was stopped on the threshold of St. Sophia by the intrepid patriarch; who charged his conscience with the deed of treason and blood; and required, as a sign of repentance, that he should separate himself from his more criminal associate. This sally of apostolical zeal was not offensive to the prince, since he could neither love nor trust a woman who had repeatedly violated the most sacred obligations; and Theophano, instead of sharing his imperial fortune, was dismissed with ignominy from his bed and palace.

In their last interview, she displayed a frantic and impotent rage; accused the ingratitude of her lover; assaulted with words and blows her son Basil, as he stood silent and submissive in the presence of a superior colleague; and avowed her own prostitution in proclaiming the illegitimacy of his birth. The public indignation was appeased by her exile and the punishment of the meaner accomplices; the death of an unpopular prince was forgiven; and the guilt of Zimisces was forgotten in the splendour of his virtues. Perhaps his profusion was less useful to the state than the avarice of Nicephorus; but his gentle and generous behaviour delighted all who approached his person; and it was only in the paths of victory that he trod in the footsteps of his predecessor. The greatest part of his reign was employed in the camp and the field. His personal valour and activity were signalised on the Danube and the Tigris, the ancient boundaries of the Roman world; and by his double triumph over the Russians and the Saracens, he deserved the titles of saviour of the empire and conqueror of the East.[g]

FOOTNOTES

[42] [Isauria is an obsolete name referring to a district in Asia Minor bounded by Cilicia, Lycaonia, Phrygia, and Pisidia. The region was cold and rugged and the Isaurians accordingly independent and fond of raids. In 75 B.C., the Roman proconsul, P. Servilius, brought them to terms and received the epithet Isauricus, but the Romans were eventually glad to grant them freedom in return for peace. Justinian claimed to have subdued them. Two emperors came from Isauria, Zeno (474-495) and the epoch-making Leo.

Hertzberg[b] says that Leo was called Isaurian “probably from the nativity of his parents,” and thinks he was “born about 675 at Germanicia, on the borders of Cappadocia, Armenia, and Syria,” whence he was taken to Mesembria in Thrace by his parents after the Arab invasion. K. Schenk,[c] however, says, “I employ the epithet consecrated by the error of centuries, although Leo was sprung from Germanicia, and therefore is a Syrian.” Gelzer[d] accordingly calls Leo “the Syrian (Isaurian) emperor.” He calls the accession of Leo “a moment of true world-historical meaning.”]

[43] [Clinton[e] says, “The empire of Rome, properly so called, ends at 476 A.D.,” which is the third year of Zeno. Numismatists, like Saulcy,[f] place the commencement of the Byzantine Empire in the reign of Anastasius I. Gibbon[g] tells us, “Tiberius by the Arabs, and Maurice by the Italians, are distinguished as the first of the Greek Cæsars, as the founders of a new dynasty and empire. The silent revolution was accomplished before the death of Heraclius.” Bury,[h] on the other hand, vehemently denies the justice of using the word “Byzantine” at all, saying “no Byzantine Empire ever began to exist; the Roman Empire did not come to an end until 1453.” He accordingly clings to the expression “Later Roman Empire.” None the less, since Finlay[i] finds the word Byzantine a convenient term and places its proper beginning here, and since so many other historians old and new have given the word authority, it may well be allowed to stand.]

[44] Theodosius ended his life at Ephesus, where he was buried in the church of St. Philip. He ordered that his tombstone should bear no inscription but the word ΥΓΕΙΑ (Health).

[45] [This was in August, 717, according to western authorities, though the Arabs set it in 716.]

[46] [On the 8th of October, according to Theophanes.[j]]

[47] [According to Hefele[m] this commonly accepted statement is not true, since Leo’s first order was the total abolition of images.]

[48] [June, 741, is the date usually assigned to Leo’s death, but Bury[h] thinks that Theophanes[j] made a miscalculation, and he reckons from a solar eclipse and an Easter date, that Leo’s death actually occurred in 740.]

[49] [According to other accounts, he actually smote the statue in the face three times.]

[50] [His brother-in-law Artavasdos rebelled shortly after his accession and held Constantinople for two years before he could be expelled and imprisoned in a monastery.]

[51] [So Nicephorus[k] says, but Theophanes[j] says they returned unmolested.]

[52] [During the reigns of Leo IV, Constantine VI, and Irene there were frequent conflicts with the Saracens, the Bulgarians, and with the troops of Charlemagne, who at one time purposed to reunite the old Roman Empire by marrying Irene, on which Bury[h] comments that such a marriage of ill-assorted nations would have been followed by a speedy divorce.]

[53] [He called a General Council which anathematised Tarasius and Nicephorus, and, repealing the acts of the Council of Nicæa, reasserted those of 754.]

[54] [“‘Crete and Sicily’ were conquered by the Saracens without offering the resistance that might have been expected from the wealth and number of their inhabitants. Indeed, we are compelled to infer that the change from the orthodox sway of the emperors of Constantinople to the domination of the Mohammedans was not considered by the majority of the Greeks of Crete and Sicily so severe a calamity as we generally believe.”--FINLAY.[n]]

[55] [“It is the boast of orthodox historians that ten thousand Paulicians perished in this manner. Far greater numbers, however, escaped into the province of Melitene, where the Saracen emir granted them protection, and assisted them to plan schemes of revenge.”--FINLAY.[n]]

[56] [Finlay[n] thinks that some of these stories may be the inventions of flatterers of Michael’s assassin and successor, Basil.]

[57] [“Basil founded,” says Finlay[n], “the largest dynasty that ruled in the Byzantine empire.”]

[58] [The Saracens were driven out of various Italian strongholds which gave allegiance to Constantinople. But Sicily was lost in 878, and though Cyprus was regained, it was also lost again.]

[59] [That is, the colony of Paulician fugitives formed at Tephrike after the persecutions of Theodora.]

[60] [“The Basilica remained the law of the Byzantine empire,” says Finlay,[n] “till its conquest by the Franks, and it continued in use as the national law of the Greeks at Nicæa, Constantinople, and Trebizond and in the Morea, until they were conquered by the Ottomans.”]

[61] [Constantine was proclaimed Augustus in 868 and died in 879. He was the eighth of the name according to Eckhel and the ninth according to Humphreys.]

[62] [During the regency the Byzantines won a battle in Caria, and invaded Saracen territory with success.]

[63] [According to Finlay,[n] Romanus had sailed away without a battle, after the land-forces had been crushingly defeated by the Bulgarian king, Simeon, at Achelous, 917. In 921, and again in 923, Simeon penetrated to the walls of Constantinople. In 934 and in 943 the Hungarians had like success, being bought off on both occasions. In 963, however, they were defeated. The Italian provinces underwent similar vicissitudes.]