The Historians' History of the World 07 [The History of the Later Roman Empire]

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

[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.