But the most painful feature of the time was that the decay of arts and letters had been accompanied by the growth of a dense superstition and ignorance which would have seemed incredible to the ancient Roman of the fourth, or even the fifth century. Although Constantinople still preserved all the great literary works of antiquity, the minds of its rulers were no more influenced by them than were the eyes and hands of its craftsmen inspired by the great works of Greek sculpture that still adorned the streets. It was a time of the growth of countless silly superstitions, of witchcraft and necromancy, of the framing of wild legends of apocryphal saints, and of strange misconceptions of natural phenomena.

Image

Among the most prominent tokens of this growth of irrational superstitions was the great tendency of the seventh century towards image-worship,-Iconoduly as its opponents called the practice. In direct opposition to early Christian custom, it became common to ascribe the most strange and magical powers to representations, whether sculptured or painted, of Our Lord and the Saints. They were not merely regarded as useful memorials to guide the piety of believers, but were thought to have a holiness inherent in themselves, and to be capable of performing the most astonishworship. ing miracles. Heraclius possessed, and carried about with him as a fetich, a picture which he believed to have been painted in heaven by angelic hands, and thought it brought him all manner of luck. The crucifix over the door of the imperial palace was believed to have used human speech. Even patriarchs and bishops affirmed that the hand of a celebrated picture of the Virgin in the capital distilled fragrant balsam. Every church and monastery had its wonderworking image, and drew no small revenue from pious offerings to it. The freaks to which image-worship led were often most grotesque: it was, for example, a well-known practice to make a favourite picture the god-father of a child in baptism, by scraping off a little of its paint and mixing it with the baptismal water.

The act for which the name of Leo the Isaurian is best remembered is the issue of his edict against these puerile superstitions, and his attempt to put down image-worship all through his realm. Leo was not only a man of strong common sense, but he was sprung from those lands on the Mohammedan border where Christians had the best opportunity of comparing the gross and material adoration of their co-religionists for stones and paint, with the severe spiritual worship of the followers of Islam. The Moslem was always taunting the Christian with serving idols, and the taunt found too much justification in many practices of the vulgar. Thinking men like Leo were moved by the Moslem's sneer into a horror of the superstitious follies of their contemporaries. They fortified themselves by the view that to make representation of the Godhead savoured of heresy, because it laid too much stress on the manhood as opposed to the divinity of Our Lord. Such an idea was no new thing : it had often been mooted among the Eastern Christians, though more often by schismatics than by Catholics. Of Leo's own orthodoxy, however, there was no doubt: even his enemies could not convict him of swerving in the least from the faith: it was only on this matter of image-worship that he differed from them. Wherever he plucked down the crucifix he set up the plain cross-on the standards of his army, on the gates of his palace, on his money, on his imperial robes. It was purely to the anthropomorphic representation of Our Lord and to the over-reverence for images of saints that he objected.

Iconoclasm.

Leo was no mere rough soldier: his parents were people of some wealth, and he had entered the army as an imperial aide-de-camp (spathiarius), not as one of the rank and file.1 It is probable therefore that he was sufficiently educated to object to image-worship on rational and philosophic grounds, not from the mere unthinking prejudice picked up from

1 The story that he began life as a poor huckster travelling about with a mule is one of the many inventions of his enemies the monks.

Saracens or heretics. This much is certain, that from the moment that he declared his policy he found the greatest support among the higher officers of the civil service and the army. Educated laymen were as a rule favourable to his views: the mass of the soldiery followed him, and the eastern provinces as a whole acquiesced in his reformation. On the other hand, he found his chief opponents among the monks, whose interests were largely bound up with image-worship, and among the lower classes, who were blindly addicted to it. The European themes were as a whole opposed to him: the further west the province the more Iconodulic were its tendencies. Of the whole empire Italy was the part where Leo's views found the least footing.

Leo began his crusade against image-worship in 726, eight years after his great victory over the Saracens. The empire was by this time quieted down and reorganised; two rebellions had also been crushed, one under a certain Basil in Italy, the other under the ex-emperor Artemius Anastasius, who had tried to resume the crown by the aid of the Bulgarians. The heads of Basil and Artemius had fallen, and no more trouble from rebellion was expected. Leo's edict forbade all imageworship as irreverent and superstitious, and ordered the removal of all holy statues and the white-washing of all holy pictures on church walls. From the very first the emperor's Leo's Icono- commands met with a lively resistance. When clastic Edict. his officials began to remove the great crucifixover the palace gate, a mob fell upon them and beat them to death with clubs. Leo sent out troops to clear the streets, and many of the rioters were slain. This evil beginning was followed by an equally disastrous sequel. All over the empire the bulk of the clergy declared against the emperor: in many provinces they began to preach open sedition. The Pope, as we have already seen when telling the fate of Italy, put himself at the head of the movement, and sent most insulting letters to Constantinople. In 727 Rome refused obedience to the edict, and what was of more immediate danger, the

theme of Hellas rose in open rebellion.

The garrison

troops and the populace, incited by the preaching of fanatical monks, joined to proclaim a certain Cosmas emperor. They fitted out a fleet to attack Constantinople, but it was defeated, and the rebel emperor was taken prisoner and beheaded. It is acknowledged, however, even by Leo's enemies, that he treated the bulk of the prisoners and the rebel theme with great mildness. Indeed, he seldom punished disobedience to his edict with death: stripes and imprisonment were the more frequent rewards of those whom the Iconodules styled heroes and confessors of the true faith. Leo was determined that his edict should be carried out, but he was not by nature a persecutor: it was as rioters or rebels, not as imageworshippers, that his enemies were punished, just as in the reign of Elizabeth of England the Jesuit suffered, not as a Papist, but as a traitor. Leo deposed the aged patriarch Germanus for refusing to work with him, but did him no further harm. In general it was by promoting Iconoclasts, not by maltreating Iconodules, that he worked.

The last thirteen years of Leo's reign (727-40) were on the whole a time of success for the emperor. He succeeded in getting his edict enforced over the greater part of the empire, in spite of some open and more secret resistance; only Italy defied him. From the reconquest of Rome he was kept back by the necessity of providing for the defence of the East, for in 726 the caliph Hisham-hearing no doubt of Leo's domestic troubles commenced once more to invade the Asiatic themes. In 727 a Saracen host pushed forward as far as Nicaea, where it was repelled and forced to retire. Wars with There were less formidable invasions in 730, 732, the Saracen. and 737-8, but none led to any serious loss, and the imperial boundary stood firmly fixed in the passes of the Taurus. The Saracen war practically ended with a great victory won by Leo in person at Acroinon, in the Anatolic theme, where an army 1 The stories of the sufferings of Germanus are late inventions of Iconodule writers.

of 20,000 Arab raiders was cut to pieces with the loss of all its chiefs. The house of the Ommeyad Caliphs was already verging towards its decline: it never again prepared any expedition approaching the strength of the great armament of Moslemah, which Leo had so effectually turned back in 718, and its later sovereigns were not of the type of those fanatical conquerors who had cut the boundaries of the empire short in the preceding century. Leo had effectually staved off any imminent danger to eastern Christendom from Moslem conquest for three full centuries.

Leo was succeeded by his son Constantine, fifth of that name according to the usual reckoning, sixth if the grandson of Heraclius be given his true name, and not the erroneous title of Constans II. The second of the Isaurian emperors, however, is less known by the numeral affixed to his name than by the insulting epithet of Copronymus, which his Iconodulic enemies bestowed on him-showing thereby their own bad taste rather than any unworthiness on the part of their sovereign.

Constantine

740-75.

Constantine was a young man of twenty-two at the moment of his accession. He had long acted as his father's colleague, and was thoroughly trained in Leo's methods of administration, and indoctrinated with his Iconoclastic views. Copronymus, He seems, while possessing a great measure of his father's energy and ability, to have been inferior to him in two respects. Leo had combined caution with courage, and knew how to exercise moderation. Constantine was bold to excess, did not understand half-measures or toleration, and carried through every scheme with a high hand. Moreover, while Leo's private life had been blameless and even severe, Constantine was a votary of pleasure, fond of pomp and shows, devoted to musical and theatrical entertainments, and sometimes lapsing into debauchery. Hence it is easy to see why he has been dealt with by the chroniclers of the next century in an even harsher spirit than his father, and is represented as a monster of cruelty and vice.