The Byzantine Empire

by Charles Oman

XV. The Iconoclasts. (a.d. 720-802.)

If Leo the Isaurian had died on the day on which the army of the Caliph raised the siege of Constantinople it would have been well for his reputation in history. Unhappily for himself, though happily enough for the East-Roman realm, he survived yet twenty years to carry through a series of measures which were in his eyes not less important than the repulse of the Moslems from his capital. Historians have given to the scheme of reform which he took in hand the name of the Iconoclastic movement, because of the opposition to the worship of images which formed one of the most prominent features of his action.

For the last hundred years the empire had been declining in culture and civilization; literature and art seemed likely to perish in the never-ending clash of arms: the old-Roman jurisprudence was being forgotten, the race of educated civil servants was showing signs of extinction, the governors of provinces were now without exception rough soldiers, [pg 190] not members of that old bureaucracy whose Roman traditions had so long kept the empire together. Not least among the signs of a decaying civilization were the gross superstitions which had grown up of late in the religious world. Christianity had begun to be permeated by those strange mediæval fancies which would have been as inexplicable to the old-Roman mind of four centuries before as they are to the mind of the nineteenth century. A rich crop of puerile legends, rites, and observances had grown up of late around the central truths of religion, unnoticed and unguarded against by theologians, who devoted all their energies to the barren Monothelite and Monophysite controversies. Image-worship and relic-worship in particular had developed with strange rapidity, and assumed the shape of mere Fetishism. Every ancient picture or statue was now announced as both miraculously produced and endued with miraculous powers. These wonder-working pictures and statues were now adored as things in themselves divine: the possession of one of them made the fortune of a church or monastery, and the tangible object of worship seems to have been regarded with quite as much respect as the saint whose memory it recalled. The freaks to which image-worship led were in some cases purely grotesque; it was, for example, not unusual to select a picture as the godfather of a child in baptism, and to scrape off a little of its paint and produce it at the ceremony to represent the saint. Even patriarchs and bishops ventured to assert that the hand of a celebrated representation of the Virgin distilled fragrant balsam. [pg 191] The success of the Emperor Heraclius in his Persian campaign was ascribed by the vulgar not so much to his military talent as to the fact that he carried with him a small picture of the Virgin, which had fallen from heaven!

Bishops, Monks, Kings, Laymen, And Women, Adoring The Madonna. (From a Byzantine MS.) (From "L'Art Byzantin." Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883.)

All these vain beliefs, inculcated by the clergy and eagerly believed by the mob, were repulsive to the educated laymen of the higher classes. Their dislike for vain superstitions was emphasized by the influence [pg 192] of Mahometanism on their minds. For a hundred years the inhabitants of the Asiatic provinces of the empire had been in touch with a religion of which the noblest feature was its emphatic denunciation of idolatry under every shape and form. An East-Roman, when taunted by his Moslem neighbour for clinging to a faith which had grown corrupt and idolatrous, could not but confess that there was too much ground for the accusation, when he looked round on the daily practice of his countrymen.

Hence there had grown up among the stronger minds of the day a vigorous reaction against the prevailing superstitions. It was more visible among the laity than among the clergy, and far more widespread in Asia than in Europe. In Leo the Isaurian this tendency stood incarnate in its most militant form, and he left the legacy of his enthusiasm to his descendants. Seven years after the relief of Constantinople he commenced his crusade against superstition. The chief practices which he attacked were the worship of images and the ascription of divine honours to saints—more especially in the form of Mariolatry. His son Constantine, more bold and drastic than his father, endeavoured to suppress monasticism also, because he found the monks the most ardent defenders of images; but Leo's own measures went no further than a determined attempt to put down image-worship.

The struggle which he inaugurated began in a.d. 725, when he ordered the removal of all the images in the capital. Rioting broke out at once, and the officials who were taking down the great figure of [pg 193] Christ Crucified, over the palace-gate, were torn to pieces by a mob. The Emperor replied by a series of executions, and carried out his policy all over the empire by the aid of armed force.

The populace, headed by the monks, opposed a bitter resistance to the Emperor's doings, more especially in the European provinces. They set the wildest rumours afloat concerning his intentions; it was currently reported that the Jews had bought his consent to image-breaking, and that the Caliph Yezid had secretly converted him to Mahometanism. Though Leo's orthodoxy in matters doctrinal was unquestioned, and though he had no objection to the representation of the cross, as distinguished from the crucifix, he was accused of a design to undermine the foundations of Christianity. Arianism was the least offensive fault laid to his account. The Emperor's enemies did not confine themselves to passive resistance to his crusade against images. Dangerous revolts broke out in Greece and Italy, and were not put down without much fighting. In Italy, indeed, the imperial authority was shaken to its foundations, and never thoroughly re-established. The Popes consistently opposed the Iconoclastic movement, and by their denunciation of it placed themselves at the head of the anti-imperial party, nor did they shrink from allying themselves with the Lombards, who were now, as always, endeavouring to drive the East-Roman garrisons from Ravenna and Naples.