The murderers hastened to the cell of Michael the Amorian, and saluted him as emperor. He was drawn from his dungeon and presented to the people in the imperial robes, before the fetters had been struck from his feet, and ere the day was ended the patriarch had crowned him in St. Sophia (December 25, 820). Michael was very inferior to the man whom he had dethroned: he had nothing to back him save his military talent and a certain measure of unscrupulous ability. He was quite uneducated, and his provincial dialect and ungrammatical expressions were the jest of the court and capital. But he knew how to strike hard, and his harshness cowed his enemies more than Leo the Armenian’s mild policy. His accession was the signal for rebellion all over the empire: a certain Thomas raised the heretical sects of Asia Minor and the Iconoclast partisans of the late emperor in rebellion, and for three years made Michael’s throne insecure. He even beleaguered Constantinople, and might have taken it, had not his followers alienated public sympathy by their ravages in its neighbourhood. He was ultimately put down and slain, but his rebellion caused a serious loss to the empire. While the whole of the imperial fleet and army was acting against him, a horde of Saracen pirates descended on the great island of Crete, and overran it from end to end (825). After peace had been restored, Michael made two attempts to expel the adventurers, but both failed, and for a hundred and thirty five years the ‘island of the hundred cities’ remained a Saracen outpost, and a sad hindrance to the commerce of the Ægean. |Loss of Crete and Sicily.| Hardly had the expeditions sent against Crete returned with loss and disgrace, than Michael heard that a new province was being assailed by the same enemy. In 827 the Moslems of Africa, summoned by the traitor Euphemius, landed in Sicily, and began the conquest of that island. We have described its slow but steady progress in another chapter.[[67]]
[67]. See pp. [448] and [449].
The loss of these two outlying provinces does not seem to have troubled Michael. He was perhaps content that he was preserved from a greater Saracen war with the whole force of the caliphate, owing to the civil strife of the descendants of Haroun-al-Raschid. Nor did the peaceful Lewis the Pious stir up the Franks against him. The conquest of Crete and Sicily was a vexatious incident, not a pressing danger.
In dealing with the thorny ecclesiastical questions which had proved so dangerous to his predecessor, Michael the Amorian showed caution rather than zeal. His accession had been supported by the image-worshippers, who cordially detested Leo the Armenian. But when safe on the throne he refused to put himself into their hands, or to commence a persecution of the Iconoclasts. He was probably at heart a contemner of images himself, and his son and colleague Theophilus had a fierce hatred for them. His line of policy was to proclaim complete toleration of both parties, and to recall and replace the prelates whom Leo had banished. But in public worship he maintained the condition of things that he found existing, and refused to restore the images which his predecessor had removed or mutilated. On the other hand he allowed such figures and pictures as had escaped Leo’s hand to remain, and permitted the monks to practise as many superstitions as they pleased within the walls of their monasteries. Neither party was satisfied; both accused Michael of time-serving and lukewarm service of God, but they kept fairly quiet, and the controversy was for a time quiescent.
Michael reigned for nine years only, and at his death in 829 left the throne to his eldest son Theophilus, a man of much greater mark and individuality than himself. The new emperor was an active warlike prince, with a great love of splendour and pomp, and a strong determination to have his own will in all things. Moreover—and this was certain to give the empire troublous times—he was a firm and conscientious Iconoclast: it had been with great difficulty that his father restrained him from taking harsh measures against image-worship, while he was still only his junior colleague on the throne. The chroniclers bear strong witness to his courage, his personal virtues, and his even-handed justice, but his meddling in things ecclesiastical has sufficed to blacken his character in their pages.
The greater part of the reign of Theophilus was taken up with a long struggle with the caliphate. The Abbasside empire had been much weakened since the death of Haroun-al-Raschid, first by the civil strife between his sons, and then by the religious wars excited by the heterodox caliph El-Mamun. Theophilus thought that the ancient enemy was so reduced by the loss of many outlying provinces, and by long strife at home, that the empire would be able to win back some of the lands lost two centuries before by Heraclius. Accordingly he provoked a war with El-Mamun by sheltering the many refugees from Persia and Syria, who fled before the persecutions of the caliph. Unfortunately for Theophilus, the troubles of his adversary were just at an end, and the Saracens had their hands once more free for a struggle with the empire. The long war which set in revealed that the forces of the caliph and the emperor were now so evenly balanced that it was impossible for either to deal the other any deadly blow, but quite possible for each to harry and molest the other’s frontiers for an indefinite time. With some trifling interruptions of truce and armistice, it lasted more than thirty years. The caliph began the struggle by invading his neighbour’s Cappadocian borders, and overrunning the land as far as Heraclea (831). His fleets at the same time made some descents on the Cyclades and the Mysian coast. El-Mamun led three expeditions in person into Asia Minor, and after getting possession of the passes of Taurus, took the great town of Tyana at their northern exit, and fortified it as a base for further operations. Fortunately for Theophilus the caliph died at this moment, and his armies retired to Tarsus, abandoning their conquests beyond the mountains. The emperor was more fortunate against the new Saracen monarch, El-Motassem, the brother of El-Mamun. Theophilus was able to invade Syria and Mesopotamia, and to capture the important town of Samosata, where the Byzantine banners had not been seen since the time of Constantine Copronymus. But the ravages of Theophilus on the Euphrates, and especially his sack of Zapetra, a place for which El-Motassem had a special regard, provoked the Saracens to greater efforts. In 838 the caliph took the field at the head of a vast army: he had sworn to sack the emperor’s birthplace, Amorium, in revenge for the plundering of Zapetra, and it is said that 130,000 men marched out of Tarsus, each with the word ‘Amorium’ painted on his shield. |Theophilus beaten by Saracens, 838.| Theophilus hastened forth to defend his ancestral town: but one division of the Saracen army defeated him with great slaughter at Dasymon, while another, under the caliph’s personal orders, stormed Amorium and slew the whole population—men, women, and children—to the number of not less than 30,000.
Such a disaster, and the sight of the caliph’s troops advancing as far as the centre of Phrygia, seemed to portend danger to the empire. But having satiated his wrath and vengeance, El-Motassem retired, and the generals of Theophilus recovered the whole of the lost lands as far as the line of Taurus. Intestine troubles kept the caliph busy at home, and after the East-Romans had recommenced their invasions of Syria and taken Laodicea, the port of Antioch, a truce was patched up, which lasted, with some intermissions, down to the death of the emperor and the caliph, both of whom expired in 842.
|Theophilus persecutes image-worshippers.| When not employed in the field against the Saracens, Theophilus had been busy at home against the image-worshippers. In 832 he issued an edict against all kinds of representations of our Lord and the Saints, whether in the form of statues, pictures, or mosaics, and had them sought out and destroyed not only in public places, but in monasteries and private dwellings. His especial wrath was reserved for the painters whom he found working in secret to reproduce the prohibited figures; he mutilated their disobedient hands with hot irons, and branded their foreheads with words of contumely. The patriarch John the Grammarian aided the emperor by excommunicating all the clergy who refused to abide by the decrees of the synod of 754. Theophilus then laid hands on the recalcitrant monks and bishops, and imprisoned or banished them. His wrath, however, did not lead him into the extremes that the Isaurian emperors had countenanced; he did not inflict the penalty of death for disobedience, nor did he endeavour to suppress the monastic system, like Constantine Copronymus. Those who bent before the storm met no harsh treatment: it was only open disobedience that moved Theophilus to anger. His very palace was full of secret image-worshippers, chief among whom was his own wife, the empress Theodora.
Like his western contemporary Lewis the Pious, the emperor yielded to the unhappy inspiration of choosing a second wife by public competition. When his childless empress died in 830, he summoned all the fairest daughters of his nobles to his Court, and passed them in review. His eye was caught by the young Theodora, the child of the high-admiral Marinus, and he espoused her without taking the trouble to discover that she was a fervent and bigoted image-worshipper. During her husband’s life she concealed her views, and contented herself with protecting all the Iconodules whom she could shelter. But after Theophilus’s death she was destined to undo all his religious schemes, and to bring up his children to loathe their father’s creed.
In spite of the Saracen war and the ecclesiastical quarrels which rendered his life unquiet, the reign of Theophilus—like that of his father—was not an unprosperous time for the empire. His strict and exact justice benefited far more of his subjects than his bigotry harmed. The revenue was in such good condition that even in war-time he was able to execute many great public works—such as the strengthening and embellishing of the walls of the capital, and the building of many palaces and hospitals. His care for the fostering of trade was shown by the conclusion of commercial treaties, not only with Lewis the Pious, but even with the distant caliph of Cordova; and Constantinople became in his day more than ever the centre of the whole trade of Europe, because the Italian ports, which were her only rivals, were now suffering greatly from the occupation of the central Mediterranean by the Moors of Sicily.