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
[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.
[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.