THE religious policy of the Empress Irene, the concentrated and impassioned devotion which she brought to the task of restoring the cult of images, had produced, in the external affairs of the Empire no less than in its internal condition, results which were largely injurious. Her financial policy, and the considerable remissions of taxation which she had agreed to in the hope of assuring her popularity and of recommending herself to the Church, had had no better success. An onerous task was thus laid upon her successor. He had to remedy the penury of the exchequer, to restore order to a thoroughly disturbed State, by prudent administration to extinguish the memories of a bitter and lengthy quarrel, and thus to quiet its last convulsive heavings.

Such was the end aimed at, it would seem, from the opening of his reign by the new Emperor Nicephorus I (802-811). From his opponents he has met with hardly better treatment than the great iconoclast sovereigns of the eighth century. Theophanes declares “that on all occasions he acted not after God but to be seen of men”, and that in all his actions “he shamelessly violated the law”, and he severely blames his “unmeasured love of money”, comparing him to “a new Ahaz, more covetous than Phalaris and Midas”. In reality, Nicephorus seems to have been a talented ruler, anxious to fulfill his duties as Emperor, a man of moderate temper and comparatively tolerant. He renounced the violent courses adopted by the Iconoclast Emperors, but he was determined to maintain the great work of reform which they had carried out. A good financier—before his accession he had filled the high office of Logothete-General—he desired to restore to the treasury the supplies of which it stood in need, and in the very first year of his reign he reimposed the greater part of the taxes imprudently abolished by Irene, until in 810 he had thought out a comprehensive scheme of financial reorganization, of which the most essential feature was the abrogation of the numerous fiscal exemptions enjoyed by Church property. A man very jealous of his authority—he bitterly reproaches his predecessors with having had no idea of the true methods of government—he would never tolerate the idea of any person being more powerful than himself, and claimed to impose his will upon the Church as well as the State. His adversaries the monks forgave nothing of all this, and have depicted him as a tyrant, oppressive, cruel, hypocritical, and debauched, while it is also plain that, owing to the harshness of his financial measures, he was highly unpopular. “Everybody” as one of his courtiers said to him, “exclaims against us, and if any misfortune happens to us, there will be general rejoicing at our fall”. Yet it would appear that Nicephorus, in difficult times, possessed some of the qualities which go to make a good Emperor.

But passions were still so much heated that everything offered matter for strife. The monks were outraged at the idea of ecclesiastical property being liable to taxation and Church tenants subject to a poll-tax. They vehemently denied the right of the Emperor to interfere in religious matters. They even resisted the authority of the Patriarch Nicephorus, who in 806 had succeeded Tarasius. Yet Nicephorus brought to his high office a fervent zeal for the reform of the monasteries and the destruction of heresy, and thus would have seemed likely to be acceptable to the monks of the Studion and their fiery Abbot Theodore. But, before attaining to the patriarchate, Nicephorus had been a layman, and it was necessary to confer all the grades of holy orders on him at the same time. Consequently the Studite monks violently protested against his election. But above all the new Patriarch was, like the Emperor, a statesman of opportunist tendencies desirous of pacifying men’s minds and of obliterating the traces of recent struggles. At the request of the Basileus, he summoned a Synod to restore to his sacerdotal functions the priest Joseph, who had formerly been excommunicated for having solemnized the marriage of the Emperor Constantine VI and Theodote. The assembly, despite the protests of Theodore of Studion, complied with the Patriarch’s wish, and even restored Joseph to the dignity of Grand Oeconomus (807). This was the origin of the long quarrel called the “Moechian controversy” (from mixós, adulterer, whence the name Moechiani given to the supporters of Joseph’s rehabilitation).

The monks of the Studion resolutely withdrew from communion with the Patriarch. “We shall endure everything”, Theodore declared, “death itself, rather than resume communion with the Oeconomus and his accomplices. As to the Patriarch, he makes us no answer, he refuses to hear us, he is, in everything, at the Emperor’s orders. For my part, I will not betray the truth despite the threat of exile, despite the gleaming sword, despite the kindled faggots”. And indeed the Emperor quickly became impatient of an opposition which disturbed the peace of the Church afresh, and which irritated him the more keenly in that it claimed to subject the conduct and marriage of an Emperor to canonical rules. Another Synod, held in 809, reiterated therefore the lawfulness. of Constantine VI’s espousals, declared that the Emperors were above the law of the Church, and pronounced sentence of excommunication upon all gainsayers. The old Abbot Plato, Theodore of Studion, and his brother Joseph, Archbishop of Thessalonica, were banished to the Princes Islands; the seven hundred monks of the Studion, who vehemently refused to go over to the side of the temporal power, were scattered, imprisoned, maltreated, driven into exile. For two whole years persecution raged. The fact was, as Theodore of Studion truly wrote, “it was no longer a mere question of ecclesiastical discipline that was at stake. A breach has been made in faith and morals and in the Gospel itself”. And in opposition to the Emperor’s claim to set himself above the laws of the Church and to make his will prevail, Theodore boldly appealed to Rome, and to secure the liberty of the Eastern Church he invoked the judgment of the Pope, “the first of pastors”, as he wrote, “and our apostolic head”.

Thus, despite the good intentions of the Emperor and his Patriarch, passions flared up afresh; and such was the fanaticism of the devout party that they ignored the grave dangers threatening the Empire, and even looked upon the death of the Emperor, who fell fighting against the Bulgars on the disastrous day of 25 July 811, as a just punishment from God upon their cruel foe.

Michael I Rangabé 

Michael I Rangabé (811-813) succeeded his father-in-law Nicephorus, after the short reign of Stauracius, the son of the late Emperor. He was a prince after the Church’s heart, “pious and most orthodox”, writes Theophanes; his chief anxiety was to repair all the injustices of the preceding reign, “on account of which”, adds Theophanes, “Nicephorus had miserably perished”. He recalled the Studites from exile, caused the Oeconomus Joseph to be condemned anew, and at this cost succeeded in reconciling the monks with the Patriarch. He showed himself a supporter of images, anxious to come to an understanding with Rome, and firmly opposed to the iconoclasts. Such a policy, at a time when the Bulgarian war was raging and the terrible Khan Krum threatening Constantinople, was grossly imprudent. The iconoclasts, indeed, were still strong in the capital, where Constantine V had settled numerous colonists from the East, and where the Paulicians, in particular, occupied an important place; besides which almost the whole army had remained faithful to the memory of the illustrious Emperors who had formerly led it to victory. Thus Constantinople was in a state of tense excitement; plots were brewing against Michael; noisy demonstrations took place at the tomb of Constantine V. When in June 813 Michael I was defeated by the Bulgars at Versinicia, near Hadrianople, the iconoclasts considered the opportunity favorable for dethroning the Emperor. The army proclaimed one of its generals, Leo the Armenian, Strategus of the Anatolics, begging him “to watch over the safety of the State, and to defend the Christian Empire”. On 11 July the usurper entered Constantinople. His accession was to be the signal for a supreme effort to impose iconoclast ideas upon the Empire.

Leo V the Armenian

The new Emperor, who was of Eastern origin, was, although secretly, an iconoclast at heart. But so great was the peril from outside—the Bulgars were besieging Constantinople—that he was at first obliged to cloak his tendencies, and to sign a confession of faith by which he pledged himself to defend the orthodox religion and the veneration of the sacred icons. But when he had inflicted a severe defeat on the barbarians at Mesembria (813), and when the death (14 April 814) of the terrible Khan Krum had led to the conclusion of a truce for thirty years with his successor Omurtag, Leo no longer hesitated to make his real feelings known. Drawing his inspiration from the same ideas as those on which the resolutions of Leo III had been based, he declared that if the Christians were always beaten by the pagans,...