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Isaurian Dynasty - 717-802

The Heraclian dynasty, which had fallen on evil times and rendered inestimable services to the Empire, came to an end in anarchy, which was terminated by the elevation of the Syrian (commonly called Isaurian) Leo III [r 717-740], whose reign opened a new period. Leo III as a great administrative reformer ranks with Augustus and Diocletian. His reforming hand was active in every sphere of government, but the ill-fame which he won by his iconoclastic policy obscured in the memory of posterity the capital importance of his work. His provincial organization was revolutionary, and his legislation departed from the Roman tradition. From his reign to the middle of the 10th century the continuous warfare by land with the Caliphs consisted of marauding expeditions of each power into the other's territory, captures of fortresses, guerilla fighting, but no great conquests or decisive battles.

Leo III, "the Isaurian," seems really to have been born rather in Cappadocia than in those rugged Isaurian mountains of Asia Minor, which through many ages were the haunt of an unruly but war-loving population. His parents had migrated to Thrace and were well-to-do peasants. He entered the army; became an imperial spatharios (aide-de-camp) and during the tumultuous years preceding the great siege showed himself a pastmaster in dealing with the Saracens whether in warfare or intrigue. Taken in the large he comes on the scene as a soldier of fortune of the better type; a considerable mixture of the fox and the lion; able to fight bravely, and, as it turned out, with very clear-cut ideas as to what ought to be done when the chance came for civil reformation. He had need for all his craft and all his valor.

In 717 the "City guarded of God" sustained the most momentous siege it ever had to endure until the iniquitous Fourth Crusade. On September 1, the Vizier Suleiman appeared with a fleet counted (probably with decided exaggeration) at 1800 vessels. By land and sea this armament perhaps represented the best effort of the entire Omiad kalifate. It was well understood that any land assaults upon the great fortifications completed by Theodosius were likely to fail. The capital was most vulnerable from the water front; and of course it could be starved out by a prolonged blockade on all sides. The imperial navy was apparently too weak to meet Suleiman's fleet on the open seas, but the actual margin of naval superiority was not very heavily on the side of the Orientals. Leo had also at his disposal an engine of warfare which had possibly been used in the earlier siege, but of which the Moslems now endured the full terrors-"Greek fire." Leo's adroit diplomacy induced Terbel, king of the Bulgars, to advance by land against the covering forces of the Saracens, and 22,000 of the latter are reported to have been slain in this first battle in which the pagan Bulgarians may be said to have posed as the defenders of European civilization. Thereupon Moslemah raised the siege precipitately.

The capture of Constantinople by the Moslems in 717-718 would have had incalculable consequences. The last real stronghold of the classical civilization would have been destroyed at an hour when Papal Rome was almost in the clutches of the barbarous and imperfectly Christianized Lombards; when the Frankish Mayors of the Palace were struggling to establish something like nominal order in the degraded kingdom of the Merovingians, and when Britain was rent between the warring princes of Wessex, Mercia, and Northumbria. Whether Christianity in any recognizable form could have survived such a disaster is not clear. Certainly after taking Constantinople the Moslems could easily have mastered the Balkan peninsula; and the conquest of Italy as an easy military proceeding would, under the existing conditions, have been almost inevitable. After that, from every modern standpoint there would have succeeded chaos and black night. Whatever constituted the strength of Saracenic civilization, it goes without saying that modern Europe and America would be impossible under the Koran.

Leo the Isaurian (717-740 AD) was more happy than Heraclius. He reigned many years after his victory with increasing glory and prosperity. Having shown himself an exceedingly competent soldier, Leo now proved himself an equally competent statesman.2 Doubtless he had able helpers, and the glory for giving to the Christian Levant a new lease of vigorous life under a strong and intelligent government should be properly distributed; but so completely now at Constantinople was the power lodged in the hands of the sovran that the credit to Leo is undeniable. Already since the days of Heraclius the "Graecianizing" of the state was proceeding apace. The loss of Syria and Egypt of course weakened the ultra-Oriental influences in the administration; that of Africa took away a province that was nominally Latinized. The hold of the imperial exarch of Ravenna upon Italy every year grew weaker. The former Latin-speaking portions of the Balkan peninsula were in the power of the Slavs or Bulgars. Only the Greek-speaking provinces held fast; and here in the lands where after a fashion the tongue of Plato was still talked in the little villages, the old civilization stood at bay. Thanks to the skill of Leo and his successors, this defense was long.

During the seventh and early eighth centuries the Empire rapidly changed itself from "Roman" to "Byzantine." Since about 600 all laws had been promulgated solely in Greek. Since the days of Heraclius Greek began to crowd off Latin on the legends on the coins (usually one of the last of such matters to change). The military names are Hellenized; we hear no longer of "Counts" (comites) but of strategoi-like the Athenian war-ministers of old. The Emperor is saluted as the Basileus (literally merely "King," but now practically "Great King"),3 he is Despot (Master) and Antocrator (autocrat). Another high imperial title is Isapostolos ("equal to the Apostles") an honorific uninterpretable to the first Augustus. There are vital reorganizations in the civil administration and in the army. "Romaioi," the subjects of such a government may still have been, but not the "Romani" of grand tradition. Yet there is no contemporary sign betraying the consciousness of any repudiation of the past. It is safe rather to say that after 717 AD the Christian Greek element in the Empire becomes even more conspicuous; the ancient Roman element obviously fades. This epoch is therefore "Byzantine."

In the famous "Isaurian" dynasty the Graeco-Roman power, which had been threatened at its very source by the triumphant Caliphs, once more shewed itself the strongest force in the world. Again orthodoxy made overtures of peace to Monophysitism, but in a very different form from those of the sixth and seventh centuries. The schismatic or heretical churches, whether Nestorian or Monophysite, shewed a conservatism greater than that exhibited by the Catholics in maintaining a simplicity in church ornamentation which orthodoxy had long abandoned. The images or pictures, originally introduced, to use the words of John of Damascus, as "books for the unlearned," had not found a place in the Monophysite or Nestorian churches; but among the orthodox had become objects of superstitious reverence. To remove this scandal and to save the Church from the reproach of Jews and Muslims as well as to conciliate the Christians outside its pale, Leo the Isaurian in 726 issued his celebrated edict against the images and inaugurated the Iconoclastic controversy. Since the Monophysites opposed the attempt to represent the human appearance of our Lord as contrary to their doctrine of the loss of his manhood in the infinity of his Godhead, the edict was sure to find favour in their eyes.

The conclusion and spread of this development of local powers formed the social change which led to the great Italian revolt in the first third of the eighth century. The state of anarchy in the centre of the Empire and the dangers by which Constantinople itself was threatened through the advance of Islam, had been a powerful help to the Italian struggle for independence. Different parts of Italy had at various times witnessed risings of the local powers, till the separate discontented forces united in a great opposition movement under the leadership of the pope. This took place when Gregory II boldly withheld the increased tax which Leo the Isaurian, the great organiser of the Byzantine Empire, attempted to raise for the benefit of the central government; and when, in addition to this, the edict against the worship of images and the outbreak of Iconoclasm incited religious passions against the imperial reformer.

The first act of the rebels was to expel the exarch and the duces, the representatives of the central government, and to replace them by confidential friends of the local powers. At Rome the pope and at Venice an elected dux (doge) took the place of the former authorities. The dido, as it was then called, was by this revolt transferred from the emperor to the local authorities, though they remained in formal adherence to the Empire. This, at least, was the pope's wish, and no emperor set up by the opposition in Italy was generally recognised.

The suppression of the revolt resulted in the resumption of the dido by the emperor, and during the next generation Italy was again ruled by his deputies and appointed duces. The fact, however, that in consequence of the Italian revolt the local powers had for a number of years been practically independent, could not be undone. Henceforth it was impossible to appoint officials in the place of tribunes. In the local organisation the landed proprietors had gained a complete victory over the bureaucracy, and in this the hereditary principle had prevailed. But the bureaucratic superstructure, by which the emperor exercised his dido, was entirely out of touch with the seigniorial element at its base, and from this resulted - at least as far as North and Central Italy were concerned, where the revolution had temporarily taken a firm hold - the complete and permanent dissolution of the central power of the State.

The efficiency of the army was carefully maintained, but the neglect of the navy led to the losses of Crete (conquered by Moslem adventurers from Spain 826) and Sicily (conquered by the Saracens of Africa), Panormus taken 832, and Syracuse in 878. The Africans also made temporary conquests, including Bari, in south Italy. This period saw the loss of the exarchate of Ravenna to the Lombards (750), the expansion of the Frankish power under Pippin and Charlemagne in Italy, and in close connexion therewith the loss of Old Rome.