Lost to the West (22 page)

The pope’s words had little effect in the East, where thousands of images were smashed or torn apart; but for every one destroyed, there seemed to be a dozen more that escaped. Nearly every household had its share of icons, from simple wooden carvings to more elaborate ones of enamel or etched metal, and these wouldn’t be given up easily. Leo, however, was nothing if not thorough, and his soldiers moved through the city, confiscating icons and painting over the mosaics that adorned church walls. The monasteries tried to resist, especially the powerful Saint John of Studius within the city walls, but there was little they could do. Hundreds of monks fled with their precious icons to the wilds of Cappadocia, where they carved secret
churches into the soft rock and waited for popular opinion to sweep their cruel emperor from power.

It was hard, however, for popular opinion to argue with results. Leo had driven the Arabs away from the walls of Constantinople, and when he smashed another Muslim army in 740, it seemed (as Leo himself claimed) that God was pleased and had vindicated the emperor’s purge of the idol worshippers. This argument was dented somewhat the next year, when an earthquake—always an ominous sign—rocked the capital, but Leo was already dying, and in the early summer he expired of dropsy, leaving the issue to his son.

He had saved Byzantium from conquest by the Muslims, and he had been the first emperor in half a century to die in his bed, but the empire he left behind was dangerously divided. The iconoclastic controversy (literally, the “smashing of icons”) that he had unleashed would rage for the better part of a century and force Christianity to come to terms with a question it had always seen in shades of gray: Where exactly was the line between veneration and idolatry? Did mortal depictions of the divine illuminate faith, by allowing previous generations to speak of their belief, or pollute it, by setting up graven images? For a moment, the fate of Western art hung in the balance.

There was some hope that Leo III’s son, Constantine
V
, would resolve the matter, but he proved even more inflammatory than his father. Steeped in the hatred of icons since birth, he emerged as the most ferocious iconoclast ever to sit on the Byzantine throne. In his view, the church was festering with idol worship, and he demanded that the entire clergy take an oath not to venerate icons. So firm was he in the belief that Christ alone was deserving of worship that the very mention of titles like “saint” or “holy”—even as an expletive—would send him into fits of rage. His hatred of monks who resisted was such that he would on occasion smear their beards with oil and set them on fire. When the patriarch objected to the harsh treatment and refused to take the oath, the emperor had him whipped and incarcerated, then humiliated the man by parading him around the Hippodrome on the back of a mangy donkey. Declaring war on the powerful monasteries in
the empire, he forced monks and nuns to marry, confiscated church property, and lodged imperial troops in monastic houses.

The emperor employed theologians to press his case, but he was a highly educated man who was also perfectly capable of defending his beliefs himself. He would often point out that the great fourth-century saint Basil of Caesarea had condemned the veneration of images, when he had written that the worship of a likeness of the emperor was just as bad as worshipping the emperor
^*
Constantine
V
, however, wanted more than old quotes to bolster his claims; he wanted official sanction for his war against icons. Church opinion was hopelessly split over the issue and not likely to support the extremist emperor, but there was more than one way to force the issue. Invoking a great council of the entire church, Constantine V packed it with his supporters and refused to let any dissenting opinion be represented. Not surprisingly, the council handed down a ringing endorsement of the emperor’s position. Icons, relics, and prayers to the saints were all forms of idolatry and therefore condemned. Even the emperor’s most savage purges could now claim the trappings of ecclesiastical support, and public executions took on a momentum of their own. Those who refused to embrace iconoclasm were beaten, mutilated, and even stoned in the streets, all with the tacit encouragement of the throne.

Constantine V was able to prosecute his personal war so ferociously because he—like his father—had the great advantage of being militarily successful and therefore popular. Even the appearance of the plague—the last recorded appearance of the black death in Constantinople until the fourteenth century—couldn’t disrupt his success. In nine brilliant campaigns, Constantine V shattered the Bulgars, restoring some control over the impoverished Balkans. Taking advantage of the overextended and internally divided Muslims,
the emperor chased them from Asia Minor, even managing to restore some semblance of control over the island of Cyprus.
^*

The unexpected victories were certainly welcome, but even Constantine’s most vehement supporters nervously watched the damage that his religious policies were wreaking. Hopelessly split between those who loved icons and those who wanted to destroy them, Byzantium was deeply unsure of itself and breaking apart at the seams. Even worse, Constantine’s ferocious war on icons estranged the West at the very moment that Byzantine power depended on loyalty. Abandoned by an emperor who considered him a heretic, the pope could only watch as the Lombards annihilated the imperial government at Ravenna. Byzantine power was reduced to a last bastion in the heel of Italy, and even that seemed vulnerable. After nearly eight centuries, the Caesars had finally been expelled from their ancient capital; never again would a soldier of the Roman Empire set foot in the Eternal City. Casting around for a new protector to shield him from the Lombards, the pope found the perfect candidate in the Frankish king Pépin the Short. Answering the call, Pépin swept into Italy, destroyed the Lombards, and turned over control of what would become the Papal States to the pope.
†
Constantinople was humiliated by the developments, but worse to the empire than the loss of territory was the spiritual damage.

In Constantine
V
, the empire at last had a strong, capable emperor on the throne, and if not for his zealotry might have been poised on the edge of a spectacular recovery. As the heir of Constantine the Great, he was in theory the temporal leader of Christendom. Every citizen of the old empire of Rome—even those buried by the shifting
barbarian kingdoms of the West—owed him their allegiance and, at least in principle, had always recognized his authority. Political realities may have forced them to acknowledge local petty kings, but there was only one God in heaven and only one emperor on earth. For those in the lost lands that had fallen in the Muslim conquests, the situation was even clearer. The majority of the population was Christian, and they dreamed and prophesied of a time when the emperor would return and deliver them from their bondage. So devoted were they to Constantinople that the Arabs called them the “emperor’s church” and lived in fear of a mass uprising. All that was needed was a strong figure who could deliver the counterstroke and satisfy their deep longing to return to an empire that shared the true faith.

But instead of seizing the opportunity, Constantine V threw it away. His harsh persecution cut off Asia Minor from the larger Christian community beyond the imperial borders.
^*
Those in the East turned away, disgusted by an empire that had seemingly lost its mind, while those in the West began to question the imperial claims to universal authority. They didn’t yet dare to claim equality with Constantinople, but that day was fast approaching. The chance of a united Christendom, sheltered under a restored empire, slipped away forever. In their anger at icons, Constantine and his father had destroyed their own spiritual claims. Nothing would ever be quite the same again.

^*
On the Venetian lagoon, the horrified citizens rebelled and appointed a local leader as
dux
, or doge, and the Venetian Republic—both an ally and an inveterate enemy of the empire—was born.

^*
Western Europe went through its own version of iconoclasm during the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. In defense of their destruction of images, the more extreme Protestants quoted the same church fathers that their Byzantine predecessors had.

^*
The Greek island had seesawed from Christian to Muslim control since the late seventh century, and Constantine forced the Arabs to recognize joint custody with the empire. This arrangement—oddly foreshadowing the situation today—was eventually resolved in the empire’s favor, and Cyprus remained in Byzantine hands until Richard the Lion-Hearted conquered it at the end of the twelfth century.

†
The last remaining part of which is still with us today as Vatican City.

^*
Christians in the Muslim-occupied lands of the East vehemently opposed the iconoclasts, and it’s fortunate that they did. Some of the most beautiful icons that survived the controversy came from Coptic monasteries that were located safely beyond the borders of the empire in the eighth century.

14

T
HE
C
RUMBLING
E
MPIRE

B
y the time of Constantine V’s death on September 14, 775, the Byzantine Empire seemed thoroughly exhausted. The constant disruptions, both within and without, had taken their toll on every level of society. Under pressure from all sides, things were beginning to break down. Records weren’t kept as faithfully, family genealogies proudly guarded since the days of the Roman Republic died out, and the old traditions of senatorial rank all but disappeared.
^*
Most cities dwindled to the size of towns, with the shrunken populations huddling amid the ruins of their former grandeur. Civic planning all but vanished, and the wide avenues and lavish public buildings of classical cities were replaced with twisting narrow streets and hastily constructed homes. Buildings were allowed to fall into ruin, and when walls were repaired at all, it was not by a trip to the long-abandoned quarries but by using the masonry of earlier structures. Even the more-important cities showed unmistakable signs of decay. Athens, once the foremost city in Greece, shrank to a provincial town with a few thousand citizens struggling beneath the shadow of the Acropolis, and Constantinople—though it still had its
Hippodrome, theaters, and baths—allowed its aqueduct to remain in disrepair for more than a century.

Sea trade remained strong, and the spices of India could still be found along with the silks of China in the markets of the capital, but merchants could no longer afford to cross the dangerous land routes in these insecure times, and much of the interior reverted to the barter system. As the urban populations declined in numbers and attacks came from every side, society became increasingly militarized. State land was turned over to the army in an attempt to reduce the costs of paying it, and political positions were turned over to military officials for greater efficiency. The result was an increasingly powerful political force that interfered in the government with unsettling frequency. In the century after Heraclius’s death, no fewer than eight emperors were put on the throne by the army, hopelessly blurring the line between civil and military authority.

Education, like so much else, was a casualty of the troubled times. The capital still had private tutors and primary and secondary schools, and positions in administration and the army were still open to merit, but for most there was no time for extensive study in a century of war and disruption. Literacy dwindled, and with it the quality of civil servants. Faced with the unrelenting pressures of military disasters and social chaos, fields such as philosophy and literature were largely ignored as the luxuries of a more peaceful time. As the value of education declined, Byzantine culture began to wither and die. Each generation was less educated than the one before and less able to appreciate the intrinsic value of learning, and before long the decline had gained its own momentum. At the start of the eighth century, a law had to be passed making it illegal to cut up old texts, throw them away, or boil them into a perfume; by the middle of the century, emperors were complaining that they couldn’t find competent officials who could understand the law. With Constantine V adding the ravages of iconoclasm to the decay by declaring war on the monasteries and doing his level best to destroy the works of those who disagreed with him, education was in a deplorable state.