Constantine V
Constantine V was Byzantine emperor from 741 to 775. His reign saw a consolidation of Byzantine security from external threats. As an able military leader, Constantine took advantage of civil war in the Muslim world to make limited offensives on the Arab frontier. With this eastern frontier secure, he undertook repeated campaigns against the Bulgars in the Balkans. His military activity, and policy of settling Christian populations from the Arab frontier in Thrace, made Byzantium's hold on its Balkan territories more secure. He was also responsible for important military and administrative innovations and reforms.
Religious strife and controversy was a prominent feature of his reign. His fervent support of iconoclasm and opposition to monasticism led to his vilification by some contemporary commentators and the majority of later Byzantine writers, who denigrated him with the nicknames "Dung-Named", because he allegedly defaecated during his baptism, similarly "Anointed with Urine", and "the Equestrian", referencing the excrement of horses.
Early life
Constantine was born in Constantinople, the son and successor of Emperor Leo III and his wife Maria. In the Easter of 720, at two years of age, he was associated with his father on the throne, and crowned co-emperor by Patriarch Germanus I. In Byzantine political theory more than one emperor could share the throne; however, although all were accorded the same ceremonial status, only one emperor wielded ultimate power. As the position of emperor was in theory, and sometimes in practise, elective rather than strictly hereditary, a ruling emperor would often associate a son or other chosen successor with himself as a co-emperor to ensure the eventual succession. To celebrate the coronation of his son, Leo III introduced a new silver coin, the miliaresion; worth one-twelfth of a gold nomisma, it soon became an integral part of the Byzantine economy. In 726, Constantine's father issued the Ecloga; a revised legal code, it was attributed to both father and son jointly. Constantine married Tzitzak, daughter of the Khazar khagan Bihar, an important Byzantine ally. His new bride was baptized Irene in 732. On his father's death, Constantine succeeded as sole emperor on 18 June 741.Historical accounts of Constantine make reference to a chronic medical condition, possibly epilepsy or leprosy; early in his reign this may have been employed by those rebelling against him to question his fitness to be emperor.
Reign
Rebellion of Artabasdos
Immediately after Constantine's accession in 741, his brother-in-law Artabasdos, husband of his older sister, Anna, rebelled. Artabasdos was the strategos of the Opsikion theme and had effective control of the Armeniac theme. The event is sometimes dated to 742, but this has been shown to be wrong.Artabasdos struck against Constantine when their respective troops combined for an intended campaign against the Umayyad Caliphate; a trusted member of Constantine's retinue, called Beser, was killed in the attack. Constantine escaped and sought refuge in Amorion, where he was welcomed by the local soldiers, who had been commanded by Leo III before he became emperor. Meanwhile, Artabasdos advanced on Constantinople and, with the support of Theophanes Monutes and Patriarch Anastasius, was acclaimed and crowned emperor. Constantine received the support of the Anatolic and Thracesian themes; Artabasdos secured the support of the theme of Thrace in addition to his own Opsikion and Armeniac soldiers.
The rival emperors bided their time making military preparations. Artabasdos marched against Constantine at Sardis in May 743 but was defeated. Three months later Constantine defeated Artabasdos' son Niketas and his Armeniac troops at Modrina and headed for Constantinople. In early November Constantine entered the capital, following a siege and a further battle. He immediately targeted his opponents, having many blinded or executed. Patriarch Anastasius was paraded on the back of an ass around the hippodrome to the jeers of the Constantinopolitan mob, though he was subsequently allowed to stay in office. Artabasdos, having fled the capital, was apprehended at the fortress of Pouzanes in Anatolia, probably located to the south of Nicomedia. Artabasdos and his sons were then publicly blinded and secured in the monastery of Chora on the outskirts of Constantinople.
Constantine's support of iconoclasm
Like his father Leo III, Constantine supported iconoclasm, which was a theological movement that rejected the veneration of religious images and sought to destroy those in existence. Iconoclasm was later definitively classed as heretical. Constantine's avowed enemies in what was a bitter and long-lived religious dispute were the iconodules, who defended the veneration of images. Iconodule writers applied to Constantine the derogatory epithet . Using this obscene name, they spread the rumour that as an infant he had defiled his own baptism by defaecating in the font, or on the imperial purple cloth with which he was swaddled.Constantine questioned the legitimacy of any representation of God or Christ. The Church Father John of Damascus made use of the term 'uncircumscribable' in relation to the depiction of God. Constantine, relying on the linguistic connection between 'uncircumscribed' and 'incapable of being depicted', argued that the uncircumscribable cannot be legitimately depicted in an image. As Christian theology holds that Christ is God, he also cannot be represented in an image. The Emperor was personally active in the theological debate; evidence exists for him composing thirteen treatises, two of which survive in fragmentary form. He also presented his religious views at meetings organised throughout the empire, sending representatives to argue his case. In February 754, Constantine convened a council at Hieria, which was attended entirely by iconoclast bishops. The council agreed with Constantine's religious policy on images, declaring them anathema, and it secured the election of a new iconoclast patriarch. However, it refused to endorse all of Constantine's policies, which were influenced by the more extremist iconoclasts and were possibly critical of the veneration of Mary, mother of Jesus, and of the saints. The council confirmed the status of Mary as Theotokos, or 'Mother of God', upheld the use of the terms "saint" and "holy" as legitimate, and condemned the desecration, burning, or looting of churches in the quest to suppress icon veneration.
The Council of Hieria was followed by a campaign to remove images from the walls of churches and to purge the court and bureaucracy of iconodules, however, the accounts of these events were written much later than they actually occurred, and by often vehemently anti-iconoclast sources, therefore their reliability is questionable. Since monasteries tended to be strongholds of iconophile sentiment and contributed little or nothing towards the secular needs of the state, Constantine specifically targeted these communities. He also expropriated monastic property for the benefit of the state or the army. These acts of repression against the monks were largely led by the Emperor's general Michael Lachanodrakon, who threatened resistant monks with blinding and exile. Constantine organised numerous pairs of monks and nuns to be paraded in the hippodrome, publicly ridiculing their vows of chastity. According to Theophanes the Confessor, the iconodule abbot Stephen the Younger, was beaten to death by a mob at the behest of the authorities. However even his hagiography, the Life of St. Stephen the Younger, connects his execution more to treason against the Emperor, and indeed his punishments reflect those typically associated with an enemy of the state. Stephen was said to have trampled on a coin depicting the Emperor in order to provoke imperial retaliation and reveal the iconoclast hypocrisy of denying the force of sacred portraits but not of imperial portraits on coins. As a result of persecution, many monks fled to southern Italy and Sicily. The implacable resistance of iconodule monks and their supporters led to their propaganda reaching those close to the Emperor. On becoming aware of an iconodule-influenced conspiracy directed at himself, Constantine reacted uncompromisingly; in 765, eighteen high dignitaries charged with treason were paraded in the hippodrome, then variously executed, blinded or exiled. Patriarch Constantine II of Constantinople was implicated and deposed from office, and the following year he was tortured and beheaded.
According to later iconodule sources, for example Patriarch Nikephoros I of Constantinople's Second Antirrheticus and treatise Against Constantinus Caballinus, Constantine's iconoclasm had gone as far as to brand prayers to Mary and saints as heretical, or at least highly questionable. However, the extent of coherent official campaigns to forcibly destroy or cover up religious images or the existence of widespread government-sanctioned destruction of relics has been questioned by more recent scholarship. There is no evidence, for example, that Constantine formally banned the cult of saints. Pre-iconoclastic religious images did survive, and various existing accounts record that icons were preserved by being hidden. In general, the culture of pictorial religious representation appears to have survived the iconoclast period largely intact. The extent and severity of iconoclastic destruction of images and relics was exaggerated in later iconodule writings.
Scholars generally take the anathemas in the Council of Hieria condemning the one who "does not ask for as having the freedom to intercede on behalf of the world according to the tradition of the church", as proof that Constantine never rejected the intercession of Mary and the saints, since they consider it inconceivable for an emperor to contradict the decisions of a council he convened. Moreover, the positive evidence that he rejected intercession is regarded as unreliable due to the iconodule motivation of its authors. Dissenting scholars point to the wealth of evidence, not only from Patriarch Nikephoros but from Theophanes and Patriarch Methodios I of Constantinople, who in his Life of Theophanes defends the intercession of saints, perpetuating a centuries-long controversy regarding the doctrine of soul-sleep, which if true would mean dead saints are incapable of intercession. They allege that it is conceivable that, although the moderate iconoclast party won at Hieria, which still affirmed the intercession of the saints, the radical iconoclasts who denied it briefly triumphed afterwards, with Constantine publicly interfering with religious practice by removing intercessory prayers to saints from church hymns and hagiographies, as described by the iconodule primary sources.
Iconodules considered Constantine's death a divine punishment. In the 9th century, following the ultimate triumph of the iconodules, Constantine's remains were removed from the imperial sepulchre in the Church of the Holy Apostles.