© GEORGE FINLAY
HISTORY OF
First Edition February 1906
Even
if we admit that the Greeks displayed considerable presumption in attacking
the Isaurian emperor, still we must accept the fact a a proof of the populous
condition of the cities and islands of Greece, and of the flourishing condition
of their trade, at a period generally represented as one of wretchedness and
poverty. Though the Peloponnese was filled with Slavonian emigrants, and the
Greek peasantry were in many districts excluded from the cultivation of the
land in the seats of their ancestors, nevertheless their cities then contained
the mercantile wealth and influence, which passed some centuries later into
the possession of Venice, Amalfi, Genoa and Pisa.
The opposition Leo encountered only confirmed him in his persuasion that i
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 silention, 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. In the capital the change met with no serious opposition.
The population of Constantinople, at every period of its history, has consisted
of a mixed multitude of different nations; nor has the majority ever been
purely Greek for any great length of time. Nicetas, speaking of a time when
the Byzantine empire was at the height of its power, and when the capital
was more a Greek city than at any preceding or subsequent period, declares
that its population was composed of various races. The cause of image worship
was, however, generally the popular cause, and the Patriarch Germanos steadily
resisted every change in the actual practice of the church until that change
should be sanctioned by a general council.
The turn now given to the dispute put an end to the power of the Eastern emperors
in central Italy. The Latin provinces of the Roman empire, even before their
conquest by the barbarians, had sunk into deeper ignorance than the Eastern.
Civilisation had penetrated farther into society among the Greeks, Armenians,
and Syrians, than among the Italians, Gauls, and Spaniards. Italy was already
dissatisfied with the Constantinopolitan domination, when Leo's fiscal and
religious reforms roused local interests and national prejudices to unite
in opposing his government. The Pope of Rome had long been regarded by orthodox
Christians as the head of the church; even the Greeks admitted his right of
inspection over the whole body of the clergy, in virtue of the superior dignity
of the Roman see. From being the heads of the church, the popes became the
defenders of the liberties of the people. In this character, as leaders of
a lawful opposition to the tyranny of the imperial administration, they grew
up to the possession of immense influence in the state. This power, having
its basis in democratic feelings and energies, alarmed the emperors, and many
attempts were made to circumscribe the papal authority. But the popes themselves
did more to diminish their own influence than their enemies, for instead of
remaining the protectors of the people, they aimed at making themselves their
masters. Gregory II., who occupied the papal chair at the commencement of
the contest with Leo, was a man of sound judgment, as well as an able and
zealous priest. He availed himself of all the advantages of his position,
as political chief of the Latin race, with prudence and moderation; nor did
he neglect the power he derived from the circumstance that Rome was the fountain
of religious instruction for all western Europe. Both his political and ecclesiastical
position entitled him to make a direct opposition to any oppressive measure
of the emperor of Constantinople, when the edicts of Leo III. concerning image-worship
prompted him to commence the contest, which soon ended in separating central
Italy from the Byzantine empire.
The possessions of thre Eastern emperors in Italy were still considerable.
Venice, Rome, Ravenna, Naples, Bari, and Tarentum were all capitals of well-peopled
and wealthy districts. The province embracing Venice and Rome was governed
by an imperial viceroy or exarch who resided at Ravenna, and hence the Byzantine
possessions in central Italy were called the Exarchate of Ravenna. Under the
orders of the exarch, three governors or dukes commanded the troops in Ravenna,
Rome and Venice. As the native militia enrolled to defend the province from
the Lombards formed a considerable portion of the military force, the popular
feelings of the Italians exercised some influence over the soldiery. The Constantinopolitan
governor was generally disliked, on account of the fiscal rapacity of which
he was the agent; and nothing but the dread of greater oppression on the part
of the Lombards, whom the Italians had not the courage to encounter without
the assistance of the Byzantine troops, preserved the people of central Italy
in their allegiance. They hated the Greeks, but they feared the Lombards.
Gregory II. sent Leo strong representations against his first edicts on the
subject of image-worship, and after the silention 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 establishment of the fiscal system.
To overcome the opposition 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. The whole
of central Italy burst into rebellion at this demonstration aginst its civil
and religious interests. The exarch was compelled to shut himself up in Ravenna;
for the cities of Italy, instead of obeying the imperial officers, elected
magistrates of their own, on whom they conferred, in some cases, the title
of duke. Assemblies were held, and the project of electing an emperor of the
West was adopted; but the the unfortunate result of the rebellion of Greece
damped the courage of the Italians; and though a rebel, named Tiberius Petasius,
really assumed the purple in Tuscany, he was easily defeated and slain by
Eutychius, who succeeded Paul as exarch of Ravenna. Luitprand, king of the
Lombards, taking advantage of these dissensions, invaded the imperial territory,
and gained possession of Ravenna; but Gregory, who saw the necessity of saving
the country from the Lombards and from anarchy, wrote to Ursus, the duke of
Venice, one of his warm partisans, and persuaded him to join Eutychius. The
Lombards were defeated by the Byzantine troops, Ravenna was recovered, and
Eutychius entered Rome with a victorious army. Though he excited the Italian
cities to resist the imperial power, and approved of the measures they adopted
for stopping the remittance of their taxes to Constantinople, he does not
appear to have adopted any measures for declaring Rome independent. That he
contemplated the possibility of events taking a turn that might ultimately
lead him to throw off his allegiance to the Emperor Leo, is nevertheless evident,
from one of his letters to that emperor, in which he boasts very significantly
that the eyes of the West were fixed on his humility, and that if Leo attempted
to injure the Pope, he would find the West ready to defend him, and even attack
Constantinople. The allusion to the protection of the king of the Lombards
and Charles Martel was certainly, in this case, a treasonable threat on the
part of the Bishop of Rome to his sovereign. Besides this, Gregory II. excommunicated
the exarch Paul, and all the enemies of image-worship who were acting under
the orders of the emperor, pretending to avoid the guilt of treason by not
expressly naming the Emperor Leo in his anathema. On the other hand, when
we consider that Leo was striving to extend the bounds of the imperial authority
in an arbitrary manner, and that his object was to sweep away every barrier
against the excercise of despotism in the church and the state, we must ackowledge
that the opposition of Gregory was founded in justice, and that he was entitled
to defend the municipal institutions and local usages of Italy, and the constitution
of the Romish church, even at the price of declaring himself a rebel.
The election of Gregory III. to the papal chair was confirmed by the Emperor
Leo in the usual form; nor was that pope consecrated until the mandate from
Constantinople reached Rome. This was the last time the emperors of the East
were solicited to confirm the election of a pope. Meanwhile Leo steadily pursued
his schemes of ecclesiastical reform, and the opposition to his measures gathered
strength. Gregory III. assembled a council in Rome, at which the municipal
authorities, whose power Leo was endeavouring to circumscribe, were present
along with the nobles; and in this council the whole body of the Iconoclasts
were excommunicated. Leo now felt that force alone could maintain Rome and
its bishops in their allegiance. With his usual energy, he despatched an expedition
under the command of Manes, the general of the Kibyrraiot theme, with orders
to send the pope a prisoner to Constantinople, to be tried for his treasonable
conduct. A storm in the Adriatic, the lukewarm conduct of the Greeks in the
imperial service, and the courage of the people of Ravenna, whose municipal
institutions enabled them to act in an organised manner, caused the complete
overthrow of Manes. Leo revenged himself for this loss by confiscating all
the estates of the papal see in the eastern provinces of his empire, and by
separating the ecclesiastical government of southern Italy, Sicily, Greece,
Illyria, and Macedonia, from the papal jurisdiction, and placing these countries
under the immediate authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople.
From this time, A.D. 733, the city of Rome enjoyed political independence
under the guidance and protection of the popes; but the officers of the Byzantine
emperors were allowed to reside in the city, justice was publicly administered
by Byzantine judges, and the supremacy of the Eastern Empire was still recognised.
So completely, however, had Gregory III. thrown off his allegiance, that he
entered into negotiations with Charles Martel, in order to induce that powerful
prince to take an active part in the affairs of Italy. The pope was now a
much more powerful personage than the Exarch of Ravenna, for the cities of
central Italy, which had assumed the control of their local government, instructed
the conduct of their external political relations to the care of Gregory,
who thus held the balance of power between the Eastern emperor and the Lombard
king. In the year 742, while Constantine V., the son of Leo, was engaged with
a civil war, the Lombards were on the eve of conquering Ravenna, but Pope
Zacharias threw the whole of the Latin influence into the Byzantine scale,
and enabled the exarch to maintain his position until the year 751, when Astolph,
king of the Lombards, captured Ravenna. The exarch retired to Naples, and
the authority of the Byzantine emperors in central Italy ended.
The physical history of our globe is so intimately connected with the condition
of its inhabitants, that it is well to record those remarkable variations
from the ordinary course of nature which strongly affected the minds of contemporaries.
the influence of famine and pestilence, during the tenth and eleventh centuries,
in accelerating the extinction of slavery, has been pointed out by several
recent writers on the subject, though that effect was not observed by the
people who lived at the time. The importance of the late famine in Ireland,
as a political cause, must be felt by any one who attempts to trace the origin
of that course of social improvement on which the Irish seem about to enter.
The severity of the winter of 717 aided Leo in defeating the Saracens at Constantinople.
In the year 726, a terrific irruption of the dormant submarine volcano at
the island of Thera (Santorin) in the Archipelago, was regarded by the bigoted
image-worshippers as a manifestation of divine wrath against Leo's reforms.
For several days the sea between Thera and Therasia boiled up with great violence,
vomiting forth flames, and enveloping the neighbouring islands in clouds of
vapour and smoke. The flames were followed by showers of dust and pumice-stone,
which covered the surface of the sea, and were carried by the waves to the
shores of Asia Minor and Macedonia. At last a new island rose out of the sea,
and gradually extended itself until it joined the older rocky islet called
Hieron.
In the year 740, a terrible earthquake destroyed great part of the walls of
Constantinople. The statue of Arcadius, on the Theodosian column in Xerolophon,
and the statue of Theodosius over the golden gate, were both thrown down.
Churches, monasteries, and private buildings were ruined: the walls of many
cities in Thrace and Bithynia, particularly Nicomedia, Praenetus, and Nicea,
were so injured as to require immediate restoration. This great earthquake
caused the imposition of the tax already alluded to, termed the dikeration.
Leo has been accused as a persecutor of learning. It is by no means impossible
that his Asiatic eduacation and puritanical opinions rendered him hostile
to the legendary literature and ecclesiastical art then cultivated by the
Greeks; but the circumstance usually brought forward in support of his barbarism
is one of the calumnies invented by his enemies, and re-echoed by orthodox
bigotry. He is said to have ordered a library consisting of 33,000 volumes,
in the, in the neighbourhood of St. Sophia's, to be burned, and the professors
of the university to be thrown into the flames. A valuable collection of books
seems to have fallen accidentally a prey to the flames during his reign, and
neither his liberality nor the public spirit of the Greeks induced them to
display any activity in replacing the loss.
Leo III. died in the year 741. He had crowned his son Constantine emperor
in the year 720, and married him to Irene, the daughter of the Khan of the
Khazars, in 733.
TO BE
CONTINUED