Times of upheaval : inquiries into the reigns and policies of the Byzantine Emperors, Leo III and Constantine V

Scholarship in the area of the First Byzantine Iconoclasm has tended to confirm the theses of Edward Gibbon and J. B. Bury, i.e., that the Iconoclast Emperors, Leo III and Constantine V, were secularists, committed to the subjection of the Orthodox Church to the Imperial State. Recent discoveries of manuscripts in Armenia and Syria have called these theses into question and the need for a fresh appraisal is evident. The questions the paper poses are: Were the Emperors Leo III and Constantine V secularists or religionists? If religionists, did they view themselves as orthodox or heterodox? What factors were decisive in their choice of iconoclasm over icon-veneration? The method employed has been a careful reappraisal of traditional Byzantine history texts. The manuscripts, translated and annotated by Dr. Stephen Gero, are introduced as the focal point from which to begin a fresh interpretation of the events as they are currently held. The form used is a retelling of the reigns of the Emperors. The results are a layman's history, one calculated to be of interest to the educated, but not specialized, reader. The reader understands the Emperors as men, molded by their social and political milieu, yet still possessed of choices. Their backgrounds and military actions, together with their legal and theological writings, hold the key to their motives. The conclusions are that both Leo III and Constantine V were committed religionists, although differing substantially from each other. Their understandings of the situation, as well as their responses to it, differ due to variances of experience and temperament. Their work deserves a much more careful study that what has been done thus far, their reigns being the key to the transition of Byzantium from a late-Roman to a medieval empire.