LEO III, EMPEROR OF THE EAST, known as the ISaurian. — His accession to the throne took place on 25 March 717, on the eve of a major offensive by the caliphate of Damascus to seize Constantinople. The Christian capital was indeed besieged by large Arab forces by land and sea from August 717 to August 718.
Leo had been *strategos* of the Anatolic Theme; a native of Isauria or Germanikeia in Syria, he was well acquainted with Arab customs and warfare. He succeeded in forcing the besiegers to retreat after they had suffered heavy losses: from this moment began the halt of the Arab offensive against the Byzantine Empire. Fighting continued, however, in eastern Anatolia: the battle of Akroinon in 739 marked a further setback for the Islamic threat. For greater security, Leo III had also succeeded in establishing good relations with the *khagan* of the Bulgars.
Even within the Empire, Leo III’s rule was not peaceful: a rebellion by the *strategos* of Sicily, Sergius, and an attempt by the former *basileus* Anastasius II disturbed him. Yet Leo III had already in 720 had his son Constantine V (b. 718) crowned and proclaimed co-emperor, thus initiating a new and stabilizing dynasty.
The struggle against the veneration of images begun by Leo III has obscured in the historiographical tradition his figure and obscured his qualities as a statesman and reorganizer as well as a warrior. The importance of his work has been much debated in recent studies. He was long considered the author of various legislative acts: the military law, the maritime law, and the rural code, which were said to have prepared the way for the publication of the great code known as the *Ecloga*, which appeared in 740. To this complex legislative activity would be linked the iconoclastic measures. This picture has been challenged by modern criticism, which attributes the maritime law to the period 600–800 without possibility of precision, and the rural code to the time of Justinian II. Certainly the *Ecloga* is by Leo III, who in its preface declared the purpose of the legislative reform: to make the law more precise and clearer, and to ensure better administration of justice. It is certainly more inspired by Christian humanitarian conceptions, especially with regard to the family, than the Justinianic Code.
The purpose of the prohibition of the veneration of sacred images, however, remains a matter of debate to this day. Research is hampered by the destruction of the polemical writings of the iconoclasts imposed by the councils that reaffirmed icon veneration in the 9th century. Some scholars, such as the Paparigopoulos, saw in Leo III a kind of despotic, enlightened monarch who pursued a program of defending secular power, combating religious interference in the state, or resisting the encroachment of the monastic element. Others believe that Leo III and his successors and partisans were motivated by religious concerns, by the intention of purifying the Church and combating the nascent idolatry they saw looming behind the lively cult of images of the saints. But one cannot exclude that Leo III, following the old Constantinian and Justinianic traditions, was concerned to assert the authority of imperial government over the Church, shaken by the grave crisis of the 7th century. Nor should one forget the iconoclastic conception shared by Judaism and Islam: the chronicler Theophanes attributes to Leo III a sympathy for these trends. The heresy of the Paulicians was also iconoclastic, and Anatolia was already dominated by this movement of ideas, so that Leo’s decisions must be judged not as a capricious outburst of fanaticism but as the expression of a dominant spirit among part of the population of the Empire. Yet it is certain that
Leo III and his son and successor Constantine V did not sufficiently gauge the religious and social forces that would oppose them. See ICONOCLASM.
As for the chronology of the iconoclastic reform, certainty is lacking. The first measures seem to date from 726. Was there already an explicit decree or only attempts to induce the Church to consent to the project? By 727, however, there were already disturbances in Constantinople over the removal of the Christ at Chalke; riots also broke out in Greece and the Cyclades, where an anti-emperor was proclaimed. Even in the Byzantine provinces of Italy there were lively movements of opposition. Pope Gregory II adopted an attitude of protest, as shown by his letters to Leo III, letters now considered authentic and written between 727 and 729. The Emperor reacted energetically, suppressing all attempts at rebellion and protest: in Italy the attempt of the anti-emperor Tiberius Petasius failed. The Pope, in fact, did not go beyond the limits of the most absolute loyalty, restraining the ambitions of King Liutprand of the Lombards, eager to seize Byzantine provinces, and calming the people ready to rebel.
Leo III, however, was determined to press on. On 17 January 730 he issued a solemn edict against the veneration of images and deposed Patriarch Germanus, who opposed II. The new pope, Gregory III, adopted a more energetic stance than his predecessor and at the Roman Council of 731 excommunicated the iconoclasts. The Emperor responded by confiscating the patrimonies of the Roman Church within imperial territory and subjecting the Byzantine provinces of Italy to the patriarchate of Constantinople. Thus the Church was again afflicted by a heresy and a schism.