LEO III, Emperor of the East, called the Isaurian. - His accession to the throne dates to 25 March 717, on the eve of a great effort by the caliphate of Damascus to seize Constantinople. The Christian capital was in fact besieged by large Arab forces by land and by sea from Aug. 717 to Aug. 718.
L. had been strategos of the theme of the Anatolikon: a native of Isauria or of Germanicia in Syria, he knew well the customs and the art of fighting of the Arabs. He succeeded in fact in forcing the besiegers to withdraw after they had suffered heavy losses: from this moment begins the halting of the Arab offensive against the Byzantine Empire. Fighting nevertheless continued in the east of Anatolia: the battle of Akroinon in 739 represented a further step backward for the Islamic danger. L. III, for greater security, had succeeded in establishing good relations with the ḥān of the Bulgars.
Nor was L. III's government peaceful internally: a rebellion of the strategos of Sicily, Sergius, and an attempt by the former basilèus Anastasius II troubled him. Yet already in 720 L. III had had his son Constantine V (b. 718) crowned and proclaimed his colleague, so as to begin a new dynasty and pacify the Empire.
The struggle against the cult of images begun by L. III has obscured his figure in the historiographical tradition and veiled his gifts as a statesman and reorganizer as well as a warrior. The importance of his work has been much debated in recent studies. He used to be considered the author of various legislative acts: the military law, the maritime law, the rural code, which would have prepared the publication of the great code known as the Ecloga, which appeared in 740. To this complex legislative activity the iconoclastic measures would be linked. This picture has been attacked by modern criticism, which attributes the maritime law to the period 600-800 without the possibility of being more precise, and the rural code to the age of Justinian II. Certainly the Ecloga is by L. III, who, in the profession, declared the purpose of the legislative reform: to make the law more precise and clearer, to ensure a better administration of justice. It is certainly inspired more than the Justinianic Code by Christian humanitarian conceptions, especially as regards the family.
What, on the other hand, was the purpose of the prohibition of the cult of the sacred image is still today a subject of discussion. Research is made difficult by the destruction of the polemical writings of the iconoclasts imposed by the councils that reconfirmed in the 9th century the veneration of icons. Some critics, such as Paparrigopoulos, saw in L. III a kind of despotic, enlightened monarch, who had a program of defending secular power, of struggling against religious interference in the State, or against the encroachment of the monastic element. Others believe that L. III and his continuators and partisans were moved by a religious spirit, by the intention of purifying the Church, of struggling against the nascent idolatry that they saw looming behind the lively cult rendered to the images of the saints. But one cannot exclude that L. III, following the old Constantinian and Justinianic traditions, was concerned to affirm the authority of the imperial government over the Church, shaken in the grave crisis of the 7th century. One must not forget the iconoclastic conception of Judaism and of Islam: the chronicler Theophanes attributes to L. III a sympathy for these currents. The heresy of the Paulicians too was iconoclastic, and Anatolia was already dominated by such a movement of ideas, so that the decisions of L. III must be judged not as an impulsive, capricious outburst of fanaticism, but as the expression of a movement of the spirit dominant in part of the population of the Empire. Certainly, however,
L. III and his son and continuator Constantine V did not sufficiently assess the religious and social forces that would oppose them. V. ICONOCLASTIA.
On the chronology of the iconoclastic reform there is not complete certainty. The first measures appear to be from 726. Was there already an explicit decree, or only attempts to induce the Church to consent to the project? Certainly in 727 riots had already broken out in Constantinople over the removal of the Christ of the Chalke; riots also occurred in Greece and in the Cyclades, where a counter-emperor was proclaimed. In the Byzantine provinces in Italy too there were lively movements of opposition. Pope Gregory II assumed an attitude of protest, as his letters to L. III demonstrate, letters that today are considered authentic and as written between 727 and 729. The Emperor reacted energetically, suppressing all attempts at rebellion and protest: in Italy the attempt of the counter-emperor Tiberius Petasius failed. The Pope in fact did not go beyond the limits of the clearest loyalism in his protest, restraining the greed of the Lombard king Liutprand, eager to lay his hands on the Byzantine provinces, and on the other hand calming the populations ready to rebel.
L. III was, however, determined to go forward. On 17 Jan. 730 he proclaimed a solemn edict against the iconoclastic cult and deposed the patriarch Germanus, who opposed it. The new pope Gregory III assumed a more energetic attitude than his predecessor and at the Roman Council of 731 excommunicated the iconoclasts. The Emperor responded by confiscating the patrimonies of the Roman Church existing in the imperial territories and by subjecting the Byzantine provinces of Italy to the patriarchate of Constantinople. Thus the Church was again afflicted by a heresy and by a schism.
Bibliography6 works
Francesco Cognasso