LEO V, EMPEROR OF THE EAST, called the ARMENIAN. — Greek emperor (813–820). He initiated the second phase of iconoclasm (the Synod of 815), finding strong opponents in the Greek patriarch St. Nicephorus (v.) and St. Theodore the Studite (v.), hegumen. He therefore had the patriarch deposed and St. Theodore sent into exile, and elevated the iconoclast patriarch Theodore I (815–821) to the see of Constantinople.
BIBL.: Fr. Dölger, Regesten der Kaiserurkunden des ostromischen Reiches, I, Munich 1924, pp. 47–49; G. Ostrogorsky, Studien zur Geschichte des byzantinischen Bilderstreits, Munich 1929, pp. 46–60. Giorgio Hofmann