surnamed ISAURUS, or the Isaurian, emperor of Constantinople (A. D. 718-741), and one of the
most remarkable of the emperors of the East, was a native of Isauria, and the son of a
respectable farmer, who settled in Thrace, taking his son with him. Young Conon, which was
Leo's original name, obtained the place of a spatharius in the army of the emperor Justinian
II. Rhinotmetus, and soon rose to eminence through his military talents. Anastasius II., who
reigned from A. D. 713-716, gave him the
supreme command in Asia, which he was still holding when Theodosius III. deposed that emperor,
and seized the crown in January, 716. Summoned to acknowledge Theodosius, the gallant general
called him an usurper, and immediately took up arms against him, alleging that he would
restore the deposed Anastasius to the throne, but really intending to make
himself master of the empire. Artabazes, the commander of the Armenian legions, supported Leo,
who had besides many friends in the army. Leo was then holding the field against the Arabs,
who had laid siege to Armorium in Galatia. After outwitting Muslima, the general of the Arabs,
he set out for Cappadocia, where he found the inhabitants willing to submit to him, but was
closely followed by Muslima. Leo would ere long have been pressed by two enemies, had he not
anticipated the attack of theweakerof them, the emperor Theodosius. He accordingly left
Cappadocia, and his rapid marches afforded him at once the double advantage of leaving the
Arabs far behind him, while he daily came nearer to the imperial troops, who were far from
being strong enough to resist him in the field. At Nicomedeia he was stopped by a son of
Theodosius, who was defeated and taken prisoner. Leo now marched upon Constantinople; and
Theodosius, despairing of success, resigned his crown (March 718), and retired to a convent at
Ephesus, where he lived peacefully during more than thirty years. Scarcely had Leo received
the homage of the people, when the khalif Soliman appeared before Constantinople with a
powerful army and a numerous fleet. He considered the trick played by Leo upon Muslima at
Armorium as a personal insult, and now came to take revenge. This siege of Constantinople, the
third by the Arabs, and one of the most memorable of all, lasted just two years, from the 15th
of August, 718, to the 15th of the same month in 720. Soliman died soon after its
commencement, and was succeeded by the khalif Omar, who swore by his beard that he would take
revenge upon Leo. But Leo sallied out from the Golden Horn with his galleys, the Greek fire
consumed the Arabian ships, and the emperor returned laden with booty and captives. In two
other naval engagements the Arabs were beaten with still greater losses; and in the beginning
of August, 720, their land forces were routed in a pitched battle, with a loss of 28,000 men.
Unable to continue the siege any longer, the khalif raised it on the 15th of August, but only
a small portion of his fleet--the third he had built for the conquest of
Constantinople--reached the harbours of Syria, the greater portion having been destroyed by a
storm. So close was the siege, so enormous the preparations of the Arabs, that even the
splendid victories of Leo could not prevent the inhabitants of the provinces from thinking
Constantinople was lost, since the very news of those victories could not reach them on
account of the watchfulness of the besiegers. The whole empire was in consternation, and in
the western kingdoms rumours were afloat that the khalif had ascended the throne of the
Byzantine emperors. Among those who believed these rumours was Sergius, governor of Sicily,
who took measures to make himself independent, and to that effect proclaimed his lieutenant,
Basil, king of Sicily and Calabria. Basil accepted the dignity, and adopted the name of
Tiberius; while Sergius took proper steps to secure the crown for himself in case of complete
success. Meanwhile, however, Leo had bettered his condition so much that he could despatch his
general. Paulus, with a few loyal veterans, to Sicily; and through the exertions of this
energetic man, the rebellion was soon quelled. Basil was taken prisoner and lost his head; but
Sergius escaped to the Lombards in Italy He was subsequently pardoned, and finally succeeded
in obtaining again the same government in Italy, which he intended to wrest from the emperor.
Another conspiracy that took place in consequence of the critical position of Leo, was that of
the deposed emperor, Anastasius II. The plot was not discovered till 721, after the
termination of the siege of Constantinople, and Anastasius paid for his temerity with his
head.
In spite of his defeats before Constantinople, the khalif Omar continued the war, and in 726
took Caesareia in Cappadocia, and Neo-Caesareia in Pontus. Leo, however, had not only
sufficient forces to make the Arabs feel that he was still more powerful than they, but his
authority was so well established, that he undertook to carry out his favourite design, the
abolition of the worship of images in the Catholic church. To this effect he issued a general
edict, which is one of the most important acts of legislation in the Eastern empire, and
perhaps in the whole Christian world. The question of the images was not only a matter of
religion, but concerned as much the political state of the empire. The abuse of the images on
one side, and the horror in which they were held by the numerous Mohammedans and Jews in the
East on the other, gave origin at last to the iconoclasts, or image-breakers. In declaring for
them, Leo certainly intended to purify the Catholic creed; but there seems to be no doubt that
by removing the images from the churches, he hoped to make the Jews and Mohammedans more
favourably inclined to the Christians and a Christian government; and although the adherents
of images were very numerous, it cannot be doubted that they would have lost all power if Leo
had succeeded in rallying the Iconoclasts, the Jews, the Mohammedans, and the numerous
worshippers of fire in Asia, round the throne of an energetic and enlightened emperor. Indeed
it seems that the protectors of the Iconoclasts in those earlier times entertained some hope
of making them the medium through which the unbelievers would be led to Christ, and the
Eastern empire restored to its ancient splendour; and this explains at once the religious and
the political importance of the question. In the West the question of the images produced
scarcely any effect upon the people, though more upon the Frankish clergy, and still more upon
the conduct of the bishops of Rome, who, by declaring in favour of the Iconoclasts, would have
been abandoned by the last of their followers. In short, the question of the images, like so
many others connected with the domestic history of the Byzantine empire, was at once religious
and political; and while, among the modern writers, Le Beau is but too often influenced by
religious opinions, and Gibbon treats the history of that empire too much as a philosopher and
an orator, we are entitled to hope that time will bring us another historian who, starting
from a mere historical and political point of view, will satisfactorily explain the
overwhelming influence of religious controversies upon the social development of the Eastern
empire.
The edict of Leo through which the images were condemned caused a general revolution
throughout the whole empire, and was the immediate cause of the loss of Ravenna, Rome, and
several other possessions of the Greeks in Italy, which were taken by the Lombards, and of the
final separation of the Latin from the Greek church. Germanus, patriarch of
Constantinople, Joannes Damascenus, and the violent Joannes Chrysorrhoas, in the East, and
pope Gregory II. in the West, were the principal leaders of those who opposed that edict,
either by words, writings, or deeds. The pope became so troublesome, that Paulus, exarch of
Ravenna, was ordered to make an expedition against Rome. But the ardour of the Romans, who
were assisted by the Lombards of Spoleto and Tuscia, and the failure of a plot to assassinate
the pope, compelled Paulus to return to Ravenna, where he had trouble enough to maintain his
authorityover the inhabitants who worshipped images. In the East a rebellion broke out in the
Peloponnesus and the Cyclades, and the inhabitants besieged Constantinople by sea, but Leo
compelled them to sail back and to submit to his government. A revolt in Constantinople was
not so easily quelled, till, after much bloodshed, Leo felt himself strong enough to depose
and banish the patriarch Germanus, and to appoint the iconoclast Anastasius in his place
(730). The majority of the professors in the numerous schools and academies of Constantinople
declared for the images, which enraged Leo so much, that it is said he gave orders to burn the
library of St. Sophia, hoping thereby to prevent the doctors from strengthening their opinions
by historical arguments. But this is decidedly an idle story, invented by some ignorant monk,
and repeated by fanatics: the library, which contained 36,000 volumes, became probably the
prey of some conflagration. Upon this Gregory III., the successor of Gregory II., assembled in
731 a council at Rome, by which the Iconoclasts were condemned; and now the opposition against
the emperor became so great as to induce him to send a powerful expedition against Italy, with
a special command to reduce Ravenna (734). The expedition failed, and Ravenna and the
exarchate fell into the hands of the Lombards, who, after having lost it and gained it again,
kept it till 756, when king Aistulph was compelled by Pipin of France to cede it to pope
Stephen II., and ever since that province has continued to belong to the papal states. This
check in Italy induced Leo to detach Greece, Illyria, and Macedonia from the spiritual
authority of the popes, and to submit them to that of the patriarchs of Constantinople; and
this is the real, effective cause of the fatal division of the Latin and Greek churches
(734).
During the seven following years the history of Leo offers little more than the horrible
details of a protracted war with the Arabs. The khalif Hesham endeavoured to produce an effect
upon the minds of the Syrians by supporting an adventurer, who pretended to be Tiberius, the
son of Justinianus II., and who was sent by the khalif to Jerusalem, where he made his
entrance, in the dress of a Roman emperor. But this was a mere farce. Things were more serious
when, in 739, the Arab general Soliman invaded the Roman territories with an army of 90,000
men, who were divided into three separate bodies. The first entered Cappadocia, and ravaged it
with fire and sword; the second, commanded by Malek and Batak, penetrated into Phrygia; and
the third, under Soliman, covered the rear. Leo, though surprised, had assembled sufficient
forces, and his general Acroninus defeated the second body in Phrygia in a pitched battle, in
which Malek and Batak were both killed. Soliman withdrew in haste into Syria. In October, 740,
an awful earthquake caused great calamities throughout the empire. In Constantinople many of
the principal buildings were levelled to the ground; the statues of Constantine the Great,
Theodosius the Great, and Arcadius, were thrown from their pedestals; and the wall along the
Propontis, together with all its towers, fell at once into the sea. Thrace was covered with
ruins. In Bithynia, Nicomedeia and Prenetus were thrown down, and of the entire town of
Nicaea, only one building, a church, remained standing. In Egypt several towns disappeared, as
it were, with all their inhabitants. On the 18th of June, 741, the emperor Leo died, after
long sufferings, and was interred in the church of the Apostles: he was succeeded by his son
Constantine V., surnamed Copronymus.
Leo III., the founder of the Isaurian dynasty, may be charged with cruelty and obstinacy,
and he had only received a soldier's education; but he was prudent, active, energetic, just,
and decidedly the kind of king whom the corrupted Greeks required. Moreover, he acted upon
principles, and never abandoned one of them during the whole course of his life. The orthodox
writers have outraged his name because he protected the Iconoclasts, but we know too well the
degree of impartiality which they can claim. (Theophan. p. 327, &c.; Cedren. p. 450,
&c.; Niceph. p. 34, &c.; Glyc., p. 180, &c.; Zonar. vol. ii. p. 101, &c.;
Paul. Diacon., De Gest. Long. 6.47, &c.)