The Apogee - Byzantium 02 by John Julius Norwich Read Free Book Online

too long. Nor was this opinion confined to the dissatisfied ex-soldiers; it was also widespread - as it had always been -among the upper classes of the capital, as well as in the senior ranks of the army. We have seen how a demonstration at the tomb of Constantine V two years before had recalled the military triumphs of the iconoclast Emperors, in marked contrast to the failures of their iconodule successors: there must have been many men and women in the Empire not normally given to theological speculation who felt nevertheless that the Almighty had made His own point of view on the matter clear enough, and that the time had come for a change.
    It was thus as a means of preserving domestic peace rather than as an expression of any deep religious conviction that Leo went ahead with his plan. His first step was to appoint, in June 814, a special commission with orders to examine the scriptures and all the writings of the early Fathers of the Church for evidence in favour of the iconoclastic persuasion. As its chairman he nominated another of his countrymen: the brilliant young Armenian abbot of the monastery of SS. Sergius and Bacchus — he wa s still in his early thirties - whose real name was John Morocharzamius but who is more conveniently known to posterity as John the Grammarian. As his deputy the Emperor rather surprisingly selected Antony, Bishop of Syllaeum in Pamphylia, an agreeable old reprobate who - according to the violently anti-iconoclast Scriptor Incertus - spent most of his time telling dubious stories to the two monks and two laymen who made up the rest of the commission. Throughout their six-month labour they were bound to the strictest secrecy, being lodged and fed — superbly, it appears — inside the Great Palace and encouraged to remain as far as possible within its walls.
    The results of their endeavours were completed in early December and submitted to the Emperor, who immediately summoned Patriarch Nicephorus to the Palace. Still treading warily, he first proposed - as a compromise 'to please the soldiers' - the removal only of those holy pictures which were hanging low on the walls; the Patriarch, however, who knew the thin end of a wedge when he saw one, would have none of it. 'But why,' pursued Leo, 'do you venerate images, when there is no scriptural injunction to do so?' Nicephorus replied that the Church endorsed many beliefs and practices for which there was no written authority; further than that he refused to go. In such circumstances the Emperor had no option but to set the example himself - acting, however, with typical disingenuousness. The icon on which he had set his sights was the huge representation of Christ which stood above the main gate of the Palace known as the Chalke - the very same that had been pulled down by Leo III in 726, only to be subsequently replaced by Irene; but whereas the Isaurian had simply ordered the military to get on with the job, the Armenian laid his plans with care. He too sent for a detachment of soldiers, but his orders' to them were somewhat different. Their task would be to create a disturbance, apparently spontaneous, in the course of which they would hurl imprecations and abuse at the holy image, pelting it with mud and stones; this would be the cue for the arrival of the Emperor himself, who would order its removal to save it from any further desecration.
    The operation went according to plan, whereupon the Patriarch on his own initiative summoned a meeting of all the local bishops and abbots, warning them of the approaching storm and calling upon them to stand firm on the principles laid down by the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787. 1 Then, early on Christmas morning, he had another
    1 This was the Council called by Irene to condemn tconoclasm. See Byzantium: The Early Centuries s, pp. 69-72.
    audience with Leo. He implored the Emperor to dismiss him if he so wished, but to make no radical change in Church doctrine; Leo smoothly assured him that