The century began with Maurice (582–602) on the imperial throne, urging
his army to resist the incursion of Slavs who were seeking to cross the
Danube from the north bank. Growing discontent culminated in mutiny
when Maurice ordered the army to continue their campaign against the
Slavs into the winter months, when bare trees would provide less cover for
the marauders. Led by Phocas, a relatively minor officer, the army marched
on Constantinople and deposedMaurice. Phocas was proclaimed emperor,
but was never very secure and faced a number of revolts. More seriously
the Persian shah Khusro II (590–628) used Maurice’s murder as a pretext
to declare war on the empire, to avenge his former protector (see above,
pp. 127, 128).With the invasion of Syria, there began a war that would last
until 626–7. In 610 Phocas was deposed by Heraclius, son of the exarch of
Carthage, who, according to Theophanes, seized the throne at the invitation
of the senate in Constantinople. Heraclius’ ships displayed reliquaries
and icons of the Mother of God on their masts: a sign of the continuing
authentication of political authority by supernatural means seen in the later
decades of the sixth century. Phocas was swiftly overthrown and executed,
and Heraclius acclaimed as emperor and crowned by the patriarch in St
Stephen’s chapel in the palace. On the same day he married his betrothed,
Eudocia, whom he crowned augusta.
The situation Heraclius faced was grim. The Persians were now advancing
into AsiaMinor, taking Caesarea in Cappadocia in 611, and to the north
from across the Danube the Avars were once again a serious menace: in 615
both enemies would make a joint assault on Constantinople. Attempts were
made to negotiate a peace treaty with the Persians – immediately, according
to the eastern sources; according to the Greek sources, in 615, once the
Persian forces had advanced as far as Chalcedon. Anyway the peace efforts
were repudiated, as the Persians were convinced that the Byzantine empire
lay at their mercy. The war took on the character of a holy war between a
Christian army, using icons of Christ and the Virgin as banners, and the
predominantly Zoroastrian army of the Persians. Besides advancing into
Asia Minor, the Persians invaded Palestine, taking Jerusalem in early May
614, and then Egypt and Libya. The fall of Jerusalem, by now regarded by
Christians as their Holy City, was a catastrophe for Byzantium as a Christian
empire, and for the emperor as God’s vicegerent on earth. Still worse
was the seizure of the relic of the True Cross, which was taken back to the
Persian capital, Ctesiphon, along with Zacharias, patriarch of Jerusalem,
and those Christian notables who survived the sack of the city; tens of
thousands are said to have been killed.7
It was not until Heraclius had managed to negotiate a truce with the
Avars that he was able to make a serious attempt to defeat the Persians.
From 622 onwards he conducted a series of campaigns against them. In
626, while Heraclius was on campaign, the Persians joined forces with the
Avars to besiege Constantinople. Heraclius himself did not return, but
sent a contingent of the field army to reinforce the City’s defenders, who
were under the leadership of the two regents, Patriarch Sergius and the
magister officiorum, Bonus. Constantinople was besieged for ten days by a
huge army of various peoples under the command of the khagan of the
Avars, while the Persian army under Shahrvaraz held the Asian shore of the
Bosporus. The siege failed when the fleet of Slav boats was destroyed by
the Byzantine fleet in the Golden Horn, just across from the Church of the
Virgin at Blachernae. The success of the Constantinopolitans’ defence of
their city was ascribed to the Virgin Mother of God, and it is likely that
the famous troparion ‘To you, champion commander’ was composed by
Patriarch Sergius to celebrate her victory. Heraclius pressed his attack into
the Sasanians’ heartland. The Persians were demoralised by their troops’
failure under Shahrvaraz to secure the City; they were also smarting at
the destruction by the emperor’s brother Theodore of another contingent
destined for Constantinople. Heraclius’ successes provoked a palace revolt
in which Khusro was murdered, and the Persians sued for peace. All the
territory they had taken was restored to the Byzantine empire, and the
Tigris–Euphrates valley became the frontier once again.Heraclius recovered
the True Cross, and celebrated his triumph by taking the relic on a tour
of the restored Byzantine territories, before returning it to Jerusalem on 21
March 630.8
It would seem to be at this stage that Heraclius began to face the religious
problems that had plagued the Byzantine empire since the council of
Chalcedon in 451.9 The schism between those who supported Chalcedon
and those who repudiated it, whom their enemies called monophysites, had
become institutionalised with a separate monophysite episcopal hierarchy
since the consecration of Jacob Baradaeus in 542. The monophysites had
their greatest support in the eastern provinces, especially Syria and Egypt;
many Christians in Armenia also declined to acknowledge the council
of Chalcedon (see also below, pp. 333, 335). After conquering the eastern
provinces, Khusro had sought to strengthen his hold over his new subjects
by exploiting the Christians’ schisms. At a meeting held in Ctesiphon,
Khusro met with leaders of the monophysites, the Armenians and also the
Nestorians, the main Christian group established in Persia. These last had
rejected the condemnation of Nestorius at the third ecumenical council
of Ephesus in 431 and fled to Persia to escape persecution in the Byzantine
empire. It was agreed that the Nestorians should retain their position
within the traditional Sasanian territories, but that the Persian authorities
would support the monophysites in Armenia and those former Byzantine
provinces where the monophysites were in a majority, that is, Syria
and Egypt. The monophysites welcomed this agreement, their patriarch
of Antioch, Athanasius ‘the Camel Driver’, rejoicing at the ‘passing of the
Chalcedonian night’.
IfHeraclius was to be secure in his regained eastern provinces, he needed
to gain the support of the monophysites. The policy he pursued was proposed
by his patriarch Sergius, who had foreseen this problem and had
already begun negotiations with monophysites: Sergius was himself Syrian,
possibly with a monophysite background. The proposal was to seek
union on the basis of the doctrine of monenergism, i.e. that Christ, while
he had two natures, as Chalcedon had affirmed, possessed only a single
divine-human activity. This policy achieved some success in Armenia, but
the Syrian monophysites (Jacobites) were not amenable and required an
explicit repudiation of Chalcedon. Monenergism’s greatest success was in
Egypt, where Cyrus of Phasi, appointed patriarch and augustal prefect in
631, reached an agreement with the main monophysite group, the Theodosians.
10 On 3 June 633 a solemn eucharist celebrated the union with
the Theodosians, on the basis of a carefully phrased pact of union in nine
chapters; this placed monenergism in the context of the Cyrilline Chalcedonianism
that had been espoused by Justinian and endorsed at the fifth
ecumenical council in 553.11
But it was not only some of the monophysites who refused to accept
monenergism. As Cyrus was about to celebrate his triumph of ecumenism,
also present in Alexandria was the learned and highly respected abbot,
Sophronius. To him, the nine chapters amounted to monophysitism. He
protested to Cyrus, to no avail, and took his protest to Patriarch Sergius in
Constantinople. Sergius was sufficiently alarmed by Sophronius’ protest to
issue a ruling on the matter (the Psephos) in which he forbade any mention of
either one or two activities in Christ. But that scarcely satisfied Sophronius,
who took his complaint to Pope Honorius I in Rome. He seems to have
had no success with the pope either, and from Rome he made his way
to Palestine, where he was elected patriarch of Jerusalem in 634. In his
synodical letter Sophronius exposed the heresy of monenergism, though
without explicitly breaching the terms of the Psephos. Before Sophronius’
arrival in Constantinople, Sergius had already communicated the success of
the doctrine of monenergism in Alexandria to Honorius, who in his reply
used the phrase that was to lead to the refinement of monenergism into the
doctrine of monothelitism. That phrase was ‘one will’.Monothelitism, the
doctrine that Christ had only one divine will, was proclaimed as imperial
orthodoxy in the Ekthesis issued by Heraclius in 638, although this was
doubtless composed by Sergius.
However, by 638 the immediate purpose of this religious compromise was
being overtaken by events, for Heraclius’ triumph over the Persians proved
a pyrrhic victory. Even while it was being celebrated, Palestine and Syria
began to experience attacks from Arab tribes that within barely more than a
decade would lead to the loss of the Byzantine empire’s eastern provinces –
this time for ever – and the complete collapse of the Sasanian empire. In
633 there were Muslim attacks on garrisons in Gaza, and the Arab armies
soon moved further north, although there is considerable confusion in the
sources about the sequence of events thereafter.12 Heraclius mustered an
army and sought to defeat the Arabs. The decisive battle took place at the
river Yarmuk in 636, when the much larger Byzantine force was routed.
Heraclius abandoned the eastern provinces in despair. The year before,
Damascus had already fallen to the Muslims – or more probably had been
surrendered – and in 638 Patriarch Sophronius surrendered Jerusalem to
Caliph ‘Umar bin al-Khattab. Alexandria was taken in 642, and though the
Byzantines recaptured it, in 645 it finally fell. By that time Mesopotamia
had already fallen, and with it the Sasanian empire. The speed with which
the eastern provinces of the Byzantine empire succumbed to the Arabs
remains to be explained by historians. However attractive at first sight, the
idea that these provinces, with their attachment to monophysitism, were
already culturally lost to the empire does not seem to be borne out by the
evidencewe have: on the contrary, there is much evidence for the continuing
power of Hellenism in the eastern provinces well into the seventh century
– evidence suggesting that Hellenic culture was more potent there than in
the empire’s capital itself.13
When Heraclius died in 641, his death precipitated a dynastic struggle.
He was succeeded by two of his sons: Constantine, by his first marriage to
Eudocia; andHeraclius, known asHeracleonas, by his second wifeMartina,
who was also his niece. Martina herself was given a special role to play as
augusta.Heraclius’ marriage to his niece after the death of Eudocia had met
with opposition at the time, and there was also opposition to the association
of Martina as empress with the two emperors. Constantine’s death – the
result of poisoning according to a rumour reported by Theophanes – only
increased the opposition toMartina and Heracleonas; there were demands
that the imperial dignity should be shared with Constantine’s son, also
called Constantine, but usually known as Constans. As troops from the
Anatolian armies appeared at Chalcedon in support of these demands,
Heracleonas seems to have acceded to them. Nevertheless, Heracleonas
and his mother were deposed and exiled, together withMartina’s other two
sons, and Constans II became sole emperor.
Constans inherited the continuing collapse of the eastern provinces to
the Arabs: Egypt was slipping away and Muslim raids into Armenia began
in 642–3. In 647 the future caliph Mu‘awiya (661–80) led a raiding party
into Anatolia and besieged Caesarea, and fromthere they penetrated further
still into Anatolia. The Arabs made no attempt to settle, but huge amounts
of booty were taken back to Damascus.Mu‘awiya also realised the need for
the Muslims to develop sea power, and in 649 he led a naval expedition
against Cyprus, in which Constantia was taken. In 654 Rhodes was laid
waste, Kos taken and Crete pillaged. The following year, in an attempt to
remove the threat from the sea, the Byzantine fleet under the command
of Constans himself engaged with the Arab fleet, but was defeated and
Constans barely escaped with his life.
The death of Caliph ‘Uthman in 656 precipitated a civil war (fitna)
amongst the Arabs: one faction was led byMu‘awiya, proclaimed caliph in
Syria, the other by ‘Ali, son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad. The civil
war ended with the death of ‘Ali and the establishment of the Umayyad
dynasty under Mu‘awiya in 661/2 – events provoking the schism in Islam
between Sunni and Shiite that still endures. However, those years of civil
war provided valuable respite for the Byzantines. Constans was able to turn
his attention to the Balkans, where the power of the Avars had waned, and
in 658 he led an expedition into the regions settled by the Slavs (Sklaviniai).
There he met with considerable success, according to Theophanes, and was
able to use the Slavs he captured to repopulate areas in Anatolia that had
been devastated or depopulated. This policy of repopulating Anatolian
regions by Slavs was to be continued by his successors, Constantine IV
(668–85) and Justinian II (685–695/705–711).
Constans also inherited his grandfather’s religious policy. By the early
640s, opposition to monothelitism had grown. Behind this opposition was
the monk Maximus, known to later ages as ‘the Confessor’; he had been a
close associate of Sophronius, who had originally stirred up opposition to
monenergism.Maximus found support in Palestine and Cyprus, but more
importantly in Italy and North Africa, where he had been in exile since
the late 620s. These were areas which, in the sixth century, had protested
against Justinian’s condemnation of the Three Chapters as compromising
the decisions of Chalcedon.14 In North Africa a number of synods condemned
monothelitism, and Maximus pressed home the attack in a series
of skilfully argued tracts and letters. In 645 the former patriarch Pyrrhus
arrived in North Africa; as a supporter of Empress Martina he had shared
her fall. In July that year a disputation between the monothelite Pyrrhus
and Maximus was held in Carthage, before the exarch Gregory, in which
Pyrrhus admitted defeat and embraced orthodoxy.15 It was perhaps the
strength of feeling against monothelitism that led Gregory to allow himself
to be declared emperor in opposition to Constans in 646–7, but his
rebellion was short-lived; he died the following year defending his province
against Arab raiders. Meanwhile, Pyrrhus had made his way to Rome to
declare his new-found orthodoxy to the pope, followed closely by Maximus.
In 648, in a vain attempt to prevent further controversy, the famous
Typos was issued in the name of the emperor by Patriarch Paul, forbidding
discussion of the number of activities or wills in Christ.
In Rome, Maximus prepared for a synod, together with other Greek
monks who had fled west in the face of the Arabs or the heresy of the
empire. This was finally held in 649 in the Lateran Palace in Rome, under
the newly elected Pope Martin I (649–55): both the Ekthesis and the Typos
were condemned, together with the patriarchs Sergius, Pyrrhus and Paul.
The extent to which this synod was of Greek inspiration has become clear
from recent research, which has shown that the Greek Acta of the synod are
the original, the Latin version being a translation.16 Such open defiance of
the imperial will could not be ignored. Olympius, exarch of Ravenna, was
ordered to arrestMartin and compel the bishops gathered inRome to accept
the Typos. When he arrived in Rome, Olympius discovered that, despite
his best efforts, Pope Martin’s popularity made it hazardous to try and
arrest him. In defiance of the imperial will he made his peace with Martin
and departed for Sicily to deal with Arab raiders. There, like Gregory the
exarch of North Africa, he may have been proclaimed emperor. But he
died in 652. In the following year a new exarch arrived with troops and
succeeded in arresting the pope. Martin was brought to Constantinople
and tried for treason, with Olympius’ rebellion being cited as evidence.
Although condemned to death, Martin’s sentence was commuted to exile
and, already ailing, he was sent to Cherson in the Crimea, where he died
in 655. Martin felt abandoned by those who should have supported him;
his successor had been elected more than a year before his death. By that
time,Maximus had already been arrested, likewise tried for treason and sent
into exile in Thrace, where attempts were made to break his opposition to
monothelitism. When that failed, he was brought back to Constantinople
for trial. He was condemned as a heretic, mutilated and exiled to Lazica,
where he soon died on 13 August 662.
By the time Maximus died in exile, the emperor himself was in selfimposed
exile from Constantinople. Around 662 Constans II and his court
moved to Syracuse in Sicily. This attempt to abandon the beleaguered Constantinople
and re-establish the court closer to the centre of the truncated
empire recalls earlier plans by Heraclius, and shows that there was no sense
that the Byzantine empire was now confined to the easternMediterranean.
From his base in Sicily, Constans clearly intended to liberate Italy from
the Lombards; before arriving at Syracuse, he had led a campaign in Italy.
This had met with some success, though he failed to take Benevento and
soon retired to Naples, from where he made a ceremonial visit to Rome.
However, his residence in Sicily was extremely unpopular, imposing as it
did an unwelcome financial burden on the island. There was also fierce
opposition in Constantinople to the loss of the court, and in 668 Constans
was assassinated by a chamberlain.
Constans II was succeeded by his son Constantine IV. It was during
Constantine’s reign that the Umayyad caliph Mu‘awiya made a serious
attempt to complete the Arab expansion begun in the 630s, aiming to take
Constantinople and with it destroy the only serious opposition to Muslim
rule in theMediterranean. After his victory over ‘Ali in the fitna,Mu‘awiya
renewed his offensive against the Byzantine empire. By 670 the islands of
Cyprus, Rhodes and Kos, and the town of Kyzikos on the southern coast
of the Sea of Marmara, had all been occupied by Arab naval forces. In 672
Smyrna was taken, and in 674 the main attack on Constantinople began. A
large Muslim fleet blockaded the city, and for the next four years the same
fleet was to blockade Constantinople, retiring in the winter to shelter off
Kyzikos. Each year the defences of Constantinople held firm, and in the
final naval battle, the Byzantines secured a major victory with the help of
Greek fire. First mentioned in the sources on this occasion, Greek fire was a
highly inflammable, crude oil-based liquid that was shot out at enemy ships,
setting them ablaze.17 At the same time as this naval victory, the Byzantine
army was able to surprise and defeat an Arab army contingent in Anatolia.
Mu‘awiya was forced to break off his attack on Constantinople and sue
for peace. This major victory for the Byzantines proved to be a turning
point: the Arab threat to Constantinople receded for the time being and
Byzantium’s prestige in the Balkans and the west was enhanced. Embassies
from the khagan of the Avars, now restricted mainly to the Hungarian
plain, and from the Balkan Slavs arrived in Constantinople, bringing gifts
and acknowledging Byzantine supremacy.
However, the situation in the Balkans was about to change. The Slavs
based there had never formed any coherent political entity, though their
presence confined imperial authority to Thessalonica and other coastal
settlements. The Bulgars, a Turkic-speaking group whose homeland was to
the north of the Sea of Azov, had long been a power among the nomadic
peoples of the Eurasian steppes. The Byzantines had maintained friendly
relations with them, and had supported them against theAvars.But with the
arrival of another people – the Khazars – the Bulgars’ khanate began to split
up, and one group led by Asparuch arrived at theDanube delta around 680,
intending to settle south of the river in traditionally imperial territory. The
Byzantines saw no threat in the Bulgars, but were unwilling to allow them
south of theDanube.AByzantine fleet arrived at the river mouth and troops
moved up fromThrace, intending to expel theBulgars. TheBulgars avoided
open battle but, as theByzantine forces withdrew, took them by surprise and
defeated them. Constantine IV concluded a treaty with Asparuch, granting
theBulgars the territory they already held. As a result of this presence, several
Slav tribes hitherto loyal to Byzantium recognised the overlordship of the
Bulgars and became their tributaries, and a Bulgaro-Slav political structure
started to develop, with its capital at Pliska. This independent, periodically
hostile presence so close to the City, in principle able to control the route
from the Danube delta to Constantinople, would prove a long-standing
threat to the stability of the empire.
The enforcement of monothelitism as imperial policy, though it secured
papal acquiescence in the years immediately following Martin’s arrest and
exile, was bound to prove ultimately unacceptable to the west, which saw
the council of Chalcedon as endorsing the Latin Christology of Pope
Leo I (440–61). By 680 Constantine had come to the conclusion that
religious unity with the west was more important than the fragile possibility
of union with the monophysites – now mostly lost to the Umayyad
caliphate – offered by monothelitism. He proposed to Pope Agatho (678–
81) the calling of an ecumenical council to condemn monothelitism. Agatho
enthusiastically concurred, and held synods in Italy and England to prepare
for the coming ecumenical council. Armed with these synodical condemnations
of monothelitism, the papal legates arrived in Constantinople.
The sixth ecumenical council met in Constantinople from 3 November
680 until 16 September 681. Monenergism and monothelitism were condemned,
and the patriarchs Sergius, Cyrus, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter anathematised,
together with Pope Honorius. There was no word, however, of
the defenders of the orthodoxy vindicated by the council,Martin andMaximus,
who had suffered at the hands of Constans; nor were the emperors
Constans or Heraclius mentioned. Constantine IV himself was hailed, at
the final session, as a ‘new Marcian’ and a ‘new Justinian’.
The latter part of Constantine’s reign saw the Byzantine empire regain
a certain stability. In 684–5 he led a successful military expedition into
Cilicia, forcing Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik to sue for peace and pay tribute to the
Byzantines (see below, pp. 344, 381–2). Religious reconciliation with Rome
led to peace with the Lombards in Italy, brokered by the pope. In North
Africa, the Byzantines were able to halt the advance of the Arabs through
alliances with Berber tribes, though this only bought time until the Berbers
themselves converted to Islam.
Constantine IV died in 685 and was succeeded by his son, Justinian II.
It is worth noting that both Constantine IV and Constans II had deposed
their brothers in the course of their reigns – in Constantine’s case, despite
open opposition from senate and army – in order to secure the succession
of their eldest sons. Justinian sought to build on the relative stability
achieved by his father, leading an expedition into the Balkans and reaching
Thessalonica. He continued the policy of both his father and his grandfather
of transporting Slavs into Anatolia. He also transported some of the
population from Cyprus to Kyzikos, depopulated during the siege of Constantinople,
and ferried Mardaites from northern Syria and Lebanon to
the Peloponnese and elsewhere. Whether or not Justinian was responsible
for the breach of the truce with ‘Abd al-Malik in 692, he suffered military
disaster when his Slav troops deserted. As a result, several Armenian princes
once again acknowledged Muslim suzerainty.
In 692 Justinian called a council, known as the quinisext or fifth-sixth
council (see below, pp. 244–7). In so doing, he followed both his father’s
example and that of his namesake, declaring his credentials as emperor and
guardian of orthodoxy. This was also manifest in his coinage: the image of
the emperor was displaced from the obverse of the coin to the reverse, and
replaced with an image of Christ, the source of his authority as emperor.
In 695, Justinian was overthrown in a palace coup and replaced by Leontius
(695–8), the recently appointed strat¯egos of the theme of Hellas. Justinian
had his nose slit and was exiled to Cherson, where his grandfather had
earlier exiled PopeMartin. Leontius’ reign lasted three years, during which
he witnessed the end of Byzantine rule inNorth Africa. That defeat, and the
consequent loss of Carthage, provoked another rebellion in which Leontius
was deposed in favour of Apsimar, the droungarios of the Kibyrrhaiotai fleet,
who changed his name to the more imperial-sounding Tiberius. Tiberius II
reigned from 698 to 705, during which time Asia Minor was subjected to
continual Arab raiding.He was replaced by Justinian II, who returned with
the support of the Bulgar khan Tervel, slipping into the City through one of
its aqueducts. Justinian’s final six years were ones of terror and vengeance,
brought to an end by a military coup; thereupon three military leaders
succeeded one another for short and inglorious reigns, until the accession
in 717 of Leo III, the emperor who subsequently introduced iconoclasm.
World History
