Each post in this series of essays on the Argument from Victory will be structured in the same way. I will began with a Curious Case, a historical episode that will lead us down a garden path: some facts and stories that I find interesting, retold in a pleasing way. This will be followed by some Speculative Reflection, in which I draw out some possible conclusions that the story might carry for my main theme.
Please feel free to disagree, and tell me so. But without anything further in the way of preface, here is our first
Curious Case
The year is 812; the season is autumn—achingly beautiful in this part of the world—and beneath the sombre gold gleam of the Church of the Holy Apostles—final resting place of Emperor Constantine the Great, Equal to the Apostles, God's Regent on Earth, founder of the five hundred year old Christian Roman Empire—an unseemly commotion has erupted. The Patriarch Nikephoros, the Empire's chief intercessor with the divine realm, is performing a service of intercession on behalf of the Balkan city of Mesembria, now besieged by an invading Bulgar horde under the command of the man the Byzantines fear most: Krum.
Krum the Horrible, great Khan of the heathen Bulgar nation, has screamed across the Christian Roman Empire like the hot summer wind that sweeps the steppe that bore him. This "New Sennacherib" has brought degradation and destruction to the New Jerusalem: Constantinople—chief city of Christendom, citadel of Orthodoxy and true heir to the Empire of Constantine—steward to the legacies of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem. Since Krum's accession in 803, this swaggering pagan, this unrepentant polygamist, this barbarian poltroon, has smashed every Christian army sent against him. And now he has inflicted the ultimate humiliation: ambushing the Roman emperor Nikephoros (so cruelly named—it means "bringer of victory") in a mountain pass, Krum has annihilated the imperial army almost to a man. Worse, the emperor himself was killed in the fighting. Beheaded, bisected, and gilded in silver, his skull now cups Krum's wine as he feasts with his ululating concubines.
This horrifying catastrophe is the climax to nearly four decades of misfortune and defeat at the hands of the Empire's heathen enemies. It can herald only one thing: the Empire has lost God's favor, and must soon be destroyed. How have God's chosen people fallen so far?
The trouble began with a woman. Irene Sarantapechaina, orphan daughter to a powerful Athenian family, seemed the perfect bride for the young Leo IV. Irene was not just well born, she was one of the most brilliant and beautiful women the Empire had ever seen. The young Leo would need wise counsel in the years ahead. Already co-emperor with his father Constantine V at the time of his marriage, Leo inherited both the name and the legacy of his grandfather Leo III, who founded the Isaurian dynasty, a lineage that crowned the Christian Roman Empire with honor, glory, riches, and above all, victory. Leo was universally expected to continue his grandfather's work: rolling back the frontiers of Islam in the East, and reclaiming the ancient possessions of the Christian Roman Empire in the West. In December of 769, as the imperial wedding flooded the capital with glamour, glitter, and gold, it did not seem too much to hope that the Empire might reclaim the ancient borders of Constantine for Orthodoxy—stretching once again from the Atlantic to the Euphrates and the Red Sea.
Alas, Irene had not the wisdom to see her place. More clever, more hard working, more ambitious and more duplicitous than her short-lived husband Leo IV and her weak-willed son Constantine VI, Irene soon ruled Constantinople in all but name, and finally in name as well. In 797 Irene rid herself of her useless son—who had grown petulant beneath her domination—by having him blinded in the palace chamber where she had given him birth twenty-six years before. Constantine died of his wounds soon afterwards, and Irene took power in her own name, styling herself both Basileus and Basilissa. Heaven itself recoiled in horror from Irene's crime, shrouding the land in seventeen days of darkness and eclipse, but the mad queen took no heed. With Constantine dead, Irene was at liberty to finish destroying the work of his great-grandfather: Iconoclasm.
Leo III, "Leo the Isaurian", had come to power in 717, during a crisis as great as the one Constantinople faces now. A lowborn soldier hailing from the Empire's Turkish border with the Umayyad Caliphate, Leo seized power even as a huge Muslim fleet prepared to besiege the walls of Constantinople. After destroying the Arab fleet with Greek Fire, Leo brokered a deal—ironically enough—with the new Bulgarian tribes, who swept down from the Danube and annihilated the Arab army besieging the land walls. Still, as the infidels retreated in tatters and Leo assumed the throne in triumph as the new savior of Christendom, he knew better than to believe that victory had been secured by the traditional Byzantine weapons of Greek Fire and clever diplomacy. Leo had a new weapon, something the Empire had not seen during the hundred years of its previous decline: Orthodoxy.
Where the pagan Roman Empire had believed that military victory was the gift of Orthopraxy—the pax deorum—peace of the gods—something guaranteed by regular prayer, sacrifice, libation and dedication, the Christian Roman Empire knew better. There was only one God in heaven, and He desired one thing above all else: that His Triune nature be properly known and worshipped. Only a right-believing Empire would enjoy the benefits of God's favor in victory over her myriad temporal enemies.
Leo grew up on the border with the Islamic enemy, an enemy that had steadily stripped the Christian Roman Empire of her possessions in Egypt, North Africa, and the Holy Land. And Leo had come to believe, like many other Christians living in or near the Arab realms, that God was sending the Greeks a message by favoring the Arabs in battle. Though they denied the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, the Arabs were conspicuously free of a practice that had come to saturate the lives of their Christian enemies: the veneration of icons. Painted on wood or formed in mosaic, these images of Christ and His company of angels, saints, and martyrs could be found in every church, every monastery, every home. Ordinary people bowed before them in veneration (or was it worship?) begging the images to intercede with God on their behalf—granting them life, health, and happiness. Emperors and generals carried them on their standards into battle, promising great building projects and displays of veneration should the mute image bring them victory.
Leo knew the truth. The veneration of icons was a violation of the second Commandment:
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me"
God had raised up the Muslims as a warning and a punishment for Christian sinners. Deniers of Christ they might be, but the Umayyads—and the Jews who flourished under their mild rule—could not be accused of idolatry. Even the making of figural images was not tolerated among them (at least in an explicitly religious context). Within ten years of his accession, gradually at first but then with ruthless and accelerating force, Leo made clear his decision to cleanse the Christian Roman Empire of its idolatrous taint and return it to the Orthodox path, the righteous path, the path of victory. The icons were burned, smashed, smeared and broken—their supporters murdered, jailed, or humiliated.
And as Leo's program spread throughout his domains, first during his own reign and then during the reign of his tireless son, Constantine V, the Christian Roman Empire was indeed crowned with victory. The Muslim armies were smashed again and again, at Akroinon, in Cyprus and in Syria, and the Empire steadily regained the territory it had lost in the reign of Heraklius a hundred years before. By 750 the Umayyad Caliphate had collapsed entirely: a victim of its own internal quarrels, exacerbated by a record of defeat at Byzantine hands.
And yet, despite all the evidence of divine favor for Iconoclasm and its champions, from the moment of her husband's death Irene had sought to destroy the legacy of Leo and Constantine. Weak. Irene was devoted to the veneration of icons, and had never made a secret of her sympathy to the Iconodule cause. (And now perhaps, she was eager to find new allies among Iconodules excluded or disgraced by their beliefs—at a time when her brothers in law and the Iconoclastic court viewed her regency with suspicion and hostility). In her first ascendency, Irene had called a new Ecumenical Council in 787 to reverse the results of a synod convened by her father in law, which condemned the veneration of icons. Now, ten years later, after a brief attempt to oust his mother and rule in his own right, Constantine VI was dead, and the Iconoclastic dynasty was dead with him. Irene had a free hand.
As Irene consolidated her power, God made his displeasure clear. In the east, the extraordinary warrior-poet Harun al-Rashid, leader of a vigorous young Abbasid Caliphate, brought death and defeat to Byzantine Armenia and Anatolia, riding from his new capital of Baghdad. In the West, the Carolingian Dynasty, in an unholy allegiance with the papacy of Old Rome, destroyed the last hopes of a reunited Roman Empire. On Christmas Day, 800 AD, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans, shattering the unity of Constantine's empire forever. And at this point Irene went too far: she entertained an offer of marriage from this illiterate Frankish upstart. This was too much even for Irene's court of Iconodule sycophants, and she was packed off to a monastery, being replaced by her own finance minister: Nikephoros. But Nikephoros had remained an Iconodule, and the Empire had continued down the road to defeat and disaster, until at last it has come to this: the emperor dead, the army defeated, and the Bulgars battering the breast of the Byzantine heartland. The Patriarch's service of intercession will be of no use: Mesembria will fall, and its inhabitants be murdered or carried off to servitude. Within months, Krum will be parading beneath the land walls of Constantinople.
And so, at this moment, as the Patriarch intones at the head of the congregation in the Church of the Holy Apostles, an unseemly commotion breaks out. In a darkened corner of the church lies the great marble sarcophagus of Constantine V: the champion of Iconoclasm, the victor of Cyprus and Syria. Suddenly, a beseeching wail rises from a small group that has gathered around the coffin, drowning out the liturgical drone of the Iconodule Patriarch. A mob of citizens and veterans implores the dead victor, beating at their breasts and clasping at the cold green marble, begging Constantine to burst from his tomb and lead the Empire to victory once again.
And so, in his way, he will. Within two years power will be seized by another Leo, Leo V, "The Armenian", like Leo III a soldier from the eastern provinces, and sympathetic to Iconoclasm. The Patriarch Nikephoros will be deposed, the Icons will be banished from Constantinople once again, and Leo will win signal victories against the Arabs and the Bulgars, driving them back from the walls of the New Jerusalem and bringing the Empire back into the light of God's favor.
Leo and his successors will demonstrate that right-thinking, Orthodoxy—and Orthodoxy alone—is the true Nikephoros, the Victory-Bringer.
Or at least they will until the reign of Theophilos (829-842), when the Abassid Caliphate will recover from the period of civil strife that crippled it after the death of Harun al-Rashid, and, under the powerful Caliph al-Mu'tasim, inflict a series of terrible defeats on the Christian Roman Empire. This will be the signal for the fourth and final revolution in the wheel of Icons, as the widow of Theophilos—Theodora—will restore their veneration once and for all. Poor Constantine V. The new Iconodules, perhaps fearing that he might play a role in a fifth turn of the wheel, will desecrate his sarcophagus: breaking the brilliant green marble into slabs and sending them to buttress the palace of the new Iconodule Empress. Iconoclasm will destroyed, never to rise again.
Unless of course, you decided to view the Protestant Reformation as the heir of Iconoclasm. Perhaps the now-itinerant spirit of Constantine V smiled over the shoulder of Martin Luther—even as the Empire he had once ruled fell to the Ottoman Turks.
Some Speculative Reflection
It would be easy to dismiss this little-known historical episode as a superstitious aberration—part of the general hiccup in human progress and reason that accounts for the Middle Ages in general. We of course live in the age inaugurated by the European Enlightenment and by Napoleon, who famously said that "God is on the side with the best artillery." The age when people thought that victory was guaranteed by right-thinking—by Orthodoxy—and that victory itself was a sign of Orthodoxy, seems very far away indeed. We know that the changing fortunes of Constantinople are to be accounted for by the waxing and waning power of the Kingdom of Bulgaria and the Islamic Caliphate: the product of internal politicking and economic fluctuations in Pliska, Baghdad and Damascus.
Orthodoxy had nothing to do with it.
But in this series of posts, I'd like to argue that this is not actually true. If we strip away the secularizing accretions and rationalizing justifications, I believe that we will find much the same pattern at work in the modern world, the epoch inaugurated by the philosophes and by Napoleon: the Age of Ideology. The tune may have been transposed into a secular key, but the expectations are the same: The proof of an Orthodoxy is its status as a Nikephoros, a Victory-Bringer. The seesawing prospects of Capitalism, Communism, Fascism (and every ideology in-between) have been subject to the same argument that ruled the changing fortunes of Iconoclasm: the Argument from Victory.
Were the Russian visitors who filed past Lenin's tomb in the autumn of 1998—as the ruble cratered and the Russian economy reeled under the impact of Capitalist shock therapy—really so different from the little band of venerators who beseeched the tomb of Constantine in the autumn of 812?
Somehow I think not.
Leo III, "Leo the Isaurian", had come to power in 717, during a crisis as great as the one Constantinople faces now. A lowborn soldier hailing from the Empire's Turkish border with the Umayyad Caliphate, Leo seized power even as a huge Muslim fleet prepared to besiege the walls of Constantinople. After destroying the Arab fleet with Greek Fire, Leo brokered a deal—ironically enough—with the new Bulgarian tribes, who swept down from the Danube and annihilated the Arab army besieging the land walls. Still, as the infidels retreated in tatters and Leo assumed the throne in triumph as the new savior of Christendom, he knew better than to believe that victory had been secured by the traditional Byzantine weapons of Greek Fire and clever diplomacy. Leo had a new weapon, something the Empire had not seen during the hundred years of its previous decline: Orthodoxy.
Where the pagan Roman Empire had believed that military victory was the gift of Orthopraxy—the pax deorum—peace of the gods—something guaranteed by regular prayer, sacrifice, libation and dedication, the Christian Roman Empire knew better. There was only one God in heaven, and He desired one thing above all else: that His Triune nature be properly known and worshipped. Only a right-believing Empire would enjoy the benefits of God's favor in victory over her myriad temporal enemies.
Leo grew up on the border with the Islamic enemy, an enemy that had steadily stripped the Christian Roman Empire of her possessions in Egypt, North Africa, and the Holy Land. And Leo had come to believe, like many other Christians living in or near the Arab realms, that God was sending the Greeks a message by favoring the Arabs in battle. Though they denied the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, the Arabs were conspicuously free of a practice that had come to saturate the lives of their Christian enemies: the veneration of icons. Painted on wood or formed in mosaic, these images of Christ and His company of angels, saints, and martyrs could be found in every church, every monastery, every home. Ordinary people bowed before them in veneration (or was it worship?) begging the images to intercede with God on their behalf—granting them life, health, and happiness. Emperors and generals carried them on their standards into battle, promising great building projects and displays of veneration should the mute image bring them victory.
Leo knew the truth. The veneration of icons was a violation of the second Commandment:
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me"
God had raised up the Muslims as a warning and a punishment for Christian sinners. Deniers of Christ they might be, but the Umayyads—and the Jews who flourished under their mild rule—could not be accused of idolatry. Even the making of figural images was not tolerated among them (at least in an explicitly religious context). Within ten years of his accession, gradually at first but then with ruthless and accelerating force, Leo made clear his decision to cleanse the Christian Roman Empire of its idolatrous taint and return it to the Orthodox path, the righteous path, the path of victory. The icons were burned, smashed, smeared and broken—their supporters murdered, jailed, or humiliated.
And as Leo's program spread throughout his domains, first during his own reign and then during the reign of his tireless son, Constantine V, the Christian Roman Empire was indeed crowned with victory. The Muslim armies were smashed again and again, at Akroinon, in Cyprus and in Syria, and the Empire steadily regained the territory it had lost in the reign of Heraklius a hundred years before. By 750 the Umayyad Caliphate had collapsed entirely: a victim of its own internal quarrels, exacerbated by a record of defeat at Byzantine hands.
And yet, despite all the evidence of divine favor for Iconoclasm and its champions, from the moment of her husband's death Irene had sought to destroy the legacy of Leo and Constantine. Weak. Irene was devoted to the veneration of icons, and had never made a secret of her sympathy to the Iconodule cause. (And now perhaps, she was eager to find new allies among Iconodules excluded or disgraced by their beliefs—at a time when her brothers in law and the Iconoclastic court viewed her regency with suspicion and hostility). In her first ascendency, Irene had called a new Ecumenical Council in 787 to reverse the results of a synod convened by her father in law, which condemned the veneration of icons. Now, ten years later, after a brief attempt to oust his mother and rule in his own right, Constantine VI was dead, and the Iconoclastic dynasty was dead with him. Irene had a free hand.
As Irene consolidated her power, God made his displeasure clear. In the east, the extraordinary warrior-poet Harun al-Rashid, leader of a vigorous young Abbasid Caliphate, brought death and defeat to Byzantine Armenia and Anatolia, riding from his new capital of Baghdad. In the West, the Carolingian Dynasty, in an unholy allegiance with the papacy of Old Rome, destroyed the last hopes of a reunited Roman Empire. On Christmas Day, 800 AD, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans, shattering the unity of Constantine's empire forever. And at this point Irene went too far: she entertained an offer of marriage from this illiterate Frankish upstart. This was too much even for Irene's court of Iconodule sycophants, and she was packed off to a monastery, being replaced by her own finance minister: Nikephoros. But Nikephoros had remained an Iconodule, and the Empire had continued down the road to defeat and disaster, until at last it has come to this: the emperor dead, the army defeated, and the Bulgars battering the breast of the Byzantine heartland. The Patriarch's service of intercession will be of no use: Mesembria will fall, and its inhabitants be murdered or carried off to servitude. Within months, Krum will be parading beneath the land walls of Constantinople.
And so, at this moment, as the Patriarch intones at the head of the congregation in the Church of the Holy Apostles, an unseemly commotion breaks out. In a darkened corner of the church lies the great marble sarcophagus of Constantine V: the champion of Iconoclasm, the victor of Cyprus and Syria. Suddenly, a beseeching wail rises from a small group that has gathered around the coffin, drowning out the liturgical drone of the Iconodule Patriarch. A mob of citizens and veterans implores the dead victor, beating at their breasts and clasping at the cold green marble, begging Constantine to burst from his tomb and lead the Empire to victory once again.
And so, in his way, he will. Within two years power will be seized by another Leo, Leo V, "The Armenian", like Leo III a soldier from the eastern provinces, and sympathetic to Iconoclasm. The Patriarch Nikephoros will be deposed, the Icons will be banished from Constantinople once again, and Leo will win signal victories against the Arabs and the Bulgars, driving them back from the walls of the New Jerusalem and bringing the Empire back into the light of God's favor.
Leo and his successors will demonstrate that right-thinking, Orthodoxy—and Orthodoxy alone—is the true Nikephoros, the Victory-Bringer.
Or at least they will until the reign of Theophilos (829-842), when the Abassid Caliphate will recover from the period of civil strife that crippled it after the death of Harun al-Rashid, and, under the powerful Caliph al-Mu'tasim, inflict a series of terrible defeats on the Christian Roman Empire. This will be the signal for the fourth and final revolution in the wheel of Icons, as the widow of Theophilos—Theodora—will restore their veneration once and for all. Poor Constantine V. The new Iconodules, perhaps fearing that he might play a role in a fifth turn of the wheel, will desecrate his sarcophagus: breaking the brilliant green marble into slabs and sending them to buttress the palace of the new Iconodule Empress. Iconoclasm will destroyed, never to rise again.
Unless of course, you decided to view the Protestant Reformation as the heir of Iconoclasm. Perhaps the now-itinerant spirit of Constantine V smiled over the shoulder of Martin Luther—even as the Empire he had once ruled fell to the Ottoman Turks.
Some Speculative Reflection
It would be easy to dismiss this little-known historical episode as a superstitious aberration—part of the general hiccup in human progress and reason that accounts for the Middle Ages in general. We of course live in the age inaugurated by the European Enlightenment and by Napoleon, who famously said that "God is on the side with the best artillery." The age when people thought that victory was guaranteed by right-thinking—by Orthodoxy—and that victory itself was a sign of Orthodoxy, seems very far away indeed. We know that the changing fortunes of Constantinople are to be accounted for by the waxing and waning power of the Kingdom of Bulgaria and the Islamic Caliphate: the product of internal politicking and economic fluctuations in Pliska, Baghdad and Damascus.
Orthodoxy had nothing to do with it.
But in this series of posts, I'd like to argue that this is not actually true. If we strip away the secularizing accretions and rationalizing justifications, I believe that we will find much the same pattern at work in the modern world, the epoch inaugurated by the philosophes and by Napoleon: the Age of Ideology. The tune may have been transposed into a secular key, but the expectations are the same: The proof of an Orthodoxy is its status as a Nikephoros, a Victory-Bringer. The seesawing prospects of Capitalism, Communism, Fascism (and every ideology in-between) have been subject to the same argument that ruled the changing fortunes of Iconoclasm: the Argument from Victory.
Were the Russian visitors who filed past Lenin's tomb in the autumn of 1998—as the ruble cratered and the Russian economy reeled under the impact of Capitalist shock therapy—really so different from the little band of venerators who beseeched the tomb of Constantine in the autumn of 812?
Somehow I think not.
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