Constantine V., surnamed Copronymos,^540 during his long reign of thirty-four years
(741–775), kept up his father’s policy with great ability, vigor and cruelty, against popular clamor,
sedition and conspiracy. His character is very differently judged according to the doctrinal views
of the writers. His enemies charge him with monstrous vices, heretical opinions, and the practice
of magical arts; while the iconoclasts praise him highly for his virtues, and forty years after his
death still prayed at his tomb. His administrative and military talents and successes against the
Saracens, Bulgarians, and other enemies, as well as his despotism and cruelty (which he shares
with other Byzantine emperors) are beyond dispute.
He called an iconoclastic council in Constantinople in 754, which was to be the seventh
oecumenical, but was afterwards disowned as a pseudo-synod of heretics. It numbered three hundred
and thirty subservient bishops under the presidency of Archbishop Theodosius of Ephesus (the son
of a former emperor), and lasted six months (from Feb. 10th to Aug. 27th); but the patriarchs of
Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria, being under Moslem rule, could not attend, the see of
Constantinople was vacant, and Pope Stephen III. disregarded the imperial summons. The council,
appealing to the second commandment and other Scripture passages denouncing idolatry (Rom.
1:23, 25; John 4:24), and opinions of the Fathers (Epiphanius, Eusebius, Gregory Nazianzen,
Chrysostom, etc.), condemned and forbade the public and private worship of sacred images on pain
of deposition and excommunication, but (inconsistently) ordered at the same time that no one should
deface or meddle with sacred vessels or vestments ornamented with figures, and formally declared
its agreement with the six oecumenical councils, and the lawfulness of invoking the blessed Virgin
and saints. It denounced all religious representations by painter or sculptor as presumptuous, pagan
and idolatrous. Those who make pictures of the Saviour, who is God as well as man in one
inseparable person, either limit the incomprehensible Godhead to the bounds of created flesh, or
confound his two natures, like Eutyches, or separate them, like Nestorius, or deny his Godhead,
like Arius; and those who worship such a picture are guilty of the same heresy and blasphemy. The
eucharist alone is the proper image of Christ. A three-fold anathema was pronounced on the advocates
of image-worship, even the great John of Damascus under the name of Mansur, who is called a
traitor of Christ, an enemy of the empire, a teacher of impiety, and a perverter of the Scriptures.
The acts of the Synod were destroyed except the decision (o{ro") and a brief introduction, which
are embodied and condemned in the acts of the second Nicene Council.^541
The emperor carried out the decree with great rigor as far as his power extended. The sacred
images were ruthlessly destroyed and replaced by white-wash or pictures of trees, birds, and animals.
The bishops and clergy submitted; but the monks who manufactured the pictures, denounced the
emperor as a second Mohammed and heresiarch, and all the iconoclasts as heretics, atheists and
blasphemers, and were subjected to imprisonment, flagellation, mutilation, and all sorts of indignities,
even death. The principal martyrs of images during this reign (from 761–775) are Petrus Kalabites
(i.e. the inhabitant of a hut, kaluvbh), Johannes, Abbot of Monagria, and Stephanus, Abbot of
to interfere with the Church. See the two letters of Gregory to Leo (between 726 to 731) in Mansi, XII. 959 sqq., and the
discussion in Hefele, III. 389-404.(^540) The surnameΚοπρώνυμος(fromκόπρος, dung) was given him by his enemies on account of his having polluted the
baptismal gont in hid infancy. Theophanes, Chronogr. ed. Bonn. I. 615 He was also called Cabellinus, from his love of horses.
(^541) Mansi, XIII. 205-363; Gieseler, II. 16; Hefele, III. 410-418.