Book 6

Chapter XLVII.

Also at this time this same nation of Saracens came with an immense army, surrounded Constantinople and besieged it continually for three years but when the citizens with great fervor cried to God, many (of the invaders) perished by hunger and cold, by war and pestilence, and thus, exhausted by the siege, they departed. [1] When they had gone thence they attacked in war the nation of the Bulgarians beyond the Danube but they were overcome also by them and took refuge in their ships. When they sought the high sea a sudden tempest attacked them and very many also perished by drowning and their ships were dashed to pieces. Within Constantinople, indeed, three hundred thousand men perished by pestilence.

[1] Hartmann says (II, 2, 85) the siege lasted one year, A.D. 717-718.


Chapter XLVIII.

Liutprand also, hearing that the Saracens had laid waste Sardinia and were even defiling those places where the bones of the bishop St. Augustine had been formerly carried on account of the devastation of the barbarians and had been honorably buried, sent and gave a great price and took them and carried them over to the city of Ticinum and there buried them with the honor due to so great a father. In these days the city of Narnia (Narni) was conquered by the Langobards. [1]

[1] Probably by the duke of Spoleto (Hodgkin, VI, 444).


Chapter XLIX.

At this time king Liutprand besieged Ravenna and took Classis and destroyed it. [1] Then Paul the patrician sent his men out of Ravenna to kill the Pope, but as the Langobards fought against them in defense of the Pope and as the Spoletans resisted them on the Salarian bridge [2] as well as the Tuscan Langobards from other places, the design of the Ravenna people came to nought. At this time the emperor Leo burned the images of the saints placed in Constantinople and ordered the Roman pontiff to do the like if he wished to have the emperor's favor, but the pontiff disdained to do this thing. Also the whole of Ravenna and of Venetia [3] resisted such commands with one mind, and if the pontiff had not prohibited them they would have attempted to set up an emperor over themselves. [4] Also king Liutprand attacked Feronianum (Fregnano), Mons Bellius (Monteveglio), Buxeta (Busseto) and Persiceta (San Giovanni in Persiceto), Bononia (Bologna) [5] and the Pentapolis [6] and Auximun (Osimo) [7] fortresses of Emilia. And in like manner he then took possession of Sutrium (Sutri) [8] but after some days it was again restored to the Romans.[9] During the same time the emperor Leo went on to worse things so that he compelled all the inhabitants of Constantinople either by force or by blandishments, to give up the images of the Saviour and of his Holy Mother and of all the saints wherever they were, and he caused them to be burned by fire in the midst of the city. And because many of the people hindered such a wickedness from being done, some of them were beheaded and others suffered mutilation in body. As the patriarch Germanus did not consent to this error he was driven from his see and the presbyter Anastasius was ordained in his place.

[1] Probably not later than A. U. 725 (Hodgkin, VI, 444, note 3).
[2] A bridge on the Salarian way, over the Anio (Hodgkin, VI, 448).
[3] This word is the plural, "the Venices," for there were then two, land Venice, mostly under the Langobards, and sea Venice, under Ravenna. (See opening words of the Chronicon Venetum by John the Deacon, Monticolo's ed., p. 59.)
[4] To understand this controversy we must return to the time of Gregory I. The weakness of the Byzantine empire and its inability to protect its Italian subjects from the Langobards, combined with the growth of the administrative powers of the Pope throughout the extensive domains of the church, gave the papacy more and more a political character. Gregory extended this influence; he even attempted to make a separate peace with the Langobards, an act which was resented by the emperor Maurice. The people of Italy began to look to the Pope for protection, and there were aspirations for independence from the Eastern Empire and for a re-establishment of the Empire of the West. The usurpation of the exarch Eleutherius and the subsequent rebellion of Olympius which was supported by Pope Martin I, as well as the revolt of Ravenna under Georgius, all show this separatist tendency. Ecclesiastical differences such as the assumption of the title of Universal Bishop by the patriarch of Constantinople, the Monothelete controversy, the Type, the imprisonment of Pope Martin, etc., accentuated the irritation of the West. Constantine Pogonatus, indeed, like some of his predecessors, had adopted a policy of friendship with the papacy, and also concluded a definitive treaty with the Langobards, fixing the boundaries of the Langobard and Roman dominions. But after this peace was made, the Langobards became subject to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Pope and it became the interest of the Roman See to play the emperor and the Langobard king against each other in favor of its own greater power and independence. (Hartmann, Atti del Congresso in Cividale, 1899, pp. 153 to 162). When Leo the Isaurian mounted the throne, he was recognized at Ravenna, but an insurrection broke out against him in Sicily, which, however, was soon suppressed. But his heavy hand was felt in Rome in his efforts to collect from church property the means for carrying on his contests against the Saracens. Gregory II, a man of great ability, then occupied the papal chair and resisted his exactions, whereupon plots were laid by imperial officers to depose and perhaps to assassinate the Pope. Then came the conflict in regard to the worship of images, a practice which had gradually grown in the church and which Leo determined to eradicate. In 725 he issued a decree for their destruction. The work was begun with energy at Constantinople, all opposition was stamped out with great severity and a popular insurrection, as well as an attack upon the city by a rebellious fleet was suppressed with a strong hand. In Rome, however, his efforts were not successful, and when in 727 the order for the destruction of the images was renewed, Gregory armed himself against the emperor. The people now elected dukes for themselves in different parts of Italy and proposed to elect a new emperor, but the Pope restrained them, not wishing perhaps to have an emperor close at his side or possibly fearing a greater danger from the Langobards. Italy was distracted by internal struggles, the Pope, aided by the Spoletans and Beneventans, prevailed, and the exarch Paul was killed. Upon his death the eunuch Eutychius was appointed to succeed him. He landed at Naples and sent a private messenger to Rome instructing his partisans to murder the Pope and the chief nobles, but the people assembled, anathematized Eutychius and bound themselves to live or die with the Pope. Then Eutychius turned for aid to the Langobards, and Liutprand, who had at first favored the Pope and the Italian revolutionary movement and had improved the occasion to seize a number of the possessions of the empire, now changed his policy and formed a league with the exarch to subject Spoleto and Benevento to his own dominion and enable the exarch to control the city of Rome. The king first marched to Spoleto where he took hostages and oaths of fidelity, then he moved to Rome and encamped on the plain of Nero close to the city. The Pope came forth to meet him, attended by his ecclesiastics and Liutprand fell before him and took off his mantle, his doublet, his sword and spear, crown and cross, and laid them in the crypt before the altar of St. Peter. In spite of these manifestations of reverence, however, Liutprand insisted upon a reconciliation between the Pope and the exarch which put a limit to the Italian movement toward independence and to the political aspirations of the papacy, and in great measure restored the power of the exarch—although in the controversy regarding the destruction of images, in which the people took a passionate interest, the emperor Leo was never able to impose his will upon his subjects in Italy. In other matters too, local self-government had made great progress during the various revolutionary movements and nowhere more than in the islands of the Venetian lagoons, where the new settlements made by the fugitives from the mainland, had now assumed a semi-independent character under the doges or dukes of Venice, who in Liutprand's time made treaties with the Langobard king (defining the boundaries of each) and (regulating the intercourse between the two communities.) Liutprand also made a treaty with Comacchio, the rival of Venice in the commerce on the Po. It is surprising that these events should have been omitted by Paul, especially as they are referred to in the Liber Pontificalis, one of his sources. It shows the incomplete character of this last book of Paul's unfinished history. Gregory II died in 731, but his successor Gregory III pursued the same policy in respect to the emperor's edict for the destruction of the images. He convened a council attended by the archbishops of Grado and Ravenna and ninety-three Italian bishops, with other clergy and laity, which anathematized all who took part in the work of destruction. The emperor now withdrew from the jurisdiction of the Roman See all the dioceses east of the Adriatic, as well as those in Sicily, Bruttium and Calabria, and made them subject to Constantinople, and the rich and important papal possessions in the three last-named provinces were confiscated. The portions of Italy still subject to the empire became now divided into three parts - 1st, southern Italy and Sicily, more directly subject to the central authority of Constantinople; and the duchy of Rome, which, subject to papal influence, gradually became more and more independent; and 3rd, the immediate exarchate of Ravenna, which conducted for a short time a desperate struggle for existence (Hartmann, II, 2, 85-114 ; Hodgkin, VI, 432-436). After king Liutprand had attained his purpose in regard to the dukedoms of Spoleto and Benevento, his unnatural alliance with the exarch came to an end. A Roman army under Agatho, duke of Perugia, attacked Bologna, which was in possession of the Langobards, and was defeated (Ch. 54, infra), and Liutprand captured Ravenna itself (A.D. 732 - 3), though the city was afterwards re-taken by the Venetians (see Hartmann, II, 2, 132—133).
[5] Tregnano is west of the Hanaro (Hodgkin VI, 454, note l); Monteveglio is west, and San Giovanni in Persiceto is a little northwest of Bologna (id.).
[6] Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia and Ancona.
[7] Near Ancona.
[8] A. D. 728-729 (Jacobi, 58). It is a place about 25 miles northwest of Rome.
[9] Liutprand took it from the empire, but in restoring it put it into the possession of the pope, who was then at the head of the independent movement in Italy (Hartmann, II, 2, 96-97).