The Iconoclastic moment: an empire internally unstable and under a double external threat
As a rule, Byzantine history is broken down into three political phases: the proto-Byzantine period stretches from the 4th to the 7th century, initiated by the foundation of Constantinople (circa 330) or taken from the split between the Western and Eastern Roman empires (395); the meso-Byzantine period occupies the 7th to the 12th century; the late Byzantine Empire opens on the fall of Constantinople before the Crusaders in1204 and ends with the capture of the city by the Ottomans in 1453. At that date the Byzantine Empire, which knew its highest territorial expansion in the 6th century has ceased to exist as a political entity.
The first Iconoclastic period intervened during the reigns of Leo III and his son Constantine V[1]. The second took place between the reigns of Leo V the Armenian[2] and Theodora[3]. Between those two periods Empress Irene[4], wife of Leo IV[5], sought to reverse the trend regarding the attitude to images in the Eastern Empire. She had Tarasios elected as patriarch of Constantinople and called an ecumenical council in 786 with a view to re-establish the veneration of icons. It failed in its purpose in the face of powerful opposition from the iconoclastic current. It is only at the Council of Nicaea in 787 that the veneration of images was reinstated. Meanwhile following disputes with her son, who would reign as Constantine VI[6], and as a result of her diplomatic advisers' reservations towards her policy of rapprochement with Charlemagne[7], the Empress was sent into exile. She was succeeded by Nikephoros[8], who succumbed in battle before he could entrench the principles adopted at the 7th ecumenical council. Facing attacks from the Bulgarians on their Western flank and the Arabs to the South, the Byzantine Empire was also internally weakened by endless succession disputes.
