Leo V the Armenian (Greek: Λέων ὁ Ἀρμένιος, Léōn ho Arménios; c. 775 – 25 December 820) was the Byzantine emperor from 813 to 820. He is chiefly remembered for ending the decade-long war with the Bulgars, as well as initiating the second period of Byzantine iconoclasm.
A senior general of Armenian origin, Leo distinguished himself under Nikephoros I and Michael I Rhangabe, eventually becoming the stratēgos of the Anatolic Theme. Taking advantage of Michael's defeat at the Battle of Versinikia, he forced the emperor to abdicate in his favour. He was able to withhold the blockade of Constantinople by Krum of Bulgaria and, after Krum's death, concluded a 30-year peace with his successor Omurtag.
In 815, Leo deposed Patriarch Nikephoros and reinstituted iconoclasm. He was assassinated by supporters of Michael the Amorian, one of his most trusted generals, who succeeded him on the throne in 820.
Leo was born c. 775 in Umayyad Arminiya, the son of the patrician Bardas, who was of Armenian descent. According to Theophanes Continuatus, Leo was also of Assyrian/Syrian descent. In his youth he fled with his family to the Byzantine Empire and enrolled in the army of the Anatolic Theme. In 802, the general Bardanes Tourkos took over the theme and married one of his daughters to Leo. When Bardanes rebelled, Leo deserted to Emperor Nikephoros I who promoted him to the position of stratēgos of the Armeniac Theme. In 811, when Nikephoros was planning his major campaign against the Bulgars (which was to end disastrously), Arab raiders captured and destroyed the city of Euchaita in the Armeniac Theme—a humiliating defeat in which the salaries of the thematic units were also lost. Nikephoros blamed this on Leo and exiled him. Punishment also included deprivation of his military rank, beating and hair cutting. However, a modern scholar suggests this "Leo" mentioned in the contemporary sources as being punished by Nikephoros was not the same as the later Emperor Leo.
Recalled by Michael I Rhangabe in 811, Leo became governor of the Anatolic Theme and conducted himself well in a war against the Arabs in 812, defeating the forces of the Cilician thughur under Thabit ibn Nasr. Leo survived the Battle of Versinikia in 813 by abandoning the battlefield, but nevertheless took advantage of this defeat to force the abdication of Michael I in his favor on 11 July 813. It was at this time that people assembled at the tomb of Constantine V, an emperor who was victorious against the Bulgars, and cried out to it: "Arise and help the state which is perishing!"
In a diplomatic move, Leo wrote a letter to Patriarch Nikephoros in order to reassure him of his orthodoxy (Nikephoros being obviously afraid of a possible iconoclast revival). A further step in preventing future usurpations was the castration of Michael I's sons. One month later, during his entrance to the Palace quarter, he kneeled before the icon of Christ at the Chalke Gate, which was erected by Empress Irene.
Leo inherited a precarious situation. Within a week of his coronation, Khan Krum of Bulgaria blockaded both Adrianople and Constantinople by land. He agreed to negotiate in person with Krum but used the opportunity to attempt to have him assassinated. The stratagem failed, enraging Krum who sacked the suburbs of Constantinople and towns in southern Thrace. However, he abandoned his siege of the capital, and withdrew to capture and depopulate Adrianople. With this moment of respite, Leo divorced his allegedly adulterous wife and married the daughter of the patrikios Arsaber, the well-regarded Armenian noblewoman Theodosia, crowning her first son, the ten-year-old Symbatios, co-emperor, and renaming him Constantine, recalling the militarily successful iconoclast emperors of the eighth century, Leo III the Isaurian and Constantine V. In 814, Krum sacked Arcadiopolis and other Thracian towns, and planned a full-scale siege of Constantinople, but died of a stroke before he could begin, causing the Bulgar threat to finally recede.
The beginning of the second iconoclasm
The motives for the second iconoclasm appear to be more straightforward than in the first, and are much less contested among scholars. Like Emperor Philippikos' (r. 711–713) re-introduction of monothelitism in 711, Leo's adoption of iconoclasm was a strategy for imperial survival and a means of bolstering imperial authority (although it is noted that pragmatism and genuine conviction are not mutually exclusive, i.e., Leo may have had genuinely iconoclastic convictions). And just as Patriarch Nikephoros I and Theodore the Stoudite opposed imperial intervention in dogmatic matters, so too did Maximos the Confessor oppose the monothelite policies of Constans II (r. 641–688). In turn, Constans and Leo appealed to the legacy of Constantine the Great in convoking the First Council of Nicaea, and believed their actions were only a re-assertion of this legitimate imperial authority in spiritual matters.
Leo informed his advisers of his opinion that recent emperors had suffered defeat because of their veneration of icons (or iconodulia), unlike the iconoclast emperors Leo III and Constantine V who were victorious against the Arabs and Bulgars. He appointed a theological commission led by the monk John the Grammarian (later Patriarch of Constantinople John VII). When called to comment, the iconodule Patriarch Nikephoros I of Constantinople rejected the report and argued that the biblical passages quoted as condemning iconodulia were not dealing with "holy images" but with idols. Leo asked the commission to produce a more carefully researched document, and enlisted the help of a major bishop, Antony, later Patriarch of Constantinople from 821. In the second document, the commission stated that, since the military blamed their defeats by the Bulgars on iconodulia, a compromise must be sought in which only images hanging low in churches (which are therefore able to be venerated) would be removed, but Nikephoros resisted again. Leo asked Nikephoros to provide biblical proof-texts for iconodulia but he appealed instead to the notion of the long-standing tradition of iconodulia. Leo then proposed a debate with the commission, but Nikephoros refused to participate. While Leo was attempting to present himself as a just arbitrator of a debate, rather than as a tyrant imposing iconoclasm for secular reasons (as was the characterisation of many iconodule accounts), debate among clergy only resulted in a stalemate. Some soldiers of the imperial guard threw stones and mud at the icon of Christ over the Chalke Gate, shouting iconoclastic slogans, prompting Leo to have it replaced with a cross.
This caused alarm among the clergy who met in the patriarchal palace on Christmas Eve 814. Patriarch Nikephoros refuted the document produced by the commission and had the clergy sign a pledge to oppose iconoclasm with their lives. The next day, Leo requested the iconodule clergy to engage in a debate with the commission, and kissed a small icon to demonstrate his desire for compromise. The influential iconodule abbot, Theodore the Stoudite, asked the Emperor not to involve himself in theological matters. After several weeks of correspondence and attempts by Leo to persuade clergy of the compromise proposal, Nikephoros remained unwavering in his views. At the beginning of Lent, he once again refused to discuss the issue and was deposed and exiled. Leo appointed the layman iconoclast Theodotos I, who held a synod to overturn the Second Council of Nicaea (787) and reaffirm the Council of Hieria (754) as the seventh ecumenical council. The Acts of the Council of Constantinople (815) differ from those of Hieria in that they do not charge the iconodules with idolatry, but rather "folly" and "recklessness": "we determine that the making of images is neither venerable nor useful, but we refrain from calling them idols, because even in evil exist different degrees". The central argument was that holy images were unsuitable if placed in areas that would implicitly or explicitly earn them the devotion and adoration which is due to God alone. Empress Irene was criticised for introducing the veneration of images, which are said to circumscribe the uncircumscribable and separate Christ's humanity from his divinity. In this sense, images are also called "falsely-named" in that they do not truly represent what they are said to, since they do not share in the essence of the person depicted. Images are also not said to be endowed with divine grace.