It met, was claimed as the seventh general (ecumenical) council of the Church,

although this claim was rejected by the council of 787 at which devotion to and

public display of images was re-established.

But although Constantine's reputation has been largely determined by his iconoclasm,

his importance lies as much in his other achievements: provincial military

and administrative changes, the establishment of a small elite imperial field army,

the so-called tagmata (the regiments) at Constantinople, changes in the fiscal system,

and the establishment of a substantial balance in the imperial treasury. He

seems to have been a careful financial manager of state resources; and he employed

the resources at his disposal in a series of well-planned military expeditions both

against the empire's northern foes, the Bulgars, and in the east. Indeed, his frequent

campaigns into the heartland of Bulgarian territory came near to destroying

the Bulgar khanate entirely, although the Bulgars offered a tenacious and fierce

resistance. In the east he campaigned against a number of key Arab fortresses, reestablishing

military parity between the Roman and Islamic armies, and thus providing

the stability economically and politically to permit the devastated provinces

to recover from the century and a half of warfare to which they had been subjected

(Brubaker and Haldon forthcoming; Herrin 1987: 295).

Constantine's reputation for later generations was entirely associated with his

iconoclasm. According to the iconophile tradition, Constantine was fanatical in his

hatred of images and monks, and the histories are replete with tales of his persecution

and torture of individuals and whole groups of his subjects who opposed his

policies. He is accused of burning monasteries as well as images, of turning churches

into stables, and similar sacrilegious acts. Yet a careful examination of the evidence

suggests that much of this results from propaganda and later misunderstanding.

Indeed, the destruction of icons and a generalized persecution of monks is nowhere

clearly evidenced in the sources. Neither is there any evidence that the bulk of the

population was particularly committed to one point of view or the other. Keen

proponents of both views there certainly were, although most were involved either

in the state or Church hierarchy at one level or another. A small but very vocal

monastic opposition only appears in the reigns of Eirene and Constantine VI. Be

that as it may, there is no doubt that iconoclasm was a convenient vehicle for the

politics of the empress Eirene, and it is clear that it was only from the time of the

council of 787 that a formal theology of images, so important for later Orthodox

doctrine, was first elaborated (Brubaker and Haldon forthcoming; Herrin 1987).

Constantine V died in 775 while on campaign and was succeeded by his son, Leo

IV (775-80), who continued his father's policies but did not reign long enough to

leave any substantial impact. Upon his death in 780, his empress Eirene became

ruler as regent for the young Constantine VI. During her reign, the seventh ecumenical

council was convoked and image devotion was restored, with most of

the iconoclast clergy accepting the change. But although Eirene seems to have

been a reasonably able administrator, the circumstances of her reign, both with

her son and after his death in 797 (the result of her own plotting), meant that

her rule was not well regarded by many contemporaries. Resurgent Bulgar power

produced several military defeats, while the able Caliph Harun ar-Rashid inflicted

several defeats along the eastern front. Her major achievement was to begin the

recovery of the Peloponnese and central Greece, the interior of which had been out

of effective imperial control for more than a century. Conversion to Christianity,

the establishment of a Church administration, and the setting up of a military

provincial organization went hand in hand in this process, and was to result by

the middle of the ninth century in the complete recovery and reincorporation of

these regions into the empire (Brubaker and Haldon forthcoming; Herrin 1987).