Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Iconoclastic epoch (717-867)

Religious controversies and the first period of Iconoclasm 

Page 13

The persecutions of monks expressed itself in many severe measures. They were forced to put on secular dress, and some were compelled to marry by force or threats. In one instance they were forced to march in file through the hippodrome, each holding a woman by the hand, amid the sneers and insults of the crowd of spectators. The chronicler Theophanes relates that a governor in Asia Minor assembled the monks and nuns of his province at Ephesus and said to them, Let each who wishes to obey the Emperor and us put on the white dress and take a wife immediately; those who do not do so shall be blinded and exiled to Cyprus, and he was congratulated by Constantine V, who wrote: I have found in you a man after my own heart who carries out all my wishes. Cyprus apparently was one of the emperors places of exile for recalcitrant monks. It is recorded that five monks managed to escape from there, reached the territory of the caliphate, and were brought to Bagdad. Monasteries were taken away from the monks and transformed into barracks and arsenals. Monasterial estates were confiscated. Laymen were forbidden to take refuge in the cowl.

All these regulations led to a wide migration of monks to districts unaffected by the Emperors iconoclastic persecutions. According to some scholars, in the time of Leo and Constantine Italy alone received about 50,000 of these refugees. This event was of enormous significance for the fate of medieval southern Italy, for it upheld there the predominance of the Greek nationality and the Orthodox church. But even southern Italy was apparently not altogether free from iconoclastic troubles. At least there is a very interesting indication that in the ninth century A.D. St. Gregory the Decapolite fell into the hands of an iconoclastic bishop of the south-Italian city of Hydrus (now Otranto). Many monks migrated also to the northern shores of the Euxine (the Black Sea), and to the coast of Syria and Palestine. Among the martyrs who suffered under Constantine V, Stephen the Younger is particularly famous.

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