Emperor leo iii the isau.., p.39
Emperor Leo III the Isaurian, page 39
However, it was to be the actions of others that was to bring the Lombard king into conflict with the imperials once more. In around 735, Agatho, dux of Perugia, attempted to reclaim Bologna from the Lombards, who had captured the city in the years since Liutprand’s attack on Aemilia in c.727. Finding the city defended by the forces of Walcari, Rotcari and Peredeo, duke of Vicenza, the Perugians were routed with ‘great slaughter.’56 In this failure, Agatho had stirred up a hornet’s nest in breaking the imperio-Lombard peace. Liutprand’s nephew and recently appointed co-ruler Hildeprand57 and Peredeo combined their forces and struck into the exarchate. Eutychios’ forces proved unable to prevent the Lombards driving to and then capturing Ravenna. The seemingly fatal undermining of the exarchate was seen as a disaster – a destruction of the balance of power – by Gregory III, and he and Eutychios moved quickly to bring together an army that could oust Hildeprand and Peredeo. The subsequent diplomatic effort brought together forces from the exarchate, the Roman and Venetian duchies, and the patriarch of Grado. There were likely contingents from other Roman regions in Italy – Naples, Sicily, Apulia etc. Whatever its size and composition, this ‘pan-Roman’ force proved large enough to reclaim Ravenna, capturing Hildeprand and killing Peredeo. Such an expedition may well have proven Liutprand’s wariness over confronting the papacy correct: if they had something to unite against, Roman forces in Italy were still capable of defeating the Lombards.58
After the Bologna and Ravenna incidents, the focus of Romano-Lombard hostilities switched to Transamund II, duke of Spoleto. In 737/738, he moved against the castrum of Gallese, which was not only in the duchy of Rome but also commanded the overland route between Rome and Ravenna. The source material is not clear if Transamund had captured Gallese or was moving against it – either way, Gregory entered negotiations and bought off the Spoletan duke ‘by giving much money.’59 The pope may also have highlighted to Transamund that his move against Gallese was against the royal prerogative of Liutprand and therefore an act of rebellion.60 It would also appear that the pope took control of Gallese after the incident, annexing more imperial territory.
There are some chronological issues with Transamund’s move against Gallese. In the text of the Liber Pontificalis, it is situated after Liutprand’s second march on Rome, which was partially encouraged by the then-fugitive Transamund, ousted from Spoleto by Liutprand (for the first time) by 16 June 739.61 There is some problematic interpolation here as the section in question not only does not fit chronologically, it also contains a grammatical issue where it is ‘stitched’ into the text. It seems much more likely that the Gallese incident helped cause Liutprand’s second march on Rome, rather than be somewhat caused by it.
That Transamund’s move against Gallese could ultimately spark a series of events that led to a Lombard march on Rome was because of what Gregory warned the Spoletan duke about – his action against Gallese was independent of Liutprand’s authority. The Lombard king was already prickly about this due to the mess that Hildeprand’s attack on Ravenna turned into. In unravelling the chronological mess of the Liber Pontificalis at this point, we may also find something that the negotiations over Gallese produced that sparked Liutprand into action – in his subsequent plea to the Franks, Gregory III hints at a renewed alliance with Spoleto and Benevento, an alliance that was supposed to not exist after Liutprand’s previous march on Rome. The interpolated section of the Liber Pontificalis also raises issues here, as it has any renewal of the papal-ducal alliance coming after Liutprand’s second march on Rome, which would be a rather brazen move for the pope and the dukes to undertake with Liutprand already on the warpath.
Transamund’s independent action, a restoration of the papal-ducal alliance and the concurrent Beneventan election of the separatist Godescalc62 as duke combined to spark Liutprand’s large-scale invasion of central Italy in 739. The Lombard king may have felt it necessary to reaffirm his military power in Italy after the Lombard defeat at Ravenna, even if he personally had not been involved. The pope and various dukes, Lombard and Roman, needed a reminder of who was the boss. This might also give us a reason why Gregory, Transamund, and Godescalc felt now was the time to test the Lombard king – Roman forces alone had bloodied his nose. Combine that with the forces of Spoleto and Benevento and they might succeed in breaking that power. Liutprand’s attention was also elsewhere at this point as he had sent and possibly even led Lombard forces across the Alps to help the Frankish leader Charles Martel eject the Umayyads from Provence in 738.63
While this might have felt like an opportune time to strike back against the Lombard king, the pope and his ducal allies quickly found that this was not the case. By mid-739, Liutprand had attacked and captured Spoleto, establishing another nephew, Hilderic, as its duke; however, Transamund had escaped and taken refuge in Rome. Therefore, Liutprand descended upon the duchy of Rome once more. His exact motives are unclear – was he merely after Transamund, as the Liber Pontificalis suggests?64 Was he looking to force Gregory into abandoning his ducal alliance as well? Or was he even taking the next step in unifying all of Italy under his control?
The Lombard king established himself on the Campus Neronis once more, putting pressure on the city of Rome65 and sending raids into Campania, perhaps to prevent imperial aid arriving from Naples. In concert with the dux Romae, Stephen (a lead bullae seal found at Blera seems to refer to this man), and all the forces at his command, Gregory refused to hand over Transamund (might we presume that the deposed duke had sought sanctuary in a Roman church?). Liutprand responded by tightening the blockade of Rome and occupying strategic strongholds in the Roman duchy – Aemilia, Orte, Bomarzo and Blera. And yet, even with these successes, Liutprand’s blockade of Rome was lifted in August 739, without Transamund in the king’s custody or the papal-ducal alliance being decisively broken. Even if we are liberal with the dates and say that Liutprand left Spoleto immediately upon Hilderic’s elevation on 16 June, force-marched the 100km to Rome in a couple of days and then left the city again in the last days of August, this Lombard blockade lasted 10 weeks at very most.
So why did it last so little time? It was still prime campaigning season, so this withdrawal will not have been through climatic necessity, bar any unrecorded freak weather. Given his age and previous ill-health, Liutprand may have worried about his own condition. As evidenced by previous papal dealings with Lombard conquerors, Gregory III could have bought off Liutprand, although any deal did not involve the return of the four captured cities, or if it did so the Lombard king immediately reneged. The chronology in the sources is messy enough to suggest, not necessarily all that convincingly, that Liutprand departed from Rome to assist Charles Martel in Provence, rather than attacking the city after aiding the Franks against the Umayyads.66 Liutprand may have felt that his subjugation of Spoleto, capture of the four cities and demonstration against the walls of Rome had made his point. But if this was the case, he was soon to find out that the ‘signatories’ of the papal-ducal alliance had not understood or cared about what that point was. The example of the pan-Roman alliance to recover Ravenna from Hildeprand will also have been fresh in Liutprand’s mind. A prolonged blockade of Rome could have seen him confronted by a combined army of thematic, exarchate, papal and ducal forces; however, there appears to have been no intention or ability of Gregory to bring such a force together again. This is seen in who the pope sent a call for help to – the Frankish ruler, Charles Martel.
This initial papal latter67 to Charles only received an ambassador to Rome and no aid, but might we speculate that the Frankish ambassador mediated between Gregory and Liutprand, leading to lifting of the blockade? While this seems an attractive notion, it comes up against geographical and political obstacles. The short length of the blockade puts time constraints on the ability of the papal plea and the Frankish response to have gotten there and back in time to influence the blockade – if Charles was still in Provence (he faced a rebellion there in 739), it would have taken a minimum of two weeks for embassies to travel in both directions. The political considerations focus on whether Charles would really side with the pope against Liutprand at this point. The Frank could have thought Gregory had brought the trouble upon himself with his ducal alliance and may still have had need of Lombard aid against Umayyad Spain.68
However, while little came of this papal plea, the call for aid to Charles Martel is still a momentous occasion. It marks a shift in papal horizons, looking west for succour rather than east to Constantinople. And the pope could hardly be blamed for such a move. In the face of an expansionist and capable Lombard king, imperial forces in Italy had proven increasingly fractured and impotent, with the Sicilian strategos focused on the Muslim threat from Africa, the exarchate in terminal decline, and the emperor either distracted with his own military problems or an active enemy of the pope and the exarch.
This is not to say that Romano-papal forces were completely ineffective in the face of Liutprand. And this, along with the possibility of the Lombard king being distracted with the Muslims in Provence, Bavarians, or Slavs to the north, the exarchate remnant, internal issues, or his own health, may be demonstrated by what occurred after his withdrawal from Rome. Immediately after Liutprand had returned home, Gregory and his allies were planning a counterattack. These plans came to fruition either in December 739 or December 740 – the manuscript of the Liber Pontificalis is missing an indiction year – with Transamund, Stephen and Godescalc launching a two-pronged invasion of the Spoletan duchy. The contingent using the Via Valetia obtained the surrender of Marsi, Forcona, Valva, and Penne. The second contingent followed the Via Salaria, going through Sabina, accepting the surrender of Rieti and then moving against Spoleto itself. Hilderic was defeated and killed, allowing Transamund to become Spoletan duke again.69
Twin Volte Faces
The restored papal-ducal alliance did not long survive this success. Despite having relied on papal aid to maintain his freedom and regain his duchy, Transamund proved an untrustworthy ally. He refused to facilitate the recovery of Aemilia, Orte, Bomarzo and Blera, which he had surely undertaken to do as part of the agreement that led to his restoration. He may not have wanted to antagonise Liutprand by being involved in an attack on settlements held by royal Lombard forces, but the deposition and execution of Hilderic had already done that – the Lombard king would soon be back in Spoleto for another reckoning. Recognising the poor position he was now in – unable to trust the Spoletan duke, shackled to the exarchate corpse, (mutually) abandoned by thematic Sicily and once more in the crosshairs of the Lombard king, Gregory III resorted to epistolary diplomacy. It could be during this crisis of 739–740 that Gregory sent his second letter to Charles Martel, seeking his aid.70 Some medieval annalists see the pope proposing that the Roman duchy and the papacy secede from the Roman Empire and accept Charles as their suzerain. Any such plea was more an acceptance of the fait accompli that was the retraction of Constantinople’s power on the Italian peninsula. And it would be foolish for the papacy not to seek protection as it remained militarily impotent in the face of a rampant Lombard king; however, at this time, nothing came of this renewed plea.71
But while Gregory might have been militarily impotent in the face of Lombard anger, ducal duplicity, and exarchate uselessness, he did find that, through further epistolary diplomacy, he was not religiously impotent. In a letter dated 15 October 740, Gregory reminded the bishops of Lombard Tuscany that their oaths of ordination included the demand to help the church when it faced danger and an exhortation to aid papal envoys going to meet Liutprand to demand the restoration of the four cities. If the Lombard bishops would not help the Holy See, the ill Gregory would make the journey himself – this was ‘a subtle but effective reminder that Rome was not without means of stirring up trouble.’72 This crisis lingered on into 741, a year which saw the death of three of the major players. First and the most important for this book, but by far the least consequential for Italy, was that of Leo III on 18 June. This was followed on 22 October by the demise of Charles Martel and then on 28 November, Gregory III shuffled off this mortal coil.
The successors of all three of these men – Constantine V, Pepin, and Zacharias – would have significant impact on Italy over the remainder of the eighth century, but it is the papal successor on whom focus must fall. This was because one player who was still very much alive was Liutprand, who, along with Hildeprand, had again turned his attention to the exarchate. The latter had raided the lands around Ravenna, before both joined together to attack the duchy of the Pentapolis. It might be expected that the new pope would continue the policies of Gregory III and try to revive the alliances that had seen success against Liutprand’s forces. However, Zacharias performed a volte face in papal dealings with the Lombards. While the Liber Pontificalis claims that Liutprand gave way to the pope’s admonishments and promised to return the four cities, what actually happened is that Liutprand agreed to return the cities if the pope abandoned the alliance with Spoleto and Benevento. Indeed, when Liutprand moved against Transamund again in 742, the forces of the Roman duchy fought alongside the Lombard king, not the Spoletan duke. Liutprand was then free to march on to Benevento and facilitate the ejection and death of Godescalc. By 743, both Spoleto and Benevento were ruled by nephews of Liutprand and the pope was his ally.73 The fall out from this papal volte face was not yet complete – Transamund would try again in Spoleto after Liutprand’s death in 744, but that is not only well beyond the reign of Leo III but also the policies that emerged during his time on the throne.
The imperial presence in central Italy had been fading before 717 and continued to do so throughout Leo III’s reign. There were several important signpost events in that decline, whether it be the papacy taking control of imperial territory through the ‘middleman’ of Lombard opportunism, papal forces attacking the seemingly pro-imperial faction of Exhilaratus, and imperial intervention taking the form of either land confiscations or military endeavours aimed at recalcitrant exarchs rather than Lombards or ‘separatist’ popes. Leo might send officials with orders, but in central Italy, there was a combination of unwillingness and inability to carry them out. This may explain the attempts to reorganise what remained ‘imperial’, such as removing papal revenues in Sicily and Calabria and reordering taxes – Leo recognised that decline of the imperial situation and was looking to make the best of it. The rise of a strong Venetian fleet, capable of helping eject the Lombards from Ravenna in 735, may reflect that Leo’s reorganisation of imperial lands in Italy and its environs was not limited to Sicily and Calabria.
But there is no getting away from the fact that significant sections of central Italy had fallen out of imperial control during Leo’s reign. This is seen most clearly at the negotiations between Zacharias and Liutprand over the four cities and papal-ducal alliance in 742 – the last time such a negotiation had taken place in c.730, the exarch had been directly involved; now, with Zacharias becoming the first pope to undertake a political mission in person outside ‘Roman’/imperial territory, he was acting as the representative of the papacy and the duchy of Rome – there was no involvement of the Roman Empire at all.74
However, while imperial influence had been ejected from west-central Italy and what remained of the exarchate had only a decade left, the days of imperial Roman Italy were not numbered by the death of Leo III in 741; far from it. Imperial influence might have continued to wane over Sardinia and the Neapolitan and Venetian duchies, but it remained strong in Sicily and the toe, sole, and heel of Italy – Calabria, Lucania and Apulia. It would even at times expand to encompass the entire Italian ‘shoe’ over the next 250 years. Sicily would not be lost to the Aghlabids of Tunisia/Libya until 902, while peninsular imperial possessions would be reorganised into the catepanate of Italy in the mid-tenth century and only be definitively lost to the Normans in 1071. Given the messiness of its restoration in the mid-sixth century and the persistent threat from Lombards and Arabs, it was quite the feat for ‘Byzantine’ Italy to have survived for over 500 years. It is difficult to credit Leo III with much influence on that survival: his attention was elsewhere and his ability to act directly or through his officials had been significantly curtailed; however, while they rely on some supposition, the reorganisation possibly involved in the patrimonial confiscations, tax ‘increases’, and his naval reforms affecting the Adriatic and possibly Sicilian and Italian coastal waters may have helped galvanise those regions – the Sicilian theme, Lucania and Apulia were to remain Roman imperial possessions for a century or more after the fall of the Isaurian dynasty.
Chapter 12
Leonid End and Isaurian Epilogue: Trouble with the In-Laws
‘In-laws can be outlaws that disrupt your peace and happiness.’
Anonymous
Epilogue
On 18 June 741, Leo III succumbed to dropsy, dying ‘a physical death, to match his spiritual death.’1 While the year of his birth is unknown, it is likely that he was in his mid/late-50s by the time he died. Upon his subsequent burial in the Church of the Holy Apostles, the succession seemed secure – Constantine V was now 23 years old and had been associated with the imperial office for over two decades, even joining his father on the campaign that culminated at Akroinon. Leo had also contracted a marriage for Constantine in the form of the daughter of the Khazar khagan, although it has yet to produce any offspring at the time of Leo’s demise – the future Leo IV would not be born until 750.
That is not to say that Constantine was the only child of Leo and Maria. There were at least two younger daughters, Kosmo and Irene, about whom very little is known beyond them being buried in a sarcophagus of Proconnesian marble in the Church of the Apostles. Perhaps they died young. However, the second most important child of the emperor, we have already met: Anna. Not only was she the eldest, but she was also married to Leo’s most important political and military ally, the kouroplates and comes Opsikon, Artabasdos. This marriage had been extremely fruitful, with nine children born, two of whom were old enough – Nikephoros and Niketas – to be in positions of power by the time of their grandfather Leo III’s death. And circumstances were soon to prove that Artabasdos had an eye for the imperial throne.
