Leo IV: Leo The Khazar

The short reign of Leo the Khazar has often been considered an epilogue to the reign of Constantine

V. Alternatively he often forms the prologue to empress Irene and her domination of affairs

for the rest of the eighth century. However, Leo IV was a capable monarch in his own right.

At the age of 25 when he became emperor, Leo IV's first challenge was to secure the succession.

Whereas there had been no doubt that he would succeed his father Constantine V there were

still his five half-brothers who had claims to the throne. The most ambitious of whom was

the Caesar Nikephoros. Leo the Khazar also had to secure the succession for his boy,

Constantine. The emperor spent the first months of his reign taking steps to secure

his and his son's position as well as check the ambitions of his half-brothers.

Leo IV's first act was to seize a secret cache of 500 pounds of gold set aside for

his half-brothers: Caesar Nikephoros, Caesar Christopher and the noblissimi. Constantine V

had amassed so much money in the treasury, it is said that people started to run short of

coins in the wider monetary economy. However, such hyperbole should be treated with appropriate

caution as these words are from Theophanes, whose Chronographia is extremely hostile to all of the

Isaurian emperors and is packed with Iconophile spin. The money was spent on buying the support of

the people of Constantinople as well as important aristocrats. He relaxed the proscriptions against

Iconophiles that his father had instituted and appointed several Iconophiles as bishops.

In April 776, during the annual payment day for the army. during the ceremony the Strategiai

soldiers, Tagmata, senate and assembled crowd demanded that Constantine, Leo the Khazar's son,

be crowned co-emperor to defend his rights to the throne. The emperor ordered the army and gathered

crowd to take an oath to uphold the right of his son, Constantine to succeed his father as emperor

after his death. The spontaneous acclamation was clearly orchestrated by Leo IV to secure

his son's succession, while excluding his half-brothers' claims. He also appointed

his youngest half-brother, Eudocimus as Nobilissimus. The concerns of Leo IV over

the succession were very real. The Isaurian civil war between Constantine V and Artabasdos,

his brother-in-law had shown that rival dynastic members were potential threats to the throne.

One month later, Caesar Nikephoros was discovered plotting against the emperor.

He had managed to gain the support of some Tagma soldiers and chamberlains.

Leo IV had Nikephoros stripped of his title of Caesar and had the rest of the conspirators,

whipped, tonsured and exiled to Cherson in the Crimea.

Leo IV's Iconoclast policy was generally more lenient and conciliatory than Constantine V's.

The emperor was a Iconoclast through and through but appointed Iconophile

monks to some bishoprics and the neutral Patriarch Paul of Cyprus in February 780.

Leo's more lenient attitude may have been to distance his regime from that of his father.

In 776, The Arabs raided into Anatolia, which pillaged its way to Ancyra. They

sacked a city in the area and enslaved the men hiding in nearby caves, called

Kasin. Leo IV responded with a retaliatory strike against Samosata on the Euphrates river. The city

was sacked and the loot and prisoners taken were brought back to the empire.

The Arabs followed up with another annual raid against the frontier.