Constantine V Copronymus
Constantine V was one of the most effective Byzantine emperors and the most thoroughly hated by the people who wrote the histories. He succeeded his father Leo III in 741 and was immediately deposed by his brother-in-law Artabasdos, spent two years fighting a civil war, and retook Constantinople in 743. He then campaigned for thirty years with consistent success — nine expeditions against the Bulgars, repeated offensives across the Euphrates against the Abbasids, and the recovery of the initiative on both frontiers for the first time in a century. He rebuilt the aqueduct that had supplied the capital, repopulated a city depleted by plague, and reorganised the army by creating the tagmata, professional regiments stationed centrally rather than provincial levies, which remained the core of Byzantine forces for centuries. He was also an iconoclast of the most committed kind. He convened a council at Hieria in 754 that condemned religious images as idolatry, wrote theological works of his own, and enforced the policy against the monasteries with a violence his predecessors had avoided: monks paraded in the Hippodrome, monasteries confiscated and turned into barracks, and the patriarch executed. That is why the sources are what they are. Almost everything written about him was written after images were restored, by monks, and it includes the nickname meaning dung-named, attached to an alleged accident at his baptism. He died on campaign against the Bulgars in 775. His policies were reversed by his daughter-in-law Irene, restored briefly in the ninth century, and abandoned for good in 843.
- Lived: 718 CE – 775 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader
