Constantine

778 – ? · Generation XX · co-emperor (r. 813–820)

Constantine (b. AD null). co-emperor (r. 813–820). Born Symbatios; son of Leo V; castrated and exiled. His renaming was a manifesto: acclaimed together as “Leo and Constantine,” father and son deliberately echoed Leo III and Constantine V, the iconoclast emperors cherished by the army. When his father's church council reversed the Second Council of Nicaea and again outlawed the veneration of icons, the boy sat in the assembly on his father's behalf, and in 819/820 he issued a law on marriage jointly with the emperor. After his father's murder at Christmas 820, Michael the Amorian banished him to the island of Prote with his mother and three brothers; there the brothers were tonsured and lived out their days as monks, kept on a portion of the income from their confiscated estates.

Parents

Leo V (775 – 820)