murderers there, and depose the usurper whom they had set up. In these attempts he succeeded; and upon his return to Constantinople with his beard grown, which was only downy when he left it, this trifling circumstance gave him the appellation by which he is distinguished. A fancy taken by some of his troops, that his two brothers ought to be admitted to an equal share of power with him, from the example of the three persons in the Trinity, caused a sedition, which he suppressed by the execution of the mutineers; and on its renewal, he cut off the noses of his brothers, that the deformity might disqualify them for the empire. The Saracens in his reign invaded Africa, Sicily, and Cilicia; and at length laid siege to Constantinople itself. They were opposed with courage and vigour; and though they renewed their attempt several successive years, they were finally obliged to relinquish it after the loss of a great number of men. The caliph Moawiyah afterwards made a treaty with the emperor, by which several provinces they had seized were left to the Saracens, on condition of their paying tribute for them. The Bulgarians next made an irruption into Thrace, and having defeated the emperor's lieutenants, it was thought necessary to purchase their retreat by the payment of an annual pension, and the assignment of a settlement in Lower Mœsia. In 680 an oecumenical council, called the sixth, was held at Constantinople, in which the heresy of the Monothelites was condemned. This prince, who is favourably spoken of as an obedient son of the church, but appears to have possessed little courage or abilities, died in 685. Univers. Hist. Gibbon.-A. CONSTANTINE V. surnamed Copronymus, son of the emperor Leo the Isaurian, was born in 719, and crowned in his infancy. He succeeded his father in 752; and as, like him, he was an enemy to the worship of images, the catholic church, which has approved and finally established that worship, regards his memory with the utmost detestation. His name of Copronymus was an opprobrious appellation given him from the circumstance of his defiling the font at his baptism; and the bigotted Greek historians of the time have exhausted their invention in absurd calumnies respecting his person and character. It appears, however, that he undoubtedly exercised much cruelty towards the party which resisted his attempts for the abolition of imageworship, and that several ecclesiastics were put death, and others mutilated, under his persecution. Civil injuries, indeed, were added to religious opposition. Soon after his accession he marched against the Saracens, who had made an irruption into Asia. During his absence, Artavasdes, his brother-in-law, placing himself at the head of the orthodox faction, procured himself to be declared emperor, and Constantine to be deposed. A civil war ensued, in which Constantine, aided by the Isaurians, defeated the usurper, and at length besieged him in Constantinople. The capital was compelled by famine to surrender, and Artavasdes and his son Nicephorus were deprived of their sight by the victor, who severely punished all the principal promoters of the rebellion. He again made war on the Saracens, entered Syria, recovered several places from the enemy, and entirely destroyed their fleet in Cyprus. These advantages, however, were interrupted by earthquakes, a pestilence, and other intestine calamities. From a successful expedition which he afterwards made into Armenia, he was recalled by an irruption of the Bulgarians, who laid waste the whole country of Thrace. The emperor advancing against them received a total defeat, and was obliged to take refuge in his capital. On a new irruption of the Bulgarians, he entirely cut off the invaders, without the loss of a man. At home, he continued to display his religious zeal in violent persecutions of the image-worshippers; and finding the monks constant fupporters of this superstition, he dissolved their communities, confiscated their property, and abolished the profession. After this, it may be conceived in what terms he is mentioned by the monkish historians. As he was proceeding to a new expedition against the Bulgarians, he was seized with a fever, and died at Strongylum in 775. Univ. Hist. Gibbon.-A. CONSTANTINE VI. son of the emperor Leo IV. by Irene, an Athenian, was born in 770, and at five years of age was associated in the purple with his father. At Leo's death, in 780, Constantine succeeded under the guardian-ship of his mother. She was able and ambitious, t and kept her son as long as possible in a state of nonage, while she administered public affairs with sovereign authority. The contests for power between the mother and son form the principal events of this reign. A conspiracy soon after his accession, to raise his uncle Nicephorus to the empire in his stead, was quelled by the vigilance of Irene, who obliged all the brothers of the late emperor to enter into holy orders. It had been designed to marry Constantine to a daughter of Charlemagne; but it suited the purposes of his mother better to give him for wife Mary, an Armenian, of private condition. When the emperor arrived at maturity, some of his favourites persuaded himn to: throw off the maternal yoke. She was, however, informed of the intention, and prevented its execution by the banishment of the conspirators; and with her own hands she inflicted chastisement on her undutiful son: she afterwards exacted from the senate and soldiery, an oath of fidelity to herself exclusively; but some Armenian legions refused compliance, and, joined by the rest, declared Constantine their sole sovereign. Upon this change, he assumed the government, sent his mother's prime minister into exile, and punished her other favourites. Irene herself was respectfully dismissed to a private life at one of her palaces. Her artful conduct, however, together with a Bulgarian invasion, caused her to be recalled to court, and restored to a degree of authority. The emperor was defeated by the Bulgarians; after which misfortune, being led to suspect a new insurrection in favour of Nicephorus, he caused his eyes to be put out, and the tongues of his four brothers to be amputated. They were exiled to Athens, where, on the discovery of a plot for their deliverance, they were put to death. Irene afterwards had the art to engage her son to break and disperse the Armenian legions, on occasion of a mutiny. He next offended the clergy and people by divorcing his wife, and marrying one of her attendants. Some success against the Saracens and Bulgarians suspended for a time the effects of a conspiracy formed by Irene for deposing him. At length, becoming suspicious of his danger, he attempted to make his escape to the provinces, but he was seized on the Asiatic shore, and carried to the palace. There, in the very chamber in which he was born, the emissaries of his unnatural mother assaulted him in his sleep, and plunged their daggers into his eyes. This catastrophe happened in 792. He survived many years in obscurity, and Irene ascended the throne in his stead. With him ended the line of Leo the Isaurian. Univers. Hist. Gibbon.-A. CONSTANTINE VII. surnamed Porphyrogenitus, or born in the purple, was the son of the emperor Leo VI. by Zoe, first his concubine, and afterwards his wife. At the death of his uncle Alexander, in 912, young Constantine, at the age of seven, was declared emperor, under the tutelage of his mother and a council of regency. Quarrels among the regents, and wars with the Bulgarians, occupied his minority; and at length, in 919, Romanus Lecapenus, a successful general, got possession of the emperor's person, persuaded him to marry his daughter, and confined Zoe to a monastery. He then as sumed the title of Augustus, and the full imperial authority, in which he successively associated his three sons, degrading Constantine to the fifth rank among the titular princes. With unusual clemency, however, he suffered him to live unmolested; and the time of Constartine was spent in study, and in the practice of music and painting. At length, Romanus was deposed by his own sons, Constantine (called the VIII.) and Stephen; but they themselves soon after, by the contrivance of their sister the empress, and the adherents of the imperial house, were seized, and sent to the same monastery in which they had confined their father. Constantine, in 745, recovered his original rights as sole emperor; but his habits of sloth and indulgence prevented him from taking an active part in the government, which he entrusted to his wife Helena, and his favourite Basil. He took pains, however, in the instruction of his son Romanus, .for whose use he drew up various treatises, some of which have come down to our times. His generals, Phocas and his sons Leo and Nicephorus, fought with various success against the Saracens ; but one of his chamberlains whom he sent to command in Crete, was totally defeated by them. Romanus, impatient to reign, is charged with attempting to poison his father, who fortunately happened to spill the greatest part of the potion, yet drank enough to bring his life into danger. In the same year, 959, however, either from the effects of poison or disease, he died at Constantinople, to the great regret of his subjects, who were much attached to him. The works composed by this emperor, or collected by his orders, are, "A Treatise on the Ceremonies of the Church and Palace of Constantinople;" "An Account of the Themes or Provinces in Europe and Asia;" "A System of Tactics;" "An Account of the Policy of the imperial Court, with respect to foreign Nations;" "Basilics, or the Code and Pandects of Greek Law;" "Geoponics, or the Art of Agriculture ;" and "Historical Collections." Though some of these are valuable as records of the times, yet on the whole they are trifling and defective, void of all originality, and poor in style and method. Univers. Hist. Gibbon.-A. CONSTANTINE IX. son of the emperor Romanus by Theophano, succeeded to the empire in conjunction with his brother Basil II. on the death of John Zimisces, in 976. But during the long period of the life of Basil, the title, without the authority, of emperor, was alone possessed by Constantine. After the death of Basil he reigned three years, which he spent in índolence and amusement, delegating to his favourites all the cares of government, and regardless of the oppressions of his people. He ended his inglorious life in 1028, at the age of seventy. Univers. Hist. Gibbon.-A. CONSTANTINE X. surnamed Monomachus, or the Gladiator, a Greek of noble extraction and comely presence, was recalled from exile in Lesbos at the deposition of the emperor Michael V., was married to Zoe the daughter of Constantine IX. then the widow of two emperors, and was raised to the throne in 1042. He brought with him a fair widow, the sister of Romanus Sclerus, whom he made his declared concubine, with the title of Augusta; and Zoe, who was advanced in years, consented to this kind of partnership. Constantine's reign was disturbed by various revolts, in which he had the good fortune to remain victor, though one of the rebels, Leo Tomitius, besieged him in his capital. He had also some success against foreign enemies; but his indolence or avarice gave opportunity to the Turks, then a new foe to the empire, to gain a footing in Lesser Asia. He died in 1054. Univers. Hist. Gibbon.-A. CONSTANTINE XI. named Ducas, of a noble Greek family, was chosen by the emperor Isaac Comnenus at his voluntary abdication in 1059, as the fittest person to succeed him. Constantine had obtained reputation as an orator and a judge, but he was by no means qualified to govern an empire, then threatened by numerous barbarian foes. He governed at home with equity and moderation; but his avarice having induced him to neglect the maintenance of the garrisons on the frontier, a body of the Uxians, a people of Scythia, consisting of 500,000 persons, passed the Danube, and laid waste the country. They penetrated even into Greece, and defeated the imperial generals who had been sent against them. The emperor in vain offered to purchase peace of them by rich presents and a tribute; but at length a great part of the host were destroyed by the plague, and the remainder were cut in pieces by the Bulgarians. Several cities of the empire were much injured by an earthquake during this disastrous reign. Constantine Ducas, whose great care was to secure the succession to his three sons, died in 1067, at the age of sixty. One of his sons ranks in the imperial catalogue as CONSTANTINE XII. though he enjoyed no more than the title under his elder brother Michael. Univ. Hist. Gibbon.—A. CONSTANTINE XIII. son of the emperor Manuel Palæologus, succeeded his brother John in 1448, at a period when the eastern empire was almost reduced to the limits of the capital. His second brother, who had usurped the throne in his absence, was obliged to resign to him, and to be contented with a settlement in the Morea. Constantine, who wasted the small remaining resources of his dominion in imperial ostentation, soon found himself threatened with the hostility of his potent neighbour, sultan Mahomet II. That haughty prince erected a fortress on the Bosphorus, which was justly considered as a declaration of his intentions against Constantinople. He eagerly seized the first occasion of quarrel, and the fatal siege of the capital was formed in 1453. Constantine, who gallantly determined to resist to the last, and share the fate of his people, applied to the christian princes of the West for succour. And, as his brother John had renounced the union between the Greek and Latin churches, he sent embassadors to the pope Nicholas V. with assurances of his spiritual obedience. Cardinal Isidore was in consequence sent as the papal legate to renew and confirm the union; but such were the religious prejudices of the Greeks, that in their utmost danger and distress they expressed abhorrence of the measure, and the emperor became unpopular from promoting it. The aid he obtained was small and tardy, and the Turkish arms soon encompassed the city close to its walls. walls. Constantine in this extremity fulfilled the part of a hero. When the final assault was prepared, he took leave of his people in a pathetic speech, received the sacrament in the church of St. Sophia, and repaired to the walls. After exerting every duty of a general and a soldier, he was overwhelmed in the storm of war, and was either killed on the spot where he stood, or trampled by the press of the flying multitude. This final catastrophe of the Greek empire and emperor happened on May 29, 1453, the fifty-eighth day of the siege. Univers. Hist. Gibbon.-A. CONSTANTINE, FLAVIUS JULIUS, was a private soldier in the legions of Britain, when, upon their revolt from the emperor Honorius, in 407, he was raised to the purple, merely on account of his name. Immediately after his. elevation he passed over into Gaul with all the forces he could assemble, and made himself master of that country. He next, by means of his general Gerontius, and his own son Constans, whom he had caused to quit the monastic life, reduced Spain, after vanquishing four brothers of the Theodosian family, the kinsmen of Honorius. He conferred upon Constans the title of Augustus, and compelled the weak em-peror to acknowledge his own right to a part- power, or indignant at such an uncanonical usurpation, concerted an insurrection in which his protector lost his life, and which led to his deposition from his dignity, after he had enjoyed it little more than one year. Under the pontificate of the new pope, he was exposed to the insults and cruel treatment of an infuriated populace, deprived of his sight, and condemned to be imprisoned in a monastery for life. Mo CONSTANTINE, abbot of St. Symphorien, at Metz, in the eleventh century, has his name inserted in the History of French Literature, on account of his being the author of "The Life of Adalberon II." bishop of that city, which has been published by father Labbe, in the first volume of his Bibliotheca Nova. Moreri.-M. hership in the empire. Constantine fixed his CONSTANTINE, pope, a native of Syria, was raised to the Roman see in the year 708, and held it rather more than seven years. He is much commended for his charity to the poor; but of his other virtues, if such he possessed, we find no mention made by his historians. Of his ambition he afforded ample proof, by the measures which he took to engage the agency of the tyrant Justinian, in subjugating the independent see of Ravenna to the yoke of Rome. Platina de Vit. Pont. Moreri. Bower.-M. CONSTANTINE, pope, or antipope, was placed on the pontifical throne on the death of Paul I. in the year 767, by the intrigues and arms of his brother Toto duke of Nepi, in Tuscany. When the Roman see became vacant, he was only a layman; but, by the influence of his brother, was ordained, consecrated a bishop, and enthroned, within the space of a few days. His honours, however, were not of long duration for some of the principal officers of the papal see, either exasperated by their loss of f CONSTANTINE, ACROPOLITA LOGOTHETES, a Greek monk, was distinguished by his writings in the thirteenth century, against John Veccus, patriarch of Constantinople, who was an advocate for the union of the Greek and Latin churches. Du Pin. Moreri.-M. CONSTANTINE, surnamed the African, a learned man and medical writer of the eleventh century, was a native of Carthage. He resided long at Babylon, where he acquired a great knowledge of Arabic, Chaldee, and other oriental languages, and was instructed in medicine and other sciences. Returning to Carthage, after an absence of thirty-nine years, his extraordinary learning rendered him suspected to his countrymen, whose designs against his life obliged him to escape secretly to Salerno. He was there known, and recommended to the notice of duke Robert; but he preferred to court favour a quiet retreat from the world; and entering into the religious order of St. Benedict, at the monastery of St. Agatha in Aversa, employed himself in composing those medical works which have perpetuated his name. He died in 1087. Of his works, many are translations or collections from the Arabian writers, and none appear the result of his own experience. They are not without science, but abound in superstition. They were published at Basil in 1536 and 1539, folio. Moreri. Haller Bibl. Med. Pract.-A. CONSTANTINE, de Medicis, a descendant of the illustrious house indicated by his surname, and bishop of Orvieto, was born at Florence, towards the beginning of the thirteenth century. He was a member of the dominican order of preaching friars, and acquired much celebrity by his pulpit talents, and by his adroitness in illustrating obscure subjects in catholic theology. After his elevation to the episcopal dignity, he was appointed legate from pope Alexander IV. to Theodore Lascaris, the Grecian emperor, with the design of promoting an union between the Greek and Latin churches; or rather of persuading the emperor and his clergy to submit to the Roman see. That prince, however, under the pretence of being obliged to place himself at the head of his armies against the Bulgarians, caused him to be civilly detained in his progress, when he had arrived at Berea, in Macedonia, where, or in some neighbouring part of Greece, he died in the year 1257. Constantine was the author of "The Life of St. Dominic;" of "Additions to the Chronicle of Jourdan of Saxony;" and, according to some writers, of the "Office" in honour of their founder, which the dominican monks are accustomed to chant on his festival. Moreri.-M. CONSTANTINE, Meleteniota, contemporary with CONSTANTINE Acropolita Logothetes, and archdeacon of Veccus, employed himself in the defence of that patriarch against his antagonist. He left behind him two treatises; one "On the Union of the Greeks and Latins;" the other "On the Procession of the Holy Spirit;" which are preserved by Allatius in the second volume of Orthodox Greece. Du Pin. Hist. Ecc. Cent. XIII. Moreri.-M. CONSTANTINE, ROBERT, a physician and man of learning, was a native of Caen in Normandy, and for some time taught the belleslettres in its university. He graduated in physic there in 1564. He is spoken of by some of his contemporaries as profoundly learned in the languages, in medicine, botany, &c.; but Joseph Scaliger treats him with the same contempt that he bestows on so many others. Constantine resided some time with Julius Cæsar Scaliger, and published a part of that critic's commentaries on Theophrastus. De Thou attributes to Constantine a life of the extraordinary length of 103 years; but another account abridges it to 75. He preserved his memory and other faculties almost to his death, which was caused by a pleurisy. This author is best known as a lexicographer. His "Lexicon Græco-Latinum" was first published at Geneva in 1562, in two volumes folio, and an improved edition in 1592. The alphabetical order in which he ranged the words gave it the preference in usefulness to that of Stephanus, who ranged them according to the roots. His other publications are, "Supplementum Lingua Latine, seu Dictionarium Abstrusorum Vocabulorum," Geneva, 1573; "Greek and Roman Antiquities;" an edition with annotations of "Celsus, Serenus, and VOL. III. Rhemmius;" "Annotations and Corrections on Dioscorides ;" "Annotations on Theophras tus;" "Nomenclator Insignium Scriptorum." Moreri. Nouv. Dict. Hist. Haller Bibl. Botan. & Med.—A. CONSTANTIUS CHLORUS, FLAVIUS VALERIUS, a partner in the Roman empire, was the son of Eutropius, a Dardanian noble, by a niece of the emperor Claudius II. His education was military, and he was but slightlytinctured with letters. He learned the art of war in service under the emperors Aurelian and Probus, and scems, during the life of the first of these, to have attained to a considerable command, as a victory obtained over a German nation in 274 is attributed to his conduct. Under the emperor Carus, in 282 or 283, he was made governor of Dalmatia. Though a brave soldier, his character was gentle and humane, and his morals regular. When it was thought advisable by the emperors Diocletian and Maximian to associate two Cæsars in the cares of of government, Constantius and Galerius were the persons appointed, in 292, to the important charge. Constantius was particularly joined by adoption to Maximian, whose daughter-in-law Theodora he was obliged to marry, after divorcing Helena, the mother of his renowned son Constantine. To Constantius were assigned the provinces of Gaul, Britain, and perhaps of Spain. He soon found employment from the revolt of Carausius, who had assumed the imperial authority in Britain, and had established his power by his vigour and abilities. Constantius began the war by an enterprise against Boulogne, of which port the British emperor had taken possession. By means of a mole raised across the harbour, he obliged this town to surrender, and with it a considerable part of the naval strength of Carausius fell into his hands. While Constantius was making preparations for an invasion of Britain, he employed his arms in expelling the Franks from the country of the Batavians, and strengthening the German frontier. He also repeopled the city of Autun, and restored it to its former splen dour. Before his preparations were finished, he received intelligence from Britain that Allectus had succeeded to the power there, by the murder of his master Carausius. (See ALLECTUS and CARAUSIUS.) TUS and CARAUSIUS.) In 296 Constantius set sail for Britain, having divided his fleet into two squadrons, one of which he commanded himself, while the other was entrusted to the prefect Asclepiodatus. The latter first reached the island, having escaped the fleet of Allectus by favour of a thick fog; and the usurper being R |