Despite his successful defence of Constantinople, Leo the Isaurian’s reputation was indeed trashed in the years that followed. He may have saved the empire in its most critical hour, but he was to become known ever after as the original iconoclast. Like many emperors before and after him, he found himself embroiled in matters theological, to the scorn of the religious authorities that followed. He took issue with the apparent idolatrous worship of icons and, believing any form of idolatry literally put the survival of the empire in jeopardy – being a flagrant provocation to the judgement of God – Leo took steps to prevent it. He presided over an orgy of destruction of the multitude of icons that adorned nearly every wall in the city and beyond. It is my view (and the view of one or two other historians I’ve read) that he did this in good faith as an act of expedience to protect the empire. But posterity did not see his acts of destruction with much sympathy. The violently divisive question of iconoclasm was eventually settled a century later in favour of the iconodules – those who favoured the reverence of icons – who would for ever afterwards cast Leo in a rather villainous light, his achievement of saving the empire conveniently forgotten. History is written by the victors; but also, often as not, by the priests.

A final word on Azazel.

Only one reader, to my knowledge, has recognized that the Watcher, aka the Witch King, aka Azazel, is a figure who harks back even beyond the murky depths of Norse mythology into a still more ancient text: the Book of Enoch.

This is an old Jewish text ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. Whether truly that old, the oldest section within it is called the Book of the Watchers. It is a more detailed telling of the story of the fallen angels cast down to Earth from heaven, which appears in brief in the sixth chapter of the book of Genesis. Although the Book of Enoch is not part of the Old Testament canon, it does appear to be quoted by both Jesus and Paul in the New Testament.

Within it, Azazel is described as one of the fallen angels rebelling before the time of the Flood. According to Enoch, he ‘taught men in the art of warfare, of making swords and knives, shields, and coats of mail, and taught women the art of deception by ornamenting the body, dyeing the hair, and painting the face and the eyebrows, and also revealed to the people the secrets of witchcraft, leading them into various wickedness and impurity’ until, at Yahweh’s command, the archangel Raphael is sent to Earth to bind him hand and foot and chain him underground in utter darkness to await his final judgement with the other demons.

As far as ancient demonic influence goes, Azazel is second to none.