Leo was a reformer and an innovator in every branch of administration. His dealings with the Church are those which caused most stir and are best remembered, but his activity was as great in secular as in ecclesiastical matters. It is unfortunate that most of the records of his reforms have perished, nothing having been preserved except his _Ecloga_ or new handbook of law. But enough survives to show the character of his administration, and its effects in the succeeding century are very marked. We have already pointed out in an earlier chapter that the East-Roman Empire had been in a state of rapid decay since the middle of the sixth century. The downward movement that had begun with the wars and taxes of Justinian had been accelerated under his successors, and had threatened the actual destruction of the empire during the reign of Heraclius. That the State struggled through all its troubles, and emerged bleeding at every pore, shorn of many of its members, but still alive, was due to the personal abilities of Heraclius and his descendants Constantinus-Constans and Constantine V. [Sidenote: Decadence of the empire.] But though the life still lingered in the body of the State, it was yet in the most deplorable condition. Its purely Oriental provinces—Egypt, Syria, and Africa—were gone for ever. Asia Minor was dreadfully wasted by the repeated invasions of the Saracens. The Balkan peninsula was, as regards more than half its extent, in the hands of the Bulgarians and Slavs. In the seventh century Slavonic tribes had made their way even into Hellas and Peloponnesus, there to occupy all the more remote and mountainous corners of the land.