1.
Byzantine Empire
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It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, several signal events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the period of transition during which the Roman Empires Greek East and Latin West divided. Constantine I reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, under Theodosius I, Christianity became the Empires official state religion and other religious practices were proscribed. Finally, under the reign of Heraclius, the Empires military, the borders of the Empire evolved significantly over its existence, as it went through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Maurice, the Empires eastern frontier was expanded, in a matter of years the Empire lost its richest provinces, Egypt and Syria, to the Arabs. This battle opened the way for the Turks to settle in Anatolia, the Empire recovered again during the Komnenian restoration, such that by the 12th century Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest European city. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence. Its remaining territories were annexed by the Ottomans over the 15th century. The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 finally ended the Byzantine Empire, the term comes from Byzantium, the name of the city of Constantinople before it became Constantines capital. This older name of the city would rarely be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts. The publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre, and in 1680 of Du Canges Historia Byzantina further popularised the use of Byzantine among French authors, however, it was not until the mid-19th century that the term came into general use in the Western world. The Byzantine Empire was known to its inhabitants as the Roman Empire, the Empire of the Romans, Romania, the Roman Republic, Graikia, and also as Rhōmais. The inhabitants called themselves Romaioi and Graikoi, and even as late as the 19th century Greeks typically referred to modern Greek as Romaika and Graikika. The authority of the Byzantine emperor as the legitimate Roman emperor was challenged by the coronation of Charlemagne as Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III in the year 800. No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the Empire was more seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world, the Roman Empire was known primarily as Rûm, the Roman army succeeded in conquering many territories covering the entire Mediterranean region and coastal regions in southwestern Europe and north Africa. These territories were home to different cultural groups, both urban populations and rural populations. The West also suffered heavily from the instability of the 3rd century AD
2.
Papal States
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The Papal States, officially the State of the Church, were territories in the Italian Peninsula under the sovereign direct rule of the pope, from the 8th century until 1870. They were among the states of Italy from roughly the 8th century until the Italian Peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. At their zenith, they covered most of the modern Italian regions of Lazio, Marche, Umbria and Romagna and these holdings were considered to be a manifestation of the temporal power of the pope, as opposed to his ecclesiastical primacy. By 1861, much of the Papal States territory had been conquered by the Kingdom of Italy, only Lazio, including Rome, remained under the Popes temporal control. In 1870, the pope lost Lazio and Rome and had no physical territory at all, Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini ended the crisis between unified Italy and the Vatican by signing the Lateran Treaty, granting the Vatican City State sovereignty. The Papal States were also known as the Papal State, the territories were also referred to variously as the State of the Church, the Pontifical States, the Ecclesiastical States, or the Roman States. For its first 300 years the Catholic Church was persecuted and unrecognized and this system began to change during the reign of the emperor Constantine I, who made Christianity legal within the Roman Empire, and restoring to it any properties that had been confiscated. The Lateran Palace was the first significant new donation to the Church, other donations followed, primarily in mainland Italy but also in the provinces of the Roman Empire. But the Church held all of these lands as a private landowner, the seeds of the Papal States as a sovereign political entity were planted in the 6th century. Beginning In 535, the Byzantine Empire, under emperor Justinian I, launched a reconquest of Italy that took decades and devastated Italys political, just as these wars wound down, the Lombards entered the peninsula from the north and conquered much of the countryside. While the popes remained Byzantine subjects, in practice the Duchy of Rome, nevertheless, the pope and the exarch still worked together to control the rising power of the Lombards in Italy. As Byzantine power weakened, though, the took a ever larger role in defending Rome from the Lombards. In practice, the papal efforts served to focus Lombard aggrandizement on the exarch, a climactic moment in the founding of the Papal States was the agreement over boundaries embodied in the Lombard king Liutprands Donation of Sutri to Pope Gregory II. When the Exarchate of Ravenna finally fell to the Lombards in 751, the popes renewed earlier attempts to secure the support of the Franks. In 751, Pope Zachary had Pepin the Younger crowned king in place of the powerless Merovingian figurehead king Childeric III, zacharys successor, Pope Stephen II, later granted Pepin the title Patrician of the Romans. Pepin led a Frankish army into Italy in 754 and 756, Pepin defeated the Lombards – taking control of northern Italy – and made a gift of the properties formerly constituting the Exarchate of Ravenna to the pope. The cooperation between the papacy and the Carolingian dynasty climaxed in 800, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor, the precise nature of the relationship between the popes and emperors – and between the Papal States and the Empire – is disputed. Events in the 9th century postponed the conflict, the Holy Roman Empire in its Frankish form collapsed as it was subdivided among Charlemagnes grandchildren
3.
Pope
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The pope is the Bishop of Rome and, therefore, the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church. The current pope is Francis, who was elected on 13 March 2013, the office of the pope is the papacy. The pope is considered one of the worlds most powerful people because of his diplomatic and he is also head of state of Vatican City, a sovereign city-state entirely enclaved within the Italian capital city of Rome. The papacy is one of the most enduring institutions in the world and has had a prominent part in world history, the popes in ancient times helped in the spread of Christianity and the resolution of various doctrinal disputes. In the Middle Ages, they played a role of importance in Western Europe. Currently, in addition to the expansion of the Christian faith and doctrine, the popes are involved in ecumenism and interfaith dialogue, charitable work, Popes, who originally had no temporal powers, in some periods of history accrued wide powers similar to those of temporal rulers. In recent centuries, popes were gradually forced to give up temporal power, the word pope derives from Greek πάππας meaning father. The earliest record of the use of title was in regard to the by then deceased Patriarch of Alexandria. Some historians have argued that the notion that Peter was the first bishop of Rome, the writings of the Church Father Irenaeus who wrote around AD180 reflect a belief that Peter founded and organised the Church at Rome. Moreover, Irenaeus was not the first to write of Peters presence in the early Roman Church, Clement of Rome wrote in a letter to the Corinthians, c. 96, about the persecution of Christians in Rome as the struggles in our time and presented to the Corinthians its heroes, first, the greatest and most just columns, the good apostles Peter and Paul. St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote shortly after Clement and in his letter from the city of Smyrna to the Romans he said he would not command them as Peter and Paul did. Given this and other evidence, many agree that Peter was martyred in Rome under Nero. Protestants contend that the New Testament offers no proof that Jesus established the papacy nor even that he established Peter as the first bishop of Rome, others, using Peters own words, argue that Christ intended himself as the foundation of the church and not Peter. First-century Christian communities would have had a group of presbyter-bishops functioning as leaders of their local churches, gradually, episcopacies were established in metropolitan areas. Antioch may have developed such a structure before Rome, some writers claim that the emergence of a single bishop in Rome probably did not occur until the middle of the 2nd century. In their view, Linus, Cletus and Clement were possibly prominent presbyter-bishops, documents of the 1st century and early 2nd century indicate that the Holy See had some kind of pre-eminence and prominence in the Church as a whole, though the detail of what this meant is unclear. It seems that at first the terms episcopos and presbyter were used interchangeably, the consensus among scholars has been that, at the turn of the 1st and 2nd centuries, local congregations were led by bishops and presbyters whose offices were overlapping or indistinguishable
4.
Byzantine Papacy
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Greek-speakers from Greece, Syria, and Byzantine Sicily replaced members of the powerful Roman nobles in the papal chair during this period. Rome under the Greek popes constituted a melting pot of Western and Eastern Christian traditions, justinians successors would continue the practice for over a century. Although the Byzantine troops that captured Italy called themselves Romans, many inhabitants of the city had a deep seated mistrust of Greeks, before long, the citizens of Rome petitioned Justinian to recall Narses, declaring that they would rather still be ruled by the Goths. Anti-Byzantine sentiment could also be found throughout the Italian peninsula, the continuing power of appointment of the Byzantine emperor can be seen in the legend of Pope Gregory I writing to Constantinople, asking them to refuse his election. This abated factionalism for the next four successions, each resulting in quick elections, Pope Boniface III was very likely of Greek extraction, making him the Easterner on the papal throne in 607. Boniface III himself attempted to outdo Phocass efforts to Christianize the site, another wave of monastic refugees, bringing with them various Christological controversies, arrived in Rome as the Sassanid Empire ravaged the eastern Byzantine possessions. Theodore was Greek-Palestinian, the son of the bishop of Jerusalem, Theodore took the nearly unprecedented measure of appointing Stephen of Dor as apostolic vicar to Palestine, with the intent of deposing the Monothelite bishop successors of Sergius of Joppa. Theodores deposition of Patriarch Pyrrhus ensured that Rome and Constantinople were now in schism, a Greek pope excommunicating the Patriarch no doubt proved a distressing spectacle for the emperors intent upon restoring religious unity. Although Martin Is main crime was the promotion of the Lateran Council of 649, the councils ecumenical status was never acknowledged, for the time solidifying the idea that the convening of ecumenical councils was an imperial prerogative. Within four years of the councils adjournment, both Martin I and Maximus the Confessor were arrested and tried in Constantinople for transgressing the Typos. According to Ekonomou, the Romans were as prepared to forget Pope Martin as Constans II was relieved to see him removed to the northern shores of the Black Sea. Thirty years later, the Sixth Ecumenical Council would vindicate the councils condemnation of Monothelitism, the inhabitants of both East and West had grown weary of the decades of religious warfare, and the arrest of Martin I did much to dissipate the religious fever of the empires Italian subjects. Rapprochement the empire was viewed as critical to combatting the growing Lombard and Arab threat, the exarch, who, invariably, was a Greek from the court of Constantinople, had the power to approve papal consecration from the time of Honorius I. Emperor Constans II, the abductor of Martin I, resided himself in Rome for a period during the reign of Pope Vitalian, Vitalian himself was possibly of Eastern extraction, and certainly nominated Greeks to important sees, including Theodore of Tarsus as Archbishop of Canterbury. After Constans II was murdered in Sicily by Mezezius, Vitalian refused to support Mezeziuss usurpation of the throne, gaining the favor of Constans IIs son and successor, Constantine IV. Constantine IV, abandoned the policy of monothelitism and summoned the Third Council of Constantinople in 680, the council returned to the Chalcedonian Creed, condemning Pope Honorius and the other proponents of monothelitism. It was during this period that the Papacy began thinking of the Universal Church not as the sum of individual churches as the East did, Pope Agatho, a Greek Sicilian, started a nearly unbroken succession of Eastern pontiffs spanning the next three quarters of a century. The Third Council of Constantinople and the Greek Popes ushered in a new era in relations between the eastern and western parts of the empire, Benedict IIs successor Pope John V was elected by the general population, returning to the ancient practice
5.
Frankish Papacy
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From 756 to 857, the papacy shifted from the orbit of the Byzantine Empire to that of the kings of the Franks. Pepin the Short, Charlemagne, and Louis the Pious had considerable influence in the selection and administration of popes, the Donation of Pepin ratified a new period of papal rule in central Italy, which became known as the Papal States. Lothair I continued to rule Middle Francia, which included much of the Italian peninsula from 843 to 855 and this period was a critical time in Romes transformation from ancient capital to powerful bishopric to new state capital. The period was characterized by battles between Franks, Lombards and Romans for control of the Italian peninsula and supreme authority within Christendom, the Lombards had extinguished the exarchate of Ravenna and turned their attention to the formerly Byzantine Duchy of Rome. For his part, then and there, Pepin executed in writing a promise to convey to the Papacy certain territories that were going to be wrested from the Lombards, no actual document has been preserved, but later 8th century sources quote from it. Fulfilling his part, in Paris Stephen anointed him as King of the Franks in a ceremony at the Basilica of St Denis. The Donation of Pepin strengthened the claim of the popes to the de facto core of the Papal States, Stephen IIs brother and successor was Pope Paul I. However, immediately after the burial of Stephen, Paul was elected by a large majority, the death of Paul I was followed by a bloody schism characterized by Toto, the dux of Nepi, and Pope Stephen III. Toto supported the claim of his brother, Antipope Constantine. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, through the support of the brothers Charlemagne and Carloman, Kings of the Franks, however, the Lombard King Desiderius married his daughter to Charlemagne, and in some mysterious manner effected the fall of the popes chief ministers, Christopher and Sergius. The Roman laity quickly regained its role after Stephen IIIs decree, the papal elections of the following decade were a series of battles between secular and ecclesiastical groups, entangled obliquely in larger Italian and Frankish politics. Pope Adrian I and Pope Leo III were elected under the rules of Stephen III, under the rule of Adrian I, Charlemagne conquered Pavia, ending the Lombard kingdom and the Papacy was forever delivered from its persistent and hereditary foe. Charlemagne confirmed the election of Leo III, sending Angilbert, Abbot of St. Regnier, Leo III was consecrated the day after his election, an unusual move perhaps intended to preempt any Frankish interference. Pope Stephen IV required the Romans to take an oath to Charlemagnes son, Louis the Pious, as their suzerain, Pope Paschal I sent several ambassadors in rapid succession to Louis before receiving from him the Pactum Ludovicianum, confirming the Donation of Pepin. After two unanimous elections, Louis the Pious intervened in a disputed election in favor of Pope Eugene II. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the election of Eugene II was a triumph for the Franks, the pope and emperor signed a concordat or constitution in 824. The papal subjects were made to swear fealty to Louis and Lothair and were not to suffer the pope-elect to be consecrated save in the presence of the emperors envoys. This was approximately the status quo circa 769, reincorporating the lay Roman nobles, the consecration of Pope Gregory IV was delayed for six months to attain the assent of Louis
6.
Kingdom of the Lombards
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The king was traditionally elected by the highest-ranking aristocrats, the dukes, as several attempts to establish a hereditary dynasty failed. The kingdom was subdivided into a number of duchies, ruled by semi-autonomous dukes. The capital of the kingdom and the center of its life was Pavia in the modern northern Italian region of Lombardy. The Lombard invasion of Italy was opposed by the Byzantine Empire, because of this division, the southern duchies were considerably more autonomous than the smaller northern duchies. Over time, the Lombards gradually adopted Roman titles, names, by the time Paul the Deacon was writing in the late 8th century, the Lombardic language, dress and hairstyles had all disappeared. Initially the Lombards were Arianist Christians, at odds with the Papacy both religiously and politically, however, by the end of the 7th century, their conversion to Catholicism was all but complete. Nevertheless, their conflict with the Papacy continued and was responsible for their loss of power in the face of the Franks. Charlemagne, the king of the Franks, adopted the title King of the Lombards, although he never managed to control of Benevento. The only evidence for their use at the level comes from the Duchy of Benevento. The existence of seal rings testifies to the tenacity of Roman traditions of government, in the 6th century Byzantine Emperor Justinian attempted to reassert imperial authority in the territories of the Western Roman Empire. Problems were further exacerbated by widespread famine and a plague pandemic. In the spring of 568 the Lombards, led by King Alboin, moved from Pannonia, the Lombard arrival broke the political unity of the Italian Peninsula for the first time since the Roman conquest. The peninsula was now torn between territories ruled by the Lombards and the Byzantines, with boundaries that changed over time, the territories which remained under Byzantine control were called Romania in northeastern Italy and had its stronghold in the Exarchate of Ravenna. Arriving in Italy, King Alboin gave control of the Eastern Alps to one of his most trusted lieutenants, Gisulf, the duchy, established in the Roman town of Forum Iulii, constantly fought with the Slavic population across the Gorizia border. Justified by its military needs, the Duchy of Friuli thus had greater autonomy compared to other duchies of Langobardia Maior until the reign of Liutprand. Over time, other Lombard Duchies were created in cities of the kingdom. This was dictated primarily by military needs as Dukes were primarily military commanders, tasked to secure control of territory. However, the collection of duchies also contributed to political fragmentation
7.
Pepin the Short
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Pepin the Short was the King of the Franks from 751 until his death. He was the first of the Carolingians to become king, the younger son of the Frankish prince Charles Martel and his wife Rotrude, Pepins upbringing was distinguished by the ecclesiastical education he had received from the monks of St. Denis. Succeeding his father as the Mayor of the Palace in 741, Pepin ruled in Neustria, Burgundy, and Provence, while his brother Carloman established himself in Austrasia, Alemannia and Thuringia. The brothers were active in suppressing revolts led by the Bavarians, Aquitanians, Saxons, in 743, they ended the Frankish interregnum by choosing Childeric III, who was to be the last Merovingian monarch, as figurehead king of the Franks. After Carloman, who was a pious man, retired to religious life in 747. He suppressed a revolt led by his half-brother Grifo, and succeeded in becoming the master of all Francia. Giving up pretense, Pepin then forced Childeric into a monastery and had himself proclaimed king of the Franks with support of Pope Zachary in 751. The decision was not supported by all members of the Carolingian family and Pepin had to put down a revolt led by Carlomans son, Drogo, as King, Pepin embarked on an ambitious program to expand his power. He reformed the legislation of the Franks and continued the reforms of Boniface. Pepin also intervened in favour of the Papacy of Stephen II against the Lombards in Italy and he was able to secure several cities, which he then gave to the Pope as part of the Donation of Pepin. This formed the basis for the Papal States in the Middle Ages. The Byzantines, keen to make good relations with the power of the Frankish empire. Pepin was, however, troubled by the revolts of the Saxons. He campaigned tirelessly in Germany, but the final subjugation of tribes was left to his successors. Pepin died in 768 and was succeeded by his sons Charlemagne, although unquestionably one of the most powerful and successful rulers of his time, Pepins reign is largely overshadowed by that of his more famous son. Pepins father Charles Martel died in 741, Grifo, Charless son by his second wife, Swanahild, demanded a share in the inheritance, but he was imprisoned in a monastery by his two half-brothers. In the Frankish realm the unity of the kingdom was connected with the person of the king. So Carloman, to secure this unity, raised the Merovingian Childeric to the throne, then in 747 Carloman either resolved to or was pressured into entering a monastery
8.
Saint Boniface
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He established the first organized Christianity in many parts of Germania. He is the saint of Germania, the first archbishop of Mainz. He was killed in Frisia in 754, along with 52 others and his remains were returned to Fulda, where they rest in a sarcophagus which became a site of pilgrimage. Through his efforts to reorganize and regulate the church of the Franks, he helped shape Western Christianity, after his martyrdom, he was quickly hailed as a saint in Fulda and other areas in Germania and in England. His cult is still strong today. Boniface is celebrated as a missionary, he is regarded as a unifier of Europe and this monastery is believed to have occupied the site of the Church of St Mary Major in the City of Exeter, demolished in 1971, next to which was later built Exeter Cathedral. In one of his letters Boniface mentions he was born and reared, the synod of London, but he may have been speaking metaphorically. According to the vitae, Winfrid was of a respected and prosperous family, against his fathers wishes he devoted himself at an early age to the monastic life. Winfrid taught in the school and at the age of 30 became a priest, in this time, he wrote a Latin grammar. While little is known about Nursling outside of Bonifaces vitae, it clear that the library there was significant. In order to supply Boniface with the materials he needed, it would have contained works by Donatus, Priscian, Isidore, Winfrid, however, declined the position and in 716 set out on a missionary expedition to Frisia. Boniface first left for the continent in 716 and he traveled to Utrecht, where Willibrord, the Apostle of the Frisians, had been working since the 690s. He spent a year with Willibrord, preaching in the countryside, Willibrord fled to the abbey he had founded in Echternach while Boniface returned to Nursling. He would never return to England, though he remained in correspondence with his countrymen, according to the vitae Boniface felled the Donar Oak, Latinized by Willibald as Jupiters oak, near the present-day town of Fritzlar in northern Hesse. According to his early biographer Willibald, Boniface started to chop the oak down, when the god did not strike him down, the people were amazed and converted to Christianity. He built a dedicated to Saint Peter from its wood at the site—the chapel was the beginning of the monastery in Fritzlar. This account from the vita is stylized to portray Boniface as a character who alone acts to root out paganism. According to Willibald, Boniface later had a church with a monastery built in Fritzlar, on the site of the previously built chapel
9.
Basilica of St Denis
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The Basilica of Saint Denis is a large medieval abbey church in the city of Saint-Denis, now a northern suburb of Paris. The building is of unique importance historically and architecturally as its choir, completed in 1144, the site originated as a Gallo-Roman cemetery in late Roman times. The archeological remains still lie beneath the cathedral, the people buried there seem to have had a faith that was a mix of Christian and pre-Christian beliefs, around 475 St. Genevieve purchased some land and built Saint-Denys de la Chapelle. In 636 on the orders of Dagobert I the relics of Saint Denis, the relics of St-Denis, which had been transferred to the parish church of the town in 1795, were brought back again to the abbey in 1819. Saint-Denis soon became the church of a growing monastic complex. In the 12th century the Abbot Suger rebuilt portions of the church using innovative structural. In doing so, he is said to have created the first truly Gothic building, the abbey church became a cathedral in 1966 and is the seat of the Bishop of Saint-Denis, Pascal Michel Ghislain Delannoy. Although known as the Basilica of St Denis, the cathedral has not been granted the title of Minor Basilica by the Vatican, Saint Denis, a patron saint of France, became the first bishop of Paris. A martyrium was erected on the site of his grave, which became a place of pilgrimage during the fifth and sixth centuries. Dagobert, the king of the Franks, refounded the church as the Abbey of Saint Denis, Dagobert also commissioned a new shrine to house the saints remains, which was created by his chief councillor, Eligius, a goldsmith by training. He composed a crest and a magnificent frontal and surrounded the throne of the altar with golden axes in a circle and he placed golden apples there, round and jeweled. He made a pulpit and a gate of silver and a roof for the throne of the altar on silver axes and he made a covering in the place before the tomb and fabricated an outside altar at the feet of the holy martyr. So much industry did he lavish there, at the kings request, the Basilica of St Denis ranks as an architectural landmark—as the first major structure of which a substantial part was designed and built in the Gothic style. Both stylistically and structurally, it heralded the change from Romanesque architecture to Gothic architecture, before the term Gothic came into common use, it was known as the French Style. As it now stands, the church is a cruciform building of basilica form. It has an aisle on the northern side formed of a row of chapels. The west front has three portals, a window and one tower, on the southern side. The eastern end, which is built over a crypt, is apsidal, surrounded by an ambulatory, the basilica retains stained glass of many periods, including exceptional modern glass, and a set of twelve misericords
10.
Byzantine Iconoclasm
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The First Iconoclasm, as it is sometimes called, lasted between about 726 and 787. The Second Iconoclasm was between 814 and 842, according to the traditional view, Byzantine Iconoclasm constituted a ban on religious images by Emperor Leo III and continued under his successors. It was accompanied by destruction of images and persecution of supporters of the veneration of images. Iconoclasm, Greek for breaker of icons, is the destruction within a culture of the cultures own religious icons and other symbols or monuments. People who engage in or support iconoclasm are called iconoclasts, a term that has come to be applied figuratively to any person who breaks or disdains established dogmata or conventions, conversely, people who revere or venerate religious images are derisively called iconolaters. They are normally known as iconodules, or iconophiles and these terms were, however, not a part of the Byzantine debate over images. They have been brought into usage by modern historians and their application to Byzantium increased considerably in the late twentieth century. The Byzantine term for the debate over religious imagery, iconomachy means struggle over images or image struggle, Iconoclasm has generally been motivated theologically by an Old Covenant interpretation of the Ten Commandments, which forbade the making and worshipping of graven images. It was a debate triggered by changes in Orthodox worship, which were generated by the major social and political upheavals of the seventh century for the Byzantine Empire. Traditional explanations for Byzantine iconoclasm have sometimes focused on the importance of Islamic prohibitions against images influencing Byzantine thought, the role of women and monks in supporting the veneration of images has also been asserted. On the other hand, the wealthier Greeks of Constantinople and also the peoples of the Balkan and Italian provinces strongly opposed Iconoclasm, Christian worship by the sixth century had developed a clear belief in the intercession of saints. A strong sacramentality and belief in the importance of physical presence also joined the belief in intercession of saints with the use of relics and holy images in early Christian practices. Believers would, therefore, make pilgrimages to places sanctified by the presence of Christ or prominent saints and martyrs. Relics, or holy objects which were a part of the remains, or had come into contact with, Christ, the Virgin or a saint, were also widely utilized in Christian practices at this time. The use and abuse of images had greatly increased during this period, in some cases it defends itself against infidels with physical force. Key artefacts to blur this boundary emerged in c.570 in the form of miraculously created acheiropoieta or images not made by human hands and these sacred images were a form of contact relic, which additionally were taken to prove divine approval of the use of icons. The two most famous were the Mandylion of Edessa and the Image of Camuliana from Cappadocia, by then in Constantinople. The latter was regarded as a palladium that had won battles and saved Constantinople from the Persian-Avar siege of 626
