Pope Stephen III was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 7 August 768 to his death. Stephen was a Benedictine monk who worked in the Lateran Palace during the reign of Pope Zachary. In the midst of a tumultuous contest by rival factions to name a successor to Pope Paul I, Stephen was elected with the support of the Roman officials. He summoned the Lateran Council of 769, which sought to limit the influence of the nobles in papal elections. The Council also opposed iconoclasm.
Pope Sergius II was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from January 844 to his death in 847. Sergius II's pontificate saw the Arab raid against Rome as well as the city's redevelopment.
Monothelitism, or monotheletism, is a theological doctrine in Christianity, that holds Christ as having only one will. The doctrine is thus contrary to dyothelitism, a Christological doctrine that holds Christ as having two wills. Historically, monothelitism was closely related to monoenergism, a theological doctrine that holds Jesus Christ as having only one energy. Both doctrines were at the center of Christological disputes during the 7th century.
Yazdegerd I was the Sasanian King of Kings of Iran from 399 to 420. A son of Shapur III, he succeeded his brother Bahram IV after the latter's assassination.
A lavra or laura is a type of monastery consisting of a cluster of cells or caves for hermits, with a church and sometimes a refectory at the center. Lavra monasteries operate within the Orthodox and other Eastern Christian traditions; the name is also used by some Catholic communities. The term in Greek initially meant a narrow lane or an alley in a city.
Sergiusand Bacchus were fourth-century Syrian Christian soldiers revered as martyrs and military saints by the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches. Their feast day is 7 October.
The sack of Rome on 24 August 410 AD was undertaken by the Visigoths led by their king, Alaric. At that time, Rome was no longer the capital of the Western Roman Empire, having been replaced in that position first by Mediolanum in 286 and then by Ravenna in 402. Nevertheless, the city of Rome retained a paramount position as "the eternal city" and a spiritual center of the Empire. This was the first time in almost 800 years that Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy, and the sack was a major shock to contemporaries, friends and foes of the Empire alike.
Sergius I was the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 610 to 638. He is most famous for promoting Monothelite Christianity, especially through the Ecthesis.
January 4 - Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar - January 6
John Eastburn Boswell was an American historian and a full professor at Yale University. Many of Boswell's studies focused on the issue of religion and homosexuality, specifically Christianity and homosexuality. All of his work focused on the history of those at the margins of society.
Abdisho and Abda were two successive bishops of Kashkar who were martyred along with 38 companions in 376 during the Forty-Year Persecution in the Sasanian Empire.
Toto was the self-styled duke of Nepi, the leading magnate of Etruria, who staged a coup d'état in Rome in 767. He became Duke of Rome for a year until his death. The principal sources documenting his takeover are the vita of Pope Stephen III in the Liber Pontificalis and a surviving deposition of the primicerius Christopher from 769, preserved in a ninth-century manuscript of Verona, the Depositio Christophori.
Al-Mundhir ibn al-Ḥārith, known in Greek sources as (Flavios) Alamoundaros, was the king of the Ghassanid Arabs from 569 to circa 581. A son of al-Harith ibn Jabalah, he succeeded his father both in the kingship over his tribe and as the chief of the Byzantine Empire's Arab clients and allies in the East, with the rank of patricius. Despite his victories over the rival Persian-backed Lakhmids, throughout Mundhir's reign his relations with Byzantium were lukewarm due to his staunch Miaphysitism. This led to a complete breakdown of the alliance in 572, after Mundhir discovered Byzantine plans to assassinate him. Relations were restored in 575 and Mundhir secured from the Byzantine emperor both recognition of his royal status and a pledge of tolerance towards the Miaphysite Church.
Metropolitanate of India was an East Syriac ecclesiastical province of the Church of the East, at least nominally, from the seventh to the sixteenth century. The Malabar region (Kerala) of India had long been home to a thriving Eastern Christian community, known as the Saint Thomas Christians. The community traces its origins to the evangelical activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. The Christian communities in India used the East Syriac Rite, the traditional liturgical rite of the Church of the East. They also adopted some aspects of Dyophysitism of Theodore of Mopsuestia, often inaccurately referred as Nestorianism, in accordance with theology of the Church of the East. It is unclear when the relation between Saint Thomas Christian and the Church of the East was established. Initially, they belonged to the metropolitan province of Fars, but were detached from that province in the 7th century, and again in the 8th, and given their own metropolitan bishop.
Hit is a village in southern Syria, administratively part of the al-Suwayda Governorate, located northeast of al-Suwayda. It is situated on the northern end of Jabal al-Arab. Nearby localities include Shaqqa to the south, Umm al-Zaytun and Amrah to the southwest, al-Hayyat to the north and al-Buthainah to the east. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Hit had a population of 655 in the 2004 census. The inhabitants are mostly Christians and Druze.
Nimreh is a village in southern Syria, administratively part of the al-Suwayda Governorate, located northeast of al-Suwayda. It is situated on the northern end of Jabal al-Arab. Nearby localities include Shaqqa, Hit and al-Junayneh to the north, Shahba, Salim and Mardak to the west and Mafaalah and Qanawat to the southwest. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Nimreh had a population of 4,376 in the 2004 census.
Severus II bar Masqeh was the Patriarch of Antioch and head of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 667/668 until his death in 684. He is commemorated as a saint by the Syriac Orthodox Church.
Ahudemmeh was the Grand Metropolitan of the East in the Syriac Orthodox Church from 559 until his execution in 575. He was known as the Apostle of the Arabs, and is commemorated as a saint by the Syriac Orthodox Church.
Harran is a village in the as-Suwayda Governorate in southwestern Syria. It is situated in the southern Lajah plateau, northwest of the city of as-Suwayda. Harran had a population of 1,523 in the 2004 census.
Gregentios was the purported archbishop of Ẓafār, the capital of the kingdom of Ḥimyar, in the mid-6th century, according to a hagiographical dossier compiled in the 10th century. This compilation is essentially legendary and fictitious, although a few parts of it are of historical value. Written in Greek, it survives also in a Slavonic translation. The three works in the dossier are conventionally known as the Bios (Life), Nomoi (Laws) and Dialexis (Debate), respectively a biography of Gregentios, the laws he wrote for the kingdom and a debate he had with a Jew. The whole dossier is sometimes known as the Acts of Gregentios.
