Basil of Jerusalem was the Patriarch of Jerusalem of the Church of Jerusalem from 821 to 842. During his episcopate, Basil actively opposed the iconoclasm that was supported by the Byzantine emperor Theophilus.
Basil, who was a follower of his predecessor Patriarch Thomas I of Jerusalem, was elected Patriarch of Jerusalem in 821. He actively opposed iconoclasm. In 836, he convened a council in Jerusalem that defended the veneration of icons. From the council, Basil sent this position of the council to emperor Theophilus in a letter carried by syncellus Michael. Theophilus, who was a confirmed iconoclast, jailed Michael upon his arrival.
In 841, Basil was able to fend off an attack on Jerusalem by the Arab rebel Abu Harb al-Mubarqa and his army of thirty thousand by buying him off.
Basil died the following year, 842, and was succeeded by Sergius I who was made the patriarch by the Arabs.
Photios I, also spelled Photius, was the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople from 858 to 867 and from 877 to 886. He is recognized in the Eastern Orthodox Church as Saint Photios the Great.
Leo V the Armenian was the Byzantine emperor from 813 to 820. A senior general, he forced his predecessor, Michael I Rangabe, to abdicate and assumed the throne. He ended the decade-long war with the Bulgars, and initiated the second period of Byzantine Iconoclasm. He was assassinated by supporters of Michael the Amorian, one of his most trusted generals, who succeeded him on the throne.
Theophilos was the Byzantine Emperor from 829 until his death in 842. He was the second emperor of the Amorian dynasty and the last emperor to support iconoclasm. Theophilos personally led the armies in his long war against the Arabs, beginning in 831.
Michael III, also known as Michael the Drunkard, was Byzantine emperor from 842 to 867. Michael III was the third and traditionally last member of the Amorian dynasty. He was given the disparaging epithet the Drunkard by the hostile historians of the succeeding Macedonian dynasty, but modern historical research has rehabilitated his reputation to some extent, demonstrating the vital role his reign played in the resurgence of Byzantine power in the 9th century. He was also the youngest person to bear the imperial title, as well as the youngest to succeed as senior emperor.
Michael II, called the Amorian and the Stammerer, reigned as Byzantine Emperor from 25 December 820 to his death on 2 October 829, the first ruler of the Amorian dynasty.
Bardas was a Byzantine noble and high-ranking minister. As the brother of Empress Theodora, he rose to high office under Theophilos. Although sidelined after Theophilos's death by Theodora and Theoktistos, in 855 he engineered Theoktistos's murder and became the de facto regent for his nephew, Michael III. Rising to the rank of Caesar, he was the effective ruler of the Byzantine Empire for ten years, a period which saw military success, renewed diplomatic and missionary activity, and an intellectual revival that heralded the Macedonian Renaissance. He was assassinated in 866 at the instigation of Michael III's new favourite, Basil the Macedonian, who a year later would usurp the throne for himself and install his own dynasty on the Byzantine throne.
Theodora, sometimes called Theodora the Armenian or Theodora the Blessed, was Byzantine empress as the wife of Byzantine emperor Theophilos from 830 to 842 and regent for the couple's young son Michael III, after the death of Theophilos, from 842 to 856. She is sometimes counted as an empress regnant, who actually ruled in her own right, rather than just a regent. Theodora is most famous for bringing an end to the second Byzantine Iconoclasm (814–843), an act for which she is recognized as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Though her reign saw the loss of most of Sicily and failure to retake Crete, Theodora's foreign policy was otherwise highly successful; by 856, the Byzantine Empire had gained the upper hand over both the Bulgarian Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Slavic tribes in the Peloponnese had been forced to pay tribute, all without decreasing the imperial gold reserve.
Ignatius or Ignatios was a Patriarch of Constantinople from July 4, 847, to October 23, 858, and from November 23, 867, to his death on October 23, 877. In the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox churches, he is regarded as a saint, with a feast day of October 23.
Antony I Kassymatas Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from January 821 to January 837.
Theodotos I Kassiteras, Latinized as Theodotus I Cassiteras was Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 1 April 815 to January 821.
Theodorus and Theophanes, called the Grapti, are remembered as proponents of the veneration of icons during the second Iconoclastic controversy. They were brothers and natives of Jerusalem.
The Byzantine Iconoclasm were two periods in the history of the Byzantine Empire when the use of religious images or icons was opposed by religious and imperial authorities within the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the temporal imperial hierarchy. The First Iconoclasm, as it is sometimes called, occurred between about 726 and 787, while the Second Iconoclasm occurred between 814 and 842. According to the traditional view, Byzantine Iconoclasm was started by a ban on religious images promulgated by the Byzantine Emperor Leo III the Isaurian, and continued under his successors. It was accompanied by widespread destruction of religious images and persecution of supporters of the veneration of images. The Papacy remained firmly in support of the use of religious images throughout the period, and the whole episode widened the growing divergence between the Byzantine and Carolingian traditions in what was still a unified European Church, as well as facilitating the reduction or removal of Byzantine political control over parts of the Italian Peninsula.
Michael of Synnada or Michael the Confessor was a metropolitan bishop of Synnada from 784/7 to 815. He represented Byzantium in diplomatic missions to Harun al-Rashid and Charlemagne. He was exiled by Emperor Leo V the Armenian because of his opposition to iconoclasm, and died on 23 May 826. He is honoured as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, his feast day is May 23.
Symbatios, variously also Sabbatios (Σαββάτιος) or Sambates (Σαμβάτης) in some sources, was the eldest son of the Byzantine emperor Leo V the Armenian. Soon after the coronation of his father, he was crowned co-emperor and renamed Constantine. He reigned nominally along with his father until the latter's assassination in 820, after which he was exiled to Prote, one of the Princes' Islands, as a monk.
Byzantine Anatolia refers to the peninsula of Anatolia during the rule of the Byzantine Empire. Anatolia was of vital importance to the empire following the Muslim invasion of Syria and Egypt during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in the years 634–645 AD. Over the next two hundred and fifty years, the region suffered constant raids by Arab Muslim forces raiding mainly from the cities of Antioch, Tarsus, and Aleppo near the Anatolian borders. However, the Byzantine Empire maintained control over the Anatolian peninsula until the High Middle Ages, when imperial authority in the area began to collapse.
This is a timeline of the presence of Eastern Orthodoxy in Greece from 717 to 1204. The history of Greece traditionally encompasses the study of the Greek people, the areas they ruled historically, as well as the territory now composing the modern state of Greece.
Euthymius of Sardis was metropolitan bishop of Sardis between ca. 785 and ca. 804, and a leading iconophile during the period of Byzantine Iconoclasm. Martyred in 831, he is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, celebrated on 26 December.
Thekla, latinized as Thecla, was a princess of the Amorian dynasty of the Byzantine Empire. The daughter and eldest child of Byzantine emperor Theophilos and empress Theodora, she was proclaimed augusta in the late 830s. After Theophilos's death in 842 and her mother becoming regent for Thekla's younger brother Michael III, Thekla was associated with the regime as co-empress alongside Theodora and Michael.
The Byzantine Empireunder theAmoriandynasty ruled from 820 to 867. The Amorian dynasty continued the policy of restored iconoclasm started by the previous non-dynastic emperor Leo V in 813, until its abolition by Empress Theodora with the help of Patriarch Methodios in 842. The continued iconoclasm further worsened relations between the East and the West, which were already bad following the papal coronations of a rival line of "Roman Emperors" beginning with Charlemagne in 800. Relations worsened even further during the so-called Photian Schism, when Pope Nicholas I challenged Photios' elevation to the patriarchate. However, the era also saw a revival in intellectual activity which was marked by the end of iconoclasm under Michael III, which contributed to the upcoming Macedonian Renaissance.
Thomas I of Jerusalem, also known in Persian as Tamriq, was the Patriarch of Jerusalem of the Church of Jerusalem from 807 to 821. Patriarch Thomas held a firm Orthodox theological position and opposed both the iconoclasts and the filioque. He is considered a saint, commemorated in May 16.