The personal criticism, while hardly novel, is noted.


Hardly; despite Larry citing it as counterevidence, recent Vatican removal of dubious and/or pagan saints supports my previous reference to such canonization.


"Non-Christian" is a hefty qualifier; iconoclasm is one of the factors Wikipedia notes in Pope Stephen III turning to Pepin rather than Byzantium for defence from predominantly Arian (i.e. heretical Christian) Lombards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Stephen_II#Allegiance_to_Constantinople

Italy and France are not all of Europe, however, and the same Germanic migration that brought the Lombards to Italy, as it had countless German tribes since before the time of Christ, brought pagan German tribes to modern Germany, northern France, Scandinavia and Britain. The Lombards were only the latest example of such a tribe threatening Rome; other, still pagan, German tribes, that could displace them while maintaining that threat, remained plentiful in Europe.

Even when they did not threaten Rome directly, pagan German migrants presented a mortal threat to Christianity along the periphery of northern and western Europe. PBS had a series of programs (i.e. send all derisive counter-arguments to them) a few years ago on Irish monks essentially confined to monasteries to avoid marauding pagan depradations on the island. St. Olaf did not establish Christianity in most of Scandinavia until a century or more after the end of iconoclasm. In addition to the threat of those MIGRATORY pagans venturing to Romes more hospitable climate, the benefit of Christian allies on the flanks of northern and western threats would have been significant as well.

The first part of my statement is relevant in contrasting the difference between Byzantiums limited non-local missionaries and Romes spread over most of the European continent. The second part references the series of pagan Germanic and Hun migrations that besieged the secular Roman Empire until it collapsed under that weight in the middle of the 5th Century, and continued to harass Rome for centuries thereafter.


Yes, I missed the "e" when moving between the "c" and "s" keys, but you really are picking nits now. Constantinople was so zealous in its defence of Rome that the Pope repeatedly turned to the Franks for defence instead, resulting in the Donation of Pepin creating the Papal States and the Pope crowning Charlesmagne Holy Roman Emperor. In the final centuries of the 1st Millenium A.D. Constantinople spent less time defending Rome than attacking its eccelesiastical authority.


I did flip that relationship, yeah, my mistake. The point was that, whether emperor or empress, things like threats to re-conquer Rome, destroy prominent Roman icons and imprison the Pope further alienated Rome and Constantinople to a degree that endured long after iconoclasm itself ceased to be an issue.