The fall of Byzantine Italy: the Papacy turns west
Merovingians to Carolingians: Part 2 in our exploration of the divide between Western Latin and Byzantine Christianity
Today we’re going to take a look at the transitional period of the 7th - 9th century, when, because of aggression from Islam and the internal turmoil caused by Iconoclasm, the power of the Byzantine Empire was tottering in Italy and Western Europe, and something new was going to have to fill the void.
Something I’ve noticed in my investigations is that most of the work on this crucial period of divergence treats the two sides as though they were completely isolated solitudes. But of course, this is nonsense. So, let’s continue that story by tracing the aftermath in both Byzantium and Western Christendom, as it was now starting to develop a separate western, Latin identity.
The next phase of Christendom is an impossibly tangled web of political shifts, and it’s precisely that interaction that shaped the artistic and liturgical divergences we now take for granted.
We left off last week with Pope Gregory I and II strongly opposing the imperial iconoclastic heresy and refusing to oblige the iconoclasts by removing sacred art from Latin Rite churches in the west. In our post for paid members today, we’re tracing the full story of the fallout from that opposition, and its effect on the development of Christian sacred art both east and west.
We’ve talked before a little about the rise of the Carolingian Empire and the importance of the Carolingian Renaissance, but today we’re going to take a closer look and discuss the transition from Byzantine to Frankish (that is, western European) influence and how it was going to affect western sacred art forever after: with Carolingian, Romanesque and finally Gothic art.
There’s a lot going on.
At the Sacred Images Project we talk about Christian life, thought, history and culture through the lens of the first 1200 years of sacred art. The publication is supported by subscriptions, so apart from plugging my shop, there is no advertising or pop-ups. It’s my full time job, and while it’s now providing me with a full time income, we are now looking at growing this into a multi-layered, multi-media project, so I can’t yet provide all the things I want to and am planning for.
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