RELIGIOUS RIVALRIES BETWEEN ROME AND BYZANTIUM AND INFLUENCES IN THE ARBERIAN TERRITORIES
Emperor Leo III, openly undertaking the battle against the cult of icons, aimed primarily to affirm the power of the central government over the unlimited power of religious institutions as well as over the provinces, especially the peripheral ones, which not accidentally sided with the worshipers of the icon. The iconoclasm met with fierce opposition in the Byzantine provinces of Italy and Illyricum, which were under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Pope. Here, however, the iconoclasm did not fail to win over its supporters. Thus, from two letters that the famous Byzantine theologian, Teodor Studiti, sent in the 820s, to the Archbishop of Durrës, Anton, and another monk from Durrës, Dionysus, it is learned that the iconoclasm was embraced in that diocese by representatives of the regular clergy (monks), who were generally its staunchest opponents? There is no evidence that the war of the icons would have taken in the Albanian territories the harsh forms it had in other parts of the Byzantine Empire. However, in its context, an event of great importance occurred not only for the ecclesiastical developments but also for the political ones in the Albanian territories. The iconoclastic emperor Leo III detached them from the jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome and placed them under the direct subordination of the Patriarchate of Constantinople (732). This step, was accompanied by the creation, at the beginning of the century. IX, of the Byzantine theme of Durrës and that of Nikopoja, greatly influenced the strengthening of the control of the central government in these western provinces of the Empire.
Iconoclasm, Emperor Leo III, Arberian territories, Durrës, Rome.