Epic Girl Tranformation Under the reign of Leo III ( 717-741 ) , the Byzantine Empire was engulfed by a serious internal religious conflict. Basically its ongoing interpretation that the different role that had become sacred images (icons) were in the Christian faith. From the time of Justinian worship icons of saints ( ikonolatria ) introduced such a wide gap in the Byzantine church , which has turned into one of the main forms of religious expression . Churches and monasteries were filled at the time with icons of saints precious and expensive , is both an indicator of wealth and luxury in which swimmers clergy and religious institutions. This resentment harbored a large extent all social strata of the population thought that I would have been like in the days of the apostles, and the virtuous poor. On the other hand , not missing even within the church leaning against the veneration of icons , under which such worship had nothing to do with Christianity , a very spiritual religion. These trends have been strongest in the eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire soil more fertile for the religious movement , which has continued to survive monofizizmit wasting time and where it is stretched and strengthened pavlikanëve sect , against any form of religious worship.
Finally, the war against the veneration of icons was the result of influence of Byzantine Christianity and Islam , the Jewish , that Byzantium was in constant contact. Both religions are dead against any form of reproduction in its holy figure. In this way , the struggle against the veneration of icons ( iconoclasm ) was deeply rooted religious , cultural and social .
The emperor Leo III in open struggle against the veneration of icons , primarily intended to affirm the power of the central government of unlimited power over religious institutions and provinces , especially those devices, which is not a coincidence lined the side fan icons . Iconoclasm meet fierce resistance in Italy Byzantine provinces of Illyria , who were under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome. Yet even here iconoclasm has not failed to make his own supporters. Thus, by two Byzantine theologian known letters, Theodore Studiti sent in 820 years, Archbishop of Durres , Anthony, and the other is a monk of Durres , Dionysus, learned that iconoclasm was adopted in the diocese and the clergy representatives of a regular ( monks ) , which are generally more opponents there .
There is no evidence that the war icons will be taken into Albanian lands who had severe forms in other parts of the Byzantine Empire. However, his past in an event of great importance for the development not only ecclesiastical , but also for policies in the Albanian territories. The emperor Leo III ikonoklast uprooted them from the jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome and put directly under the Patriarch of Constantinople ( 732). This step , along with the establishment at the beginning of the century . IX , the Byzantine theme of Nikopojës Durres, greatly influenced the strengthening of central control in the western provinces of the Empire.