Protection of icons outside the empire

Such political persecution of icons, fortunately, was powerless outside the "Orthodox kingdom."

In other Eastern patriarchates, they were completely calm about the artificially stirred up dispute in Byzantium and, on occasion, firmly reacted to attempts to introduce iconoclasm within their borders.

Thus, in 764, Cosmas, bishop of the Syrian city of Epiphania of Apamea, was accused before the Antiochian Patriarch Theodore of having seized church property in the form of sacred vessels in his own favor. Cosmas did not give the vessels under the pretext of denying the icons depicted on them. But Patriarch Theodore, striving to nip this "foreign" heresy in the bud, conspired with his namesake, Patriarch Theodore of Jerusalem and Cosmas of Alexandria. All three of them on the same day – May 13, 764 – at the Liturgy on Pentecost, after the reading of the Gospel, anathematized Cosmas of Epiphania according to one agreed formula. This speech was clearly made in opposition to the iconoclastic council of Constantine Copronymos.

The patriarchs were on the alert against heresy and in their epistles, the synodics, on the occasion of their accession to the cathedras, inserted special points in defense of icons. This explains the subsequent reading of the Synodica of Theodore of Jerusalem at the Seventh Ecumenical Council.

Apparently, this synodikon was then, for the special purpose of protecting icons, supplemented with arguments in favor of their veneration and was sent by the three Eastern patriarchs in solidarity to other autocephalous churches. Thus, on August 12, 767, it was received in Rome, as evidence of the agreement of the patriarchs with the Roman Church on the question of icons. The antipope Constantine II (767-768), who occupied the papal see at that time, sent a synodikon to the Frankish king Pepin, "so that they would know in Gaul about the zeal shown in the East in favor of icons."

In the West

The rejection of iconoclasm here during the time of Constantine Copronymus was caused by the relations of the basileus with the Frankish king Pepin. Constantine demanded of Pepin the return to him of the possessions he had lost (through iconoclastic madness) in Southern Italy, which Pepin had consciously given to the pope. Byzantine ambassadors gave Pepin some "false promises".

Pepin convened a special conference of his nobles and bishops (concilium mixtum) and on behalf of the conference declared allegiance to the pope. And on the question of icons, also raised by the ambassadors of the basileus, Pepin did not even want to talk without the legates of the pope. They were sent for them. When the legates arrived, at Easter 767, Pepin was celebrating Easter in the suburbs of Paris, at the royal dacha at Gentilly, where there are now many dull and dirty factory buildings along the river Vièvre. At the council there were disputes "de sanctorum imaginibus et de Trinitate" ("on sacred images and on the Trinity").

Apparently, in response to the accusation of the Greeks by the legates of the heresy of iconoclasm, the Greeks reproached the Latins, in turn, with the heresy of the filioque. Chronologically, this is the earliest precedent of the controversy about the filioque that exists to this day. The Council spoke in favor of icons, and this made Pope Paul very happy. The epistle of the Eastern patriarchs concerning icons, received about this time, perhaps testifies to the fact that the popes and Pepin had a countermine for the Byzantines in this protest of their Greek brethren.

Emperor Leo IV the Khazar (775-780)