Through case studies examined in a comparative East-West approach, this book analyses how Byzantine iconoclasm (ca. 720s-843) impacted on the West and how it shaped a papal reaction in Rome. The policy on the production and veneration of sacred images that was then adopted by the popes would only be challenged 700 years later by the Protestant Reformation. The key aims and contribution of this book are its demonstration of how a number of the most iconic ways of representing the Virgin Mary and Christ - crystallized over the long Middles Ages and the early Renaissance in Byzantine,...