In 1274, the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople signed a historic reunion, but there were some formidable dissenters.
In 1261, the Roman Emperor Michael Palaeologos won his battered empire back from the Crusaders, but Charles, Count of Anjou, was eager to reconquer the East and bring its ‘schismatic’ Christians under the Pope. Michael instructed the Greek Church to give in and save his crown, but twenty-six monks of Mount Athos were more concerned with their consciences.
An obscure officer in the Roman Army gains a dizzying promotion after performing a simple act of kindness.
In the fifth century, about the time when St Patrick was preaching in Ireland, far away in the Roman Empire’s glorious capital of Constantinople an obscure Roman soldier performed a kindness for a blind man which brought the most rapid promotion one could ever imagine.
A tenth-century Greek monk is joined by a total stranger for Mattins.
In the days of St Dunstan (r. 959-988), Archbishop of Canterbury to King Ethelred the Unready, over in Greece an otherwise comfortably obscure fellow monk – we still do not know his name – was entertaining a guest of even greater royalty.
A widow cast her precious icon into the sea rather than see it dishonoured by government agents, but that wasn’t the end of the story.
In the days of the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus (829-842), it was illegal to possess religious art depicting people. Houses were searched, and offenders saw their precious icons destroyed with dishonour.