The prohibition against icon veneration was the cornerstone of the religious policy of the Isaurian dynasty in the 8th century and of the Amorion dynasty in the 9th century, provoking intense conflict within the empire. Asia Minor, the then most important part of Byzantium, became the focal point of the Iconoclasm, where the supporters of the imperial iconoclastic policy, but also many iconophiles seeking for the restoration of the icons, developed their activity.

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The Mandylion was according to the legend a piece of cloth upon which the features of Jesus’ face have been miraculously imprinted. It was about the most famous acheiropoietos (mean. "not made by human hands") icon, which was translated to Constantinople from the Syrian town of Edessa (mod. Urfa in Turkey) in 944. The use of the name was generalized in the sources from the 11th century and thereafter, while the legend around the Mandylion had been until then gradually crystallized as well. The...

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Tryphon was a Christian martyr from Asia Minor, honoured both by the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church. In the Byzantine years the main centres of his cult were Asia Minor and Constantinople. Especially after 1204, when his relics seem to have been transported by the crusaders from Constantinople to Rome, his cult became widespread in Nicaea. The beginnings cult of the saint as the patron of cultivation, and particularly viniculture, probably date back to the 10th century.

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The traditions about Eugenios report that he was martyred during the persecutions of Diocletian (late 3rd-early 4th c. AD). The Passion and miracles of the saint have survived in several texts dating from the Middle Byzantine period onwards. His cult was particularly spread in Trebizond and, according to tradition, from the 11th century onwards he was worshipped as the patron of the city. After the establishment of the Empire of Trebizond (1204-1461), the Grand Komnenoi adopted St. Eugenios as...

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