Christianity in the 8th century

By the late 8th century, the Muslim empire had conquered all of Persia and parts of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) territory including Egypt, Palestine, and Syria.

Sometime between 726 and 730 the Byzantine Emperor Leo III the Isaurian ordered the removal of an image of Jesus prominently placed over the Chalke gate, the ceremonial entrance to the Great Palace of Constantinople, and its replacement with a cross.

This was followed by orders banning the pictorial representation of the family of Christ, subsequent Christian saints, and biblical scenes.

In the early 8th century, Byzantine iconoclasm became a major source of conflict between the Eastern and Western parts of the Church.

Eventually, the conversion was imposed by armed force and successfully completed by Charlemagne and the Franks in a series of campaigns, starting in 772 with the destruction of their Irminsul and culminating in the defeat and massacre of Saxon leaders at the Bloody Verdict of Verden in 782 and the subjugation of this large tribe.

[5] The old indigenous traditions that had provided security and structure since time immemorial were challenged by ideas that were unfamiliar, such as original sin, the Trinity and so forth.

[5] Archaeological excavations of burial sites on the island of Lovön near modern-day Stockholm have shown that the actual Christianization of the people was very slow and took at least 150–200 years,[6] and this was a very central location in the Swedish kingdom.

In 698 the Northumbrian Benedictine monk, Saint Willibrord was commissioned by Pope Sergius I as bishop of the Frisians in what is now the Netherlands.

In 717, the English missionary Boniface was sent to aid Willibrord, re-establishing churches in Frisia and continuing to preach throughout the pagan lands of Germany.

The Mesopotamian patriarch in the 8th century wrote that he was appointing a metropolitan for Tibet, implying that their churches were numerous enough to require bishops and lesser clergy.

Between 711 and 718 the Iberian Peninsula had been conquered by Muslims in the Umayyad conquest of Hispania; between 722 and 1492 the Christian kingdoms that later would become Spain and Portugal reconquered it from the Moorish states of Al-Ándalus.

The Arabs, under the command of the Berber General Tarik ibn Ziyad, first began their conquest of southern Spain or al-Andalus in 711.

Crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, it won a decisive victory in the summer of 711 when the Visigothic king Roderic was defeated and killed on July 19 at the Battle of Guadalete.

Tariq's commander, Musa bin Nusair quickly crossed with substantial reinforcements, and by 718 the Muslims dominated most of the peninsula.