[3] When George resumed his commission, he only made it as far as Sicily, where he was arrested by the strategos Sergius on Leo’s orders and held in prison for over a year.
[6] The synod issued a ruling, outlining the traditional Roman position as articulated by previous popes, in support of Icon veneration,[2] and condemned iconoclasm as a heresy.
Gregory made a final attempt, this time entrusting two letters to his new Defensor Peter, one for Patriarch Anastasius of Constantinople, and one for the two emperors, Leo and his son Constantine, without success.
[9] In response to the synod’s opposition to iconoclasm, in 733 Leo sent out a fleet under the command of the strategos of the Cibyrrhaeot Theme, but it was shipwrecked in the Adriatic Sea.
Further, he not only removed Sicily and Calabria from the jurisdiction of the pope, but he also did the same to all the territory within the former Praetorian prefecture of Illyricum, transferring it to the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople,[11] although at that time in practice it only meant Byzantine Greece and the Aegean islands, which were under the emperor’s direct control.