The earliest preserved painted icons in the Adriatic date from the thirteenth century.In fact, apart from Rome, the entire Latin West seems to have embraced icons simultaneously overnight as soon as they started coming in great numbers from Byzantium following the capture of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204. This chapter argues that the Adriatic was particularly responsive to these painted icons because it had already embraced Byzantine relief icons in the eleventh century. The examination includes both the material and written evidence for the existence of icons in the eleventh-century Adriatic, such as the extant marble Hodegetria icon from Trani and the recorded commission of a gilt silver icon for Siponto Cathedral in 1069. When it comes to Dalmatia, this investigation looks into a donation document recording five icons, one of which was made of silver, in a church built and furnished by a Croatian dignitary in the 1040s. The analysis demonstrates that by the thirteenth century, the Adriatic was conditioned by relief icons to embrace easily portable painted icons reaching its shores after the fall of Constantinople and that this area as a whole experienced a strong prestige bias towards Byzantine artefacts.

The Exarchate of Ravenna has usually been seen as peripheral to Carolingian Italy because of its ’alien’ character, stemming from its position as a province of the eastern empire up to 751. This chapter first argues that, while the area retained many distinctive ‘Roman’ institutions that were quite distinct from the those of the old Lombard kingdom, it is unhelpful to regard these as ‘Byzantine’, and that enduring links with Constantinople were limited. The chapter goes on to argue that the area came to play an increasing role in the political and ecclesiastical life of Carolingian Italy, for a number of reasons, including the archbishops’ conflicts with the papacy and the attractiveness of Ravenna’s heritage to rulers keen to enhance their claims to imperial authority. Also, by the late ninth century various factors led to the settlement in the Exarchate of several powerful families of Lombard and Frankish descent.