ABSTRACT
The fact remains that the council in question was ecumenical, which means that not only suffragans of the patriarch of Constantinople, but bishops from every part of the Christian oecumene were invited to participate. The protocols of the fourth and the seventh session of the council clearly suggest that the bishops of Split, Rab and Osor held a position among the autocephalous archbishops of the Constantinopolitan church. Information from the twelfth-century chronicler Michael the Syrian about the presence of bishops from Dalmatia at the Iconoclast Council of Hieria in 754, is sometimes used to argue that the church of Dalmatia was already part of the patriarchate of Constantinople in the mid-eighth century. While Croatia came under Frankish sway after the Treaty of Aachen in 812, the Byzantines showed little interest in subordinating the Dalmatian church to the patriarch of Constantinople until later in the century.
