Changes

The Holy '''42 Martyrs of Amorium'''<ref group="note">[[w:Amorium|Amorium]] is in [[w:Phrygia|Phrygia]], Asia Minor.</ref> (†845) &mdash; [[Passion-bearer]]s Constantine, Aetius, Theophilus, Theodore, Melissenus, Callistus, Basoes and 35 others with them &mdash; were prominent officers and notables of the Byzantine city of [[w:Amorium|Amorium]], one of Byzantium's largest and most important cities at the time, who were seized following the capture and systematic destruction of the city in 838 AD by the Abbasid caliph [[w:Al-Mu'tasim|Al-Mu'tasim]], then taken as hostages to [[w:Samarra|Samarra]] (today in Iraq) and [[Martyr|executed]] there seven years later for refusing to [[convert]] to [[Islam]].

The most long-term result of the fall of Amorium, was in the religious rather than in the military sphere. [[Iconoclasm]] was supposed to bring divine favour and assure military victory, but neither the army's weaknesses nor the reported treachery of Baditses could detract from the fact that this was "a humiliating disaster to match the worst defeats of any iconophile emperor" (Whittow), comparable in recent memory only to the crushing defeat suffered by Emperor [[w:Nikephoros I|Nikephoros I]] (r. 802–811) at [[w:Battle of Pliska|Pliska]]. As Warren Treadgold writes, "the outcome did not exactly prove that Iconoclasm was wrong ... but it did rob the iconoclasts for all time of their most persuasive argument to the undecided, that Iconoclasm won battles". [[Iconoclasm]] was thoroughly discredited, and a little over a year after Theophilos's death, on 11 March 843, a [[synod]] [[Sunday of Orthodoxy|restored]] the [[veneration]] of [[icon]]s, and [[iconoclasm]] was declared [[heresy|heretical]].<ref>Treadgold 1988, p. 305; Whittow 1996, pp. 153–154.</ref>

The city itself never recovered from the sack, but retained an active bishopric until definitively conquered by the [[w:Great Seljuq Empire|Seljuks]] following the [[w:Battle of Manzikert|Battle of Manzikert]] in 1071. Emperor [[w:Alexios I Komnenos|Alexios I Komnenos]] defeated the Seljuks at Amorium in 1116, but the area was never recovered.