The emperor Leo III launches the iconoclastic controversy, sending soldiers to smash the great image of Christ over the gateway to his palace

The Muslim advance into France is halted when Charles Martel defeats the Arabs between Poitiers and Tours

Boniface, working as a missionary among pagan Germans, makes his headquarters at Mainz

Pope Stephen II anoints Pepin III and his two sons (one of them Charlemagne) in the abbey church of St Denis

Alcuin leaves the palace school at Aachen to become abbot of the monastery of Tours

In St Peter's in Rome, on Christmas Day, pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne emperor - supposedly to Charlemagne's surprise

Pope Leo III consecrates Charlemagne's new palace chapel in Aachen, modelled on San Vitale in Ravenna

The discovery of the supposed remains of the apostle St James makes Santiago de Compostela a new centre of European pilgrimage

The Venetians, acquiring from Alexandria some bones believed to be those of St Mark, build St Mark's to house the valuable relic

The iconoclastic controversy ends when Theodora, widow of the emperor Theophilus, officially sanctions the veneration of icons

The missionary brothers Cyril and Methodius arrive in Moravia, where they introduce the Greek Orthodox faith in a special Slavonic liturgy

The Bulgarian king Boris I is baptized in the Greek Orthodox faith, bringing his people within the Byzantine fold

Cyril and Methodius translate the Gospels and parts of the Old Testament into Slavonic for the Moravians.

Monastic reform, begun at Cluny, is so successful that more than 1000 Benedictine houses eventually follow the Cluniac example

Wenceslas, a prince of the Premsylid family, is murdered on his way into church - and becomes Bohemia's patron saint

The Byzantine empire enjoys a revival, bringing the Slavs within the Greek Orthodox fold and winning victories against the Muslims

Harald Bluetooth is baptized a Christian and unites the whole of Denmark as a single kingdom.

The imperial coronation of Otto I by Pope John XII in St Peter's puts in place the formal role of a Holy Roman emperor

Mieszko, pagan chieftain of the Poles, marries a Christian Czech princess and brings all his people into the Roman Catholic fold

The Hungarian king Gezá and his family are baptized as Roman Catholics, beginning a long link between Hungary and Rome

Vladimir, the prince of Kiev, decides that Greek Orthodoxy is the most suitable religion for the Russian people

Iceland's parliament, the althing, passes a resolution that everyone on the island is to be baptized

Pope Gregory VII decrees that only the church may make ecclesiastical appointments, thus initiating the investiture controversy between pope and emperor

Anselm includes in his Proslogion his famous 'ontological proof' of the existence of God

St Bruno and six companions retire to Chartreuse, in the French Alps, and establish the Carthusian order