with icons. Both Christ and the Theotokos were believed in strong traditions to have sat on different occasions for their portraits to be painted. Iconophiles further argued that decisions such as whether icons ought to be venerated were properly made by the church assembled in council, not imposed on the church by an emperor. Thus the argument also involved the issue of the proper relationship between church and state. Related to this was the observation that it was foolish to deny to God the same honor that was freely given to the human emperor, since portraits of the emperor were common and the iconoclasts did not oppose them. Emperors had always intervened in ecclesiastical matters since the time of Constantine I. As Cyril Mango writes, "The legacy of Nicaea, the first universal council of the Church, was to bind the emperor to something that was not his concern, namely the definition and imposition of orthodoxy, if need be by force." That practice continued from beginning to end of the Iconoclast controversy and beyond, with some emperors enforcing iconoclasm, and two empresses regent enforcing the re-establishment of icon veneration. In art The iconoclastic period has drastically reduced the number of survivals of Byzantine art from before the period, especially large religious mosaics, which are now almost exclusively found in Italy and Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt. Important works in Thessaloniki were lost in the Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 and the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). A large mosaic of a church council in the Imperial Palace was replaced by lively secular scenes, and there was no issue with imagery per se. The plain Iconoclastic cross that replaced a figurative image in the apse of St Irene's is itself an almost unique survival, but careful inspection of some other buildings reveals similar changes. In Nicaea, photographs of the Church of the Dormition, taken before it was destroyed in 1922, show that a pre-iconoclasm standing Theotokos was replaced by a large cross, which was itself replaced by the new Theotokos seen in the photographs. The Image of Camuliana in Constantinople appears to have been destroyed, as mentions of it cease. Reaction in the West The period of Iconoclasm decisively ended the so-called Byzantine Papacy under which, since the reign of Justinian I two centuries before, the popes in Rome had been initially nominated by, and later merely confirmed by, the emperor in Constantinople, and