A Duchy of Naples had been created after the fall of the Exarchate of Ravenna.

Although Naples' Greco-Roman culture endures, it eventually switches allegiance from Constantinople to Rome under Duke Stephen II, putting it under papal suzerainty by 763.

At the beginning of his reign, Naples was still a loyal dukedom of the Empire, her dukes appointed by the emperor.

In 761, therefore, she had denied entry to the papal envoy, the Bishop Paul, an opponent of the iconoclasm then gripping the Eastern Roman world.

Stephen was no less a supporter of the iconoclasm than the emperor himself.

At that time, Stephen had addressed Antiochos, the patrician of Sicily and his technical overlord, as "our lord" and "most excellent patrikios and protostrategos" (763).

By 764, however, Naples had thrown off iconoclasm and Paul is able to take up his see.