State church of the Roman Empire

With the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 AD, Emperor Theodosius I

made Nicene Christianity the Empire's state religion.[1][2] The
Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Catholic
Church each claim to stand in continuity with the church to
which Theodosius granted recognition, but do not look on it as
specific to the Roman Empire.

Earlier in the 4th century, following the Diocletianic Persecution

of 303-313 and the Donatist controversy that arose in
consequence, Constantine had convened councils of bishops to
define the orthodoxy of the Christian faith, expanding on earlier
Christian councils. A series of ecumenical councils convened by
successive emperors met during the 4th and 5th centuries, but
Christianity continued to suffer rifts and schisms surrounding the
issues of Arianism, Nestorianism, and Miaphysitism. In the 5th Missorium of Emperor Theodosius I, who made
century the Western Empire decayed as a polity: invaders sacked Nicene Christianity the state religion of the Roman
Rome in 410 and in 455, and Odoacer, an Arian barbarian Empire.
warlord, forced Romulus Augustus, the last nominal Western
Emperor, to abdicate in 476. However, apart from the
aforementioned schisms, the church as an institution persisted in communion, if not without tension, between the east and west.
In the 6th century the Byzantine armies of the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I recovered Italy and other sections of the
western Mediterranean shore. The Eastern Roman Empire soon lost most of these gains, but it held Rome, as part of the
Exarchate of Ravenna, until 751, a period known in church history as the Byzantine Papacy. The Muslim conquests of the 7th
century would begin a process of converting most of the then-Christian world in West Asia and North Africa to Islam, severely
restricting the reach both of the Byzantine Empire and of its church. Missionary activity directed from Constantinople, the
Byzantine capital, did not lead to a lasting expansion of the formal link between the church and the Byzantine emperor, since
areas outside the empire's political and military control set up their own distinct churches, as in the case of Bulgaria in 919.

Justinian I, who became emperor in Constantinople in 527, recognized the patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria,
Antioch and Jerusalem as the top leadership of the Church (see Pentarchy). However, Justinian claimed "the right and duty of
regulating by his laws the minutest details of worship and discipline, and also of dictating the theological opinions to be held in
the Church".[3][4]

In Justinian's day, the Christian church was not entirely under the Emperor's control even in the East: the Oriental Orthodox had
seceded, having rejected the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and called the adherents of the imperially recognized Church
"Melkites", from Syriac malkâniya "imperial".[5] In western Europe, Christianity was mostly subject to the laws and customs of
nations that owed no allegiance to the emperor in Constantinople.[6] While eastern-born popes appointed or at least confirmed by
the Eastern Emperor continued to be loyal to him as their political lord, they refused to accept his authority in religious matters,[7]
or the authority of such a council as the imperially convoked Council of Hieria of 754. Pope Gregory III (731-741) was the last
Bishop of Rome to ask the Byzantine ruler to ratify his election.[8][9] With the crowning of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III on 25
December 800 as Imperator Romanorum, the political split between east and west became irrevocable. Spiritually, Chalcedonian
Christianity persisted, at least in theory, as a unified entity until the Great Schism and its formal division with the mutual
excommunication in 1054 of Rome and Constantinople. The Eastern Roman Empire finally collapsed with the Fall of
Constantinople to the Islamic Ottoman Turks in 1453.
The obliteration of the Empire's boundaries by Germanic peoples and an outburst of missionary activity among these peoples,
who had no direct links with the Eastern Roman Empire, and among Pictic and Celtic peoples who had never been part of the
Roman Empire, fostered the idea of a universal church free from association with a particular state.[10] On the contrary, "in the
East Roman or Byzantine view, when the Roman Empire became Christian, the perfect world order willed by God had been
achieved: one universal empire was sovereign, and coterminous with it was the one universal church"; and the church came, by
the time of the demise of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, to merge psychologically with it to the extent that its bishops had
difficulty in thinking of Christianity without an emperor.[11][12]

Modern authors refer to the church associated with the emperor in a variety of ways: as the catholic church, the orthodox church,
the imperial church, the imperial Roman church, or the Byzantine church, although some of these terms are also used for wider
communions extending outside the Roman Empire.[13] The legacy of the idea of a universal church carries on, directly or
indirectly, in today's Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as in others, such as the Anglican Communion.

Contents
History
Early Christianity in relation to the state
Establishment and early controversies
Debates within Christianity
Late antiquity
End of the Western Roman Empire
Patriarchates in the Eastern Roman Empire
Rise of Islam
Expansion of Christianity in Europe
East–West Schism (1054)
Legacy
See also
References
Literature

History

Early Christianity in relation to the state

Before the end of the 1st century, the Roman authorities recognized Christianity as a separate religion from Judaism. The
distinction, perhaps already made in practice at the time of the Great Fire of Rome in the year 64, was given official status by the
emperor Nerva around the year 98 by granting Christians exemption from paying the Fiscus Iudaicus, the annual tax upon the
Jews. Pliny the Younger, when propraetor in Bithynia in 103, assumes in his letters to Trajan that because Christians do not pay
the tax, they are not Jews.[14][15][16]

Since paying taxes had been one of the ways that Jews demonstrated their goodwill and loyalty toward the Empire, Christians had
to negotiate their own alternatives to participating in the imperial cult. Their refusal to worship the Roman gods or to pay homage
to the emperor as divine resulted at times in persecution and martyrdom.[14][15][16] Church Father Tertullian, for instance,
attempted to argue that Christianity was not inherently treasonous, and that Christians could offer their own form of prayer for the
well-being of the emperor.[17]
Christianity spread especially in the eastern parts of the Empire and beyond its
border; in the west it was at first relatively limited, but significant Christian
communities emerged in Rome, Carthage, and other urban centers, becoming by
the end of the 3rd century, the dominant faith in some of them. Christians
accounted for approximately 10% of the Roman population by 300, according to
some estimates.[18] According to Will Durant, the Christian Church prevailed
over paganism because it offered a much more attractive doctrine and because
the church leaders addressed human needs better than their rivals.[19]

In 301, the Kingdom of Armenia, nominally a Roman client kingdom but ruled
by a Parthian dynasty,[20] became the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state
religion.
Monogramme of Christ (the Chi Rho)
on a plaque of a sarcophagus, 4th-
century AD, marble, Musei Vaticani,
Establishment and early controversies
on display in a temporary exhibition
at the Colosseum in Rome, Italy
Major communions of the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries
Communion Major churches Primary centers
Rome, Alexandria, Antioch,
Chalcedonian Catholic/Orthodox
Constantinople,
Christianity Church
Georgian Kingdoms (Colchis
(after 451) Georgian Church
and Iberia)

Nestorianism Syria,
Persian church
(after 431) Sassanid Empire (Persia)[21]
Armenian Church
Miaphysitism Coptic Church
Armenia, Syria, Egypt[22]
(after 451) Syriac Church
Ethiopian Church
Donatism
(largely ended North Africa[23]
after 411)
parts of Eastern Roman
Arianism Empire until 380
Gothic tribes[24]

In 311, the dying Emperor Galerius ended the Diocletianic Persecution that he is reputed to have instigated, and in 313, Emperor
Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, granting to Christians and others "the right of open and free observance of their
worship".[25]

Constantine began to utilize Christian symbols such as the Chi-Rho early in his reign but still encouraged traditional Roman
religious practices including sun worship. In 330, Constantine established the city of Constantinople as the new capital of the
Roman Empire. The city would gradually come to be seen as the intellectual and cultural center of the Christian world.[26]

Over the course of the 4th century the Christian body became consumed by debates surrounding orthodoxy, i.e. which religious
doctrines are the correct ones. In the early 4th century, a group in North Africa, later called Donatists, who believed in a very
rigid interpretation of Christianity that excluded many who had abandoned the faith during the Diocletianic persecution, created a
crisis in the western Empire.[27]

A synod was held in Rome in 313, followed by another in Arles in 314. These synods ruled that the Donatist faith was heresy
and, when the Donatists refused to recant, Constantine launched the first campaign of persecution by Christians against
Christians, and began imperial involvement in Christian theology. However, during the reign of Emperor Julian the Apostate, the
Donatists, who formed the majority party in the Roman province of Africa for 30 years,[28] were given official approval.[29]

Debates within Christianity

Christian scholars and populace within the Empire were increasingly embroiled
in debates regarding christology (i.e., regarding the nature of the Christ).
Opinions ranged from belief that Jesus was entirely human to belief that he was
entirely divine. The most persistent debate was that between the homoousian
view (the Father and the Son are of one substance), defined at the Council at
Nicaea in 325 and later championed by Athanasius of Alexandria, and the Arian
view (the Father and the Son are similar, but the Father is greater than the Son).
Emperors thereby became ever more involved with the increasingly divided
Church.[30]

Constantine backed the Nicene creed of Nicaea, but was baptized on his
deathbed by the Eusebius of Nicomedia, a bishop with Arian sympathies. His
successor Constantius II supported Arian positions: under his rule, the Council
of Constantinople in 360 supported the Arian view. After the interlude of Icon depicting Constantine and the
Emperor Julian, who wanted to return to the pagan Roman/Greek religion, the bishops of the Council of Nicaea
west stuck to the Nicene creed, while Arianism or Semi-Arianism was dominant (325). The centrally placed and
in the east (under Emperor Valens), until Emperor Theodosius I called the haloed Emperor holds the Creed of
the First Council of Constantinople
Council of Constantinople in 381, which reasserted the Nicene view and rejected
(381).
the Arian view. This council further refined the definition of orthodoxy, issuing
the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.

On 27 February of the previous year, Theodosius I established, with the Edict of Thessalonica, the Christianity of the First
Council of Nicaea as the official state religion, reserving for its followers the title of Catholic Christians and declaring that those
who did not follow the religion taught by Pope Damasus I of Rome and Pope Peter of Alexandria were to be called heretics:[31]

It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our Clemency and Moderation, should continue to
profess that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by
faithful tradition, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man
of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one
deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers
of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since, in our judgment they are foolish
madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to
give to their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine
condemnation and in the second the punishment of our authority which in accordance with the will of Heaven we
shall decide to inflict.

— Edict of Thessalonica

In 391, Theodosius closed all the "pagan" (non-Christian and non-Jewish) temples and formally forbade pagan worship.

Late antiquity
At the end of the 4th century the Roman Empire had effectively split into two parts although their economies and the Church
were still strongly tied. The two halves of the Empire had always had cultural differences, exemplified in particular by the
widespread use of the Greek language in the Eastern Empire and its more limited use in the West (Greek, as well as Latin, was
used in the West, but Latin was the
spoken vernacular).

By the time Christianity became the

state religion of the Empire at the
end of the 4th century, scholars in
the West had largely abandoned
Greek in favor of Latin. Even the
Church in Rome, where Greek
continued to be used in the liturgy
longer than in the provinces,
abandoned Greek.[32] Jerome's Changes in extent of the Empire ruled from Constantinople.
Vulgate had begun to replace the 476 End of the Western Empire; 550 Conquests of Justinian I; 717 Accession
of Leo the Isaurian; 867 Accession of Basil I; 1025 Death of Basil II; 1095
older Latin translations of the Bible.
Eve of the First Crusade; 1170 Under Manuel I; 1270 Under Michael VIII
The 5th century would see further Palaiologos; 1400 Before the fall of Constantinople

fracturing of the Church. Emperor

Theodosius II called two synods in
Ephesus, one in 431 and one in 449, the first of which condemned the teachings
of Patriarch Nestorius of Constantinople, while the second supported the
teachings of Eutyches against Archbishop Flavian of Constantinople.[33]

Nestorius taught that Christ's divine and human nature were distinct persons, and
hence Mary was the mother of Christ but not the mother of God. Eutyches taught
on the contrary that there was in Christ only a single nature, different from that
of human beings in general. The First Council of Ephesus rejected Nestorius'
view, causing churches centered around the School of Edessa, a city at the edge The Hagia Sophia basilica in
of the empire, to break with the imperial church (see Nestorian schism).[33] Constantinople, for centuries the
largest church building in the world.
Persecuted within the Roman Empire, many Nestorians fled to Persia and joined
the Sassanid Church (the future Church of the East). The Second Council of
Ephesus upheld the view of Eutyches, but was overturned two years later by the Council of Chalcedon, called by Emperor
Marcian. Rejection of the Council of Chalcedon led to the exodus from the state church of the majority of Christians in Egypt and
many in the Levant, who preferred miaphysite theology.[33]

Thus, within a century of the link established by Theodosius between the emperor and the church in his empire, it suffered a
significant diminishment. Those who upheld the Council of Chalcedon became known in Syriac as Melkites, the imperial group,
followers of the emperor (in Syriac, malka).[34] This schism resulted in an independent communion of churches, including the
Egyptian, Syrian, Ethiopian and Armenian churches, that is today known as Oriental Orthodoxy.[35] In spite of these schisms,
however, the Chalcedonian church still represented the majority of Christians within the by now already diminished Roman
Empire.[36]

End of the Western Roman Empire

In the 5th century, the Western Empire rapidly decayed and by the end of the century was no more. Within a few decades,
Germanic tribes, particularly the Goths and Vandals, conquered the western provinces. Rome was sacked in 410 and 455, and was
to be sacked again in the following century in 546.[24]
By 476 the Germanic chieftain
Odoacer had conquered Italy and
deposed the last western emperor,
Romulus Augustus, though he
nominally submitted to the authority
of Constantinople. The Arian
Germanic tribes established their
own systems of churches and
bishops in the western provinces but
were generally tolerant of the
population who chose to remain in
communion with the imperial
church.[24]

In 533 Roman Emperor Justinian in Odoacer's kingdom in 480, after annexing Dalmatia and most of Sicily.
Constantinople launched a military
campaign to reclaim the western
provinces from the Arian Germans, starting with North Africa and proceeding to Italy. His success in recapturing much of the
western Mediterranean was temporary. The empire soon lost most of these gains, but held Rome, as part of the Exarchate of
Ravenna, until 751.

Justinian definitively established Caesaropapism,[37] believing "he had the right and duty of regulating by his laws the minutest
details of worship and discipline, and also of dictating the theological opinions to be held in the Church".[3] According to the
entry in Liddell & Scott, the term orthodox first occurs in the Codex Justinianus: "We direct that all Catholic churches,
throughout the entire world, shall be placed under the control of the orthodox bishops who have embraced the Nicene Creed."[38]

By the end of the 6th century the Church within the Empire had become firmly tied with the imperial government,[39] while in
the west Christianity was mostly subject to the laws and customs of nations that owed no allegiance to the emperor.[6]

Patriarchates in the Eastern Roman Empire

Emperor Justinian I assigned to five sees, those of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, a superior ecclesial
authority that covered the whole of his empire. The First Council of Nicaea in 325 reaffirmed that the bishop of a provincial
capital, the metropolitan bishop, had a certain authority over the bishops of the province.[40] But it also recognized the existing
supra-metropolitan authority of the sees of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch,[41] and granted special recognition to
Jerusalem.[42][43][44]

Constantinople was added at the First Council of Constantinople (381)[45] and given authority initially only over Thrace. By a
canon of contested validity,[46] the Council of Chalcedon (451) placed Asia and Pontus,[47] which together made up Anatolia,
under Constantinople, although their autonomy had been recognized at the council of 381.[48][49]

Rome never recognized this pentarchy of five sees as constituting the leadership of the church. It maintained that, in accordance
with the First Council of Nicaea, only the three "Petrine" sees of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch had a real patriarchal
function.[50] The canons of the Quinisext Council of 692, which gave ecclesiastical sanction to Justinian's decree, were also never
fully accepted by the Western Church.[51]

Muslim conquests of the territories of the patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, most of whose Christians were in
any case lost to the orthodox church since the aftermath of the Council of Chalcedon, left in effect only two patriarchates, those of
Rome and Constantinople.[52] In 732, Emperor Leo III's iconoclast policies were resisted by Pope Gregory III. The Emperor
reacted by transferring to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Constantinople in 740 the territories in Greece, Illyria, Sicily and
Calabria that had been under Rome
(see map), leaving the bishop of
Rome with only a minute part of the
lands over which the empire still had
control.[53]

The Patriarch of Constantinople had

already adopted the title of
"ecumenical patriarch", indicating
what he saw as his position in the
oikoumene, the Christian world
ideally headed by the emperor and
the patriarch of the emperor's
capital.[54][55] Also under the
influence of the imperial model of
governance of the state church, in
which "the emperor becomes the
actual executive organ of the
universal Church",[56] the pentarchy A map of the five patriarchates in the Eastern Mediterranean as constituted
by Justinian I. Rome is coloured in pink, Constantinople in green, Antioch in
model of governance of the state
blue, Jerusalem in pink and Alexandria in yellow. Leo III extended the
church regressed to a monarchy of
jurisdiction of Constantinople to the territories bordered in pink.
the Patriarch of
Constantinople.[56][57]

Rise of Islam
The Rashidun conquests began to expand the sway of
Islam beyond Arabia in the 7th century, first clashing
with the Roman Empire in 634. That empire and the
Sassanid Persian Empire were at that time crippled by
decades of war between them. By the late 8th century
the Umayyad caliphate had conquered all of Persia and
much of the Byzantine territory including Egypt,
Palestine, and Syria.

Suddenly much of the Christian world was under A map of Muslim expansion in the 7th and 8th centuries.
Muslim rule. Over the coming centuries the successive
Muslim states became some of the most powerful in the
Mediterranean world.

Though the Byzantine church claimed religious authority over Christians in Egypt and the Levant, in reality the majority of
Christians in these regions were by then miaphysites and members of other sects. The new Muslim rulers, in contrast, offered
religious tolerance to Christians of all sects. Additionally subjects of the Muslim Empire could be accepted as Muslims simply by
declaring a belief in a single deity and reverence for Muhammad (see shahada). As a result, the peoples of Egypt, Palestine and
Syria largely accepted their new rulers and many declared themselves Muslims within a few generations. Muslim incursions later
found success in parts of Europe, particularly Spain (see Al-Andalus).[58]

Expansion of Christianity in Europe

During the 9th century, the Emperor in Constantinople
encouraged missionary expeditions to nearby nations
including the Muslim caliphate, and the Turkic Khazars. In
862 he sent Saints Cyril and Methodius to Slavic Great
Moravia. By then most of the Slavic population of Bulgaria
was Christian and Tsar Boris I himself was baptized in 864.
Serbia was accounted Christian by about 870.[59] In early
867 Patriarch Photios I of Constantinople wrote that
Christianity was accepted by the Kievan Rus', which
however was definitively Christianized only at the close of
the following century.

Of these, the Church in Great Moravia chose immediately

The spread of Christianity in Europe by 325 AD (dark
to link with Rome, not Constantinople: the missionaries
blue) and 600 AD (light blue).
sent there sided with the Pope during the Photian Schism
(863–867).[60] After decisive victories over the Byzantines
at Acheloos and Katasyrtai, Bulgaria declared its Church
autocephalous and elevated it to the rank of Patriarchate, an
autonomy recognized in 927 by Constantinople,[61][62] but
abolished by Emperor Basil II Bulgaroktonos (the Bulgar-
Slayer) after his 1018 conquest of Bulgaria.

In Serbia, which became an independent kingdom in the

early 13th century, Stephen Uroš IV Dušan, after
conquering a large part of Byzantine territory in Europe and
assuming the title of Tsar, raised the Serbian archbishop to
the rank of patriarch in 1346, a rank maintained until after
the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Turks. No Byzantine
emperor ever ruled Russian Christianity.
The spread of Christianity in Europe by 1000.
Expansion of the Church in western and northern Europe
began much earlier, with the conversion of the Irish in the
5th century, the Franks at the end of the same century, the Arian Visigoths in Spain soon afterwards, and the English at the end of
the 6th century. By the time the Byzantine missions to central and eastern Europe began, Christian western Europe, in spite of
losing most of Spain to Islam, encompassed Germany and part of Scandinavia, and, apart from the south of Italy, was
independent of the Byzantine Empire and had been almost entirely so for centuries.

This situation fostered the idea of a universal church linked to no one particular state.[10] Long before the Byzantine Empire came
to an end, Poland also, Hungary and other central European peoples were part of a Church that in no way saw itself as the
empire's church and that, with the East-West Schism, had even ceased to be in communion with it.

East–West Schism (1054)

With the defeat and death in 751 of the last Exarch of Ravenna and the end of the Exarchate, Rome ceased to be part of the
Byzantine Empire. Forced to seek protection elsewhere,[63] the Popes turned to the Franks and, with the coronation of
Charlemagne by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800, transferred their political allegiance to a rival Roman Emperor. Disputes
between the see of Rome, which claimed authority over all other sees, and that of Constantinople, which was now without rival in
the empire, culminated perhaps inevitably[64] in mutual excommunications in 1054.
Communion with Constantinople was broken off by
European Christians with the exception of those ruled by
the empire (including the Bulgarians and Serbs) and of the
fledgling Kievan or Russian Church, then a metropolitanate
of the patriarchate of Constantinople. This church became
independent only in 1448, just five years before the
extinction of the empire,[65] after which the Turkish
authorities included all their Orthodox Christian subjects of
The coronation of Charlemagne as emperor.
whatever ethnicity in a single millet headed by the Patriarch
of Constantinople.

The Westerners who set up Crusader states in Greece and the Middle East appointed Latin (Western) patriarchs and other
hierarchs, thus giving concrete reality and permanence to the schism.[66][67][68] Efforts were made in 1274 (Second Council of
Lyon) and 1439 (Council of Florence) to restore communion between East and West, but the agreements reached by the
participating eastern delegations and by the Emperor were rejected by the vast majority of Byzantine Christians.

In the East, the idea that the Byzantine emperor was the head of Christians everywhere persisted among churchmen as long as the
empire existed, even when its actual territory was reduced to very little. In 1393, only 60 years before the fall of the capital,
Patriarch Antony IV of Constantinople wrote to Basil I of Muscovy defending the liturgical commemoration in Russian churches
of the Byzantine emperor on the grounds that he was "emperor (βασιλεύς) and autokrator of the Romans, that is of all
Christians".[69] According to Patriarch Antony, "it is not possible among Christians to have a Church and not to have an emperor.
For the empire and the Church have great unity and commonality, and it is not possible to separate them",[70][71][72] and "the
holy emperor is not like the rulers and governors of other regions".[72][73]

Legacy
Following the schism between the Eastern and Western Churches, various
emperors sought at times but without success to reunite the Church, invoking the
notion of Christian unity between East and West in an attempt to obtain
assistance from the Pope and Western Europe against the Muslims who were
gradually conquering the empire's territory. But the period of the Western
Crusades against the Muslims had passed before even the first of the two reunion
councils was held.

Even when persecuted by the emperor, the Eastern Church, George Pachymeres
Emblem of the Patriarch of
said, "counted the days until they should be rid not of their emperor (for they
Constantinople, based on the
could no more live without an emperor than a body without a heart), but of their
imperial symbol adopted in the 11th
current misfortunes".[74] The church had come to merge psychologically in the century
minds of the Eastern bishops with the empire to such an extent that they had
difficulty in thinking of Christianity without an emperor.[11]

In Western Europe, on the other hand, the idea of a universal church linked to the Emperor of Constantinople was replaced by that
in which the Roman see was supreme.[75] "Membership in a universal church replaced citizenship in a universal empire. Across
Europe, from Italy to Ireland, a new society centered on Christianity was forming."[76]

The Western Church came to emphasize the term Catholic in its identity, an assertion of universality, while the Eastern Church
came to emphasize the term Orthodox in its identity, an assertion of holding to the true teachings of Jesus. Both churches claim to
be the unique continuation of the previously united Chalcedonian Church, whose core doctrinal formulations have been retained
also by many of the churches that emerged from the Protestant Reformation, including Lutheranism and Anglicanism.
See also
Arian controversy
Caesaropapism
Chalcedonian Christianity
Christianity in Iran
Early Christianity
History of late ancient Christianity
History of the Catholic Church
History of the Orthodox Church

References
1. Forster (2008), p. 41.
2. Tony Honoré (1998), p. 5.
3. Ayer (1913), p. 553
4. Thomas Talbot, The Inescapable Love of God (https://books.google.com/books?id=L6WPBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA18
&dq=Ayer+emperor+head+church&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Ayer%20emperor%20head%20chu
rch&f=false) (Wipf and Stock 2014 ISBN 978-1-62564690-3), p. 18
5. Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition (Westminister John Knox Press 1996), p. 63 (https://books.google.c
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RfMAKHapJCI8Q6AEIMzAC#v=onepage&q=chalcedon%20melkites&f=false); James Hitchcock, History of the
Catholic Church (Ignatius Press 2012), p. 209 (https://books.google.com/books?id=8nt_n7wuugAC&pg=PA209&
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6. Ayer (1913), pp. 538-539
7. Ekonomou (2007), p. 218
8. Granfield (2000), p. 325
9. Noble (1984), p. 49
10. Gerland, Ernst. "The Byzantine Empire" (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03096a.htm) in The Catholic
Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. Retrieved 19 July 2010
11. Schadé (2006), art. "Byzantine Church"
12. In 1393, Patriarch Antony IV of Constantinople declared the Byzantine emperor to be "emperor (βασιλεύς) and
autokrator of the Romans, that is of all Christians, and "it is not possible among Christians to have a Church and
not to have an emperor. For the empire and the Church have great unity and commonality, and it is not possible
to separate them" (Dimitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Inheritance of Eastern Europe (https://books.google.com/bo
oks?id=L0EbAAAAYAAJ&q=%22+not+as+other+rulers+and+governors+of+other+regions+are%22&dq=%22+not
+as+other+rulers+and+governors+of+other+regions+are%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sw4WUdn3DsOBhQeDxID4Dw&r
edir_esc=y) (Variorum Reprints 1969 ISBN 978-0-86078102-8), p. 339).
13. Latourette (1983), p. 175.
Schaff (1883), p. 179.
Irvin (2002), p. 160.
O'Hare (1997), p. 88.
14. Wylen (1995). Pp 190-192.
15. Dunn (1999). Pp 33-34.
16. Boatwright (2004). Pg 426.
17. Tertullian, Apologeticus 30.1, as discussed by Cecilia Ames, "Roman Religion in the Vision of Tertullian," in A
Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), pp. 467–468 et passim.
18. Hopkins(1998), p. 191
19. Durant, Will. Caesar and Christ. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1972
20. Redgate, Anne Elizabeth (2000). The Armenians (First ed.). Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, p. 88–91.
ISBN 0-631-22037-2.
21. O'Leary (2000), pp. 131–137.
22. Price (2005), pp. 52–55.
23. Dwyer (1998), pp. 109–111.
24. Anderson (2010), p. 604.
Amory (), pp. 259–262.
25. Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum 45.1, 48.2, qtd. and tr. in Graeme Clarke, "Third-Century Christianity" in
The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume XII: The Crisis of Empire, edited by Alan Bowman, Averil Cameron, and
Peter Garnsey, 589–671. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-30199-8, pp. 662–663
26. Payton (2007), p. 29.
27. Irvin (2002), p. 164, ch. 15.
28. Encyclopædia Britannica, Facts about Julian: Donatists (http://www.britannica.com/facts/5/26375/Julian-as-discu
ssed-in-Donatist-religion)
29. George M. Ella, The Donatists and Their Relation to Church and State (http://evangelica.de/articles/the-donatists-
and-their-relation-to-church-and-state/)
30. Irvin (2002), p. 164, ch. 16.
31. Bettenson (1967), p. 22 (https://books.google.com/books?id=k9L2UaDJLGkC&pg=PA22&dq=pontiff+damasus+a
nd+by+peter+bishop+of+alexandria+inauthor:bettenson&hl=en&ei=B8BATLTZC8G78gasysiZDw&sa=X&oi=book
_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=pontiff%20damasus%20and%20by%20pete
r%20bishop%20of%20alexandria%20inauthor%3Abettenson&f=false).
32. "The first Christians in Rome were chiefly people who came from the East and spoke Greek. The founding of
Constantinople naturally drew such people thither rather than to Rome, and then Christianity at Rome began to
spread among the Roman population, so that at last the bulk of the Christian population in Rome spoke Latin.
Hence the change in the language of the liturgy. ... The liturgy was said (in Latin) first in one church and then in
more, until the Greek liturgy was driven out, and the clergy ceased to know Greek. About 415 or 420 we find a
Pope saying that he is unable to answer a letter from some Eastern bishops, because he has no one who could
write Greek" (Alfred Plummer, Conversations with Dr. Döllinger 1870-1890, ed. Robrecht Boudens (Leuven
University Press, 1985), p. 13).
33. Price (2005), p. 52
34. Price (2005), p. 54
35. Bussell (1910), p. 346.
36. Latourette (1975), p. 183.
37. Ayer (1913), p. 538
38. Code of Justinian I.5.21 (http://www.freewebs.com/vitaphone1/history/justinianc.html) Archived (https://web.archi
ve.org/web/20130727022718/http://www.freewebs.com/vitaphone1/history/justinianc.html) 27 July 2013 at the
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39. Cairns (1996), p. 124. "By 590 the church had not only been freed from persecution by the Roman state but had
become closely linked with that state."
40. Canon 4 (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.vii.vi.v.html)
41. Canon 6 (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.vii.vi.viii.html)
42. Canon 7 (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.vii.vi.x.html)
43. Paul Valliere, Conciliarism (https://books.google.com/books?id=Qrt3Z7fyzlUC&pg=PA91&dq=Valliere+%22super
visory+authority%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ElnHUIftK8SQhQfQ7oHwBQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Valliere%20%2
2supervisory%20authority%22&f=false) (Cambridge University Press 2012 ISBN 978-1-10701574-6), pp. 91-92
44. J.F. Puglisi (editor), How Can the Petrine Ministry Be a Service to the Unity of the Universal Church? (https://book
s.google.com/books?id=SZ2vkWM8IpwC&pg=PA40&dq=Puglisi+%22metropolitan+structure%22&hl=en&sa=X&
ei=KmPHUPSGJMO7hAfBjIHoDw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Puglisi%20%22metropolitan%20structure%22&f
=false) (Eerdmans 2010 ISBN 978-0-80284862-8), p. 40
45. Canon 3 (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.ix.viii.iv.html)
46. George C. Michalopulos, "Canon 28 and Eastern Papalism: Cause or Effect?" (http://www.aoiusa.org/canon-28-a
nd-eastern-papalism-cause-or-effect/) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20130110112941/http://www.aoius
a.org/canon-28-and-eastern-papalism-cause-or-effect/) 10 January 2013 at the Wayback Machine
47. Canon 28 (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xi.xviii.xxviii.html)
48. Canon 2 (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.ix.viii.iii.html)
49. L'idea di pentarchia nella cristianità (http://www.homolaicus.com/storia/medioevo/pentarchia/pentarchia.htm)
50. Wilhelm de Fries, The College of Patriarchs from the Point of View of Rome (https://books.google.com/books?id=
aezGH7vcWMEC&pg=RA1-PA211&lpg=RA1-PA211&dq=%22petrine+sees%22&source=bl&ots=lmZtNo8rTA&si
g=Ao0ZUvhzsYO1W-3XyPpNbcgZHuE&hl=en&ei=_M0-TOrxEaS60gSN7byDBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=resul
t&resnum=2&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22petrine%20sees%22&f=false)
51. Encyclopædia Britannica "Quinisext Council" (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/487431/Quinisext-Cou
ncil)
52. Robert Browning, The Byzantine Empire (https://books.google.com/books?id=qAlcKDsubMgC&pg=PA73)
(Revised Edition, CUA Press 1992 ISBN 978-0-81320754-4), p. 73
53. Treadgold. History of the Byzantine State, pp. 354–355.
54. John Meyendorff, The Byzantine Legacy in the Orthodox Church (https://books.google.com/books?id=9HQ3YU9
SAG8C&pg=PA20) (St Vladimir's Seminary Press 1982 ISBN 978-0-91383690-3), p. 20
55. Jonathan Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades (https://books.google.com/books?id=PXizk1RZ88wC&pg=PA44)
(Continuum International 2006 ISBN 978-1-85285501-7), p. 44
56. Joseph Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism and Politics, p. 95 (https://books.google.com/books?id=mctH97b6wRoC&
pg=PA95)
57. Milton V. Anastos, Constantinople and Rome (http://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/milton1_21.html)
58. Cardini (2001), p. 9.
59. The entry of the Slavs into Christendom, p. 208
60. Warren T. Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society (https://books.google.com/books?id=nYbnr5X
VbzUC&pg=PA453&dq=Methodius+sided&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vEO2UPKYKYKFhQeTjIGgBg&redir_esc=y#v=onep
age&q=Methodius%20sided&f=false) (Stanford University Press 1997 ISBN 978-0-80472630-6), pp. 453, 558
61. Kiminas, D. (2009). The Ecumenical Patriarchate. Wildside Press LLC. p. 15 (https://books.google.com/books?id
=QLWqXrW2X-8C&lpg=PA2&ots=t4LMQbMa_B&dq=927%20recognized%20constantinople%20bulgarian%20pa
triarch&lr=&pg=PA15#v=onepage&q=927&f=false)
62. GENOV, R., & KALKANDJIEVA, D. (2007). Religion and Irreligion in Bulgaria: How Religious Are the Bulgarians?
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63. Jeffrey Richards, The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages (https://books.google.com/books?id=tsE9
AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA230&dq=%22compelled+to+look+elsewhere+for+a+secular+protector%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2
NTIUOLoJJOxhAfw_4CoBA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22compelled%20to%20look%20elsewhere%20for%2
0a%20secular%20protector%22&f=false) (Routledge 1979 ISBN 978-0-71000098-9), p. 230
64. Paul Johnson, History of Christianity (Simon & Schuster 2005 ISBN 978-0-74328203-1), p. 186
65. E.E. Golubinskii, Istoriia russkoi tserkvi (Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1900), vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 469
66. Aidan Nichols, OP, Rome and the Eastern Churches (https://books.google.com/books?id=Hje62q52XNsC&pg=P
A281&dq=Nichols+%22the+child+of+the+Crusades%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=F5ufUL_kIoWyhAfspIDQBw&redir_esc
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68. Eparchy of Newton, "The Melkites" (https://melkite.org/faith/faith-worship/the-melkites)
69. Meyendorff 1996, pp. 89.
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71. Michael Angold, Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 5, Eastern Christianity (https://books.google.com/book
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7AaRoYHIAg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22great%20unity%20and%20commonality%22&f=false)
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YAAJ&q=%22+not+as+other+rulers+and+governors+of+other+regions+are%22&dq=%22+not+as+other+rulers+
and+governors+of+other+regions+are%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sw4WUdn3DsOBhQeDxID4Dw&redir_esc=y)
(Variorum Reprints 1969 ISBN 978-0-86078102-8), p. 339
73. J. Chrysostomides in Kathēgētria (https://books.google.com/books?id=dGIbAAAAYAAJ&q=%22autokrator+of+th
e+Romans+that+is+of+all+Christians%22&dq=%22autokrator+of+the+Romans+that+is+of+all+Christians%22&hl
=en&sa=X&ei=GggWUYiqFcWRhQev4IHYDg&redir_esc=y) (Surrey 1988 ISBN 978-1-87132800-4), p. 516
74. Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium (https://books.google.com/books?id=y2d6OHLqwEsC&pg=PA
78&dq=%22in+the+capital+the+monks%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2QUlUeGRC4iChQek9YBY&redir_esc=y#v=onepa
ge&q=%22in%20the%20capital%20the%20monks%22&f=false) (CambridgeUniversity Press 1993
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75. "It was the papacy also which kept alive in western Europe the ideal of a universal imperial Church, for the whole
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76. Marvin Perry et alii, Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics, and Society, Volume I: To 1789 (https://books.google.co
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ZTYUJXeMYaChQfEo4GQBA&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22membership%20in%20a%20universa
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