Before the Christian conquest of Europe was finished,
Christianity had divided into two great communions—the Greek Church and the
Roman Church. Their separation was a long, slow process, arising from the
deep-seated differences between East and West. Though Rome had carried her
conquering arms throughout the Mediterranean basin, all the region east of the
Adriatic was imperfectly Romanized. It remained Greek in language and
culture, and tended, as time went on, to grow more and more unlike the West,
which was truly Roman. The founding of Constantinople and the transference of
the capital from the banks of the Tiber to the shores of the Bosporus still
further widened the breach between the two halves of the Roman world. After the
Germans established their kingdoms in Italy, Spain, Gaul, and Britain, western
Europe was practically independent of the rulers at Constantinople. The
coronation of Charlemagne in 800 A.D. marked the final severance of East and
West.
THE PAPACY AND THE EASTERN EMPERORS
The division of the Roman Empire led naturally to a
grouping of the Christian Church about Rome and Constantinople, the two chief
centers of government. The popes, it has been seen, had always enjoyed
spiritual leadership in the West. In temporal matters they acknowledged the
authority of the eastern emperors, until the failure of the latter to protect
Rome and Italy from the barbarians showed clearly that the popes must rely on
their own efforts to defend Christian civilization. We have already learned how
well such men as Leo the Great and Gregory the Great performed this task. Then
in the eighth century came the alliance with the Frankish king, Pepin the
Short, which gave the Papacy a powerful and generous protector beyond the Alps.
Finally, by crowning Charlemagne, the pope definitely broke with the emperor at
Constantinople and transferred his allegiance to the newly created western
emperor.
