CHAPTER IX
The Division between East and West
A.D. 680-A.D. 1054
Outward unity of the Church broken
So far we have contemplated the Church of Christ as one in external communion, no less than by the inner bonds of charity and of sacramental life; but we now come to a period in which this external unity began to be to a certain extent dissolved, and that in great measure by the same outward influences which had at first secured its cohesion. with the breaking up of the Roman Empire. Heresies and schisms, especially the great heresy of Arius, had indeed troubled the Church and threatened to break the visible union existing between its branches in different countries; but it was not until after the dissolution of the Roman empire that the breach really came.
Section I. Jealousy between Rome and Constantinople.
Reasons for Roman ascendancy.
During the flourishing days of the empire the city of Rome had naturally been looked up to with great reverence by all the other Churches of the world. Its political importance as the centre of government, the vast number of its martyrs, its comparative freedom from heresy, and its connexion with the lives and deaths of St. Peter and St. Paul, all tended to give it a moral ascendancy which was gradually claimed as a right. This, however, did not take place without protests on the part of other Bishops, nor even without very definite disclaimers of any wish for or right to supreme authority on the part of the Bishops of Rome themselves.