A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ROMAN CHURCH

20 September 2022

Go back to Diocletian's decision to divide the empire into the Western and Eastern wings in around 286,  two domains—the Western Roman Latin-speaking empire and the Eastern Greek-speaking empire. Constantine founded Constantinople on the existing city of Byzantium in 330. This Wrst-East split was made permanent on the death of Emperor Theodosius in 379. This split separates what we call the Rome of Antiquity from Medieval Rome and the sacking of Byzantium by the Ottoman Turks marks the end of the so-called Middle Ages.

Or back more recently to The Great Schism of 1054 when the Christian church itself split into the Orthodox church in the East and the Roman Catholic Church in the West because the West claimed jurisdiction over the East, which the East refused. After this, the East split again into Greek and Orthodox churches. Things would have been OK, but in 1204 crusaders of the Fourth Crusade mutinied and captured Constantinople. Byzantium (Constantinople) migrated to Moscow starting a war of Christian v. Orthodox. 1854 found protestant Great Britain in alliance with Catholic France and Muslim Turkey, against Orthodox Russia - the same setup when Russia annexed the Chanet of Crimea 260 years later.