Title: Eastern Orthodoxy - History | Britannica
Headings: History
History
The church of imperial Byzantium
Byzantine Christianity about 1000 ce
Relations between church and state
Monastic and mission movements
Relations with the West
Invasions from east and west
The Crusades

Content: Eastern Orthodoxy - History | Britannica
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History
The church of imperial Byzantium
Byzantine Christianity about 1000 ce
At the beginning of the 2nd millennium of Christian history, the church of Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire, was at the peak of its world influence and power. Neither Rome, which had become a provincial town and its church an instrument in the hands of political interests, nor Europe under the Carolingian and Ottonian dynasties could really compete with Byzantium as centres of Christian civilization. The Byzantine emperors of the Macedonian dynasty had extended the frontiers of the empire from Mesopotamia to Naples (in Italy) and from the Danube River (in central Europe) to Palestine. The church of Constantinople not only enjoyed a parallel expansion but also extended its missionary penetration, much beyond the political frontiers of the empire, to Russia and the Caucasus. Virgin Mary (centre), holding the Christ Child, Justinian (left), holding a model of Hagia Sophia, and Constantine (right), holding a model of the city of Constantinople; mosaic from Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, 9th century. Dumbarton Oaks/Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C.
Relations between church and state
The ideology that had prevailed since Constantine (4th century) and Justinian I (6th century)—according to which there was to be only one universal Christian society, the oikoumenē, led jointly by the empire and the church—was still the ideology of the Byzantine emperors. The authority of the patriarch of Constantinople was motivated in a formal fashion by the fact that he was the bishop of the “New Rome,” where the emperor and the senate also resided (canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon, 451). He held the title of “ecumenical patriarch,” which pointed to his political role in the empire. Technically, he occupied the second rank—after the bishop of Rome—in a hierarchy of five major primates, which also included the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.