Rome and Byzantium were the primary centers of Christianity in the first millennium. However, what began as a brotherly relationship turned into a dispute over supremacy, which ended with the rupture in the year 1054. 

PHILIP GOYRET 

Pontifical University of the Holy Cross 

“Western Europe, from Byzantium’s perspective, was a chaotic world. The city of Rome had less than 20,000 inhabitants. Byzantium, in turn, was the cradle of culture.” 

NIKOS TZOITIS 

Advisor, Ecumenical Patriarchate 

“Historians say that in the Byzantine Empire, people would go to bakeries and discuss theology. The split was the result not of differing doctrines nor heresy. It was rather a consequence of cultural incompatibility between the two.”

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