What divided the Roman Catholic church from the Orthodox church?

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There are two ways to look at that.

The first is to look at the late Classical period, where the Remnants of the Roman Empire in the east lost control of Rome, and thus the papacy. This allowed the Popes the ability to exert their ecclesiastical power without having to worry about any political repercussions.

An "all-powerful" emperor is obviously not going to put up with that. So within the remaining (Byzantine) empire, eventually that power got transferred to the pope's former subordinate in Byzantium. This split between "Catholic" and "Greek Orthodox" later got enshrined in doctrinal differences, but this was its actual source.

enter image description here You'll see from this map that the start of the initial (Photean) Schism happened to coincide with the Byzantine loss of temporal authority in Rome.

The second way to look at it is to look at how the Russians got converted to Christianity. Russia really wasn't ready to embrace a world religion until roughly the year 1000. Vladimir the Great sent emissaries to his neighbors essentially shopping for his new religion. At that time, it really wasn't much of a contest, simply because the Byzantines were far and away their richest neighbors. Russian sources talk about how impressed they were with Hagia Sophia, the great Basilica in Constantinople. Arab sources instead view it as part of the negotiations required to get an alliance between the two. But either way, Vladimir turned out to be serious about it, and converted the Kievan Rus to Eastern Orthodoxy.

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