Byzantine Empire
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Religion
According to Joseph Raya, "Byzantine culture and Orthodoxy are one and the same." The survival of the Empire in the East assured an active role of the Emperor in the affairs of the Church. The Byzantine state inherited from pagan times the administrative, and financial routine of administering religious affairs, and this routine was applied to the Christian Church. Following the pattern set by Eusebius of Caesarea, the Byzantines viewed the Emperor as a representative or messenger of Christ, responsible particularly for the propagation of Christianity among pagans, and for the "externals" of the religion, such as administration and finances. The imperial role, however, in the affairs of the Church never developed into a fixed, legally defined system.
It is a popular misconception that Christianity was ever fully united or that even Christians in the Byzantine Empire were united throughout the Empire's history. The imperial Roman Church, what came to be known as the Eastern Orthodox Church, never represented all Christians in the Empire. Nestorianism, a view promoted the Nestorius, a fifth century Patriarch of Constantinople, split from the imperial Church leading to what is today the Assyrian Church of the East. In a greater schism during the sixth century the Oriental Orthodox churches split from the imperial Church over the declarations of the Council of Chalcedon. Aside from these communions, Arianism and other Christian sects existed in the early Empire, although by the time of Rome's fall in the fifth century Arianism was mostly confined to the Germanic peoples of Western Europe. By the Empire's late stages, though, Eastern Orthodoxy represented most Christians in what remained of the Empire. Jews were a significant minority in the Empire throughout its history. Despite periods of persecution, they were generally tolerated, if not always embraced, during most periods.
With the decline of Rome, and internal dissension in the other Eastern patriarchates, the church of Constantinople became, between the sixth and eleventh centuries, the richest and most influential center of Christendom. Even when the Empire was reduced to only a shadow of its former self, the Church, as an institution, had never exercised so much influence both inside and outside of the imperial frontiers. As George Ostrogorsky points out:
The themes c. 950.