Mr. Moderate

Most people would think that the terms “Western” and “Eastern” had to do with the 20th century confrontation between the United States of America (USA) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The origin of this distinction between what is “East” and what is “West” actually goes back 17 additional centuries to 285 CE when the Emperor Diocletian divided the Roman Empire into its Eastern and Western halves. After Diocletian, the Roman Empire was united and divided several times until the final division in 395 when the Emperor Theodosius I gave half to each of his two sons by his first wife. The western half went into a period of rapid decline, and was overrun by various surrounding tribes in various places and at various times. Some date the fall of the Western Roman Empire as early as 455 CE, when Rome was overrun by barbarian tribes, but the last widely-recognized Emperor of the West formally abdicated his rule on October 4, 476 CE.

The Eastern Roman Empire, which is usually called the Byzantine Empire, continued on for many centuries, however. Its founding is sometimes taken as May 11, 330, when the Emperor Constantine, who ruled over both East and West, formally consecrated his new capitol as Nova Roma (New Rome). However, after his death, the city became known as Constantine’s City, or Constantinople. To distinguish this long-lasting empire from the older Roman Empire, the eastern empire is frequently referred to as the Byzantine Empire, a name which is taken from the name of Constantinople prior to Constintine’s extreme makeover. Before then, the small town which stood at that site was called Byzantium, a trading post town established in the 7th century BCE.

It is not Christianity which distinguishes West From East. Constantine is also known for formally adopting the Christian religion as the official religion throughout the old Roman Empire. But the West would come under the religious control of a central religious authority figure known as the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Meanwhile, Christianity in the East retained its ancient apostolic traditions of having Christian Patriarchs as the heads of their own regional churches, with none recognized as superior to any other. In 1054 CE, when Pope Leo IX of Rome insisted that the Patriarch of Constantinople submit to his authority as the head of all Christians, the split between West and East became complete. The Great Schism resulted when the two sides each mutually excommunicated each other, leading to the ultimate in irreconcilable differences between the two principle branches of Christianity.

After the sack of Rome in 455, the Western Roman Empire ceased to exist for all practical purposes, although it was several decades before its chain of rulers was completely exterminated. This left the Pope in Rome in a somewhat untenable position, and for the next three-and-a-half centuries, the Pope frequently controlled little more than his personal estates, and it required considerable effort to keep control of those small scraps of land. However, by the end of the eighth century, the Pope had cut a deal with the Frankish Empire (known as Francia at the time) to provide protection in return for a religious blessing and recognition for its leadership of Western Civilization. The crowning moment, in a very literal sense, came in 800 CE when Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king, Charlemagne (or “Charles the Great” in English), as Holy Roman Emperor. This was the single act which tied the very different cultural traditions of Western Civilization back to the historical foundations of ancient Rome. Under Charlemagne the non-Christian portions of the Frankish Empire converted to Christianity, and by the time of his death, the identity of Western Civilization had been firmly established as quite distinct from whatever came out of the East.

Meanwhile, the Eastern or Byzantine Empire established its own cultural and religious traditions centered on Christian Orthodoxy (also known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity) and the Greek language and culture preserved out of the Eastern portion of the old Roman Empire. The Eastern Orthodox churches spread out throughout Eastern Europe, providing a completely different cultural heritage to the people living in that part of the world as compared with the cultural heritage of those who lived in the West.

While the Byzantine Empire ended on May 29, 1453, with the fall of Constantinople to the Islamic Ottoman Empire under Sultan Mehmed II, the Eastern Orthodox religion continued on to the present, and acted as a cultural transmission vehicle for the ancient Byzantine culture into modern times.

The inherent mistrust of the Russian people for any nation of the West is probably rooted in this ancient division between Western and Eastern civilizations. The two inheritors of the ancient Roman Empire took very different paths to greatness, and each established very different and distinct religious and cultural traditions. Western nations trace back to a unified domination by the Roman Catholic Church while Eastern nations trace back to domination by the diversity of Eastern Orthodox traditions. It is highly-probable that the ease of disintegration of the Soviet Union itself was set up in the pattern of religious diversity in Eastern Orthodox churches. In Eastern traditions, each nation had its own distinct culture, which was represented by its own distinct branch of the Eastern Orthodox Church. In Western traditions, the Western nations see themselves as largely unified with a common cultural and religious heritage, which traces back to the domination of Western thought by the doctrines and writings of the Roman Catholic Church. While the Protestant Reformation split Western Christianity into thousands of splinters, large and small, that overall unity of culture still remains at the core of thinking about what the phrase “The West” means to us all.

The end conclusion is this: it is a great error to believe that the differences between East and West are largely irrelevant now that the Cold War of the 20th century is over. Those differences go back nearly 2,000 years to the split-up of the Roman Empire in 285 CE, after which time Rome declined in importance until it resurrected itself through an alliance with the Frankish Empire. Such distinctions are not trivial at all, but run deeply to the core of what each member of society feels about themselves and the civilization which they are a part of. Animosities such as these are not easily healed. They are certainly no more easily healed than the still-ongoing Great Schism between Roman and Eastern religious traditions.