world where orthodoxy was considered essential to individual salvation and to the success of the God-given empire, and emperors desperately sought to restore unity by veering between persecution and the working out of a generally acceptable compromise. The latter policy aroused the staunch opposition of the popes, who, as patriarchs of the west, set their face against tampering with orthodox belief. To make matters worse, tension grew between east and west over the issue of primacy in the Church after the upstart capital of Constantinople was granted patriarchal status in 381.

By the sixth century the ideal of the Church Universal so dear to Justinian persisted but in reality a parting of the ways between east and west was under way. In the west Christians had retained their earlier suspicion of the empire and regarded their faith as a sphere of activity separate from and superior to the secular life, with the Church viewed as a militant group of spiritual shock-troops. These notions were reinforced by the political collapse of the empire, and bishops assumed the secular as well as spiritual leadership of their communities. In the east more of the pluralism and complexity of the ancient world survived and it was unthinkable for the Church to adopt such a 'divisive' attitude. The eastern Church never aimed to isolate itself from or dominate profane society because it regarded the empire as part of God's plan and accorded a greater degree of holiness to the material world. In the west, however, churchmen such as Pope Gregory the Great were forced to adjust to the realities of a changed world. Aware that the barbarian invaders had come to stay, he moved beyond the traditional equation of Christian and Roman and sought to integrate the Lombard and Anglo-Saxon invaders into the Christian world by a deliberate missionary programme.

The increasing differences between eastern and western Christianity should not blind us to the persistence of ties and parallels. Just as Frankish pilgrims could travel to Jerusalem, eastern churchmen and artists settled in the west, such as Theodore, a refugee from St Paul's city of Tarsus, who was a monk in Rome before being sent to Canterbury as archbishop. Throughout the seventh and early eighth centuries Rome's

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