Abstract:

The western and eastern churches were separated in 1054, when the representative of the pope had excommunicated the patriarch of Constantinople. The council of Serdica was considered as the beginning of this great turning point in the western literature. Recently this view has been pri­marily held by L. Barnard in his book on the council. This article argues otherwise. The main argument behind the paper is that in A.D. 343 the western and eastern Christianity was not par­ting the ways, because the political circumstances of the period was not in the favour of any divis­ion. On the other hand the participation lists of the western and eastern groups of bishops were not divided on the cultural base. It is offered here that the division between the churches in the Middle Ages was the result of the political developments of the late antiquity, because the uniting force the Roman empire had been waned after the fifth century. And with the rise of Islam the Byzan­tine empire had also turned on itself and the fragmentary political culture of the western World led to the creation of a powerful papal centre, which conflicted later with the patriarch and the Byzantine political system.

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