The Emperors attempted several times to win back the renegade provinces by means of compromise solutions , but as a result it came to a separation from the West . The first schism between Pope and Patriarch lasted from 482 to 519 . It was the prelude to an ever more profound alienation which had its background in competing claims for primacy . The spark which set off the next schism was the question whether pictures were idolatrous or harmless ecclesiastical tradition . Here too , the question of Christ's nature played a role , admittedly it was not a question of its doctrinal expression , but the meaning of the portrayal . All parties were agreed that the divine aspect could not be portrayed . For this reason , until the 4th. century the Church had stood for a strict ban on portrayal . After the legalisation , many new believers came to church and as a concession to this mass , which was not thought out well theologically , the decoration of churches with images and pictures for personal piety on wooden boards , the icons , were initially tacitly tolerated and later promoted . Initially , the iconophiles had only educational arguments for this usage : the pictures were intended to consolidate what faith taught . Only in the course of the almost 150 year long dispute did John of Damascus in particular develop the theological justification : Christ was to be understood as the first image of God , and therefore all images were legitimate . The incarnations repeated in pictures preached grace and revelation . The iconoclasts , on the other hand , insisted on the sameness of nature which must exist between an image and original and which one could not ascribe to paintings on wood or limestone . But the view that the veneration of a picture was not intended for the picture , but for the original , ultimately prevailed and temporarily restored unity with the West once again . On the Roman side , there had never been any support for iconophobe attitudes .

The breach with the West in the schism of 1054 came more by chance considering these profound differences , it remained almost unnoticed by contemporaries and was , at all events , not regarded as final . It was more the result of personal antipathies than a difference in substance . The unleavened bread used by the West for the Eucharist had to do for the accusations which the Patriarch of Constantinople , Michael Keroularios , made against Rome , and , namely , because he wanted to harm the Byzantine governor in southern Italy . In view of the Norman attack on Sicily , an alliance between Byzantium and Rome would have seemed the obvious answer which Cerularius sought to prevent because it would have helped his personal enemy .

Nevertheless , the discussions of the following centuries prove that this separation was not the result of a chance rivalry , but in keeping with the intellectual divergences in both directions . Whereas in the West , with Thomas Aquinas , a rational theology , a theology on a high scholarly and intellectual level developed , the East was impelled by mysticism . Hesychasm found many supporters , particularly among monks . The word comes from the Greek hesukhos , quiet , and stands for mystical practices which were intended to make it possible to view God already on Earth . Hesychasm found its most eloquent representative in Gregorios Palamas . He differentiated between God's being and His energies which acted in the world and which human beings , as they are themselves , the 'product' of these energies , can observe if they prepare themselves accordingly . By this , Palamas lastingly influenced the spiritual alignment of the East and its turn away from the West .

From the 13th. century on , in view of the danger from the Turks , the Byzantine emperors attempted to achieve a reconciliation of standpoints between the two churches . The climax of these endeavours was the Union Council in Ferrara and Florence in 1439 . But the union set down on paper remained worthless because the Orthodox clergy would not implement it and the military situation led to the catastrophe too soon for these measures to have been able to save Byzantium .

Under Ottoman rule , the religious affiliation of the subjects determined their legal position . In this connection , the national unity already developed by the Orthodox Church was to its advantage . It was able to maintain a limited autonomy and look after the personal legal matters of the faithful (e.g. marriages), but also take on state tasks , such as tax collection . Important was the cultivation and continuation of the Greek language which formed the main identification element for the Orthodox in the area of the medieval Byzantine state .

Directly after the fall of Constantinople , the representatives of the Church concentrated on the maintenance of tradition and endeavoured to continue their everyday life and rites as uninterruptedly as possible . Towards the end of the 16th. century , an attempt started in theological thinking to adapt the currents from the West and compensate for the deficits in scholarly treatment . With a time lag , in the age of European renaissance , a religious humanism was cultivated in which in particular schools and printing houses promoted the innovations , while the disciples of Palamas emerged as an element of constancy . In the 17th. and 18th. centuries , one can observe the increased reception of scholasticism ; under the influence of the religious wars in the West , an attempt was made to ascertain the Church's own standpoint in the field of tension between the religions . Until the outbreak of national independence which the Greeks were the first to achieve in 1821 , the confrontation with the Enlightenment led to a return to awareness of their own sources .

This of course only touches on the main trends within the Church . In people's everyday life they were hardly reflected with this clarity . Only the very fewest were even aware of the intellectual trends of the times , because they were unable to either read or write and were much too pre-occupied with survival . In Cyprus , for example , in the 19th. century the village teacher still enjoyed extraordinarily great prestige , because his competence , however slight it may have been in individual cases , was viewed with awe .In contrast to the earlier disputes of the Orthodox Church's own , these discussions were also no longer reflected in Art .If the various problems of the early period had at least led to change in iconography , if not indeed to destruction or an enormous upswing in pictorial decoration , from now on one was content to continue in the tradition prevailing in the 15th. century .