“My dearest brother, we do not deny to the Roman Church the primacy amongst the five sister Patriarchates; and we recognize her right to the most honorable seat at an Ecumenical Council. But she has separated herself from us by her own deeds, when through pride she assumed a monarchy which does not belong to her office... How shall we accept decrees from her that have been issued without consulting us and even without our knowledge? If the Roman Pontiff, seated on the lofty throne of his glory, wishes to thunder at us and, so to speak, hurl his mandates at us from on high, and if he wishes to judge us and even to rule us and our Churches, not by taking counsel with us but at his own arbitrary pleasure, what kind of brotherhood, or even what kind of parenthood can this be? We should be the slaves, not the sons, of such a Church, and the Roman See would not be the pious mother of sons but a hard and imperious mistress of slaves.” Nicetas, Archbishop of Nicomedia in the 12th centuryFor nearly a thousand years following its foundation, there was only one Christian Church. Centered in the city of Rome, the Church expanded and grew until it became the dominant religion in Europe and beyond. The early growth of the Church had been suppressed by the Romans until the Emperor Constantine became the first to convert the empire to Christianity, and from that point forward, the growth of the Church Was inextricably linked with the Roman Empire, the most powerful military, economic, and political force in the ancient world.For almost 600 years, from the defeat of Carthage in the Second Punic War in 201 BCE to around 395 CE, Rome was one of the most important cities in the world, but things were beginning to change around the time Constantine converted the empire. Rome controlled large areas of the world, but by the 4th century the emphasis had shifted from military conquest to the control of lucrative trade routes. The problem was that the city of Rome, isolated in