, translated by the Petri brothers, along with
Laurentius Andreae scholars in
China. Top:
Matteo Ricci,
Adam Schaal and
Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–88); Bottom:
Paul Siu (Xu Guangqi),
Colao or Prime Minister of State, and his granddaughter Candide Hiu For much of its history, the Christian church has been
culturally divided between the Latin-speaking West, whose centre was
Rome, and the Greek-speaking East, whose centre was
Constantinople. Cultural differences and political rivalry created tensions between the two churches, leading to disagreement over
doctrine and
ecclesiology and ultimately to
schism. Like
Eastern Christianity, Western Christianity traces its roots directly to the
apostles and other early preachers of the religion. In Western Christianity's original area,
Latin was the principal language. Christian writers in Latin had more influence there than those who wrote in
Greek,
Syriac, or other languages. Although the first Christians in the West used Greek (such as
Clement of Rome), by the
fourth century Latin had superseded it even in the cosmopolitan city of
Rome, as well as in
southern Gaul and the
Roman province of Africa. There is evidence of a Latin translation of the
Bible as early as the 2nd century (see also
Vetus Latina). With the
decline of the Roman Empire, distinctions appeared also in organization, since the bishops in the West were not dependent on the
Emperor in Constantinople and did not come under the influence of the
Caesaropapism in the Eastern Church. While the
see of Constantinople became dominant throughout the Emperor's lands, the West looked exclusively to the
see of Rome, which in the East was seen as that of one of the five
patriarchs of the
Pentarchy, "the proposed government of universal
Christendom by five patriarchal sees under the auspices of a single universal empire. Formulated in the legislation of the emperor
Justinian I (527–565), especially in his
Novella 131, the theory received formal ecclesiastical sanction at the
Council in Trullo (692), which ranked the five sees as Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem." Over the centuries, disagreements separated Western Christianity from the various forms of Eastern Christianity: first from
East Syriac Christianity after the
Council of Ephesus (431), then from that of
Oriental Orthodoxy after the
Council of Chalcedon (451), and then from
Eastern Orthodoxy with the
East-West Schism of 1054. With the last-named form of Eastern Christianity, reunion agreements were signed at the
Second Council of Lyon (1274) and the
Council of Florence (1439), but these proved ineffective. Historian Paul Legutko of
Stanford University said the
Catholic Church is "at the center of the development of the values, ideas, science, laws, and institutions which constitute what we call
Western civilization". The rise of
Protestantism led to major divisions within Western Christianity, which still persist, and wars—for example, the
Anglo-Spanish War of 1585–1604 had religious as well as economic causes. In and after the
Age of Discovery,
Europeans spread Western Christianity to the
New World and elsewhere. Roman Catholicism came to the Americas (especially South America), Africa, Asia, Australia and the Pacific. Protestantism, including Anglicanism, came to North America, Australia-Pacific and some African locales. Today, the geographical distinction between Western and Eastern Christianity is much less absolute, due to the great migrations of Europeans across the globe, as well as the work of
missionaries worldwide over the past five centuries. == Features ==