ACH and WI: No Great Schism

What if the Great Schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches in 1054 was averted and never happened? This means that the Pope has all power over the eastern churches and for at matter in the ERE, How would this effect relations between the ERE and the western european HRE? How would this effect politics and diplomacy at the time? How would this effect, say the crusades or other wars. What about science? Butterflies are huge.

I know many will say disagreements between churches will be inevitable and all, but lets say this original schism never happens, so maybe the Pope could become more powerful, so other independent Christian denominations could eventually arise, but they'll probably be minor and few and far between.
 

Whangadude

Banned
The crusades would have probably been more successful. For no schism to happen at all the POD would have to be a few centuries earlier to stop the minor theological points of difference, if this was the case then I could see the crusades earlier and more effective.
 
I don't think the Pope did have power over all the east before the great schism and I don't see why he would if it was avoided.
 
Indeed - one of the problems was that the Popes claimed not simply Primacy, which the East had no problem with but juridical power which the East especially the Emperors did. You would need to somehow avoid the Caesaro-papism of the ERE apart from everything else.
Improved communications would also help, several times the conflicts occurred because the two sides literally spoke two separate languages, so even when they agreed, the slight semantic/theological differences got exaggerated. Better comms might enable more bilingualism to - maybe - help avoid this.
 
At the root of it was a political power struggle between Rome and Constantinople , neither of which were willing to concede primacy to the other, and neither of which had the military ability to impose their primacy. It is at it's roots the nature of religions spanning large distances across multiple cultural barriers to fragment.

That being said having the church heads unified under the same flag would certainly help as there would be political and military interest in unity.
 
Have the East Romans remain active in Italy, maybe even actually taking control of Rome sometime.
 
One possibility is wanking the Normans into oblivion by making Robert Guiscard Byzantine emperor, I believe if he married the daughter of the previous emperor and perhaps Alexius Comnenus is murdered.

On the side of the Orthodox side of things, you could making the Normans weaker (maybe by killing off Guiscard) and have the Byzantines reclaiming South Italy in alliance with the Pope. Having the Byzantines playing a role in the Guelph vs. Ghibelline conflict could be interesting.
 
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