Firstly, there were the "Orthodox" who lived in territories at peace with the Byzantine Empire or, after its fall, hoped that the Russian Tsar would replace the emperor as his natural successor. This block lived in the most stable environment where Christianity had the upper hand. They could continue to rely on the emperor to unify the Church within his domain and had little temptation to find an alternative. For them, the emperor (or Tsar) served as the centre of administrative unity. At certain times they showed a respect toward and acceptance of the Roman see as successor of St Peter, especially when emperors adopted heresies or when they needed western intervention; but, in general, the pope lived too far away to be constantly in their thoughts, and the emperor was very much nearer. Because they lived in a stable environment where the Empire functioned, they suffered the illusion that they alone remained faithful to the Gospel and all churches were to be judged according to their distance or nearness to Orthodoxy which, after all, was only a portion of the Church, albeit an important portion
From very early on in the West, the Byzantine Empire was too weak to fulfil even the basic functions of government. It could neither keep order nor defend the West against its enemies, and it certainly could not guarantee the unity of either church or state. The saga of King Arthur and the Round Table has its origins in the retreat of the Empire and the defence of the Romanized Celts against the barbarian hoards from Germany. Historical accident or divine Providence left Gregory the Great as the only person capable of organizing the people of a large part of Italy in such a way that they could live in relative peace and be protected from the invaders. The representative of the Byzantine Emperor could do nothing except look pretty.
In contrast to the Byzantine empire, it became the function of the Church to impose order, even in secular affairs; and it was Rome that made sure that Western Europe, ecclesiatical and civil, did not disintegrate. Because the Byzantine Empire did not function in the West, the Catholic Church had to find a means to unify the Church within its own constitution; and the Bishop of Rome, accepted by all as successor of St Peter, was the obvious candidate. It must be emphasized that this was a question of survival in the west. The fact that, where Roman unity became the norm, there was a flourishing of new religious communities and many saints, and that where it was resisted it was normally for the very worst of reasons, led Rome to believe that, wherever the centralizing power of Rome was resisted, even in the Byzantine Empire where there were different problems. It was for the same corrupt reasons: the Eastern bishops were in the pockets of the civil authority, were doing very nicely and were resisting the rigours of the Gospel. Thus, the West, like the East when it thought of Catholicism, interpreted Orthodoxy from its own limited standpoint. Moreover, the Frankish Empire resented its Eastern counterpart that claimed, with reason, to be the only authentic Roman Empire, and wanted to use any method to discredit it. ..
The third block could be called the "Semitic" block. Its liturgical language was neither Greek nor Latin, but a semitic language. It retained a far stronger Judeao-Christian influence than in the other two blocks (worshipping with head covered, for instance.
Again, the division was along political lines and can be divided between the Assyrian Church of the East, that lived outside the Byzantine Empire and hence did not attend the historic ecumenical councils, and the Coptic Church with Ethiopia and the Syrian Orthodox Church that lived within the Empire but wanted to be free from its yoke. The Assyrian Church, the Syrian Orthodox and the Catholic Maronites had Aramaic, the language of Christ, as their liturgical language - indeed they spoke a more current version of the language in their everyday life and were Syrians by race, while the Copts and Ethiopians celebrated the liturgy in Ge'ez, another Semitic language. It is out of that aprt of the Church that had a strong semitic influence that monasticism sprang. In Syrian Christianity, there was the strange phenomenon of the "Sons and Daughter of the Covenant"in Syria in the 3rd and fourth centuries who only baptized celebates and who shared a strictly communal life; and it was from the Church of Alexandria that was a centre of Jewish spiritual and intellectual life even before Christianity arrived, that the first monks went into the desert. The words "Abbot", "Aba", "Abuna" come neither from Egyptian, Greek or Latin, but from Aramaic.