e people of the West as ignorant
and barbarous, and were esteemed by them in turn as mendacious and
unmanly.

In ecclesiastical matters also the differences were of long standing.
These related to questions of jurisdiction between the two
patriarchates. Up to the eighth century, the patriarchate of the West
included a number of provinces on the eastern side of the
Adriatic--Illyricum, Dacia, Macedonia, and Greece. But Leo the Isaurian,
who probably foresaw that Italy would ere long cease to form part of his
dominions, and was unwilling that these important territories should own
spiritual allegiance to one who was not his subject, altered this
arrangement, and transferred the jurisdiction over them to the Patriarch
of Constantinople. Against this measure the bishops of Rome did not fail
to protest, and demands for their restoration were made up to the time
of the final schism. A further ecclesiastical question, which in part
depended on this, was that of the Church of the Bulgarians. The prince
Bogoris had swayed to and fro in his inclinations between the two
churches, and had ultimately given his allegiance to that of the East;
but the controversy did not end there. According to the ancient
territorial arrangement the Danubian provinces were made subject to the
archbishopric of Thessalonica, and that city was included within the
Western patriarchate; and on this ground Bulgaria was claimed by the
Roman see as falling within that area. The matter was several times
pressed on the attention of the Greek Church, especially on the occasion
of the council held at Constantinople in 879, but in vain. The Eastern
prelates replied evasively, saying that to determine the boundaries of
dioceses was a matter which belonged to the sovereign. The Emperor, for
his part, had good reason for not yielding, for by so doing he would not
only have admitted into a neighboring country an agency which would soon
have been employed for political purposes to his disadvantage, but would
have justified the assumption on which the demand rested, viz., that the
pope had a right to claim the provinces which his predecessors had lost.
Thus this point of difference also remained open, as a source of
irritation between the two churches.

But behind these questions another of far greater magnitude was coming
into view, that of the papal supremacy. From being in the first instance
the head of the Christian church in the old Imperial city, and afterward