The Eastern Church, then, throughout the middle ages, remained true in
every particular to her ancient character. It cannot be said that she
developed as did the Western Church during this period, for she remained
what she had been; but she freely developed her original
characteristics, consistently, in every direction. This too is life,
though of a different type from that of the West.

That there was life in the Eastern Church is also proved by the fact
that the power of _expansion_ was not denied her. Through her agency an
important bulwark for the Christian faith was created in the new nations
which had sprung into existence since the beginning of the middle ages:
the Bulgarians, the Servians, and the multifarious peoples grouped under
the name of Russians. There is a vast difference in national character
between these young peoples and the successors of the Hellenes; and it
is therefore all the more significant to find that both the Church and
religious sentiment should in their case have fully preserved the
Byzantine character. This proves once more the ancient capacity of the
Greeks for the assimilation of foreign elements.

There was yet another outcome of this stubborn persistency of a peculiar
type--the impossibility of continuing to share the life of the Western
Church. Neither in the East nor in the West was a _separation_ desired;
but it was inevitable, since the lives of East and West were moving in
different directions. It was the fall of Constantinople that first
weakened the vital force of the Eastern Church. May we hope that the
events of modern times are leading her towards a renaissance?

(b) _The Nestorian and the Monophysite Churches._--Since the time when the
church of eastern Syria had decided, in opposition to the church of the
Empire, to cling to the ancient views of Syrian theologians--therefore
also to the teaching and person of Nestorius--her relations were broken
off with the church in western Syria and in Greek and Latin countries; but
the power of Nestorian, or, as it was termed, _Chaldaic_ Christianity, was
not thereby diminished. Separated from the West, it directed its energies
towards the East, and here its nearest neighbour was the Persian church.
The latter followed, almost without opposition, the impulse received from
Syria; from the rule of the patriarch Babacus (Syr. B[=a]b-h[=a]i,
498-503) she may be considered definitely Nestorian. A certain number,
too, of Arabic Christians