The Byzantine Imperial Church (Justinianic)

For nearly two centuries after Chalcedon, the church of the eastern Roman Empire was inseparable from the empire itself. Emperors summoned its councils, legislated for its clergy and monasteries, appointed and deposed its patriarchs, and treated doctrinal unity as a condition of political order. Justinian pushed this furthest — rebuilding Hagia Sophia in under six years, codifying Roman law with the church written into it, and in 553 calling a council to condemn the writings of three long-dead theologians, two of whom Chalcedon itself had cleared, in the hope of winning back the Miaphysites. It did not work: the condemnation alienated much of the Latin West without reconciling Egypt or Syria, and each attempted formula produced a fresh schism instead. The same church, in the same years, produced Romanos the Melodist, whose sung sermons in verse are among the finest poetry in Greek, and sent missionaries as far as the Nile kingdoms.