These past few days I have seen this video pop up in my recommended tab on YouTube a few times so I thought I'd give it a go. Certainly as just a eleven days ago I praised the Kings & Generals channel on this subreddit for their improvement in the last year or so.

0:05 - Throughout the Middle Ages High Middle ages the Christian civilisation was notoriously devided. In one camp was the Catholic west, where the pope in Rome reigned spiritually supreme. In the other the Orthodox east, dominated by the holy patriarch of Constantinople. In this video, we will exlain how the eastern and western halves of the Christian world drifted apart from one another and ultimately became two of the most bitter rivals of the medieval world

Right at the start Kings & Generals set out their ambitious goal for this episode. They are going to try and explain the relations between the 'catholic' west and the orthodox east. Moreover they are going to focus on how they drifted apart and would become rivals. Throughout this video they are going to put forward the idea that the two churches started together and they ended up being quite seperated and that everything inbetween was a gradual step towards further seperation. There isn't anything wrong with the idea that these churches seperated over time, but I do object to the idea that this was a linear proces of further seperation with each development. And what Kings and Generals, herafter shortened to K&G, do is that they just leave out these attempts at reconciliation and only mention the hostilities. Let's get back to that when we see it in the video. By the way incase you didn't know you can skip backwards and forwards ten seconds in YouTube videos by pressing the 'j' and 'l' keys, 'k' can be used to pause and the arrow keys do the same but for five seconds, pressing 'l' five times will skip you past the add.

1:30 - In the year 285 AD, the Roman empire stretched from Northern England to the upper nile. The imperium was becoming too big to rule. And the crisis of the third century had nearly seen it buckle under it's own weight.

Already right at the start their wording annoys me. Saying that the imperium was becoming too big sort of implies that it was the empire that was growing which resulted in it being to big but the empire had hardly expanded since the days of emperor Hadrian (117-138). It was a weakining government structure, weakened by inflation, that could no longer support such a big empire.

2:42 - By the fourth century, the four most important christian churches existed in Antioch, Alexandria, the old capital of the west in Rome and the shining new capital of the east in Constantinople.

I find it a bit weird that they use the term most important churches because it's a bit arbitrary what that could mean but in htis context it must refer to the different patriarch seats right? Antioch, Alexandria and Rome were the first three patriarchal seets as their churches had been founded by the apostles and the bishops from these seats would take a leadership position amongst the other bishop, this had been decided at the council of Nicaea in 325. With the council of Constantinople in 381 Jerusalem and Constantinople were added to bring the number of patriarchs up to five. Jerusalem for it's spiritual importance to Christianity and because St. Helena the mother of emperor Constantine claimed to have found the true cross there and set up the church of the holy sepulchere. Constantinople's claim to prominence was it's position in the capital and it's proximity to the emperor. For some reason they forgot to mention Jerusalem here. Together these five formed the pentarchy, rule of five, which had the responsibility of maintaining the correct belief among Christians. In 451 at the council of Chalcedon these five patrairchs were again confirmed and a sort of hiërachy was made. The bishop of Rome remained the first seat due to it's connection to St. Peter, it was then followed by Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. So Rome was the nominal overlord of these five, this was more of a case of primus inter pares. Or not even that, it was a nominal superiority and not the kind of papal supremacy that you get later after the Gregorian reforms.¹

3:45 - ... in this emperor Justian was the most succesfull. As his conquests was most of the former western empire, including all of Italy brought under his rule. https://i.imgur.com/ovgG92x.png

In this part the error is not really in anything that he he says, although North-Africa, Italy and the southern coast of Iberia is not something I would clasify as most, but I'll let it slipt as in terms of tax income these parts of the empire would indeed bring in the most for the western half of the Roman empire. The error I would like to point out is in the map. It goes quite far in claiming what Justinian had (re-)conquered. Not just Italy and the province of Africa, but the entire north African coast and far inland. Also he conquered all the way up to the Danube in Germany apparantly. Most estimates I've seen are much more conservative. Such as this one or this one.

3:58 - In the seventh century, an unexpected threat arose out of the southern desert. The Arabs of the Rashidun Caliphate, emodying a new religion Islam. Swallowed up the southern half of the Mediteranean. This had a polarising effect upon Christendom, for Antioch and Alexandria were now in Muslim hands. There were now only two major centers of Christianity, one in Rome and one in Constantinople. Making it inevitable that the two would eventually feud over which one was the ultimate ecclisiastical authority in Christendom.

First of all I'd like to object to the term 'swallowed up' it could imply the caliphate was some sort of brute force like the borg from star trek. Secondly this says that Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem were no longer centers of Christianity. Well I'm sorry Copts and other eastern Christians you no longer exist according to K&G. These cities would remain centers of Christianity for centuries after, even to this day. the patriarch of Alexandria continues on in the form of the current Coptic pope and the orthodox church also continues to name patriarchs to the places enventhough they have not been under Christian rule for quite some time. Christians continued to exist in the middle east and had their own patriarchs who continued to act as represantives for their followers at the Abbasid court for example but later also at the Ottoman court he would stand at the head of the Rûm millet of Orthodox christians. ²

4:33 - While the holy patriarch in Constantinople was a massively influentail man. Formally speaking, the bishop of Rome, otherwise known as the pope, was the highest power in the Christian world.

Here again I will object to the usage of the term pope. The bishops of Rome, especially before the Donation of Peppin which they'll talk about in a bit, weren't much more than just that, the bishop of Rome. The western christian world was a world without a center at this time. It was a world characterized by strong regional churches. The Visigoths in Iberia and the Saxons in Britain would have their own church councils without much interference from Rome.³

6:47 - The current king of the Franks was Peppin the short, who had deposed the last Merovingian monarch to form his own dynasty, the Carolingians. It was to Peppin whom the pope called for aid against the invading Lombards. King Peppin was happy to oblidge, and with his army drove back the encroaching enemy

There isn't anything wrong with this passage but I would like to continue about the authority of the pope. Because this is an episode where the pope would start to acquire more authority. I was a bit disappointed that they leave out the crowning of Peppin from this story. Peppin was a Frankish mayor of the palace, the de-facto ruler of the Frankish kingdom. The Frankish kingdom had at first been ruled by the Merovingian kingdom but teir royal authority weakened so much that the mayors of the palace would take over as the real rulers of Francia. How weak and strong the Merovingians and Carlongians were exactly is still up for debate so if you want to read more about that I'd suggest reading something from Ian Wood. In 751 Peppin sends a letter to the pope asking if it were not better that the the one with the most power in the kingdom be the actual king? And in response the pope gives Peppin the legitiacy to proclaim himself as king. The pope would even travel all the way to Paris to anoint Peppin as king. This gave the bishop of Rome more authority as he was now a king maker. And after this the Carolingian alliance with the bishops of Rome would continue as they state in the video with the donation of Peppin. It was the donation of Constantine and later the crowning of Charlemagne wich gave the bishop of Rome it's growing authority. But this power wouldn't really last. After the break up of the Carolingian empire the papal state would enter a period sometimes called a pornocracy with many so called 'decadent' popes would weren't that celibate. The popes were still little more than rulers of the lands around Rome and the bishops in the kingdoms of Europe would most of the time be named by their kings and not by Rome or the local christian hierarchy. This would take a turn with the Gregorian reforms starting in the 11th century. These were a bunch of reforms to the papacy which resulted in a much stronger popes. But that is a story for another time.⁴

11:20 - She was replaced by Nicephoros. Naturally, neither the papacy nor the Frankish king relinquished their claim on the imperial title following this development. And for the first time since antiquity there were two Roman emperors once more. The Holy Roman empire, a nation that would endure for another one thousand years, existed forever more.

I personally would place the start of the Holy Roman Empire more with Otto I in the 10th century but there are some who put it all the way back to the age of Charlemagne.

14:25 - On the altar of the Hagia Sophia. The greatest church in eastern Christendom.

Again, just to be nit picky. Why say eastern Christendom? Hagia Sophia was just the biggest and greatest church as far as I'm aware.

17:53 - The Sack of Constantinople was ultimately the culmination of centuries of deteriorating relations. From that point on, any hope of reconciliation between the two branches of Christianity was dead in the water. In the centuries that followed, the two schismatic churches that had dominated medieval politics turned their attention away from eachother. In the east the Byzantines would reclaim their capital but tired and broken they were conquered by the rising Ottoman juggernaut and the center of the Orthodox church moved north to Moscow.

With these sentences I come back to what I said at the beginning. They frame it in a way that it looks like there is just centuries of continuous deteriorating relations. But they completely skip over the crusades (minust the fourth) where the Latin and Orthodox christians did cooperate. Especially the first crusade was an attempt at reconciliatian with the christian brothers in the east. Sure they had their arguments but this wasn't as simple as 'relations got worse over the centuries'. Sometimes they got better and the emperors of Byantium would ally themselves with the crusader states and sometimes the relations would deteriorate heavilly as was the case with the 4th crusade.⁵

18:40 - In the West reformations were the order of the day. As the protestant movement gained traction and the catholic church found itself rocked to it's foundations. In time Western Europe was too busy tearing itself apart in a revolutionary fervor to concern itself with the christians in the east.

And in this last part of the video they again do the same thing they did earlier, they leave out the attempts at reconciliation. They later part of the Byzantine empire saw them standing at a crossroads. They could attempt to mend the schism and ask for aid from Latin Christendom but that would mean subordination to the pope in Rome. Or they could attempt to stand on their own, the people wanted support from the west, not subordination. With the election of Pope Gregory X the Latin church turned to be more friendly towards the Orthodox east and wanted to organise new crusades to take back the christian lands from the Muslims. Mending the schism if only for a little bit was achieved in this period with emperor Michael VIII accepting the pope as his spiritual overlord but there was a lot of disunity in the eastern church and after the deaths of Gregory and Michael this refound unity would again fall apart. This went back and for a long time but in 1439 they would again reach an understanding. The Byzantine empire had weakened significantly but there still a number of crusaded launched to beat back the Turks but none of those was able to achieve a significant victory with many costly defeats such as Nicopol in 1396 and Varna in 1444. They also refer to the reformation as a cause for the Western disinterest which again I find an odd choice. Sure the reformation had it's predecessors with John Wycliffe and Jan Hus but I'd say that the Western Schism played a much bigger role in this. New popes kept poping up left and right in this timeperiod which is much more relevant than the reformation wich started more than fifty years after the fall of Byzantine empire.

All in all this video tells a story with a strong narrative of two churches diverging further and further untill there was a point of no return but this is just too much of a simplification of what actually happened. If anyone who is more knowdledgeable about Iconoclasm wants to make additonal remarks about that section then feel free to do so because I deleberately left that section alone as I don't feel like I'm knowledgeable enough about that to criticize it. Thanks for reading.

1. Judith Herrin, Byzantium, The surprising life of a medieval empire (2007) 38.
2. Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity the first three thousand years (2011) 255-269.
   
3. Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000 (2003) 1-34.
4. Edit: Forgot to add in my source for this: Chris Wickham, The Inherritance of Rome (2009) 376-379.
5. Herrin, Byzantium (2007) 255-265.