Yes, I am aware that Byzantium is the Roman Empire, even if I didn’t hint at that. However that is my point. It’s hard to say that the Latins were the dominant Catholic church since before Constantine when you have the Orthodox church sitting within the preeminent Eastern Roman Empire while Rome was both a piece of the Empire for part of, and more or less on it’s back for a good deal of the other part of the last half of the first millennium.
And in theory yes, Rome was simply part of the old Empire the Byzantines wanted back, but that was their perspective. In practice Rome was never fond of Byzantine rule and strove against it even when it could barely take care of itself. Besides, Byzantium hardly held Italy long enough to be of consequence before the Germanics took a good chunk of it right back. The reality is the whole time Rome was scheming with the Franks and other Germanics to sweep aside the Arians, take Italy, and form something out of the old Western Empire clear up to the point where Pope Leo found his man in Charlemagne.
That’s why I termed it a vassal state, as it constantly chafed against Eastern Roman rule, as did the Germanics and Slavs as a whole. This is evident by the fact that at the first opportunity, the Latin church jumped right in with the Frankish Holy Roman Empire, a New Rome essentially where it would be the head church inside a real empire that would both crush it’s rivals the Arians and rival Constantinople. They even tried to expand that concept to the Slavs with the newly Christianized Bulgarian Empire to put the Byzantines against a two-front threat.
In light of that, I guess at the end of the day I look at it this way - the Latins can assert and pound the table about their supremacy all day, but no one is listening. History just doesn’t jibe with their story. The only way I see that changing is by attrition as the Muslims seek to exterminate the Christian church in North Africa and the Middle East, but that is a marriage of necessity and convenience, not acquiescence in my book.
The thing is that you are taking a split of 1054 and projecting it backwards
in 315 AD when Christianity was no longer outlawed (but not the state religion), there was no large Church at Constantinople -- the 4 Churches were Rome, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem. Jerusalem was nowhere near the force it was due to the destruction in 69 AD -- it sunk into nominal significance. Ditto for Antioch -- difficult to defend and threatened with sacking by the Persians -- it was sacked twice by the Persians in 250-256 AD
There was basically Alexandria and Rome. The Alexandrians did produce the larger chunk of Church Fathers, it was a center of Christianity and if you look at real numbers you would think that they would get primacy. Yet, the bishop of Rome was given primacy -- in the sense of first among equals and in many councils as the deciding vote
And this way it remained during the first decades of a non-persecuted Christianity in the Roman Empire
now, by the time Christianity was made state religion -- in 395 AD, yes, Byzantine had waxed in importance and so too had the Patriarch of Byzantine
Yet, there is still no separation of orthodoxy -- Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Rome and Byzantine are united
Theodosius II elevates Byzantine to the pentarchy, purely as the Emperor was sitting there -- and yes, that made sense
From that point on there is a tussle between Rome and Byzantine -- but not a tussle between Latins and Orthodox as you are projecting backwards
The Byzantine Church has some problems like Patriarch Nestorius etc.
And, in all of these cases, the role of the Patriarch of the West remains as the primus inter pares -- there is no doubt of that
To a specific sense that you make of "a dominant Church within the Catholic Church" -- if you mean one ruling over the others like the medieval papacy, then yes, you are correct. If you mean one given spiritual 'first among equals' place, then no, you are wrong
hmmm...true -- and the reason was not religious, but socio-linguistic leading to political
The turning point could be put as the reign of Flavius Heraclius Augustus in 610 AD when two things happened:
The latter was a big hit. It was logical for Heraclius as most in the East spoke Greek not Latin. But just a few years later, NO ONE spoke Latin, while in the West there were fewer speakers of Greek. Net-net, the two sides just didn't understand what the heck the other was arguing about, especially over intricacies like homousis etc.
by 700 AD, the fact was that these were not speaking to each other, and the Western Patriarch's problems -- the Arians, the Magyar, Viking, Saracen, Slavic etc. invasions -- were ignored by the East. The Pope had no choice but to seize on a suitable political power and that's why he chose the Franks
True enough about the part until the Bulgars
the Bulgars were ALREADY the second threat to Constantinople, and remained so even after their conversion to Christianity. They remained like so until the Magyars came
Then the second Bulgar Empire was another threat to the reduced Byzantine Empire, but were crushed by the Turks
Firstly, I'm a Latin, and secondly, NYer is a Latin but attends an Eastern Catholic Church. Neither of us (and incidently neither does Pope Benedict or Pope John Paul II) talk about 'supremacy' - at the Papal stage that is acknowledged as wrong. And you can see this in the funeral of Pope John Paul II when the Patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churchs were the ones leading the coffin -- because this returned to the idea of the Patriarchs as equals with the Patriarch of the West as the first among equals
That view is the view of the present Pope and is permeating all in the West and that is why relations between Catholic and Orthodox and Orientals and Assyrians are warmer and warmer.