SPACE: AN EASTWARD SHIFT | 113Simeon’s collection of cloth creeds must have seemed reassuring proof
that the anti- Chalcedonian world both within and beyond Rome’s frontiers
was united round a defined doctrine. But it did not stop disputes such as the
thirty- year schism between the Syrian and Eg yptian hierarchies in the late
sixth and early seventh centuries. Partly as a result of such internal differ-
ences, the distinction between Chalcedonians and anti- Chalcedonians was
less clear- cut or widely understood than some modern students admit.^74 In
any case, the East Roman Commonwealth cannot be identified solely with
the opponents of Chalcedon. They were an important part of it, but they
lived in a world where the imperial Chalcedonian Church, and in the Sasa-
nian realm the Church of the East too, were likewise a presence. None of
these theological and ecclesiastical distinctions and schisms seriously frag-
mented the state—that is why we can talk of an East Roman Common-
wealth. Nevertheless, when the Arab believers in Muhammad did finally
come and shake the empire’s foundations, it was with a scripture, the Qurʾān,
that revealed God’s deep displeasure at the Christians’ internal dissensions
(see below, p. 188), and valuably confirms not only the spiritually and so-
cially fragmented nature of the East Roman Commonwealth, but also the
role that world played in setting the scene for Islam.
Although the Church of the East in the Sasanian Empire, and its missions
in Central Asia and China, eschewed political linkage to Rome (despite call-
ing itself “Ta Ch’in,” “East Roman” in Chinese), and except in Iraq can hardly
be regarded as part of the East Roman Commonwealth however distantly,^75
still it too deserves mention in this context. The post- Roman Germanic
kingdoms of Western Europe—Visigoths, Vandals, Burgundians, Franks,
Ostrogoths, Anglo- Saxons, and others—provide a closer analog y to the East
Roman Commonwealth, indeed a Latin equivalent; but they were not part
of the same system.^76 They were geographically and politically remote from
Constantinople, and espoused Arianism—a form of Christianity that came
to be associated particularly with Germans, and marked political as well as
religious distance. In the West, it was only the residual authority and prestige
of Rome itself—especially its bishop—that really engaged the interest of the
Greek Christian world. There was also the later “Byzantine” Commonwealth
sacred books: E. A. Meyer, Legitimacy and law in the Roman world (Cambridge 2004) 25, 54 (reference
courtesy of Christina Kokkinia).
74 See, e.g., the anti- Chalcedonian John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical history, Part 3 [ed. and tr. (Latin)
E. W. Brooks (Louvain 1935–36)] 2.23; 3.12, 21. Also M. Whittow, The making of Orthodox Byzantium,
600–1025 (Basingstoke 1996) 42–46; J. Shepard, “Byzantium’s overlapping circles,” Proceedings of the
21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies (Aldershot 2006) 1.28–29.
75 On the Church of the East remnant on East Roman territory even after the School of Edessa was
closed, see John of Ephesus, Lives of the eastern saints [4:70] 10, p. 139.
76 I disagree, here, with A. Harris, Byzantium, Britain & the West: The archaeolog y of cultural iden-
tity AD 400–650 (Stroud 2003), and Sarris, Empires of faith [4:42] 204, 226.