> > I don't know a whole lot, but from what I can recall from History of Civ, I think the Orthodox church came about because of a division in the last days of the Roman Empire. There were actually two capitols, one in Rome and the other in Byzantium/Constantinople. The Catholic church was, and still is, based in Rome, while the Orthodox church as it is today came out of Constantinople. But I'm not sure how accurate that is, or how the Orthodox got split into the Greek / Russian denominations.
>
> There were two Popes appointed at one time- one in Rome and the other in Byzantium. I think France had a third one, but he died. Anyway, the two Popes wouldn't concede to the other, and both countries expressed their wish to follow their own Pope. Eventually, they just became split and the Eastern Orthodox Church formed.

I've been lurking around here for some time now and I finally got the courage to post something myself. Actually, I finally feel like I can really provide some information by posting.
So I'll do my best to explain this in English

The Roman Empire had two capitols in the end, but there never were two popes. In Constantinople the head of the church was the Caesar. The other big difference was that in the west Latin was used during services and in the east the language was Greek. Councils were formed by Constantinus to discuss the different beliefs and to try and make universal rules for the church.

This worked well for a while, but then there was the minor issue about the filique-concept being added to the creed in the west. In the east this was thought to affect the balance of the trinity and what was even worse, the west did this without consulting Constantinople. This ended with the two Churches cursing each other in 1054. The curses were removed later, in 1965 to be exact.

There, I hope that made some sense.
Maybe now I'll even write another post some day.

-hansu