Our Western civilization found it difficult to comprehend the mysticism of the East, which felt the presence of our Lord Christ, the Theotokos, the myriad angels and thousands of saints.

We must also decry the simplification of Byzantium as "Greek". The Roman Empire was ecumenical. Whether Latin of Greek predominated in Constantinople, ours was a multiethnic empire, with the church willing to use the local language to convey the world of God. Thus were the Slavs and others converted to Orthodoxy and brought into the orbit of our Roman civilization.

And the ecumenical idea, the notion that held together the diverse Christian communities under the rubric of Rome, was reinforced under the Ottomans - whose own empire, let us remember, was also multiethnic and often tolerant. It was Mehmet II, the Conqueror of Constantinople, who sought out the greatest ecclesiastical personality of the time, George Scholarios, and enthroned him as Ecumenical Patriarch Gennadios - head of the Rum Millet and spiritual leader of the entire Orthodox world.