The first entries to this library shelf starts to tell the story of how the West started splitting itself in two as the Roman Empire became divided into a Latin West and Greek East--probably over a period of about 400 years.

The East of the Roman Empire later became known as the Byzantine area being home to the Greek Orthodox churches of the time. The rift between Church of the East and the Byzantine church came with much more bitterness than the split with the Roman church as such. Initiatives to actively persecute Church of the East members who could not reconcile themselves with the 4th century invention of the western Bible, and the various (many) so-called creeds of Christianity that all seemed to change in Jesus' teaching and person into a strange new face, all came from Constantinople, the capital of Greek Christianity.

Those factions of Church of the East that broke away to embrace the West's creeds and Scriptures adopted the new Christianity and adapted their rites to reflect the changes. See the Syro Malabar and Assyrian rites listed here and elsewhere on the site.