George the Hagiorite into a vibrant center of Georgian Orthodox culture. At some point between 1052 and 1057, George left his fellow monk George of Oltisi in charge of the Iviron monastery, and set off to Antioch to appear before the Patriarch to defend his brethren, accused by a group of the Greek clerics of heresy. The dispute quickly evolved around the canonical legality of the autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox church, which had originally operated within the framework of the see of Antioch, but had been becoming increasingly independent since the 6th century. In defense of the Georgian autocephaly, George was referring
Relations between the Catholic Church and the state religious unity, anyone within the Church who did not subscribe to Catholic Christianity was seen as a threat to the dominance and purity of ""the one true faith"" and they saw it as their right to defend this by all means at their disposal. Beginning with Edward Gibbon in "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" some historians have taken the view that Christianity weakened the Roman Empire through its failure to preserve the pluralistic structure of the state. Pagans and Jews lost interest and the Church drew the most able men into its organisation to