"The East", writes Fr C. J. Dumont, O.P., in his Introduction to this book, " was the cradle of Christianity. The peoples among whom it was born and first spread and developed set the mark of their own genius on its first forms of expression, and naturally enough they have continued to be the most fit to think and live it in accordance with what it was from the beginning." This book discusses those characteristics of Byzantine Christianity that both distinguish it from and link it with the tradition of the Latin West. It analyses the early beginnings in the teaching of the Eastern Fathers and its emphasis upon the fullnesi of the Christian mystery, its formulations of dogma, the place it gives to the Mother of God and its conception of the Church. In the second part of the book, Fr Le Guillou surveys the history of the separation of Eastern and Western Christianity, the main points of dispute and the various attempts at reunion that have failed in the past. He traces too the different traditions of Eastern piety, the historical pressures exerted from outside under the rule of the Turki and by the rule of the Tsars and their successors, the modern renewal of Orthodoxy and the hopes for a future union with the Christians of the West.