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The Search for Unity

We desire one thing: that the Holy Church, now trampled upon and in confusion and divided into parties, may return to its former unity and splendor.

- St. Gregory VII, Letter to All the Faithful, 1082

How indeed, is the Greek Church to be brought back into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the Apostolic See when she has been beset with so many afflictions and persecutions that she sees in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs?

- Innocent III, Letter to Cardinal Peter, Papal Legate, July 12, 1204