The disunion between the Armenian and the Byzantine Churches, aside from the question of loyalty to the original Christian faith, also had a political background.
In reality the Armenian Church was independent from Byzantine, which had during a short time subverted the whole of the Christian Orient world under its will in order to increase its political influence. This independence was a necessity for the Armenians to survive as a nation of their own and become assimilated into the Byzantine culture.
The creation of an independent Armenian Church demonstrated that Armenia was no longer dependent on the West. Over the years, Byzantine and Rome criticised Armenia continuously for this separation. Without doubt there were periods, for instance during the crusades, when Byzantine and the Vatican protected the Armenians, but these alliances were highly political measures: there was political common ground during these cases, not religion.
In fact the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches tried to distinguish themselves as more liberal and mild towards other religions and heathen peoples, while simultaneously regarding other Christian denominations as apostasies.
Byzantine, the perhaps undeserving successor of Rome with its extra-ordinary skill of handling religious issues, showed in particular an unbelievable blindness and fanaticism. The hatred and the malevolence that had accumulated in Byzantine against Armenia on account of the religious separation, inspired the empire to take the most illogical, groundless and ridiculous measures. Their actions in fact opened the eastern provinces for hostile attacks with fatal consequences for Byzantine (the weakening of Armenia and later the division of the country on the 11th century during the Bagratouni dynasty, hostilities against the New Armenia, Cilicia, and the crusader states during the crusade and the religious persecutions in the Armenian provinces of the Byzantine Empire).
Though the existence of a national and independent church in Armenia decreased the amount of assistance which the country received from its western neighbours in its struggle against external threats, it is to this church that Armenia should be grateful for its survival as a nation. It was the intense affection for their church that led Armenians to defend their religion. Hence the independent church did not weaken but rather strengthened the country. The church gave a new identity to its people, without which the Armenians as a people would most certainly have disappeared amongst the many cultures in Byzantine. As Macler has observed, this stubbornness of Armenians regarding their church may have isolated them, but at the same time has reinforced their political existence.
This conflict between Byzantine and Armenia, compound on the resistance that the Armenians displayed during the rule of the Sasanids and later during the rule of the Arabs, convinced first the fire-worshiping Persians and then the Muslim Arabs that it was best to let the Armenians be and not to attempt religious conversion.
Finally, as a note of interest, Armenia was the birthplace of a new theology which no longer exists today, namely Paulism, which one could say is the predecessor to reform-protestantism. This theology was created during the 7th century in Armenia Minor that was at that time under the rule of Byzantine and was opposed fiercely both by the orthodox archbishop of Constantinople, and by the Armenian Church itself. Later the Byzantine emperor moved many of these Paulists to Antiochia and Macedonia where the preached and spread their faith among the people of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia and converted them. It was these newly converted Christians who became the Bogomils of Bulgaria, who in their turn strongly influenced the Albigians and the Hussitians in Czechoslovakia. 23
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