Well, wait just a minute.
Charlemagne, whatever you think about him, was crowned by an Orthodox Saint (and opponent of the filioque) Pope Leo III, whose life Charlemagne had saved. Before that, the popes were at the mercy of whoever ruled Italy--Arian Lombards or meddling Byzantine Emperors (and many of these were odious heretics--like the one who exiled Pope St. Martin). Besides this, there was at least one Orthodox Saint who was a Holy Roman Emperor, St. Henry II. It was called the \"Holy Roman\" Empire because the Emperor\'s main duty was to protect the Pope. And the Pope definitely needed protection because he, unlike the Patriarchs of the East, did not have a client state behind him. The Byzantine Emperors were only interested in the affairs of the papacy if the Popes got in the way of one of their ecclesiastical agendas. Perhaps, if the Byzantines had not tried to lord it over the papacy through bad religious policies (Monophysitism, the Henoticon, the Typos, Monotheletism, Iconoclasm) and anti-Roman councils like the Council in Trullo, the papacy would have been more inclined to look for helpers in the East. As it happened, the most opportunistic party (the Normans) became the special protectors of the Popes (although this was not to the complete liking of the papacy), and this Norman influence meant an abrupt change of ecclesiastical policy and philosophy and, ultimately, a religious, not to mention political, break with the East and Orthodoxy.
Charlemagne\'s religious policies were not ALL bad. They were a mixed bag. He did much for the expansion of Christianity in the West. As for the filioque, the Eastern Church\'s response to the issue has remained consistent since the time of St. Photios, but the extent that the Western Church has understood or adopted the filioque THEOLOGICALLY (and not just as an item in the Creed) has fluctuated. One can argue that the theological implications of the filioque were not adopted by Western theologians until after the schism of 1054. Prior to that time, there was use of the filioque in many Western churches, but theological debate over it\'s correctness. In other words, it might be considered as theologumena (not in the Eastern sense, because it\'s in the Creed), but not doctrine, because there was little teaching on it by Western theologians. The Orthodox East and West have similiarities, but also differences in their understanding of ecclesiastical issues. This should just be accepted.
