Discuss the factors causing the schism between the early Eastern and Western churches

What will be an ideal response?

A schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches occurred over the issue of iconography. Although religious imagery was essential to the growing influence of Christianity, the two branches of Christianity disagreed over the role of icons in divine worship. Most Christians held that visual representations of God the Father, Jesus, the Virgin, and the saints worked to inspire religious reverence. Others, however, adhering to the prohibition of "graven images" in the Hebrew Bible, considered images to be no better than pagan idols. During the eighth century, the issue came to a head when the Byzantine emperor Leo III inaugurated a policy of iconoclasm ("image-breaking") that called for the wholesale destruction of religious sculpture and the whitewashing of mosaics and wall-paintings. The Iconoclastic Controversy, which remained unresolved until the middle of the ninth century, generated the schism between the Eastern and Western churches. Compounded by other liturgical and theological differences, that schism would become permanent in 1054.