And his great attempt at religious healing—a gathering of the Church known as the Fifth Ecumenical Council, held in Constantinople in the early summer of 553—was an expensive, public failure. Hardly any western bishops attended, and in the end the council served best to highlight the dismal fractures in the Church and the seeming impossibilities of agreeing to a common position on the precise nature of Christ—as well as hinting at a future in which the Churches of Constantinople and Rome, much like the Roman empires that had nurtured them, would strike out in separate directions.
