In the early centuries the Christians in the Persian and the Roman Empires were subject to religious persecutions, so the Church spread its wings without the help of any of the imperial authorities. After the Roman Emperor accepted Christianity in 315, the church in Rome was spared from atrocities, but from then onwards the Persian rulers adopted a much more hostile attitude towards those Christians in Persia as they were considered as agents of the former. It was during this period that the office of the Great Metropolitan, which later came to be known as the Catholicate of East, was established in Persia. As the enmity between the empires increased, the leaders of the Church in Persia found it nearly impossible to continue ecclesiastical commune with the universal Church. Meanwhile some