As the heirs of Roman Byzantium, the Palaeologi and their Orders suffer from ingrained prejudice of Western thought arising from centuries of antagonism between the Orthodox and Latin Churches, which led to the sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade, and the refusal of aid which might have saved the Empire, and retained much of the Middle East within the Christian World.

On the 5th January 1964, Pope Paul, Patriarch of the West, embraced the Oecumenical Patriarch Athanagoros of Constantinople, Oecumenical Pariarch of the East, to celebrate the reversal of thousand years of unhappy estrangement, but if he dreams of second Vatican Council, and of the Anglican / Orthodox joint Doctrinal discussions are ever to be realised it must be appreciated that the effects of the mutual anathemas of 1054 on historical understanding remain, and must overcome.

Western thought has been conditioned to regard Orthodoxy in general, and everything appertaining to Roman Byzantine in particular, as suspect, if not of a nefarious nature! Since the writers from whom Western history has been drawn were bounded by the Latin anathema to denigrate the East. Orthodox thought has suffered equally from its historical antagonism to the West, with memories of the Crusaders, who set a prostitute on their Patriarchal Throne, and centuries of persecution for which the West has shown little sympathy.

The Orthodox/Latin confliction has significance far beyond questions of Christian Dogma, however, since it is the root cause of an antagonism which endangers the peace of the world today, European Communism has rejected Orthodoxy, but its distrust of the West is ingrained, as in the Western belief in their primacy, derived from the concept of Papal Primacy, which has remained where the Papacy has been rejected. This mutual antipathy is relevant to the Order from two aspects; it has limited its activities since its exile, and it points to the need for its development as an Oecumenical bridge of understanding between Eastern and Western Christians, and possibly through the experience of former to the Muslim world. A further factor arising from the Byzantine source of the Order is the existence of other Orders of similar designations and traditions, since with the fragmentation of the Empire, the separate Ruling Dynasties which merged, assumed independent Grand Mastership of the Knights of Saint George within their own domains.

Reference is made to one such sub-division from which the great Roman Catholic Order of Constantine St. George is derived by a treaty of 1263. Other sub-divisions arose by force, and if the heirs of the former Reigning Grand Masters have maintained these Orders, and continued to put their Chivalric ideals into practice, their effective validity achieved by force is hallowed by time, but insufficient knowledge is available for any specific reference in this work. Equally, no reference has been made to the confusing changes of name, which took place throughout the Orders history with the transition from Latin to Greek, sub-division, re-unification, and further sub-division , and a general return to Latin with the exile of the Imperial Houses of the whole of the former Byzantine Empire, following the Ottomon conquest.

The designation of Ordo Imperialis Constantinianus Sancti Georgii was adopted as appropriate to the exile of this Order in the West, despite its Orthodox status.