There are a lot of assumptions inherent in this question, I know--I'm fully prepared to hear that I may have a mistaken impression of affairs from the start. My understanding is that, essentially, the Christology of the Catholic and would-be Orthodox Christians are to this day identical, and their doctrinal differences are even now quite limited. As far as I am aware of the discourse, I most often hear that arguments over the primacy of the Pope were the rationale for the split, as the Emperor (and the church within the Empire) did not want to be even nominally subservient to the whims of Rome, and believed there was no basis in the scripture for overriding primacy of the Pope.

But lately I've been questioning whether that divide was mostly political, as I'd heard the story, or whether there was a divide in behavior long before the Schism itself ever became formal. My question goes beyond a division of rituals (it's my understanding that even at this time Orthodox priests tended to require beards, for example) into the precedents set by state and/or church actors: the Pope and Catholic Church in the west, and the Roman Emperor, the Patriarch, and the Church of the Empire in the east.

My first assumption, which I'd like to know if I'm getting correct or not, is that there was at least some division of ritual between the two groups before 1054, and that the eastern church was largely hostile to the imposition of the Pope's authority. Assuming these assumptions are (broadly) correct, from there I'm most curious about whether or not the split might not have begun in practice due to inaction or indifference on the part of the Pope toward the eastern church; post-schism attempts to reconcile and acquiescence to calls for help such as the First Crusade aside, was the Papacy likely to ignore eastern affairs compared to western ones? If not, could it then be said that the Emperor or Patriarch's obstruction of the Pope's efforts at the creation of a church structure fully centralized on Rome tended to cause an impression of difference between the two groups long before 1054, which ultimately helped lead to a full schism over authority?