The study focuses on two different periods of the 12th century, during which philosophical and theological debates of Latin and Byzantine thinkers took place in Constantinople. The first half of the century is essential to the Western world as far as the so-called Investiture Controversy has undermined the basis and demolished the structure of the obviousness of the Western European early medieval culture. Namely, metaphorically, the world has been destroyed and needs to be assembled anew. The claims for universality of its architects require the inclusion of Eastern Christianity even though it is already seen as “our foreign”. The Universalist Byzantine cultural model, for its part, implies the link with the West despite the clear distinction between “us” and “them”. This link is defined as the touchstone for this cultural model. After the 1160s, the new generation of Western ideologists, who have found an already established and even self-sufficient world, are increasingly becoming estranged from the East. The pogroms against the Latins in Constantinople in the 1180s turn alienation into open hostility.