YoBro2485 (yes, that's my discord username)

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Latest Babble: The Great Schism of 1054 is a Medieval Myth (Commentary on an article)

Generally, the study of history has moved away from a list of great events and great men (see revisionist analysis of the great man theory) and has instead been approached as a study of long term trends and movements. For example, I'm more of an early modernist, and many historians in that space now consider the idea of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) being a singular event that caused the formation of the modern Westphalian style nation-state to be archaic. Rather, the evolution of nation-states was a long term transition in which Westphalia was merely a part of (see Osiander's Westphalian Myth, for example). It seems that the article makes a similar point about the Great Schism in section 2 and 3, referencing how 1054 is not a clear start date to a schism and rather the schism occurred gradually with 1054 being a part of that long story.

The article

Did the Roman/Byzantine empire stop being an empire and become a sort of kingdom/other state at some point?

That distinction would depend fully on your definition of Empire, a term that is quite complex and doesn't exactly have one true definition.

It does seem that to most, the term "Empire" has begun to simply refer to a large powerful political entity. For example, the Spanish Empire had a lot of land, and ruled over a lot of people, so we can call it an Empire. Likewise, the same is true with the Mongol Empire, or the Seleucid Empire. The word Empire even refers to other things that are large and powerful, like Business Empires, for example.

However, many tend to forget that the historical term of Empire, in the European context, usually derived its legitimacy from Rome. Rome was an Empire, ruled by an Emperor, and this sort of became a very important definition in the European context. The Holy Roman Empire, the Latin Empire, and the Russian Empire, all claimed their Imperial titles from the fact that they claimed to derive legitimacy from Rome. For example, the Russian term "Tsar", is really just a translation for Caesar. Similar is also true with the term "Kaiser" in German (this is all a simplification of course).

In this regard, we can see why the Spanish Empire, despite its massive size and power, never claimed to be "Emperors". The rulers of Spain were always officially Kings (except for Charles V who derived an Imperial title from Germany). Spain was, in the context of Roman-legitimacy, never truly an "Empire".

By this same definition and logic, the Byzantine Empire was always an Empire. It was always ruled by a person considered to be an Emperor (though the Frankokratia likely brought complications I'm not familiar with). It never became any less "Roman" and as a result, that claim they had to be Emperors through the historical precedent of Rome never faded. Same is true with the Holy Roman Empire as well, for example.

Would the Ecclesiastical lands of the Holy Roman Empire go to war?

They definitely did go to war. Some examples would be the War of the Limburg Succession, the Mainz Diocesian Feud, and the Cologne War. Remember the bishops are also princes of the empire, and even though they were technically temporal rulers they were also secular rulers. They had secular interests and often times were ruled by families seeking to spread dynastic influence. The Wittelsbachs ruled the Archbishopric of Cologne for almost 100 years straight, for example.

In addition to this, after Reichsreform, the ecclesiastical territories were expected to make the usual military contributions to the Reichsarmee as per the Matricular System.