Everything about the East-west Schism totally explained
The
East-West Schism, or
Great Schism, (1054) divided medieval
Christendom into Western (Latin) and Eastern (Greek) branches, which later became the
Roman Catholic Church and the
Eastern Orthodox Church, respectively. Relations between Rome and the Eastern Patriarchs had long been bitter, due to political, ecclesiastical, and theological disputes.
Pope Leo IX and
Michael Cerularius,
Patriarch of Constantinople, heightened the conflict by suppressing Greek and Latin in their respective domains. In
1054, Roman legates traveled to Cerularius to deny him the title Oecumenical Patriarch and to insist that he recognize the Roman claim to be the head and mother of the Church. Rome had an early and significant Christian population. These sees were later called
Patriarchates and were given an
order of precedence: Rome, as capital of the empire was naturally given first place, then came Alexandria and Antioch. In a separate canon the Council also approved the special honor given to Jerusalem over other sees subject to the same metropolitan.
Five patriarchs
Soon, Constantine erected a new capital at
Byzantium, a strategically-placed city on the
Bosporus. He renamed his new capital
Nova Roma ("New Rome"), but the city would become known as
Constantinople. The
Second Ecumenical Council, held at the new capital in
381, now elevated the see of Constantinople itself, to a position ahead of the other chief metropolitan sees, except that of Rome. Mentioning in particular the provinces of
Asia,
Pontus and
Thrace, it decreed that the synod of each province should manage the ecclesiastical affairs of that province alone, except for the privileges already recognized for Alexandria and Antioch.
The
Fourth Ecumenical Council at
Chalcedon in
451, confirming the authority already held by Constantinople, granted its archbishop jurisdiction over the three provinces mentioned by the First Council of Constantinople:
[T]he Fathers rightly granted privileges to the throne of old Rome, because it was the royal city. And the One Hundred and Fifty most religious Bishops [for example,the Second Ecumenical Council], actuated by the same consideration, gave equal privileges (ἴσα πρεσβεῖα) to the most holy throne of New Rome, justly judging that the city which is honoured with the Sovereignty and the Senate, and enjoys equal privileges with the old imperial Rome, should in ecclesiastical matters also be magnified as she is, and rank next after her; so that, in the Pontic, the Asian, and the Thracian dioceses, the metropolitans only and such bishops also of the Dioceses aforesaid as are among the barbarians, should be ordained by the aforesaid most holy throne of the most holy Church of Constantinople.
The council also ratified an agreement between Antioch and Jerusalem, whereby Jerusalem held jurisdiction over three provinces, numbering it among the five great sees. There were now five patriarchs presiding over the Church within the
Byzantine Empire, in the following order of precedence: the
Patriarch of Rome, the
Patriarch of Constantinople, the
Patriarch of Alexandria, the
Patriarch of Antioch and the
Patriarch of Jerusalem (see
Pentarchy).
Empires East and West
Disunion in the Roman Empire further contributed to disunion in the Church.
Theodosius the Great, who established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, died in 395 and was the last Emperor to rule over a united Roman Empire; following his death, the Empire was divided into western and eastern halves, each under its own Emperor. By the end of the 5th century, the Western Roman Empire had been overrun by the Germanic tribes, while the Eastern Roman Empire (known also as the
Byzantine Empire) continued to thrive. Thus, the political unity of the Roman Empire was the first to fall.
In the West, the collapse of civil government left the Church practically in charge, and bishops took to administering secular cities and domains. have argued that the Schism between East and West has very ancient roots, and that sporadic schisms in the common unions took place under Victor (second century), Stephen (third century) and Damasus (fourth and fifth century). Later on, disputes about theological and other questions led to schisms between the Churches in Rome and Constantinople for 37 years from 482 to 519 (
the Acacian Schism), and for 13 years from 866-879 (see
Patriarch Photios I of Constantinople).
Mutual excommunication of 1054
Most of the direct causes of the Great Schism, however, are far less grandiose than the famous
filioque. The relations between the papacy and the Byzantine court were good in the years leading up to
1054. The emperor
Constantine IX and the
Pope Leo IX were allied through the mediation of the
Lombard catepan of Italy,
Argyrus, who had spent years in Constantinople, originally as a political prisoner. Leo and Argyrus led armies against the ravaging
Normans, but the papal forces were defeated at the
Battle of Civitate in
1053, which resulted in the pope being imprisoned at
Benevento, where he took it upon himself to learn
Greek. Argyrus hadn't arrived at Civitate and his absence caused a rift in papal-imperial relations.
Meanwhile, the Normans were busy imposing Latin customs, including the unleavened bread—with papal approval. Patriarch
Michael I then ordered
Leo, Archbishop of Ochrid, leader of the
Bulgarian church, to write a letter to the
bishop of Trani, John, an Easterner, in which he attacked the "
Judaistic" practices of the West, namely the use of unleavened bread. The letter was to be sent by John to all the bishops of the West, Pope included. John promptly complied and the letter was passed to one
Humbert of Mourmoutiers, the
cardinal-bishop of Silva Candida, who was then in John's diocese. Humbert translated the letter into
Latin and brought it to the pope, who ordered a reply to be made to each charge and a defence of
papal supremacy to be laid out in a response.
Although he was hot-headed, Michael was convinced, probably by the Emperor and the bishop of Trani, to cool the debate and prevent the impending breach. However, Humbert and the pope made no concessions and the former was sent with legatine powers to the imperial capital to solve the questions raised once and for all. Humbert,
Frederick of Lorraine, and
Peter, archbishop of Amalfi set out in early spring and arrived in April
1054. Their welcome wasn't to their liking, however, and they stormed out of the palace, leaving the papal response with Michael, whose anger exceeded even theirs. The seals on the letter had been tampered with and the legates had published, in Greek, an earlier, far less civil, draft of the letter for the entire populace to read. The patriarch determined that the legates were worse than mere barbarous Westerners, they were liars and crooks. He refused to recognise their authority or, practically, their existence.
When Pope Leo died on
April 19,
1054, the legates' authority legally ceased, but they didn't seem to notice. The patriarch's refusal to address the issues at hand drove the legatine mission to extremes: on
July 16, the three legates entered the church of the
Hagia Sophia during the divine liturgy on a Saturday afternoon and placed a
Papal Bull of
Excommunication (
1054) on the altar. The legates left for Rome two days later, leaving behind a city near riots. The patriarch had the immense support of the people against the Emperor, who had supported the legates to his own detriment, and Argyrus, who was seen still as a papal ally. To assuage popular anger, Argyrus' family in Constantinople was arrested, the bull was burnt, and the legates were
anathematised—the Great Schism had begun.
Orthodox bishop
Kallistos (formerly Timothy Ware) writes, that the choice of cardinal Humbert was unfortunate, for both he and Patriarch Michael I were men of stiff and intransigent temper... . After [aninitial, unfriendly encounter] the patriarch refused to have further dealings with the legates. Eventually Humbert lost patience, and laid a bull of excommunication against Patriarch Michael I on the altar of the Church of the Holy Wisdom... . Michael and his synod retaliated by anathematizing Humbert.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia says, "The consummation of the schism is generally dated from the year
1054, when this unfortunate sequence of events took place. This conclusion, however, isn't correct, because in the bull composed by Humbert, only Patriarch Michael I was excommunicated. The validity of the bull is questioned because Pope Leo IX was already dead at that time. On the other side, the Byzantine synod excommunicated only the legates.
It should be noted that the bull of excommunication issued against Patriarch Michael stated as one of its reasons for the excommunication the Eastern Church's deletion of the word "filioque" from the original Nicene Creed. It is now common knowledge that the Eastern Church didn't delete anything, it was the Western Church that added this word to the
original Nicene Creed.
East and West since 1054
"Even after
1054 friendly relations between East and West continued. The two parts of Christendom were not yet conscious of a great gulf of separation between them... . The dispute remained something of which ordinary Christians in East and West were largely unaware".
There was no single event that marked the breakdown. Rather, the two churches slid into and out of schism over a period of several centuries, punctuated with temporary reconciliations. During the
Fourth Crusade, however, Latin crusaders on their way eastward sacked
Constantinople itself and defiled the
Hagia Sophia. The ensuing period of chaotic rule over the sacked and looted lands of the Byzantine Empire is still known among Eastern Christians as
Frankokratia. After that, the break became permanent. Later attempts at reconciliation, such as the
Second Council of Lyon, met with little or no success.
In May 1999,
John Paul II was the first pope since the Great Schism to visit an Eastern Orthodox country:
Romania. Upon greeting John Paul II, the Romanian Patriarch
Teoctist stated:"The second millennium of Christian history began with a painful wounding of the unity of the Church; the end of this millennium has seen a real commitment to restoring Christian unity."
John Paul II visited other heavily Orthodox areas such as Ukraine, despite lack of welcome at times, and he said that an end to the Schism was one of his fondest wishes.
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