The East-West Schism, or Great Schism, divided Chalcedonian
Christianity into Western (Latin) and Eastern (Greek) branches, i.e. Western
Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Though normally dated to 1054, the East-West Schism was
actually the result of an extended period of estrangement between Latin and Greek Christendom. The primary causes of the Schism
were disputes over papal authority—Pope Leo IX claimed he held authority over the four
Eastern patriarchs—and over the insertion of the filioque
clause into the Nicene Creed by the Western Church. Eastern Orthodox today claim
that the primacy of the Patriarch of Rome was only honorary, and that he has authority only over his own diocese and does not
have the authority to change the decisions of Ecumenical Councils. There were other,
less significant catalysts for the Schism, including variance over liturgical practices and
conflicting claims of jurisdiction.
The Church split along doctrinal, theological,
linguistic, political, and geographic lines, and the fundamental breach has never been healed. It might be alleged that the two churches
actually reunited in 1274 (by the Second Council of
Lyon) and in 1439 (by the Council of Basel),
but in each case the councils were repudiated by the Orthodox as a whole, on the grounds that the hierarchs had overstepped their
authority in consenting to reunification. Further attempts to reconcile the two bodies have failed.
Origins
Since its earliest days, the Church recognized the special positions of three bishops, who were known as patriarchs: the
Bishop of Rome, the Bishop of
Alexandria, and the Bishop of Antioch. They were joined by the
Bishop of Constantinople and by the Bishop of Jerusalem, both confirmed as patriarchates by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (see Pentarchy). The patriarchs held precedence over fellow bishops in the Church. While the See of Constantinople
would come to argue that it should be ranked 2nd because it was, "New Rome," the Patriarch of Rome strongly disputed that point,
arguing that the reason for Rome's Primacy had always been that it was the position of the Successor of St. Peter, the
first-ranking among the Apostles.
Disunion in the Roman Empire further contributed to disunion in the Church. Theodosius the
Great, who died in 395, was the last Emperor to rule over a united Roman Empire; after his death, his territory 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.
Many other factors caused the East and West to drift further apart. The dominant language of the West was Latin, whilst that of the East was Greek. Soon after the fall of the
Western Empire, the number of individuals who spoke both Latin and Greek began to dwindle, and communication between East and
West grew much more difficult. With linguistic unity gone, cultural unity began to crumble as well. The two halves of the Church
were naturally divided along similar lines; they developed different rites and had different
approaches to religious doctrines. Although the Great Schism was still centuries away, its outlines were already perceptible.
Great Schism
Catalysts
There were many catalysts which caused tensions.
- Leo III the Isaurian outlawed the veneration of icons in the 8th century. This policy, which came to be called Iconoclasm, was
extremely divisive within the Byzantine Empire and roundly rejected by popes.
- The insertion of the Filioque clause into the Nicene
Creed.
- Disputes in the Balkans, Southern Italy, and Sicily over
whether the Western or Eastern church had jurisdiction.
- The designation of the Patriarch of Constantinople as
ecumenical patriarch, which was understood by Rome as universal patriarch and therefore
disputed.
- Disputes over whether the Patriarch of Rome, the Pope, should be considered a higher authority
than the other Patriarchs.
- The concept of Caesaropapism, a tying together in some way of the ultimate political
and religious authorities, which was much stronger in Constantinople, where the emperor lived, than in Rome which was
geographically distant and at a certain stage ceased to be subject to the emperor's power.
- Following the rise of Islam, the relative weakening of the influence of the patriarchs
of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, leading to internal church politics increasingly being seen as Rome versus
Constantinople.
- Certain liturgical practices in the West that the East believed represented innovation: the
use of unleavened bread for the Eucharist, for example.
- Celibacy among Western priests (both monastic and parish), as opposed to the
Eastern discipline whereby parish priests could be married men whose marriage had taken place when they were still laymen, before
their ordination to the diaconate.
Preliminary schisms
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).
Excommunications and final break
The direct causes of the Great Schism are, however, 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 had not arrived at Civitate and his absence caused a rift in
papal-imperial relations just at the time when the patriarch was set to open up a Pandora's
box.
Meanwhile, the Normans were busy imposing Latin customs, including the unleavened bread—with papal approval. This riled the
patriarch Cerularius, who ordered the Latin churches of Constantinople to adopt Eastern usages and when they refused, he shut
them down (although this piece of information is questionable for many historians today; it seems that several Latin churches
were still open even years later). He 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. 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, Cerularius 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 was not to their liking, however, and they stormed out of the palace, leaving
the papal response with Cerularius, 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.[1]
When Pope Leo died on April 19,1054, the legates' authority
legally ceased, but they did not seem to notice.[citation needed] 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 Ware (formerly Timothy Ware) writes, "The choice of Cardinal
Humbert was unfortunate, for both he and Cerularius were men of stiff and intransigent temper. . . . After [an initial,
unfriendly encounter] the patriarch refused to have further dealings with the legates. Eventually Humbert lost patience, and laid
a bull of excommunication against Cerularius on the altar of the Church of the Holy Wisdom. . . . Cerularius and his synod
retaliated by anathematizing Humbert (but not the Roman Church as such)" (The Orthodox Church, 67).
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, is not correct, because in the
bull composed by Humbert, only Patriarch Cerularius 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 and abstained from any
attack on the pope or the Latin Church."
Early attempts at reconciliation
"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" (Ware, 67).
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 Fragkokratia. After that, the
break became permanent. Later attempts at reconciliation, such as the Second Council of
Lyon, met with little or no success.
Reconciliation
During the 12th century, the Maronite Church in
Lebanon and Syria reconciled with the Church of Rome, while preserving most of its own Syriac
liturgy. Between then and the 20th century, some Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches entered into full communion with the
Roman Catholic Church, thereby establishing the Eastern Catholic Churches as
in full communion with, but liturgically and hierarchically distinguished from, the Holy
See.
The Catholic-Orthodox Joint Declaration of 1965 was read
out on 7 December, 1965, simultaneously at a public meeting of
the Second Vatican Council in Rome and at a special ceremony in Constantinople.
It withdrew the exchange of excommunications between prominent ecclesiastics in the
Roman see and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in
1054. It did not end the East-West Schism but showed a desire for greater reconciliation between
the two churches, represented by Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I.
May 7-May 9, 1999: invited by
Teoctist, the Patriarch of the Romanian
Orthodox Church, Pope John Paul II visited Romania. It was the first visit of a Pope to an Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism.[2] After the mass officiated in Izvor Park, Bucharest, the crowd
(both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox) chanted "Unity!" Despite the fact that Pope John Paul II did not participate as an
officiant, but only assisted at the Orthodox liturgy officiated by the Romanian Patriarch, the
Greek monks of Mount Athos refused to admit Romanian priests and hieromonks as co-officiants at their liturgies for a few years afterwards.[citation needed] Patriarch Teoctist visited
Vatican City at the invitation of Pope John Paul from October
7–October 14, 2002.
On November 27, 2004, in an attempt to "promote Christian
unity", Pope John Paul II returned the relics of two sainted Archbishops of Constantinople, John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus to
Constantinople (modern day Istanbul). The Orthodox
believe the relics were stolen from Constantinople in 1204 by participants in the Fourth
Crusade, an interpretation that Vatican spokesman Dr Joaquin Navarro Valls
declared to be "historically inaccurate".[3]
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, together with
Patriarchs and Archbishops of other Eastern Orthodox Churches, were present at the funeral of Pope John Paul II on 8 April 2005. Bartholomew sat in the first chair of honor. The special and increased role of the Eastern Orthodox
Patriarchs in Pope John Paul's funeral along with the fact that this was the first time for many centuries that an Ecumenical
Patriarch has attended the funeral of a Pope, was considered by many a serious sign that dialogue towards reconciliation might
have started.
On May 29 2005 in Bari,
Italy, Pope Benedict XVI cited reconciliation as a
commitment of his papacy, saying, "I want to repeat my willingness to assume as a fundamental commitment working to reconstitute
the full and visible unity of all the followers of Christ, with all my energy."[4] Pope Benedict XVI was invited to visit Turkey in November 2006 by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I
[2].
Archbishop Christodoulos, head of the Greek Orthodox
Church, visited Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican on December 13, 2006. It was the first official visit by a head of the Church of Greece
to the Vatican.
Notes
See also
External links
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