6
July 1054 A.D. 1054
East-West Schism
1054 The East-West
Schism
Long-standing
differences between Western and Eastern Christians finally caused a definitive
break, and Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox still remain separate.
Dr. George T. Dennis is
professor of history at Catholic University of America in Washington. D.C., and
author of several books on the Byzantine Empire.
On Saturday, July 16, 1054, as afternoon prayers
were about to begin, Cardinal Humbert, legate of Pope Leo IX, strode into the
Cathedral of Hagia Sophia, right up to the main altar, and placed on it a
parchment that declared the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, to
be excommunicated. He then marched out of the church, shook its dust from his
feet, and left the city. A week later the patriarch solemnly condemned the
cardinal.
Centuries later, this
dramatic incident was thought to mark the beginning of the schism between the
Latin and the Greek churches, a division that still separates Roman Catholics
and Eastern Orthodox (Greek, Russian, and other). Today, however, no serious scholar maintains that the
schism began in 1054. The process leading to the definitive break was
much more complicated, and no single cause or event can be said to have
precipitated it.
Immediate Causes of the Break
In 1048 a French bishop
was elected as Pope Leo IX. He and the clerics who accompanied him to Rome were
intent on reforming the papacy and the entire church. Five years earlier in
Constantinople, the rigid and ambitious Michael Cerularius was named patriarch.
Problems arose in
Southern Italy (then under Byzantine rule) in the 1040s, when Norman warriors
conquered the region and replaced Greek [Eastern] bishops with Latin [Western]
ones. People were confused, and they argued about the proper form of the
liturgy and other external matters. Differences over clerical marriage, the
bread used for the Eucharist, days of fasting, and other usages assumed an
unprecedented importance.
When Cerularius heard
that the Normans were forbidding Greek customs in Southern Italy, he
retaliated, in 1052, by closing the Latin churches in Constantinople. He then
induced bishop Leo of Ochrid to compose an attack on the Latin use of
unleavened bread and other practices. In response to this provocative treatise,
Pope Leo sent his chief adviser, Humbert, a tactless and narrow-minded man with
a strong sense of papal authority, to Constantinople to deal with the problem
directly.
On arriving in the
imperial city in April 1054, Humbert launched into a vicious criticism of
Cerularius and his supporters. But the patriarch ignored the papal legate, and
an angry Humbert stalked into Hagia Sophia and placed on the altar the bull of
excommunication. He returned to Rome convinced he had gained a victory for the
Holy See.
Dramatic though they
were, the events of 1054 were not recorded by the chroniclers of the time and
were quickly forgotten. Negotiations between the pope and the Byzantine emperor
continued, especially in the last two decades of the century, as the Byzantines
sought aid against the invading Turks. In 1095, to provide such help, Pope
Urban II proclaimed the Crusades; certainly there was no schism between the
churches at that time. Despite episodes of tension and conflict, Eastern and
Western Christians lived and worshiped together.
In the latter half of
the twelfth century, however, friction between the groups increased, caused not
so much by religious differences as by political and cultural ones. Violent
anti-Latin riots erupted in Constantinople in 1182, and in 1204 Western knights
brutally ravaged Constantinople itself. The tension accelerated, and by 1234,
when Greek and Latin churchmen met to discuss their differences, it was obvious
they represented different churches.
Underlying Causes of the Break
What caused the schism?
It was not the excommunications of 1054; not differences in theology,
discipline, or liturgy; not political or military conflicts. These may have
disposed the churches to draw apart, as did prejudice, misunderstanding,
arrogance, and plain stupidity. More fundamental, perhaps, was the way each
church came to perceive itself.
The eleventh-century reform
in the Western Church called for the strengthening of papal authority, which
caused the church to become more autocratic and centralized. Basing his claims
on his succession from St. Peter, the pope asserted his direct jurisdiction
over the entire church, East as well as West.
The Byzantines, on the
other hand, viewed their church in the context of the imperial system; their
sources of law and unity were the ecumenical councils and the emperor, whom God
had placed over all things, spiritual and temporal. They believed that the
Eastern churches had always enjoyed autonomy of governance, and they rejected
papal claims to absolute rule. But neither side was really listening to the
other.
In addition, since the
ninth century, theological controversy had focused on the procession of the
Holy Spirit. In the life of the Trinity, does the Spirit proceed from the
Father only, or from the Father and from the Son (Filioque in
Latin)? The Western church, concerned about resurgent Arianism, had, almost
inadvertently, added the word to the Nicene Creed, claiming that it made more
precise a teaching already in the creed. The Greeks objected to the unilateral
addition to the creed, and they strongly disagreed with the theological
proposition involved, which seemed to them to diminish the individual
properties of the three Persons in the Trinity. In 1439 Greek and Latin
theologians at the Council of Florence, after debating the issue for over a
year, arrived at a compromise that, while reasonable, has not proven fully
satisfactory.
After the Byzantine Empire
fell in 1453, the Eastern church lived on under Turkish rule and then in
various nations. Millions of Orthodox Christians in those lands are still
separated from the millions of Christians adhering to Rome. Today greater
efforts are made to address the issues, but neither side seems willing to make
the necessary concessions. As a result, Christians who share a common belief
and accept Jesus as head of the church, feel that they cannot share his
Eucharist.
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