Posted on 07/06/2003 6:31:26 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861
THE GREAT SCHISM The Estrangement of Eastern and Western Christendom
By
Bishop Kallistos Ware
One summer afternoon in the year 1054, as a service was about to begin in the Church of the "Holy Wisdom" (Hagia Sophia) at Constantinople, Cardinal Humbert and two other legates of the Pope entered the building and made their way up to the sanctuary. They had not come to pray. They placed a Bull of Excommunication upon the altar and marched out once more. As he passed through the western door, the Cardinal shook the dust from his feet with the words: 'Let God look and judge.' A deacon ran out after him in great distress and begged him to take back the Bull. Humbert refused; and it was dropped in the street.
It is this incident which has conventionally been taken to mark the beginning of the great schism between the Orthodox east and the Latin west. But the schism, as historians now generally recognize, is not really an event whose beginning can be exactly dated. It was something that came about gradually, as the result of a long and complicated process, starting well before the eleventh century and not completed until some time after.
In this long and complicated process, many different influences were at work. The schism was conditioned by cultural, political, and economic factors; yet its fundamental cause was not secular but theological. In the last resort it was over matters of doctrine that east and west quarreled - two matters in particular: the Papal claims and the Filioque. But before we look more closely at these two major differences, and before we consider the actual course of the schism, something must be said about the wider background. Long before there was an open and formal schism between east and west, the two sides had become strangers to one another; and in attempting to understand how and why the communion of Christendom was broken, we must start with this fact of increasing estrangement.
When Paul and the other Apostles traveled around the Mediterranean world, they moved within a closely-knit political and cultural unity: the Roman Empire. This Empire embraced many different national groups, often with languages and dialects of their own. But all these groups were governed by the same Emperor; there was a broad Greco-Roman civilization in which educated people throughout the Empire shared; either Greek or Latin was understood almost everywhere in the Empire, and many could speak both languages. These facts greatly assisted the early Church in its missionary work.
But in the centuries that followed, the unity of the Mediterranean world gradually disappeared. The political unity was the first to go. From the end of the third century the Empire, while still theoretically one, was usually divided into two parts, an eastern and a western, each under its own Emperor. Constantine furthered this process of separation by founding a second imperial capital in the east, alongside Old Rome in Italy. Then came the barbarian invasions at the start of the fifth century: apart from Italy, much of which remained within the Empire for some time longer, the west was carved up among barbarian chiefs. The Byzantines never forgot the ideals of Rome under Augustus and Trajan, and still regarded their Empire as in theory universal; but Justinian was the last Emperor who seriously attempted to bridge the gulf between theory and fact, and his conquests in the west were soon abandoned. The political unity of the Greek east and the Latin west was destroyed by the barbarian invasions, and never permanently restored.
During the late sixth and the seventh centuries, east and west were further isolated from each other by the Avar and Slav invasions of the Balkan peninsula; Illyricum, which used to serve as a bridge, became in this way a barrier between Byzantium and the Latin world. The severance was carried a stage further by the rise of Islam: the Mediterranean, which the Romans once called mare nostrum, 'our sea', now passed largely into Arab control. Cultural and economic contacts between the eastern and western Mediterranean never entirely ceased, but they became far more difficult.
The Iconoclast controversy contributed still further to the division between Byzantium and the west. The Popes were firm supporters of the Iconodule standpoint, and so for many decades they found themselves out of communion with the Iconoclast Emperor and Patriarch at Constantinople. Cut off from Byzantium and in need of help, in 754 Pope Stephen turned northwards and visited the Frankish ruler, Pepin. This marked the first step in a decisive change of orientation so far as the Papacy was concerned. Hitherto Rome had continued in many ways to be part of the Byzantine world, but now it passed increasingly under Frankish influence, although the effects of this reorientation did not become fully apparent until the middle of the eleventh century.
Pope Stephen's visit to Pepin was followed half a century later by a much more dramatic event. On Christmas Day in the year 800 Pope Leo III crowned Charles the Great, King of the Franks, as Emperor. Charlemagne sought recognition from the ruler at Byzantium, but without success; for the Byzantines, still adhering to the principle of imperial unity, regarded Charlemagne as an intruder and the Papal coronation as an act of schism within the Empire. The creation of a Holy Roman Empire in the west, instead of drawing Europe closer together, only served to alienate east and west more than before.
The cultural unity lingered on, but in a greatly attenuated form. Both in east and west, people of learning still lived within the classical tradition which the Church had taken over and made its own; but as time went on they began to interpret this tradition in increasingly divergent ways. Matters were made more difficult by problems of language. The days when educated people were bilingual were over. By the year 450 there were very few in western Europe who could read Greek, and after 600, although Byzantium still called itself the Roman Empire, it was rare for a Byzantine to speak Latin, the language of the Romans. Photius, the greatest scholar in ninth-century Constantinople, could not read Latin; and in 864 a 'Roman' Emperor at Byzantium, Michael III, even called the language in which Virgil once wrote 'a barbarian and Scythic tongue'. If Greeks wished to read Latin works or vice versa, they could do so only in translation, and usually they did not trouble to do even that: Psellus, an eminent Greek savant of the eleventh century, had so sketchy a knowledge of Latin literature that he confused Caesar with Cicero. Because they no longer drew upon the same sources nor read the same books, Greek east and Latin west drifted more and more apart.
It was an ominous but significant precedent that the cultural renaissance in Charlemagne's Court should have been marked at its outset by a strong anti-Greek prejudice. In fourth-century Europe there had been one Christian civilization, in thirteenth century Europe there were two. Perhaps it is in the reign of Charlemagne that the schism of civilizations first becomes clearly apparent. The Byzantines for their part remained enclosed in their own world of ideas, and did little to meet the west half way. Alike in the ninth and in later centuries they usually failed to take western learning as seriously as it deserved. They dismissed all Franks as barbarians and nothing more. These political and cultural factors could not but affect the life of the Church, and make it harder to maintain religious unity. Cultural and political estrangement can lead only too easily to ecclesiastical disputes, as may be seen from the case of Charlemagne. Refused recognition in the political sphere by the Byzantine Emperor, he was quick to retaliate with a charge of heresy against the Byzantine Church: he denounced the Greeks for not using the Filioque in the Creed (of this we shall say more in a moment) and he declined to accept the decisions of the seventh Ecumenical Council. It is true that Charlemagne only knew of these decisions through a faulty translation that seriously distorted their true meaning; but he seems in any case to have been semi-iconoclast in his views.
The different political situations in east and west made the Church assume different outward forms, so that people came gradually to think of Church order in conflicting ways. From the start there had been a certain difference of emphasis here between east and west. In the east there were many Churches whose foundation went back to the Apostles; there was a strong sense of the equality of all bishops, of the collegial and conciliar nature of the Church. The east acknowledged the Pope as the first bishop in the Church, but saw him as the first among equals. In the west, on the other hand, there was only one great see claiming Apostolic foundation - Rome - so that Rome came to be regarded as the Apostolic see. The west, while it accepted the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils, did not play a very active part in the Councils themselves; the Church was seen less as a college and more as a monarchy- the monarchy of the Pope.
This initial divergence in outlook was made more acute by political developments. As was only natural, the barbarian invasions and the consequent breakdown of the Empire in the west served greatly to strengthen the autocratic structure of the western Church. In the east there was a strong secular head, the Emperor, to uphold the civilized order and to enforce law. In the west, after the advent of the barbarians, there was only a plurality of warring chiefs, all more or less usurpers. For the most part it was the Papacy alone that could act as a center of unity, as an element of continuity and stability in the spiritual and political life of western Europe. By force of circumstances, the Pope assumed a part that the Greek Patriarchs were not called to play, issuing commands not only to his ecclesiastical subordinates but to secular rulers as well. The western Church gradually became centralized to a degree unknown anywhere in the four Patriarchates of the east (except possibly in Egypt). Monarchy in the west; in the east collegiality.
Nor was this the only effect that the barbarian invasions had upon the life of the Church. In Byzantium there were many educated laymen who took an active interest in theology. The 'lay theologian' has always been an accepted figure in Orthodoxy: some of the most learned Byzantine Patriarch Photius, for example - were laymen before their appointment to the Patriarchate. But in the west the Church provided the only effective education that survived through the Dark Ages for its clergy. Theology became the preserve of the priests, since most of the laity could not even read, much less comprehend the technicalities of theological discussion. Orthodoxy, while assigning to the episcopate a special teaching office, has never known this sharp division between clergy and laity that arose in the western Middle Ages.
Relations between eastern and western Christendom were also made more difficult by the lack of a common language. Because the two sides could no longer communicate easily with one another, and each could no longer read what the other wrote, misunderstandings arose much more easily. The shared 'universe of discourse' was progressively lost.
East and west were becoming strangers to one another, and this was something from which both were likely to suffer. In the early Church there had been unity in the faith, but a diversity of theological schools. From the start Greeks and Latins had each approached the Christian Mystery in their own way. At the risk of some oversimplification, it can be said that the Latin approach was more practical, the Greek more speculative; Latin thought was influenced by juridical ideas, by the concepts of Roman law, while the Greeks understood theology in the context of worship and in the light of the Holy Liturgy. When thinking about the Trinity, Latins started with the unity of the Godhead, Greeks with the threeness of the persons; when reflecting on the Crucifixion, Latins thought primarily of Christ the Victim, Greeks of Christ the Victor; Latins talked more of redemption, Greeks of deification; and so on. Like the schools of Antioch and Alexandria within the east, these two distinctive approaches were not in themselves contradictory; each served to supplement the other, and each had its place in the fullness of Catholic tradition. But now that the two sides were becoming strangers to one another - with no political and little cultural unity, with no common language - there was a danger that each side would follow its own approach in isolation and push it to extremes, forgetting the value in the other point of view.
We have spoken of the different doctrinal approaches in east and west; but there were two points of doctrine where the two sides no longer supplemented one another, but entered into direct conflict - the Papal claims and the Filioque. The factors that we have mentioned in previous paragraphs were sufficient in themselves to place a serious strain upon the unity of Christendom. Yet for all that, unity might still have been maintained, had there not been these two further points of difficulty. To them we must now turn. It was not until the middle of the ninth century that the full extent of the disagreement first came properly into the open, but the two differences themselves date back considerably earlier.
We have already had occasion to mention the Papacy when speaking of the different political situations in east and west; and we have seen how the centralized and monarchical structure of the western Church was reinforced by the barbarian invasions. Now so long as the Pope claimed an absolute power only in the west, Byzantium raised no objections. The Byzantines did not mind if the western Church was centralized, so long as the Papacy did not interfere in the east. The Pope, however, believed his immediate power of jurisdiction to extend to the east as well as to the west; and as soon as he tried to enforce this claim within the eastern Patriarchates, trouble was bound to arise. The Greeks assigned to the Pope a primacy of honor, but not the universal supremacy which he regarded as his due. The Pope viewed infallibility as his own prerogative; the Greeks held that in matters of the faith the final decision rested not with the Pope alone, but with a Council representing all the bishops of the Church. Here we have two different conceptions of the visible organization of the Church.
The Orthodox attitude to the Papacy is admirably expressed by a twelfth-century writer, Nicetas, Archbishop of Nicomedia:
My dearest brother, we do not deny to the Roman Church the primacy amongst the five sister Patriarchates; and we recognize her right to the most honorable seat at an Ecumenical Council. But she has separated herself from us by her own deeds, when through pride she assumed a monarchy which does not belong to her office . . . How shall we accept decrees from her that have been issued without consulting us and even without our knowledge? If the Roman Pontiff, seated on the lofty throne of his glory wishes to thunder at us and, so to speak, hurl his mandates at us from on high, and if he wishes to judge us and even to rule us and our Churches, not by taking counsel with us but at his own arbitrary pleasure, what kind of brotherhood, or even what kind of parenthood can this be? We should be the slaves, not the sons, of such a Church, and the Roman See would not be the pious mother of sons but a hard and imperious mistress of slaves.
That was how an Orthodox felt in the twelfth century, when the whole question had come out into the open. In earlier centuries the Greek attitude to the Papacy was basically the same, although not yet sharpened by controversy. Up to 850, Rome and the east avoided an open conflict over the Papal claims, but the divergence of views was not the less serious for being partially concealed.
The second great difficulty was the Filioque. The dispute involved the words about the Holy Spirit in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Originally the Creed ran: 'I believe . . . in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and together glorified.' This, the original form, is recited unchanged by the east to this day. But the west inserted an extra phrase 'and from the Son' (in Latin, Filioque), so that the Creed now reads 'who proceeds from the Father and the Son'. It is not certain when and where this addition was first made, but it seems to have originated in Spain, as a safeguard against Arianism. At any rate the Spanish Church interpolated the Filioque at the third Council of Toledo (589), if not before. From Spain the addition spread to France and thence to Germany, where it was welcomed by Charlemagne and adopted at the semi-iconoclast Council of Frankfort (794). It was writers at Charlemagne's court who first made the Filioque into an issue of controversy, accusing the Greeks of heresy because they recited the Creed in its original form. But Rome, with typical conservatism, continued to use the Creed without the Filioque until the start of the eleventh century. In 808 Pope Leo 111 wrote in a letter to Charlemagne that, although he himself believed the Filioque to be doctrinally sound, yet he considered it a mistake to tamper with the wording of the Creed. Leo deliberately had the Creed, without the Filioque, inscribed on silver plaques and set up in St Peter's. For the time being Rome acted as a mediator between the Franks and Byzantium.
It was not until 860 that the Greeks paid much attention to the Filioque, but once they did so, their reaction was sharply critical. The Orthodox objected (and still object) to this addition to the Creed, for two reasons. First, the Creed is the common possession of the whole Church, and if any change is to be made in it, this can only be done by an Ecumenical Council. The west, in altering the Creed without consulting the east, is guilty (as Khomiakov put it) of moral fratricide, of a sin against the unity of the Church. In the second place, most Orthodox believe the Filioque to be theologically untrue. They hold that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, and consider it a heresy to say that He proceeds from the Son as well. There are, however, some Orthodox who consider that the Filioque is not in itself heretical and is indeed admissible as a theological opinion - not a dogma - provided that it is properly explained. But even those who take this more moderate view still regard it as an unauthorized addition.
Besides these two major issues, the Papacy and the Filioque, there were certain lesser matters of Church worship and discipline which caused trouble between east and west: the Greeks allowed married clergy, the Latins insisted on priestly celibacy; the two sides had different rules of fasting; the Greeks used leavened bread in the Eucharist, the Latins unleavened bread Around 850 east and west were still in full communion with one another and still formed one Church. Cultural and political divisions had combined to bring about an increasing estrangement, but there was no open schism. The to sides had different conceptions of Papal authority and recited the Creed in different forms, but these questions had not yet been brought fully into the open.
But in 1190 Theodore Balsamon, Patriarch of Antioch and a great authority on Canon Law, looked at matters very differently:
For many years [he does not say how many] the western Church has been divided in spiritual communion from the other four Patriarchates and has become alien to the Orthodox . . . So no Latin should be given communion unless he first declares that he will abstain from the doctrines and customs that separate him from us, and that he will be subject to the Canons of the Church, in union with the Orthodox.
In Balsamon's eyes, communion had been broken; there was a definite schism between east and west. The two no longer formed one visible Church. In this transition from estrangement to schism, four incidents are of particular importance: the quarrel between Photius and Pope Nicolas I (usually known as the 'Photian schism': the east would prefer to call it the 'schism of Nicolas'); the incident of the Diptychs in 1009; the attempt at reconciliation in 1053-4 and its disastrous sequel; and the Crusades.
From Estrangement to Schism (858—1204) In 858, fifteen years after the triumph of icons under Theodora, a new Patriarch of Constantinople was appointed - Photius, known to the Orthodox Church as St Photius the Great. He has been termed 'the most distinguished thinker, the most outstanding politician, and the most skillful diplomat ever to hold office as Patriarch of Constantinople.' Soon after his accession he became involved in a dispute with Pope Nicolas I (858-67). The previous Patriarch, St. Ignatius, had been exiled by the Emperor and while in exile had resigned under pressure. The supporters of Ignatius, declining to regard this resignation as valid, considered Photius a usurper. When Photius sent a letter to the Pope announcing his accession, Nicolas decided that before recognizing Photius he would look further Into the quarrel between the new Patriarch and the Ignatian party. Accordingly in 861 he sent legates to Constantinople.
Photius had no desire to start a dispute with the Papacy. He treated the legates with great deference, inviting them to preside at a council in Constantinople, which was to settle the issue between Ignatius and himself. The legates agreed, and together with the rest of the council they decided that Photius was the legitimate Patriarch. But when his legates returned to Rome, Nicolas declared that they had exceeded their powers, and he disowned their decision. He then proceeded to retry the case himself at Rome: a council held under his presidency In 863 recognized Ignatius as Patriarch, and proclaimed Photius to be deposed from all priestly dignity. The Byzantines took no notice of this condemnation, and sent no answer to the Pope's letters. Thus an open breach existed between the Churches of Rome and Constantinople.
The dispute clearly involved the Papal claims. Nicolas was a great reforming Pope, with an exalted idea of the prerogatives of his see, and he had already done much to establish an absolute power over all bishops in the west. But he believed this absolute power to extend to the east also: as he put it in a letter of 865, the Pope is endowed with authority 'over all the earth, that is, over every Church'. This was precisely what the Byzantines were not prepared to grant. Confronted with the dispute between Photius and Ignatius, Nicolas thought that he saw a golden opportunity to enforce his claim to universal jurisdiction: he would make both parties submit to his arbitration. But he realized that Photius had submitted voluntarily to the inquiry by the Papal legates, and that his action could not be taken as recognition of Papal supremacy. This (among other reasons) was why Nicolas had cancelled his legates' decisions. The Byzantines for their part were willing to allow appeals to Rome, but only under the specific conditions laid down on of the Council of Sardica (343). This Canon states that a bishop, if under sentence of condemnation, can appeal to Rome, and the Pope, if he sees cause, can order a retrial; this retrial, however, is not to be conducted by the Pope himself at Rome, but by the bishops of the provinces adjacent to that of the condemned bishop. Nicolas, so the Byzantines felt, in reversing the decisions of his legates and demanding a retrial at Rome itself, was going far beyond the terms of this canon. They regarded his behavior as an unwarrantable and uncanonical interference in the affairs of another Patriarchate.
Soon not only the Papal claims, but the Filioque became involved in the dispute. Byzantium and the west (chiefly the Germans) were both launching great missionary ventures among the Slavs.' The two lines of missionary advance, from the east and from the west, soon converged; and when Greek and German missionaries found themselves at work in the same land, it was difficult to avoid a conflict, since the two missions were run on widely different principles. The clash naturally brought to the fore the question of the Filioque, used by the Germans in the Creed, but not used by the Greeks. The chief point of trouble was Bulgaria, a country which Rome and Constantinople alike were anxious to add to their sphere of jurisdiction. The Khan Boris was at first inclined to ask the German missionaries for baptism: threatened, however, with a Byzantine invasion, he changed his policy and around 865 accepted baptism from Greek clergy. But Boris wanted the Church in Bulgaria to be independent, and when Constantinople refused to grant autonomy, he turned to the west in hope of better terms. Given a free hand in Bulgaria, the Latin missionaries promptly launched a violent attack on the Greeks, singling out the points where Byzantine practice differed from their own: married clergy, rules of fasting, and above all the Filioque. At Rome itself the Filioque was still not in use, but Nicolas gave full support to the Germans when they insisted upon its insertion in Bulgaria. The Papacy, which in 808 had mediated between the Franks and the Greeks, was now neutral no longer.
Photius was naturally alarmed by the extension of German influence in the Balkans, on the very borders of the Byzantine Empire; but he was much more alarmed by the question of the Filioque, now brought forcibly to his attention. In 867 he took action. He wrote an Encyclical Letter to the other Patriarchs of the east, denouncing the Filioque at length and charging those who used it with heresy. Photius has often been blamed for writing this letter: even the great Roman Catholic historian Francis Dvornik who is in general highly sympathetic to Photius, calls his action on this occasion a futile attack, and says 'the lapse was inconsiderate, hasty, and big with fatal consequences'. But if Photius really considered the Filioque heretical, what else could he do except speak his mind? It must also be remembered that it was not Photius who first made the Filioque a matter of controversy, but Charlemagne and his scholars seventy years before: the west was the original aggressor, not the east. Photius followed up his letter by summoning a council to Constantinople, which declared Pope Nicolas excommunicate, terming him 'a heretic who ravages the vineyard of the Lord'.
At this critical point in the dispute, the whole situation suddenly changed. In this same year (867) the Emperor deposed Photius from the Patriarchate. Ignatius became Patriarch once more, and communion with Rome was restored. In 869-70 another council was held at Constantinople, known as the 'Anti-Photian Council', which condemned and anathematized Photius, reversing the decisions of 867. This council later reckoned in the west as the eighth Ecumenical Council, opened with the unimpressive total of 12 bishops, although numbers at subsequent sessions rose to 103.
But there were further changes to come. The 869-70 council requested the Emperor to resolve the status of the Bulgarian Church, and not surprisingly he decided that it should be assigned to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Realizing that Rome would allow him less independence than Byzantium, Boris accepted this decision. From 870, then, the German missionaries were expelled and the Filioque was heard no more in the confines of Bulgaria. Nor was this all. At Constantinople, Ignatius and Photius were reconciled to one another, and when Ignatius died in 877, Photius once more succeeded him as Patriarch. In 879 yet another council was held in Constantinople, attended by 383 bishops - a notable contrast with the meager total at the anti-Photian gathering ten years previously. The council of 869 was anathematized and all condemnations of Photius were withdrawn; these decisions were accepted without protest at Rome. So Photius ended victorious, recognized by Rome and ecclesiastically master of Bulgaria. Until recently it was thought -hat there was a second 'Photian schism', but Dr Dvornik has proved with devastating conclusiveness that this second schism is a myth: in Photius' later period of office (877-86) communion between Constantinople and the Papacy remained unbroken. The Pope at this time, John VIII (872-82), was no friend to the Franks and did not press the question of the Filioque, nor did he attempt to enforce the Papal claims in the east. Perhaps he recognized how seriously the policy of Nicolas had endangered the unity of Christendom.
Thus the schism was outwardly healed, but no real solution had been reached concerning the two great points of difference that the dispute between Nicolas and Photius had forced into the open. Matters had been patched up, and that was all.
Photius, always honored in the east as a saint, a leader of the Church, and a theologian, has in the past been regarded by the west with less enthusiasm, as the author of a schism and little else. His good qualities are now more widely appreciated. 'If I am right in my conclusions,' so Dr Dvornik ends his monumental study, 'we shall be free once more to recognize in Photius a great Churchman, a learned humanist, and a genuine Christian, generous enough to forgive his enemies, and to take the first step towards reconciliation.
At the beginning of the eleventh century there was fresh trouble over the Filioque. The Papacy at last adopted the addition: at the coronation of Emperor Henry 11 at Rome in 1014, the Creed was sung in its interpolated form. Five years earlier, in 1009, the newly elected Pope Sergius IV sent a letter to Constantinople that may have contained the Filioque, although this is not certain. Whatever the reason, the Patriarch of Constantinople, also called Sergius, did not include the new Pope's name in the Diptychs: these are lists, kept by each Patriarch, which contain the names of the other Patriarchs, living and departed, whom he recognizes as orthodox. The Diptychs are a visible sign of the unity of the Church, and deliberately to omit a person's name from them is tantamount to a declaration that one is not in communion with him. After 1009 the Pope's name did not appear again in the Diptychs of Constantinople; technically, therefore, the Churches of Rome and Constantinople were out of communion from that date. But it would be unwise to press this technicality too far. Diptychs were frequently incomplete, and so do not form an infallible guide to Church relations. The Constantinopolitan lists before 1009 often lacked the Pope's name, simply because new Popes at their accession failed to notify the east. The omission in 1009 aroused no comment at Rome, and even at Constantinople people quickly forgot why and when the Pope's name had first been dropped from the Diptychs.
As the eleventh century proceeded, new factors brought relations between the Papacy and the eastern Patriarchates to a further crisis. The previous century had been a period of grave instability and confusion for the see of Rome, a century which Cardinal Baronius justly termed an age of iron and lead in the history of the Papacy. But under German influence Rome now reformed itself, and through the rule of men such as Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII) it gained a position of power in the west such as it had never before achieved. The reformed Papacy naturally revived the claims to universal jurisdiction that Nicolas had made. The Byzantines on their side had grown accustomed to dealing with a Papacy that was for the most part weak and disorganized, and so they found it difficult to adapt themselves to the new situation. Matters were made worse by political factors, such as the military aggression of the Normans in Byzantine Italy, and the commercial encroachments of the Italian maritime cities in the eastern Mediterranean during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
In 1054 there was a severe quarrel. The Normans had been forcing the Greeks in Byzantine Italy to conform to Latin usages; the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, in return demanded that the Latin churches at Constantinople should adopt Greek practices, and in 1052, when they refused, he closed them. This was perhaps harsh, but as Patriarch he was fully entitled to act in this manner. Among the practices to which Michael and his supporters particularly objected was the Latin use of 'azymes' or unleavened bread in the Eucharist, an issue that had not figured in the dispute of the ninth century. In 1053, however, Cerularius took up a more conciliatory attitude and wrote to Pope Leo IX, offering to restore the Pope's name to the Diptychs. In response to this offer, and to settle the disputed questions of Greek and Latin usages, Leo in 1054 sent three legates to Constantinople, the chief of them being Humbert, Bishop of Silva Candida. The choice of Cardinal Humbert was unfortunate, for both he and Cerularius were men of stiff and intransigent temper, whose mutual encounter was not likely to promote good will among Christians. The legates, when they called on Cerularius, did not create a favourable impression. Thrusting a letter from the Pope at him, they retired without giving the usual salutations; the letter itself, although signed by Leo, had in fact been drafted by Humbert, and was distinctly unfriendly in tone. After this 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: among other ill-founded charges in this document, Humbert accused the Greeks of omitting the Filioque from the Creed! Humbert promptly left Constantinople without offering any further explanation of his act, and on returning to Italy he represented the whole incident as a great victory for the see of Rome. Cerularius and his synod retaliated by anathematizing Humbert (but not the Roman Church as such). The attempt at reconciliation left matters worse than before.
But 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, and people on both sides still hoped that the misunderstandings could be cleared up without too much difficulty. The dispute remained something of which ordinary Christians in east and west were largely unaware. It was the Crusades that made the schism definitive: they introduced a new spirit of hatred and bitterness, and they brought the whole issue down to the popular level.
From the military point of view, however, the Crusades began with great éclat. Antioch was captured from the Turks in 1098, Jerusalem in 1099: the first Crusade was a brilliant, if bloody,' success. At both Antioch and Jerusalem the Crusaders proceeded to set up Latin Patriarchs. At Jerusalem this was reasonable, since the see was vacant at the time; and although in the years that followed there existed a succession of Greek Patriarchs of Jerusalem, living exiled in Cyprus, yet within Palestine itself the whole population, Greek as well as Latin, at first accepted the Latin Patriarch as their head. A Russian pilgrim at Jerusalem in 1106-7, Abbot Daniel of Tchernigov, found Greeks and Latins worshipping together in harmony at the Holy Places, though he noted with satisfaction that at the ceremony of the Holy Fire the Greek lamps were lit miraculously while the Latin had to be lit from the Greek. But at Antioch the Crusaders found a Greek Patriarch actually in residence: shortly afterwards, it is true, he withdrew to Constantinople, but the local Greek population was unwilling to recognize the Latin Patriarch whom the Crusaders set up in his place. Thus from 11000 there existed in effect a local schism at Antioch. After I 187, when Saladin captured Jerusalem, the situation in the Holy land deteriorated: two rivals, resident within Palestine itself, now divided the Christian population between them - a Latin Patriarch at Acre, a Greek at Jerusalem. These local schisms at Antioch and Jerusalem were a sinister development. Rome was very far away, and if Rome and Constantinople quarreled, what practical difference did it make to the average Christian in Syria or Palestine? But when two rival bishops claimed the same throne and two hostile congregations existed in the same city, the division became an immediate reality in which simple believers were directly implicated. It was the Crusades that turned the dispute into something that involved whole Christian congregations, and not just church leaders; the Crusaders brought the schism down to the local level.
But worse was to follow in 1204, with the taking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. The Crusaders were originally bound for Egypt, but were persuaded by Alexius, son of Isaac Angelus, the dispossessed Emperor of Byzantium, to turn aside to Constantinople in order to restore him and his father to the throne. This western intervention in Byzantine politics did not go happily, and eventually the Crusaders, disgusted by what they regarded as Greek duplicity, lost patience and sacked the city. Eastern Christendom has never forgotten those three appalling days of pillage. 'Even the Saracens are merciful and kind,' protested Nicetas Choniates, 'compared with these men who bear the Cross of Christ on their shoulders.' In the words of Sir Steven Runciman, 'The Crusaders brought not peace but a sword; and the sword was to sever Christendom. The long-standing doctrinal disagreements were now reinforced on the Greek side by an intense national hatred, by a feeling of resentment and indignation against western aggression and sacrilege. After 1204 there can be no doubt that Christian east and Christian west were divided into two.
Orthodoxy and Rome each believes itself to have been right and its opponent wrong upon the points of doctrine that arose between them; and so Rome and Orthodoxy since the schism have each claimed to be the true Church. Yet each, while believing in the rightness of its own cause, must look back at the past with sorrow and repentance. Both sides must in honesty acknowledge that they could and should have done more to prevent the schism. Both sides were guilty of mistakes on the human level. Orthodox, for example, must blame themselves for the pride and contempt with which during the Byzantine period they regarded the west; they must blame themselves for incidents such as the riot of 1182, when many Latin residents at Constantinople were massacred by the Byzantine populace. (None the less there is no action on the Byzantine side that can be compared to the sack of 1204.) And each side, while claiming to be the one true Church, must admit that on the human level it has been grievously impoverished by the separation. The Greek east and the Latin west needed and still need one another. For both parties the great schism has proved a great tragedy.
But what about the Assumption of Mary? Where did this Roman doctrine originate historically and what position(s) has Rome held upon the Assumption of Mary?
- Alfonsus de Liguori (1696-1787) was a principal proponent of the Marianist Movement, which glorifies Mary. He wrote a book entitled The Glories of Mary which is famous, influential and widely read. In this book, de Liguori says that Mary was given rulership over one half of the kingdom of God; Mary rules over the kingdom of mercy and Jesus rules over the kingdom of justice. De Liguori said that people should pray to Mary as a mediator and look to her as an object of trust for answered prayer. The book even says that there is no salvation outside of Mary. Some people suggest that these views are extreme and not representative of Catholic Church teaching. However, instead of silencing de Liguori as a heretic, the Catholic Church canonized him as a saint and declared him to be a “doctor of the Church” (a person whose teachings carry weight and authority). Furthermore, his book is openly and officially promoted by the Catholic Church, and his teachings have influenced popes. [William Webster, The Church of Rome at the Bar of History, page 87]
- Pope Benedict XV said of Mary that “[O]ne can justly say that with Christ, she herself redeemed mankind.” [In the Encyclical Intersodalicia (1918). Quoted in Donald G. Bloesch, Essentials of Evangelical Theology, Vol. 1, page 196].
- Pope Pius IX said, “Our salvation is based upon the holy Virgin... so that if there is any hope and spiritual healing for us we receive it solely and uniquely from her.” [In the Encyclical of February 2, 1849. Quoted in Donald G. Bloesch, Essentials of Evangelical Theology, Vol. 1, page 196]
The Assumption of Mary was officially declared to be a dogma of the Roman Catholic faith in 1950. This means that every Roman Catholic is required to believe this doctrine without questioning it. However, as we will see, the teaching of the Assumption originated with heretical writings which were officially condemned by the early Church. In 495 A.D., Pope Gelasius issued a decree which rejected this teaching as heresy and its proponents as heretics. In the sixth century, Pope Hormisdas also condemned as heretics those authors who taught the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary. The early Church clearly considered the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary to be a heresy worthy of condemnation. Here we have “infallible” popes declaring something to be a heresy. Then in 1950, Pope Pius XII, another “infallible” pope, declared it to be official Roman Catholic doctrine. [William Webster, pages 81-85]So, the early infallible popes absolutely and officially declared any belief in the Assumption of Mary to be a heresy. And then in 1950, another infallible pope declared it was heresy not to believe in the Assumption of Mary, a doctrine which has been upheld by the subsequent infallible popes including the current one. As is often the case, a pope's claims to infallibility founder upon their own proclamations of doctrine which contradict their infallible predecessors.
“Thus the priest may, in a certain manner, be called the creator of his Creator, since by saying the words of the consecration, he creates, as it were, Jesus in the sacrament, by giving him a sacramental existence, and produces him as a victim to be offered to the eternal Father. As in creating the world it was sufficient for God to have said, Let it be made, and it was created. He spake, and they were made, so it is sufficient for the priest to say, ‘Hoc est corpus meum,’ and behold the bread is no longer bread, but the body of Jesus Christ. ‘The power of the priest,’ says St. Bernadine of Sienna, ‘is the power of the divine person; for the transubstantiation of the bread requires as much power as the creation of the world’.”In this statement, we see that God has indeed become the slave of the Roman church. Only Mary counts. This is why they pray to Mary ten times for each time they pray to God.
“With regard to the mystic body of Christ, that is, all the faithful, the priest has the power of the keys, or the power of delivering sinners from hell, of making them worthy of paradise, and of changing them from the slaves of Satan into the children of God. And God himself is obliged to abide by the judgment of his priests, and either not to pardon or to pardon, according as they refuse or give absolution, provided the penitent is capable of it.”
Incredible.! There is absolutely no foundation for this teaching..it might make an interesting movie however..
Ask him if the Orthodox believe in original sin.
I would certainly hope you believe that man is born without grace and a tendency to sin as an inherited defect from Adam. Are you telling me otherwise? Is man's nature not injured? Are little children born sanctified? Obviously not, and that is original sin.
On the OCA link you posted, it says: "In the Orthodox Christian understanding, while humanity does bear the consequences of the original, or first, sin, humanity does not bear the personal guilt associated with this sin."
Well, no kiding! We DON'T believe that either. "... original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Para. 405) Its seems to me that Eastern Orthodoxy takes a word in Latin theology they object to, misinterprets it, and then demolishes the numerous strawmen created by the misunderstanding, all the while accusing Catholics of being heretics. I fail to see the difference in our teaching and yours, other than matters of semantics, such as our description of concupiscence - the tendency to sin - as "guilt".
Here's another example. On this Orthodox site, it says: "So Rome is left with a need to explain how Christ could be born of a human parent yet without sin. The immaculate conception dogma tries to break this chain by making Mary the exception, not Christ."
Amazing that this sort of "insight" into Roman Catholicism, which I've heard often from Orthodox believers, did not occur to St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, who state the sanctification of Jesus was by virtue of the hypostatic union, not the holiness of the flesh of Blessed Mary. The Immaculate Conception was to prepare an appropriate tabernacle for the Lord Jesus - one pure and without blemish - "an ark of incorruptible wood", the holy womb of Our Lady which was inhabited by none but God Himself. The Immaculate Conception of Mary was wholely unnecessary to make Jesus free of Original Sin.
Here's the Catholic explanation:
Marriage has a threefold good and set of ends - children, the indissoluble unity of the spouses, and the holiness of the Sacrament. The form of the sacrament is the mutual consent of the spouses, and the matter is their bodies, so the Sacrament of Matrimony (or Holy Crowning if you will) is only completed by their coming together in sexual intercourse, and every time the spouses have sexual intercourse with each other, provided that grevious sins that cry to heaven such as sodomy, fellatio, and contraception are avoided, they can grow in grace because of the Sacrament. Their action is Holy because it signifies the union of Christ and his bride the Church.
Marriage was instituted, as Genesis teaches us, for the propagation of the human race within a stable family environment, and the creation of that stable family environment by the pleasure and attraction of sex between the husband and wife. Christ has blessed and raised this union to the dignity of a sacrament, whereby Christians can grow in grace by its reception and exercise to better support their children and each other towards salvation. So the crowning good of Holy Matrimony is the Holiness of the Sacrament, but its first end is children.
So Holy Matrimony, and sexual intercourse in Marriage, have three purposes.
The frustration of the natural first end of sex within Marriage, the conception of children, makes the entire Marriage into a lie. "When this is taken away, husbands are shameful lovers, wives are harlots, bridal chambers are brothels, fathers-in-law are pimps." (St. Augustine, Against Faustus 15:7, AD 400). (Note well that he says "taken away", not "absent" - the sin is in the human will, not defects in the human body such as sterility, or temporary inability because of pregnancy or the natural cycle of the woman.)
Because Matrimony signifies the union of Christ and His Church, contraception is the equivalent of Christ (the husband) or His Church (the wife) preventing His Church from gaining new offspring (pregnancy) through conversion (conception). As abominable and unimaginable as this blasphemy is, so is artificial contraception.
Sex and sexual desire was ordained BY GOD, and as long as it is within the Sacrament of Marriage, blessed by God...
But it must be exercised to the due ends and with due means. Simply because one is married does not make lawful that which is inherently unlawful, such as the abominable peversion of sodomy. Lust is a vice, not a virtue, even within Marriage. It is laudable to want sexual union with ones wife as an exercise of the holy union between husband and wife or for children, and the pleasure attached to it is a blessing from God when enjoyed in these bounds. It is a fault to wish it for sensual pleasure alone though, because that is no different than fornication, and this is intrinsically what artificial contraception does, because it frsutrates one of the ends which must always be present (as regards sex during pregnancy, the openness to children during sex has already occurred to cause the pregnancy, therefore it suffices that the spouses come together to signify their union; the openness to children is implicit in the physical circumstances of the woman).
I believe it says in the Scripture, "The marriage Bed is undefiled"
"Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge." (Hebrews 13.4). It is not saying "do whatever you will", but rather, "keep your marriage bed pure". You cannot keep it pure by using contraceptives, or by other common perversions like rectal intercourse, coitus interruptus (withdrawal), consummated fellatio, and mutual consummated masturbation. Simply put, husband and wife are free within marriage to caress and kiss each other as they will, but if they continue to the point where they wish to or will have an orgasm, the husband MUST climax inside the woman's vagina without artificial barriers or drugs in the way to prevent conception. Otherwise, they have sinned.
We also follow the Second Council of Nicea and ANATHEMATIZE those who do not implore the intercession of the Blessed Virgin:
"The Lord, the apostles and the prophets have taught us that we must venerate in the first place the Holy Mother of God, who is above all the heavenly powers ... If anyone does not confess that the holy, ever-virgin Mary, really and truly the Mother of God, is higher than all creatures visible and invisible, and does not implore, with a sincere faith, her intercession, given her powerful access to our God born of her, let him be anathema." (Second Council of Nicea, Session IV, AD 787)
The book even says that there is no salvation outside of Mary.
That's not an exact extract from the book, but the gist of what is meant is taught by the 7th Ecumenical Council above. Prayer for Blessed Mary's intercession is viewed by us as a vital necessity.
We fly to your patronage, O Holy Mother of God:
despise not our petitions in our necessities,
but deliver us always from all dangers,
O Glorious and Blessed Virgin.
-Prayer "Sub tuum", 3rd Century AD, Egypt
The Bohemians never used the Eastern Liturgy. They were converted by Germans.
"The services of the feast repeat the main theme, that the Mother of Life has "passed over into the heavenly joy, into the divine gladness and unending delight" of the Kingdom of her Son. (Vesper verse) The Old Testament readings, as well as the gospel readings for the Vigil and the Divine Liturgy, are exactly the same as those for the feast of the Virgin's nativity and her entrance into the Temple. Thus, at the Vigil we again hear Mary say: "My soul magnifies the Lord and my Spirit rejoices in God my Saviour." (Luke 1:47) At the Divine Liturgy we hear the letter to the Philippians where St. Paul speaks of the self-emptying of Christ who condescends to human servitude and ignoble death in order to be "highly exalted" by God his Father. (Philippians 2:5-11) And once again we hear in the Gospel that Mary's blessedness belongs to all who "hear the word of God and keep it." (Luke 11:27-28)
"Thus, the feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos is the celebration of the fact that all men are "highly exalted" in the blessedness of the victorious Christ, and that this high exaltation has already been accomplished in Mary the Theotokos. The feast of the Dormition is the sign, the guarantee, and the celebration that Mary's fate is, the destiny of all those of "low estate" whose souls magnify the Lord, whose spirits rejoice in God the Saviour, whose lives are totally dedicated to hearing and keeping the Word of God which is given to men in Mary's child, the Saviour and Redeemer of the world.
Finally it must be stressed that, in all of the feasts of the Virgin Mother of God in the Church, the Orthodox Christians celebrate facts of their own lives in Christ and the Holy Spirit. What happens to Mary happens to all who imitate her holy life of humility, obedience, and love. With her all people will be "blessed" to be "more honorable than the cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim" if they follow her example. All will have Christ born in them by the Holy Spirit. All will become temples of the living God. All will share in the eternal life of His Kingdom who live the life that Mary lived. In this sense everything that is praised and glorified in Mary is a sign of what is offered to all persons in the life of the Church. It is for this reason that Mary, with the divine child Jesus within her, is called in the Orthodox Tradition the Image of the Church. For the assembly of the saved is those in whom Christ dwells.
Where you learn history from? Your parts either lies or warped or make Islamic thinking look sane.
Pope Pius IX said, “Our salvation is based upon the holy Virgin... so that if there is any hope and spiritual healing for us we receive it solely and uniquely from her.” [In the Encyclical of February 2, 1849. Quoted in Donald G. Bloesch, Essentials of Evangelical Theology, Vol. 1, page 196]
These are great "excerpts" that take the quoted words completely out of context. When you feel like learning what we really believe, George, feel free to consult the original sources rather than Evangelical misrepresentations.
But what about the Assumption of Mary? Where did this Roman doctrine originate historically and what position(s) has Rome held upon the Assumption of Mary?
Last I checked, the Orthodox and Copts and Syrians also held to this belief, and had Churches named after the feast and icons painted of it.
In 495 A.D., Pope Gelasius issued a decree which rejected this teaching as heresy and its proponents as heretics. In the sixth century, Pope Hormisdas also condemned as heretics those authors who taught the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary. The early Church clearly considered the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary to be a heresy worthy of condemnation.
The Popes condemned apocryphal works which distorted the truth. They never condemned the Assumption.
There is a very simple proof of the reality of the Assumption. The body and relics of Holy Mary are not to be found in any ancient Church, be it Roman Catholic, Eastern, Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, or the Church of the East. The body of St. James is in Campostella in Spain. St. Peter is under his basillica in Rome. St. Thomas is in India. Etc., etc., etc. No one has ever at any time, anywhere, claimed to have the bodily relics of Blessed Mary, who has always been considered the greatest of the saints.
Another proof - the Coptic and Syraic Churches which broke off from what I will call the Orthodox Catholic Church after the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) celebrate the Assumption liturgically. If the belief did not exist prior to that date, it seems incredible we would find them celebrating a feast from a Church they considered heretcal. In fact, the celebration of the feast can be shown to go back to the 4th Century in Antioch - prior to that, there simply are not written records on much, and so much from before then is lost.
This is why they pray to Mary ten times for each time they pray to God.
Only in the Holy Rosary. In the Holy Mass and the Breviary, the ratio is quite reversed.
What you've written is a wonderful exercise in Jungian distortion, and it happily has little to do with Catholic belief.
Most Poles only converted after AD 996, and they went straight into the Latin Rite of the unified Church.
And from your second website, I hope you'll stop complaining about Catholic Bishops in Russia, so long as the Orthodox are creating Orthodox dioceses in Western Europe.
You don't see the contradiction here?
In Slavic languages that word is "Slowianie"
In Russian it is slavyanskii.
"Slovene" etc, with obvious similarities to word "Slowo" meaning "Word", so "Slowianie" would mean "people who can speak" as opposed for Slavic word for Germans "Niemcy" that is, "dumb", "people who cannot speak". Other obvious similarity is to word "Slawa", that is "glory" or "praise"(with common root with "Slowo"), however some linguists believe that that obvious connections are false ..."
While many others believe that the obvious connection to slava/slovo is true.
I did point out that the Slavs called themselves Slovene, not Slavs or Slava.
Well, duh, "slavs" is an english word.
In the eastern part of the present Slovak Republic the Orthodox Church lasted due to the influence of the Kiev Russia until the 17th century, when the Union with Rome was instituted by the Viennese Court, Jesuits and noblemen in 1649.
Oh, this how well Orthodox Church play with facists while some others like them better...no names need mentioning.
During the occupation and the World War II this small church showed how firmly it is connected with the Czech nation. The church proved its qualities like fighting spirit, bravery and devotion to matters of justice. By providing a shelter to Reichsprotector Heydrich's assassins, which were later disclosed by Nazis, the church was struck a hard blow. On 4th September 1942 Bishop Gorazd, Vaclav Cikl, the senior of the cathedral church, Dr Vladimir Petrek, the priest, and Jan Sonnevend, the chair of the board of elders, were shot dead. Their families and many other people died in a fascist concentration camp, the Orthodox priests were sent to forced labour, the church was interdicted and its property confiscated.
That is a good point; however, is it possible that John could have anticipated this, possibly through revelation, and hid her body?
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