The Great Schism of 1054

Holy Trinity Website ^ | Unknown | Bishop Kallistos Ware

[Chancellor Palpatine]

*snort*

Now you're making stuff up - of course, that would be expected from someone who wholeheartedly aceepted the dogmatic philosophy that promoted cultural genocide on native populations of the Americas rather than show a decent example, and avoiding doing a liturgy in vernacular.

Did Christ preach in Latin? Teach in Latin?

[TexConfederate1861]

I believe the point he was trying to make is that excepting in the Latin Mass, Latin is DEAD....it is not spoken as a language by any country on the earth today.

That is one serious mistake that was made by the Latin Church, and one of the main reasons for the Protestant Reformation.

Also, that point is one of the most valid testimonies to the validity of the Orthodox Faith...we didn't have the abuses the West had, because we did not depart from the Original faith of the Fathers..hence, NO REFORMATION was needed.......

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Sorry, but Greek was the common language of Christendom, which no longer has a common tongue in the earthly sense.

Not so fast! The Church of Rome did use Greek very early on, although Latin rather rapidly came to the fore, but the Church in Northern Africa (Carthage, etc.) never used Greek - simple reason, Greeks never settled there. I believe it was here that the Italic translation of Scripture originated from. The Church in Palestine and Syria clearly used Aramaic/Syraic, and in Egypt and Ethiopia, they used Coptic, as they still do.

Or have you forgotten that the Holy Apostle Paul wrote his Epistle to the Romans in Greek? or indeed that the Holy Scriptures of the Church existed first in Greek before being translated into other tongues?

Not all of them. The Gospel According to St. Matthew was written in Aramaic. The Gospel According to St. Mark was clearly written for Latin speakers with only rudimentary Greek knowledge, if that. Some authorities, such as Cardinal Baronius, state forthrightly that Mark was written in Latin originally.

that the Acta of the Ecumenical Councils were all in Greek and were translated into Latin only for the benefit of those clergy in the West who did not speak Greek?

Rather, because they were held in Greek speaking areas with mostly Greek speaking Bishops present. Much of the clergy of the West would not have spoken Greek by that time, if clergy in those areas ever had, which most did not. The Greek diaspora was mostly Littoral - the inland spoke Latin.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Following the pattern established by the Saints Cyril and Methodius, Orthodox Churches always adopted the native language when they moved into a new area. This was particularly important in regards to the Gospel and was why the Russians translated the Bible into Aleut when they began establishing churches in Alaska.

Well, this is a great oversimplification of what occurred in what are now termed Slavic Lands. Other than Old Church Slavonic, in both its Glagolitic and Cyrilic versions, there were no written Slavic languages such as Polish, Czech, Slovenian, Slovak, Serbian, etc. before 200-600 years ago. Modern written Russian is the creation of Tsar Peter the Great, for example and is a mix of the existing vernacular, Church Slavonic, and westernisms. The oldest of them is Czech.

Of course, there was no "Slavic" people either - Slav is simply a Latinism for Slaves - Sclave. In many places where Slavonic was imposed, the early civil records were in other languages. Thus old Chronicles and Government Acta in Poland, Bohemia, and Slovenia were in archaic German, although Poland was certainly not under German suzerainity. And the Bulgurs are certainly not racially "Slavic", being remnants of the Huns mixed with Uigurs in the Don Basin, and splitting into the modern Bulgarian state and a Volga Bulgur State when the Don Bulgur State was destroyed by Khazar expansionism. As to the Serbs, they were an invading barbarian tribe who converted to Latin Christianity in the 8th Century, before Sts. Cyril and Methodius. They gained Slavonic when taken over by the Bulgarians and then the Byzantines, being then absorbed into the Byzantine Rite and the sway of the Patriarch of Constantinople (as also happened in Albania to the Illyrians). Incidentally, the Serbs also stayed united to Rome until around AD 1300 during the reign of Stephen Milutin, when they joined themselves to the Greek side of the schism. The title of King for the ruler of Serbia came from the patent of Pope Honorius III, who granted it in AD 1217 to what was then still a loyal realm of Rome (so much for the magical 1054 date). The Greeks to this day maintain that the Macedonians are merely Slavified Greeks thanks to the sway of Bulgarian rule, not true Slavs like the Moravians and Russians. They are probably right.

The process of this occurring is not difficult to follow. Just as many Franks and all Burgundians, who were German tribes, now speak French, and not Germanic languages, or many people who are today eastern Germans speak German, but are descended from Slavic tribes like the Kashubes and Sorbians who settled among the original German tribes, so many of the descendants of inhabitants of what are now Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Poland, Bohemia, Slovakia originally did not speak Slavic languages, but came to do so over time.

Church Slavonic was created to imitate the sounds of the non-German, non-Latin, and non-Greek peoples in Moravia and Bulgaria, from which we may surmise the language was probably similar to that of the Muscovites, from whom the Bulgurs had arrived and possibly some, but certainly not all of the intervening peoples, since the area was thoroughly mixed with areas and pockets of Germans, Latin Romans, Greeks, Balts, and Magyars.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Jesus Christ himself didn't speak Latin

Did He and Pontius Pilate communicate privately by telepathy?

You think Sts. Cyril and Methodius could have reached any of their people with Latin

Sts. Cyril and Methodius were the Apostles to the Slavs, but they were not Slavs. That should be clear enough from their names.

The Germans seemed to have converted rather peaceably despite having to use Latin in ecclesiatic ritual.

The Indians still use Syraic (Amaraic), and not Sanskrit.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

The Germans converted - not necessarlily that peacably. They did take the opportunity to bail out in droves when they got an opportunity - and pretty much immediately went to vernacular.

One would suspect that given the alacrity with which they shed their affiliation with the hierarchy of the day, that they might have been kind of upset prior to Luther knocking over the applecart. In any event, the numbers were huge, considering the lack of mass communication.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

cultural genocide on native populations of the Americas rather than show a decent example, and avoiding doing a liturgy in vernacular.

And here we see you expose yourself as an unknowledgeable cultural liberal. The native populations (not the Spanish Whites or Mestizos) of Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, etc., seem quite happy their way of incorporating their culture into Latin/Spanish Catholic Culture. I don't think they care at all for you butting into their affairs and declaring that their culture is an unworthy imposition.

Did Christ preach in Latin? Teach in Latin?

Christ read the Scriptures in the Synagogue in Hebrew (or Greek I suppose, if he was ever in a Hellene Synagogue with a Septuagint Bible), but taught in Aramaic to the Israelites, and Greek to the Greeks (as in John 12). I'm sure when he ran into the Roman Centurion in Matthew 8, he taught him in Latin. Or are you know going to tell us that first century Centurions and Legionaires were not Italians?

[Chancellor Palpatine]

You think Pilate didn't speak Greek or Aramaic?

[Chancellor Palpatine]

First century legions stationed in the East would have learned the Eastern languages.

No matter how hard you try to spin it in your quest to restore the Imperial Roman Catholic Church, there is nothing particularly sacred about the Latin language.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

I believe the point he was trying to make is that excepting in the Latin Mass, Latin is DEAD....it is not spoken as a language by any country on the earth today.

Its close enough to Italian, Spanish, French, and Rumanian - at least as much as Church Slavonic is to Russian, Serbian, Ukranian, etc.

That is one serious mistake that was made by the Latin Church, and one of the main reasons for the Protestant Reformation.

Why is the scrupulous observance of the traditions of our Fathers a mistake? Doesn't Orthodoxy believe in Ecclesial Tradition?

Latin was used in the west because the west spoke Latin. That non-Latin peoples came to inhabit some of this area (England, Belgium, western Germany, Austria) was due to invasions after the Church was already established with a Latin ritual. The Latin came first.

In other parts of the world, the quarreling tribes in places like Africa have long praised Latin as a unifying and civilizing force that gave them peace as Christian brothers together at Church, chanting the same Creed and Prayers in one tongue, even if outside Church they were rival tribes. This is a "mistake"?

we didn't have the abuses the West had, because we did not depart from the Original faith of the Fathers..hence, NO REFORMATION was needed.......

You don't need a reformation if you are willing to undergo an internal theological re-ordering all on your own. Find me an Orthodox Christian who denied the Immaculate Conception prior to say 1700. Or one who accepted divorce, the dissolution of valid marriages, and subsequent remarriage in the Church, or the use of artifical contraceptives prior to the past 100 or 200 years.

I have to ask about your thinking the west "needed" a "reformation". Do you really believe the Reformers carried away their lands to something closer to the Orthodox Church than the Catholic Church is?

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Luther did not favor abolishing Latin in the Church.

And the Germans had been Christians since at least the time of Tertullian - he mentioned Christians among them even then, which should be no suprise since the Apostles went off as fast as possible to all the peoples that could be found. Thus St. Thomas going to Persia and India, and St. Andrew to Scythia.

As to the peacefulness of later conversions, I'm not sure what you are referring to. In Iceland, for example, the conversion occurred by a vote of the Althing, and the people accepted it.

The Germans did not "bail out in droves". Some German Princes did, and the Reformation settlement of the religious wars dictated that the Religion of the Prince became the Religion of the Realm. Most people did not voluntarily leave the Church, nor did most ecclesiastics, which is why Luther's German Church had no Bishops apostasize to it. The peoples themselves were forced to become Lutherans by the Princes and Pastors.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Greek possibly. Aramaic, highly unlikely. The Gospel's show that he knew nothing of the Jewish religion; it would be unlikely he would bother himself with their language. His native tongue would have been Latin, and official government business, such as trying Jesus, would have been conducted in Latin.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

First century legions stationed in the East would have learned the Eastern languages.

First century Legions were raised in Italy and lived in mobile field encampments, not in towns. Their life was intwined in the military and in military comraderie. Why they would have bothered learning the language of peoples they barely considered human, and with whom they had little interaction is beyond me. Do you have some evidence of this from history? Did C. Quinctilius Varus' three legions speak German? I doubt it. They had taught the Germans they needed to interact with, like Arminius (Hermann the Cherusker) to speak Latin.

The natural reaction of visitors is to speak to the natives in your native language, not theirs, and hope they respond. Generally, when you are the occupation army, and they the occupied, they do.

Occupying Army's tend to learn native words shouting out to surrender and curse at them, and for getting food and sex. And that's it. "Spazierengehen fraeulein?"

How many Americans in Okinawa have comeback fluent in Japanese? How many in the Philipines speak fluent Tagalog?

[TexConfederate1861]

Herman:

First of all, most of the countries where Protestants thrived wanted the Mass, and the scriptures in their own language...The RC's not only refused, but burned at the stake anyone who dared tried to publish the scripture in the vernacular, and even went so far as to chain the Bible to the pulpits......

And...as I have debated and proven before, your church DIDN'T scrupulously observe the traditions of the Church Fathers, or the Reformation wouldn't have been needed...There was NO need for a Luther to publish and post 95 Theses on the door of one of our churches, because we didn't have the abuses.....

As for the Immaculate Conception...that is a Papal Dogma, which wasn't decreed by a valid Church council...and before you start with your Vatican I diatribe...If it wasn't one of the original 7 it isn't valid.

as for marriage, the Orthodox Church is almost as strict as your Church, at least concerning divorce...I know this from PERSONAL experience...

Abortion is not tolerated and forbidden, just as your church.

The Orthodox view of contraception is somewhat different, but then again, that goes back to Papal decrees again....

[George W. Bush]

An excellent article. As long as it is, I found myself wishing for more details from this excellent writer.

One can observe a continuity from the earliest patriarchs of the other four sees toward the dictatorial claims of the first Roman patriarch who claimed any sort of monarchical authority over them. They reacted with a certain amusement and contempt toward the attempted usurpation of power by the first Roman 'pope'. And this has held true ever since. Indeed, one wonders how the Latin popes had the nerve to press such claims.

For many centuries, the self-annointed Roman pope openly wielded and claimed such power only within his own domains, domains where were won and held by the secular power of the Roman state. Only the discretion in pressing the claims of authority over all Christendom by the Roman popes allowed any continuity of communion between East and West. It was only when the schism became open that the Latin pope expanded his dictatorial claims publicly and aggressively.

Of course, I do have a considerable sympathy for the Eastern position on the filioque. For me, it is simply a matter that the Father is the source of all.

I think our Roman friends don't worry much about being correct theologically, in this or in other matters. After all, they only need to get one pope to pronounce upon a matter and it becomes unassailable. They were wrong to magnify their false doctrine of filioque in their (correct) suppression with the Arian heretics of Spain. However, the prouncement of filioque was never previously required to deal with the heresy of Arianism so it was not vital on that occasion either. Instead, a local doctrinal pronouncement became the infallible doctrine of the entire Western church.

Ignorance and political expediency were the authors of the filioque. The East was entirely correct to reject it. The Latin church continues to press unscriptural and unhistoric claims, building upon the cracked foundation of the authority of Rome's 'pope'. Among many other unscriptural claims, we see the rise of Mary as a Co-Redemptrix, another Roman imposition of a barrier to a personal relationship with God. In the Roman tradition, one cannot reach God without the intervention of the pope and his minions. Soon, Mary will also be interposed between the believer and Christ. It's quite a gauntlet that the Roman believer must run before he has contact with Christ. The misfortune here is that the Roman believer is shorn of his birthright, namely, his personal access to our Saviour without the trappings of popes and priests and Mary.

[George W. Bush]

Did He and Pontius Pilate communicate privately by telepathy?

Grasping at straws. You don't seem to recognize the other possibilities here that explain their conversation. Of course, that's only natural because you need to make Christ speak Latin in order to support your other arguments.

[DManA]

Slav is simply a Latinism for Slaves

I always thought it was a germanic word. Given to them by the Vikings.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Are you sure you aren't a Protestant? This is straight out of Jack Chick.

First of all, most of the countries where Protestants thrived wanted the Mass, and the scriptures in their own language...The RC's not only refused, but burned at the stake anyone who dared tried to publish the scripture in the vernacular, and even went so far as to chain the Bible to the pulpits......

Actually, many Catholic Saints translated Bibles into the vernacular well prior to the Reformation. The problem with Wycliffe and Tyndale's translations was that they falsified the scriptures - they were forgers of things spiritual. Somehow, I doubt Russia or Byzantium would have by particularly tolerant about that.

And...as I have debated and proven before, your church DIDN'T scrupulously observe the traditions of the Church Fathers, or the Reformation wouldn't have been needed...There was NO need for a Luther to publish and post 95 Theses on the door of one of our churches, because we didn't have the abuses.....

I don't think many Orthodox would agree with ALL that Luther wrote. Here's the first 4 of the Theses, plus number 19:

1. When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said "Repent", He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

2. The word cannot be properly understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, i.e. confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.

3. Yet its meaning is not restricted to repentance in one's heart; for such repentance is null unless it produces outward signs in various mortifications of the flesh.

4. As long as hatred of self abides (i.e. true inward repentance) the penalty of sin abides, viz., until we enter the kingdom of heaven.

19. Nor does it seem proved to be always the case that [the Holy Souls in Purgatory] are certain and assured of salvation, even if we are very certain ourselves.

As for the Immaculate Conception...that is a Papal Dogma, which wasn't decreed by a valid Church council...and before you start with your Vatican I diatribe...If it wasn't one of the original 7 it isn't valid.

You know, in the West, under the influence of St. Augustine's acceptance of Aristotelean science, Blessed Mary's sinlessness was understood by many as having been from the time of the infusion of her human soul 80 days after conception. It was the East that had things aright, and from which the true belief spread through the West, first to England, then to all of the West. How ironic then, that the East, so effusive in their praise for "our Immaculate Lady" as the Liturgy sings, now denies her this title and privilege.

"Mary, a Virgin not only undefiled but a Virgin whom grace has made inviolate, free of every stain of sin." (St. Ambrose, Sermon 22,30, AD 388)

"Thou alone and thy Mother are in all things fair, there is no flaw in thee and no stain in thy Mother." (St. Ephraem, Nisibene Hymns, 27,8, AD 370)

"As he formed her without my stain of her own, so He proceeded from her contracting no stain." (Proclus of Constantinople, Homily 1, ante AD 446)

"A virgin, innocent, spotless, free of all defect, untouched, unsullied, holy in soul and body, like a lily sprouting among thorns." (Theodotus of Ancrya, Homily VI,11, ante AD 446)

"The angel took not the Virgin from Joseph, but gave her to Christ, to whom she was pledged from Joseph, but gave her to Christ, to whom she was pledged in the womb, when she was made." (St. Peter Chrysologus, Sermon 140, AD 449)

"The very fact that God has elected her proves that none was ever holier than Mary, if any stain had disfigured her soul, if any other virgin had been purer and holier, God would have selected her and rejected Mary." (Jacob of Sarug, ante AD 521)

"She is born like the cherubim, she who is of a pure, immaculate clay" (Theotoknos of Livias, Panegyric for the Feast of the Assumption, 5,6, ante AD 650)

"O most blessed loins of Joachim from which came forth a spotless seed! O glorious womb of Anne in which a most holy offspring grew." (St. John Damascene, Homily I in Nativ., ante AD 749)

You see where pigheaded anti-Catholicism gets you? You end up denying the veracity of your own past and contradicting your own sainted doctors just because the Pope dogmatized something for Catholics. This is ridiculous!

BTW, the Orthodox believe in the 7 Sacraments as a dogma, yet none of the first 7 councils decreed that number. Its a "mere Papal Dogma". Why accept that, and not others?

as for marriage, the Orthodox Church is almost as strict as your Church, at least concerning divorce...I know this from PERSONAL experience...

I understand that the Orthodox Church will allow up to two remarriages, and has liturgies drawn up for specifically that purpose. It may be strict, but it is allowed. Its much simpler to just follow the accepted Canons of the Church:

"Canon 8 Likewise, women who have left their husbands for no prior cause and have joined themselves with others, may not even at death receive communion.

"Canon 9 Likewise, a woman of the faith who has left an adulterous husband of the faith and marries another, her marrying in this manner is prohibited. If she has so married, she may not at any more receive communion--unless he that she has left has since departed from this world.

"Canon 10 If she whom a catechumen has left shall have married a husband, she is able to be admitted to the fountain of baptism. This shall also be observed in the instance where it is the woman who is the catechumen. But if a woman of the faithful is taken in marriage by a man who left an innocent wife, and if she knew that he had a wife whom he had left without cause, it is determined that communion is not to be given to her even at death." (Council of Elvira, circa AD 300)

Abortion is not tolerated and forbidden, just as your church.

I don't dispute that, but keep a watch on this one.

The Orthodox view of contraception is somewhat different, but then again, that goes back to Papal decrees again....

Oh no it doesn't. Condmenations of contraception can be found from the first works of the Church Fathers.

"Marriage in itself merits esteem and the highest approval, for the Lord wished men to 'be fruitful and multiply.' He did not tell them, however, to act like libertines, nor did He intend them to surrender themselves to pleasure as though born only to indulge in sexual relations ... Why, even unreasoning beasts know enough not to mate at certain times. To indulge in intercourse without intending children is to outrage nature, whom we should take as our instructor." (St. Clement of Alexandria. Paedagogos 2,10, before AD 202)

They [certain Egyptian heretics] exercise genital acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption." (Medicine Chest Against Heresies 26,5,2, AD 375)

"Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit, where there are medicines of sterility [oral contraceptives], where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain only a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well ... Indeed, it is something worse than murder, and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you condemn the gift of God and fight with his [natural] laws? ... Yet such turpitude ... the matter still seems indifferent to many men—even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. Against her are these innumerable tricks" (St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 24, AD 391)

"I am supposing, then, although you are not lying [with your wife] for the sake of procreating offspring, you are not for the sake of lust obstructing their procreation by an evil prayer or an evil deed. Those who do this, although they are called husband and wife, are not; nor do they retain any reality of marriage, but with a respectable name cover a shame. Sometimes this lustful cruelty, or cruel lust, comes to this, that they even procure poisons of sterility ... Assuredly if both husband and wife are like this, they are not married, and if they were like this from the beginning they come together not joined in matrimony but in seduction. If both are not like this, I dare to say that either the wife is in a fashion the harlot of her husband or he is an adulterer with his own wife." (St. Augustine of Hippo, Marriage and Concupiscence 1,15,17, AD 419)

"Who is he who cannot warn that no woman may take a potion so that she is unable to conceive or condemns in herself the nature which God willed to be fecund? As often as she could have conceived or given birth, of that many homicides she will be held guilty, and, unless she undergoes suitable penance, she will be damned by eternal death in hell. If a woman does not wish to have children, let her enter into a religious agreement with her husband; for chastity is the sole sterility of a Christian woman." (St. Cesarius of Arles, Sermons 1,12, AD 522)

"We assure you that we remain close to you, above all in these recent days when you have taken the good step of publishing the encyclical Humanae Vitae. We are in total agreement with you, and wish you all God's help to continue your mission in the world." (Telegram from Patriarch Athenagoras to Pope Paul VI, 9 August 1968)

Certainly not much evidence of this being a Papal invention, although the Popes have always preached against it.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Thats not what I had heard. I understood it came from the Latin "Sclavi" or "Slave". Some of the "Slavs" called themselves "Slovene", which may by the origin of some confusion on this point as is the equation of the Greek Sklabenoi with the Slavs.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

No I don't "need" Christ to speak Latin. I merely think he did.