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