East–West Schism

"Great Schism" redirects here. For the later Papal Schism in Avignon, see Western Schism.

The East-West Schism, known also as the Great Schism (though this latter term sometimes refers to the later Western Schism), was the event that divided Chalcedonian Christianity into Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Though normally dated to 1054, when Pope Leo IX and Patriarch Michael I excommunicated each other, the East-West Schism was actually the result of an extended period of estrangement between the two Churches. The primary causes of the Schism were disputes over papal authority—the Pope claimed he held authority over the four Eastern patriarchs, while the four eastern patriarchs claimed that the primacy of the Patriarch of Rome was only honorary, and thus he had authority only over Western Christians—and over the insertion of the filioque clause into the Nicene Creed. There were other, less significant catalysts for the Schism, including variance over liturgical practices and conflicting claims of jurisdiction.

The Church split along doctrinal, theological, linguistic, political, and geographic lines, and the fundamental breach has never been healed. It might be alleged that the two churches actually reunited in 1274 (by the Second Council of Lyons) and in 1439 (by the Council of Basel), but in each case the councils were repudiated by the Orthodox as a whole, given that the hierarchs had overstepped their authority in consenting to these so-called "unions". Further attempts to reconcile the two bodies have failed; however, several ecclesiastical communities that originally sided with the East changed their loyalties, and are now called Eastern Rite Catholic Churches. For the most part, however, the Western and the Eastern Churches are separate. Each takes the view that it is the "One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church", implying that the other group left the true church during the Schism.

Origins

Since its earliest days, the Church recognized the special positions of three bishops, who were known as patriarchs: the Bishop of Rome, the Bishop of Alexandria, and the Bishop of Antioch. They were joined by the Bishop of Constantinople and by the Bishop of Jerusalem, both confirmed as patriarchates by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (see Pentarchy). The patriarchs held both authority and precedence over fellow bishops in the Church. Among them, the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople were deemed to hold a higher status, by virtue of importance of their Sees as capitals of the Roman Empire.

Disunion in the Roman Empire further contributed to disunion in the Church. Theodosius the Great, who died in 395, was the last Emperor to rule over a united Roman Empire; after his death, his territory was divided into western and eastern halves, each under its own Emperor. By the end of the 5th century, the Western Roman Empire had been destroyed by the barbarians, while the Eastern Roman Empire (known also as the Byzantine Empire) continued to thrive. Thus, the political unity of the Roman Empire was the first to fall.

Other factors caused the East and West to drift further apart. The dominant language of the West was Latin, whilst that of the East was Greek. Soon after the fall of the Western Empire, the number of individuals who spoke both Latin and Greek began to dwindle, and communication between East and West grew much more difficult. With linguistic unity gone, cultural unity began to crumble as well. The two halves of the Church were naturally divided along similar lines; they used different rites and had different approaches to religious doctrines. Although the Great Schism was still centuries away, its outlines were already perceptible.

Early schisms

The Great Schism was not the first schism between East and West; there had, in fact, been other schisms during the first millennium of the Church. For centuries the Church was split over Arianism, a doctrine supported by most western kings though rejected by the Emperor in the East.

Another conflict broke out when Pope Honorius supported the heresy of monothelitism. He was condemned as a heretic by the 6th Ecumenical Council.

Great Schism

Catalysts

There are many catalysts which caused the separation in fact, if not in theory, of the Eastern and Western churches long before 1054. These are discussed below. The direct, immediate causes of the formal separation of 1054 are narrated in the subsequent section.

• The insertion of the filioque clause into the Nicene Creed by the Roman church in direct violation of the command of the Council of Ephesus. Many Popes including Leo III and John VIII have condemned the filioque as heresy.
• Disputes in the Balkans over whether the Western or Eastern church had jurisdiction.
• The designation of the Patriarch of Constantinople as ecumenical patriarch (which was understood by Rome as universal patriarch and therefore disputed).
• Disputes over whether the Patriarch of Rome, the Pope, should be considered a higher authority than the other Patriarchs. All five Patriarchs of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church agreed that the Patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople should receive higher honors than the other three.
• The concept of Caesaropapism, a tying together in some way of the ultimate political and religious authorities, which were physically separated much earlier when the capital of the empire was moved from Rome to Constantinople. There is controversy over just how much this so-called "caesaropapism" actually existed and how much was a fanciful invention, centuries later, by western European historians.
• Following the rise of Islam, the relative weakening of the influence of the patiarchs of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, leading to internal church politics increasingly being seen as Rome versus Constantinople.
• Certain liturgical practices in the West that the East believed represented innovation: the use of unleavened bread for the Eucharist, for example.

Excommunications

The direct causes of the Great Schism are, however, far less grandiose than the famous filioque. The relations between the papacy and the Byzantine court were good in the years leading up to 1054. The emperor Constantine IX and the pope Leo IX were allied through the mediation of the Lombard catepan of Italy, Argyrus, who had spent years in Constantinople, originally as a political prisoner. Recently, Leo and Argyrus had led armies against the ravaging Normans, but the papal forces were defeated at the Battle of Civitate in 1053, which resulted in the pope being imprisoned at Benevento, where he took it upon himself to learn Greek. Argyrus had not arrived at Civitate and his absence caused a rift in papal-imperial relations just at the time when the patriarch was set to open up a Pandora's box.

Meanwhile, the Normans were busy imposing Latin customs, including the unleavened bread—with papal approval. This riled the patriarch Michael I, who ordered the Latin churches of Constantinople to adopt Eastern usages and when they refused, he shut them down. He then ordered Leo, Archbishop of Ochrid, leader of the Bulgarian church, to write a letter to the bishop of Trani, John, an Easterner, in which he attacked the "Judaistic" practices of the West. The letter was to be sent by John to all the bishops of the West, pope included. John promptly complied and the letter was passed to one Humbert of Mourmoutiers, the cardinal-bishop of Silva Candida, who was then in John's diocese. Humbert translated the letter into Latin and brought it to the pope, who ordered a reply to be made to each charge and a defence of papal supremacy to be laid out in a response.

Michael was convinced, probably by the Emperor and the bishop of Trani, to cool the debate and prevent the impending breach. However, Humbert and the pope made no concessions and the former was sent with legatine powers to the imperial capital to solve the questions raised once and for all. Humbert, Frederick of Lorraine (the future pope Stephen IX), and Peter, archbishop of Amalfi set out in early spring and arrived in April 1054. Their welcome was not to their liking, however, and they stormed out of the palace, leaving the papal response with Cerularius, whose anger exceeded even theirs. The seals on the letter had been tampered with and the legates had published, in Greek, an earlier, far less civil, draft of the letter for the entire populace to read. The patriarch determined that the legates were worse than meer barbarous Westerners, they were liars and crooks. He refused to recognise their authority or, practically, their existence.

When pope Leo died on April 19, the legates' authority legally ceased, but they did not seem to notice. The patriarch's refusal to address the issues at hand drove the legatine mission to extremes: on July 16, the three legates entered the church of the Hagia Sophia during mass on a Saturday afternoon and placed a bull of excommunication on the altar. The bull accused the Greeks of heresy for "deleting the filioque" from the original Creed. It is now known without doubt by all that it was the Latin church that added the filioque to the Creed and that the Greek church has always used the original Creed. The legates left for Rome two days later, leaving behind a city near riots. The Patriarch had the immense support of the people against the Emperor, who had supported the legates to his own detriment, and Argyrus, who was seen still as a papal ally. To assuage popular anger, Argyrus' family in Constantinople was arrested, the bull was burnt, and the legates were anathematised—the Great Schism had begun.

Reconciliation

During the 12th century the Maronite Church in Lebanon and Syria reconciled with the Church of Rome, while preserving most of its own Syriac liturgy. During the next centuries up to the 20th century many Eastern, and even Oriental, Orthodox converted or, rather, entered into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, thereby establishing the Eastern Catholic Church under control of, but also liturgically and hierarchically separate from, the Holy See.

The Catholic-Orthodox Joint Declaration of 1965 was read out on 7 December 1965 simultaneously at a public meeting of the Second Vatican Council in Rome and at a special ceremony in Constantinople. It addressed an exchange of excommunications between prominent ecclesiastics in the Roman see and the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1054. It did not end the East-West Schism but showed a desire for greater reconciliation between the two churches, represented by Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I.

May 7-May 9, 1999: invited by Teoctist, the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Pope John Paul II visited Romania. It was the first visit of a Pope to an Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism. After the mass officiated in Izvor Park, Bucharest, the crowd (both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox) chanted "Unity!". Despite Pope John Paul II didn't participate as officiant, but only assisted to the Orthodox liturgy officiated by the Romanian Patriarch, the Greek monks in Mount Athos refused to admit Romanian priests and hieromonks as co-officiants to their liturgies for a few years afterwards.

October 7-October 14, 2002: invited by Pope John Paul II, Teoctist, the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, visited Vatican City.

On November 27, 2004, in an attempt to "promote Christian unity", Pope John Paul II returned the bones (relics) of Patriarchs John Chrysostom and Gregory the Theologian to Istanbul. Chrysostom's remains were taken as war booty from Constantinople by Crusaders in 1204, and many believe that Nazianzen's were taken then as well.

On May 29, 2005 in Bari, Italy, Pope Benedict XVI cited reconciliation as a commitment of his papacy, saying, "I want to repeat my willingness to assume as a fundamental commitment working to reconstitute the full and visible unity of all the followers of Christ, with all my energy."

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, together with other heads of self-governed Eastern Churches, were present at the funeral of Pope John Paul II on April 8, 2005. This is the first time for many centuries that an Ecumenical Patriarch has attended the funeral of a Pope and is considered by many a serious sign that dialogue towards reconciliation might have started.

See also

• Western Christianity
• Eastern Christianity

External links

• Byzantium: The Great Schism By Bp. Kallistos Ware
• Catholic Encyclopedia article, representing a Roman Catholic view
• In Our Time page with link to online talk
• OrthodoxWiki: Great Schism