Factors Contributing to
The Development of the
Christian East-West Schism
Usually Denoted by the Year 1054
Byzantine History
Dr. Jane Bishop
The Citadel
22 Jan 06
by
John M. Thomas, Jr.
The “Schism of 1054” has been seminal in defining the administrative structure of and delineating lines of authority over a very large part of the Christian Church since the 11th-century, creating and to some extent legitimizing two loci of ecclesiastical power in Rome and Constantinople. However, this schismatic event was not as well-defined temporally as the placement of the date “1054” might lead one to believe. The schism between the primary Christian churches of the Eastern and the Western Mediterranean regions has its roots in several important events, trends, and historical developments, including the unilateral institution of the
filioque into the Western Church’s creed by Roman pontiffs. This schism, the main medieval cleavage within the body of the Christian Church, which is often said to have been caused by events in the year 1054, was certainly more of a development achieved over time rather than a single schismatic incident. This event precipitated a break in the body of the Christian Church which has not been repaired in the almost ten centuries since the traditional date of occurrence of the schism.
To synopsize the confrontational event of 1054, which is often ascribed to be the culminating point of the East-West divergence, Latin and Greek Christian leaders during the papacy of Leo IX attempted a dialogue in an effort to settle some disputes. These differences of opinion and practice included quarrels over doctrine, such as the disagreement over the appropriate disposition of the aforementioned Filioque, as well as over contentious issues involved with church business, such as whether Latin-Rite churches should be reopened in Constantinople. Largely due to the personality conflicts among the people involved, including squabbles between Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and the French cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, Leo’s legate, the representatives of the Greek and Latin churches excommunicated each other, abandoning all ecclesiastical restraint in favor of punitive measures.
This row was based more on idiosyncratic and personal issues rather than seriously doctrinal problems, which kept the conflict out of the realms of the most serious heresy considerations and accusations, at least by modern standards.1 The participants in the schismatic event of 1054 offered strong opinions that there were substantive issues on which Rome and Constantinople differed that were important enough to embroil the respective churches in an open conflict, but, in modern retrospect, those issues seem mostly trivial.2 The excommunications delivered in the year 1054 were originally intended to be understood on a personal level among the disputants involved with the interactions between Cerularius and Humbert. These vitriolic conflicts unfortunately did, over time, however, mostly as a result of the Crusades and the Fourth Crusade in particular, come to be interpreted as having a broader meaning. The implication of the excommunications widened to include the entirety of the Christian communities represented by the Greek and Latin prelates who were involved in this fracas of 1054, much to the eventual misfortune of those communities, particularly the Byzantine Empire.3
The aforementioned incident of 1054 deserves analysis mostly in the sense that it is an example of how oppositional personalities and the conflicts that erupt from the clashes between those personalities have affected the conduct of medieval politics and church business. Certainly personality conflicts motivate much of what history is about, but when examining the changing religious habits of entire nations of peoples, more is often at issue than just hard feelings between leaders. The tantrum-like excommunications by the camps of Cerularius and Humbert were largely considered mere technicalities for decades, maybe longer, by most medieval Eastern and Western citizens, if they had even heard about the conflict (most probably hadn’t in the 11th-century, and certainly few had details).4 Attention should be instead drawn to the overarching socioreligious themes which were pulling the two Christian communities apart over several centuries and which represent the true course of events leading to the estrangement of Eastern and Western Christianity. This dichotomy has essentially led to the distinction of two different religious movements, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, with an overlapping, partially shared history.
The separate and contrasting theological and church-related dynamics of East and West had been well-established and well-defined before 1054. As far as the interactions of the Roman and Constantinopolitan churches are concerned, there had been quite a few outstanding incidents since the early days of the Church that had caused “a line in the sand” to be drawn. Perhaps the first major incidents revolved around the heresies of Arius, which created much of the early dynamic evidenced in the East regarding the consideration of alternative theological positions. The vigorous, educated approach to confronting and elucidating heresy in the East was in stark contrast to a West that truly had not the luxury of time and energy to devote to theological speculation (due to the distractions caused by the Germanic invasions particularly).
Neither did many in the West have the appropriate education to rightly ponder and analyze the Arian heresy and later theological disputes in as detailed and introspective a way as their Eastern counterparts.5 This disparity in intellectual capital created quite a distinction between the East and West, guaranteeing two widely divergent Christian religious cultures in the Mediterranean region drawn along geographical lines. These demarcations insured different sorts of reactions from this pair of widely variant intellectual and religious worldviews, each having its own traditions and priorities.6
Further problems that affected interactions between East and West erupted over the Byzantine Patriarchate of John Chrysostom, followed by the Acacian Schism over the Henotikon, with both of these events occurring in a time much earlier in church history than the 11th-century. Also early on and perhaps more importantly, several Eastern patriarchates and their peoples migrated toward monophysitism, a theological position which has been said by some theologians to have never been abandoned by the Oriental Orthodox who have chosen that theology. Some religious scholars believe that the protests of the Oriental Orthodox objecting to this designation are questionable.7 Monophysites believe that Christ had only a divine nature, even when He lived on earth in human form, which contrasts with the orthodox view that Christ was at once fully human and fully divine. The monophysite controversy left Westerners thinking in terms of monophysitism being an Eastern phenomenon, one that somewhat characterized the religious climate of the East, which, for the most part and when considered over the entire Eastern Mediterranean, would have been a mischaracterization.
The iconoclasm controversy also created a sharp division between the East and the West, since much of the East, having been initiated into the cult of iconoclasm by the actions of Byzantine emperor Leo III in the 8th-century, embraced further iconoclastic thinking during the later contentious periods of the iconoclasm controversy. In contrast, the Latin West generally had no problems with religious pictures and often considered such pictures valid teaching tools, especially for the illiterate masses. As a result, the fire of iconoclasm burned less brightly in the West, leaving another sharply contrasting pair of early religious experiences for each region and further separating the two camps in their spiritual leanings through the particular mechanism of the iconoclasm controversy, as well as the aforementioned monophysitic controversy.
The events surrounding the Photian Schism, which is rooted in the appointment of Ignatius as Patriarch of Constantinople in 847 and lasted until the resignation of Photius from that same office in 886, served to show certain cleavages between the Eastern Church and the Western Church. The Pope’s ability to control episcopal appointments was shown by the Photian Schism to be limited with respect to the office of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. As well the Pope could not stop the consecration of a bishop which was certainly an example of lay investiture by the Byzantines, namely the consecration of said lay scholar Photius.8 Power struggles for the Byzantine throne led to the alternating elevation of Ignatius and Photius to the Patriarchate of Constantinople over the duration of the controversy, with this oscillation causing more and greater tensions between the Church of Rome and the Eastern patriarchates, namely Constantinople.
It is important to note that the Photian Schism is essentially the practice-run for the disputation of the
filioque issue, which will be discussed later in this paper. The issue was taken up by Photius and Ignatius as one of the disagreements which fueled their many conflicts, which were actually rather political in nature.9 As a Roman-Constantinopolitan conflict which has merited the label “Schism,” the Photian affair foreshadows the importance of the
filioque issue in later years and illustrates the tension capable of being generated between the ecclesiastical powers-that-be in Rome and Constantinople.
An important link between the Greek East and Latin West had been the presence in the East of certain Latin-speaking peoples, including the peoples of the Balkans. Many of these Greeks fled the Balkans, however, when the Slavs invaded, which happened as early as the 6th-century, and many Balkan Greeks migrated to Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula, areas later, at least in part, to be commandeered by the Normans and taken out of the normal circulation and society of Italy for some time. This limited the cross-cultural impact of the Latinate Greeks in the West.10 Overland contact between the East and the West was also limited due to the interposition of the Slavs. The Latin West and the Greek East became more isolated each from the other due to the Slavic migration, and cultural independence became a more pronounced matter due to the elimination of this culturally and linguistically Greek crossroads in the Balkans.
The de-Latinization (linguistically speaking) of the Balkans also eventually led to the long-lasting disputes between Constantinople and Rome regarding ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the territory, particularly in Moravia and Bulgaria. This conflict brewed for centuries and led to further alienation between Rome and Constantinople. The dispute was exacerbated by Bulgarian leaders “playing one side off against the other” in a game designed to exact the best deal from the two churches.11
Religious divisions in the region, including divisions caused by the additional, later introduction of Islam into the Balkan Peninsula, have persisted until the present day and have motivated much ethnic conflict in what is often described as “the former Yugoslavia.” This modern state of affairs, having recently been improved by international action, can be said to have been possibly affected by the lack of a unified church policy with regards to the region during medieval times. As a result of the quarreling of the Eastern and Western Churches over the region, various forms of religious practices developed in “the former Yugoslavia.” The mishandling of the Balkans and the church rivalry associated therewith exacerbated the tensions between East and West in medieval times and laid the foundation for the post-Tito nightmare in “the former Yugoslavia.”
The greatest doctrinal conflict between the future Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches around the time of the schism in question was caused by the Western inclusion of the
filioque in the standard profession of faith of the Church. This creed had been based on an ecumenical consensus during the proceedings of the First Council of Nicaea in 325. The
filioque issue stemmed from the unilateral inclusion of this Frankish addition to the creed by the papacy. This inclusion indicated that the Holy Spirit “proceeds” from the Father “and the Son” (Latin:
filioque) rather than abiding by the Nicene tradition of the procession of the Holy Spirit only from the Father. The change was made to help to solidify the trinitarian nature of local Christianity in Frankish areas and their vicinities in Western Europe.12 These areas were struggling against non-trinitarian heretics spawned by the long-term proliferation of the ideas of Arius regarding the nature of Christ among certain Germanic tribes, some of which having carried the Arian heresy as part of their religious practice for centuries.
Modern Christian religious thinkers on both sides of the
filioque divide generally agree that the issue in and of itself was not and certainly is not justification for the schism.13 Catholics and Orthodox now regard each other as fully legitimate and genuine Christians despite the flap over the creed, although each camp still believes that their respective brand of Christianity is the only version that is completely correct.14 The tolerance that does exist between the Catholics and the Orthodox is due in part to the
rapprochement of the two churches in modern times, with some events germane to this topic unfolding in modern Turkey at the time of the writing of this paper through the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to meet with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I in Istanbul.15 At the time of the “Schism of 1054,” however, one doctrinal error was seen by many religious scholars as something that could jeopardize the disposition of one’s immortal soul, so the stakes were seemingly higher for the members of the 11th-century Church.
Theologically speaking, however, when you carry forward all the trinitarian connotations of the analyses of both the
filioque and non
-filioque approaches, you end up with the same result: the person of God, which is three divine persons in one, receives and gives the Holy Spirit in all its aspects within the singular nature of the godhead. There is little meat on this bone to make much of a meal; whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from one or two sources, the Spirit is still integrally part of the Holy Trinity, which is tripartite but also unitary, which implies the real and eminent presence of the Holy Spirit in the other members of the Trinity. As well we must remember that orthodox Christian theology includes the observation that the Holy Spirit is everywhere, including with the other members of the Trinity, due to God’s omnipresence. The omnipresence of God and the unitary-but-tripartite nature of God are two of the most fundamental of Christian doctrines and are crucial here for debunking the Orthodox arguments against the
filioque.
One set of causes of the Schism of 1054 has to do with political geography. Since the time of Diocletian, the Roman Empire had been divided in an East-West manner for administrative purposes, in addition to all the other contrasts between East and West previously mentioned in this paper. Officials in the East answered to local authorities rather than to Rome, and the evolution of the center of power in the East was in the form of the new capitol city of Constantinople. Both of these trends further drew the administrations of the two regions into different functionalities, creating different kinds of political culture in the East and the West. 16
Ultimately, Theodosius I (r. 379 – 395) was the last Roman Emperor to rule both East and West; major political events and the political geography brought about a formal separation between the two regions and, to some extent, the two churches, as both the Patriarch of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople assumed respective roles in terms of the local polity as well as the region. This difference in political culture was not only reflected in affairs of state but also affected church politics as well, especially given the strong linkage between church and state at this point in the history of civilization and its religions.
Political geography also played a strong role due to the technological level that existed in Europe and the Near East during the centuries preceding and following the excommunications of 1054. National power had technological limitations with respect to the limited scope of the proliferation of key elements of that power, including the dissemination of critical information, an important part of nation-building. This limited scope stands in considerable contrast to limits by which many modern states are much less constrained. These limitations led to a degree of disconnectedness of some population centers from their respective national capitols, denigrating the sense of belonging that the outlying regions might have experienced in a different technological setting.
Because of this disconnectedness, the reduced psychological ties of the citizens of distant locales to the respective regional capitals could certainly play a role in the continued religious alienation of those locales from far away ecclesiastical centers of power. The creation and persistence of the schism could have been affected by a lack of reliable information penetrating much of the sparsely inhabited area of the Mediterranean region in a timely manner.
Difference of opinion over the appropriate marital status of the clergy was also an issue that caused alienation between East and West. The attempted dictation of a celibacy policy by the Roman Church to the Greek East was resented since the early traditions in all parts of the Church in the Byzantine-occupied areas of the Eastern Mediterranean had allowed for either clerical marriage or celibacy as a personal choice.17 Nicolaitism, a Western term for the doctrinal error of allowing married clergy, was during the 11th-century a banner issue for the reform-minded popes that came to power around 1054 and catalyzed a considerable amount of the conflict between the Eastern and Western Christian camps.
Other minor doctrinal conflicts existed as well, including a disagreement over what kind of bread to use at Eucharistic services, over the Latin practice of fasting on Saturdays, and over a number of false accusations hurled by either side during the years around 1054. These issues, even the ones that were valid, were little more than a smoke-screen raised by the parties to the dispute to cloud the personal nature of the quarrel at that time.18
The actions of Charlemagne and other Holy Roman Emperors also created political situations which exacerbated the estrangement between the Latin West and the Greek East, including the provision by the Holy Roman Empire of a military and political ally of consequence for the papacy. This new ally enabled some popes to resist influences or dictates from the Byzantine Emperor or the Patriarch of Constantinople.19 The politics of the Holy Roman Empire as they relate to the East-West schism process is a subject that deserves to be treated at a length well beyond the scope of this paper. Some of the situations created by the creation of the upstart Holy Roman Empire had grave repercussions for prospects of East-West unity, especially including the crowning of “Roman Emperor” Charlemagne as a rival to the “legitimate” Eastern heir to that appellation, the Byzantine Emperor. This figure was surely perceived by the majority of the Greek-speaking subjects of Constantinople as a “Roman Emperor,” a perception which served many who for good reason still regarded themselves as “Roman citizens.”
Issues surrounding the disagreement over the degree of the primacy of Rome over other historically prominent sees weighed into the calculus describing the widening gap in understanding between East and West. Prior to the wide acceptance of the “Schism of 1054,” Rome enjoyed primacy among the traditional patriarchates of the Church. However, the four eastern patriarchates, since the very early years of the history of the Church, regarded said primacy as an honorific only, or at best as indicating Rome as an avenue of appeal in cases of disagreement in the Church. Rome and a great many popes came to regard the honorific as carrying functional superiority that could enable the Western Church to exercise the direction of policy without the support and guidance of church councils. Thus there existed a considerable amount of stressed relations between East and West for some time before the actual schism, and this stress was concerned with the nature of the exact powers of the Pope.
The See of Rome and the See of Constantinople were the only two of the sees historically regarded as preeminent that were not under Muslim control in the 11th-century. So the bipolar nature of the church’s power structure led to tensions between the two poles, Rome and Constantinople, not in a manner completely dissimilar to other geopolitical bipolarities throughout history, such as the modern Cold War or the situation that existed between the Roman Republic and Carthage. Seemingly routine disputes would become extraordinarily exacerbated by the accumulating tension formed by myopically focusing only on one adversary.
The loss of south Italy to the Normans in the 11th-century worsened the political situation that existed between Rome and Constantinople. As mentioned earlier, the natural society of Italy was affected by this conquest. As well, with the growing power of the Normans at issue, it should have been expected that the Pope and the Byzantine Emperor should have cooperated in controlling their mutual enemy. Despite these common vested interests, among others, the personality conflicts and petty criticisms prevailed, preventing an effective papal-Byzantine alliance and thereby helping Robert Guiscard and his successors establish themselves on the Italian peninsula and Sicily.
The “Schism of 1054” is often billed as one of the principal splits in Christianity and for good reason. The division has parted Catholic from Orthodox, West from East, in a manner that has been as comprehensive and important as any of the many schisms that have occurred in the history of Christianity. The causes, however, cannot be oversimplified to entail only the immediate conflict of 1054; many different types of forces, including social, cultural, political, ecclesiastical, and idiosyncratic, led to the dissolution of the bonds between Eastern and Western Christianity.
As to which cause or set of causes that most precipitated the division between Eastern and Western Christianity, any identification would be purely speculative. The finer points of theology, such as the
filioque, probably did not concern the masses greatly and were a matter of vibrant concern only to church leaders. The people of East and West were different because of their cultures, their languages, and their political loyalties, all of which provided the framework for disputed church policies to kick-off the technical religious disagreements that were the catalyst, but not the substance, of the schism between East and West.
Ultimately people behave according to their cultural and individual imperatives, with less attention to the fineries of theology than to the matters of everyday life. While the obscure points of theology were more important to the general population in the medieval world than they are today, especially in the East, the cultural fabric, different from East to West and experienced in person everyday by all the citizens of their respective regions, is more important than theological abstraction as a cause for the alienation and ultimate schism between the Eastern and Western Churches.
Notes
1. Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, 133.
2. The Encyclopedia Press, Inc., The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1914 ed., “The Eastern
Schism,”
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13535a.htm. December 19, 2006.
3. Magoulias, Byzantine Christianity, 116. The “Schism of 1054” made it more
possible and more likely that the conflicts that existed between Byzantium and the
West during the course of the Crusades would ultimately lead to the disastrous
Fourth Crusade which heralded the beginning of the end of the Byzantine Empire.
The fall of Byzantium opens wide the door for the Ottoman Turks and other invaders
Into Europe and the Near East, a trend that eventually affects the West in countless
ways.
4. Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 163-4.
5. Ibid., 4.
6. Ibid.
7. The Oriental Orthodox, consisting of the Armenian Apostolic, Coptic Orthodox,
Ethiopian Orthodox, and Syrian Orthodox, and a few other groups, maintain that
they are “miaphysitic,” i.e. believing Christ has only one nature which is both
human and divine. Chalcedonian Christians, by and large, still regard the Oriental
Orthodox as being monophysitic since the two natures of Christ are not included.
Despite this difference of opinion, Chalcedonian Christians look favorably on the
Oriental Orthodox as having a compatible Christology. See Encyclopedia
Britannica, Inc., Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2006 ed., “Monophysite,”
http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9053408 >.
8. Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 23.
9. Ibid., 24.
10. Robert Guiscard in fact took these Italian lands in part from culturally Greek people
in the 11th-century who answered to the Byzantine Emperor, which would have
compromised much of the Greek influence in the region for a time, including the
Greek culture and immigrants from the Balkans.
11. Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 25.
12. Ibid., 29.
13. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 92.
14. Clément, Conversations with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, 189.
15. Carried in the general news media, this event was heralded as a possible
breakthrough in Catholic-Orthodox relations. Any lasting results of the meeting
may take some time to determine.
16. Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society, 14.
17. Magoulias, 92.
18. Meyendorff, 95.
19. Congar, After Nine-Hundred Years, 22.
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