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East-West Schism

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Religious disputes


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   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 Latin Western
   Catholicism and Greek-Byzantine Eastern Orthodoxy. Though normally
   dated to 1054, 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 Greek-speaking
   patriarchs, and over the insertion of the filioque clause into the
   Nicene Creed. Eastern Orthodox today claim that the primacy of the
   Patriarch of Rome was only honorary, and thus he had authority only
   over Western Christians and does not have the authority to change the
   decisions of the Ecumenical Councils. 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 Lyon) 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; Rome, because of
   its imperial status (or, for some, because it was regarded as the seat
   of St Peter), and Constantinople (regarded as the seat of Saint Andrew,
   the first bishop of Byzantium and Saint Peter's brother) by virtue of
   its importance as the " New Rome" and capital of the Roman
   Empire-Byzantine 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.

   Many 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.

Great Schism

Catalysts

   There are many catalysts which caused tensions.
     * The insertion of the filioque clause into the Nicene Creed.
     * Disputes in the Balkans, Southern Italy, and Sicily 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.
     * 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.
     * 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 and final break

   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
   Cerularius, who ordered the Latin churches of Constantinople to adopt
   Eastern usages and when they refused, he shut them down (although this
   piece of information is questionable for many historians today; it
   seems that several Latin churches were still open even years later) .
   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.

   Although he was hot-headed, Cerularius 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, 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 mere
   barbarous Westerners, they were liars and crooks. He refused to
   recognise their authority or, practically, their existence.

   When pope Leo died on April 19, 1054 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 papal Bull of
   Excommunication (1054) on the altar. 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.

   Orthodox bishop Kallistos Ware (formerly Timothy Ware) writes, "The
   choice of Cardinal Humbert was unfortunate, for both he and Cerularius
   were men of stiff and intransigent temper. . . . After [an initial,
   unfriendly encounter] 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. . . . Cerularius and his synod retaliated by
   anathematizing Humbert (but not the Roman Church as such)" (The
   Orthodox Church, 67).

   The New Catholic Encyclopedia says, "The consummation of the schism is
   generally dated from the year 1054, when this unfortunate sequence of
   events took place. This conclusion, however, is not correct, because in
   the bull composed by Humbert, only Patriarch Cerularius was
   excommunicated. The validity of the bull is questioned because Pope Leo
   IX was already dead at that time. On the other side, the Byzantine
   synod excommunicated only the legates and abstained from any attack on
   the pope or the Latin Church."

Early attempts at reconciliation

   "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. . . . The dispute remained something of which
   ordinary Christians in East and West were largely unaware" (Ware, 67).

   There was no single event that marked the break, but rather a sliding
   into and out of schism during a period of several centuries, punctuated
   with temporary reconciliations. During the Fourth Crusade, however,
   Latin crusaders sacked Constantinople itself on their way eastward, and
   defiled the Hagia Sophia. A period of chaotic rule over the sacked and
   looted lands of the Byzantine Empire ensued, still known among Eastern
   Christians as Fragkokratia. After that, the break became permanent.
   Somewhat later attempts at reconciliation, such as Second Council of
   Lyon, met with little to no success.

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 (but not significantly many), 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 Ecumenical 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 the fact
   that Pope John Paul II did not participate as an officiant, but only
   assisted at the Orthodox liturgy officiated by the Romanian Patriarch,
   the Greek monks of Mount Athos refused to admit Romanian priests and
   hieromonks as co-officiants at 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 the Vatican
   City.

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

   Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, together with Patriarchs and
   Archibishops of other Eastern Orthodox Churches, was present at the
   funeral of Pope John Paul II on April 8, 2005. He was standing in the
   honorary first seat. The special and increased role of the Eastern
   Orthodox Patriarchs in Pope John Paul's funeral along with the fact
   that this was the first time for many centuries that an Ecumenical
   Patriarch has attended the funeral of a Pope, is considered by many a
   serious sign that dialogue towards reconciliation might have started.

   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."

   Pope Benedict XVI was invited to visit Turkey in November 2006 by
   Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I.

   Archbishop Christodoulos, head of the Greek Orthodox Church, is
   scheduled to visit Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in December 2006.
   It will be the first official visit by a Greek church leader to the
   Vatican.

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