Yet More on the Great Schism

A Celebration of the Eucharist in an Orthodox

Church "We did not know if we were in heaven or

still on earth."

Sorry about the hiatus.  We have been without internet for several days and then I was involved in doing some moving which is always a strain on time and energy.  But things have settled down a bit and I would like to get back to the matter of the schism that has divided the Orthodox Churches of the East from the Catholic Church of the West.  I mentioned in the previous blog that the first thing we Catholics have got to get over is the idea that the Greek Church was in some way or other at one time “under” the Pope.  It never has nor had been.  The Churches of Rome and of Constantinople, and the various local Churches of their respective patriarchates, had been in communion with one another since apostolic times.  That communion was fractured in the ninth century when Pope Nicholas I, as senior patriarch of the Church, had excommunicated the Byzantine Emperor Michael III for having deposed the Patriarch Ignatios and replaced him with Photius but the Pope was acting as senior patriarch protecting the rights and authority of a brother patriarch, Igantios.  Ignatios, as a matter of fact, was restored and when, after the death of Ignatios,  Photios was elected in his own right to the Patriarchal Throne there was no breach of communion with the Churches of the West.  In fact, according to some historians, Photios’ son succeeded to the Papal Throne as Theodore II, one of the few good popes of the late ninth  century.  (He had a very short reign, only twenty days, in 897.  His death may be a witness to just how good a pope he was in a time when a fair number of evil men coveted the Throne of Peter and achieved it by very unscrupulous means.)  This time, however, the schism would be of greater and more serious duration.  
     Part of the problem is that the Byzantine Empire was in the early stages of what would be a fatal decline.  Actually, by the time of the schism o f 1054 the decline was pretty advanced, though it could—and would—get far worse.  For over four centuries the Empire had been being whittled away by first the Arabs and then the Turks.  Jerusalem, Damascus, Antioch had all fallen to the Caliphate.  Most of Asia Minor—modern day Turkey—was no longer under imperial control.  It would be another four centuries before the Empire fell completely but the effects of its diminution were already being felt.  Long-term fatal illnesses in empires, like humans, often lead to denial.  The smaller and weaker the Empire became, the more pretentious and even arrogant its claims to sovereignty.   And while it was shrinking, it remembered that while its dominion may be shaky, Rome was not little more than a clump of ruined temples and theatres in a malaria-ridden cattle field.  It was time for “old Rome” to give up its pretensions to Patriarchal Seniority and allow “new Rome” (Constantinople) its rightful dominance in matters ecclesiastical as well as civil. 
     “Old Rome” was not about to do any such thing.  Granted, the Vatican Basilica was already falling down around their ears and cows wandered grazing around those churches standing among the ruins of Caesar and Marcus Aurelius’ capital, but like a delusional old dowager whose once-expensive dresses were now patched and who no longer could afford the luxury of the beauty parlor, but who claimed yet to be the grand dame of the town’s first family,  the Popes of Rome in the squalor of the Lateran reminded anyone who would listen that they were the successors of Saint Peter to the plenitudo potestatis.  Conflict was inevitable where claims of ego were the agenda of the hour. 
     The conflict had been building over time, but the immediate conflagration was ignited when the Patriarch, Michael Caerularius wrote to the Bishop of Trani, an Italian See that had connections both to Rome and to Constantinople.  The Patriarch accused the papacy of introducing “judaizing” practices into Christianity, most notably the use of unleavened bread into the Eucharist.  (The practice in the Church, both East and West, had long been to use leavened bread for the Eucharistic celebration, but in the tenth and eleventh century the West gradually began using unleavened bread—as would have been used by Christ at the Last Supper.  The concern for the form of the bread itself corresponds to an increasing appreciation of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist that began as a result of the Eucharistic controversies in the Abbey of Corbie in the ninth century.  But note, there was no continuing tradition from the Last Supper of using unleavened bread.  Leavened bread had become the norm and then the West began introducing unleavened bread.) 
     There were other issues as well—the West had made an unilateral change in the Creed of the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople, proclaiming that the Holy Spirit “proceeded” from the Father and the Son whereas the Conciliar formula said only that the Spirit proceeded from the Father.  This is a very difficult theological point to explain, but suffice it to say that the issue was that the West had altered a formula of faith and altering a formula of faith challenges the orthodoxy of the doctrine.  This in fact is a far more significant problem than leavened/unleavened bread. 
     A third issue was that the West was beginning to impose celibacy on the clergy while in the East married men were allowed to become deacons and priests (though not bishops, at least until they were widowed).
     The Pope, Leo IX, resented the Patriarch’s sending a letter of complaint to a Bishop in the West and the Patriarch’s request that the letter be forwarded to the other bishops of the Western Church.  Leo saw this as an attack on his authority over his own patriarchate and he sent a delegation to Constantinople demanding an acknowledgement by the Patriarch of Papal Supremacy.  This would have been an innovation—the Pope may have been first but he was first among equals.  The Patriarch was not going to give in on that point.  The head of the legation, the Cardinal Bishop of Silva Candida, Humbert, marched into the Hagia Sophia during a Patriarchal Liturgy and, in the name of Leo IX, laid a bull of excommunication on the altar.  The Patriarch then in turn excommunicated the Legate.  The Patriarchal Sees of Rome and Constantinople were no longer in communion with one another, nor were the various Churches comprising their patriarchates.   As far as I can ascertain from my sources, the Patriarch’s pronouncement of excommunication was directed only towards the Legates and not towards either the Pope nor the Western Church.  As for the Bull that Humbert laid on the altar—it was not valid for it was issued in the name of Leo IX and Leo was, unknown yet in Constantinople, dead.   Well, more on this in the next entry.  But the chief point we need to pay attention to is that the schism of East and West is not a rebellion against Papal Authority for the Pope never did have authority over the Eastern Churches.  It was a break of communion as the unity of the Church was shattered as Churches equal in dignity and authority set themselves on different courses. 

The East-West Schism: 1054 and All That

His Ecumenical Holiness,

Bartholomew I, 270^th  

successor of Saint Andrew

the Apostle

Sorry about the recent hiatus—we have had issues with our wireless internet connections over the last few days, but now it’s time to refocus and to return to the subject of the Gregorian Reform.  But before we focus on the Reform itself, let’s take a brief detour here and talk about the East-West Schism since it was at this time that the papal legate Humbert of Silva Candida excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Caerularius and the Patriarch—always a gentleman—returned the compliment.   You may remember from our last posting (August 13^th)  on the Gregorian Reform, the one on German Reform popes, that Leo IX had sent Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida to Constantinople on a mission that went bad and ended up with the Cardinal (in the pope’s name) and the Patriarch excommunicating each other. 
     Tensions between the Sees of Rome and Constantinople had often been tense.  Contrary to Catholic Mythology, the Patriarch of Constantinople—like the other Apostolic Patriarchs of Jerusalem. Antioch, and Alexandria—had never been “under” the pope or his authority.  As successor to various apostles, they were “brothers” among whom the Patriarch of the West, the Bishop of Rome, stood out as first among equals.  The Council in Trullo (692), a Council which the Eastern Churches recognize as Ecumenical but the Western Church does not (since no delegates from the West were there) determined the precedence to be Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.  The First Council of Constantinople (381), which both the Churches of the East and the West recognize as Ecumenical, had already determined that the Bishop of Rome held precedence over the Bishop of Constantinople.  This was not a matter of jurisdiction, however, but only of honor.  Each Patriarch was supreme authority in his own jurisdiction; indeed each bishop was supreme in his own diocese.  A patriarch could settle disputes among the bishops in his patriarchate.  Each patriarch in his own jurisdiction also was the court of appeal should the clergy have a canonical or doctrinal grievance against their bishop, but the universal Church had a very collaborative structure rather than the hierarchical structure that was to emerge in the Middle Ages.  From the time of the Apostles until the Emperor Justinian (d. 565) the universal Church was a communion of local churches;  by the sixth century, it had become a communion of the five patriarchates which in turn were communions of the local churches that comprised them.  Universal Jurisdiction of the papacy would only be claimed towards the end of the first millennium and even then it did not approach the authority claimed by the popes since the fifteenth century collapse of conciliarism—which is a future topic. 
     That is not to say that everything in the church was all buddy-buddy among bishops, metropolitans, and patriarchs—to the contrary. Male animals in nature do not share territory; likewise in the Church there have been squabbles of jurisdiction ever since the beginning.  As Constantinople, the capital of the surviving Roman Empire, grew in importance and Rome, abandoned by its Emperor and bereft of its Empire, declined in its significance, the bishops of Constantinople pushed more and more to be recognized as the first bishop of Christendom.  The bishops of Constantinople were (allegedly) the descendents of Andrew and Andrew was, after all, Peter’s older brother—and the “first-called.”  (Saint Andrew is venerated to this day in the Churches form the Byzantine Tradition as “The First-Called.).  Rome, on the other hand, was jealous of its ancient prerogatives and suspicious of Constantinople’s designs.  The political situation made matters even more tense.  Increasingly after the seventh century, the Emperors in Constantinople were unable to defend Rome from the Lombards and other Germanic tribes as well as from the Saracen pirates who dominated the Mediterranean.  As a result, the popes looked more and more to the Merovingian and Pippinid (Carolingian) Kings of the Franks for protection.  When Charlemagne assumed the title “Emperor” in 800 AD, the Emperor—the “real” Emperor in Constantinople—was furious that this illiterate animal-skin wearing baboon in the West would assume equality with his perfumed and silk-clad dandy self in Constantinople.  Mirroring the political tension between the emperors, mistrust and antagonism grew between the Church in the East (Constantinople) and the Church in the West (Rome).   
      Now, over the centuries there had been  a number of popes who had been chosen from the East.  In antiquity there had been Anacletus, the second successor to Peter, Telesphorus (+137), Hyginus (+140), Sixtus II (+258)  Zosimus (+418)  among others.  Even as the tension between East and West mounted, Greek and Syrian popes were common—among them (there were more) were Boniface III (+607)  Theodore I (+642) Agatho (+681) Sergius I (+687) Constantine (+715)  Zachary (+752) Stephen III (+772).  The Greek and Syrian popes brought much to the Western Church—the “Kyrie” of the Mass being one contribution.  Nevertheless the tension began to build. 
    858 the Emperor Michael III of Constantinople deposed the Patriarch Ignatius for political reasons and replaced him with a theologian, a layman, Photios.  Under normal circumstances Photios would have made an excellent patriarch—he was both holy and scholarly.   Ignatius had dared to excommunicate the Emperor’s uncle for having an affair with his widowed daughter-in-law.  Pope Nicholas I, as senior patriarch, felt he had a responsibility to speak up for the deposed Ignatius whose rights had been violated.  He did not claim universal jurisdiction but rather acted as the senior patriarch protecting one of the four junior patriarchs. Nicholas excommunicated Photios and the Emperor.  This created a schism between the Eastern and Western Churches.  When Ignatius died, Photios was elected in his own right to succede him and the schism was healed.   But it left a bad mark.  Ironically, according to some historians, Photius’ son succeeded to the papal throne as Theodore II. 
     There were other points of tension that persisted even after the schism had been healed.  The Western Church unilaterally altered the Creed of the Council of Nicea, declaring that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as the Father.  The addition to the creed “and the Son” is known by its Latin phraseology: filioque.  As the western Church began to impose celibacy on the clergy, the Eastern Church maintained a married parish clergy.  The Western Church began using unleavened bread for the Eucharist as Christ had used unleavened bread at the Last Supper; the Eastern Churches kept to the apostolic custom of using leavened bread.  When the Greek Church banned the use of icons—images of Christ, Mary, and the Saints in 730, Pope Gregory III convoked a synod that defended the use of Icons.  This caused many Greek Christians to flee to Rome to maintain their practice of using icons in personal prayer as well as corporate worship.  The second Council of Nicea in 787 affirmed the use of icons, but  the East and West remained suspicious of each other’s doctrinal position