Schism: The Great Schism of 1054

The Great Schism of 1054 divided Chalcedonian Christianity between those governments which spoke Latin, and those which spoke Greek, into the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodoxes churches, respectively. Historians have previously noted 1 it split the Latin(Romance) and Germanic speakers from the Greek, Slavic and Uralic with the exception of Bohemia(Slavic-Czech) and Carinthia(Slavic-Slovene) The language of the government, Latin or Greek, was also the language of church services.

The filioque clause was the underlying theological point of contention. Christians are Trinitarians, meaning they believe god is divided into three: God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Eastern Orthodox believe the Holy Spirit comes from God, following the Nicene Creed of 589. Roman Catholics amended this to say the Holy Spirit comes from God and Jesus. If this were simply a theological point, one might expect everyone to make up their own mind independently, and Europe to be checkered with Churches believing either faith. The divide was described by French theologian and historian Yves Congars thusly: "it is a fact that the Christian world split in two according to a line that practically corresponded to the linguistic boundary."

We might never know what languages most Europeans, the peasants, were speaking at this time, except perhaps in great centers like Rome and Constantinople, and we have very few scraps of writing in other languages which survive from this period, and from some regions nothing at all. It is a leap, consistent with the evidence, to talk about 11th century people "speaking" what probably amounted to mutually unintelligable dialects of the modern European languages, but it is especially consistent with the repeated efforts to get local clergy to use the ruling tongue and avoid the local language and instead preach in Latin (in the West) or Greek (in the East).One interesting thing about this schism is that on the border between these two linguistic empires, in southeastern Europe, the Bible had been translated into the local dialects earlier than in any other area. Into Slavic(Glagolitic), with Papal approval, before 8852 (compared to the 1300s in English). Slavic, at the time, was dominating most of the Balkans and western Black Sea coast. This was the first major translation of the Bible outside of Greek or Latin in Europe. Whether or not this had much to do with the schism should surely be wondered at.

A little background on the schism.

Early Roman Christians has four leaders, later five, called Patriarchs. The Patriarch of Rome was also the Pope, was first among his peers stationed Constantinople(Turkey), Antioch(Syria) and Alexandria(Egypt) and later Jerusalem.

The Byzantine Empire saw itself as the continuation of the Roman Empire, and its religious leader, the Patriarch of Constantinople, was, in wealth, splendor, learning and publishing, the greatest of all the Patriarchs. The Patriarch of Rome was seen by the Greeks as poor and constantly overrun by Germanic barbarians, one of whom (Charlemagne) the Pope had the audacity to crown Holy Roman Emperor while there was still an Emperor in Byzantium. The short duration of a unified Holy Roman Empire (800-843) and internal wars discouraged any other perspective.

The other three Patriarchs all lived in Muslim dominions.

The immediate context was complex. In 967 Pope John XIII could write, to descibe the estrangement between East and West, that there was an "an Emperor of the Greeks" and "an Emperor of the Romans."3 and the idea that the Pope was first among equals worked as well as it did just long as the Westerners did not push very far.

The Western powers had little control over their possessions in northern Italy by 10004 . The revolts, intra-urban and inter-urban conflict in northern Italy was incessant, while to the south of the Papacy the Norman Vikings had begun their slow, grinding conquest of Southern Italy and Sicily, to be completed after forty years.

As far as the Byzantines, their fortunes reached their nadir in the early 900s, with Bulgarian raids repeatedly reaching the wall of Constantinople5 , but were apble to reclaim most of the Balkan penninsula and achieve some brief successes against the Arabs to the east by 1054. Their renewed power brought about renewed feelings of supremacy which regularly angered the Pope. The regular changes of fortune resulted in Pope St. Leo IX excommunicating the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1054.

Footnotes4. The Holy Roman Empire roughly constitued France, Germany and northern Italy. Emperor Louis the Pious wanted to leave it to his son Lothar, but his sons had other ideas, and divided the Empire into three sections (Treaty of Verdun).6 Charles the Bald and successors would retain France (without Provence) while the rest of the Empire, by 880 was reunited by Treaty of Ribemont. For the following centuries, when the Popes had trouble with their German lords they would look to France for help. After 1056, there was no official East-West communication for 100 years. 7 back
The Croats were the only nation in Europe which was given permission by the

Pope to use the vernacular where the different script (Glagolitic) was in use.8

9*988:989; Kiev Prince Vladimir sent 6000 Rus to help Byzantine Emperor Basil II and demanded his sister Anna's hand in marriage. Basil promised because he needed Kievan help. Constantinople threatened by rebel general Bardas Phocas from Asia Minor. Prince Vladimir captured Kherson in the Crimea, perhaps because Basil balked on his promise. Kiev becoming the major power north of Constantinople. Negotiations continued, resulting in Vladimir's diplomatic decision to be baptized a Christian and to declare the Orthodox Church official in his realm *--Christianization described in Chronicle TXT [Other locations = CPC:110-19| ZNC,1:74-122| KRR:63-7| VSB,1:25-6| DMR2:38-44| ZMR1:65-71| ZMR2:43-83| WAL,1:65-71]; church statute [VSB,1:39] *--Russian/Byzantine relations very close, and, in connection with this, Kievan Rus mirrored Byzantine church/state relations *--Vladimir promulgated a statute protecting the interests of the newly established Russian Orthodox Church and defining its independence from interference [W] Does this statute suggest separation of church and state? *--Orthodox websites: [W#1] [W#2]

10"[H]e was profoundly troubled by the attitude of Michael Crularius, Patriarch of Constantinople. That ambitious prelate was determined, if possible, to have no superior in either Church or State. As early as 1042, he had struck the pope's name off the sacred diptychs, and soon proceeded, first in private and then in public, to attack the Latin Church because it used unfermented bread (azymes) in the Sacrifice of the Mass. At length, and that, too, in a most barbarous manner, he closed the Latin churches in Constantinople. In reply to this violence, Leo addressed a strong letter to Michael (Sept., 1053), and began to study Greek in order the better to understand the matters in dispute . However, if Michael had taken advantage of the pope's difficulties with the Normans to push his plans, the Greek Emperor, seeing that his hold on Southern Italy was endangered by the Norman success, put pressure on the patriarch to make him more respectful to the pope. To the conciliatory letters which Constantine and Crularius now dispatched to Rome, Leo sent suitable replies (Jan., 1054), blaming the arrogance of the patriarch. His letters were conveyed by two distinguished cardinals, Humbert and Frederick, but he had departed this life before the momentous issue of his embassy was known in Rome. On 16 July, 1054, the two cardinals excommunicated Crularius, and the East was finally cut off from the body of the Church." [emphasis mine]

Footnotes.On the Normans "[E]verywhere destroy the chuches with more than pagan brutality, murdering Christians and torturing them to death with new and horrible torments. They spare neither the young nor old, and they respect neither humanity nor holiness."11 It was not long after that Leo IX was aligned with the Normans, to strengthen claims to Papal lands [forged Donation of Constantine] against the Roman Emperor, Henry III.12 back

13 stuff on how divided Louis VI's France was. Better German material here, though

I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a desire to pave over this schism, and thus an attempt to undermine the difference by making it trivial. It is repeated by Congars that the two churches should re-unify.

We shall not stress the importance of language as a cultural factor, for it has long since become a classic questions which ahs been studied so thoroughly that there is little more to be said on the matter Yet, the question of language is important to us here, and from three points of view. A language is, to begin with, an instrument of communication. Where there is no understanding, contact becomes impossible. Thus, in Constantinople, the ise of Latin was restricted to administrative and judicial formulae. In the West, thanks to the monks who came from the Neapolitan region and Scility, there were always men, -- especially in Rome -- who understood Greek, and this language of prime importance for the sources of tradition was studied by numerous scholarly churchmen. But unfortunately it is a fact that the Christian world split in two according to a line that practically corresponded to the linguistic boundary. The Greek Fathers were amazingly lacking in curiousity regarding the Latin Fathers, and the latter were scarcely better informed as to the Greeks. Such a situation was an obstacle to the unity that lives by the exchange of ideas and by the awareness thus acquired, of the existence of ways other than one's own for appraoaching, and feeling, and conceiving intellectually the Holy Mysteries; and also other ways, equally legitimate, of expressing one's faith in worship and of organizing the life of the Church. The toll exacted by linguistic provincialism was bound to be, sooner or later, a certain provincialism in thought, perspective and judgement, a certain narrow separtism in the theological and canonical tradition. In short, it was bound to bring about a serious lessening of the spirit of communion and of the likelihood, of not of the very possibility, of commmunion. Language is a symbol of culture and it plays a great part in the esteem civilizations have for each other. We will later return to the highly critical way in which Latins and Greeks mutually viewed each other. But, merely from the viewpoint of language itself, although the Latins were annoyed by what they considered an excess of subtlety in Greek, the Greeks themselves felt a certain condescension, if not a kind of contempt, for the Latin Language. But language isnot merely the symbol of ideas which exist of themselves: language also shapes ideas. It contributes before the thought is expressed, to the very formation of the metchanics of thought, and to the formation of that kind of inner mirror wherein our perceptions are "refracted"; it really constitutes the climate which is called "the mind." It is a fact well known to translators that for a great many words and phrases which are most expressive of profound conviction, there is no exact equivalent in another language. For example, how do we translate into any other language the German Gemüt , the English worship , the French carrefour , the Russian sobornost ? Historians of dogma, and all those working for union, are likewise well aware that many of the difficulties between the Orthodox and ourselfes are linked with questions of language and that this was so in the past as it often still is today. There are wellknown instances of prosopon , --hypostasis --substantia . There are aloso minor instances, equally decisive; the fact that the Greeks and the Russians have generally expressed "infallibility" by the word that also signifies "impeccability" (infallible αναμαρτηος or in Russian nepogresmyi), and that in Greek there is no equivalent for the Latin word vicarius; the fact that the word αιτια signifies "to proceed as from the first principle"; the fact that the word "satisfaction" practically does not exist in Greek; and that, on the other hand, after having translated μετανοια by poenitentia, the Latins have often joined poenitentia with poena and developed there thought in the direction of the idea of acts of penance and satisfaction. These are but a few instances of the many expressions that could be mentioned; while their translation is quite clear, the difficulty of acheiving an exact understanding of them is likely to have serious consequences. This language difficulty has much to do with the conditions -- even with the possibilities of union, hence of unity. Their consequences lead once again to estrangement on the local of thought and mutual understanding.

From the "Notes to Chapter 3" in Congars

1. Cf. Jugie, Le Schisme byz. 39f. on the diversity of languages and reciprocal ignorance as one of the causes of the schism; Bardy, "La question des langues dans l'Eglise ancienne." Et. de theol. histor. I (Paris 1948); Michel, "Sprache und Schisma," Festschrift der Freisinger Hochschule f. Kard. Faulhaber zum 80. Geburstag, 37-69, which traces the process of estrangement on the background of the ignorance of the respective languages from the time of Justinian. The point is not touched upon by Greenslacde, Schism in the Early Church . As a preparation for his book or as an outgrowth of it, Bardy has written some very suggestive articles summarizing the question, among others, "La latinisation de l'Eglise d'Occident," Irenikon 14 (1937) 3-20, 113-30; "Orientalisme, occidentalism, catholicisme," L'Annee theolog . (1947) 230-44.