Decisive Moments: We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (AD 1054)
In past instalments in this series, we’ve already seen a growing rift between the Eastern and Western sides of Christianity. Today there is the Roman Catholic Church in the West and Eastern Orthodoxy. They were once united, but that was nearly a thousand years ago. So what happened?
East and West had long been dissimilar. For one thing, they used different languages; Greek in the East and Latin in the West. The West had a pope, the East had four patriarchates (Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, and Jerusalem – with Constantinople as the “Ecumenical Patriarchate”). In theology, the West had adopted the “Filioque” clause in the Nicene Creed. That clause says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The East professes that he only proceeds from the Father. There were also differences in worship with the East being more mystical. They also insisted on using leavened bread for communion, whereas the West maintained the use of unleavened.
While they had been drifting apart for many years, it all came to a head in 1054. In the Western corner were Holy Roman Emperor Henry III and Pope Leo IX. In the Eastern corner, we had Emperor Constantine IX and Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Cerularius. The precipitating event was an invasion of southern Italy by Norman knights in 1050. These knights were threatening property of all the parties involved, both from the West and from the East. You see, there were Greek churches in Italy at this time and they were also under threat.
So it happened that Henry, Leo, and Constantine were negotiating a way to resist the Norman invaders. Pope Leo IX smelled an opportunity. He argued that the Greek churches in Italy should come under his authority (and therefore protection). Moreover, the pope wanted the Greek patriarch Michael Cerularius to acknowledge his authority as the “first among equals.” Pope Leo IX was apparently making a power-play to gain control over the East.
Except Cerularius didn’t want to play ball. He didn’t concede a thing. Instead, when he heard about Leo’s demands, he came back with his own demand that the Latin churches in Constantinople follow the Eastern worship rituals and use Greek. When they refused, he closed them all down. East and West were deadlocked.
In 1054 Pope Leo decided to try and break the impasse. He sent Cardinal Humbert as his representative to Constantinople. But there were two major hitches. One was the fact that soon after Humbert arrived in the East, he heard that Leo IX had inconveniently died. But that didn’t stop Humbert from carrying out Leo’s attempt at diplomacy. As far as tactics go, it was not quite brilliant. Humbert gave a letter from Leo to Michael Cerularius. The letter insisted the patriarch recognize the authority of the Roman pope. Not surprisingly, Cerularius refused. Humbert stormed off, greatly offended at the patriarch’s pigheadedness.
Before he left Constantinople to go back to Rome, Cardinal Humbert entered the city’s famous church, the Hagia Sophia. He placed a paper excommunicating Michael Cerularius and all his clergy on the altar. Four days later, Cerularius convened a synod in Constantinople and returned the favour, excommunicating Humbert and the Roman papacy. This is the Great Schism of 1054.
Now there is a bit of a post-script to this story. After lengthy negotiations, the mutual excommunications were revoked in 1965. Nevertheless, while Rome and the East have warmed up to each other a little bit, the schism is still a reality. They never ever got back together.
There are a couple of reasons why the Great Schism was a decisive moment in church history. First, after a long period of drifting apart, it definitively split East and West. The second reason follows closely on from that. Because of the isolation between East and West, when the Reformation happened in the 1500s, the East was left largely untouched. There were exceptions, one of the most significant being Cyril Lucaris (1572-1638), Greek Patriarch of Alexandria, and later Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. He is reputed to have held Reformed beliefs and to have tried (unsuccessfully) to bring the Reformation to the East. Today, while there are Reformed and Presbyterian churches in the East, the need for true reformation remains in Eastern Orthodoxy.
