The Great Schism of 1054

A marriage that drifted apart

Shelley compares the split between Eastern and Western Christianity to a marriage that slowly fails. No single fight causes the divorce. Years of misunderstanding, neglect and resentment pile up until a final quarrel makes it official [check]. The date usually given is 1054, but historians agree that the separation was a long process, both before and after that year.

Growing apart

For the first centuries, the church was one communion across the Mediterranean, though it always had Greek and Latin "accents." After the empire divided, the two halves drifted:

• Language: By the 600s few Westerners knew Greek and few Easterners knew Latin. Theologians could no longer read each other, and translations were often poor.
• Politics: The East kept a Roman emperor in Constantinople. The West had Germanic kings and, from 800, its own rival "Roman" emperor (see Charlemagne).
• Islam: The Arab conquests cut the Mediterranean in two and removed Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem as counterweights. That left Rome and Constantinople facing each other.
• Theology and style: The West, shaped by Augustine and Roman law, tended toward precise definitions, legal categories and questions of sin and grace. The East, shaped by the Greek fathers, emphasized mystery, the Holy Spirit, and salvation as Theosis, sharing in God's life.
• Practices: Western priests had to be celibate. Eastern parish priests could marry. The West used unleavened bread for the Eucharist, and the East used leavened bread. They differed on fasting rules, beards and the date of Easter.

None of these differences alone would have split the church. Two issues made them explosive: authority and the Creed.

Issue 1: the pope's authority

Both sides agreed that the bishop of Rome held the first place of honor among the five great patriarchs: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. The question was what that "first place" meant.

• The West increasingly held that the pope, as Peter's successor, had supreme authority (jurisdiction) over the whole church, East included. He could judge any bishop and define doctrine.
• The East saw the pope as "first among equals," with a primacy of honor. Major questions should be decided by ecumenical councils of all the bishops, not by one bishop alone. Constantinople, as "New Rome," claimed second place.

Tensions flared in the 860s. Pope Nicholas I refused to recognize the learned Photius as patriarch of Constantinople. Photius denounced Western practices, including the filioque. The "Photian schism" was patched up, but the issues remained.

Issue 2: the filioque

The Nicene Creed of 381 said the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father." In Spain, probably to stress the Son's equality with the Father against Arian Visigoths, Latin churches began adding the words "and the Son" (in Latin, Filioque). The Council of Toledo in 589 used it. Charlemagne's court championed it. Rome resisted adding it to the Creed for centuries, but it was finally sung there in 1014, at the coronation of the German emperor Henry II.

The East objected on two grounds:

1. Procedure: The Creed was the common property of the whole church, agreed by an ecumenical council. No single church, not even Rome, had the right to change it.
2. Theology: In Eastern thought, the Father is the single source of the Trinity. Saying the Spirit proceeds from the Father "and the Son" seemed to create two sources, or to make the Spirit secondary.

Westerners thought the East was being pedantic. Easterners thought the West was arrogant and theologically careless. Both issues, papal power and the filioque, were really about the same thing: who has authority to define the faith?

Why East and West split

	Latin West (Rome)	Greek East (Constantinople)
Language	Latin	Greek (and Slavonic, Arabic, etc.)
Authority	Pope has supreme jurisdiction over the whole church	Pope is "first among equals"; councils decide
The Creed	Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque)	Spirit proceeds from the Father (original 381 text)
Church & state	Pope vs. emperor rivalry; "two swords"	Emperor and patriarch in "symphony"
Theology	Augustine; legal categories; sin, grace, satisfaction	Greek fathers; mystery; theosis (sharing God's life)
Clergy	Celibate priests (enforced from the 1000s)	Married parish priests allowed; bishops celibate
Eucharist	Unleavened bread (wafers)	Leavened bread
Key wounds	1054 mutual excommunications → 1204 sack of Constantinople → failed reunions (1274, 1439) → 1965 excommunications lifted

1054

The crisis of 1054 had a political background. The Normans were conquering southern Italy, where Greek and Latin Christians lived side by side, and both pope and emperor wanted an alliance against them. But religious tensions boiled over. The patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, a proud and combative man, closed Latin churches in the city and attacked Western practices, especially unleavened bread.

Pope Leo IX sent a delegation led by Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, equally proud and combative. Negotiations went badly. On 16 July 1054, Humbert marched into Hagia Sophia during the afternoon liturgy and laid a bull of excommunication against Cerularius on the altar. In a final irony, the bull accused the Greeks of having removed the filioque from the Creed. A deacon ran after him begging him to take it back. Humbert refused, shook the dust from his feet, and left. Days later Cerularius and his synod excommunicated the legates in return.

Technically, the excommunications applied to individuals, not whole churches, and Pope Leo IX had actually died before the bull was delivered, which arguably made it invalid. At the time, many saw 1054 as just another quarrel. Ordinary contacts continued. But in hindsight it became the symbolic date of the split.

1204: the wound that would not heal

What turned a quarrel into a real division was the Crusades (see The Crusades). Western armies marching east often treated Byzantine Christians with contempt. Then, in 1204, the knights of the Fourth Crusade, diverted from their goal by Venetian money and Byzantine politics, attacked and sacked Constantinople itself. For three days they looted, raped and murdered. They stripped Hagia Sophia of its treasures and set a prostitute on the patriarch's throne. They installed a Latin emperor and a Latin patriarch, who ruled until 1261.

Orthodox Christians have never forgotten 1204. A Byzantine writer said that even the Muslims had been more merciful. Pope Innocent III, who had forbidden the attack, was horrified, though he accepted its results. In 2001 Pope John Paul II apologized for it. Many historians date the true schism from 1204 rather than 1054.

Failed reunions

As the Ottoman Turks threatened Constantinople, the Byzantine emperors sought Western military help, and the price was church reunion. Twice reunion was signed: at the Council of Lyon (1274) and at the Council of Florence (1439), where Greek delegates accepted the filioque and papal primacy. Both times the clergy and people of the East rejected it. "Better the Sultan's turban than the cardinal's hat," a Byzantine official reportedly said. In 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottomans. No Western army had come to save it.

Toward healing

On 7 December 1965, Pope Paul VI in Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I in Istanbul simultaneously lifted the excommunications of 1054, "removing them from memory." Since then, popes and patriarchs have met, prayed together and held theological dialogues. The Catholic Church has said the filioque can be understood in a way compatible with Eastern teaching, and it has used the Creed without it in some joint services. Yet the core question of papal authority remains unresolved, and the two largest Christian communions are still not in full communion.