A Final History Project

[Writer’s Note: This is my final project from my time at a junior college. I’ll be starting at University in a few months. I’m tired. I’m tapped. I spent a lot of time researching this and basically blew my fuse box back in April. I’ll start writing again at some point, but for now please enjoy this series I wrote during Lent appropriately and implicitly recording my transition from the Western Anglo-Catholic tradition to the Eastern Orthodox Church. The bibliography will be released with the third, and final, installment. Enjoy!]

The Great Schism of 1054, forever splitting Christendom into the Latin West and the Greek East, was not merely a result of the theological conflict, but rather a culmination of divergent cultural practices of characterized by the issues of facial hair and bread. Two profound symbols, and the dividing line, of identity and tradition were clean-shaven clergy and the use of leavened bread versus the use of unleavened bread. These two religious practices, though seemingly mundane, reflected the growing political and theological tensions between the two traditions, leading to the formal split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.

In the summer of 1054, when three legates of Pope Leo IX, led by the Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida placed a Bull of Excommunication on the altar in the sanctuary of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. This was the beginning of the Great Schism (The Great Schism: The Estrangement of Eastern and Western Christendom).

There has been much written about and continues to be written about the political differences and the infamous “Filioque clause” that divided the united Church. However, the idea that the Great Schism was a product of the three words and the claims of the papacy obfuscate the centuries of tension that were behind the altar veil, slowly dividing Christendom leading to that fateful summer day.

The fact is that Christendom had been splitting since the early centuries of the first millennium, with Roman emperors of the 3rd century being assassinated, like Aurelian, with families fighting for political control of the dying Empire (Bello).

The Imprint of a Line in the Sand

At the end of the 3rd century the emperor, Diocletian, divided the Empire installing two Agustuses and two Caesars, combating the emerging tradition of assassination in the Empire. Thus, the East and West were formed, coincidentally, during the final and most severe persecution of the burgeoning Christian religion by the Roman state. The younger, ambitious emperor in the West, Constantine would issue the edict of Milan in 313, ending the persecution before abandoning the West, moving the capital of Rome to Constantinople, establishing the Byzantine Empire.

The Roman Empire in the West would, in a mirror image of its failing state of disunification and wealthy cul-de-sacs of aristocratic wealth, property, and no investment in country, business, or infrastructure the Western state fell into feudal lordships after the deposition of the last Roman Emperor in the late 5th century by the German barbarians.

The Byzantine Empire would thrive under the direction of the emperor Theodosius, who made Christianity the official religion of the Empire in the late 4th century, stamping out paganism, spiritually, and fighting the Visigothic threat from the West (Bello).

An Emerging Identity

The first eight hundred years of the emerging Church were a time spent trying to unify Christendom into an orthodox thought and practice on both sides of the East and West fault line. This effort to bring Christianity into consensus is qualified by seven ecumenical councils being held between the fourth to eighth centuries. The issues that became cause of the Great Schism arise, pretty much immediately in the 4th century.

The Church’s foremost focus was to root out heresies regarding the Trinity and Christology, which in turn informed the orthodoxy of the Church which would inform its ecclesiology. The doctrinal issues directly influence the ecclesial, and we can argue, political structure of the wider institution.

The first two ecumenical councils became the basis for which the Great Schism would point to showing cause: what is known as the “Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed”, indicating the locations of the first two ecumenical councils as well as the origination of the Christian creed, typically referred to as the Nicene Creed, for brevity’s sake. The second cause was the 381 council’s third canon, “The Bishop of Constantinople, however, shall have the prerogative of honor after the Bishop of Rome; because Constantinople is New Rome” (The Canons of the Council of Constantinople 381).

The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed is seen as one of the major reasons for the Schism, with the Orthodox pointing to the aforementioned “Filioque clause” they claim the Western, Latin Church introduced in the 5th century by the West which the East claims is a direct violation of the seventh canon of the Council of Ephesus, the third ecumenical council held in 431:

“When these things had been read, the holy Synod decreed that it is unlawful for any man to bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different Faith as a rival to that established by the holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicæa. But those who shall dare to compose a different faith, or to introduce or offer it to persons desiring to turn to the acknowledgment of the truth, whether from Heathenism or from Judaism, or from any heresy whatsoever, shall be deposed, if they be bishops or clergymen; bishops from the episcopate and clergymen from the clergy; and if they be laymen, they shall be anathematized” (The Canons of the Council of Ephesus).

The Seeds of Division

The Filioque clause is the addition of “And the Son,” to the Nicene Creed, referring to the procession of the Holy Spirit. It must be mentioned that this is incredibly important to both the Latin West and the Greek East, because from the perspective of the latter this addition changes the theology of the Church. The Greek East sees this violation as a marked departure from the orthodox theology established in the first two ecumenical councils.

Papal primacy is the other ever-present doctrinal dispute between the East and West going back to the beginning, again, with the Bishop of Rome accruing more and more power during the disintegration of the Roman state, especially in the 5th century, after the establishment of Christianity as the Roman state’s official religion. The Visigoths in the West were converting to the form of Christianity known as Arianism, which was the subject of the first two ecumenical councils where it was declared a heresy.

However, in the late fifth century, “Clovis I, king of the Franks, was the first important barbarian ruler to convert to Catholicism rather than Arianism, allying himself with the papacy. Other tribes, such as the Visigoths, later abandoned Arianism in favor of Catholicism” (The Development of Papal Supremacy).

The collapse of the Roman Empire in the West gave the Bishop of Rome opportunity to acquire political power during the Middle Ages, “As the leading civil official of the empire in Rome, [the Pope] was compelled to take over the civil administration of the cities and negotiate for the protection of Rome itself with the Lombard invaders threatening it” (Ibid.).

This period also saw the rise of Islam in the East, and it would witness Islam’s rapid ascendancy and expansion which threatened the Byzantine Empire in the latter half of the first millennium. Thus, not only was Christendom facing a total breaking away by the East and West by, perhaps at the latest the Council of Chalcedon in the mid-5th century, which resulted immediately in a Schism between the orthodox ruling of the Chalcedonian council regarding Christology and the non-Chalcedonian determinate traditions breaking away from the Church, proper.

This break was a rejection of the Christological formula known as “dyophysitism” established and codified by this Council. The predominant church, still to this day, holding to the pre-Chalcedonian, or non-Chalcedonian view, is the Oriental Orthodox Church. The view is called “monophysitism,” claiming that the Christian savior, Jesus Christ, had only one nature, whereas the dyophysitic view holds that Jesus had two natures, both human and divine.

Now, while this little schism is occurring, as mentioned above, the Western church is accruing support and becoming more and more associated with the Germanic peoples of Western Europe during the early Middle Ages. This geo-political shift is occurring, at the same time, as the rise of Islam in the East, dawning in the early seventh century (Bello).

Christianity Versus the World

While we can say a lot about the Islamic influence on both the Eastern and Western halves of Christian thought, during the expanse occurring during the seventh and eighth centuries Eastern Christendom faced the Islamic expanse and its own influence on Christian thought. This influence would lead to the last ecumenical council held between the agreeing East and West.

This council is known as Nicaea II, and it is here that the Iconoclast controversy was ended in an affirmation of the use of icons, or images, depicting Jesus Christ. Theologically, there are many reasons for those who opposed this doctrine, iconoclasts as well as those who defended the doctrine, iconophiles.

There was considerable influence by the emerging Islamic world, accusing the Christian religion of idolatry through the use of these images, “Islam constantly claimed to be the latest, and therefore the highest and purest, revelation of the God of Abraham, and repeatedly leveled the accusations of polytheism and idolatry, against the Trinity and the use of icons” (Meyendorff 42–43).

Regardless, there was infighting and the pressures of Islam that fueled this controversy which was very much related to the earlier councils that were focused, committed to providing an ecclesial consensus on the nature of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, and what is—and is not—heresy.

The iconoclast controversy would end in the eighth and, finally, the ninth centuries by the affirmation of the seventh, and last, ecumenical council. The result was a further wedge being driven into Christendom, “At the time of the Persian wars of Emperor Heraclius in the seventh century, Byzantium turned away culturally from its Roman past and toward the East. The great confrontation with Islam, which was reflected in the origins and character of iconoclasm, made this trend even more definite. Deprived of political protection by the Byzantine emperors, with whom they were in doctrinal conflict, the popes turned to the Franks and thus affiliated themselves with the emerging new Latin Middle Ages. As a result, the social, cultural, and political background of this separation became more evident; the two halves of the Christian world began to speak different languages, and their frames of reference in theology began to diverge more sharply than before” (Meyendorff 50).

The theological divergence and cultural separation would continue fueling the flames of Schism. The two halves of the Christian world depart from one another more and more as their theological differences lead to distinct application of Christian thought. It appears, at least with a cursory glance, that these distinctions were made expressly that the practicing faithful would be set apart from the world in which they inhabited.

To be Cont…

Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΜΕΣΩ ΗΜΩΝ! ΚΑΙ ΗΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΑΙ