Christians in America are overwhelmingly Protestant. In fact, about two thirds of the Americans who identify as Christian are Protestant, while less than 30% of them are Roman Catholic (Pew Research Team). Most know little about Eastern Orthodoxy, and those in Western and Northern Europe only a little more. Unlike with the Protestant Reformation, when the two different churches remained close together in Western Europe after their separation, the Orthodox and Catholic churches drifted apart so long ago that the event is almost lost in Western history courses. In the beginning of their divergence, the two churches had only small religious differences. Each church had traits that could have enriched the other. Their separation was slow and complicated, affected by political events over centuries. This schism, the Great Schism, should mean more to modern Christians than it does. It was a slow and painful process of separation that marks one of the most important and unknown (in the West) events in Church History.
In many ways, the conditions for the schism came out of political problems. Until the third century, the Roman Empire united the Mediterranean world. But as problems arose in dealing with such a huge empire, it divided in two: Eastern and Western, the Greek and the Latin. Emperor Constantine cemented this situation when he founded another imperial capital in the East, Constantinople (Ware). The two empires grew slowly apart, especially as the West was set upon and then overrun in the fifth century by the ‘barbarians’—the Frankish and German tribes. These, along with the rise of Islam and the Avar and Slav invasions in the East in the sixth century, made it hard for the two empires to communicate. When Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne, the king of the Franks, as Holy Roman Emperor in 800, the Byzantines did not recognize him. The pope had hoped that having an Emperor again would help them come together, but the Byzantine Empire “regarded Charlemagne as an intruder,” so it only caused more division (Ware, 45). The East and West, with this political and physical separation, grew more apart in matters of culture. The Eastern scholars read and wrote Greek, and the Western scholars used Latin. While in the past scholars would know both, a language barrier grew as they stopped learning the same language, and, therefore, reading the same literature. The authority of the Pope was also a question: the Byzantines saw him as another brother bishop—important, as the bishop of Rome, but no more so than the eastern patriarchs. Yet in the West, there was no strong emperor for a long time as the German tribes fought, and the Pope was a ruler in many ways (Ware, 47). After all of this, the church was still certainly one, but a definite estrangement had asserted itself.
From the ninth to thirteenth centuries the church had several disputes and attempted to reconcile several times. Among these was the Photian Schism, when controversy arose as to who was the Patriarch of Constantinople and Pope Nicolas investigated the quarrel. Though he initially supported Photius, once he went back to Rome, he re-investigated the problem and rejected Photius for his rival, Ignatius. Because this violated normal procedure, it caused a lot of bitterness in the East (Ware 53). The Crusades also created resentment toward the West, especially from the general people. Up to this point, the Schism had been mostly on the level of the church leadership, with most ordinary people completely uninvolved. But when the Crusades proclaimed Holy War in the East, they often tried to install Latin Patriarchs in cities like Antioch where there were already Byzantine ones (Ware 60). This brought the problems all down to the level of the people, making estrangement between Latin and Greek churches more personal. In 1052, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, closed several Latin churches in the East after they refused to conform to Greek practices. After bad diplomacy in the attempts to mend this quarrel, messengers of the Pope delivered a notice of excommunication to Cerularius, and therefore the entire Orthodox church. Though leaders attempted to hold councils, in 1274 at Lyons, and in 1438 at Florence, both failed to reunite the churches, which had already split significantly (Ware 64, 70). Though they made agreements to change their practices and doctrine, most people completely ignored these resolutions and continued worshiping as they had before.
Most matters of doctrine that the churches disagreed on were not initially major. The most discussed issues were the use of unleavened bread in Communion and the Filioque, a clause that the Latins added to the Nicene creed. But cultural differences, political issues, and arguments between powerful leaders led to anger between Christians in the East and West. Today, anger—or at least a sense that we have the correct interpretation of scripture and others are sadly mistaken—between denominations is not uncommon. And, as with the Great Schism, a lot of division between churches is political or cultural. All too often, both then and now, Christians do not draw a firm enough line between their faith and their political positions. No matter what a Christian’s political beliefs, they are nevertheless Christian, and this is something we should remember. And instead of isolating themselves in their own traditions as the Latin and Greek churches did, Christians today could try to learn as much as possible about other peoples’ ways of worshiping God, in order to avoid ignorance. Christianity has come a long way since the formation of the Orthodox church, but the lessons in this event could teach modern Christians many lessons.
Works Cited
“Religious Landscape Study.” Pew Research Center, 2014, www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/.
Ware, Timothy. “Byzantium, II: The Great Schism.” The Orthodox Church, New Edition, Penguin, 1997, pp. 43-72.
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