The Church and the Empire: Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304Medley, D. J. (Dudley Julius)
Religion
The Church and the Empire: Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304
Medley, D. J. (Dudley Julius)
Church history -- Middle Ages, 600-1500
A history of the Church Universal must needs take some notice of those
Christian communities which never acknowledged the supremacy of Rome.
Chief among these stands the Church of the Eastern Empire where the
Patriarch of Constantinople strove to make himself at least the equal
of the Bishop of Rome. This mutual jealousy of the old and the new
Rome was only one of the causes of quarrel between them, a quarrel
which was fanned from time to time by the appeal of a defeated party
in some ecclesiastical dispute at Constantinople to the Pope. The most
famous of these disputes was that begun by the deposition of the
aristocratic Ignatius from the patriarchate in favour of the learned
Photius. Both Emperor and Patriarch appealed from Constantinople to
Pope Nicholas I; but when that masterful bishop decided against the
new patriarch, Photius used his learning to summarise in eight
articles the differences between east and west. Of these, two
concerned such important matters as the doctrine of the procession of
the Holy Ghost and the practice of clerical celibacy.
[Sidenote: Breach between East and West.]
The schism made by this quarrel was healed for the moment, but for the
first time the points of difference between the two Churches had been
crystallised. The Eastern Emperors, however, who still possessed lands
in the Italian peninsula, felt it to their interest to remain friendly
with the pope, and in 1024 an attempt on the part of Basil II to
adjust the question of dignity by the suggestion that both the
Patriarch and the Pope should assume the title of Universal bishop,
was only defeated by the inextinguishable jealousy of the Western
Church. The presence of the Normans in Southern Italy should have
united Pope and Eastern Emperor against the intruders; but the Greek
Church only saw in the Norman successes a danger lest Southern Italy
should pass from the Greek to the Latin communion, and the Patriarch
Michael Caerularius joined with the Bulgarian Archbishop of Achrida in
publicly warning the inhabitants of Apulia against the errors of the
Latin Church. The one especially noted was the use of unleavened bread
at the Sacrament, with the addition of others of even less importance.
The Emperor Constantine Monomachos strove hard in the interests of
peace and even compelled a literary champion of the Greek Church,
Nicetas Pectoratus, a monk of the monastery of Studium, to repudiate
his own arguments. But the violence of the papal envoys and the
obstinacy of the Patriarch made agreement impossible. Finally the
legates laid upon the altar of St. Sophia's Church a document in which
Michael and all his party were anathematised; and the Patriarch
responded by summoning a Council, which in like manner banned the
Western Church (1054). Not only was Michael's action supported by the
clergy and people of Constantinople, but it was ratified by the
approval of the Patriarchs of Bulgaria and Antioch.
[Sidenote: Attempts at reconciliation.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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