Benedict and Bartholomew meet in Istanbul.

ISTANBUL, Turkey
November 30, 2006
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Benedict XVI walked alongside each other amid the sound of church bells after a day of worship, ecumenical dialogue, and fraternal embrace.
In a mutual statement of ecclesiastical solidarity, the two Church leaders renewed their commitment to work towards the restoration of Full Communion between the two Churches.
The Pope's visit to the Ecumenical Patriarchate came at the invitation of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians world-wide. It was the first visit of a Pope to the Ecumenical Patriarchate since 1979.
Pope Benedict XVI attended services celebrated by Ecumenical Patriarchal Bartholomew and his Holy Synod in the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George for the feast day of St. Andrew the Apostle, the Patron Saint of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

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Charlemagne

King of the Franks from 768 to his death in 814. He built a Frankish Empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. He conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800.
Charlemagne came to the aid of Pope Leo III, who had been attacked in the streets of Rome. He went to Rome to restore order and, after Leo purged himself of the charges against him, he was unexpectedly crowned emperor. Charlemagne wasn't pleased with this development, because it established the precedent of papal ascendancy over secular leadership, but though he still often referred to himself as a king he now also styled himself "Emperor," as well.
Charlemagne was responsible for the death of masses of people who refused to accept Christianity, or their new king.

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Saint Photios
Patriarch of Constantinople
820-893

His greatness was not only due to his defense of Orthodoxy against heretical papal practices, but also connected to his love and meekness. He vigorously opposed the addition of the filioque clause to the Nicene - Constantinopolitan Creed, and wrote On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit to preserve "the purity of our religion" and to hinder "those who chose to promote any other definition of dogma than the unanimous and common faith of the pious". This treatise became the pattern for all subsequent Byzantine anti-Latin polemics.
Photios was long the standard-bearer of their church in its disagreements with the Pope of Rome.

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Pope Leo III

Leo announced his election to Charlemagne, sending him the keys of Saint Peter's tomb and the banner of Rome, requesting an envoy. Charlemagne replied that it was his function to defend the church and the popes' to pray for the realm.
Leo, coming from a common-folk background, aroused the hostility of Rome's nobility. He was accused of adultery and perjury. In April 799 he was attacked by a gang, who attempted to gouge out his eyes and cut off his tongue for his earlier actions. He was formally deposed and sent to a monastery, but escaped and made his way to Charlemagne, who escorted him back to Rome under royal protection. On Christmas Day, Leo placed the imperial crown on Charlemagne's head, resurrecting the office of Emperor of the Roman Empire in the East.
Leo forbade the addition of "filioque" to Nicene Creed, which was added by Franks in Aachen in 809. He also ordered that the Nicene Creed be engraved on silver tablets so that his conclusion might not be overturned in the future.

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Mark of Ephesus

Mark of Ephesus (Evgenikos), Pillar of Orthodoxy, was famous for his courageous defense of Orthodoxy at the Council of Florence (1439 A.D.) in spite of the emperor and the pope of Rome. He held Rome to be in schism and heresy for its acceptance of the Filioque clause added to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and for the claims of the papacy to universal jurisdiction over the Church, and was thus the only Eastern bishop to refuse to sign the decrees of the council.
He died peacefully in the year 1452 A.D. On his death bed, Mark implored Gregory, his disciple, and later Patriarch Gennadius, to be careful of the snares of the West and to defend Orthodoxy.

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The Crusades

The Crusades were a series of military conflicts of a religious character waged by Christians during 1095–1291, most of which were sanctioned by the Pope in the name of Christendom. The Crusades originally had the goal of recapturing Jerusalem and the sacred "Holy Land" from Muslim rule and were originally launched in response to a call from the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire for help against the expansion of the Muslim Seljuq dynasty into Anatolia.
The Crusades were never referred to as such by their participants. The original crusaders were known by various terms, including fideles Sancti Petri (the faithful of St. Peter) or milites Christi (knights of Christ). They saw themselves as undertaking a peregrinatio, a pilgrimage, though pilgrims were usually forbidden from carrying arms. Like pilgrims, each crusader swore a vow (a votus), to be fulfilled on successfully reaching Jerusalem, and they were granted a cloth cross (crux) to be sewn into their clothes.
1st Crusade : 1096 to 1099
2nd Crusade : 1147 to 1149
3rd Crusade : 1189 to 1192
4th Crusade : 1201 to 1204
5th Crusade : 1218 to 1221
6th Crusade : 1228 to 1229
7th Crusade : 1248 to 1254
8th Crusade : 1270

The Great Schism

What caused the split of the Church between East and West?

While the Church was unified for almost a thousand years, there developed differences in doctrine and practice that have separated them. While Orthodoxy has preserved the teachings of the first Seven Councils without change, there have been changes introduced in the other groups who call themselves Christians. We will briefly take a look at how this split occurred. Why is it important to know about this? Because this history affirms that the fundamental nature of Orthodoxy is that it’s doctrines do not change and that it holds the truths as proclaimed in the Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Church.

The Great Schism must not be conceived as the result of only one specific quarrel. There were political and cultural differences that arose along with doctrinal issues. The split occurred over a long period of time and formally came to a head in 1054 in what is known as the Great Schism.

Political and Cultural divergence
If we go back to the time of the Apostles there was a political and cultural unity because of the Roman Empire. The Empire embraced many different national groups, often with languages and dialects of their own. But all these groups were governed by the same Emperor. The Romans has assimilated the Hellenic culture so there was a broad Greco-Roman civilization in which educated people throughout the Empire shared. Both Greek and Latin was understood throughout the Empire with Greek being the common language of commerce at that time. These facts greatly assisted the early Church in its missionary work.

This unity gradually disappeared. In the third century the empire was divided into two parts, East and West with two emperors. Constantine furthered this process of separation by establishing a second imperial capital in the east, Constantinople. Then came the barbarian invasions at the start of the fifth century: apart from Italy, the west was carved up among barbarian chiefs.

The separation was carried a stage further by the rise of Islam. The Mediterranean, which the Romans once called "our sea," passed largely into Arab control. Cultural and economic contacts between the eastern and western Mediterranean became far more difficult.

Being isolated from Byzantium, the west proceeded to set up a "Roman" Empire of its own. On Christmas Day in the year 800 the Pope crowned Charles the Great, King of the Franks, as Emperor. Charlemagne sought recognition from the ruler at Byzantium, but without success. The Byzantines regarded Charlemagne as an intruder and the Papal coronation as an act of schism within the Empire.

Matters were made more difficult by problems of language. Educated men were no longer bilingual. By the year 450 there were very few in western Europe who could read Greek, and after 600, although Byzantium still called itself the Roman Empire, it was rare for a Byzantine to speak Latin. Photius, the greatest scholar in ninth century Constantinople, could not read Latin; and in 864 a "Roman" Emperor at Byzantium, Michael III, even called the language in which Virgil once wrote (Latin) "a barbarian and Scythic tongue."

Charlemagne’s Court was marked at its outset by a strong anti-Greek prejudice. Men of letters in Charlemagne’s entourage were not prepared to copy Byzantium, but sought to create a new Christian civilization of their own. Perhaps it is in the reign of Charlemagne that the schism of civilizations first becomes clearly apparent.

Charlemagne, rejected by the Byzantine Emperor, was quick to retaliate with a charge of heresy against the Byzantine Church. He denounced the Greeks for not using the filioque in the Creed and he declined to accept the decisions of the seventh Ecumenical Council.

The barbarian invasions and the consequent breakdown of the Empire in the west also strengthened the autocratic structure of the western Church. In the east there was a strong secular head, the Emperor, to uphold the civilized order and to enforce law. In the west, after the advent of the barbarians, there was only a plurality of warring chiefs, all more or less usurpers. For the most part it was the Papacy alone, which could act as a center of unity, as an element of continuity and stability in the spiritual and political life of western Europe. By force of circumstances, the Pope became an autocrat, an absolute monarch set up over the Church, issuing commands — in a way that few if any eastern bishops have ever done — not only to his ecclesiastical subordinates, but to secular rulers as well. The western Church became centralized to a degree unknown anywhere in the four Patriarchates of the east. There developed monarchy in the west and collegiality in the east.

There were differences in world views and how they thought. The Latin approach was more practical, the Greek more speculative. Latin thought was influenced by juridical ideas, by the concepts of Roman law, while the Greeks understood theology in the context of worship and in the light of the Holy Liturgy. When thinking about the Trinity, Latins started with the unity of the Godhead, Greeks with the threeness of the persons. When reflecting on the Crucifixion, Latins thought primarily of Christ the Victim, Greeks of Christ the Victor. Latins talked more of redemption and Greeks of deification.

Role of the Pope.
As suggested, these factors led to a different role for the Pope than the traditional role of a Patriarch. The Pope became an absolute authority over all of the Western church, while in the East there was still the sense of a conciliar approach. The Orthodox held that any doctrine difference had to include the entire Church and that no single person had the ability to make changes in doctrine. The absolute authority rested with the Ecumenical council as it had since the council of Jerusalem held by the Apostles.

Doctrinal divergence
The second great difficulty was the filioque. The dispute involved the words about the Holy Spirit in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Originally the Creed ran: "I believe... in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and together glorified." This, the original form, is recited unchanged by the east to this day. But, the West inserted an extra phrase "and from the Son" (in Latin, filioque), so that their Creed now reads "who proceeds from the Father and the Son." It is not certain when and where this addition was first made, but it seems to have originated in Spain, as a safeguard against Arianism. At any rate the Spanish Church interpolated the filioque at the third Council of Toledo (589), if not before. From Spain the addition spread to France and thence to Germany, where it was welcomed by Charlemagne and adopted at the semi-Iconoclast Council of Frankfort (794). It was writers at Charlemagne’s Court who first made the filioque into an issue of controversy, accusing the Greeks of heresy because they recited the Creed in its original form. But Rome, with typical conservatism, continued to use the Creed without the filioque until the start of the eleventh century. In 808 Pope Leo III wrote in a letter to Charlemagne that, although he himself believed the filioque to be doctrinally sound, yet he considered it a mistake to tamper with the wording of the Creed. Leo deliberately had the Creed, without the filioque, inscribed on silver plaques and set up in Saint Peter’s. For the time being Rome acted as mediator between Germany and Byzantium.

It was not until after 850 that the Greeks paid much attention to the filioque, but once they did so, their reaction was sharply critical. Orthodoxy objected (and still objects) to this addition in the Creed, for two reasons. First, the Ecumenical Councils specifically forbade any changes to be introduced into the Creed; and if an addition has to be made, certainly nothing short of another Ecumenical Council is competent to make it. The Creed is the common possession of the whole Church, and a part of the Church has no right to tamper with it. In the second place, Orthodox believe the filioque to be theologically untrue. They hold that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, and consider it a heresy to say that He proceeds from the Son as well. It may seem to many that the point at issue is so abstruse as to be unimportant. But Orthodox would say that since the doctrine of the Trinity stands at the heart of the Christian faith, a small change of emphasis in Trinitarian theology has far-reaching consequences in many other fields. Not only does the filioque destroy the balance between the three persons of the Holy Trinity: it leads also to a false understanding of the work of the Spirit in the world, and so encourages a false doctrine of the Church.

Besides the issues of the role of the Papacy and the filioque, there are certain lesser matters regarding Church worship and discipline which have caused trouble between east and west: the Greeks allowed married clergy while the Latins insisted on priestly celibacy; there are different rules of fasting; the Greeks used leavened bread in the Eucharist and the Latins use unleavened bread or "azymes."

Formal Schism 1054
The formal break came when Michael Cerularius was Patriarch of Constantinople and St. Leo Pope in Rome. In 1053, Cerularius circulated a treatise criticizing in strong terms the practices of the Western church. Cerularius said the fact that Catholics did not allow their clergy to marry was contrary to scripture and tradition. He objected to the Catholics use of unleavened bread in their Eucharist. But his most serious concern was that the Latin Church had added the word "filioque" to the Nicene Creed, saying the Holy Spirit proceeded from both Father and Son.

Cerularius excommunicated all bishops of Constantinople who used the Western ritual and closed down their churches. This incensed Leo. He demanded that Cerularius submit to the Pope. Any church which refused to recognize the pontiff as supreme was an assembly of heretics, he said - a synagogue of Satan. The Eastern patriarch wasn't about to accept this characterization. The five patriarchs, Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome were equals in his eyes. The bishop of Rome, as patriarch of the West, was given the courtesy title of "first among equals" and in a tie vote he could make the final determination according to tradition. Rome's growing claims to authority were deemed unacceptable to the other patriarchs, who believed (and who still believe) that Christ alone is the head of the Church.

Leo sent legates, headed by an unyielding man, Cardinal Humbert, to discuss the issues. Before they could complete their mission, Leo died. Humbert was so rude to Cerularius that Cerularius refused to speak with him. Aggravated by this treatment, the legates marched into St. Sophia on July 6, 1054, and placed a bull on the altar, excommunicating Cerularius. After this act, Humbert made a grand exit, shaking the dust off his feet and calling on God to judge.
Cerularius convoked a council and once more blasted Western practices. Humbert was anathematized. The Orthodox condemned all who had drawn up the bull. There was now no chance of reconciliation between the factions. The once united Church was now divided into two: Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic.

In more recent times there have been further differences.

In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII introduced the new, Gregorian calendar and the East still uses the old Julian calendar to determine the date of Pascha. Consequently, East and West celebrate Pascha on different dates.

In the 1800’s the Roman Catholic Church established both Papal Infallibility and Mary’s Immaculate Conception to be dogmas of the universal Church. They also brought numerous Byzantine Rite communities in Eastern Europe and the Ukraine into communion with Rome, forming the greater part of the Byzantine Catholic Church.
In 1950 the Pope defined Mary’s Assumption (aka Dormition) as a dogma.

 

 

How did the Crusades impact the East?

The Crusades made the split firm. For those in the East the crusades were seen as “Frank Invasions”. The first crusade was a bloody success. The first city sacked was Antioch. While under Muslim control, Antioch was inhabited primarily by Christians. It was sacked and pillaged. Antioch was followed by Jerusalem in 1099. As a result of the invasion Latin Patriarchs were set up leaving the cities under two patriarchs, those who were appointed by Constantinople and those appointed by the conquerers with allegiance to Rome. The worst was the 4th Crusade (1204) which was a disaster and disgrace. The Crusades were originally bound for Egypt and then to go to the Holy Land, but it was delayed and the mercenary soldiers were running out of money and set out on a campaign for stolen goods. Constantinople was the richest city in the world at the time. This is where they headed and defeated the Byzantine Army and sacked the city. They destroyed churches and undertook systematic acts of sacrilege. Women and children were killed and women raped. It was a horrible scene. The holy relics were stolen and many that are to this day seen throughout Europe came from this Crusade as Constantinople was the center of Christianity and its most precious relics. The Latins then set up a government and their own bishops. All this was done with the blessing of the Pope in Rome.

 

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