On the Great Schism: Causes and Core Issues

Introduction

The schism between the sees of Constantinople and Rome is the sad result of years of increasing estrangement. The year 1054 AD is memorable because it was then that the bishops of the respective sees excommunicated each other, but that event was really just a trough in a relationship whose troubles began centuries earlier. Furthermore, the exact ramifications of the event in 1054 took centuries to realize. This paper will first briefly explore the historical factors that led to their gradual estrangement and then drill down on the two doctrinal issues at the core of the schism: the papal claims of universal jurisdiction and the papal support of the filioque clause.

Historical Factors

In a sense, the gradual estrangement between Rome and Constantinople makes complete historical sense. In a day without the Internet and airplanes, the 850 miles between the cities made them worlds apart. There are four factors that especially contributed to the estrangement: distance, language, heresy, and politics. Because of the distance, the dispatch of letters took weeks or months and slowed down two-way communication. Dispatching legates was an alternative, but legates might overstep their mandate (Hussey 76), be unable to act because the situation upon arrival was so different from that specified in their original mandate (83), or even be imprisoned as the bearer of bad news (61). With respect to language, the bishop of Rome spoke Latin, and the bishop of Constantinople spoke Greek. Thus, all communication had to go through intermediary translators, who might suppress unpalatable parts of the message (46), or do such a poor job that the resulting translation almost “perpetuated those very errors which it sought to eradicate” (49). Beside the vagaries of translation, the Greek side actually disdained the Latin language as being barbarian (77) and perhaps even incapable of expressing fine theological distinctions (179). With respect to heresy, iconoclast emperors had plunged the see of Constantinople into heresy for more than a hundred years, which degraded the trust between the sees (67).

With respect to politics, there were three expressions of this. One was the fact that from the seventh century onward, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt (18), and later North Africa and Spain (31) came under Muslim rule, which sometimes absolutely obstructed communication between patriarchal sees (46). The second was the fact that the Balkans, which were the midpoint between the sees of Rome and Constantinople, at first fell to Avar and Slav invaders, impeding communication (32), and later become the center of a jurisdictional dispute between the two sees (81-82). Lastly, from the standpoint of the Byzantine Emperor, Charlemagne’s arrogation of the title “Emperor” with papal support in 800 AD challenged the universal claims of Constantinople and sowed seeds of jealousy that between the two sees (53-54).

Core Doctrinal Issues

Papal Claims of Universal Jurisdiction

Having looked at the historical factors that contributed to the schism, we now turn to the doctrinal issues, starting with papal claims to universal jurisdiction. The Pope had from antiquity been accorded primacy of honor in Christendom (126). However, with the transfer of the Imperial capital to Constantinople, the relationship between the bishops of Old and New Rome became complicated. Should that primacy be transferred to the bishop of the new capital? The Second Ecumenical Council tried to resolve this with its 3rd Canon: “The Bishop of Constantinople, however, shall have the prerogative of honour after the Bishop of Rome; because Constantinople is New Rome” (Schaff 178), with which Rome agreed although the other patriarchs were irritated. However, the Fourth Ecumenical Council revised this position in its 28th Canon: “The bishop of New Rome shall enjoy the same honour as the bishop of Old Rome, on account of the removal of the Empire” (Schaff 289), which Rome refused to accept (Hussey 27). In practice, peace was maintained by granting the Pope the right to confirm the election of other patriarchs (18) and declare the ecumenicity of a council (27) in exchange for the Emperor’s having the right to confirm the election of the Pope (21). The canons of the Council of Trullo; however, really pushed the issue. The 33rd canon re-asserted the equal dignity of Constantinople: “[W]e decree that the see of Constantinople shall have equal privileges with the see of Old Rome, and shall be highly regarded in ecclesiastical matters as that is, and shall be second after it” (Schaff 382). Not only this, but the canons of Trullo insisted on obedience, under pain of clerical deposition and laical excommunication, to certain canons that the Pope rejected (Hussey 26).

The Patriarch of Constantinople and the Emperor often sought the Pope’s confirmation of a decision but not necessarily with the presupposition that a rejection of the decision would reverse it. Sometimes out of courtesy to Rome, they would allow the Pope to make a decision only to ignore it (Hussey 77). For example, during the Photian schism, the Pope deposed and laicized Patriarch Photius of Constantinople (76), to which Photius responded by convening a council that deposed and anathematized the Pope (78). Things like this occurred with some regularity but reconciliation always eventually followed.

In the mid-eleventh century, Papal insistence on jurisdiction over affairs in the East intensified. A series of letters were exchanged between the Pope, the emperor, and Cerularius, the patriarch of Constantinople. Cerularius chided the Pope for minor liturgical differences and closed the Latin churches in Constantinople. The Pope claimed to be the head and mother of the churches and took offense at the patriarch referring to himself as the Ecumenical Patriarch. The East insisted that the Pope was only the first among equals (133) and that the Church was rightly governed through the Pentarchy and ecumenical councils (135). In the end, legates of the Pope delivered a Papal bull of excommunication for Cerularius (133), and Cerularius anathematized the authors of the bull (135). Normal relations actually continued for a while, but later history in the Crusades showed that the papal claims to universal jurisdiction actually created irreconcilable differences between it and Constantinople (136).

Papal Support of the Filioque Clause

Regarding the second doctrinal issue, the Second Ecumenical Council set forth a creed that said this: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified.” The Latin-speaking West over time began to insert the word filioque, which means “and from the Son”, into the text after “who proceeds from the Father” when they chanted the Creed. The seeds of this controversy go back to Augustine, who wrote: “We find that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son also … Therefore He so begat Him [the Word] as that the common Gift should proceed from Him also, and the Holy Spirit should be the Spirit of both.” (Augustine 216). By 589 AD, a local council in Toledo acknowledged that the filioque was already in common usage in the West (Walker 164). The first known Eastern reaction to this introduction was in 649 AD at a local council in Rome, where the Eastern representatives chided Pope Martin I for its presence in the Creed in parts of the West (Hussey 20). At the council of Frankfort in 794 AD, Charlemagne officially approved the use of the filioque in his empire, prompting Pope III in 808 AD to warn Charlemagne against tampering with the Creed (Ware 54). Thus, up until beginning of the 9th century, the Pope and the Eastern Patriarchs still had an uneasy agreement.

When German missionaries started evangelizing toward the East into Bulgaria, bringing the filioque with them, the Pope while still not using the filioque himself, gave his full consent to its use in Bulgaria (Ware 54). This prompted Photius Patriarch of Constantinople to take action in 867 AD, writing the other Eastern Patriarchs to denounce the filioque not only as a western innovation without sanction from an ecumenical council but more importantly as a heresy since it admitted of two principles in the Godhead (Hussey 78). In 879 AD at a council in Constantinople with papal legates, all sides agreed not to change the Creed by inserting the filioque (84). However, in 1014 AD the Pope finally succumbed to Germanic pressure, and at the coronation of Henry II at Rome, the filioque was sung in the Creed, and Rome has retained it in its Creed ever after.

In a sense, the controversy around the filioque clause could be subsumed under the topic of universal papal jurisdiction because it is just one of many examples of unilateral decisions made by the Pope. Later Orthodox theologians have noted that it is possible to give an Orthodox interpretation to the phrase if it understood as referring to the temporal mission of the Holy Spirit instead of His eternal procession (Ware 213). But even so, from the Orthodox point of view, the Pope should not have at first allowed, and then encouraged, and then later adopted the filioque without sanction from an Ecumenical Council, and the fact that he did flows naturally from his claims to universal jurisdiction. In addition to the filioque, there have been other dogmas that the Pope has unilaterally introduced, including purgatory, the immaculate conception of Mary, and papal infallibility. In my opinion, the Orthodox Church, while having the fullness of the faith, simultaneously has a type of poverty while its Elder Brother, the bishop of Rome, is in schism, and I pray nearly every day that Pope Francis will take the kenotic initiative and renounce the claim to universal jurisdiction, which action would do so much toward the cause of restored communion between East and West.

Works Cited

Augustine. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Volume 3. Ed. by Philip Schaff. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Web. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf103.i.html

Hussey, J. M. The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.

Schaff, Philip. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Volume 14. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Web. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.i.html

Ware, Timothy. The Orthodox Church. New York: Penguin, 1997. Print.

Walker, Williston. A History of the Christian Church. New York: Scribners, 1959.