The Eastern Schism (Oxford University Press Academic Monograph Reprints)

216 Pages·1955·0.79 MB·English

by  Steven Runciman

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title : The Eastern Schism
author : Runciman, Steven.
publisher : Oxford University Press
isbn10 | asin : 0198264178
print isbn13 : 9780198264170
ebook isbn13 : 9780585304786
language : English
subject Schism--Eastern and Western Church, Church history--Middle
Ages, 600-1500.
publication date : 1997
lcc : BX303.R8 1997eb
ddc : 270.3/8
subject : Schism--Eastern and Western Church, Church history--Middle
Ages, 600-1500.
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The Eastern Schism
A Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches During the XIth And XIIth Centuries
By Steven Runciman
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

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Page iv
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First published by Oxford University Press 1955 Reprinted 1956 Special edition for Sandpiper Books Ltd., 1997
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Preface
This book is based on seven Waynflete lectures given in the University of Oxford in the Hilary term of 1954 at the
invitation of the President and Fellows of Magdalen College. I am deeply grateful for the honour of that invitation
and for the opportunity with which I have thus been provided for a discussion of one of the most controversial and
unhappy chapters in the history of Christendom.
A full and detailed account of the division between the great Churches of the East and the West could only be
covered in a work of many volumes. The pages that follow are intended to offer a brief presentation of those facts
which I believe to be essential for the understanding of the story. The history of the controversy has usually been left
to the pens of theologians, not without reason; for the battlefield on which Church leaders challenge each other is one
of doctrine and of religious usage. But wars are not started on the battlefield; and, just as it would be unwise to
employ soldiers alone to write the history of a war and its causes, so it is useful to regard a schism from a viewpoint
that is not purely theological. It is my aim to show that the Eastern Schism was not fundamentally caused by
differing opinions on the Procession of the Holy Ghost or the Bread of the Sacrament but by the conjunction of
political events and the prejudice and bitterness that they aroused with a growing divergence in basic ideology, which
the political events forced on to the notice of the world.
It used to be generally held that, after the solution of earlier quarrels between the great Patriarchates, schism was
started anew in a more dangerous form by Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and that though the division that he
caused was patched up after his death it broke out again in a final and irrevocable form owing to the Patriarch

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Michael Cerularius. The writings of Professor Dvornik and Father Grumel have taught us that the traditional view of
Photius must be greatly modified; and scholars are now reaching the conclusion that the year 1054, the date of the
breach between Michael Cerularius and Cardinal Humbert, can no longer be held to mark the final separation of their
Churches. The separation came more slowly and more unevenly, when the Norman invasion of Italy, the greater
invasions of the Crusaders, and the vigorous actions and ideas of the reformed Papacy gradually forced on to the
notice of Eastern Christendom the extent to which the Eastern and Western point of view on the Universal Church
had moved apart.
I am deeply in debt to the distinguished scholars whose works have helped to clarify the history of the Schism. It was
M. Jules Gay whose history of Byzantine Italy was the first book to put the events of 1054 in a clearer perspective.
The publications of Professor Michel and of the Catholic ecclesiastical historians Amann, Jugie, and Leib, as well as
the Anglican writer George Every, have further enlarged our understanding of the whole episode. The references in
my footnotes will show how much I owe to them in detail, but I should like to acknowledge herewith my larger
obligations to them.
It is difficult to treat of a controversial subject without rousing disagreement and resentment. But I hope that none of
my words will cause offence to followers of either the great Church of Rome or the Churches of the East. If my
personal sympathies incline towards Byzantium, it is because I have tried to understand the Byzantine point of view.
Most of the writers who have dealt with the unhappy question have belonged to the Latin world; and though nothing
could be more scrupulously fair-minded than the writings of such Catholic scholars as Father Jugie or Father Amann,
the full Byzantine case has often been allowed to go by default. It is my belief that only by a fuller

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understanding of each other's feelings and traditions can the Churches be brought into closer friendship; and though I
do not think it possible that terms can now be found on which the breach can be healed, it is my hope that this book
will in no way embitter the problem but may help a little to lessen ill will.
S.R.
LONDON 1955

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Contents
I. The Historical Background 1
II. Michael Cerularius 28
III. From 1054 To the First Crusade 55
IV. The Churches and The Crusades 78
V. Diplomacy and Debate 102
VI. The Growth of Popular Animosity 124
VII. The Fourth Crusade 145
VIII. The Date and Nature of the Schism 159
Bibliography 171
Index 182

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I
The Historical Background
It is an article of faith that the followers of Christ should form one united body on earth. The Creed put forward by
the Fathers at Nicaea as well as the shorter Apostles' Creed ordains belief in the Holy Catholic Church; and all good
Christians must wish that the high ideal of an undivided Church could be realized. But human nature is not uniform,
nor is human religious experience. Complete agreement on ecclesiastical theory or practice among the diverse
peoples of the Christian world has never been achieved. `I hear that there be divisions among you', wrote Saint Paul
to the Corinthians;1 and the example of the Church of Corinth has been copied perpetually down the ages.
The usual definition of a schism is that it is the emergence of a separate faction within the Church, whereas heresy is
associated with false doctrine. This seems to be the sense in which Saint Paul uses the two expressions. According to
Saint Augustine, schism is a broken fellowship of communion, but does not affect the Faith or the Sacraments. The
Early Fathers frequently blurred the distinction between schism and heresy; but it came to be generally accepted that
while the latter represents doctrinal error, the former represents Orthodox dissent.2 Strictly speaking, the great
Churches of the East and the West, which for convenience we usually call the Orthodox and Catholic Churches,
should regard each other as heretics. The Orthodox consider that the Catholics have
1 1 Corinthians xi. 18.
2 St. Augustine of Hippo, De Fide et Symbolo, 21, M.P.L., vol. xl, col. 193. See Greenslade, Schism in the
Early Church, pp. 19-20.

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tampered wrongly with the Creed ordained by the Holy Oecumenical Councils to be the common symbol of
Christendom, while the Catholics have raised their theory of Church authority, which the Orthodox reject, to be an
article of faith. But in fact, though Orthodox theologians have in the past tended to exaggerate theological differences
and Catholic theologians cannot condone what they consider to be a wanton repudiation of the rights of the See of
Saint Peter, the division still essentially concerns the question of authority rather than that of doctrine and is therefore
more in the nature of a schism.
It is possible to analyse the causes of schism under five headings. It may be due to personal rivalries; to nationalistic,
social, or economic rivalries; to the rivalry of the great sees; to liturgical disputes; or to problems of discipline.1 In
the story of the quarrel between Eastern and Western Christendom personal rivalry in the narrow sense was absent.
The protagonists fought as representatives of their sees, not as individual claimants for the same see. The character of
each of them naturally affected his attitude towards the dispute and his tactics; and on occasions personal dislike
exacerbated the dispute. But the rivalry was essentially between the sees. This rivalry was, however, largely an
expression of nationalistic rivalries and itself raised problems of discipline. Nationalistic pride also made liturgical
disputes more bitter, while liturgical differences were largely due to temperamental divergencies, themselves partly
the result of social and economic trends; and a long sequence of political events embittered and distorted the quarrel.
When a schism concerns a single Church, we can fix with some precision the moment when it began. When it
concerns the greatest Churches of the time, it is less easy to say when the absolute breach occurred. The official
symbol of unity was provided by the diptychs, the lists
1 Greenslade, op. cit., pp. 19-20.

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kept by each Patriarch in the churches of his see for the commemoration of the Patriarchs, past and present, with
whom he was in communion. When a new Pope or Patriarch was elected it was his duty to send round to his fellow
Patriarchs his declaration of faith; and thereupon, unless the declaration was rejected as heterodox, his name was
added to the diptychs. It might seem, therefore, that if a Patriarch's name were omitted from the diptychs of another
see, that see and his were in schism. But in fact that deduction was only valid if there were constant means of
communications between the sees. After the breakdown of the Roman Empire there were times when a newly elected
Patriarch was quite unable to send his Systatic Letter, which was his declaration of faith, to his fellows. If they failed
to commemorate him it might often be through sheer ignorance of his existence.1 After the Arab conquests of the
seventh century there were long periods during which the Oriental Patriarchs were completely out of touch with
Rome and even with Constantinople, and there were huge gaps in their diptychs. Moreover, particularly in the East,
there were Patriarchs whose election seemed to be uncanonical or whose theology seemed to be dubious, and whose
names were therefore omitted till further information arrived; but this was not thought to impugn the orthodoxy of
their sees. Omission from the diptychs did not necessarily involve a schism.
It is more accurate to date the schism from the moment when rival lines of Patriarchs, Greek and Latin, appeared to
contest each of the great sees. There must be some sort of schism in existence for this to happen. But it happened at a
different date in each Patriarchate. But a state of schism may well exist before there is a conflict over a particular
bishopric, while on the other hand such a conflict does not
1 For the significance of the diptychs see Every, The Byzantine Patriarchate, p. 31, and Langford-James, A
Dictionary of the Eastern Orthodox Church, p. 46.

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