The Great Schism between East and West
Legates of the pope and the patriarch of Constantinople excommunicate each other, a symbolic moment in the slow split between Catholic West and Orthodox East.
- The Orthodox Church — Timothy Ware, Penguin (1993)
- Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)
- A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years — Diarmaid MacCulloch, Allen Lane (2009)
Greek East and Latin West had been drifting apart for centuries, divided by language, politics and theology. Rome claimed authority over the whole church as Peter’s see; Constantinople saw the pope as first among equal patriarchs. The West had added the word filioque (“and the Son”) to the Nicene Creed, saying the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son”, which the East rejected. They also differed on details such as leavened bread at the Eucharist and married priests.
- The Orthodox Church — Timothy Ware, Penguin (1993)
- A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years — Diarmaid MacCulloch, Allen Lane (2009)
In July 1054 the papal legate Cardinal Humbert laid a bull of excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia against Patriarch Michael Cerularius, who excommunicated the legates in return. Contemporaries did not see this as final, but the split hardened, above all after Western crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1204. Attempts at reunion, as at the Council of Florence in 1439, failed. On 7 December 1965 Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras lifted the mutual excommunications, and in 2001 John Paul II asked forgiveness for the sack of 1204.
- The Orthodox Church — Timothy Ware, Penguin (1993)
- Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)
The bishop of Rome, as Peter's successor, has a God-given primacy over the whole church, and the West was right to add the "filioque" to the creed. The split is a wound to be healed, ideally with the East keeping its own traditions in communion with Rome.
- Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)
- Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd edition) — Holy See, Libreria Editrice Vaticana (1997)
Rome claimed a supremacy the early church never gave it and changed the shared creed on its own authority. The pope was honoured as first among equal bishops, not as ruler of the whole church, and the church is guided by councils, not by one see. The sack of Constantinople by crusaders in 1204 turned a quarrel into a lasting bitterness.
- The Orthodox Church — Timothy Ware, Penguin (1993)
- The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture — John Anthony McGuckin, Wiley-Blackwell (2008)
- The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople — Jonathan Phillips, Jonathan Cape (2004)
Why it matters today
The Catholic Church sees the Orthodox as sister churches with true sacraments, separated mainly over the authority of the pope. Popes since Paul VI have worked for reunion, and every pope now meets the Ecumenical Patriarch, but the split remains, and it still colours relations in places like Ukraine and the Balkans.
Orthodox Christians see themselves as the continuation of the undivided early church, from which Rome departed. Relations with Catholics are now warm at the top, with patriarchs and popes praying together, but many Orthodox, especially monks and ordinary believers in Greece, Serbia and Russia, remain wary of anything that looks like submission to Rome.