This chapter is extensive in the topics presented, and each have been given individual attention in scholarly literature. In short, it covers the Great Schism, the Crusades, the Union of Lyons, Hesychasm and the Palamite Controversy, the Union of Ferrara-Florence, the Fall of Constantinople and the following conditions of Orthodoxy in many countries under the Islamic Ottoman empire. It has a very chess board type of history that makes it difficult to really identify any purely good or bad characters. There were Latin rite Christians worshipping in the city of Constantinople and there were many well-established Greek Orthodox churches and monasteries in Italy before 1054. Rash decisions were made, and wise calculations taken too. The Hellenic and Italic cultures have been melding for millennia in the Mediterranean, not to mention how the Etruscans also helped to Orientalize Italy. How Greece and Italy have been integrated over thousands of years dwarfs in comparison this most recent and artificial break in the ecclesial and political spheres between them. Another example of integration is the Septuagint, which is the Bible translated into Greek by Alexandrian Jews as well as most of the wisdom books in scripture that could be described as products of reaction and synthesis of Hellenic and Hebraic wisdom traditions. Wisdom is universal. To reiterate a little, the Byzantines viewed themselves as Romans who did speak Greek, and no longer Latin. But for convenience sake, we refer to them as different peoples. The Byzantines were in fact heirs of classical culture, and imparted much inspiration, not its only source, to the Italian Renaissance in the 1400s. The Latins in Italy, as they came to be called by Greek Orthodox Christians, also saw themselves as inheritors of the pure faith and heirs of the Romans. So Rome and Constantinople are the apex of the schism and also probably the most similar to each other in many ways. The Byzantine empire had to be defended from multiple angles, as it happens. Often the attempts to preserve the original ecumenical territory that included Italy wasn’t perfectly reintegrated and there were new forces on the peninsula such as the Lombard kings and Norman mercenaries. Charlemagne’s translatio imperii performed and sanctioned by a part of the hierarchy, the Pope, was a strange sight for Byzantines who didn’t have this kind of direct relationship between church and state. The Roman pontiff, in the end, was able to maintain more independence from the Byzantine emperor while the patriarchs of the East submitted to the earthily authority of the rulers. These two ecclesial patterns more or less continued into the divergent histories of western Europe and eastern Europe and Asia. The Holy Roman emperors and princes vied with the Papacy while the Orthodox East fell under the control of the Muslim Ottoman empire.
Many scholars and typical accounts of the schism focus on a few characters or several key factors that are easy to list and summarize. But other crucial events and socio-political changes also began with the Merovingians and Clovis, then Charlemagne and the Franks leading to the Lombards and Normans ruling various Italian city states. There doesn’t seem to be any kingdom or culture in the past that didn’t see religion and power as working together. When Pope Leo III gave political legitimacy to the Frankish king Charlemagne, the Greeks considered this action unjustifiable and against political and religious order. Pepin the Short (probably ironically so-called) donated lands that would form the Papal States in 756. The Normans had a hand in ridding Orthodoxy from Italy and imposing the Latin rite from Rome. While in Sicily the Norman elite created an amazing amalgamation of indigenous Sicilian, Byzantine, Viking and Arab culture and art. These historical events aren’t given much detail in the volume but are worth understanding in our North American culture. But even earlier, as Metropolitan Hilarion recounts, there were provocations already in 732 when the anti-icon emperor Leo III the Isaurian took dioceses from southern Italy from the pope’s jurisdiction and placed under the control of Constantinople. All of this set up the coming collision between these two rival powers of spiritual and secular authority. It might be useful to remember that Christianity is a more accurately a kingdom not of this world, and not just a religion among other world religions. The Muslims were religious, the Jews were religious, the Franks were religious, the Latins were religious as well as the Byzantines and the lands of the Rus’. The rules and canons differed and were similar among these peoples.
Metropolitan Hilarion reminds us that “Papal Primacy was repeatedly advanced in the east …” during the age of ecumenical councils with hardly any protest at all. The Pope could be “the most divine head of all heads” if he were to maintain the Orthodox faith; and there is no doctrine of papal supremacy or infallibility in the strongly pro-papal examples provided in these volumes, or in the patristic history and literature. Both papal supremacy and infallibility are dogmas now of the Roman Catholicism. These doctrines are not accepted by the Orthodox Churches today. Papal primacy is accepted on the condition that the Bishop of Rome is Orthodox in faith. The Roman Church was one of the greatest churches because it maintained Orthodoxy, fought against heretical politicians and emperors, and they had the honor of being purified by the martyrdom of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. The filioque occupied more attention than purgatory or the papacy in the theological discussions at the Ferrara-Florence is noteworthy.
The Latin filioque comes from the addition to the Nicene Creed the Son (Patre filioque procedit) meaning the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. It was more serious than the minor differences in Latin ritual practices, although they were often taken together to form anti-Latin polemics with a lack of discernment. The Holy Trinity was the cornerstone of the traditions of the Church and faith that kept the Orthodox world together. The emperor Michael was the person who pushed the most for viewing the Latins as non-Orthodox, whenever they were. Patriarch Peter of Antioch wrote to Patriarch Michael Cerularius about Roman practices saying:
But I think the other things … should be overlooked, since the word of truth is not at all harmed by them. For we should not readily be persuaded by vain accusations, nor believe in our own suspicions, and we should not change the things which are established and right.
And Peter ended his letter to Cerularius by saying:
If ever they [the Romans] would correct the addition to the holy creed, I would demand nothing else, leaving as a matter of indifference, along with all the other matters, even their fault regarding the azyme.
There were schisms before 1054 that were healed. Surprisingly even this local split between Patriarch Michael Cerularius and the papal legates of Pope Leo did not end until the Fourth Crusade of 1204.
The Fourth Crusade in 1204 recounts the liberation from the Muslim armies but also the plundering of Orthodox churches and cities. Latin patriarchs were assigned to Constantinople and Antioch. It was abolished in 1291 in Jerusalem, but reinstated by the Roman Catholic Church in 1847 to the present day. Between the 10th and 15th c. the eastern Roman empire along with the patriarchates in the east began to decline slowly. But there were cultural flowerings of learning such as the Macedonian, Comneian and Palaeologan renaissances, named after the emperors responsible for supporting them in the church.
The Union of Lyons was a regrettable attempt at reunification. The Greek clergy arrived to celebrate the liturgy together and they chanted the filioque with the Latin patriarchs from western Europe. The emperor Michael VIII forced this union. Neither the Pope of Rome’s papal supremacy or his privileges healed the schism, nor did the emperor without adhering to the Orthodox faith can heal the schism by unilateral means. Emperor John VIII Palaeologos (1425-1448) met with Pope Eugene IV. Patriarch Joseph II came too. Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem came. In 1438, a council was convened in Ferrara, Florence. Metropolitan Mark of Ephesus came.
Purgatorium. They discussed the idea of purgatory that only those who are in good standing with the Church, the elect, can be cleansed of venial sins and go to heaven after this purifying fire. Mortal sins cannot be purified and the fire of hell isn’t the same as purgatory according to the Roman Catholic Catechism. The modern catechism describes purgatorial fire as not coming from God’s anger but out of charity. It isn’t clear or talked about whether the fire is created or uncreated, literal or allegorical. But no one in hell can escape; no one in heaven needs prayers. The Orthodox Church doesn’t teach this purgatory. St. Mark of Ephesus and the Orthodox did not know this doctrine, since they prayed for all the departed either in heaven or hell. What it really ends up saying theologically is that there is a limit to forgiveness and mercy.
Filioque. They discussed the filioque clause at the council. After a year and a half of discussions they couldn’t agree to each other’s explanations of purgatory or the filioque. The Latins gave an ultimatum. The pope promised military help against the Turks on the condition that they accept purgatory, filioque, and all that the Latins teach. Only Mark of Ephesus refused to sign in agreement. Transubstantiation, papal supremacy, and the use of unleavened bread, the specific way of saying the epiklesis were also doctrines that the Greeks had to accept. Papal supremacy meant that not only did the Pope of Rome have primacy of honor, but primacy of jurisdiction and doctrine. The Orthodox had to accept that the Pope of Rome was the “vicar of Christ” and “head of the Church.” That means the Pope could act unilaterally. The filioque really implied that there is not one source of the Godhead – God the Father – that the will and energy of God are not created but uncreated.
St.Mark of Ephesus says that the Greek delegation sent to Ferrara had sold out the Orthodox Faith. He lists what the Orthodox Church taught in opposition to the Latins at that time. “And we say that the saints do not enter the kingdom and the unspeakable delights prepared for them, nor are sinners sent to Gehenna, but both await their fate, which will be entered into in the age to come after the resurrection and judgment; but they along with the Latins, wish that these might receive according to their deeds immediately after death, granting those in between … the purifying fire, which is not identical to that of Gehenna ….”
He also says about the Patriarch of Rome, “For us the pope is one of the patriarchs, and only if he is Orthodox; but they declare with great self-importance that he is the vicar of Christ, the father and teacher of all Christians …. Therefore, brethren, run from them and avoid contact with them.” The Russian Church at the time under Constantinople was the first to reject the Union of Florence.
Even though Metropolitan Isidore of Kiev accepted and commemorated the Bishop of Rome in liturgy at Moscow, the Grand Prince Vasily Vasilievich declared Isidore a heretic and arrested him. Then, all the Russian bishops and priests rose against the union with the Latins. Isidore fled to Rome and became a cardinal. (135-136). In concert, the state and church worked together to reject a false union.
Laetentur Caeli was the document that the Basel group had to sign. The Russians declared autocephaly and excoummunicated sympathizers to the Latin doctrines. Etsi non dubitemus (1441) sealed the doctrine of the papal supremacy over church councils. But just before the Union of Florence, the Great Western Schism had just been broiling among western bishops who never resolved how to settle a dispute between rival claimants to the papal office – do they hold a council or do they not? If they hold a council, a council becomes the mechanism and superior to the Pope, as they reasoned and feared that conciliarism would become a guiding precedent.
All these events are interlocking. Since the military help needed to repel the Ottomans from sieging Constantinople hinged on accepting the Union of Florence and hence a different set of dogmas and traditions of the Church, Constantinople Fell in 1443. May 28 was the last day that the divine liturgy was held in Constantinople up to today. May 29 was the day that the Turks finally took the city after a week long defense by the Greeks, Genovese Italians, and others. The city had officially accepted the Latin doctrine and Papacy, yet they fell nevertheless. Constantine XI Palaeologos was the last Roman Emperor. Cardinal Isidore was there and was caught and executed along with many Byzantine priests, nobility, and aristocracy. Churches were looted and destroyed.
Uniatism was an idea and practice that was banned by the Roman Catholic Church in 1993. Pope Benedict XVI has taught that there is nothing else required from Orthodoxy except for the first millennium (including papal primacy as defined by the Orthodox Church, not papal supremacy or the filioque).
Another Italian-Greek debate occurred between Barlaam of Calabria, a Greek, and St. Gregory Palamas of Constantinople. The knowledge of God is a topic related to hesychasm as well as the ability to experience “the divine light.” Palamas defended the essence-energies distinction that is common way of explaining how we can know and experience God while God’s essence remains unknowable and inscrutable. Barlaam lost the debate at the council in Hagia Sophia in the summer of 1341; Barlaam fled the city and sought refuge in Avignon under Pope Clement VI who appointed Barlaam bishop of Gerace in Naples, Italy with the help of Francesco Petrarca. Gregory defends that we worship one God, not two – one essence God. Hesychasm as taught by St. Gregory Palamas was confirmed three times in council in Constantinople, although one of his disciples and others later opposed him like Barlaam.
By 1453 most of the historical splits that endure today have occurred. Italy still isn’t a unified country at this time but it’s divided into various kingdoms, city-states, and the Papal states. Russia is germinating in Kiev and the northern lands of the Rus’ including Moscow haven’t been united under one monarch. What is now Greece is under Muslim control in the Ottoman empire, and it isn’t a national concept yet. But the Fall of Constantinople is considered by many scholars in the West, even Edward Gibbons, to be the last of the Roman emperors on July 4, 1453. The Byzantines, however, didn’t disappear. In 1498, the Scuola dei Greci was established by Byzantine Greeks residing in Venice after the Fall of 1453. San Giorgio dei Greci was built later. The last grand duke of the Byzantine emperor fled to Venice where treasures are kept at this church. They began building an Orthodox temple in 1456 about a decade after the city of Constantinople fell. Napoleon and the Enlightenment movement eventually closed these Greek and Slavic confraternities in 1806.
Many older Greek and Middle Eastern immigrants to America would later have the Ottoman empire on their passport while many Eastern Europeans would have the stamp ofvthe Austro-Hungarian empire, or the Russian Orthodox missionaries to America would have a passport from the Russian empire. Just as the Jewish nation fell to allow the totality of the gentiles into the church, so too global immigration, imperial missionaries, and the fall of empires have allowed those of us who live in non-Orthodox countries to experience Orthodox Christianity freely. Whatever interpretation we take on these historical events we know in divine wisdom that God orders all things according to his mercy. The next chapter discusses how Orthodoxy in Rus’ became Orthodoxy in Russia, and the historical development of Russia came to influence Europe, France, and the United States.