By Alex Wodzicki
Today, Christianity can broadly be divided into the Western church (Catholicism, Protestantism and its various denominations) and the Eastern church (Eastern Orthodoxy, Miaphysitism and Nestorianism). This is mostly taken for granted today, but it is fascinating to look at how exactly a once unified church fractured so completely. Martin Luther and the Protestant reformation that split the Western church in the 16th century is pretty well known, but today we’ll explore the early history of the Christian church, and the Great Schism of 1054 that permanently split Eastern and Western Christianity.
Early History of the Church
Christianity had spread relatively slowly in the centuries after Jesus’ death, and its few adherents were heavily persecuted by the Romans. This changed after the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine I in 312 and the Edict of Milan in 313, which legalized Christianity across the Empire. The Council of Nicaea convened by Constantine in 325 established official Christian doctrine and from there, the faith spread rapidly, with Nicene Christianity becoming the official faith of the Roman Empire in 380. The next century saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Germanic invaders, and although most of them were eventually converted to Nicene Christianity, this would mark the beginning of the gradual divergence between the Eastern Roman Empire (Later known as Byzantium) and the Latin West during the early middle ages. This divergence also extended to their respective churches as differences in doctrine and practice multiplied. Another important development in the relationship between East and West was the growing influence of the Bishop of Rome (better known today as the Pope) in the Western world, and his claims to primacy over the other four Christian patriarchates in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria.
The Schism of 1054
The trends of a diverging “Latin” West and “Greek” East, and an increasingly powerful and assertive Pope would continue throughout the middle ages, culminating in the Great Schism of 1054. Although the events that would later come to be known as the Great Schism were not seen as a particularly big deal at the time, the minor split between the Eastern and Western churches they created would ultimately never be resolved. The Schism originated with a 1053 letter from the Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Cerularius over Western Christian practices like using unleavened bread for the eucharist and other minor theological disagreements between the two churches. Pope Leo IX would respond with a letter that emphasized the primacy of the Bishop of Rome over the patriarch of Constantinople. The next year, a papal delegation was dispatched to Constantinople with letters proposing cooperation against the Norman invasion of southern Italy, but also chastising the Patriarch for his arrogance and insisting on papal primacy over Christian practice. The papal legates were not well received, and on July 16, 1054 they officially excommunicated Cerularius and his followers. Cerularius quickly responded by excommunicating the papal legates on July 20, 1054, and creating an official schism between the Eastern and Western Churches. It is worth repeating that although it is convenient to use 1054 the “official” date the rift was opened, it was really the product of a much longer historical trend both before and after 1054, as Eastern and Western Christendom gradually developed into distinct entities during the middle ages. The years after the Schism were characterized by the Crusading movement and a growing feeling of difference between the Byzantine Empire and the Latin West, culminating in the 4th Crusade and the capture of Constantinople in 1204. This resulted in a brief, forcible reunion of the Churches under the Latin Empire, but this would come to an end after Constantinople was retaken by the Byzantines in 1261. After 1261, the rift between East and West would never again be mended.