This is the sixth of a series, 7 Dates and Why They Matter for the Anglican Faith. Read previous installments.
By Derek Olsen
On Sunday mornings during the prayers I always feel a pang when we hit that section:
“Receive these our prayers which we offer
unto thy divine Majesty, beseeching thee to inspire
continually the Universal Church with the spirit of truth,
unity, and concord; and grant that all those who do confess
thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word, and
live in unity and godly love.”
The truth, of course, is that this prayer has always been a fantasy; since its composition in 1552 it has expressed a hope, a wish, and never described reality. I feel it more keenly these days. A relationship between ecclesial groups—just as with families—tends not to breakdown in one decisive moment. (It’s a process, not an event.) And yet there are often watershed moments to which we can point and often a single event of great moment that shows the relationship utterly fractured. That is why one of the dates that every Anglican should know is AD 1054.
On July 16th, 1054, papal legates excommunicated Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople and the Great Schism between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches was formally begun. Factually speaking, this was neither the first nor the last schism between the two sides. The first major schism was proclaimed by Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople two hundred years earlier when he condemned what he called the five major errors of the Latins:
1. fasting is allowed on Saturdays,
2. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday [rather than the preceding Sunday],
3. priests are not allowed to marry,
4. priests are not allowed to confirm, and
5. the phrase filioque […and from the Son…] was added to the Nicene Creed
By the time of Michael Cerularius, these had been joined by yet another:
6. The West used unleavened bread for the Eucharist.
Modern Anglicans looking at this list may well find these quite minor reasons for splitting Christendom. After all, only the fifth (perhaps the fourth as well) seem to touch on actual theological issues. We might well ask whether these are reasons or pretexts for a split. The answer, as is usually the case, is that the truth is far more complicated than what we see on the surface.
While we may point to dates like 1054 or 861, the reality is that the seeds of discord sprung from soil prepared and tended by history itself. Throughout most of its existence, the Roman Empire fell neatly into two halves—one spoke Latin, the other Greek. This natural division was formally recognized by Diocletian’s division of the empire into four administrative districts at the beginning of the 4th century which quickly became two under Constantine. Thus were functionally created a Latin section incorporating Western Europe and Northwestern Africa and a Greek section from Egypt and the Balkans to the western boundary of the resurgent Persian Empire under the Sassanids. Without a common language, the two halves of the Empire which faced different social, economic, and military challenges drifted apart and the pre-existing cultural differences were only exacerbated.
As a result, the beginning of the problem in the Church began in the 2nd and 3rd centuries when the churches in Rome and north Africa began doing theology and liturgy in Latin rather than Greek. By the 4th and 5th centuries, two separate paths diverged—one in Greek, the other in Latin. Nowhere is this more evident than in the linguistic capabilities of the great Doctors of the Church in the patristic age. St Augustine himself admits his inability to converse in Greek; St Gregory the Great spent six years in Constantinople yet never learned Greek. St Leo too could neither read nor write it. While Sts Ambrose and Jerome were quite fluent in Greek, Jerome’s program of translating great Christian works from Greek into Latin further reduced the need for western clergy to learn the language—and formulations—of the eastern theologians. Photius, one of the greatest scholars of his age, knew no Latin.
Furthermore, the works of St Augustine which would become the great foundation of western theology were translated only sporadically into Greek. In particular, his treatise on the Holy Trinity on which the West based most of its support for the filioque clause was not translated into Greek until the twelfth century.
Without shared theological reflection and liturgical practice, the later split seems not just unfortunate but—sadly—inevitable.
Of course, theology and liturgy wasn’t all there was too it—no reflection on the issue would be complete without recognizing a variety of political complications. The term “Byzantine Empire” used in European and American literature didn’t appear until the 19th century and is itself polemical in nature; the “Byzantine” empire had never regarded itself as anything other than the Roman Empire—which it was. Despite the sack of Rome in 410 by Alaric and a string of barbarian pretenders, the imperial succession remained unbroken in the East. Constantine’s establishment of Constantinople as the “New Rome” and the new center of the Eastern section of the Empire left a vacuum in the West, though.
As is well known, the bishop of Rome claimed primacy over the other patriarchate sees (Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople) who, not surprisingly, disagreed. Specifically, Antioch argued that it was also founded by St Peter thus undercutting the Roman claim to the “See of Peter”; Constantinople argued that as the seat of the Emperor, the “New Rome” should, if anything, hold primacy over “Old Rome.”
To make matters worse, with the rise of Frankish power in the West, Charlemagne’s coronation on Christmas Day of 800 as “Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire” was a direct slap in the face to the rulers in Constantinople. The theological attack on the 7th Ecumenical Council prompted by Charlemagne in the so-called Caroline Books was based on faulty and mistranslated accounts of the council and helped create the poisonous atmosphere that exploded with Photius a few decades later.
As we say today, “mistakes were made”… Neither side is blameless.
The rest, as they say, is history. From the Great Schism to the Protestant Reformation down to events of recent days, the cause of Christian unity has proven ever elusive. Too, the wisdom of Ecclesiastes is ever proven true: there is nothing new under the sun. Disagreements over practice that seem more pretext than substance, arguments over the respective powers and legitimacy of various bishops, the mating habits of clergy, and underlying factors driven by baser motives arise again and again.
What do we learn from this history? What’s the take-away from AD 1054? I won’t presume to make a grand statement to “answer” this conundrum. Rather I refer back to Paul in Second Corinthians. Truly we have this treasure—the Gospel—in clay jars. Fragile, fractious, fallible, flawed containers of earth. “Mistakes were made”…and have been, and will continue to be. We have due cause to consider our own cracks. And—too—to consider the treasure contained therein, a treasure that spurs us to not remain forever consumed with flaws—whether our own or others—but to join Archbishop Cranmer in the hope and prayer that we make our own: “grant that all those who do confess thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word, and live in unity and godly love.”
Derek Olsen is in the final stretch of completing a Ph.D. in New Testament (with a healthy side of Homiletics) at Emory University. He has taught seminary courses in biblical studies, preaching, and liturgics; he currently resides in Maryland. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X/Y dad appear at Haligweorc.