Im doing a time-line of the Christian Religion and im stuck at the Great Schism. All i see is that before this time there was one Roman Catholic Church and after, there was a Roman Catholic and an Eastern Orthodox church. What happened exactly?
By: Jordy S
Source: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091009195407AAe4YiO
keyword: schism
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The principle criticism of the Moslems was the use of “Icons” or religious paintings and statues that were worshiped like idols; in flagratnt disregard of God’s old Testament Command against making any image or likeness to bow down to. So he ordered all images destroyed. This was called the “Iconoclast controversy” The Emporer ordered the Pope of Rome to comply or he would personally come to Rome and destroy the statue of Saint Peter with his own hands.(The statue of St. Peter sits outside the vatican to this day and people still kiss the feet of this statue; to the extent that the toes have been completely worn of from it.) The Emporer set the death penalty against this as an act of treason. His troops broke into churches and monesteries and destroyed the images and met with great resistence many churches and monasteries were closed or burned. The Pope replied that laymen had no business meddling in spiritual affairs and ordered excommunication to all who violated any religious images.
(Which was now the rule of imperial law in Constantinople. So the Pope Excomunicated the Emporer and deposed him. This resulted in assasinations and uprisings and intrigue for many hundreds of years until the ninth century when the east relented. The Pope said it was ludicrus that the Emporer who was supposed to be emporer of the Romans that he neither lived in Rome nor could speak the language of Rome; Latin. he laughed at the Idea. The Emporer attacked Rome and confiscated papal property and lands(hitting the church in it;s pocketbook) and took greece out of Papal jurisdiction. So there was a lot of bad blood between the two. As the Emporer tried a number of times to heal the rift, attending councils and submitting to the Pope this did not heal the rift as the Emporer could make amends with Rome but the Byzantine people considered this as apostasy and he could not sell his people on the idea. Finally during the eleventh century during the “Gregorian Reforms” in the Roman church Pope Leo IX sent Humbert of Silva Candida, to Constantinople as his Papal Legate to observe the practices in the Eastern church; after Constantine IX was pushing for a reunion. Humbert entered the scene with the idea of Roman supremecy and met with Eastern resistence.
Humbert disputed and argued with the ecclesiastics and met with dissapointing resistence, He was so enraged that he published a book on the “Errors of the East” and tried to publish it in the East! (not a popular move) When the Pope died he was left without Papal authority so as he left town he entered the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in July 16, 1054 and in the middle of mass he strode up to the throne of the Eastern patriarch Michael and slammed down a bull of excommunication of the Patriarch and the Eastern church.
Which led to excommunications by the Patriarch against Humbert and Rome. This rift has carried down to this day; When Pope John Paul visited Greece he was met by thousands of protestors and when he sat down with the greek patriarch they did not discuss the present but that past and the actions of the Roman church’s insult to the patriarch in the very alter of his Church during the mass.
That is the cause of the rift and it is also a fulfillment of Biblical Prophecy in the book of Daniel in chapters 2 and 7 can be seen prophecies concerning the world kingdoms culminating in the Roman Empire. In Daniel 2 it speaks of four empires as a giant statue of various metals beginning with the head of Gold as Babylon and culminating in the feet of iron and clay as Daniel foretold thousands of years before: the kingdom shall be divided, and like iron
Prior to that their were Bishops in all major centers of Christianity. When the Roman emperors tried to control the church, the Bishop of Rome gained preeminence over the other Biships. That eventually gave rise to the Pope.
During the next centuries, Constantinople was elevated above all other Christian centers except Rome. The Christian leaders in Byzantium were know as Patriarchs.
As the Roman empire began to ’split’ between east and west so did the Church. When the western empire (Rome) fell to the “barbarians” and fell into disarray (“dark age”) the Eastern empire and church in Constantinople continued on as before and further split off from the Roman church. That eventually brough into question by the east of the true authority of the Pope- which the eastern church held wasn’t absolute authority.
Language also contributed to the split; the western people spoke Latin while the eastern people spoke Greek.
Michael of Constantine banned the speaking of Latin in the east and Leo of Rome suppressed the speaking of Greek in the west. Then in 1054 which is recognized as the year of the Schism, each church excommunicated important leaders of the other church.
That’s it in a nutshell from what I recall. Find a good book or website on Church History if you want to know more.
Take care
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Great_Schism
The basis of the argument was who had the ultimate power to appoint the Patriarch of Constantinople (the leading religious office in the East),The Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople, or the Pope in Rome.