In Our Time - The Schism

Episode Date: October 16, 2003

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss events surrounding the medieval division of the Christian Church. In 1054, Cardinal Humbert stormed into the Cathedral of Constantinople and charged down the aisle. In his hand was a Papal Bull – a deed of excommunication - and he slammed it down onto the altar. As he swept out of the startled church, the Papal Legate and his entourage stopped at the door and symbolically shook the sullied dust of Eastern Christianity from their Catholic boots. The Pope of Rome had decreed that the Patriarch of Constantinople was denied his place in heaven, and soon afterwards the Patriarch excommunicated the Pope in return.It was the culmination of an argument over a single word in the Nicene Creed - but after a thousand years of being one Church, so began a permanent rift.But what were the real underlying reasons behind the split, what were its effects and why did it take until December 1965 for the excommunications to be finally revoked?With Henrietta Leyser, medieval historian and Fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford; Norman Housley, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Leicester; Jonathan Shepard, editor of the Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. In 1054, Cardinal Humbert went into the cathedral of Constantinople. In his hand, there was a papal ball, which is a document with a very large seal attached, a deed of excommunication, and he slammed it down onto the altar.

As he swept out of the startled church, the papal legate and his entourage stopped at the door and symbolically shook the solid dust of Eastern Christianity from their Catholic boots. The Pope of Rome had decreed that the Patriarch of Constantinople was denied his place in heaven, and soon afterwards the patriarch excommunicated the Pope in return. It was the culmination of an argument

over a single word in the Nicene Creed, and after a thousand years of being one church, so began a permanent schism. But what were the real underlying reasons behind the split? What were its effects and why did it take until December 1965 for the excommunications to be finally revoked? With me to discuss the schism of Eastern and Western Christianity, a Norman Hausley, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Leicester,

Henrietta Liza, fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford, and Jonathan Shepherd, editor of Byzantine diplomacy and of the forthcoming Cambridge history of the Byzantine Empire? Henry Relyzer, can we get a sense of the way the church is organised prior to these excommunications in the mid-11 century. How many patriarchs, for instance, were there in the Christian world? The important thing really is to recognise that there are five patriarchs, so there's Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria. And very much of the system is really concerned with the authority of Rome as opposed to the authority of what's called the Pentarchy,

which is the five patriarchs are known as the Pentarchy. But of course, for a lot of the time, some of those seas are under Muslim rule. And so you get more of a focus than you might have expected originally between old Rome, i.e. Italian Rome and Constantinople, new Rome. As soon as Constantinople was established by Constantine, was the rift beginning, was it inevitable? I don't know that it's inevitable, but the tension is indeed always there. There is right from the beginning a sense that there's going to be rivalry. Rome, of course, has the advantage of having St. Peter, and Constantinople hasn't really got a saint. I mean, they do try very hard to have St Andrew, but they don't really.

So to one extent, they don't start going off on a very good footing. On the other hand, they aren't assailed by barbarians in the way that Rome is. So they have a strength of tradition that Rome loses, and Rome is much more vulnerable for a lot of the period under discussion, the Constantinople. So the five patriarchs, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome. And we have the Muslim overlay, because they rise of Muslim power in the 7th, early 8th century,

and they're taking over, particularly. And are they tolerating these patriarchies, the Muslims at that time? Oh, there's a lot of, I mean, there's much more toleration overall than one might think. And I think it's also very important to recognise that throughout the period that we're talking about, there are Latin in Constantinople, and equally, of course, a lot of Greeks in Italy. And we shouldn't, and also Muslims in Italy, in Sicily, particularly. And so the whole thing is much more fluid. I think we now, we tend to think already that there is an east-west divide in ways that there simply isn't.

There isn't politically and there isn't ecclesiastically. There's a great melee of people across the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, a schism is coming up. So what's happening, Norman Hensley, in the early 11th century with Rome? It seems to me from my reading that they're driving forward in some way. they're pushing at some sort of boundaries, is that right? Well, in the early to mid-11th century, there emerges at Rome a radical sort of wing of the church,

which is composed primarily of intellectuals, highly trained and very ambitious intellectuals who are pushing for papal primacy within the church as a whole. And these people are grouped within the papal curia itself, and they tend to establish a dominance over papal policy which leads to the events of 10, And what are they pushing for? What are they aiming to do?

They're aiming to do. They're aiming for conformity, but in order to achieve an acceptance that the chief patriarchate, the patriarchate, which has authority in magisterial terms, and laying down doctrine and enforcing doctrine, is the Sea of Rome. And that that establishes a claim to precedence, which cannot be challenged by the other surviving patriarchate, patriarchate in Christian hands, which is Constantinople. Was the situation hardened by the fact that in Rome there was no emperor,

in Constantinople, there was a patriarch and an emperor, and in Rome the Pope sought some kind of imperial role, which made him cross over more markedly into the secular world. Had that good anything to do with the... That is part of it. When the Roman Empire broke into two halves, in the western half there was for a long time, no emperor. and the Pope therefore had a particular position at Rome

in terms of actually governing the city, which was expressed in terms of a kind of inheritance of the imperial role. By the early 11th century, there certainly was an emperor in the West, the Holy Roman Emperor, but he tends to be resident in Germany, pays infrequent visits to Rome. But that actually complicates the situation because you do actually have two people who claim to inherit the political authority of the Roman Emperor.

which makes things even more complex. Jonathan Shepard, can you give us a picture of the Eastern Church in the 11th century, and let's talk in a bit more detail about the differences in practices from those of the West? We've put some idea from Norman Housley what was going on in Rome. I'd like to come back to put this idea. What about in the Eastern Church? Well, the Eastern Church had its own outlook, and there were also declared differences between the East and the West,

and these were not new in the mid-11th century. They went back to the 9th century and before. It's partly a matter of authority, as Henrietta has just said. It's also a matter of doctrine, whether you're going to tack on anything extra to the creed, to the creed of, I believe, in God the Father. They were all agreed on that, but the Greeks objected to a little addition at the end of the creed, which the Latins had been using for the last 200 years or so. And finally, there was a difference in ritual.

The Greeks disapproved of a use of unleavened bread in the communion. They referred to this as a kind of heresy, as the use of adzymes. They believe that you should have leavened bread. And although that may seem a trivial difference to us in an age when ritual and symbolism is very, very important, this was error. And these were not new differences. They'd agreed to let live with the Westerners for a long long time. time. But they were fault lines, which suddenly became much more clearly apparent. Very briefly, can you give us some idea of the differences in the practice of the religion

on the ground with the ordinary monks and people? Because there too, from my reading, there are significant and interesting differences. Well, yes, and these are not declared differences. They're not causes of war, as it were. There are differences of practice, which do reveal, I think, a rather different mentality. I mean, as far as worship goes, the very act of communion. What part of the row was about of 11 bread? There, there was communion in two kinds, to use the jargon. That is to say, the laity in Byzantium partook of the bread,

as well as of the wine, whereas, as I believe in the West, it's essentially only the wine which is available to the laity. That's one thing. Another thing is the idea of what is acceptable sacred conduct. The Byzantines never quite like the idea of the holy authority being vested in a single person or a single establishment body. There was a heavy emphasis on God's holiness being shown in strange ways. And a key example of that would be the stylites or indeed the dendrites. The dendrites are people who live up trees.

The stilites are people who stand up columns. and this goes back to the early church. There's also the Holy Fool who's more interesting than both of those. Well, wait for the Holy Fool, yes. I mean... I love for it's fascinating. I mean,

let me have my Starlight for a moment. Living up on his column, there was a very famous one in the 10th century called Luke for Stylite, who made it for 42 years. He claimed to be the world's greatest stilite and number five in the great tradition of stylites, going back to the 4th century.

Out of Simeon in the 5th century. And again, there's this sense of context, of tradition, that they are upholders of a grand tradition of extreme asceticism. As well as people standing on columns, you've got holy fools. Fools for the sake of Christ, acting out some of the instructions in one of the letters of St. Paul, but it's better to be a fool in Christ than to have earthly wisdom. These characters would very often run around naked, wrapped in chains, stealing fish from the markets in Constantinople,

really challenging existing notions of decency decorum, and making people think that the Holy Spirit moves in odd ways. Well, I think we've got a reasonable platform there between the three of you. Can I ask around the table briskly? There'd been divergences here, and they'd been developing to say for a few hundred years. Why do you think they came to a head, briskly, each of you, in the middle of the 11th century, Henrietta?

Well, I suppose primarily because of the paper, reform movement, which Norman's talked about equally, because there's something similar going on in Constantinople. They're also trying to, they've got their problems with the Armenian, whom they are trying to get into line. But I also want to, I suppose, say that actually I don't think 1054 is anything like as significant as it has often been made out. Do you agree with that?

Well, the 11th century is a crucial period, irrespective of what happens in 1054 and its influence and its impact. The point is that it's at that time that these differences become really prominent and are felt and are certain on both sides. And the key issue is points of contact. It's where the two churches are coming into collision, and the differences therefore emerged. And in the 11th century,

the key point of contact before the First Crusade is southern Italy and to some extent also the Balkans. And in southern Italy, you have effectively a power vacuum because the Byzantine Empire is receding from southern Italy, and you have a new force intruding into southern Italy, which is the Normans, Norman adventurers, who are conquering the Byzantine lands. and Rome sees this going on.

So as well as conquering us, they're conquering them? They're conquering lands from the Byzantines. And the Normans are a real wild card in the pack because do they represent the reformist tendency at the Papal Curia or are they just after their own good, conquering territory and using that for their own purposes? So that makes things incredibly unstable in the 50 or so years leading up to the First Crusade.

Can I just ask you briskly, John, do you think that Henrietta's view of the 1054 isn't all that important despite the mutual excommunications? I think it's a kind of thunder clap, which is something of a boat from the blue, which surprises people at the time. It's sort of small earthquake in St. Sophia. Not many immediately gets communicated, but it does have a long-term impact. You know, it rolls on a bit, and then finally really bursts out perhaps 20, 30, 30 years later. So I think it's the beginning, but it doesn't immediately lead to them not being on speaking terms.

Could I just say that if they're ex-communicating each other, then that presupposes that they're in a state of communion. So it means there isn't a schism. So in a sense, that's something which is to the good, because they're still talking to each other. And the difficulty comes about when they're simply moving apart. So you might argue that it shows at least they're negotiating. And they continue to talk to each other for a long time. And there's the Council of Bari not so much before the end of the century in 1098, in which they're all kind of quite good friends. for the Crusades, I would have thought 1054

would really have been forgotten. Henrietta, what was the immediate aftermath of the papal-legged delivering or slapping that seal on the altar at St. Sophia? Well, again, it seems to me that it depends on how you read this, and possibly my colleagues aren't going to agree, but because I'm rather down playing the whole episode.

I'm going to worry if there's been in the schism, maybe there weren't any Crusades. No, no, I'm sorry, I'm going to hang on to the crusades being... Crusoe being kind of awful, and Sacking Constantinople being the kind of ultimate, well, I think the number of things on the crusade, there's Antioch. Hold on just a second. What happened after that? But what was the immediate consequences? The immediate consequences are, there's a lot of towing and froing, but, you know, the Pope has died in between. There's some anxiety, I mean, the patriarch himself may be a little bit bothered about what he's going on. He writes to Peter of Antioch and says, hey, do you think this is okay?

And Peter of Antioch says, I think you've overblown it. And I think the whole thing. second. I mean, what you're saying is really amusing in that, but do they put it in such light-hearted terms? Well, you know, Carol, the patriarch himself is going to be deposed. There are a lot of other more important things going on.

As Norman said, everybody's... It's actually not in their interest to quarrel at the moment, because you have got these Normans who are the wild card, I think was Norman's expression, in Italy, who are potentially a threat to the Greeks and to the papacy. They really don't want to fall out

right now if they can help it. They really don't? I think that gives us some idea of a change because to some extent the schism arises because of a long-standing sense of alliance. It's so easily forgotten that the excommunications come at the same time as they're negotiating an alliance between the papacy and Byzantium against the Normans. And this is quite a familiar pattern going back into the 9th century before, where when the Muslims were literally at the gates of Rome, the Byzantines would send a fleet. I mean, never forget that Byzantium had been the superpower in the eastern and central Mediterranean for a long time, and the Muslim threat in many ways had kept them sort of united.

Well, in 1050-51, people are writing letters saying the Norman Zavar new Saracens, the new Muslims. In fact, they're even worse than the Muslims at times. They're wrecking so many churches and so on. So to some extent, you're getting a familiar lever being pulled, that one possibility was the Eastern Christians coming to the assistance of the papacy. The Normans are reckoning, sorry, just to get it clear, wrecking the Byzantine churches.

No, they're wrecking any churches. No, there's no stopping them. I mean, this is it. They were a very ugly bunch initially. And they were down in Sicily. Well, they'd seized lands and towns in southern Italy very, very quickly. I mean, they are an extraordinary flash flood,

a flash phenomenon of the 1040s. arrived as just mercenaries in the employment of Byzantines around 1040, some of a mutiny, others arrive and take over castles from local Italian lords, and within five to ten years, they've become a very troublesome body of gangsters in effect, often fighting each other. Now, at the time, the Byzantines rather underestimated than I think. They thought, oh, well, this is an irritant. Let's just link up with the papacy, and we'll get rid of them. The Byzantines were still very self-confident.

It's in that atmosphere that the negotiations take place for an alliance, but the patriarch of Constantinople sees this as a chance to crack down on bad Latin practices. And he is not actually stymying an alliance, but he's saying if we're going to cooperate with the papacy, we'd better get them to perform, we'd better get them to behave correctly on ritual. It's precisely when they're coming to Glever so closely in alliance that you're doing a few sorting out and getting people to Toverline,

but of course the timing is appalling because this is, just when, as Norman was saying, the paper sees actually itself gaining new self-confidence and attempting standardisation. And then Pope Urban II-N-N-N-Intyre five, which is a mere hop and a skip in the way we're going through history from 1054, conceives the first crusade, which, as I understand it, was originally designed to reconcile the rift between East and West, and the Byzantine Empire would lead it. What did that lead to? Well, that's...

We know it led to a crusade, but in terms of what we're talking about, the East and Western Church. About 50 years ago, Stephen Rumsman was prepared to say that the Crusades were the crucial point at which the two churches divided. They were catastrophic. I think that's a judgment that holds water actually still, that they were catastrophic. And the vote to 1204 and the Fourth Crusade sack of Constantinople is one which starts back in 1095. The Crusades cause problems, all sorts of problems. but in two respects in particular. One is that as the crusading armies,

starting with the ones of the first crusade, going right through to the third, as they make their way across the Balkans, through Byzantine Territi, they raise all sorts of problems of logistics and supply and management. The first one is supposed to be about 100,000. Absolutely. And so also was the third,

the army led by Barbarossa a century later. So the first problem is simply that of managing these huge numbers and the way, the inevitable bad behaviour on the part of crusaders and the perceived bad behaviour on the part of the Byzantines in response to that. So it's management of the vast armies causes difficulties. And the second area in which you get problems is that the Crusaders make conquests in Palestine and Syria. In northern Syria, one of those major conquests, Antioch is a traditionally Byzantine city, which is held by the Crusaders, and the Byzantines want it back again.

So there are territorial clashes and generally an inability to cooperate between the Crusader state, down in the south on the Levant and the Byzantine Empire in the north. And Rita, can you give us your view of how this first crusade how it may have done the opposite of what was intended instead of uniting divided? I think it certainly does not least because whenever anything goes wrong, the Latin say, oh, it's the Greek's fault. And because it's very clear that, again, the Normans aren't, are not the great saviors

that everybody hopes they might be the Normans are in there territory for themselves So the Normans are part of the crusade Absolutely The Normans are very much part of the crusade And they are the people who are after kind of territory And the Normans are

As we suggested The Normans are kind of Really are the bad guys You've got to watch them And they do cause consternation in Constantinople And they do cause a lot of the tension that follows Yes And we haven't even yet mentioned ostensibly why they're going there,

which is to win Jerusalem back from the Muslims. And so we have a triangle rather than two sides. And then we have inside the West going across, we have this wild card called the Normans, who are sort of bucking all sorts of trends and out for land grabs wherever they can get it. Does that begin to describe what's going on? Yes, I mean, because there is a redrawing of the map,

or if you like a seismic shift in the second half of the 11th century. And in a way you've got to remember that the crusade was probably triggered by SOS messages going out from the Byzantine Emperor, invoking Christian unity and saying, come to my assistance, the Turks are at the gate, because there had been a catastrophic setback for the Byzantine Empire in the second half the 11th century. They'd lost a major battle at Manzikert.

There'd been various internal circumstances. wars and by the 1080s the Turks were sometimes on the other side of the Bosporus from Constantinople so there was a sudden military reversal and in the way 180 degree you turn because whereas the Byzantines

and the papacy were planning to cooperate against the Normans in the early 1050s just over a generation later you've got the Byzantine Emperor appealing to the Pope and saying please try and muster an army and come to my assistance

against the Muslim Turks who are overrunning Asia Minor and destroying churches, etc., etc. And this seemed quite a neat bit of diplomacy, and it was very successful in the sense that a large army was formed. But I think the Byzantine Emperor probably overestimated his ability to manipulate and to keep control of this army. And although he probably expected it to go to Jerusalem and wanted it to go to Jerusalem,

what he didn't expect was the rapid appearance of a whole series of Latin. implant, so to speak, of Western implants at Antioch of Jerusalem, and a turning of the tables. Can I fast forward to 1204, where we have the sacking of Constantinople, not by the Muslims, but by

the Western Christians. Now, there's two theories of that, an out-of-control army, let's say an accident, or a conspiracy theory because of Italian merchants, wealth and all that sort of thing. Can we just maybe put that to one side

or a second? And what I'd like to ask you, What was decisive about that? Was there something decisive about that 1204 sacking? I think that the feeling for a long time, which you already get with the First Crusade, that actually everybody in the West is really a thug. I think 12.04 confirms, and my God, they are. They are just terrible. They are barbarians.

They don't understand our traditions. They've looted our precious treasures. And the worst insults you can really hurl at anybody after 1204 is you're behaving like a Frank. You're behaving like a Westerner. As bad as that? Yes. I would say so.

Jonathan. Yes, you've already got a Byzantine patriarch around 1170 saying I'd rather live under Muslim rule because at least they'll leave my soul alone, even if they beat up my body. But I don't want the Latin's ruling because they're going to take away my soul, force me to sign up to the filo-quiclox and then I'm lost forever kind of thing.

You're already getting that around 1170. While there were some Byzantines still sympathetic, still wearing the clothes of Westerners in the 1180s and 90s. There's still quite a lot of contact. There's a lot of business being done. but 1204 is seen as the great betrayal, and things never were of the same again. Poems were written immediately afterwards,

saying that the Latins were even worse than dogs, and again, that it was much better, if you were going to be overrun, better be by the Turks and by the Latins. And it's fair to say that the Greeks, the Eastern Christians have never really forgotten 12 before, or forgiven it ever since. Would it be true to say that the West tried to sort of get out of this sacking of 1204

by pretending, or by saying, claiming that this was just, this is the way hungry, ill-disciplined soldiers behaved under stress, while the East said, look, this was a conspiracy, you meant to do this, you meant to destroy it, it was in your commercial as well as in your theological interest. Would that be fair enough? Well, I think it's worse than that, actually.

The Apologia for Trogon is really incredibly, mealy-mouthed because you get people saying in the West that the Greeks have deserved it, that they're duplicitous, treacherous, they don't deserve to have this wonderful city and its relics. So we're bringing them back into the fold. We're saving their souls by force. There's a ghastly kind of achievement of unity through force idea there in the early 13th century.

Enwitted, why did that sort of venom come from? Always a total talk about each other as dogs. They really live in Muslims. It seems to have spiraled into vitriol quite quickly, doesn't it? Well, it's very deep-seated. I mean, yes, it didn't need to lead to sort of schism at any point, but I think you can take it right back to the 10th century. You can take it right back before.

I mean, there's, after all, there's suspicion, oh, right back to 800, when there's a new emperor in the West with Charlemagne, what is this kind of barbarian doing becoming an emperor, excuse me, you know, it should only be an emperor in Constantinople. And then, of course, the Karinian Empire kind of, you know, falls apart. But then again, you get a new emperor in the West in the form of the Otonians in Saxony. And again, you get the same sort of feeling, what are these upstarts doing, having an emperor? And so there's always this feeling that the Westerners are really kind of barbarians who have no business to claim half of what they claim. And so there's always cultural tension. Added to that, of course, there is real competition over Moravia, over Bulgaria,

and indeed over Russia. Because one has to remember that there's a lot of missionary work going on all the time and where are these churches going to belong? And Bulgaria in particular goes backwards and forwards and plays one off against the other. so there's plenty of opportunities and reasons for competitive vitriol. And again, just briefly, Jonathan, where are the Muslims fitting into all this? Well, the Christians, as it were, being elliptical and demotic,

tearing each other apart, tearing themselves apart. Well, I mean, the Muslims had threatened the crusading states in the late 12th century. Basically, Jerusalem had been lost to Saladin in the 1180s, and that's what had precipitated the third and then the fourth crusade. And I think it's fair to say, The Crusades were in a bit of a parlous problem. They were having difficulty getting quite as many recruits as they wanted to. And you've got in some ways two institutions somewhat creaking,

the Institute of the Crusade rather uncertain. And you could argue that only the rather undesirable elements had stayed on the Fourth Crusade, as far as Constantinople itself. They were actually desperate for more supplies which a claimant to the Byzantine throne had promised them. And that's what diverted them. The Byzantine Empire at that time in many ways was a failed state. It was suffering endless internal revolts. intervention by outsiders such as the Crusaders.

So, you know, you've got two rather, and it's a series of accidents at the time, but when it happens, it confirms all the darkest prejudices of the Byzantine churchmen about what the Latins were all about. Henrietta, who do you think was most damaged by this? What, east or west? Yes. Well, I think the West are the losers, actually. Why? Could you explain that a little more?

Well, I think there are so many problems with the role that the papacy assumes in the West, which I think actually are compounded by the schism, actually, really. And I think it really is a lot of the criticism of the role that the Pope has in the West is really so complicated very much by the criticism. I haven't, I think there's not, I mean, there's not time to go into that more, but that's sort of in sum my feeling. Finally, you, Norman, who do you think was most damaged? Oh, the West, because it lost that tremendous legacy, and it only got it back in the very late Middle Ages

when you find Italian scholars going over to Constantinople and getting away with precious manuscripts just before the Turks arrive. So there is a sort of a poshmal in the late Middle Ages, but of course then the Turks arrive and Constantinople falls to them. Well, thank you all very much for having a go at that. I know it's a massive subject, and there are deep breath taken before we came on air, but I think they were well taken. Thank you all very much. If you would like to make a contribution on the subject of the schism,

there's a new comment board on our In Our Time website, and next week I'll be talking about infinity. Thank you very much for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.com.com.com.