Although it is widely accepted that the Schism of 1054 was caused by religious differences in the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, or Latin Christian, cultural differences and political tensions played an equally important role is the separation of the Christian Church in Europe.
The centers of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches were surrounded by very different influences, causing substantial differences in culture, which bred and built up conflict when the two empires interacted. The surrounding cultures of each empire were crucial in the shaping of culture. For instance, in the Eastern Orthodox Empire, had a base for their culture formed by a mixture of Greek, Western Asian, and Egyptian qualities, but
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Most notably, the difference in leadership sparked a lack of unity between the East and West. The West divided secular and ecclesiastical issues into two roles: the emperor and the Pope. This separation of responsibility allowed each head to focus a great amount of energy into the protection of the Church and state. In particular, the elimination of heretics in the West was a source of pride for the Roman Catholic Church and is mentioned in multiple primary sources, such as Document #63 in The Human Record and “Anna Comnena on the Suppression of Bogomil Heretics.” Unfortunately, the separate leadership positions produced an internal tension while both the Pope and emperor were aiming to be accepted as the more powerful leader. A prime example of this competition would be between Pope Leo III and King Charles when, before King Charles could declare himself emperor of all of the West, Pope Leo III invited him to Rome, where mosaics depicting shared power between the Pope and emperor had been placed, and crowned him emperor, which reinforced the idea that the religious leader held power over the secular leader. In contrast, the East’s leader was both the secular and religious leader, as shown in the Ravenna mosaics of Justinian and Theodora (Document #61, The Human Record). The couple were depicted with symbols of both legal and religious authority including purple robes, for royalty, religious, military, and domestic figures, ornate crowns, and the bread and wine for mass. The choice to keep one person as both secular and religious leader caused a lack of tension between the two aspects, but also caused less changes to be made, such as banning heretics, which the West found appalling. In Document #63 of The Human Record it reads, “all heresies have emanated from [the East] and have flourished among [the East]; among us, that is Westerners, they
There was disputes and conflict between two churches because of the cultural and political differences. The Roman Catholic Church quickly develops into the West. Rome was a home for Roman Catholic Church. Pope is the head of the church. Death of Jesus happened in 33AD, since than until early 4th century, Christianity was forbidden from Europe.
The religious schism took place in the 16th century, mainly between the Catholic Church and Protestants. During these times, many changes were brought forth to Europe during this schism. Although the religious schism brought forth an age of Reformation of the Catholic church, the religious schism started wars, revolts across Germany following the teachings of Luther, and the struggle for power between Catholicism and Protestantism.
Although the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church ultimately had more differences which ended up causing their
During the 17th to 18th century, The Roman Empire had gone through a cultural and religious metamorphous. Throughout this time, the roles of religion in the Islamic, Byzantine and Western European worlds altered the period of 600-750 with their similarities adhering to monotheism for one, and differences in regards to perspectives. These three cultures were all pretty diverse but they also shared some of the same roots and became heritors of the Roman Empire, built on different ideologies. The different ideologies of the Islamic, Byzantine and Western European worlds, consisted of different founders, places, and elements of worship, thus portraying how religion was indeed prominently central to governmental and social structures because of the large impact towards political laws.
Western Europe triumphed from their princes and the Pope ruling since they soon overcame The Byzantine Empire. This was because having more than one ruler can hold together an empire or countries better than one ruler. The princes had control of the government in their areas, and the Pope had control of the entire religion in Western Europe. Having the Pope and the princes dealing with separate issues is better than having just one emperor deal with all of their issues. Another difference of the two halves of Europe was the monasteries and nunneries. Western Europe believed that they should have both priests and nuns teaching and preaching to other people. The Byzantine Empire did not feel that nuns were needed in their empire to preach and to teach other people. This was the most likely cause for the many people in the empire converting to their barbaric enemies religions. If The Byzantine Empire had used nuns to preach and teach their people, instead of having just priests and monasteries, the people would not have converted the their enemies. Hence, The Byzantine Empire, and Western Europe were greatly different than each other.
The first pope to recognize the full potential of the papacy was Leo the Great. In his two decades of servitude, he planted the seeds of Christian control to come over the next millennia in asserting the pope’s authority over other bishops by the power of the keys, granted by Jesus to Peter. In doing this Leo the Great positioned the pope as the sole arbiter in holy matters, establishing the position as that of enormous spiritual power. With the collapse of Roman authority in the West, the papacy found itself well positioned to take a lead in temporal affairs as well. The Church had already demonstrated its ability to exert spiritual authority over the ruling class, but this opened the door for more diplomatic controls. When Rome was threatened by Attila the Hun, it was Pope Leo the Great who is credited with persuading Attila to turn back short of Rome. Whatever the truth of his role was, Leo had set a precedent for the broader role of the papacy in secular dealings.
Religion greatly affected who was a political leader and how the leaders took control in both empires. The Christian religion and the Byzantine Empire were closely linked because the Empire started in the city that made Christianity famous, Constantinople. In the Byzantine Empire, the emperor was not only the head of the state, but they were also, the pope. Not only did they appoint the patriarch of the Orthodox Church, they treated the church as a government department. Nearly everyone who lived in the Byzantine Empire was Christian and anyone who wasn't was deemed a minority. The emperors and the people strongly believed that Christianity was the superior religion. While in the Islamic Caliphate, the Caliph, someone who ruled the Muslim
The Byzantium recognized church and state as corresponding parts of the whole empire. This obviously caused problems because church and state has their own authority. This made it difficult to decide which one has more authority. This especially causes feuds in the West, due to not agreeing on whom had the power. The East, however differed with the West in this. In the East their structure was “symphonia” aka they had harmony, between each to.(pg.129).
Therefore, he separated the universal Roman Catholic Church. A pitfall in this concept is aligning Christendom with politics, culture, and society. For instance, the pace of negotiations between King Henry VIII of England and Pope Clement VII is a political pitfall which derived from the Great Schisms. Let’s go over some schisms for the staging. Part of the great schisms was the rise of the papacy were several Bishops of Rome was viewed as ‘the vicar of Christ and the Protestants agreed that the pope is not the divine successor of the apostles” (Noll, 2012, p.102). By the fourth century “the ecclesiastical centrality of the Roman bishop had much to do with the political centrality of Rome” (Noll, 2012, p.104). Biblically in Acts 26: 1-29, we find a similar example of Christendom with politics and society as Paul stands before Felix and Agrippa. Again, in Acts 2:11, Paul addressed Peter Apologetically about his fellowship of the uncircumcised, yet demanding that their culture is not according to God divine
With regards to religion, the western Roman Empire centered Christianity around the Roman pontiff, while the East was concerned with the Patriarch, or bishop of Constantinople. Each bishop’s powers
In 1054, the Great Schism occurred between the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox Christians, when the Pope first excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople. Not long after that, the Patriarch excommunicated the Pope, causing the split. There were many issues prior that created the Great Schism between the east and west both before and after 1054. It would appear from the documentation that the east had more issues with how the west conducted the church. The issues that caused the Schism between the two churches happened prior to 1054, but more issues occurred after the split. Before the split occurred, there were multiple differences that the Latin Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox, which could be possible reasons for the schism. The Catholics had different authorities, government systems and rules which they followed daily. For starters, the Catholic Church was separated from political authority, the Pope ruled the church and everything was directed as a monarchy. The Eastern Orthodox had the Byzantine Emperor as the political head of the church, a council of bishops was the supreme religious authority and was ruled as an oligarchy (Doc 4). Their differences would eventually lead to arguments between them, and cause the split. Before that, a man named Pope John VIII sent a letter to the Greek Patriarch Photius, stating that “It is our will that our Bulgarian diocese, which converted to Christianity through the efforts of my predecessor, Pope Nicholas, and which was
The Great Schism or The Western Schism was kind of like a separation within the Roman Catholic Church. What happened was, three men/popes all claimed to be the one true pope. It lasted from 1378 to 1417. Many people had doubt about the true authority of the Church because of this, and many people came to preach/debate about it. Though, the schism was ended by the Council of Constance between 1414 and
The crises of the Catholic Church were the Great Schism. It started five months after Urban’s election of the thirteen cardinals, all but one of them French, formed their own conclave and elected Pope Clement, a cousin of the French king. The both of them insisted they had voted for Urban in fear of their lives, having been surrounded by a Roman mob demanding the election of an Italian pope. This became a scandal to Christendom, and the allegiance to the two papal courts divided along political lines. Like England and its allies acknowledge d Urban VI, while France and its orbit supported Clement VII.
To begin, when it came to the theological similarities and differences there were definitely more differences. First, the only similarity was the leadership that each one had. They had disputes over everything else. Second, the church and the leaders in the Eastern Orthodox Church believed that all popes were equal and there was no real focus or
The official split between the Catholic and Orthodox churches was in 1054. However, there was a build up of conflict that started back when Rome chose Latin as their main language, while Constantinople chose Greek many years earlier. This small disagreement, along with many others, contributed to the split of the two branches of the church. (World History In Context). The most well-known disagreement between the two branches is in their understanding of the Pope. Catholics believe that the Pope is the highest office in the church while the Orthodox believe that all bishops should be equal. Disagreements continued to build and led to the division of of the two groups currently known as the Catholic and the Orthodox churches. From there,