I. THE “DARK AGES”#
In contrast to the flourishing of Middle Byzantine civilization, this was a time when civilization in western Europe reached a low ebb, but even then there were forces of renewal at work. There was more continuity than the language of “Dark Ages” allows, and the tenth century prepared for the great progress of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Threats to European Christianity came from both the East, represented by the Magyars, who moved into what is now Hungary at the end of the ninth century, and from the North, to which we will give more attention. Those very invaders from the north, when incorporated into the feudal society of western Europe, combined with the Benedictine monks to provide the impetus to an age of renewed vitality in the West.
With roots in the troubled times of the tenth century, efforts at institutional revival—monastic, imperial, and papal—came to a culmination in the eleventh century.
A. Invaders from Scandinavia#
The Northmen or Norsemen (hence, Normans), including the Vikings and Danes, were Germanic peoples from Scandinavia, who represented the last wave of migration into the heart of Europe. Between 800 and 1100 the Vikings went from the Iron Age to a fully medieval society.
The word “Viking” meant pirate raiders, which few of these people were, but the name was given a wider significance to refer to invaders from the North, barbaric pagans who threatened to snuff out the light of civilization kindled during the Carolingian renaissance.
The Vikings had invaded Ireland in the eighth century and by the end of that century had ravaged the Northumbrian monasteries in England. The first recorded Viking attack is described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 793, and a stone was set up at Lindisfarne a century later as a memorial. King Alfred (871–99) of Wessex checked their advance into England.
The Normans by the tenth century were raiding around the Mediterranean Sea and into Russia. Under an arrangement with Charles the Simple, Rollo settled his followers after 911 in the region of France since known as Normandy, where they were Christianized. Where Christians had not taken the gospel, the people came to the Christians. The vitality of the Normans gave them a great religious significance in the renewal of Western Christianity.
B. The Decline of the Papacy#
Meanwhile, civil wars and petitions had reduced the territory over which the Roman emperor ruled to a small Italian principality. This enabled the papacy to establish a hold over the title of emperor in the late ninth century and to suppress the title in 924.
One incident will illustrate how the barbarity of the times affected even the heart of the Western church. Pope Formosus (891–96) was involved in political treachery: he crowned Lambert, duke of Spoleto, emperor and then repudiated him and crowned Arnulf. After Formosus’s death, a successor, Stephen, had his body exhumed, placed in the papal chair, and judged. All Formosus’s acts were condemned, the three fingers with which he conferred the papal blessing were cut off, his vestments were stripped from his body, and his corpse was dragged through the streets and thrown into the Tiber River.
During much of the tenth and eleventh centuries the Roman aristocracy dominated the papacy. The ruling influences in Rome and on the papacy for the first sixty years of the tenth century were Theophylact and his daughters Marozia and Theodora. Marozia’s son Alberic controlled affairs in Rome from 932 to 954.
One bright spot was the papacy of Gerbert, who took the name Sylvester II (999–1003), recalling the first Sylvester to whom Constantine supposedly made the donation of rule in the West and thus the harmony of emperor and pope. He had taught at Rheims, to whose cathedral school he bequeathed his precious library, and had been abbot of Bobbio and then archbishop of Rheims and later of Ravenna before becoming pope. He pioneered the use of Arabic numerals (although still without the zero) instead of Roman numerals.
The papacy fell back again under the Tusculum popes, 1012–46. Count Alberic of Tusculum was descended on the female side from the Theophylact family.
He raised to the papacy his brother Theophylact as Benedict VIII (1012–24) and then another brother as John XIX (1024– 32).
He finally seated his son, Theophylact, as Benedict IX (1032–44), under whom the papacy sank to a new moral low.
At this point the reformed empire stepped in to rescue the papacy, and the reforming popes in turn dissociated themselves from the empire. The shameful abuses of the papal office in the tenth and eleventh centuries did not shake the institution, because since Augustine’s controversy with the Donatists it was customary to make a distinction between the office and its holder.
C. Missionary Counterattack#
At a time when Western Christianity at its center seemed hopelessly mired in political intrigue and moral corruption, on the frontiers new gains were made for the Christian faith. The coming of the Norsemen brought to Christians an awareness of the pagans to the North.
Willibrord had visited Denmark briefly in the early 700s, but the principal mission work in Scandinavia began with Anskar (or Ansgar) from the Frankish kingdom in the ninth century. Pagan reactions largely wiped out his efforts.
More lasting work began with the conversion about 965 of King Harald Bluetooth, who built the first church on the site of the twelfth-century cathedral at Roskilde, where Danish kings and queens are buried. Under the kings Svein (Svend, 985–1014) and Canute (Knut) the Great (1014–35) the Christian faith spread in Denmark.
King Olaf of Sweden was baptized in 1008 by Sigfrid, a monk from England, but heathenism was not overthrown until about 1100.
The Norwegian king Olaf Tryggvason had been baptized in England about 995 after a hermit on the Scilly Isles foretold his future to him. The Christianization of Norway, however, owed more to Olaf Haraldsson (king 1016–30), whose harsh measures against paganism provoked opposition, but who became the patron saint of Norway after he was killed in battle. From 1150 to 1300 there flourished in Norway the construction of the distinctive wooden stave churches.
The spread of Christianity in Scandinavia was aided by the expansion of the Germanic empire in the tenth and eleventh centuries. To the East, encroachments by the German empire also advanced Christianity in Bohemia and Poland.
“Good King Wenceslas” of Christmas carol fame was actually the duke of Bohemia (910–29), who enthusiastically and successfully promoted Christianity in his half-pagan realm. Political conflict caused his assassination in 929, but the largely legendary “Lives” of Wencelas (Vaclav in Czech) correctly emphasized his piety, humility, and charity, so that he became the patron-saint of his homeland. His successors consolidated the hold of Christianity in the region, and the episcopal see of Prague, established in 976, was subordinated to the archbishop of Mainz.
Christianity entered Poland with the baptism of Prince Mieczyslaw (or Mieszko) I in 966. He donated his realm to the papacy in 992 in order to block German and Bohemian claims, and under Boleslas (Boleslav) Polish independence was recognized by the German emperor Otto III (1000) and a metropolitan see was established at Gniezno.
The Magyars (their own name for the Hungarians) accepted Christianity under King Stephen I (997–1038). He made his vow on becoming king to Mary; earlier the Christian rulers had made their vows to Christ. Stephen styled himself kral, a variant of Karl (or Charles), showing the continued aura emanating from the rule of Charlemagne. One half of the expense of his crown was a present of Pope Sylvester II and the other half a gift of the Byzantine government. This fact is a reminder of the close competition between East and West that preceded Hungary’s allegiance to the Western church.
MONASTIC REVIVAL: CLUNY#
A. Protection and Autonomy#
Because of the Viking invasions, lack of protection, and secularizing influences, monastic life declined with other aspects of Western society. Lay abbots were often appointed due to the feeling that the monasteries needed someone to defend them, but these lay abbots did not always put spiritual interests first.
The center from which the monastic renewal in the eleventh century was to come was Cluny, founded in 909/910.
William the Pious of Acquitaine placed Berno (abbot 910–27) in charge of a new monastic foundation at Cluny. He worked out a charter that was destined to have a great influence. The monastery had autonomy under the protection of Peter and Paul (not even the bishop of Rome could give the land to another) with the purpose of freeing it from the control of the local bishop and nobles.
Although not the first monastery to have papal protection, Cluny utilized its position to exercise great influence. It operated under the Rule of Benedict. After Berno the monks were to elect their own abbot. The long tenure of the early abbots showed the stability of the new foundation. Four of the first six (all but Berno and Aymard) were venerated as saints.
B. Characteristics of Cluny#
1. Independence
The right of election of the abbot by the monks, and exemption from episcopal oversight and from taxes, had precedents but became common with the example of Cluny.
A canon adopted at Chalcedon had prohibited monks from moving around without permission of their bishop, and an important concern of Benedict had been stabilitas (“staying in one place”) — both aiming to bring the monks more under control.
Now, however, there was a need for greater freedom, and this could be secured only by placing the monastery under the “outside” supervision of Rome.
2. Kinds of monks
A distinction developed between lay monks, who were subject to the rules of the monastery but had not received orders, and monks who were priests.
Originally monasticism had been a lay movement; then priests were appointed to minister to them.
Now the two distinct classes of monks introduced the concept of a “regular clergy,” that is, clergy who lived by a monastic rule (regula)
In addition, there were serfs to work the land.
3. Emphasis on liturgy and learning
With others present to do the hard work, the monks became overseers of estates that came into their possession. They filled their time with more elaborate worship. Because of the liturgical interest, Cluny is associated with the introduction of a new feast in the church calendar, All Souls Day on November 2, to follow All Saints Day.
C. The Influence of Cluny#
During the eleventh century a number of monasteries received exemption from the jurisdiction of bishops, for which they made a payment to Rome, and associated themselves with Cluny. A close alliance developed between the papacy and the Cluniac movement.
Cluny began to bring under its leadership other Benedictine monasteries, which had been isolated, to form a congregation of monasteries. These monasteries were ruled by priors under the Abbot-General of Cluny, so that Cluny became the head of a movement within Benedictine monasticism.
A feeling of being a “church apart” developed among the Cluniacs, a consciousness of being a third force (in addition to the papacy and the empire) in Christendom. Such a vast congregation had a concern with all of society.
1. Religious and monastic reform
The practice of free election of abbots and priors spread to other monasteries. Many Cluniac monks became bishops, and Cluniac abbots attended diocesan and provincial synods. In the eleventh century, popes Clement II, Gregory VII, and Urban II were Cluniac monks. Many pagan practices and beliefs continued to be held by the people, so there was much teaching to be done by bishops and monks
2. Civil peace
The “Peace of God” and the “Truce of God”, although not a product of Cluny, were promoted by Cluny and became the first popular religious movement of the Middle Ages. The terms refer to enactments of many councils between 975 and 1040 designed to promote peace.
Councils of bishops, also attended by abbots, met. Monks brought their relics of saints to serve as heavenly witnesses to agreements reached at the councils and sworn to by the nobles.
The first of these gatherings met in an open field near LePuy in 975. The earliest council from which canons of the Peace movement survive met at the monastery of Charroux in Aquitaine in 989. Its enactments, typical of those to follow, pronounced an anathema, unless reparations or satisfactions were made, on those who:
Attacked the church or took anything from it
Seized animals from the poor
Robbed or seized an unarmed cleric
Similar protections were extended later to other defenseless persons — widows and unaccompanied women, pilgrims, and merchants — and to other aspects of food production
With its promise of protection for the weak the Peace of God was a popular movement of the poor with social implications, and so opposed by the privileged.
The “Truce of God” began to be enacted in the 1030s and reached definitive expression in councils at Arles, 1037–41. It protected all classes at certain seasons—at first only on Sunday, then from Wednesday evening to Monday, then on liturgical feasts, so that, if observed, only eighty days a year were left for private warfare. As a commentary on the times, provision was made for the use of arms to enforce the Peace and Truce, but bishops and nobles took up the proposals as a means of reducing bloodshed and limiting feuds.
The advocates of the Peace and Truce of God saw a religious sanction for peace on earth as an image of divine peace. Some of these proposals continued to be enacted into the twelfth century. Although setting ideals, they met with little practical success. Warlike energies were later to be channeled into the Crusades, fighting the enemies of Christian faith rather than shedding the blood of Catholics. The Peace and Truce of God did promote the idea of a Christendom that transcended political divisions.
3. Celibate clergy
The Peace of God was related to a broader reform movement, for the councils that promoted it also enacted reform canons in regard to clerical celibacy and the independence of the church from secular lords.
The connection of the Peace of God and clerical reform was a concern for the purity of the church from abuses that were polluting the clergy: marriage and unchastity, simony, and the use of arms.
The monks wanted to impose chastity on the “secular clergy,” that is the clergy who lived in the world. They called the practice of married clergy “Nicolaitanism” (from Revelation 2:6, 15, traditionally interpreted as referring to sexual immorality) and the wives of clergy “concubines.” The priests who had wives, however, did not consider them concubines.
There was a tendency to have the son of priestly marriages inherit the parish church with the result of trapping the church in feudalism, to say nothing of what spiritual qualifications the son might or might not have for his duties.
The reforms of Cluny with its development of priestly monasticism sought to impose the ideal of celibacy on all clergy and to make non-celibacy a matter of “heresy” for the clergy. This was not a new development, for earlier canonical legislation in the West had opposed the marriage of priests, but this had not been uniformly observed in recent years. Monastic reform now brought new pressure to have a celibate priesthood, which provoked opposition.
4. Purchase of clerical office
The term “simony,” from Simon Magus’s offer to buy from the apostles the power of conferring the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:18–19), referred to buying spiritual gifts. There was agreement that simony was wrong, but there was uncertainty about what constituted simony, and reformers applied the word to practices against which they protested. In particular, the Cluniac monks applied the word to the common practice of paying money in order to receive a benefice.
Defenders of making gifts to the proprietor of a church or monastery saw these as tokens of obedience to the secular lord and distinguished the property belonging to the church from the ecclesiastical office itself, a distinction denied by those who wanted to separate the church from lay control. Many with good intentions paid money according to the general custom on receiving clerical offices, which often carried with them temporal administration and its accompanying remuneration.
On the other hand, clergymen who received payments for administering the sacraments did not see this as the sale of the gifts of the Spirit.
The word simony was later applied to the supplier of a church office as well as the purchaser and extended to any appointment to church office by a lay ruler.
The Cluniac reform, defending the independence of the church, opposed these practices.
D. Related Developments#
Other reform movements arose.
In Lorraine (led by Gerard), Burgundy, and Acquitaine there was opposition to married clergy.
In Italy reform found expression in a revival of anchorite (hermit) piety. Peter Damian (more below) was its foremost representative.
Monasteries in the tenth and eleventh centuries became the centers of the cult of relics.
Reliquaries (chests or caskets, often expensively and elaborately ornamented, to house and display the relics of saints) were created, and larger church buildings were required at monasteries, especially abbeys, to accommodate the crowds of pilgrims.
Oaths were sworn on the reliquaries; and they were carried in processions to ward off plagues, obtain good harvests, or drive away an approaching enemy.
The reform of monastic life, the renewal of the cult of the saints, and the extensive building and rebuilding of churches gave a strong sense of renewal to the early eleventh century.
III. IMPERIAL REVIVAL#
Political leadership in western Europe had been with the Franks, but after the Viking incursions it passed to the Germans. With the election of Hugh Capet as king in 987 the Carolingian dynasty was replaced in France by the Capetians, who ruled until 1328.
Five duchies (ruled by dukes) in Germany became the basic framework of the empire—Saxony, Franconia, Lorraine, Swabia, and Bavaria—from whom the king of Germany was chosen. In addition to these, the king of Burgundy and the king of the Lombards were part of the structure of the empire.
A. The Saxon Kings - The Ottonian Age#
The Saxon line of German kings (919–1024) began with Henry the Fowler (he was falconing when he was elected), who avoided a liturgical coronation. His son, Otto I the Great (936–73), began the imperial revival that brought the broader Ottonian cultural renewal of the tenth and eleventh centuries.
Otto I the Great was anointed and crowned king at Aachen, being installed on the very throne of Charlemagne. Not content to be a “first among equals,” Otto strengthened the national monarchy. He attached much importance to receiving papal coronation as emperor in Italy, which he obtained in 962. When he was crowned by the pope, he revived the imperial title, based on the ninth-century theory that an emperor (in contrast to a king) ruled over a number of peoples. He was King of Germany, King of Lombardy, and now Imperator augustus (there was no “Roman” in the title). The imperial dignity only brought rule of the diminutive duchy of Rome, and Otto did not revive Charlemagne’s empire in West Frankish lands.
Otto had led an expedition to Italy in 951, but a rebellion in Germany prevented his establishing his authority there. Alberic ruled Rome and placed many popes on the throne, including his immoral sixteen-year-old son, consecrated in 955 as John XII, who set the precedent for a pope to change his name. Otto returned to Italy in 961, and John XII crowned him emperor in 962, a significant date for the relations of the papacy and the empire. Their agreement regulated the election of the bishop of Rome: he was to be elected by the people and clergy of the diocese; the election was to be announced to the king of Germany for approval before consecration.
Otto swore to honor papal authority, and after his coronation he confirmed and extended the Carolingian grant of the papal states. John XII, however, concluded Otto was too powerful and turned against him. Otto then had him deposed at a synod, and a new pope, Leo VIII, was elected. The Roman people sided with John XII and rioted, but Otto put to flight the Roman populace.
In Germany, Otto I the Great used bishops and abbots in securing authority over the powerful duchies. He formed prince-bishoprics with church prelates as an integral part of the structure of government, advancing the gradual evolution of ecclesiastical properties into ecclesiastical principalities. The archdioceses of Germany were Trier, Cologne, Mainz, Salzburg, Hamburg-Bremen (since Louis the Pious), and Magdeburg (elevated under Otto I in 962).
Otto strengthened the position of archbishops and imperial abbots, using them in the administration of the empire, in order to counterbalance the authority of dukes and counts. The control of the elections of abbots and bishops passed almost entirely to the king. He conferred the shepherd’s staff at their consecration. Henry III later extended to the ceremony the bestowal of the bishop’s ring (indicative that the only lawful spouse was the prelate’s diocese). Among the regal rights given to bishops were the collection of tolls, coining money, exercising judicial power, and fortifying their cities.
Monasteries continued to provide education in Scripture and the seven liberal arts. The monastery of St. Gall (Switzerland) was a center of learning under the Ottos. In the tenth and eleventh centuries cathedral schools added an emphasis on mores, manners and conduct, so that education was summarized in the combination “letters and manners” (or literature and conduct, learning and virtue).
Brun, who ended his career as archbishop of Cologne (953–65) and was brother of Otto I, served a similar educational role in Ottonian circles as Alcuin did for Charlemagne, except that his activity focused more on preparation of clerics for civil service than for their religious duties. Cathedral schools prepared churchmen for service in an imperial church with frequent dealings in the secular world.
In three regions Otto I the Great carried on missionary activities with territorial interests:
The Magyars (modern Hungary), whom he defeated at Lechfeld in 955
The Norsemen (subjugating the Dane-mark, now Denmark
The Slavs (east of Saxony)
The pope permitted the king to do the ecclesiastical organization in these areas.
Diplomatic contacts with the eastern empire, including the marriage of Otto II to the Byzantine princess Theophano, opened the way to Byzantine influence on Ottonian art, seen especially in wall paintings of churches and illuminations of biblical and liturgical manuscripts.
Otto II (973–83) took the title “Roman Emperor”. He did so in conscious opposition to the Byzantine emperor (whose title was “Roman Emperor”) Basil II. The title stuck with his successors.
In the background was the continuing influence of the interpretation of the fourth kingdom in Daniel 7 as Rome, an interpretation going back to Hippolytus and Jerome. There was the feeling that the name must continue for the kingdom to endure until the end.
The reign of Otto III (983–1002) was significant for church-state relations. He appointed the first German pope, his cousin Bruno, as Gregory V, and the first French pope, his tutor Gerbert, as Sylvester II.
B. The Salian Dynasty and the Papacy#
With Conrad II (1024–39) the Salian dynasty (1024–1125) succeeded the Saxons as German rulers. Under him, about 1034, the title “Roman Empire” came into use for all the lands under the sway of the German emperor.
The emperor Henry III (1039–56), who no longer styled himself “king of the Germans” but “king of the Romans,” provides the connection between the monastic revival and the imperial revival, for he was married to the daughter of the duke of Acquitaine, whose family had founded Cluny, and he was himself a genuinely religious ruler and a great patron of the Cluniac order.
Henry III also provides the connection between the imperial revival and the papal revival, for he removed three rival popes and placed his own nominees in office. This situation came about because in Rome the first half of the eleventh century repeated the first half of the tenth century, as the papacy sank again to a miserable condition.
Benedict IX (1032–44) was only eighteen years old when raised to the papacy and was one of the worst popes. He was driven from Rome, but was able to return and held the church of St. John Lateran.
Sylvester III was bishop of Sabina when elected to replace Benedict in 1036; he held St. Peter’s Vatican.
Gregory VI (1045–46) came from a family of converts from Judaism and wanted to rescue the papacy. He bought the office for 1,000 pounds of silver from Benedict, who then sought to regain his position. Gregory occupied Santa Maria Maggiore.
Emperor Henry III convened three synods in 1046: at Pavia, at Sutri (where Gregory VI abdicated and Sylvester III was divested of office), and at Rome (where Benedict IX was deposed). Henry III secured from the Roman people the right to designate the bishop of Rome.
As a reform-minded ruler, Henry III opposed Nicolaitanism and favored celibacy. He did so not only to safeguard the purity of the church, but also to control ecclesiastical benefices that otherwise would be inherited by the sons of married clergy. The popes favored celibacy not only for long-standing religious reasons, but also in order to avoid a hereditary priesthood that would sink the church further into feudalism.
Both the emperor and the popes opposed simony, but the rulers felt bound to appoint good men to office, while righteous popes had to oppose appointments by the rulers in the interest of the independence of the church.
IV. PAPAL REVIVAL#
Until the mid-eleventh century the actual influence of the pope, although theoretically head of Western Christendom, was largely provincial. The papal revival at this time began a process of changing the theory into more of a reality.
The year 1046 begins a new era in church history. The emperor Henry III named Suidger, the bishop of Bamberg, as Pope Clement II (1046–47), followed by Damasus II (1047–49). The popes had started taking new names, and a large number of “the seconds” occur: Victor II (1055– 7), Nicholas II (1058–61), Alexander II (1061–73), and Urban II (1088–99), who initiated a series of eight consecutive popes who were “the second.” There was a consciousness that something new was occurring.
In 1049 there came a great pope, Leo IX (1049–54). He was a product of the reform efforts in Lorraine that came from the secular clergy and he had been bishop of Toul. He did not consent to becoming pope without proper election by the clergy and people of Rome.
Leo IX brought with him into the administration of the church the following associates:
Frederick of Lorraine—archbishop of Liege and brother of Godfrey, duke of Tuscany and the second spouse of Beatrice (beginning the alliance of Tuscany with the papacy), who became Leo’s Chancellor, then abbot of Monte Cassino, and finally Pope Stephen IX.
Humbert—from Lorraine, a monk at Cluny who thought Cluny had compromised the ideals of its founders and who was made a cardinal.
Hugh White—monk and then cardinal, who later turned against the reform.
Hildebrand—appointed archdeacon of papal finance, who later became Pope Gregory VII.
Peter Damian, who became a cardinal under Stephen IX. Peter Damian was important as an author and eloquent spokesman of asceticism. He promoted the celibacy of the clergy and its separation from secular involvement, but was more moderate in his approach than Hildebrand.
The college of cardinals grew out of the old advisory presbyteral council of the bishop of Rome. By 736 seven bishops of suburban sees (Ostia, Porto, Alvano, Sabina, Tusculum, Frascati, and Praenesti) were a part of the pope’s regular advisory council. The archpriests of the titular churches and other churches of special note were the cardinal priests, and eighteen deacons were included in the cardinalate.
Under Leo the cardinals became more institutionalized as a “senate of the Roman church” with less importance for the liturgy and spiritual life of individual Roman churches and more for serving as assistants of the popes. Leo’s strategy was to put into as many of these positions as possible fellow reformers from Lorraine. Although the feeling survived that a bishop was married to his original church and should not be translated, Leo internationalized the cardinalate.
On the model of the German emperor at imperial diets, Leo IX journeyed up and down to convene synods and local councils, to adjudicate disputes, and promote reform. He elaborated the Petrine authority of the papacy and advocated celibacy for the clergy and canonical election of prelates.
Leo’s first policy in Italy was directed not against the Saracens or Byzantines, but against the Norman freebooters who had been a threat in south Italy since 1016. Leo claimed this area as part of the patrimony of Peter on the basis of the Donation of Constantine. He devised the first papal banner and took it into battle, but his troops were defeated in 1053 and he was held captive for nine months. His military action alarmed the Byzantine emperor, who was concerned for the Byzantine holdings in south Italy.
The further story of the revived papacy can be told in terms of the break in communion with the Greek church and the Investiture controversy.
V. THE SCHISM BETWEEN WEST AND EAST (1054)#
A. Differences between West and East#
Leo IX’s counterpart in the Greek church was Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople (1043–58). An unusually assertive patriarch, he was in many ways like Leo IX—interested in the independence of the church, holding a high ideal of his office, and promoting education.
Michael was ambitious for the extension of Byzantine dignity.
Remembering the popes of the preceding century, he looked on the Roman see as uncouth and barbarian.
When Leo IX was captured by the Normans, Michael ordered the Byzantines in Italy to abstain from helping the Romans
He closed the churches in the East that used the Latin liturgy
Michael operated within the Eastern theory of one empire with one emperor, and of the church as one body in which the five senses were represented by the five patriarchs.
After the Photian schism in the ninth century, the bond between East and West never grew strong again. There were differences of language, national character, ecclesiastical organization, liturgy, and theology. These differences were more of emphasis than of contradictions.
The Eastern church drew its self-understanding more from the local assembly united in eucharistic fellowship, from the sacraments, and from the ecumenical creeds. In contrast, the Western church was coming to define itself more in terms of canon law and hierarchical submission to a monarchic head.
To these differences had been added serious political complications:
Loss of Byzantine control in central and northern Italy
The alliance of the popes and the Franks
The formation of the papal states at the expense of Constantinople
The revival of the western empire under Otto I
The loss of Byzantine territory in south Italy to the Normans in the early eleventh century that ended the last geographical link between East and West
Ottonian and then papal military policy in south Italy
The question of authority over lower Italy and different views over the primacy of Rome aroused Michael.
Michael attacked the Latins as heretical for a variety of reasons.
The Latin church used unleavened bread in the eucharist (the Greeks, arguing that the Gospels use the word for ordinary bread in the accounts of the Last Supper, used leavened bread), making them no better than Jews
They forced celibacy on all the clergy
They pictured Jesus Christ as a Lamb (because of the incarnation he should be pictured as a man)
They sang Hallelujah at Easter only, omitting it from Lent
They did not forbid the eating of strangled meat (the Germans liked their blood sausages!)
The question of the addition of the filioque clause to the Nicene Creed, criticized by Photius, played only a minor role in the dispute before the twelfth century.
Leo IX replied to Michael’s attacks with letter-dissertations: In terra pax and More Romano. These treatises argued that a variety of usages could prevail and therefore he would not close the Greek churches in Rome. Among Greek customs that he found objectionable were:
Clerical marriage
Rebaptism of Latins by Greeks
Waiting until the eighth day before baptizing children
Cerularius’s use of the title “ecumenical patriarch” and his claims to authority over the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch
Leo IX insisted that Rome was the mother church and those separated from her were synagogues of Satan. Constantinople, he said, was a daughter of Rome. Furthermore, he pointed out the heresies that some patriarchs of Constantinople had embraced, in contrast to the successors of Peter who could never fall from the faith. Leo included an appeal to the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals to support his claims for the Roman bishop.
B. The Excommunications#
Emperor Constantine X (1042–54) made efforts at reconciliation. Leo IX sent two more letters:
One to the emperor appealing for help against the Normans
One to Michael, referring to his errors, including the false title of “ecumenical patriarch.”
The administrators of the Roman church (the Curia), aiming at repudiation of the title “ecumenical patriarch” and acceptance of the Roman primacy, sent a three-man embassy to the emperor: Humbert, Frederick of Lorraine, and Peter of Amalfi.
Humbert was a champion of papal authority, claiming the apostolic see of Rome as the source and norm of all church law and advocating the freedom of the church from lay control.
Humbert wrote a Dialogue between a Roman and a Constantinopolitan, in which he defended the celibacy of the clergy not as a matter of discipline but of faith (any priestly marriage was “concubinage”) and said that sacraments administered by married clerics were invalid.
Humbert’s later work Against the Simoniacs in three books made a similar claim: Any cleric appointed to office by a layman, no matter how honestly, could not administer valid sacraments, a doctrine that revived the viewpoint of Donatism, which made the validity of sacraments depend on the status of the administrator.
Nicetas, a monk at the Studium monastery, wrote against the Latin use of unleavened bread, and Humbert, angered at the reply, attacked the monk. The emperor went to Studium and insisted that Nicetas retract his book and burn it.
This was the atmosphere in which the papal delegation went to Hagia Sophia in 1054 and laid on its high altar a bull of excommunication against Michael Cerularius and his associates, while declaring the emperor and people of Constantinople orthodox.
Michael asked for a conference with the three legates. They feared this and asked for the presence of the emperor, a request that was refused on the grounds that only ecclesiastical matters were at stake. The legates, carrying gifts from the emperor to the pope, left Constantinople, but Michael issued a counter excommunication of the papal legates and their supporters. Leo IX, however, had died a few months before, not knowing that the excommunication had been consummated.
There had been breaks in communion between Rome and Constantinople before, according to the terminology of the Western church:
The Acacian schism (482–519)
The Monothelete schism (646–81)
The Photian schism (869–80)
After two centuries it was time for another break in communion, and there was no reason to think that this one would not be repaired as the earlier ones had been. Moreover, since the excommunications did not apply to the respective churches as a whole, and not even to their heads, the pope and the emperor, little changed in the relations of the two churches for some time. However, the recriminations were more vehement and the sense of estrangement greater.