The Great Schism: With Emphasis on the Filioque

The Great Schism is neither an event that happened over night nor the product of a single disagreement. The Great Schism is the name of the climax of the growing chasm between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Schreck, an historian writes, “The events immediately surrounding it are only symptoms of difficulties that had been brewing for centuries.”^[1] There were many disagreements between the East and the West (East in reference to the Orthodox Church and West in reference to the Roman Catholic Church). The points of the break between East and West can be defined as cultural, political, and religious. The most powerful of these three influencers was religion. The tension surrounding unleavened bread and, more prominently, the filioque lead to the final break between East and West. 

The cultural split between the East and the West did not take long to develop. It grew when the head of the Roman Empire moved to Constantinople, under Emperor Constantine. The empire that grew around Constantinople was Greek culturally. However, those who lived in Rome continued to live under Roman ideals. The cultural gap that separated ancient Greece from ancient Rome now applied to the Christian world.^[2] While the pope was still in Rome, the emperors had authority over the Church, selecting bishops, calling Church councils, and approving doctrine. Because of where the emperor was now located geographically, he tended to appoint Church hierarchy from the East.  Further, the East and the West were also separated by languages, Greek and Latin. These languages could not translate one to one. Going from Greek to Latin meant a loss of meaning and vise-versa. Vidmar, a notable Church historian points out, “Language was one such difference, and it was so important a difficulty that the Christian world split almost precisely along the Greek-Latin language boundary.”^[3] The border formed by culture and language would lead to political problems in the future, such as the power of the pope and the rights of the Eastern Emperor.

 

In the ninth century a new source of division occurs, the liberation of the pope from the authority of the emperor. The popes prior to the ninth century were at the beck and call of the emperor, who lived in Constantinople, Vidmar writes, “Ever since the days of Constantine, the Roman emperor regarded himself as a quasi-pope, with the care of the church as well as the state among his responsibilities.”^[4] For centuries popes fought for the liberation of the Church, as they saw problems with a secular ruler having authority over the Church. It would be under Pippin and his son Charlemagne that the popes would achieve liberty from the emperor. However, it would be an offence when pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne under the title Holy Roman Emperor. With the liberation of the pope from the emperor of the east, a new empire was formed, and its emperor was from the West.  This created a more distinctive line between the East and the West. The Christian world was now under the control of two different powers, East and West. The West was pleased to be released from the tight control of the eastern emperor, but at the cost of alienating the Eastern Church even more. This concludes how the Church was separated secularly, now the religious separation can be discussed.

            The disagreement between the East and the West concerning the insertion of the filioque into the Creed is a major cause of the Great Schism. The filioque was not a theological topic created and disagreed upon in 1054 but was first introduced in 447 by Pope St. Leo I in his letter Quam laudabiliter, a refutation of the Priscillianists. The filioque was added to the Creed in the thirteenth century, two centuries after the schism. The Great Schism took place in the eleventh century. The cause was pressure from the pope to use the Roman rite in Orthodox churches where the people demanded it.

            The filioque is a complex problem. The filioque answers the theological question, from whom does the Holy Spirit proceed? To see how the Great Schism could happen from the filioque we must know how it affected the Eastern Church. Leonid Ouspensky, a member of the Russian Orthodox Church gives the response of the patriarchal fathers to the Western Church,

 

“this newly introduced doctrine, according to which the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son is in truth a heresy, and its followers, whoever they might be, are heretics. The societies they form are heretical societies, and any liturgical and spiritual communion of the Orthodox children of the catholic Church with them is an iniquity.”^[5]

 

From this declaration it can be seen how offensive it must have been for the pope to demand that the Eastern Church provide the Roman rite in their churches, they would now have to utter the Creed which they believed heretical. The East saw the West as heretics. The East’s decision to break from the West is more natural under these circumstances. As the Catholic Church did not accept the Arian heresy so the Eastern Church would no longer accept the Western Church. 

           

 

The history of the filioque fills councils and refutations by notable figures of both the Eastern and Western Church. One such figure is Photios, the ecumenical patriarch of the Orthodox Church from 858 to 867 and again in 877 to 886. During the Eighth Ecumenical Councils Photios was a prominent figure in developing the Horos, what Meijer calls, the formula of faith of the Synod.^[6] The primary object of the Council was to address the rift between the East and the West and to find a means to unite the two. Photios saw the dangers of the filioque and he personally refuted the filioque on biblical and theological grounds.^[7] At the time, the West was not in opposition to the filioque but did not recognize it as part of the Creed. The Frankish missionaries in Bulgaria, who already inserted the filioque into the Creed, were condemned under the Photian Synod as separate from the Roman Catholic Church.^[8] The conclusion of the council agreed that the Creed was unchangeable, Dragas writes concerning the council’s conclusion,

 

“without mentioning the Filioque, the emperor asks for an Horos of the Synod and the synodical members present at this meeting propose the Horos of the first two Ecumenical Councils, i.e. the Symbol of the Faith, but without any addition and with the stipulation that any addition or subtraction or alteration in it should incur the anathema of the Church. This is accepted by the emperor who signs it and the synodical members who express their satisfaction.”^[9]

 

From the conclusion of the Eighth Ecumenical Council the offence of the filioque can be seen in a better light. Looking at the Eighth Ecumenical Council the err of the Great Schism may be more the fault of the West, a brief history of the filioque concludes this topic.

            The filioque was not officially added to the Creed at the point of the Great Schism, 1054. Schabel, an historian wrote, “The doctrine of the Filioque was officially determined at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274 the determination was clarified, and this clarification was repeated in 1439 in the formulation of the Council of Florence.”^[10] The history of the filioque begins with the Church Fathers, suffers refutation from the East, achieves implementation in the eleventh century, and is officially accepted by the West in the thirteenth century. This history of the filioque should present why it was such a shock to the East, a piece of doctrine concerning the Holy Trinity was not accepted by any council but was implemented into the Creed professed by the West. Furthermore, two centuries earlier at the Eighth Ecumenical Council there was an agreement that the Creed was not to be altered, such alteration would lead to excommunication. By allowing the filioque, without the proper support of a council to officially include it into the Creed, the pope had crossed the line stipulated by the Eighth Ecumenical Council. The East responded with conservative measures under the guidance of one of their great saints on the matter, Photios. 

The Great Schism happened over centuries; it only needed an issue which would differentiate the religious ideas of the two sides. The lines in the sand had been drawn for centuries by cultural and political differences. What the Great Schism did was sever the Church along the lines already distinguished. In 1054 when the pope excommunicated the East for refusing to allow the Roman rite in Orthodox churches the patriarch responded by closing Roman Catholic churches in his diocese and excommunicating the West. The Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church were under each other's excommunication until 1965 when Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras, warmly embraced and removed them.^[11] Concerning the filioque, after the Fourth Lateran Council, according to FitzRalph, many Greeks supported, and no major Greek doctor opposed the Filioque.^[12] With such a comment from FitzRalph we might conclude by wondering, “Would the Great Schism have been so great if the filioque was properly discussed and used in 1054?”

 

 

 

 

 

1 Alan Schreck, The Compact History of the Catholic Church, Rev. ed., (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2009), 48.

2 John Vidmar, OP, The Catholic Church Through the Ages: A History; Second Edition, (New York / Mahwah NJ, Paulist Press, 2014), 102.

3 Ibid. Page 102.

4 Ibid. Page 103.

5 Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, Volume Two, (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1992)

6 Dragas, George Dion, The Eighth Ecumenical Council: Constantinople IV (879/880) and the Condemnation of the Filioque, Greek Orthodox Theological Review. 1999, Vol. 44 Issue 1-4 357-369. 359.

7 Ibid. 361

8 Ibid. 361.

9 Ibid. 363

10 Schabel, Chris, Pope, Council, and the Filioque in Western Theology, 1274–1439, Medieval Encounters. 2015, Vol. 21 Issue ⅔, 190-213. 196.

11 Alan Schreck, The Compact History of the Catholic Church, Rev. ed., (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2009),

12 Schabel, Chris, Pope, Council, and the Filioque in Western Theology, 1274–1439, Medieval Encounters. 2015, Vol. 21 Issue ⅔, 190-213. 201