The Schism of 1054

16 July 1054, firm dateFirm date

Legates of the Roman see excommunicate the patriarch of Constantinople in Hagia Sophia, and his synod anathematizes them in return. The sentences name persons, not churches, but later ages take the day as the breach between East and West.

Greek and Latin Christians had quarrelled before, over the pope’s claim to judge a patriarch of Constantinople and over the words “and from the Son” in the creed (The Photian Schism, the Visigoths Turn Catholic at Toledo). By 1054 the pope was no longer named in the liturgy at Constantinople. The patriarch Michael Cerularius believed this had been so for centuries (Michael Cerularius, Letter to Peter of Antioch 9); Peter, patriarch of Antioch, answered that he had heard the name read there forty-five years earlier (Peter of Antioch, Letter to Michael Cerularius 5).

In 1053 a letter in the name of Pope Leo IX answered Greek attacks on the Latin use of unleavened bread. It declared that the Roman see is judged by no one and cited the Donation of Constantine in proof (Leo IX, Letter to Michael Cerularius (In terra pax) 10–14; 20 (pp. 70–74, 76)). Three legates followed, led by Humbert of Silva Candida. In 1054 the emperor received them; the patriarch would not meet them (Humbert, Brief Account 1–3). Leo had died at Rome that April, before the legates acted (Hermann of Reichenau, Chronicle, year 1054).

On Saturday 16 July the legates laid a document on the altar of Hagia Sophia and walked out, shaking the dust from their feet (Humbert, Brief Account 1–3). The bull finds the city, in its rulers and leading citizens, most Christian and orthodox. It charges Michael and his supporters with a list of heresies, among them rebaptizing Latins, letting priests marry and cutting from the creed the procession of the Spirit from the Son, and pronounces anathema on Michael, on two named associates and on their followers, unless they repent (Bull of excommunication (1054)).

The synod’s edict answers in kind. In words borrowed from Photius (Photius, Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs 4), it speaks of men from the darkness of the West who condemned the orthodox for wearing beards, for receiving communion from married priests and for refusing to alter the creed (Synodal edict (1054) preamble, pp. 157–158). It holds that the three were not sent by the pope at all but came on their own, with forged seals (Synodal edict (1054) account of the legates, pp. 160–161). It anathematizes the document and those who wrote it or advised it; the emperor ordered it burnt, and the patriarch kept the original (Synodal edict (1054) emperor’s letter and sentence, pp. 166–168).

The synod read the bull as an attack on the whole orthodox church (Synodal edict (1054) preamble, pp. 157–158), but its own sentence fell only on the document, its authors and their helpers (Synodal edict (1054) emperor’s letter and sentence, pp. 166–168), whom it held to have acted without the pope (Synodal edict (1054) account of the legates, pp. 160–161). Peter of Antioch, who also rejected the addition to the creed, urged Michael to treat the Latins as brothers, to be lenient where the faith was not at stake (Peter of Antioch, Letter to Michael Cerularius 12–14) and to write to the next pope (Peter of Antioch, Letter to Michael Cerularius 19–21). The estrangement hardened later. After the sack of Constantinople in 1204 Innocent III wrote that the Greek church now had reason to detest the Latins “more than dogs” (The Fourth Crusade Sacks Constantinople) (Innocent III, Letters, to the legate Peter, 12 July 1205). In 1965 the pope and the ecumenical patriarch declared that the censures of 1054 had been aimed at persons, not at the churches, and were not meant to break communion. They removed them from memory, and added that this did not end the differences between the two churches (Rome and Constantinople Lift the Anathemas of 1054) (Joint Catholic–Orthodox Declaration (1965) 2–5).

How this is dated

Firm date. Fixed by contemporary documentation and not seriously disputed.

The legates’ own report gives the day as the seventeenth before the Kalends of August, a Saturday, at the third hour: 16 July 1054, which was a Saturday (Humbert, Brief Account 1–3). The synod’s edict is dated July of the seventh indiction and puts its anathema on the twentieth of the month, to be repeated before the people on the day on which the acts of the fifth council were read; the older printed text gives that day as the twenty-fourth, a Sunday, which the editor alters to the twentieth (Synodal edict (1054) emperor’s letter and sentence, pp. 166–168). Pope Leo IX had died at Rome in April; Hermann of Reichenau gives the sixteenth day before the Kalends of May (Hermann of Reichenau, Chronicle, year 1054).

That 1054 marks the division of the churches is a later judgement. The documents of that year show a quarrel between a patriarch and three legates; the patriarch of Antioch still expected it to be taken up with the next pope (Peter of Antioch, Letter to Michael Cerularius 19–21).