"For centuries, the Great Schism of 1054 has been presented as the dramatic moment when the Christian world split in two-but this familiar story is deeply misleading. Most popular retellings of the Great Schism follow a simple, dramatic arc. For centuries, the story goes, tensions simmered between the Latin West and the Greek East, fuelled by disputes over doctrine and ritual. Then, in 1054, the conflict finally boiled over."
"In this version, Pope Leo IX sends legates to Constantinople to confront Patriarch Michael Cerularius. After negotiations collapse, Cardinal Humbert marches into Hagia Sophia and places a bull of excommunication on the altar. The patriarch responds by excommunicating the legates in return. With that exchange-so the narrative continues-the unity of Christendom is shattered: the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches become permanently separated."
"To modern readers, the appeal of this account is obvious. It offers a clear date, a vivid scene, and a clean cause-and-effect explanation. But as Eugene Webb points out, that tidy story is exactly the problem-and it risks turning a long, complicated medieval process into a single "break" that never truly happened in that way. Webb, a Professor Emeritus in the University of Washington, lays out his argument in an article written for The Cambridge History of the Papacy."
The Great Schism of 1054 has been widely framed as a single dramatic split between the Latin West and the Greek East, but the separation unfolded gradually across institutional, theological, and conceptual dimensions. The 1054 legation sent by Pope Leo IX was partly aimed at securing an alliance with the Byzantine Empire against Norman incursions, rather than deliberately provoking a showdown. The mutual excommunications exchanged at Hagia Sophia were limited in scope and did not instantly create a permanent separation. Multiple misunderstandings of the 1054 events have simplified a complex medieval process into a misleading single 'break' narrative.
Read at Medievalists.net
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