Great Schism

Christianity

Through the preaching of three thousand men and women have been baptized ad the first Christian
community was formed in Jerusalem.Soon Antioch became the centre of new missionary movement. St.
Paul and St. Peter went to Rome. The Empire through which the apostle travelled was of the cities and
this determined the administrative structure of the primitive church. The basic unit was a city
community governed by its own bishop with priests and deacons to assist. Although there were long
periods when the Roman authorities seemed to tolerate the Christians, the threat of persecution was
always there.

The situation transformed in 312 with the conversion of Emperor Constantine. As he rode through
France with his army, Constantine looked up suddenly and saw a cross of light infront of the su with the
inscription ‘In this sign Conquer’. As a result Constantine became the first Roma Emperor to embrace
Christian religion.This event brought the first period of Church history to an end led to the creation of
the Christian Empire Byzantium.

In the Church there was neither dictatorship or individualism but harmony and unanimity in the
beginning.

The Church Under Roman Empire(312-680A D)

The conversion of the Emperor Constantine to the faith worked a great change in the condition of the
church.Constantine began to issue edicts of toleration in favour of the Christians.

Edict of Milan was one of the most important one that issued by Emperor Constantine.

Impact of the Conversion

Emperor Constantine moved the Capital from Rome to the shores of Bosphoros and built a new capital
known as New Rome. In the later period it came to known as Constantinople as it name respect of
emperor Constantine. With the construction of Constantinople built by Emperor Constantine the city of
Rome gradually became less important as an administrative centre.

Constantine summoned the first General or Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church in 325 AD at
Nicaea from which we get the creed which bears its name. The Emperor himself presided which
illustrated his position in the church.

Thus Three events

• The Edict of Milan in 313

• The foundation Constantinople
• The Council of Nicea in 325 marked the first period of Christian Church
4th to 6th century

The period that followed from Emperor Contantine to the Great Pope Leo the Great who died in 461
was one of the decisive importance in history. During this time many of its basic features including the
Divine Liturgy, the Chief Dogma, Principle of ots code on social and personal ethics, the priesthood and
many of its fundamental practices were fixed.

Christianity spread rapidly throughout the empire but it remained an urban religion until the arrival of
the monk.Monasticism took root in Egypt and spread across Christiadom. St. Anthony of Egypt is
believed to have been the first monk. With the breakdown of city life that accompanied the dissolution
of the western Roman empire from the 14th century an agrarian economy and rural society developed in
which the monasteries proved to be very effective centres of missionary activity.

Division of Roman Empire

Theodorsius or Theiodosius I was the last emperor of a United Roman Empire. He divided the empire
between his two sons- Arcalius and Honorius. Honoraicus occupied the west and Arcacalius in the East.
Arcalius ruled from Constantinople. East gradually adopted Greek Language and culture more an more.

The western Roman Empire was to have a short life, It collapsed in usually dated 476 when the Germane
Roma general Odacer deposed the titular western Emperor but did not replace him. In its height the
empire was the beacon of learning., trade , prosperity and power in the western world. However, by the
fifth century the once powerful Rome lay open to barbarian warriers who came in wave after wave of
invasion, stealing, slaughtering and ultimately setting from the North.

With the fall of the Empire the west was to descent into what is known as the ‘Darke Age’ that period
roughly from the 5th to 6th century in which chaos replaced culture. Europe was beset by famine, plague,
persecution and a persistent state of war fro centuries

The Eastern Roman empire on the other hand, was to last almost one thousand years until it was finally
brought to an end by the Ottoman Mehmat II when he conquered the city of Constantinople in 1453.
The city of Byzantium had been chosen as the capital of Eastern Roman Empire and sixty five years later
in 460, its name was changed to Constantinople in honour of its founder Constantine.

Christianity under Byzantium

The most important change made when the Byzantium empire evolved into the Byzantium empire was
change in religion. While Rome was a polytheistic society, the Byzantines accepted monotheism as the
basis of their religious belief. The official language of Latin was took over by Greek.In the east the
struggle between the two great religions Christianity and Islam led to the development of an Islamic
civilization on the one hand and a Byzantium civilization on the other. In the East from the 9th century ,
the Byzantium church turned its energies to the conversion of slavs, beyond the empire. Unlike the
Church of Rome, the Orthodox has never rigid on language. Greek was replaced by Slavonic. The link
between the Church and people was reinforced by the system of creating independent churches until
Russian Revolution in 1917. Orthodoxy became the State Religion of Russia.
West- Christians

Mean while in the Latin Church Gregory became Pope in 590 AD and laid the foundation of Medieval
Western Christiandom. He established the Pope as the temporal ruler of central Italy strengthened
Papal primacy over the western church and furthered the work of conversion.

During the time of Charles Maigne western Europe became a common wealth of Christian people with
two heads. As long as Charles Maigne ruled there was no problem because no one dared to challenge
his authority. However, following his death the struggle between the two heads which led to the
disintegrate of both Empire and Papacy towards the end of 9th century.The struggle between the
Empire and Papcy had severe implication over the Roman empire. Cities were depopulated, monasteries
destroyed and western Roman Empire descended into feudalism.

The division between East and West

AD 680-1054

During the flourishing days of the Empire the city of Rome had naturally been looked up to north with
graet reverence by all churches of the world. Its political importance as the center of government, the
vast number of its martyrs its comparative freedom from heresy and its connection with the lives and
deaths of St. Peter and St. Paul all tendered to give it a moral ascendancy. Constantinople as beig the
New Rome and Capital of the Eastern Romn Empire was especially jealous of the claims of the mother
city. John the Faster or John IV of Constantinople in the sixth century first set the evil example of
assuming the title of ‘Universal Bishop” a title which the Roman Pontiff(Sovereign) have since taken and
retained.(That is assumed the title of ecumenical Patriarch).

In proportion as the political division between East and West became more complete, so also did the
tendency towards separation in ecclesiastical matters increased. Western Dioces, now people by the
Barbarian nations who had overrun Europe, still looked up to Rome as their centre and head whilst, the
Eastern Bishops under the sway of the decaying empire clung to Constantinople. The controversy
respecting the use of images and that about the procession of Holy Ghost from the so as well as from
the Father were however the means actually bringingabout the cessation of all outward communion.

The Iconoclast or image breaking Controversy

There had been from very early times an extensive though not universal feeling in the church against the
use of painting or sculpture in Divine worship. This feeling was occasioned partly by dead of the idolatry
still prevalent among the heathens and partly in the East where it was strongest by the remains of
Judaism still lingering in the Church of Christ.
As heathenism (German paganism)died out it was gradually felt in the West that the strong reasons
formerly existing against the adornment of Churches with pictures and images had passed away; but the
Eastern Church with the dead of change which distinguishes it to this day, clung as before to the old
sentiment. In the 8th century, Leo III then reigning at Constantinople passed a decree for the removal of
all images and paintings from churches and his violent conduct in the matter occasioned such discontent
in the west.

Charles Maigne(West) under the influence of our English Acuin opposed the decision of the Councel and
provincial synods to condemn what was at any rate , very like image worship.At any rate the Iconoclaust
controversy aided very strongly to put an end to all political union.

The summary of Christian belief know to us the Nicene creed. It was completed at the Council of
Constantinople AD381 but with the exception that the article defining the faith of the church concerning
the Third Person of the ever blessed Trinity asserted only that ‘the Holy Ghost ---proceed from the
father”. Without the addition of the words ‘and the son’ and it was the controversy as to the admission
or non admission of these words into the creed which caused the formal division between the Eastern
and western Christiandom.

In the 9th century an appeal was made on the subject to Pope Leo III who decided in a provincial Council
that no such addition could lawfully be made to the creed and ordered it to be engraved on silver plates
exactly as the Council of Constantinople had left it. Towards the end of the same century another
Council was held at Constantinople which also decreed the disuse of the addition and then the matter
dropped for about a hundred and fifty years.

At last it led to the formal Schism in AD 1053 with the Pope Leo IX issued a sentence of
excommunication against the Patriarch of Constantiople and all who adhered him.

In 1054 as a service was about to begin in the Basilica of Santa Sophia in Constantinople Cardinal
Humbert and two legate of the Pope entered the building and went up to the sanctuary, it was assumed
that they were going to pray but instead they placed a Bull of excommunication upon the altar and
marched out. This incident is conventionally taken as the beginning of the great schism between the
Orthodox East and the Latin West.