After Nine Hundred Years: The Background of the Schism Between the Eastern and Western Churches

The traditional date of the beginning of the Oriental Schism is 1054, when the Papal Legate placed on the altar of Santa Sophia the Bull of Excommunication of Michael Cerularius, the Patriarch of Constantinople. In this book the author shows that the seeds of this formal break were sown many centuries before when the creation of Byzantium as a Second Rome, the crowning of Charlemagne as Roman Emperor, and the knife-thrust of Islam divided East and West politically. Further, in the course of the centuries, East and West had developed each its own cultural and intellectual milieu: divergent ways of thinking, a vastly different understanding of the nature of the Church and an ever-growing distrust and disdain. The first steps toward the reconciliation so ardently desired by John XXIII must be taken in humble charity and understanding. The West must accept the East for what it is, and the East must, in turn, come to an understanding of Rome and the West. Only in such an atmosphere of love and forgiveness of the past can the most grievous wound the Church as ever suffered, be healed.