Page 272 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
The Great Schism and
E arly Reunion Efforts
The date commonly held by historians to mark the schism
between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches is
1054, when the legates of Pope Leo IX placed on the altar of Ha-
gia Sophia in Constantinople a bull excommunicating the Patri-
arch of Constantinople, Michael Keroularios. In return, the pa-
triarch promptly convened a synod that anathematized the pope.
This event is known as the Great Schism. In reality, however, this
sequence of events did not mark a final breach in relations be-
tween Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. The pope’s bull of
excommunication, deposited at Hagia Sophia by his legates, was
never officially ratified in Rome, and when Michael Keroularios
lost the patriarchal throne in 1059, the pope reestablished com-
munion with the Byzantine emperor.
On the Orthodox side, it does not appear that the other pa-
triarchs of the East officially interrupted communion with
Rome. In many areas, communion between Orthodox and Ro-
man Catholics continued as though nothing had happened. A
typical example is the way the first crusaders were received in
Constantinople as Christian brothers in 1096. The crusaders
behaved similarly when they captured Antioch and then Jeru-
salem: they regarded the Orthodox patriarchs in those cities
not as schismatics, but as the established ecclesiastical leaders.
However, the establishment of a Latin hierarchy in these re-
gions, and above all the election of the papal legate Daimbert as
Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1099, lit the first fuse in relations be-
tween East and West, since it meant that the pope was putting
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