The Age of the Great Schism and the Gregorian Reform
At the beginning of the eleventh century the increasing estrangement between the Latin- and Greek- speaking churches— the “mute schism”— allowed for the maintenance of a fragile peace despite the theological and disciplinary differences that had grown up between them. As it concerned the papacy, it was already clear that by this time each possessed their own interpretation of the biblical, patristic, and historical record, and that they were applying these understandings to the practical realities of a Christian world politically divided between two empires and two emperors. For the Byzantines, Rome was far enough away that they could easily ignore any claims the papacy might make, especially as the popes themselves were preoccupied dealing with more pressing local concerns. This situation changed dramatically in the middle of the eleventh century, when the reforming agenda of Popes Leo IX (1049–54) and Gregory VII (1073– 85) led Western theologians to stress the universal nature of the papal ministry, and the power the pope held over both ecclesiastical and secular authorities. Initially these claims were directed at those in the West who were perceived to be blocking efforts at reform (e.g., the Holy Roman Emperors). Increasingly, however, the reformers realized that upholding the pope’s universal authority meant nothing unless the principle was universally applied—there could be no geographic restrictions on the pope’s plentitude of power. Thus when the Byzantines began to attack Roman teaching and practice (e.g., the filioque and the use of azymes) it was immediately perceived as a direct challenge, not only to the pope’s orthodoxy but also to his authority. The excommunications of Cardinal Humbert and Patriarch Michael Cerularius, long used to date the “Great Schism” between East and West, was in reality little more than a personal dustup between two hot-headed clerics.
The excommunications themselves were quickly forgotten and it would be centuries before anyone thought of them as the beginning of a church- dividing schism. Yet 1054 was a significant marker in the relationship between Christian East and West, for it was during this period when Latins and Greeks came to see themselves as “different”—not yet as separate ecclesiological entities, but certainly as distinct. The crusades, inspired in part by the pope’s desire to improve relations with the Byzantine church, had quite the opposite effect, as increased contact between Latins and Greeks only highlighted their many liturgical, theological, and ecclesiological differences. At a time when political realities should have brought East and West closer together, divergent understandings of the primacy and the powers attached to it created a new and even more powerful obstacle to unity. The earlier disputes about the geographic or canonical limits of Roman authority in the East now morphed into something far more substantial—a debate about the primacy itself and whether the pope’s claims to power had scriptural, conciliar, or historical basis. It was during this period that Byzantine writers first advanced those arguments that formed the foundation of anti-papal polemics for centuries to come—the pentarchical nature of Church governance, the translation of the primacy to New Rome, the unique headship of Christ, and the universal (rather than particularly “Roman”) ministry of Peter. These arguments, fashioned in the twelfth century, reached maturity in the thirteenth after the Fourth Crusade, when the Greeks experienced the full force of the reformed papacy and gave it their full-throated condemnation. Yet it should be pointed out that even during this period, when theological discussion was largely replaced by polemics, there were figures on both sides of the East-West divide who tried their best to bridge the unbridgeable gap growing up between the churches. It is a sad reality that their voices were often drowned out by those whose views on papal power did not allow for compromise, but they continued to advocate for a formula or system that could keep the Church together. In that effort they would fail miserably.
Prelude to Schism It was shortly after the “schism between the two Sergii,”1 on February 14, 1014, that Benedict VIII (1012–24) finally took the step that the popes had resisted for over two centuries—bowing to imperial pressure, Benedict introduced the interpolated creed (i.e., with the filioque) as part of the Roman liturgy for Sundays and feasts.2 Although there is no record that this caused an immediate uproar in the East, the pope’s decision was significant because it had the effect of linking the filioque with his right to define the faith of the universal Church. Eastern attacks upon the use of the interpolated creed, which up to this point had been aimed at the Frankish and Ottonian churches, henceforth became de facto attacks upon the powers and orthodoxy of the pope. Perhaps as a way to ease the tensions caused by recent events, and to prepare the way for further Byzantine military action in Southern Italy, in 1024 Emperor Basil II and Patriarch Eustathius of Constantinople (1019–25) sent Pope John XIX (1024–32) a formula that they hoped would clarify the respective positions of Rome and Constantinople. They suggested that “the church of Constantinople might be called and regarded as universal in its own sphere (in suo orbe) just as Rome is throughout the world (in universo).”3 On one level this formula was a gift to Rome, as it was prepared to “recognize the supreme power of the Roman See over the whole church and even Constantinople. … reissuing the ordinances of Justinian II, of Phocas, and of Justinian I.”4 True, there was also the suggestion that administratively Constantinople “should be admitted to be self-sufficient and autonomous,” but given the relative impotence of the papacy at the time this was not an unreasonable request.5 John, who had no desire to continue the confrontational policies of his predecessors toward Byzantium, was apparently on the verge of accepting it, and might have done so had it not been for the opposition of reform-minded clerics like Abbott William of Saint Benignus (d. 1031).6 He admonished the pope with all due “filial care” that “although the power of the Roman Empire … is now divided in various areas under numerous scepters, the power of binding and loosing in heaven and on earth is attached by inviolable gift to the office of St. Peter.”7 The proposal was left to die, and the pope’s name remained stricken from the Constantinopolitan diptychs even though the patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem both continued to commemorate him. The schism, such as it was, was still very much a local matter—it was still a “schism at the top.” In Rome the papacy descended into chaos once again during the troubled reign of Benedict IX (d. 1056), a man whose reputation for debauchery “recalled to older members of his flock the worst days of the pornocracy.”8 Forced to abandon the city when Sylvester III (1045) claimed the papal throne, he returned shortly thereafter and effectively “sold” the papacy to his uncle, the reform-minded Gregory VI (1045–46), who offered him money in exchange for his resignation. Benedict then changed his mind, leading the German king Henry III (d. 1056) to call the Council of Sutri (1046) to sit in judgment on the respective claims of all three pontiffs—Benedict, Sylvester, and Gregory. The council deposed Benedict and Sylvester, and Gregory was forced to resign for the crime of simony. The new pope, Clement II (1046–47), immediately took the opportunity to place the imperial crown on the head of his patron, whose actions at the council were deemed to have saved the Church.9 Clement died only months later, and Henry’s next choice for pope, Damasus II (1048), lasted only twenty-four days before succumbing to malaria. Finally, in 1048, a council held at Worms chose a man whose saintliness was recognized even by animals10 and whose desire for reform was well-known—Bruno of Toul, who took the name Leo IX.
Leo “was determined to make the papacy an instrument of spiritual and moral rejuvenation both in Rome itself and throughout Europe.”11 Up to this point calls for Church reform had largely come from the monasteries (e.g., Cluny, Brogne, and Gorze), which were chiefly interested in renewing Benedictine spirituality and eliminating corruption. However, the success of the Cluniac reformers “provide[d]Rome with some of its own inspiration and drive” and their “support of papal authority, clerical celibacy, and ecclesiastical centralization … later prove[d] crucial to the papacy’s struggle for freedom.”12 There were other advocates for reform, including “the German emperors, Henry II (1014–24) and Henry III (1046–56) [whose] reliance on the imperial Church (Reichskirche) in the running of the empire gave them an interest in having a Church free from corruption.”13 Now the pope was fully behind them, allowing the reform movement to take hold and spread beyond the boundaries of its monastic origins. Leo’s desire to cleanse the church of simony, clerical concubinage, and other “degenerate practices”14 led him to re-shape the papacy itself, for in his mind the reform of the church demanded not only the pope’s personal sanctity (which Leo surely had), but also the authority to carry it out. According to Andrew Louth, the pope and his allies (e.g., Humbert, Peter Damian, Frederick of Lorraine, Hildebrand) actually “created the very notion of ‘the papacy’ … the term papatus in Latin, coined only then, … suggest[ing] an order of ministry in the Church that transcend[ed] the episcopate.”15 On one level these men were not introducing anything novel, as “the programme of the papacy as a governing institution had been maturing since the mid-fifth century,” and yet Leo and the reformers applied it with such “enthusiasm, audacity and zeal” that something genuinely new did emerge.16 Pope Leo and the reformers brought forward the encomiums by which Rome had been praised for centuries—“head and mother of the churches” (caput et mater ecclesiarum) and “hinge” (cardo) upon which all turned—and invested them with a new power. Peter Damian was among the most effusive, addressing the pope as “common father” (communis pater), “height and summit of the human race” (cacumen et vertex humani generis), and “sole ruler of the entire world” (unus omni mundo praesidens).17 He was “vicar of Christ”18 and was, in his person, “the apostolic see … [and] the Roman Church” enfleshed.19 Even titles that had been shunned by earlier popes, such as “universal bishop” (universalis episcopus) were now embraced with full vigor.20 Just as Peter “held a general apostolate for all believers … only his successor held a general care for all the churches,”21 which on a practical level granted the pope “immediate, not just appellate jurisdiction” in the Church, able to enforce his will wherever necessary.22 Of course, it should be noted that Leo’s intent was not to accumulate power for its own sake, but rather to use it for the reform of the Church—the guiding principle of his entire pontificate. This desire for reform led him to travel several times across the Alps to lead a series of local synods aimed at correcting abuses. In the words of Aristeides Papadakis, this level of personal intervention was “extraordinary … After all, the papacy until then really had no sense of itself as an international body with broad responsibilities for the world beyond the Alps, or for Christian Europe. … Rome until then had rarely interfered outside Italy. By contrast, in 1049 it was being extolled as the undisputed center of Latin Christendom—the supreme divinely ordained authority in the Church universal.”23 On matters of faith, to question the judgment of the pope was to question the judgment of Peter, upon whom the Church itself was built. For this reason Roman belief and practice were put forward as the norm from which no deviation could be permitted. In matters of faith, discipline, and liturgical practice, the Roman way was the correct way. It was this last belief that directly led to the “heresy of the fermentacei, which poured scorn on the holy Roman see, or rather the whole Latin and western church, for offering a living sacrifice to God in unleavened bread.”24
It began in Southern Italy, where relations between Greeks and Latins can best be described as “complex,” although by all accounts the two traditions coexisted in relative peace.25 In their conquest of Southern Italy the Normans generally left the Byzantines to their own rites provided the hierarchy submitted itself to the pope.26 Yet the fragile balance was upset—by whom it is still debated27—and at a time when their shared disdain of the Normans should have made Leo and the Byzantines natural allies,28 a new theological debate drove them even further apart. Among the first Eastern critiques of the Latin practice was that of Leo of Ohrid (d. 1056), who in his letter to John of Trani29 attacked the use of azymes as a Judaizing tendency shared by the monophysite Armenians.30 During this same period a treatise written by the Studite monk Niketas Stethatos (d. 1090) began to circulate, cataloguing the “horrible infirmities” of the Western Church—that is, their use of azymes, fasting practices, and clerical celibacy, describing the Latins themselves as “dogs, bad workmen, schismatics, hypocrites and liars.”31 What is important to note about both authors is what they did not say—neither attacked the pope personally (Leo referred to him at one point as “the venerable Pope” [τὸν αἰδεσιμώτατον Πάπαν]) nor the claims to primacy being made on his behalf. In fact, Tia Kolbaba has noted that few of the “Lists of Latin Errors” produced during this period mentioned papal primacy.32 According to John Erickson, “For most Byzantine churchmen of the eleventh and twelfth century, the principal point of disagreement with the Latins was not papal primacy or even the filioque, but rather the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist.”33 This was certainly true in Antioch, where Patriarch Peter III (1052–56) continued to enjoy cordial relations with the pope, sending Leo the traditional synodica announcing his election and lamenting that “the great successor of St. Peter” had been for so long out of touch with the Eastern bishops.34 Yet despite the warmth of this relationship, on the matter of the azymes Peter stood firmly with the East, arguing in his letter to Dominic of Grado that tradition demanded the use of leavened bread, and that this position was upheld by four of the five patriarchates. Rome, as the “odd man out,” should conform itself to the teaching of the Church “for everyone knows that you are [otherwise] orthodox. … being lame in this one thing alone.”35 In a clear affirmation of the pentarchical principle, he told Dominic that “just as the human body is governed by one head … and regulated by the five senses … likewise the body of Christ … is fitted together from different members and is regulated by five senses,36 which are called the great sees, and is governed by one head, which is Christ. Thus just as there is no sense above the five senses, there is no patriarch admitted above the five patriarchs.”37 For Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida (d. 1061), one of the leading lights of the reform movement, Leo of Ohrid’s letter constituted an intolerable attack upon the orthodoxy of the Roman See.38 Humbert composed a letter in the pope’s name to Leo and Patriarch Michael Cerularius (d. 1059) of Constantinople, outlining both the cause and nature of the Roman primacy, which, he believed, had been called into question by their attacks.39 He chided Michael and Leo for their “strange presumption and incredible boldness” in teaching the Roman Church how to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, as if the See of St. Peter were unaware of such matters.40 “Do you not see how impudent it is to say that the Heavenly Father has hidden from Peter, the Prince of apostles, the proper rite of the visible sacrifice?”41 Did they not know that the Roman See, where Peter remained present in his successors, had stood firm against the many heresies that emanated from the East, and most of them from Constantinople itself?42 Surely Michael and Leo, despite their “incautious reprehension and evil boasting” knew that the Council of Nicea had decreed that the supreme see could be judged by no-one (summa sedes a nemine judicetur).43 Christ himself established the spiritual authority of Rome, the ancient councils had confirmed it, and Constantine, out of love for the Apostolic See, had issued the Donation in order to add imperial dignity and earthly dominion to the heavenly power it already enjoyed.44 Humbert then reminded Cerularius that whatever dignity his see did possess—and it was not much—it owed solely to the benevolence of Rome. He wrote: Although the Church of Constantinople is by no divine or human privilege more honorable or glorious than other churches … nevertheless the pious mother, the Roman Church, anxious not to see her beloved daughter deprived of all honor … provided that, as long as the dignity of the principal and apostolic sees were fully respected, the Archbishop of Constantinople should be honored as bishop of the Imperial City … a dignity obtained through no prerogative or merit but only because the Church of Rome, out of love for venerable Constantine, paid it honor.45 It is unknown whether this letter was ever sent, since word was soon received from Emperor Constantine IX (1042–55) that he was taking steps to improve relations, although both ultimately proved counterproductive. First, Constantine appointed Argyrus, a Latin, as catepan (katepano) for Southern Italy, but this only led Cerularius to suspect that the pope was plotting against him since Argyrus was the patriarch’s bitter enemy. The emperor then persuaded Cerularius to write Leo a short yet friendly letter, but this too backfired when the patriarch suggested a quid pro quo—restoration of Leo’s name in the Constantinopolitan dyptichs in exchange for the commemoration of Cerularius in Rome.46 Leo’s response was scathing: You write to us that if we make your name honored in the Church of Rome you will make our name honored throughout the whole world. What monstrous idea is this dear brother? Does not the Roman Church, head and mother of all churches, have members and children? … So little does the Roman Church stand alone, as you seem to think, that in the whole world any nation that out of pride dissents from her is in no way a Church, but a council of heretics, and a synagogue of Satan.47 Leo sent this letter to Constantinople, along with a delegation led by Humbert, in the hopes of settling the dispute about the azymes and negotiating an anti-Norman alliance with the emperor. It has long been noted that Humbert was not temperamentally suited for such a delicate diplomatic mission, having been described by his contemporaries as a “foolish Burgandian”48 with an “intolerant and overbearing” character.49 As for the patriarch, modern historians describe him as “an ambitious man, fussy about secondary matters,”50 and possessing an “understanding of patriarchal power … not all that different from what the reform movement claimed about the papacy.”51 That an encounter between two such men ended badly is thus hardly surprising.
The Great Schism The events leading up to the mutual excommunications of Humbert and Cerularius actually had very little to do with the papacy or the contents of Pope Leo’s letters, especially as the patriarch was convinced that Leo did not write them.52 As was made clear in the excommunication itself, the patriarch believed that Humbert was conspiring with Argyrus and that the pope’s letters had been tampered with.53 During their stay in Constantinople the papal representatives dealt chiefly with the emperor, who arranged for Niketas Stethatos to come before Humbert and recant his earlier anti-Latin tract, anathematizing “all those who denied that the Roman Church was the first of all churches (primam omnium ecclesiarum) and who presumed to rebuke its ever-orthodox faith in any respect.”54 Humbert’s attitude was haughty, his language intemperate (e.g., he at one point characterized Niketas as a “pestiferous pimp”), and he compounded this by re-introducing the thorny issue of the filioque, claiming that the East’s omission of the word from the Nicene Creed had brought them into serious heresy.55 This opened the ancient debate, providing Cerularius with a powerful weapon able to unify the Eastern Church against the Latins. Yet it would be a mistake to blame the schism on the personality of one man. The real issue facing the East, behind the azymes and the filioque, was how to deal with the reformed papacy, for whom Humbert was merely a spokesman. In him and the pamphlets he circulated they encountered a different understanding of the papacy, for “up to this time that had not realized the changes that had taken place in the Roman Church. In all frankness, they simply did not understand them.”56 Perhaps, as Deno Geanakoplos observed, they had become too “accustomed to the low-prestige and corruption of the tenth century papacy” and thus “underestimated the growing strength of the papal reforming party.”57 On July 16 Humbert and his party entered Hagia Sophia just as the liturgy was to begin and placed the bull of excommunication against Patriarch Michael, Leo of Ohrid, and “all their followers in the aforesaid errors and presumptions” on the altar.58 The excommunication began with a re-statement of Roman primacy, writing that “the holy, first, and apostolic see of Rome, to which the care of all the churches most especially pertains as if to a head” (ad quam tanquam ad caput sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum specialius pertinent), had sent delegates to Constantinople to investigate matters.59 These delegates found that “with respect to the pillars of the empire and its wise and honored citizens, the city is most Christian and orthodox,” but judged that “Michael, false neophyte patriarch” had committed “extremely wicked crimes” and that “although admonished by the letters of our lord Pope Leo, contemptuously refused to repent. … Indeed, so much that among his own children, he had anathematized the apostolic see and against it he still writes that he is the ecumenical patriarch.”60 Although the subdeacons made feverish attempts to return the bull to Humbert, in accordance with the biblical command he and companions “shook the dust from their feet” and left both the Church and the city before the emperor even knew what had occurred.61 Hopes of recalling them soon collapsed, and the emperor, now under pressure from both the clergy and the populace, abandoned his hoped-for alliance with Rome and gave the patriarch permission to respond accordingly. A synod was summoned, and a response to the excommunication was issued. The edict of the Synod described how these “impious men coming out of darkness” [i.e., Humbert and his companions], in attacking the doctrines of the Greek Church [e.g., the omission of the filioque], had demonstrated their own heterodox nature and were to be anathematized.62 Neither the pope nor any of claims made regarding his primacy were either mentioned or condemned.
The Gregorian Reform The reforming zeal that Pope Leo had brought to Rome continued under his successors, although the irregular election of the antipope Benedict X (1058–59) and the resulting schism briefly complicated matters.68 The interference of the secular powers in the affair reinforced the reformers’ belief that their success demanded the libertas ecclesiae (“Freedom of the Church”)—the power of the princes over the Church, and especially the papacy, had to kept in check. To increase their newfound sense of independence the papacy was happy to pit the secular powers one against the other, entering into alliances with the Normans under Robert Guiscard (d. 1085) in order check the ambitions of the Western Empire and guarantee papal possessions throughout Italy.69 Michael Cerularius, although later hailed as the champion of the Eastern Church against the pretentions of Rome, remained a controversial figure in the years following the excommunication of Humbert and was not much missed when he died in 1059.70 His successors had little desire to continue the feud with the West, and the ongoing Norman threat gave Emperor Constantine X (1059–67) a strong incentive to improve relations with the papacy. This may, in part, explain why Patriarch Constantine Lichoudes (1059– 63) wrote to Pope Alexander II (1061–73), allegedly requesting an explanation of the Latin teaching on the procession of the Holy Spirit. Peter Damian (d. 1073) responded on behalf of the pope, exalting the patriarch for his “laudable prudence … that in resolving this question about the Holy Spirit you came to not just anyone, but specifically to Peter, whom you undoubtedly recognize as having received the keys of heavenly wisdom and power.”71 Irenic in tone, the work was nevertheless a clear affirmation of the authority of him who “the Creator of the world chose … in preference to all other mortals on earth, and granted to him for all time the privilege of magisterial primacy within the Church … Why, therefore, should we wonder that a bishop, even though he is outstanding for holiness and thoroughly instructed in the Word of God, should approach the teaching authority of the prince of the apostles.”72 The fortunes of the Eastern Empire greatly waned in the decades after the so-called Great Schism. Robert Guiscard continued his campaigns against the Byzantines, and in 1071 finally succeeded in ejecting them from Southern Italy. That same year, at the Battle of Mazikert, the armies of Romanos IV (1068–71) suffered “the greatest disaster” in the Byzantine Empire’s “seven and a half centuries of existence,” quickly resulting in the loss of most of Asia Minor.73 The sad reign of Michael VII (1071–78) was characterized by economic troubles and internal strife. Caught between the Normans and the Seljuk Turks, increasingly the emperors turned to the pope for help, believing him the only force capable of keeping Guiscard at bay and unifying the West against the Muslim threat. A century earlier, when the empire was at its height and the pornocracy governed Rome, the Byzantines could afford to be haughty in their dealings with the papacy. Now they were supplicants, albeit proud ones, and the popes to whom they addressed their pleas happily received them as such. Much has been written about the pontificate of Gregory VII (1073–85), especially as it relates to his ongoing feud with the Western Emperor, Henry IV (d. 1106) over the power to appoint bishops (i.e., the Investiture Controversy).74 Gregory had long been one of the leading lights of the reforming movement, and believed “with the passionate zeal of the Old Testament prophets … [that] absolute obedience to God” was required in all things.75 God’s will, of course, was made known by the Church, whose governance had been entrusted to St. Peter and then passed on to his successors. Yet the pope was not simply Peter’s successor, but Peter redivivus, so much so that “papal actions [became] the direct actions of Peter himself.”76 The logic was therefore simple—disobedience to the pope equaled disobedience to Peter equaled disobedience to God.77 It is thus not surprising that the language of “obedience” and “disobedience” permeated the correspondence of Pope Gregory,78 and why questioning the teachings of the Roman Church was equated with becoming a heretic (haereticus esse constat, qui Romanae ecclesiae non concordat).79 Modern theologians, East and West, still differ in their views of whether Gregory and his allies actually created something “new” in constructing the outlines of the reformed papacy. Aristeides Papadakis was among those who maintained that it is impossible to escape the conclusion that many of the reformers’ claims (e.g., the power to depose emperors) “lacked historical precedent”80 and that even the term reform “is a serious understatement … [that] plays down the magnitude of the discontinuity between what had gone before and what came later.”81 These scholars contend that despite all pretense the medieval canonists made little effort to ground this “metamorphosis of the papacy” in Church tradition, simply creating or nullifying laws as needed, “declaring [previous] conciliar legislation invalid just because it contradicted papal decrees” (si decretis Romanorum pontificum non concordat).82 As Karl Morrison noted, the reformers’ “contempt for antiquity struck at the base of the idea of tradition” a fact noted by those (e.g., Godfrey of Vendôme, Sigebert of Gembloux, Ivo of Chartes) who opposed these so-called new traditions (novae traditiones) being invented by the pope.83 According to Hermann Pottmeyer there was some merit to this charge of “novelty,” “for under Gregory VII a break with the previous paradigm of church and primacy occurred that could hardly be described as a logical or organic development.”84 Yet if “to some [Gregory] was a revolutionary genius, fighting for a new, just world order while advocating the overthrow of the old. … to others he was a saint … [who] like all reformers insisted that his undertakings were firmly rooted in the pronouncements of the fathers.”85 As Walter Ullman wrote, “Repeatedly and, as can be proved, correctly, [Gregory] claimed that he was simply the executor of ancient decrees, laws, views, the one who considered it his mission to translate pure, abstract ideology into papal action … What appeared new in his pontificate was this impetuously pursued policy of application, but not the matter and programme that was applied.”86 Klaus Schatz agreed, arguing that the seeds of the reformed papacy “were certainly present in their initial stages in the work of Innocent I and Leo I, and more powerfully in that of Nicholas I, but now they were developed with a much greater consistency.”87 Gregory may have “reserved for himself the papal right to promulgate new laws, or alter old laws in accord with the needs of the present,” argued Uta-Renate Blumenthal, but “this prerogative had been part of canon law as far back as the early centuries of the Church.”88 Rome was not making radically new claims, but rather pressing its old claims in a manner that was genuinely new.
While debate about the relative novelty of the Gregorian reform still divides scholars, almost all agree that the reforms themselves were “directed at bettering a situation that was in dire need of improvement”89—that is, this was not about power sought for its own sake, but rather sprang from the conviction that “an independently powerful papacy exercising direct jurisdictional control over Christendom was an indispensable condition for renewal” in the Western Church.90 In achieving this control, the Dictatus Papae (1075), thought to be “the chapter headings of a now lost canonical collection,” was to become a powerful weapon that unambiguously asserted the powers of the pope over both the secular and ecclesiastical spheres.91 Among its claims: 1. That the Roman church was founded by God alone. 2. That the Roman pontiff alone can with right be called universal. 16. That no synod shall be called a general one without his order. 19. That he himself may be judged by no one. 22. That the Roman church has never erred; nor will it err to all eternity. 23. That the Roman pontiff, if he has been canonically ordained, is undoubtedly made a saint by the merits of St. Peter. 25. That he may depose and reinstate bishops without assembling a synod. 26. That he who is not at peace with the Roman church shall not be considered catholic.92 Of course most, if not all, of the assertions made in the Dictatus Papae were addressed to a Western audience, and in particular to those princes or powers who dared question the authority of the apostolic see as it carried out its program of reform.93 Yet the reformers’ universalist understanding of the papacy’s mission certainly meant that these claims equally applied to the East. In fact, it is possible that some of the propositions of the Dictatus Papae were aimed at the Byzantines, and that Gregory “may have had in mind certain pretensions of Byzantium” (e.g., the patriarch’s use of “universal bishop”) when he wrote it.94 However, John Meyendorff was probably correct when he suggested that the reformers’ attitude toward the East was not so much aggression as ignorance, and that the Eastern Church, along with its unique theology, ecclesiology, and discipline, rarely figured in their calculations.95 “Church” for the reformers, meant the Latin or Western Church, centered in Rome and governed by the dictates of Christ’s vicar, the pope. It was to Christ’s vicar that an embattled Emperor Michael VII addressed an embassy in 1073, professing both his love for the Roman Church and his desire for better relations. Michael did not necessarily “share or even understand the conception of the papacy cherished by Hildebrand … but he was shrewd enough to see that the restoration of a united Church, even at the expense of a few verbal concessions” was to his advantage.96 Inspired by the emperor’s goodwill, Gregory called for a crusade in order to assist “the Church of Constantinople, differing from us on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, [which] is seeking the fellowship of the Apostolic See.”97 Unfortunately, Michael’s deposition in 1078 and Gregory’s ongoing struggles with Henry in the West kept matters from progressing beyond the planning stage.98
Two things are significant about this letter. First, it began an almost four- hundred-year pattern of ecclesiological negotiations with the West being conducted by the Constantinopolitan emperor rather than the patriarch, who often found himself marginalized in this so- called ecumenical dialogue. Second, Michael’s letter was the first time that “the emperor held out the bait of ecclesiastical reunion to the papacy as a means of eliciting material support. The offer was to become, with variations, a recognized move in the Byzantine diplomatic game for the next four centuries, culminating in the Council of Florence in 1439.”99 As history would demonstrate, these offers ultimately meant little without the support of the Byzantine populace, who viewed the betrayal of orthodoxy in exchange for political security an unacceptable trade-off. The Alexiad of Anna Comnena (d. 1153), although written much later, contains a rather intriguing character sketch of Pope Gregory and the way his papacy was remembered in Byzantium in the years following his death.100 Anna was apparently convinced by the rumor, spread by the pope’s enemies, that this “abominable pope” had committed some unspecified violation of Henry’s ambassadors, a tale the author “as a woman and a princess … cannot endure to disclose or describe,” although she spends a great deal of time alluding to it.101 She wrote how Gregory, “according to the claims and beliefs of the Latins—another example of their arrogance,” styled himself “supreme high priest, who presided over the whole inhabited world.”102 The truth, which everyone knew, was “that when power was transferred from Rome to our country and the Queen of Cities … the senior archbishopric was also transferred here. From the beginning the emperors have acknowledged the primacy of the Constantinopolitan bishop and the Council of Chalcedon especially raised that bishop to the place of highest honor and subordinated to him all the dioceses throughout the world.”103 The argument first encountered centuries earlier— that the translation of imperial authority (translatio imperii) transferred the primacy to Constantinople—was quickly gaining traction.104
Dialogue and Debate during the Crusading Era Gregory VII, the man who had done so much to raise the pope above the other powers of the world, died in exile in Salerno—the “height and summit of the human race” and “sole ruler of the entire world” forced from Rome itself while the anti-pope Clement III (1080–1100) ruled in his place.105 In order to bolster his claims for legitimacy, Clement looked not only to Emperor Henry but also to the East, where many bishops remained in communion with Rome despite the “creeping estrangement of the churches.”106 John II of Kiev wrote back to Clement, “most worthy of the apostolic throne and vocation” (τῆς ἀποστολικῆς ἄξιε καθέδρας καὶ κλήσεως), acknowledging the many points of concord between Greeks and Latins, including their shared reverence for the seven councils.107 It was when he turned to the issues that divided them (e.g., the use of azymes and the inclusion of the filioque) that the tone of the letter changed, John firmly, but respectfully, pointing out those areas where Roman teaching was at odds with Church tradition.108 He beseeched Clement to write “to the Patriarch of Constantinople, your spiritual brother, and to use all diligence to eliminate these scandals so that unity and harmony should reign between the churches.”109 John’s position was clear—the popes who had supported the councils were “worthy of the chair of St. Peter, because they agreed with us,” but the current pontiffs were in error and required fraternal correction.110 It is important to note that John “does not directly address the primacy of the pope … and it is not itself listed among the obstacles for the unity of the two churches.”111 Yet in challenging Roman teaching and suggesting that the pope required instruction/correction from “the Patriarch of Constantinople and his metropolitans who possess the Word of God and who illumine the world like resplendent lights,” John was effectively denying Rome’s claim to be “mother and teacher of all Christians.” It is a sign of the growing consensus in the East that Rome’s exalted status was contingent upon its continued orthodoxy, and if this was now in doubt, so too was the primacy.112 In 1089 Clement’s chief rival for the papal throne, Urban II (1088–99), also eager to have his claims legitimized by the East and apparently unaware of any “Great Schism,” wrote to Emperor Alexios I (1081–1118) in Constantinople asking why the pope’s name was not commemorated in the dyptichs.113 The emperor, in consultation with Patriarch Nicholas III (1084–1111) and a synod of bishops, responded that no reason could be found for the omission and that since “the Church of Rome is not separated from our communion by a synodal decision … [the pope’s name] must have been removed improperly.”114 Before restoring his name and “honoring him as in ancient times” the synod asked only that any canonical differences between the churches be resolved first, perhaps at a council to meet in Constantinople.115 Nicholas wrote to his “most blessed and reverend brother” in Rome informing him of the synod’s decision, asking Urban to revive the custom of sending a synodal letter, including his profession of faith, as had been done in times past.116 Urban never complied, nor did he ever accept the invitation to come to Constantinople, although “it seems clear that the Pope was quite ready to go … and that Roger I of Sicily (d. 1101) encouraged him in this intention.”117 The reason, Henry Chadwick speculated, is that the developing understanding of papal primacy in the West precluded such a letter, as it would have suggested the need for the pope to defend his orthodoxy before being recognized.118 For the post-Gregorian church, this was unthinkable. Urban was determined to achieve better relations with the East, and while continuing to press his claims for jurisdictional control in southern Italy, as a general policy he “left the Greek monasteries and many of the Greek churches unmolested.”119 It was Urban’s desire for better relations with the Eastern church that in large part explains his positive response to Emperor Alexios’s ambassadors at the Council of Piancenza in March of 1095120 and his call for a crusade at the Council of Clermont eight months later. Knowing that unity required more than just strained toleration, in 1098 the pope convoked a synod to meet at Bari so that representatives of both churches could discuss the disputed issues,121 although the primacy does not appear to have been among them. Unfortunately, despite Urban’s hopes that a crusade against a common foe would draw the Eastern and Western churches closer together, the resulting tensions only served to consummate the schism that had grown up between them.122 There were early signs that Latins and Byzantines could co-exist peacefully, but increased contact soon proved these hopes illusory. For example, in Antioch the crusaders initially hailed the Byzantine Patriarch John IV as a “confessor” for his courage during their siege of the city—the Seljuk governor had at one point hung him outside the walls in a cage—and while they allowed him to remain in office for two years after its capture, by 1100 an embittered John was in exile writing anti-Latin treatises.123 For their part the Latins increasingly came to despise the Greeks, who because of their heresies “concerning the treatment of the holy Eucharist and concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit … were judged not to be Christian.”124 The Byzantines felt very much the same about the “barbarian” Latins, allegedly rebaptizing Westerners who married Greek women and purifying any altar upon which a Latin mass had been celebrated “as if they had been defiled.”125 For many in the East the errors of the Latins were both odious and numerous, and thanks to the recent establishment of crusader states in formerly Byzantine territory, they were there for all to see. Yet not everyone was convinced by the arguments of the polemicists. One such figure was Archbishop Theophylact of Ohrid (d. 1107), who railed against those who “through unmeasured zeal … and lack of humility” accused the West of all sorts of heresies, despite the fact that many of the charges were based simply on small differences in custom.126 Like Peter of Antioch he believed the addition to the symbol was genuinely problematic, but even here he maintained that the West’s error was due “less to wickedness than to ignorance” since the poverty of the Latin language was unable to convey the necessary theological subtleties.127 As it concerned the primacy, Theophylact continued to praise the apostle Peter without reservation, writing “That the Lord entrusts to Peter the presidency over the sheep in the world, and nobody else but him.”128 Peter had been made chief (ἔξαρχος) of the disciples and thus Christ prayed that he would confirm his brothers, “being, after me, the rock and the foundation of the Church.”129 “If James received the throne of Jerusalem,” Theophylact wrote, “Peter was made teacher of the universe.”130 Such quotations were later used to great effect by Catholic apologists, as they allegedly witnessed to recognition of the pope’s universal petrine ministry. Yet it would be a mistake to assume that in his praise of Peter Theophylact was giving support to an all- powerful papacy. In fact, while never denying Rome’s primacy or the pope’s succession from St. Peter, Theophylact thought it ridiculous that the popes justified their erroneous teaching on the filioque by claiming to speak with Peter’s voice. Those who would refuse to reject and to correct this error would be unworthy of pardon even if they spoke from the height of the throne which they professed to be the highest of all and even if they should put forth the confession of Peter and the blessing which he received from Christ for it, even if they should shake before our eyes the keys of the kingdom. For in proportion that they pretend to honor Peter by these keys, they dishonor him if they destroy what he established, if they root up the foundations of the Church which he is supposed to support.131 In Rome, Urban’s successor Paschal II (1099–1118) continued to struggle for the libertas ecclesiae against the German King Henry V (d. 1125), who briefly imprisoned the pope for his intransigence. Pope Paschal wrote to Emperor Alexios in the hopes of using his support as leverage against the Germans, but made recognition of the primacy by the Constantinopolitan patriarch a precondition for future negotiation.132 He claimed that the patriarchs of Constantinople had once shown great devotion to Rome, but now they had withdrawn their obedience (obediencia subtraxerunt), even refusing to correspond with the pope or to receive his messengers.133 Before negotiations for a council could proceed, Paschal insisted that his “brother” (confrater) the patriarch first recognize the primacy and reverence owed to the apostolic see, privileges granted to it “by the religious prince Constantine and confirmed by the holy councils.”134 The patriarch’s reaction is unknown, and it is likely that the emperor never even broached the matter, knowing as he did that the pope’s demand was a “non-starter.” It was during these negotiations that Peter Grossolanus traveled to Constantinople, where in 1112 he engaged in a debate with Niketas Seides and other Byzantine churchmen.135 The encounter focused chiefly on the azymes and the filioque, although the issue of the primacy was briefly raised in the context of the pope’s authority to alter the creed.136 It was an early sign of what Donald Nicol called the emerging “papal scandal”—that is, “the growing feeling that the pope’s claim to primacy, or rather supremacy, over the whole church was being pressed to the point where it became a major obstacle [to unity].”137 Until the beginning of the twelfth century “the major causes of scandal … were [still] thought to be the Latin addition to the creed … and the use of unleavened bread in the sacrament.”138 Historically the Byzantines “had no difficulties in explicitly recognizing Rome’s presidency or primacy within the pentarchy of patriarchs. Its willingness to do so was well documented.”139 However, faced with the growing Latin presence in the Holy Land and the claims of the reformed papacy, the primacy itself was increasingly becoming an issue, which is why it was during this period that the first Byzantine attacks upon it began to appear. It was shortly after his debate with Grossolanus that Niketas Seides authored what Jannis Spiteris called “the first example of a [Byzantine] critique directed specifically against Roman claims of primacy,” and in particular the idea of a monarchical petrine office that exercised headship over the entire church.140 Seides questioned both the reasons and logic behind Rome’s claims, arguing, for example, that Jerusalem was better suited for the primacy since it was there that the “the Great High-Priest” (i.e., Christ) appointed James as high-priest long before Peter came to Rome.141 Rome was not, as it claimed to be, “mother” of all the churches and even if it had been so, mothers were only owed obedience if they were faithful to God, which (given its teachings on the procession and azymes) Rome was not.142 Rome’s primacy, such as it was, had been granted by the emperors and then transferred along with imperial authority to Constantinople, which truly was “New Rome” with all the political and religious implications that implied. As for headship in the Church, Rome’s claims to a monarchical office differed from Seides’s vision of a Church headed by the patriarchs, who like the five senses guided the body of Christ—Jerusalem representing vision, Antioch smell, Rome taste, Alexandria hearing, “and finally our New Rome clearly represents touch, the ultimate and universal sense.”143 Rome, he prayed, should thus return to the body from which it had separated herself, to be united with the other senses under the Church’s one true head, Jesus Christ. Several years later, in 1136, Emperor John II (“the Beautiful”; 1118–43) invited Bishop Anselm of Havelberg (d. 1158), who was in Constantinople on a diplomatic mission, to debate Niketas of Nicomedia on the three most controversial religious issues of the day: the use of unleavened bread, the procession of the Holy Spirit, and the primacy of Rome. The proceedings appear to have been carried out in an atmosphere of genuine ecumenical understanding, with each side manifesting a genuine willingness to avoid the “pride and eagerness for victory” that often characterized such encounters.144
After dealing with the filioque and azymes, Anselm asked Niketas why he continued to ignore “the laws of the sacrosanct Roman Church, which has primacy through God and from God and next after God in its authority in the universal church.”145 Anselm then cited a spurious canon from the Council of Nicea claiming that “the holy Roman Church stands above the decrees of any synod.”146 He cited Matthew 16:18–19, the mayrtyrdoms of Peter and Paul (“on the same day”), and the petrine ordering of the churches (Rome, Alexandria, Antioch) to bolster the claim that Rome was “set above the others … by the Lord himself … [so that] fortified against deceitful questions by the shield of divine wisdom” it may preserve “the integrity of the faith before all others … deservedly receiv[ing] the privilege of prelacy over all.”147 Anselm then recounted at some length the “innumerable heresies [that] have bubbled up in the Constantinopolitan Church” telling Niketas that if he wanted to account himself a “true son of church,” he could no longer despise the decrees of Rome, the “mother of all churches … [with whom] none should disagree.”148 Niketas listened patiently, and responded that indeed he never had “deni[ed] or reject[ed] the primacy of the Roman Church, whose place among the three patriarchal sees had long been recognized as it was “the preeminent seat of the empire. … It was named the first see, and there all the others made appeal in problematic ecclesiastical cases [i.e., the Sardican privilege].”149 Yet now the pope was demanding more, when in fact the pope has never been called “the ruler of priests, nor high priest, nor anything of the sort, rather only bishop of the first see.”150 He reminded Anselm that “God’s will transferred the empire to this royal city that it became premier in the orient” and that the Council of Constantinople decreed “that just as old Rome long ago held primacy in ecclesiastical cases … because of its imperial status, this younger and new Rome had primacy after it because of the dignity of empire.”151 Rome’s “primacy among the patriarchal sisters we [still] acknowledge” he claimed, for in Hagia Sophia were preserved the acts of the councils in which the authority of the Roman Church was proclaimed, including “the high role of presiding at a general council.”152 “We would be greatly embarrassed to deny what we have before our eyes as recorded by the fathers,”153 Niketas told Anselm, and thus grant with you that the Roman Church was worthy of veneration, “but do not, like you, follow it in all things nor do I consider that I must follow it in all things.”154 Rome had erred by seizing for itself “a monarchical rule that was not her office” and forcing the East to accept the decisions of western councils “written without our counsel, even without our knowledge.”155 This was unacceptable. If the Roman pontiff, sitting on high on the throne of his glory should wish to thunder at us or cast down his commands from on high, and if he might want to judge, rather to rule us and our churches as his own will pleases and without our counsel, what sort of brotherhood or fatherhood might this be? Who could endure this with equanimity? If we did then we would rightly be called—indeed we would be—slaves, not sons of the Church.156 Niketas argued that Peter’s authority was not given “to Peter only, but to all the apostles along with Peter … nor did the Holy Spirit sent from the Lord on Pentecost … descend on Peter alone. Rather he set them all afire together … We must not attribute to Peter alone the privilege that the Lord gave to all in common.”157 This is true, said Anslem, but it was to Peter alone that Christ gave the keys to the kingdom (Matt. 16:19) and the command to “feed my sheep” (John 20:23). “It befits none of the faithful at all to doubt that the Lord himself established Peter as ruler of the apostles … So [ just as] Christ, as head of the Church, granted his place on earth to Peter, foremost of the apostles … the Roman pontiffs in succession have held Christ’s place as head of the Church on earth as he is its head in heaven.”158 In their effort to claim a primacy equal to that of Rome, Anselm accused the Constantinopolitans of creating a two-headed monster, something “unseemly, unnatural, the opposite of perfection,” using human [i.e., conciliar] rather than divine judgment.”159 Anselm told Niketas: “Just as there is one church, so the church has one head, and this head is the Roman pontiff … [and] all who wish to be saved” must be obedient to him and conform to the model and customs of his church.160 After a further discussion of their ritual differences, both Anselm and Niketas joined in calling for a council so that “fraternal charity” might be restored and “Greeks and Latins may be made one people under their one Lord, Jesus Christ.”161 Fraternal charity was running thin, but hope for a conciliar resolution still remained. In 1143 Roger II of Sicily asked Nilos Doxapatres, a native Constantinopolitan serving in Sicily, to answer several questions about the church’s patriarchal structure.162 Doxapatres himself was a firm believer in the pentarchy, which he too likened to the five senses of the body,163 contending that the conciliar legislation establishing it may have been written by men, but at its heart was the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Doxapatres was not unfamiliar with the apostolic principle—he acknowledged the petrine origin of the first three patriarchates (Rome, Alexandria, Antioch), and cited the Andrew legend to support the apostolicity of Constantinople. Yet it was not apostolic pedigree that determined primacy for Doxapatres, but rather the imperial principle— that is, where the emperor goes, there too goes the primacy. You see how from the present canon [28 of Chalcedon] those who say that Rome should be honored on account of St Peter are clearly foolish in their argument. Look this canon of the holy synod says that Rome has honor on account of being the imperial city … And since it stopped being imperial through being captured by foreigners and barbarian Gothic tribes, and is now held by them, it has fallen from imperial dignity and thus also from its ecclesiastical preeminence.164 He held that when imperial authority was transferred to Constantinople ecclesiastical precedence was transferred along with it, granting the bishop of the capital the powers once held by Rome, including the so-called Sardican Privilege—that is, the right “of judging appeals from the other patriarchs and examining accusations over the three patriarchs [i.e., Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem].”165 Old Rome still retained the title of “ecumenical,” but more as a reminder of its former glory than a reflection of its present power.166 Another witness to the growing popularity of the translatio imperii theory was the Metropolitan of Ephesus, George Tornikes, who in a letter to Pope Hadrian IV (1154–59) on behalf of the emperor used it as his chief support for Constantinople’s primacy.167 He derided Rome’s claim to be the “mother and teacher of all the churches,” for this usurped the unique headship of Christ, “who alone is head of the mystical body, who alone is teacher.”168 It also usurped the role of the emperor, who in Christian society served as both “high priest and Βασιλεύς” in Christ’s place.169 A few years later his brother, Demetrios Tornikes, wrote two letters to the pope on behalf of both the emperor and the patriarch, each proclaiming the desire for unity.170 However, in his letters he took the opportunity to refute Rome’s petrine claims, repeating the argument that “It is thus not a result of a plan or arrangement of a spiritual nature that the thrones of the churches have acquired superiority or inferiority, but as a result of the order of preeminence and subordination of the principalities of this world. … For churches are not vested with supremacy because of the burial places of the apostles but because of the decisions taken by the holy ecumenical councils.”171 Besides, Tornikes contended that no church, with the possible exception of Jerusalem “sanctified by the saving work of the Lord’s death and resurrection,” could rightly claim to be the “mother of any other church.”172 In 1156 Pope Hadrian IV wrote to Basil of Ohrid (d. 1169) asking him to extend hospitality to his legates, who were then traveling in the East. In the letter the pope reminded Basil that “the holy fathers commanded that the holy Roman Church should obtain unconditionally the primacy of all the churches and they ordered that the judgment of all things should be referred to her decision.”173 He urged the Greeks to return to obedience so that, “like the lost sheep” from the gospel, they could return to “the ark of salvation” and be revived like Lazarus after his three days in the tomb.174 Basil responded with “almost exaggerated politeness,”175 firmly rejecting the pope’s analogy.176 In fact, he argued, the East had shown more reverence to Peter by keeping Peter’s faith inviolate, while the West, in introducing the filioque and the use of azymes, had become the true “lost sheep.”177 Still, he argued, the differences between the churches were not so great that a general council could not settle them, as long as “bishops under your [i.e., the pope’s] direction and those of us in the East who accept the splendor of the priesthood of the sublime throne of Constantinople” acted in a spirit of genuine goodwill.178 Emperor Manuel I (d. 1143–80) continued to negotiate with the papacy for better ecclesiastical and political relations, and his generally pro-western views gave him in this task a certain credibility.179 In theory both Pope Hadrian IV and his successor Alexander III (1159–81) were in favor of improving relations as it would have challenged Norman power in Southern Italy, which remained an ongoing problem. Yet the papal demand for Constantinople’s recognition of Rome’s jurisdictional primacy remained a stumbling block, for even if Manuel himself was willing to come to an accommodation, the Byzantine hierarchy and populace were not. In 1167 Manuel made his boldest proposal to date—he would travel to Rome and be crowned by the pope as sole Roman Emperor, thus delegitimizing the claim of Frederick Barbarossa (1155–90).180 In return the pope would take possession of the patriarchal throne of Constantinople, which had recently become vacant. Pope Alexander realized that Manuel’s proposal was “extremely complex and needed much consideration,”181 and instead suggested a simpler one—that the new patriarch, Michael III of Anchialus (1170–78), acknowledge the primacy, restore the pope’s name in the dyptichs, and recognize the right of appeal to Rome.
A document, written in the form of a dialogue between Michael and Manuel on the subject of union, but now thought to have been authored much later, angrily rejected the proposal and the arguments for Rome’s primacy based on Peter’s tenure there.182 Here the patriarch allegedly claimed that he would rather “let the Muslim be my material master than the Latin my spiritual master. If I am subject to the former, at least he will not force me to share his faith. But if I have to be united in religion to the latter, under his control, I may have to separate myself from God.”183 In fact, relations between Manuel and Alexander remained warm as their ongoing negotiations for a political/religious alliance continued apace. At some point between 1166 and 1177184 Manuel asked his cousin, Andronicus Kamateros (c. 1180), to compose a Sacred Arsenal of texts that reflected the traditional Byzantine arguments against both the Latins and the Armenians.185 Written in the form of a dialogue between the emperor and a Roman cardinal, the first part deals mostly with the filioque, but also touches on the primacy of Rome. In the dialogue the emperor counters the petrine pedigree of the papacy by emphasizing Peter’s universal ministry—that is, it denigrates Peter to think his ministry was somehow restricted to the city of Rome when he was in fact “teacher of the whole world,” for while bishops have ministries that are geographically limited, apostles had no such constraints.186 He argued that if the pope wanted to base his authority on Peter’s presence in Rome, then Antioch or even Jerusalem, where Peter had taught before his arrival in the West, certainly had better claims to primacy.187 Kamateros did acknowledge that Rome had been granted a certain primacy by the Donatio Constantini, an argument also seen in the writings of John Kinnamos (c. 1185).188 For Kinnamos the argument was clear: “Constantine, not Peter, created the dignity of the pope,” and with the withdrawal of imperial authority came the loss of Rome’s primacy.189 The Bishop of Rome, who had “made grooms” of the so-called emperors of the West, was “caught in his own snare” if he declared himself pope yet denied the imperial power that had raised him up in the first place.190 “The throne of Byzantion [to whom he owed his title] is the throne of Rome.”191 Emperors made primates, not the other way around. The great Byzantine canonist Theodore Balsamon (c. 1199) also had little love for the Latins “whose words,” he wrote, “were smoother than oil, Satan having hardened their hearts.”192 A lawyer with a great regard for the emperor,193 he acknowledged that the councils had granted Rome a primacy within the patriarchal structure, but pointed out that these same canons demanded that Constantinople be honored exactly like it in all respects. Citing John Zonaras’s earlier interpretation of Constantinople’s canon 3,194 Balsamon rejected the argument that “primacy after (μετα) Rome” meant “coming after in time” and not “subjugation in honor,” insisting that under normal circumstances the imperial capital would rank second in the church’s hierarchy.195 However, given its lapse into heresy (e.g., the filioque) and the fact that it had severed “spiritual communion [with] the other four holy patriarchs,” Rome had surrendered the privileges once granted to it.196 This was how Constantinople had achieved the primacy—not by the transfer of imperial authority as Doxapatres and the Tornikes brothers had argued—but by a sort of “promotion” caused by Rome’s heterodoxy. Balsamon even spoke about Constantinople’s primacy in terms that were almost “Roman,” insisting that “all the churches of God ought to follow the custom of New Rome, that is Constantinople, and to celebrate [the liturgies] according to the traditions of the great teachers and luminaries of piety, St. Iōnnēs Chrysostomos and St. Basileios.”197 In the years that followed Manuel’s death in 1180, relations between East and West continued to deteriorate.
During the brief but turbulent reigns of Emperors Alexios II (1180–83) and Andronicus I (1183–85), a wave of anti-Latin sentiment swept through Constantinople, culminating in the 1182 riots in the city’s Latin quarter. The Latin chronicler William of Tyre described how “the perfidious Greek nation … this brood of vipers” returned the Latins’ longtime friendship by indiscriminately slaughtering thousands, decapitating the papal legate and tying his head to the tail of a dog to be dragged in the street.198 Three years later the Normans matched brutality for brutality as they sacked the city of Thessalonica as if they were “making war on God Himself,”199 entering the churches and “then uncover[ing] their privy parts to let the membrum virile pour forth the contents of the bladder, urinating round the sacred floor.”200 Pope Celestine III (1191–98) tried to maintain a cordial dialogue with the East, as he and Emperor Alexios III (1195–1203) had a common interest in thwarting the ambitions of the Western Emperor Henry VI (1191–97), but events were conspiring against them.201 The death of Celestine and the election of his nephew, Innocent III (1198– 1216) proved to be a turning point in East-West relations. Like the other reforming popes of the period, Innocent possessed a conception of the papal office that did not admit competition from other powers, secular or ecclesiastical, especially when it came to achieving his three main goals—“to regain the Holy Land, to oppose heresy, and to purify the Church.”202 For Innocent, Christ had given Peter and his successors a plentitudo potestatis (plentitude of power) over all the churches of the world, different from the geographically bounded solicitudo exercised by the other bishops and patriarchs, all of whom were dependent upon Rome. This meant that in theory the pope’s authority over ecclesiastical matters in Constantinople was no different than his authority in Rome, and that every local church, including the churches of the East, were under Peter’s successor just as “all the members of the body are joined under the one head.”203 Of course, it was this very stress on the power of the papacy that prevented Innocent from realizing his dream of a great Latin-Byzantine crusade to liberate the Holy Land, as he continued to press the demands for “obedience.” Soon after his election he wrote to Alexios III on the subject of a crusade. The letter itself was “most restrained” and even “conciliatory … but in other respects it was uncompromising”204—before matters could progress further “the Greek Church must return to the unity of the apostolic see like a daughter returning to her mother.”205 He wrote also to Patriarch John X Kamateros (1198–1206), questioning the ecclesial status of the Greek Church since no entity “in addition to the one church should really be called such, having left the unity of the apostolic see.”206 This, Innocent believed, endangered the eternal salvation of the Greek people, who would find themselves outside the “ark of salvation” when the day of judgment came.207 The patriarch’s response was polite but firm. He praised Innocent’s desire for union, but questioned the pope’s claims that the Roman Church was somehow “one and universal” and “mother of all the churches.”208 For the patriarch “Christ’s church has many shepherds, the mother of all being Jerusalem,” which was the source for the “the river of grace” that flowed upon every church, including the Church of Rome.209 Rome called itself the catholic or universal see, when it fact it was one particular church among many, a part rather than the whole, its bishop one shepherd among the many to whom Christ entrusted the flock. As for the ecclesial status of the Greek Church, John told Innocent that if anyone had “rendered the tunic of Christ” it was the pope, who by his acceptance of the filioque had introduced an innovation not known by Scripture or the fathers. Innocent wrote to the emperor, stating that he would gladly call a council at which the patriarch could come and pay “reverence and obedience to the Roman Church,” and that having done so he would be treated as “our most dear brother and chief member of the Church.”210 In his letter to the patriarch Innocent vigorously reasserted both Rome’s “maternal” claims and the divine rather than conciliar origin of its plentitudo potestatis, dismissing any notion that the primacy could somehow be translated by human authority. “The Roman Church,” he wrote, “is the head and mother of all churches not by the decision of some council but by divine ordinance, so because of difference neither of rite nor of dogma, should you continue to disobey us as your head.”211 Then came the threat—if the patriarch did not submit the pope would “be compelled to proceed both against the emperor himself …and against you and against the church of the Greeks.”212 Kamateros’s second letter to the pope, “more extreme and provocative”213 than the first, responded by taking aim at the petrine basis for Rome’s primacy.
“Where does Christ in the gospels say that the Roman Church is the head, the universal and catholic mother of churches everywhere? …Which of the ecumenical councils formulated the doctrines you teach about your church?”214 Innocent boasted that he ruled over Peter’s see, but in doing so the pope actually diminished the dignity of the apostle by reducing his universal ministry to one city. Peter was commissioned to spread the gospel, forgive sins, and feed his flock throughout the world, a commission shared equally by all those to whom Christ gave the Spirit. The pope misunderstood Matthew 16:18–19 if he thought that Peter alone was named the foundation of the church since “we believe this [title] no less [applies] to the other apostles of Christ”215 who became the foundation stones upon which the household of God was built (Ephesians 2:20). What Christ gave to Peter he gave to all. That said, Kamateros freely acknowledged that Peter was indeed “set by Christ before the other disciples, and in honor preceded the others,”216 and yet the patriarch firmly believed that “the apostolic choir did not need to obey him as their chief and master, thus leaving to the Church of the Romans a similar universal primacy.”217 He then likened the Bishop of Rome’s position in the college of bishops to Peter’s place within the circle of apostles—that is, he was “first in rank and honor”218 among the bishops, but he did not have authority over them. Rome was not the mother of all churches, but rather “first among honored sisters” [i.e., the patriarchates] who “like fingers on the hand or strings on a lyre” act in harmony without one being more important than the others.219 For Kamateros the primacy had been granted to Rome “not because Peter was made [its] bishop … or because he died there. … Such honor has been granted because at the time it was exalted by the emperor and the senate, neither of which is found there any longer.”220 The source of Rome’s greatness was neither Christ nor Peter, but rather the canons of Chalcedon. According to Aristeides Papadakis, this dialogue between pope and patriarch is notable for two reasons. First, it took place “just a few years before the Fourth Crusade, when the breech between the two great churches was not yet final and rapprochement was not yet next door to impossible.”221 Second, in these letters one sees the archetype for all subsequent debate on the papacy, with Latin demands for obedience met by increasingly strident Byzantine refutations of Rome’s primacy and the reasons for it. The Fourth Crusade certainly increased the frequency and “heat” of these attacks, but “as a rule, new arguments against the Roman primacy were rare after 1200 [and] subsequent Byzantine assessments of the question were to build on the same solid foundation established by twelfth century polemicists.”222 Long before the crusader armies approached the walls of Constantinople in 1203, the battle lines were already clearly drawn.
1. It is unknown when or how this schism was ever resolved, Peter III of Antioch later claiming that he heard the pope’s name commemorated in Constantinople at some point in 1009, but this might have been before Patriarch Sergius acted to remove it.
“Where does Christ in the gospels say that the Roman Church is the head, the universal and catholic mother of churches everywhere? …Which of the ecumenical councils formulated the doctrines you teach about your church?”214 Innocent boasted that he ruled over Peter’s see, but in doing so the pope actually diminished the dignity of the apostle by reducing his universal ministry to one city. Peter was commissioned to spread the gospel, forgive sins, and feed his flock throughout the world, a commission shared equally by all those to whom Christ gave the Spirit. The pope misunderstood Matthew 16:18–19 if he thought that Peter alone was named the foundation of the church since “we believe this [title] no less [applies] to the other apostles of Christ”215 who became the foundation stones upon which the household of God was built (Ephesians 2:20). What Christ gave to Peter he gave to all. That said, Kamateros freely acknowledged that Peter was indeed “set by Christ before the other disciples, and in honor preceded the others,”216 and yet the patriarch firmly believed that “the apostolic choir did not need to obey him as their chief and master, thus leaving to the Church of the Romans a similar universal primacy.”217 He then likened the Bishop of Rome’s position in the college of bishops to Peter’s place within the circle of apostles—that is, he was “first in rank and honor”218 among the bishops, but he did not have authority over them. Rome was not the mother of all churches, but rather “first among honored sisters” [i.e., the patriarchates] who “like fingers on the hand or strings on a lyre” act in harmony without one being more important than the others.219 For Kamateros the primacy had been granted to Rome “not because Peter was made [its] bishop … or because he died there. … Such honor has been granted because at the time it was exalted by the emperor and the senate, neither of which is found there any longer.”220 The source of Rome’s greatness was neither Christ nor Peter, but rather the canons of Chalcedon. According to Aristeides Papadakis, this dialogue between pope and patriarch is notable for two reasons. First, it took place “just a few years before the Fourth Crusade, when the breech between the two great churches was not yet final and rapprochement was not yet next door to impossible.”221 Second, in these letters one sees the archetype for all subsequent debate on the papacy, with Latin demands for obedience met by increasingly strident Byzantine refutations of Rome’s primacy and the reasons for it. The Fourth Crusade certainly increased the frequency and “heat” of these attacks, but “as a rule, new arguments against the Roman primacy were rare after 1200 [and] subsequent Byzantine assessments of the question were to build on the same solid foundation established by twelfth century polemicists.”222 Long before the crusader armies approached the walls of Constantinople in 1203, the battle lines were already clearly drawn.
1. It is unknown when or how this schism was ever resolved, Peter III of Antioch later claiming that he heard the pope’s name commemorated in Constantinople at some point in 1009, but this might have been before Patriarch Sergius acted to remove it.
2. According to Berno of Reichenau, the creed was not included in the Roman liturgy prior to Henry II’s arrival, but the Emperor insisted that the Saxon custom be upheld and the creed (with the filioque) chanted. Bernonis, Libellus de quibusdam Rebus ad Missae Officium Pertinentibus (PL 142, 1060–61). 3. Rudolf Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque 4.2; Critical edition and Eng. trans: Rodulfus Glaber, The Five Books of the Histories, ed. and trans. John France, and Neithard Bulst (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 172–73. 4. Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, 130. 5. Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 36. 6. See V. Grumel, “Les Préliminarires du schism de Michel Cérulaire ou la question romaine avant 1054,” Revue des études byzantines 10 (1953): 5–23.
7. Rudolf Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque 4.3; Critical edition and Eng. trans: Rodulfus Glaber, The Five Books of the Histories, 174–75. 8. Norwich, Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy, 94. 9. Not everyone was pleased by the emperor’s actions. The anonymous tract De Ordinando Pontifice chided “the most-worthless Emperor” (imperator nequissimus) Henry for interfering in Church affairs and claimed that because of his actions the Council of Sutri was illegitimate. See Erwin Frauenknecht, ed., Der Traktat De ordinando pontifice (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1992); Hans Hubert Anton, Der sogenannte Traktat “De ordinando pontifice”: ein Rechtsgutachten in Zusammenhang mit der Synode von Sutri (1046) (Bonn: L. Röhrscheid, 1982). 10. “It is scarcely remarkable that rational creatures sang his praises, when even irrational animals (wonderful to relate!) articulated human words to proclaim his name. For it is alleged by truthful reporters that in Benevento a cock frequently repeated his name and instead of uttering its natural sound loudly cried ‘Pope Leo!’ to the amazement of all.’” The Life of Pope Leo IX in The Papal Reform of the Eleventh Century: Lives of Pope Leo IX and Pope Gregory VII, Manchester Medieval Sources, ed. and trans. Ian Robinson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 135.
11. Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 34. 12. Ibid., 30. 13. Louth, Greek East and Latin West, 297. 14. Peter Damian’s Liber Gomorrhianus, which condemned (in graphic detail) homosexual practices among the clergy, was addressed to Pope Leo. See Peter Damian, Book of Gomorrah: An Eleventh-century Treatise against Clerical Homosexual Practices, trans. Pierre J. Payer (Waterloo, Ont: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1982). 15. Louth, Greek East and Latin West, 298. 16. Ullmann, A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages, 128.
7. Rudolf Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque 4.3; Critical edition and Eng. trans: Rodulfus Glaber, The Five Books of the Histories, 174–75. 8. Norwich, Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy, 94. 9. Not everyone was pleased by the emperor’s actions. The anonymous tract De Ordinando Pontifice chided “the most-worthless Emperor” (imperator nequissimus) Henry for interfering in Church affairs and claimed that because of his actions the Council of Sutri was illegitimate. See Erwin Frauenknecht, ed., Der Traktat De ordinando pontifice (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1992); Hans Hubert Anton, Der sogenannte Traktat “De ordinando pontifice”: ein Rechtsgutachten in Zusammenhang mit der Synode von Sutri (1046) (Bonn: L. Röhrscheid, 1982). 10. “It is scarcely remarkable that rational creatures sang his praises, when even irrational animals (wonderful to relate!) articulated human words to proclaim his name. For it is alleged by truthful reporters that in Benevento a cock frequently repeated his name and instead of uttering its natural sound loudly cried ‘Pope Leo!’ to the amazement of all.’” The Life of Pope Leo IX in The Papal Reform of the Eleventh Century: Lives of Pope Leo IX and Pope Gregory VII, Manchester Medieval Sources, ed. and trans. Ian Robinson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 135.
11. Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 34. 12. Ibid., 30. 13. Louth, Greek East and Latin West, 297. 14. Peter Damian’s Liber Gomorrhianus, which condemned (in graphic detail) homosexual practices among the clergy, was addressed to Pope Leo. See Peter Damian, Book of Gomorrah: An Eleventh-century Treatise against Clerical Homosexual Practices, trans. Pierre J. Payer (Waterloo, Ont: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1982). 15. Louth, Greek East and Latin West, 298. 16. Ullmann, A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages, 128.
17. Peter Damian, De Brevitate vitae pontificum Romanorum et divina providentia (PL 145: 473–80). 18. For the restriction of this title to the pope alone see Michele Maccarrone, Vicarius Christi. Storia del titolo papale (Rome: Lateranum, 1953). 19. Peter Damian, Apologeticus ob dismissum episcopatum (PL 145:443). 20. Peter Damian, De Brevitate vitae pontificum Romanorum et divina providentia (PL 145: 474). 21. Morrison, Tradition and Authority in the Western Church, 283. 22. Louth, Greek East and Latin West, 299. 23. Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 34–35. 24. The Life of Pope Leo IX, in Robinson, ed. and trans., The Papal Reform of the Eleventh Century, 146.
25. On one hand “the ancient cultural feud between Latins and Greeks provided Southern Italy with a smoldering cinder-bed of misunderstanding and distrust” Mahlon Smith, And Taking Bread … Cerularius and the Azymite Controversy of 1054, Théologie Historique 47 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1978), 117. On the other, “the long-lived cooperation and coexistence of Latins and Greeks [also] provided Southern Italy with reserves of understanding, tolerance, and trust that could hold Rome and Constantinople together.” Tia Kolbaba, “The Virtues and Faults of the Latin Christians,” in Paul Stephenson, ed., The Byzantine World (New York: Routledge, 2010), 119. See also Jules Gay, D’Italie méridionale et l’empire Byzantin 867–1071 (Paris: Frontemoing, 1904); G. A. Loud, The Latin Church in Norman Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); La chiesa greca in Italia dall’viii al xvi secolo. Atti del convegno storico interecclesiale (Bari, 30 Apr.–4. Magg. 1969), 3 vols. (Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1972–1973). 26. Leo had tried to exert his own influence there—in 1050 his reforming zeal had led him to call the Synod of Siponto, legislating in an area “long under Byzantine administration.” Smith, And Taking Bread, 79. 27. For different opinions see Judith Ryder, “Changing Perspectives on 1054,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 35 (2011): 20–37; Tia Kolbaba, “1054 Revisited: Response to Ryder,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 35 (2011): 38–44. See also Donald Nicol, “Byzantium and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 13 (1962): 1–20. 28. Despite their occasional usefulness, the pope had no great love for the Normans and was, in fact, their prisoner at Benevento for several months before his death. 29. Leo of Ohrid, Epistula ad Ioannem Episcopum Tranensem in Cornelius Will, ed., Acta et Scripta quae de controversiis ecclesiae graecae et latinae saeculo undecimo composite extant (Leipzig, 1861), 56–60. For more on this charge see Tia Kolbaba, “Byzantines, Armenians, and Latins: Unleavened Bread and Heresy in the Tenth Century,” in George Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou, eds., Orthodox Constructions of the West (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 45–57. 30. John Erickson, “Leavened and Unleavened: Some Theological Implications of the Schism of 1054,” in The Challenge of Our Past (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991), 137.
31. Niketas Stethatos, Libellus Contra Latinos, in Acta et Scripta, ed. Will, 126–36. 32. Tia Kolbaba, The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 21–22. See also Kolbaba, “Byzantine Perceptions of Latin Religious ‘Errors’: Themes and Changes from 850 to 1350,” in The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. Angeliki Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001), 117–43. Kolbaba cites the earlier conclusions of Jean Darrouzès, “Les documents byzantins du XIIe siècle sur la primaute romaine,” Revue des études byzantines 23 (1965): 51–100. 33. Erickson, “Leavened and Unleavened,” 134. See also Michele Giuseppe D’Agostino, Il primato della sede di Roma in Leone IX (1049–1054), Studio dei testi latini nella controversia greco–romana nel periodo pregregoriano (Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2008). 34. The pope responded to his “most dear brother” (charissime frater) in Antioch, reminding him that Rome’s primacy had been “promulgated by all the venerable councils … and confirmed by the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” Leo told him to resist the pretentions of Constantinople, for Antioch owed its dignity to its foundation by Peter, “the head and hinge of the apostles.” Leo IX, Epistola ad Petrum Episcopum Antiochenum, in Acta et Scripta, ed. Will, 168–71. 35. Peter III of Antioch, Epistola ad Dominicum Gradensem, in Acta et Scripta, ed. Will, 214.
25. On one hand “the ancient cultural feud between Latins and Greeks provided Southern Italy with a smoldering cinder-bed of misunderstanding and distrust” Mahlon Smith, And Taking Bread … Cerularius and the Azymite Controversy of 1054, Théologie Historique 47 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1978), 117. On the other, “the long-lived cooperation and coexistence of Latins and Greeks [also] provided Southern Italy with reserves of understanding, tolerance, and trust that could hold Rome and Constantinople together.” Tia Kolbaba, “The Virtues and Faults of the Latin Christians,” in Paul Stephenson, ed., The Byzantine World (New York: Routledge, 2010), 119. See also Jules Gay, D’Italie méridionale et l’empire Byzantin 867–1071 (Paris: Frontemoing, 1904); G. A. Loud, The Latin Church in Norman Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); La chiesa greca in Italia dall’viii al xvi secolo. Atti del convegno storico interecclesiale (Bari, 30 Apr.–4. Magg. 1969), 3 vols. (Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1972–1973). 26. Leo had tried to exert his own influence there—in 1050 his reforming zeal had led him to call the Synod of Siponto, legislating in an area “long under Byzantine administration.” Smith, And Taking Bread, 79. 27. For different opinions see Judith Ryder, “Changing Perspectives on 1054,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 35 (2011): 20–37; Tia Kolbaba, “1054 Revisited: Response to Ryder,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 35 (2011): 38–44. See also Donald Nicol, “Byzantium and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 13 (1962): 1–20. 28. Despite their occasional usefulness, the pope had no great love for the Normans and was, in fact, their prisoner at Benevento for several months before his death. 29. Leo of Ohrid, Epistula ad Ioannem Episcopum Tranensem in Cornelius Will, ed., Acta et Scripta quae de controversiis ecclesiae graecae et latinae saeculo undecimo composite extant (Leipzig, 1861), 56–60. For more on this charge see Tia Kolbaba, “Byzantines, Armenians, and Latins: Unleavened Bread and Heresy in the Tenth Century,” in George Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou, eds., Orthodox Constructions of the West (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 45–57. 30. John Erickson, “Leavened and Unleavened: Some Theological Implications of the Schism of 1054,” in The Challenge of Our Past (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991), 137.
31. Niketas Stethatos, Libellus Contra Latinos, in Acta et Scripta, ed. Will, 126–36. 32. Tia Kolbaba, The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 21–22. See also Kolbaba, “Byzantine Perceptions of Latin Religious ‘Errors’: Themes and Changes from 850 to 1350,” in The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. Angeliki Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001), 117–43. Kolbaba cites the earlier conclusions of Jean Darrouzès, “Les documents byzantins du XIIe siècle sur la primaute romaine,” Revue des études byzantines 23 (1965): 51–100. 33. Erickson, “Leavened and Unleavened,” 134. See also Michele Giuseppe D’Agostino, Il primato della sede di Roma in Leone IX (1049–1054), Studio dei testi latini nella controversia greco–romana nel periodo pregregoriano (Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2008). 34. The pope responded to his “most dear brother” (charissime frater) in Antioch, reminding him that Rome’s primacy had been “promulgated by all the venerable councils … and confirmed by the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” Leo told him to resist the pretentions of Constantinople, for Antioch owed its dignity to its foundation by Peter, “the head and hinge of the apostles.” Leo IX, Epistola ad Petrum Episcopum Antiochenum, in Acta et Scripta, ed. Will, 168–71. 35. Peter III of Antioch, Epistola ad Dominicum Gradensem, in Acta et Scripta, ed. Will, 214.
36. The patriarchal status of Grado, in Peter’s opinion, was only honorary. 37. Peter III of Antioch, Epistola ad Dominicum Gradensem, in Acta et Scripta, ed. Will, 211–12. 38. See Walter Ullman, “Cardinal Humbert and the Ecclesia Romana,” Studi Gregoriani 4 (1952): 111–27. 39. Leo IX, Epistola ad Michaelem Constantinopolitanum Archiepiscoporum, in Acta et Scripta, ed. Will, 65–85. He also composed a response to Leo in the form of dialogue between a Roman and a Constantinopolitan (Cardinal Humbert, Dialogus, in, Acta et Scripta, ed. Will, 93–126). 40. Leo IX, Epistola ad Michaelem Constantinopolitanum Archiepiscoporum, in Acta et Scripta, ed. Will, 68. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., 68–69. 43. Ibid., 70. 44. Ibid., 73.
45. Ibid., 80. 46. Cerularius compounded his error when he signed the letter as “ecumenical patriarch,” which Leo considered “a sacrilegious usurpation” of a title never granted by the holy fathers. Leo IX, Epistola ad Michaelem Constantinopolitanum Archiepiscoporum, in Acta et Scripta, ed. Will, 90. 47. Ibid., 91–92.
48. See Allan John Macdonald, Berengar and the Reform of Sacramental Doctrine (London: Longmans, 1930), 134. 49. J. M. Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 133. 50. Chadwick, East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church, 210. 51. Louth, Greek East and Latin West, 309. A contemporary biography can be found in F. Tinnefeld, "Michael I. Kerullarios, Patriarch von Konstantinopel (1043– 1058) Kritische Überlegungen zu einer Biographie," Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 39 (1989): 95–127. 52. See Richard Mayne, “East and West in 1054,” Cambridge Historical Journal 11 (1954): 133– 48; Axel Bayer, Spaltung der Christenheit: Das sogenannte Morgenländische Schisma von 1054 (Cologne: Böhlau Vertag, 2002); Vitalien Laurent, “Le schisme de Michel Cérulaire,” Échos d’Orient 31 (1932): 97–110; Tia Kolbaba, “The Legacy of Humbert and Cerularius: Traditions of the Schism of 1054 in Byzantine Texts and Manuscripts of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Porphyrogentia: Essays on the History and Literature of Byzantium and the Latin East in Honour of Julian Chrysostomides, ed. Jonathan Harris, Charalambos Dendrinos, and Judith Herrin (London: Ashgate, 2003), 47–62; Anton Michel, Humbert und Kerularios: Quellen und Studien zum Schisma des XI. Jahrhunderts 1 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1924). 53. “But they come against us and against the orthodox church of God, not as from elder Rome but as from some other place … intrigu[ing] against the faithful and even ‘counterfeited’ their arrival with the pretext they came from Rome and pretending they were sent by the pope.” Excommunicatio qua feriuntur Michael Caerularius atque ejus sectatores, Acta et scripta, ed. Will, 153–54; Eng. trans: Deno John Geanakoplos, Byzantium: Church, Society and Civilization Seen through Contemporary Eyes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 211.
45. Ibid., 80. 46. Cerularius compounded his error when he signed the letter as “ecumenical patriarch,” which Leo considered “a sacrilegious usurpation” of a title never granted by the holy fathers. Leo IX, Epistola ad Michaelem Constantinopolitanum Archiepiscoporum, in Acta et Scripta, ed. Will, 90. 47. Ibid., 91–92.
48. See Allan John Macdonald, Berengar and the Reform of Sacramental Doctrine (London: Longmans, 1930), 134. 49. J. M. Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 133. 50. Chadwick, East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church, 210. 51. Louth, Greek East and Latin West, 309. A contemporary biography can be found in F. Tinnefeld, "Michael I. Kerullarios, Patriarch von Konstantinopel (1043– 1058) Kritische Überlegungen zu einer Biographie," Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 39 (1989): 95–127. 52. See Richard Mayne, “East and West in 1054,” Cambridge Historical Journal 11 (1954): 133– 48; Axel Bayer, Spaltung der Christenheit: Das sogenannte Morgenländische Schisma von 1054 (Cologne: Böhlau Vertag, 2002); Vitalien Laurent, “Le schisme de Michel Cérulaire,” Échos d’Orient 31 (1932): 97–110; Tia Kolbaba, “The Legacy of Humbert and Cerularius: Traditions of the Schism of 1054 in Byzantine Texts and Manuscripts of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Porphyrogentia: Essays on the History and Literature of Byzantium and the Latin East in Honour of Julian Chrysostomides, ed. Jonathan Harris, Charalambos Dendrinos, and Judith Herrin (London: Ashgate, 2003), 47–62; Anton Michel, Humbert und Kerularios: Quellen und Studien zum Schisma des XI. Jahrhunderts 1 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1924). 53. “But they come against us and against the orthodox church of God, not as from elder Rome but as from some other place … intrigu[ing] against the faithful and even ‘counterfeited’ their arrival with the pretext they came from Rome and pretending they were sent by the pope.” Excommunicatio qua feriuntur Michael Caerularius atque ejus sectatores, Acta et scripta, ed. Will, 153–54; Eng. trans: Deno John Geanakoplos, Byzantium: Church, Society and Civilization Seen through Contemporary Eyes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 211.
Soon after Humbert’s departure, Cerularius wrote to the other Eastern patriarchs to enlist their support in resisting both the heresies and pretensions of the Latin Church. Among the recipients was Peter III of Antioch, who quickly realized that many items on Cerularius’s list of Latin “errors” were either manifestly untrue or concerned trivial matters of ritual and discipline that should not affect the maintenance of ecclesial communion. This was particularly true of Cerularius’s statement that “from the sixth holy and ecumenical council to the present the commemoration of the pope has been excised from the sacred dyptichs because the pope at that time, Vigilius, did not want to come to the council.”63 Peter knew this to be false as he had personally heard the pope’s name commemorated at Constantinople in 1009, and wrote that he was “ashamed” that Cerularius had written such things “before examination or complete understanding, setting forth from vain rumor what never happened as if it had happened.”64 Peter urged Cerularius to tolerance, asking him to differentiate between the trivial (e.g., the eating of lard and the use of silken vestments), those errors that required fraternal correction, and those (like the addition of the filioque) that must be fiercely resisted. Whatever their shortcomings, Peter wrote to Michael that the Latins were “our brothers, even if from rusticity or ignorance they often lapse from what is right.”65 If there were canonical irregularities occurring in the Latin West, then surely they must be occurring without the pope’s knowledge.66 Thus despite his own problems with certain Latin practices and beliefs, Peter refused to break communion with Rome, as did the other Eastern sees, and it appears that the whole incident was soon forgotten. “Misunderstandings between the two ecclesiastical centers were all too common, and no one was to guess that the quarrel of 1054 was of greater significance than earlier disputes, or that it marked a schism that was never again to be healed.”67
68. Benedict X was elected contrary to the wishes of the late Pope Stephen IX (1057–58), who had made the cardinals swear a solemn oath that the election of his successor would not take place without the presence of Cardinal Hildebrand, who was at the time traveling in Germany. A second election therefore took place (with Hildebrand present), elevating Nicholas II to the papal throne. 69. Robert Guiscard swore an oath in 1059 to Nicholas promising (among other things) “to support the holy Roman Church in holding and acquiring the temporalities and possessions of St. Peter everywhere and against all men … to help you to hold the Roman papacy securely and honorably … [and] to put all churches in my lordship and their possessions under your power.” Eng. trans: Brian Tierney, ed., The Crisis of Church and State 1050–1300 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 44. 70. According to Michael Psellos, it was only Cerularius’s death that prevented his deposition by Isaac I on the charges of treason, heresy, and witchcraft. Michael Psellos, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, trans by E. R. A. Sewter (London: Penguin Books, 1966), 269; Michael Psellos, Un discours inédit de Psellos: Accusation du patriarche Michel Cérulaire devant le synode (1059), ed. Louis Bréhier (Paris: E. Leroux, 1904).
68. Benedict X was elected contrary to the wishes of the late Pope Stephen IX (1057–58), who had made the cardinals swear a solemn oath that the election of his successor would not take place without the presence of Cardinal Hildebrand, who was at the time traveling in Germany. A second election therefore took place (with Hildebrand present), elevating Nicholas II to the papal throne. 69. Robert Guiscard swore an oath in 1059 to Nicholas promising (among other things) “to support the holy Roman Church in holding and acquiring the temporalities and possessions of St. Peter everywhere and against all men … to help you to hold the Roman papacy securely and honorably … [and] to put all churches in my lordship and their possessions under your power.” Eng. trans: Brian Tierney, ed., The Crisis of Church and State 1050–1300 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 44. 70. According to Michael Psellos, it was only Cerularius’s death that prevented his deposition by Isaac I on the charges of treason, heresy, and witchcraft. Michael Psellos, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, trans by E. R. A. Sewter (London: Penguin Books, 1966), 269; Michael Psellos, Un discours inédit de Psellos: Accusation du patriarche Michel Cérulaire devant le synode (1059), ed. Louis Bréhier (Paris: E. Leroux, 1904).
54. Humbert, A Brief or Succinct Account of What the Ambassadors of the Holy Roman and Apostolic See Did in the Royal City, Acta et Scripta, ed. Will, 151. 55. The filioque had been raised at an earlier disputation held at Bari in 1053 and Humbert had even authored his own pro-filioque treatise, the Rationes de sancti spiritus processione a patre et filio. 56. Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, 132. 57. Geanakoplos, Byzantium, 206. In an e-mail to the author Tia Kolbaba wrote: “It is worth remembering, too, that the papal-reform party and their absolutist vision of papal power hadn’t even triumphed yet in the West. To expect easterners to understand and/or accept the vision of someone like Humbert is anachronistic, given that the battles to get western Christians to accept papal reform were just getting started.” 58. Excommunicatio qua feriuntur Michael Caerularius atque ejus sectatores, Acta et scripta, ed. Will, 153–54; Eng. trans: Geanakoplos, Byzantium, 208–9. Pope Leo’s death in April (even before the legates arrived in Constantinople) calls into question the validity of their actions, since their mandate would have died with the pope. It is entirely possible that Humbert himself knew of the pope’s death, which is why he felt bound to act before it became known throughout the capital. See Emil Herman, “I legati inviati da Leoni IX nel 1054 a Constantinopoli,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 8 (1942): 209–18.
59. Excommunicatio qua feriuntur Michael Caerularius atque ejus sectatores, Acta et scripta, ed. Will, 153. 60. Ibid. Among the patriarch’s crimes was the charge that Michael and his followers “like Pneumatomachians or Theoumachians have deleted from the creed the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son.” Other charges included treating Latins as heretics (and subsequently re-baptizing them, like the Arians) and allowing priests to marry (like the Nicholaites). Cerularius was also accused of threatening to close the Latin churches in Constantinople unless they adopted the Greek rite, but this claim was recently challenged by Tia Kolbaba, “On the Closing of the Churches and the Rebaptism of Latins: Greek Perfidy or Latin Slander?” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 29 (2005): 39–51. Humbert also made sure to note Michael’s personal rudeness to the pope’s representatives (e.g., forbidding use of a church in which to celebrate mass), demonstrating his insolence to the Holy See. 61. See Matt. 10:14–15, Mark 6:11, and Luke 9:5. 62. Edictum Synodi Constantinopolitanae, Acta et scripta, ed. Will, 155– 58 (Eng. trans: Geanakoplos, Byzantium, 209–12).
63. Michael Cerularius, Letter to Patriarch Peter III of Antioch, in Acta et scripta, ed. Will, 178. 64. Peter of Antioch to Michael Cerularius, in Acta et scripta, ed. Will, 190–91. 65. Ibid., 198. 66. Tia Kolbaba cautions us that in the eleventh century “the Latin West” was not yet viewed as a monolithic entity opposite “the Greek East” as if the two existed in a strictly bi-polar world. Peter of Antioch was fully aware that the Normans, Germans, Lombards, etc. were all distinct entities and that not all of them were on the best of terms with the pope. Kolbaba, “Byzantine Perceptions of Latin Religious ‘Errors,’” 117–43. 67. Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, 298.
59. Excommunicatio qua feriuntur Michael Caerularius atque ejus sectatores, Acta et scripta, ed. Will, 153. 60. Ibid. Among the patriarch’s crimes was the charge that Michael and his followers “like Pneumatomachians or Theoumachians have deleted from the creed the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son.” Other charges included treating Latins as heretics (and subsequently re-baptizing them, like the Arians) and allowing priests to marry (like the Nicholaites). Cerularius was also accused of threatening to close the Latin churches in Constantinople unless they adopted the Greek rite, but this claim was recently challenged by Tia Kolbaba, “On the Closing of the Churches and the Rebaptism of Latins: Greek Perfidy or Latin Slander?” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 29 (2005): 39–51. Humbert also made sure to note Michael’s personal rudeness to the pope’s representatives (e.g., forbidding use of a church in which to celebrate mass), demonstrating his insolence to the Holy See. 61. See Matt. 10:14–15, Mark 6:11, and Luke 9:5. 62. Edictum Synodi Constantinopolitanae, Acta et scripta, ed. Will, 155– 58 (Eng. trans: Geanakoplos, Byzantium, 209–12).
63. Michael Cerularius, Letter to Patriarch Peter III of Antioch, in Acta et scripta, ed. Will, 178. 64. Peter of Antioch to Michael Cerularius, in Acta et scripta, ed. Will, 190–91. 65. Ibid., 198. 66. Tia Kolbaba cautions us that in the eleventh century “the Latin West” was not yet viewed as a monolithic entity opposite “the Greek East” as if the two existed in a strictly bi-polar world. Peter of Antioch was fully aware that the Normans, Germans, Lombards, etc. were all distinct entities and that not all of them were on the best of terms with the pope. Kolbaba, “Byzantine Perceptions of Latin Religious ‘Errors,’” 117–43. 67. Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, 298.
71. Peter Damian, Letter 91 to Constantine Lichoudes; Eng. trans: Peter Damian, Letters 91–120, trans. Owen Blum, OFM, FC Medieval Continuation 3 (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 4. 72. Ibid. 73. John Julius Norwich, A Short History of Byzantium (New York: Vintage, 1997), 242. 74. See Friedrich Kempf, “Primatiale und episcopal- synodale Struktur der Kirche vor der gregorianischen Reform” Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 16 (1978): 27–66; Uta-Renate Blumenthal, Papal Reform and Canon Law in the 11th and 12th Centuries (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998); Ian Robinson, The Papacy, 1073–1198: Continuity and Innovation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); H. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085 (Oxford University Press, 1998); Cowdrey, Popes and Church Reform in the 11th Century (London: Ashgate, 2000). Werner Goez, Kirchenreform und Investiturstreit: 910–1122 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2000); Kathleen Cushing, Reform and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century: Spirituality and Social Change (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).
75. Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 117. 76. Ibid. It was, for example, his “extreme and indeed bizarre interpretation” of the Petrusmystik (Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 47) that led to Dictatus Papae 23. See Walter Ullman, “Romanus Pontifex indubitantur efficitur sanctus: Dictatus Papae 23 in Retrospect and Prospect,” Studi Gregoriani 6 (1959–61): 229–64. 77. For Klaus Schatz it was this mystical identification of the pope with Peter that “was the true kernel of Gregory’s notion of primacy.” Schatz, Papal Primacy, 85–86. 78. See Werner Goez, “Zur Persönlichkeit Gregors VII,” Römische Quartalschrift 73 (1978): 193–216. 79. This formula, found in Peter Damian, appeared in a slightly altered form in the Dictatus Papae: “That he who is not at peace with the Roman church shall not be considered catholic” (Quod catholicus non habeatur qui non concordat Romanae ecclesiae). Eng. trans: Ernest Henderson, ed., Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages (London: George Bell and Sons, 1910), 366–67. See also Horst Fuhrmann, “‘Quod catholicus non habeatur, qui non concordat Romanae ecclesiae,’ Randnotizen zum Dictatus Papae,” in Festschrift für Helmut Beumann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Kurt-Ulrich Jäschke and Reinhard Wenskus (Thorbecke: Sigmaringen, 1977), 263–87. 80. Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 53. 81. H. J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Foundation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1983), 87.
82. Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 53. See especially Joseph J. Ryan, Saint Peter Damiani and his canonical sources; a preliminary study in the antecedents of the Gregorian reform (Toronto: Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Mediae Aetatis, 1956). 83. Morrison, Tradition and Authority in the Western Church, 346. 84. Hermann Pottmeyer, Towards a Papacy in Communion: Perspectives from Vatican Councils I & II (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1998), 30. 85. Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy, 118. 86. Ullmann, A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages, 147–48. 87. Schatz, Papal Primacy, 86. 88. Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy, 118.
75. Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 117. 76. Ibid. It was, for example, his “extreme and indeed bizarre interpretation” of the Petrusmystik (Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 47) that led to Dictatus Papae 23. See Walter Ullman, “Romanus Pontifex indubitantur efficitur sanctus: Dictatus Papae 23 in Retrospect and Prospect,” Studi Gregoriani 6 (1959–61): 229–64. 77. For Klaus Schatz it was this mystical identification of the pope with Peter that “was the true kernel of Gregory’s notion of primacy.” Schatz, Papal Primacy, 85–86. 78. See Werner Goez, “Zur Persönlichkeit Gregors VII,” Römische Quartalschrift 73 (1978): 193–216. 79. This formula, found in Peter Damian, appeared in a slightly altered form in the Dictatus Papae: “That he who is not at peace with the Roman church shall not be considered catholic” (Quod catholicus non habeatur qui non concordat Romanae ecclesiae). Eng. trans: Ernest Henderson, ed., Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages (London: George Bell and Sons, 1910), 366–67. See also Horst Fuhrmann, “‘Quod catholicus non habeatur, qui non concordat Romanae ecclesiae,’ Randnotizen zum Dictatus Papae,” in Festschrift für Helmut Beumann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Kurt-Ulrich Jäschke and Reinhard Wenskus (Thorbecke: Sigmaringen, 1977), 263–87. 80. Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 53. 81. H. J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Foundation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1983), 87.
82. Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 53. See especially Joseph J. Ryan, Saint Peter Damiani and his canonical sources; a preliminary study in the antecedents of the Gregorian reform (Toronto: Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Mediae Aetatis, 1956). 83. Morrison, Tradition and Authority in the Western Church, 346. 84. Hermann Pottmeyer, Towards a Papacy in Communion: Perspectives from Vatican Councils I & II (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1998), 30. 85. Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy, 118. 86. Ullmann, A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages, 147–48. 87. Schatz, Papal Primacy, 86. 88. Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy, 118.
89. Henn, The Honor of My Brothers, 102. 90. Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 46. 91. Patrick Granfield, The Limits of the Papacy: Authority and Autonomy in the Church (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 34. For more see Karl Hofmann, Der “Dictatus papae” Gregors VII (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1933); Hofmann, “Der “Dictatus papae” Gregors VII. al seiner Kanonessammlung?” Studi Gregoriani 1 (1947): 531–37. 92. Dictatus Papae; Henderson, ed., Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, 366–67. 93. It remains unknown whether the pope’s power to depose the emperor would have also included the emperor in Constantinople. Gregory later excommunicated Nikephoros III (1078–81), whom he believed had wrongfully deposed the Emperor Michael, but he never moved to depose him.
94. Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, 137. Papadakis entertains the “intriguing” theory that the Dictatus Papae were not only aimed at the East, but were also, in fact, originally written for the Orthodox as a “reunion formula” at some point after 1054. Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 57–58. 95. John Meyendorff, “Les causes directes du schism,” Le Messager Orthodoxe 7 (1959): 4–9. Francis Dvornik observed that “in enforcing observance of Roman customs the [reformers] took no account whatever of the fact that the East had different customs and different rites.” Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, 129. 96. Nicol, “Byzantium and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century,” 13. 97. Gregory VII to Henry IV; Eng. trans: Ephraim Emerton, The Correspondence of Pope Gregory VII: Selected Letters from the Registrum (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 57. 98. André Tuilier, “Michel VII et le pape Grégoire VII: Byzance et la réforme grégorienne,” XV Congrès international des Études Byzantines (Athens, 1980), 350–64; H. E. J. Cowdrey, “The Gregorian Papacy, Byzantium, and the First Crusade,” Byzantinische Forshungen 13 (1988): 145–69; Cowdrey, “Pope Gregory’s VII’s Crusading Plans of 1074,” in Benjamin Kedar ed., Outremer: Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem Presented to Joshua Prawer (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Inst., 1982), 27–40; Georg Hofmann, “Papst Gregor VII und der christliche Osten,” Studi Gregoriani 1 (1947): 169–81; Ian Robinson, “Gregory VII and the Soldiers of Christ,” History 58 (1973): 169–92.
99. Nicol, “Byzantium and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century,” 13. 100. Anna’s objectivity is certainly in doubt—Gregory had not only excommunicated her father Alexios, but also had congratulated Robert Guiscard for his victory over Alexios at Durazzo in 1081. For more on Anna and her views of the West see Thalia Gouma-Peterson, ed., Anna Komnene and Her Times (London: Routledge, 2000); J. Howard-Johnston, “Anna Komnene and the Alexiad,” in Alexios I Komnenos: Papers of the Second Belfast Byzantine International Colloquium, 14– 16 April 1989, ed. Margaret Mullett and Dion Smythe (Belfast: Belfast Byzantine Texts and Translations, 1996), 260–302; R. D. Thomas, “Anna Comnena’s Account of the First Crusade: History and Politics in the Reigns of the Emperors Alexius I and Manuel I Comnenus,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 15 (1991): 269–312; John France, “Anna Comnena, the Alexiad and the First Crusade,” Reading Medieval Studies 10 (1983): 20–32; Paul Stephenson, “Anna Comnena’s Alexiad as a Source for the Second Crusade,” Journal of Medieval History 29 (2003): 41–54. 101. Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, trans. by E.R.A. Sewter (London: Penguin Publishing, 1969), 61–62. 102. Ibid.
103. Ibid.
104. See Paul Alexander, “The Donation of Constantine at Byzantium and Its Earliest Use against the Western Empire,” in Religious and Political History and Thought in the Byzantine Empire (London: Variorum Reprints, 1978), 11–26; Hans-Georg Krause, “Das Constitutum Constantini im Schisma von 1054,”in Hubert Mordek, ed., Aus Kirche und Reich: Festschrift für Friedrich Kempf (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1983), 131–58; Dimiter Angelov, “The Donation of Constantine and the Church in Late Byzantium,” in Church and Society in Late Byzantium, ed. Dimiter Angelov (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2009), 91–157. Peter L’Huillier traces the translatio imperii argument even further back, to a scholion that is dated in the seventh century: “If, therefore, as the holy council affirms, the fathers attributed the [primatial] prerogatives to older Rome because it was the capital, now that, by the good will of God, this city [Constantinople] is the only capital, it is the one who rightly holds the first place position” L’Huillier, The Church of the Ancient Councils, 283. See also Wilfred Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington. The History of Byzantine and Eastern Canon Law to 1500 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012).
105. His alleged last words were: “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile.”
106. John Meyendorff, Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantine-Russian Relations in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 27.
107. John II of Kiev, Letter to Clement of Rome; Critical edition, in S. A. Pavlov, Critical Essay on the History of the Greco-Russian Polemic against the Latins (in Russian) (Petersburg, 1878), 167–86. For a discussion of this text see Bernard Leib, Rome, Kiev, et Byzance à la Fin du XIe siècle. Rapports religieux des Latins et des Gréco-Russes sous le pontificat d’Urbain II (1088– 1099) (Paris: Auguste Picard, 1924), 32–37; Jannis Spiteris, La Critica Bizantina del Primato Romano nel secolo XII. Orientalia Christiana Analecta 208 (Roma: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1979), 38–44. 108. For his list of Latin errors see Kolbaba, The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins, 175–76. 109. John II of Kiev, Letter to Clement of Rome; Pavlov, Critical Essay, 174. 110. Ibid., 185–86. 111. Spiteris, La Critica Bizantina del Primato Romano nel secolo XII, 42. 112. This link between the orthodoxy and primacy of Rome is also seen in a letter ascribed to Patriarch Nicholas III of Constantinople (1084–1111), but now thought to have been written at some point after the Fourth Crusade. In the letter, Nicholas allegedly recognized that “there was a time when the pope was first among us since he shared the same sentiments as we do, but now that he holds such different views, how can we call him first?” Yet even now the author expressed his willingness to acknowledge the primacy of the pope “if he will show us the identity of his faith with ours. … but if he will not do that, he will never receive what he asks of us.” Eng. trans: Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, 140. For the dating see Jean Darrouzès, “Les documents byzantins du XIIe siècle sur la primaute romaine,” 51.
113. For this exchange see Walther Holtzman, “Die Unionsverhandlungen zwischen Kaiser Alexios I und Papst Urban II im Jahre 1089,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 28 (1928): 38–67. 114. Ibid., 60–62. 115. Ibid. The Latin chronicler Goffredo Malaterra claimed that the schism was caused solely by the fact that “the Greeks sacrificed with leavened and the Latins with unleavened bread.” Goffredo Malaterra, Historia Sicula 4.13 (PL 149: 1192). 116. Holtzman, “Die Unionsverhandlungen,” 62–64. 117. Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, 139. 118. Chadwick, East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church, 223. 119. Kolbaba, “The Virtues and Faults of the Latin Christians,” 119. When Reggio in Calabria was contested by both a Byzantine and a Norman candidate, Urban clearly asserted his jurisdictional claims to the area, telling the Greek candidate, Basil, that his ordination at the hands of the Constantinopolitan Patriarch did not entitle him to a see within papal jurisdiction. Yet Urban did offer Basil and several other Greek bishops sees in southern Italy as long as they acknowledged papal jurisdiction there.
120. What exactly Alexios asked for remains the subject of debate. Most scholars today consider it unlikely that Alexios actually suggested a Frankish-Byzantine crusade for Jerusalem and believe what he really wanted was simply some “foreign auxiliary troops” to assist in Asia Minor (Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 85). For various views on Alexios’s motives and the nature of his request see Dana Munro, “Did the Emperor Alexius I Ask for Aid to the Council of Piacenza, 1095?” The American Historical Review 27 (1922): 731– 33; Peter Charanis, “Byzantium, the West, and the Origin of the First Crusade,” Byzantion 19 (1949): 17–36; Jonathan Shepard, “Aspects of Byzantine Attitudes and Policy towards the West in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” Byzantinische Forshungen 13 (1988): 67–118; Shepard, “Cross Purposes: Alexios Comnenus and the First Crusade,” in The First Crusade: Origin and Impact, ed. Jonathan Phillips (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 107–29. Jonathan Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades (New York: Palgrave, 2003); Laiou and Mottahedeh, eds., The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World. 121. Among the Latin representatives was Anselm of Canterbury, whose De Processione Spiritus Sancti (F. S. Schmitt, ed., Anselmi Opera Omnia, vol. 2 [Edinburgh: T. Nelson and Sons, 1938], 175–219) was a summary of the arguments he presented there. Eng. trans: Anselm of Canterbury, “On the Procession of the Holy Spirit,” in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 390–434. 122. According to Aristeides Papadakis, “Before 1095, in both East and West, Christians still believed in a single undivided Christendom, whereas afterward very few did so.” Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 105. 123. William of Tyre tried to put the best face on John’s departure, writing that John left voluntarily because he realized “that as a Greek he could never effectively rule over the Latins.” William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea, trans. E. Babcock and A. C. Krey (New York, 1943), 464–65. See Bernard Hamilton, The Latin Church in the Crusader States (London: Variorum Reprints, 1980); Giorgio Fedalto, La Chiesa Latina in Oriente (Verona: Mazziana. 2006). 124. Odo of Deuil, De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem—The Journey of Louis VII to the East, trans. Virginia Berry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948), 57. For Odo’s reliability see Jonathan Phillips, “Odo of Deuil’s De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem as a Source for the Second Crusade,” in The Experience of Crusading, vol. 1, ed. Marcus Bull, Norman Housley, Peter Edbury, and Jonathan Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 80–95. 125. Odo of Deuil, De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, 57. 126. Theophylact of Ohrid, De Iis in quibus Latini Accusantur (PG 126: 224). For more on Theophylact see Dimitri Obolensky, “Theophylact of Ohrid,” in Six Byzantine Portraits (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 34–82; Margaret Mullett, Theophylact of Ochrid: Reading the Letters of a Byzantine Archbishop, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs 2 (London: Variorum, 1997). 127. Theophylact of Ohrid, De Iis in quibus Latini Accusantur (PG 126, 228). 128. Theophylact of Ohrid, Commentary on the Gospel of John (PG 124: 309); Eng. trans: Meyendorff, “St. Peter in Byzantine Theology,” 73. Elsewhere Theophylact confirmed that Peter’s “power of the keys” was shared by the others: “By ‘keys’ understand that which binds or looses transgressions, namely, penance or absolution; for those who, like Peter, have been deemed worthy of the grace of the episcopate, have the authority to absolve or to bind. Even though the words ‘I will give unto thee’ were spoken to Peter alone, yet they were given to all the apostles.” Theophylact of Ohrid, Commentary of the Gospel of Matthew; Eng. trans: Theophylact of Ohrid, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, trans. by Christopher Stade (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom Press, 1992), 140–41.
129. Theophylact of Ohrid, Commentary on the Gospel of Luke (PG 123: 1073); Eng. trans: Meyendorff, “St. Peter in Byzantine Theology,” 73. In his commentary on Matt. 16:18–19 Theophylact applied “rock” to both Peter and the confession: “The Lord gives Peter a great reward, that the Church will be built on him. Since Peter confessed Him as Son of God, the Lord says, ‘This confession which you have made shall be the foundation of those who believe, so that every man who intends to build the house of faith shall lay down this confession as the foundation.” Theophylact of Ohrid, Commentary of the Gospel of Matthew; Eng. trans: Theophylact of Ohrid, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, 140–41. 130. Theophylact of Ohrid, Commentary on the Gospel of John (PG 124: 313); Eng. trans: Meyendorff, “St. Peter in Byzantine Theology,” 73. 131. Theophylact of Ohrid, De Iis in quibus Latini Accusantur (PG 126, 241); Eng. trans: Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, 141.
132. Paschal II, Epistola ad Alexium imperatorem Constantinopolitenum (PL 163: 388–89). At one point Alexios suggested to the abbot of Monte Casino that he travel to Rome and that he or his son might accept the imperial crown from the pope, thus reviving the idea of a united Roman Empire, with himself at its head serving as Paschal’s protector. 133. Ibid. 134. Ibid. 135. See V. Grumel, “Autour de voyage de Pierre Grossolanus, archevêque de Milan, à Constantinople en 1112,” Échos d’Orient 32 (1933): 22–33. 136. Seides listed twelve significant differences between the two churches, only three of which (azymes, the filioque, and the Latins’ alleged unwillingness to call Mary Theotokos) he regarded as genuinely problematic. See Niketas Seides, On the Many Differences Regarding the Law; Text in Reinhard Gahbauer, ed., Gegen den Primat des Papstes: Studien zu Niketas Seides (München: Verlag Uni-Druck, 1975). 137. Donald Nicol, “The Papal Scandal,” in Baker, ed., The Orthodox Churches and the West, 141. 138. Ibid. 139. Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 154.
140. Spiteris, La Critica Bizantina del Primato Romano nel secolo XII, 63. 141. Gahbauer, ed., Gegen den Primat des Papstes: Studien zu Niketas Seides, 9–10. 142. Ibid., 13. 143. Ibid., 74. 144. See Norman Russell, “Anselm of Havelberg and the Union of the Churches,” Sobornorst 1 (1979): 19–41. Whether Anselm’s account is a literary production or a verbatim account is the subject of some debate. For recent scholarship on Anselm’s description of events see Jay Lees, Deeds into Words in the Twelfth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Brian Dunkle, S.J. “Anselm of Havelberg’s Use of Authorities in His Account of the Filioque,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 105 (2012): 693–720; Sebastian Sigler, Anselm von Havelberg: Beiträge zum Lebensbild eines Politikers, Theologen und königlichen Gesandten im 12. Jahrhundert (Aachen: Shaker, 2005). In an e-mail to the author Tia Kolbaba wrote: “While Anselm probably exaggerated his own role [and] the extent to which the Byzantines welcomed him as ‘a Latin man who is truly Catholic!’ … nevertheless it seems to me that his account of what his Byzantine interlocutor says is very close to Byzantine sources of the same period.” 145. Anselm of Havelberg, Anticimenon: On the Unity of the Faith and the Controversies with the Greeks, trans. Ambrose Criste and Carol Neel, Cistercian Studies 232 (Collegeville,: Liturgical Press, 2010), 162–63. 146. Ibid., 163. 147. Ibid., 164–65. 148. Ibid., 165, 168. 149. Ibid., 169. 150. Ibid.
151. Ibid., 170. 152. Ibid., 171. 153. Ibid., 184. 154. Ibid., 172. 155. Ibid., 171. 156. Ibid. 157. Ibid., 174.
158. Ibid., 175. 159. Ibid., 179–80. 160. Ibid., 181. 161. Ibid., 211. Unfortunately, Anselm’s later debate with Basil of Ohrid in Thessalonica (1154) did not end as happily as his encounter with Niketas. See Josef Schmidt, Des Basilius aus Achrida, Erzbischofs von Thessalonich, bisher unedierte Dialog. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des griechischen Schismas (Munich: J. J. Lentner, 1901); John G. Rowe, “The Papacy and the Greeks (1122–1153),” Christian History 28 (1959): 115–30, 310–27. 162. Roger’s motives are still debated, some speculating that “Roger had ordered the work to be written as a threat to Rome that he might eventually make the bishoprics of his kingdom subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople.” Hubert Houben, Roger II of Sicily: A Ruler between East and West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 102. Others see it as an attempt “to conciliate Roger’s Orthodox subjects at a time when they were under increasing pressure from an aggressive papal monarchy.” T. S. Brown, “The Political Use of the Past in Norman Sicily,” in The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. Paul Magdalino (London: Hambledon Press, 1992), 205. 163. Doxapatres, unlike both Anastasius Bibliothecarius and Niketas Seides, did not speculate which sense represented each individual patriarchate. Nilos Doxapatres, Τάξις τῶν πατριαρχικῶν θρόνων (PG 132: 1097).
164. Nilos Doxapatres, Τάξις τῶν πατριαρχικῶν θρόνων (PG 132: 1100). 165. Nilos Doxapatres, Τάξις τῶν πατριαρχικῶν θρόνων (PG 132: 1101). 166. “For Rome was formerly the imperial city of Christendom, but later it became Constantinople instead, and so naturally both the pope is ecumenical and the bishop of Constantinople is ecumenical.” Ibid. 167. Jean Darrouzès, ed., Georges et Dèmètrios Tornikès, Lettres et discours (Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1970), 324–35. 168. Ibid., 331. 169. Ibid., 333.
170. Ibid., 336–53. 171. Ibid., 346. 172. Ibid. 173. Hadrian IV, Letter to Basil of Ohrid (PL 188: 1580–81): Eng. trans: Robinson, The Papacy, 1073–1198: Continuity and Innovation, 182. 174. Ibid. 175. Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 119. 176. Schmidt, Des Basilius aus Achrida, Erzbischofs von Thessalonich, bisher unedierte Dialog, 16–23. 177. Ibid.
178. Ibid. 179. To support Manuel’s policies Niketas of Maroneia (d. 1145) had written Six Dialogues between a Latin and a Greek to address the issue of the filioque (PG 139 169–222) and Hugo Etherianus (d. 1182), a Pisan living Constantinople, wrote his De haeresibus quos graeci in latinos devolvunt (PL 202, 227–396), later sending copies to both Patriarch Aimerikos of Antioch and Pope Alexander III. 180. Manuel “asked that the crown of the Roman Empire should be restored to him by the Apostolic See, since, he declared, it belonged to him by right and not to that German, Frederick.” G. M. Ellis and Peter Munz, trans. and eds., Boso’s Life of Alexander III (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973), 70. 181. Ibid. 182. J. M. Hussey says that modern scholarship now regards the work as the product of a later era and was probably written during the reign of Michael VIII (mid to late thirteenth century). See Darrouzès, “Les documents byzantins du XIIe siècle sur la primaute romaine,” 79–82; and Georg Hofmann, “Papst und Patrirach unter Kaiser Manuel I Komnenos,” Epeteris Etaireias Byzantinon Spoudon 23 (1953): 74–82.
183. Michael III of Anchialus, Dialogue; Eng. trans: Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 122. 184. Alessandra Bucossi, in her article “New Historical Evidence for the Dating of the Sacred Arsenal by Andronikos Kamateros,” Revue des études byzantines 67 (2009): 111–30 argued for a date after March of 1171, and possibly after 1172. See also Bucossi, “The Sacred Arsenal by Andronikos Kamateros: A Forgotten Treasure” in Byzantine Theologians: The Systematization of Their Own Doctrine and Their Perception of Foreign Doctrines, ed. Antonio Rigo and Pavel Ermilov (Roma: Università degli studi di Roma Tor Vergata, 2009), 33–50; Bucossi, “Dialogue and Anthologies of the Sacred Arsenal by Andronikos Kamateros: Sources, Arrangements, Purposes,” in Encyclopedic Trends in Byzantium? Proceedings of the International Conference held in Leuven, 6–8 May 2009, ed. Peter Van Deun and Caroline Macé (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 269–84. 185. Critical edition in Alessandra Bucossi, ed., Andronicus Camaterus, Sacrum Armamentarium: Pars Prima, Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca 75 (Brepolis, 2014). John Beccus later wrote a detailed refutation of this work (Adversus Andronicum Camaterum; PG 141, 395–612). 186. Bucossi, Andronicus Camaterus, Sacrum Armamentarium, 26–27. 187. Ibid., 27–28. 188. Charles M. Brand, ed., Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus by John Kinnamos (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976).
189. Angelov, “The Donation of Constantine and the Church in Late Byzantium,” 117. According to Spiteris, Kinnamos’s thinking was almost mathematical: “the presence of the emperor = existence of ecclesiastical primacy, the absence of empire = no primacy.” Jannis Spiteris, La Critica Bizantina del Primato Romano nel secolo XII, 199. 190. Brand, ed., Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus by John Kinnamos, 166. 191. Ibid. 192. His anti-Latin attitude has often been explained by the fact that Balsamon was unable to take possession of his See at Antioch because of the western presence there. Runciman described him as “a far stronger candidate than either Photius or Cerularius” for the role of “villain on the Orthodox side for the development of the schism.” Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 138. 193. Balsamon has sometimes been accused of supporting a form of Byzantine caesero- papism, at one point writing that imperial authority was superior to that of the patriarchs (including Rome’s), since “the service of the emperors includes the enlightening and strengthening of both the soul and the body [while] the dignity of the patriarchs is limited to the benefit of souls and to that only.” Theodore Balsamon, Meditata (PG 138: 1017); Eng. trans: Ernest Barker, ed., Social and Political Thought in Byzantium from Justinian I to the Last Palaeologues: Passages from Byzantine Writers and Documents (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957), 106. 194. “Some indeed wish to understand the preposition μετὰ here of time and not of inferiority of grade … [but] the 130th novel of Justinian, Book 5 of the Imperial Constitutions, title three, understands the canon otherwise. For, it says, ‘we decree that the most holy Pope of Old Rome, according to the decrees of the holy synods is the first of all priests, and that the most blessed bishop of Constantinople and of New Rome, should have the second place after the Apostolic Throne of the Elder Rome, and should be superior in honour to all others.’ From this therefore it is abundantly evident that ‘after’ denotes subjection (ὑποβιβασμ ὸν) and diminution. … Whoever therefore shall explain this particle μετὰ as only referring to time, and does not admit that it signifies an inferior grade of dignity, does violence to the passage and draws from it a meaning neither true nor good” (NPNF 2.14.178).
195. G. A. Ralles and M. Potles, eds., Syntagma ton theion kai hieron kanonon, vol 2 (Athens: Charophylakos, 1852–59), 173–76. 196. Theodore Balsamon, Interrogationes canonicae sanctissimi patriarchae Alexandriae domini Marci et responsa ad eas sanctissimi patriarchae Antiochiae domini Theodori Balsamonis (PG 138: 953). Eng. trans: Patrick Demetrios Viscuso, ed., Guide for a Church under Islam: The Sixty-Six Canonical Questions Attributed to Theodoros Balsamon (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2014), 85. 197. Ibid., 68. 198. William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea, 464–65. 199. Eustathios of Thessaloniki, The Capture of Thessaloniki: A Translation with Introduction and Commentary, trans by John R. Melville-Jones (Canberra: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 1988), 115. 200. Niketas Chroniates, O City of Byzantium, Annals of Niketas Chroniates, trans. by Harry Magoulias (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984), 165–66.
201. Vitalien Laurent, “Rome et Byzance sous le Pontificat de Célestin III,” Echo d’Orient, 39 (1940): 26–58. 202. Joseph Gill, Byzantium and the Papacy 1198–1400 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1979), 9. See also Gill, “Innocent III and the Greeks: Apostle or Aggressor,” in Baker, ed., Relations between East and West in the Middle Ages, 95–108; Gill, “Franks, Venetians, and Pope Innocent III,” Studi Veneziani 3 (Venice, 1970): 85–106; John C. Moore, Pope Innocent III (1160/61–1216): To Root Up and to Plant (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009). 203. Innocent III, Register 1.353 (PL 214: 327). 204. Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades, 149. 205. Innocent III, Register 1.353 (PL 214: 327). 206. Innocent III, Register 1.354 (PL 214: 328).
207. Ibid. 208. Aristeides Papadakis and Alice Mary Talbot, eds., “John X Camaterus Confronts Innocent III: An Unpublished Correspondence,” Byzantinoslaoica 33 (1972): 34. 209. Ibid. 210. Innocent III, Register 2.211 (PL 214:771). 211. Innocent III, Register 2.209 (PL 214:764) Eng. trans: Gill, “Innocent III and the Greeks: Apostle or Aggressor,” 98. 212. Innocent III, Register 2.209 (PL 214:765). 213. Papadakis and Talbot, eds., “John X Camaterus Confronts Innocent III,” 31.
207. Ibid. 208. Aristeides Papadakis and Alice Mary Talbot, eds., “John X Camaterus Confronts Innocent III: An Unpublished Correspondence,” Byzantinoslaoica 33 (1972): 34. 209. Ibid. 210. Innocent III, Register 2.211 (PL 214:771). 211. Innocent III, Register 2.209 (PL 214:764) Eng. trans: Gill, “Innocent III and the Greeks: Apostle or Aggressor,” 98. 212. Innocent III, Register 2.209 (PL 214:765). 213. Papadakis and Talbot, eds., “John X Camaterus Confronts Innocent III,” 31.
214. Ibid., 36. 215. Ibid. 216. Ibid., 39. 217. Ibid., 36–37. 218. Ibid. 219. Ibid., 39–40. 220. Ibid., 40.
221. Ibid., 29. 222. Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, 165–66.
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