Lecture
Это окончание невероятной информации про христианство в римской империи.
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most of Asia lay in the 13th century, but at the end of the 14th century the Nestorian Church was almost completely destroyed as a result of the persecutions of Tamerlane.
In the 16th century a schism occurred in the Nestorian Church: some of its members joined the Roman Catholic Church as Catholics of the Chaldean rite. Soon after this most of the Nestorians of India became either Catholics of the Malabar rite or Jacobites. By the 18th century the remnants of the Nestorians lived in the mountains of Kurdistan as a national minority speaking one of the Aramaic dialects. In the 19th century they began to call themselves Assyrians. During the First World War many Assyrians were massacred, and many of the survivors fled Kurdistan. In 1933 the patriarch-catholicos Mar Shimun XXI, after his attempt to create an independent Assyrian state, was expelled from Iraq and settled in the United States. His successor, Mar Dinkha IV, was elected in 1976 and returned to the Middle East. By 1990 there were about 500,000 Nestorians, living mainly in Iraq, Iran, and the United States.
The Coptic Church. Egypt was one of the main centers of ancient Christianity. The Christian monastic movement arose in the Egyptian deserts under the influence of Anthony the Great (died 356). Egyptian missionaries converted the inhabitants of Ethiopia and Nubia to Christianity. After the condemnation of Monophysitism at the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Hellenized population of the major Egyptian cities largely supported the imperial authorities and Orthodoxy, while the rural population, who spoke Coptic,
were for the most part opposed to the official authorities and inclined toward Monophysitism. Political and religious disputes between the two parts of the divided Christian community continued until 641, when Muslim armies invaded Egypt. Many Copts preferred to find themselves under the rule of the Arab caliphate rather than of the Byzantine Empire. In subsequent centuries many Coptic Christians converted to Islam, but the Coptic Church continued to exist. In 1990 it numbered about 10 million members, mainly in Egypt. The Coptic Church is headed by the Coptic patriarch, who bears the title of Pope of Alexandria, Pentapolis, and Ethiopia, and whose residence is in Cairo. Relations between the Egyptian government and the Coptic minority have often been tense,
and from 1981 to 1985 Pope Shenouda III was, by order of the authorities, kept in exile in a monastery in the desert.
The Ethiopian Church. Frumentius, who arrived from Alexandria, the first bishop of the Ethiopians, was consecrated to the episcopate around 347. In subsequent centuries Holy Scripture and the writings of later Christian authors were translated into Ge'ez, the classical language of the Ethiopians. The resulting Ethiopian Church, in which monasticism played an important role, maintained close ties with Alexandria: for more than fifteen centuries it was headed by an abuna – a Coptic bishop sent from Alexandria – although the affairs of the church were managed by a representative of the Ethiopian clergy. An Ethiopian abuna was appointed for the first time only in 1951. The distinctive feature of the Ethiopian Church is that, in addition to the canonical books of Holy Scripture, it uses such apocryphal books as the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees, and preserves many religious customs characteristic of Judaism: this concerns circumcision, dietary practices, and the observance of the Sabbath on Saturday (as well as on Sunday). The Trinitarian and Christological disputes that troubled the ancient Christian church did not die down here until the modern era. In 1990 the Ethiopian Church numbered about 20 million members. The residence of its head, the abuna, is in Addis Ababa.
The Syrian Orthodox (Jacobite) Church. Religious life in Syria in the 5th–6th centuries underwent almost the same evolution as in Egypt. Most of the local Syriac-speaking population adopted the teaching of the Monophysites, which was largely due to hostility toward the Hellenized landowners and city dwellers, as well as toward the Greek emperor in Constantinople. Although the most eminent Syrian Monophysite theologian was Severus of Antioch (died 538), Jacob Baradaeus (500–578) played so important a role in building up the Monophysite church of Syria that it came to be called Jacobite. Originally the population of Syria consisted predominantly of Christians, but later most of the population
converted to Islam. In 1990 the Syrian Jacobite Church numbered about 250,000 members, living mainly in Syria and Iraq. It is headed by the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, whose residence is in Damascus (Syria).
The Malabar Jacobite, or Malankara Syrian Orthodox (Jacobite), Church. According to tradition, Christianity was brought to India by the apostle Thomas. By the 6th century Nestorian communities already existed in southwestern India. As the Nestorian Church declined, these Christians gained ever greater independence. In the 16th century, under the influence of Portuguese missionaries, some of them became Catholics. However, attempts to bring Indian Christians into conformity with Western religious practice provoked protest among many, and in the 17th century those believers who did not wish to join the Roman Catholic Church became Jacobites. The Malabar Jacobite Church is headed by the Catholicos of the East, with his residence in Kottayam, and in 1990 it numbered about 1.7 million members.
The Malabar Syrian Church of St. Thomas, which separated from the Jacobite Church under the influence of Anglican missionaries in the first half of the 19th century, numbered about 700,000 members in 1990.
The Armenian Apostolic Church. In 314 Armenia became the first country to proclaim Christianity its state religion. After the condemnation of Monophysitism in 451, Christological disputes in Armenia did not subside, and in 506 the Armenian Church officially adopted an anti-Chalcedonian position. In the 12th century Nerses the Gracious declared that the Christological teaching of the Armenian Church did not in fact contradict the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon;
indeed, the Armenians were attached to Monophysite doctrine to a considerably lesser degree than, for example, the Ethiopian Christians.
The Armenian Church survived despite the cruel massacres perpetrated by the Turks during the First World War and the atheism of the Soviet period. In 1990 the Armenian Church numbered about 4 million members in Armenia itself and around the world. The church is headed by a patriarch-catholicos.
The Schism of the Churches – the disintegration of the Christian church – originally conceived as Ecumenical – into different churches. According to B. M. Melioransky's account of the history of the question, the disagreements that led to the formation within the church of parties that broke off ecclesiastical communion with one another were of two kinds: some concerned questions of dogma, others questions of church administration. Of all the divisions of the churches, the one of undoubtedly the greatest importance in world-historical terms is the division, now already a thousand years old, of the Ecumenical church into the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic. From the Eastern Orthodox point of view this division of the churches appears as a consequence of the «lust for power and intellectual pride» of the Popes and of the unorthodox opinions and innovations they introduced into the Western patriarchate (the «Latin heresy»); from the Roman Catholic point of view, on the other hand, it is regarded as a schism arising from the East's refusal to recognize its lawful supreme head in the person of the Pope of Old Rome (the «Greek schism»).
According to theological analysis, in the first centuries of our era Christianity in the Roman Empire spread chiefly in the cities, among the middle and lower strata of the population, and only from there gradually penetrated into the interior of the country. The most numerous communities arose in the largest centers of the empire – commercial, industrial, and administrative – such as Antioch (in Syria), Ephesus, Corinth, Alexandria, and Rome. From these the poorer communities were accustomed to expect material and spiritual support; here occurred the greatest clashes between Christianity and pagan power, and here the heroism of the martyrs could be most fully displayed; from here the best writers and teachers went out and to here they flocked, and from here preaching spread out to the smaller towns and villages. In these same cities, according to more or less reliable traditions, the apostles and their successors, in order the better to establish the numerous converts in the faith, lived for long periods and, on departing, left as bishops their closest disciples. When Gnosticism became active, the Church combated it not so much with metaphysical as with historical arguments, proving that Jesus Christ and the apostles taught something quite different from what the Gnostics taught; in confirmation of this, appeal was made to the apostolic tradition, preserved unbroken and in agreement above all by the bishops of those cities where the apostles or their disciples had lived and preached for a long time. All this led to the fact that the «apostolic sees», which coincided with the sees of the chief cities, had long enjoyed preeminent honor and authority in the Christian world, although hierarchically they did not stand above other episcopal sees. Rome had special significance in the West: it was there not only the sole apostolic see, but until the second half of the 2nd century the only significant Church at all, and consequently, by the antiquity of its traditions, it surpassed all the other churches of the West by a whole century, the one closest to the apostles.
By the time the bishops became authorities recognized by the state, some apostolic centers (for example, Ephesus) had already lost their luster and significance, since the apostolic tradition on which that significance rested had, through literature, already become common property; on the other hand, the significance of those centers which were centers of population, learning, wealth, and administration grew still further. Such were Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. By the time of the Council of Nicaea (325) these sees had already for quite some time enjoyed not only moral authority but also supreme jurisdiction in the churches of all the regions attached to them (which was fixed by canon 6 of the First Ecumenical Council). At the same time a new see came to the fore – that of Constantinople – as a result of the transfer of the capital and residence to Constantinople and its proclamation as «New Rome». From the 4th century a definite rivalry for dominant influence in the church can be observed among the four centers of Christianity (or patriarchates, as they later began to be called): Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch. The following factors were decisive, in order of importance: 1) the wealth and political significance of the city; 2) the extent of the patriarchate's territory; 3) the see's services to Orthodoxy; 4) the loftiness of the sacred memories associated with the see and the degree of certainty of its apostolic foundation (the fifth patriarchate, that of Jerusalem – see canon 7 of the First Ecumenical Council – far surpassed all the others in this last respect, but fell far short of them in all the rest, and therefore did not take part in the rivalry). In the 4th century Alexandria, thanks to the merits of its theology (Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria), became a very serious rival to Antioch and Constantinople. But the Council of Chalcedon, at which the shadow of heresy fell upon the Alexandrian bishop Dioscorus (touching, in the opinion of many, even the memory of St. Cyril) and at which the Orthodoxy of Pope Leo I the Great and St. Flavian of Constantinople triumphed, undermined its authority.
The final victory of the Chalcedonian dogma over Monophysitism (553) was at the same time a victory of Rome and Byzantium over Alexandria. The unsubmissive East fell away from the Ecumenical church, while the part that submitted no longer disputed, directly or indirectly, the primacy of Byzantium. Moreover, in the 7th century the eastern patriarchates were conquered by the Muslims: only Byzantium and Rome remained on the world Christian stage. The political significance of Rome fell very low in the 4th–6th centuries, first because of the transfer of the imperial residence to Ravenna, and then because of the conquests of Alaric, Genseric, and Odoacer. Thus Constantinople, though lagging behind all the patriarchates in every respect except the political, in this last and, for the subjects of the eastern empire, decisive respect, outstripped Rome. It seemed to the East in the highest degree both desirable and just that Rome, out of respect for antiquity, should retain the first place of honor, and that next to it should stand the see of New Rome, which would be equal to Old Rome in every respect. This was already decreed at the Second Ecumenical Council (381), and confirmed at the Fourth (451) (canon 28), and from then on this view of the position of the see of Constantinople became established throughout the East. In the West, on the contrary, the fall of the empire raised the significance of the Roman bishop still higher: he became the center – religious, political, national
– of Western Roman orthodoxy, law, and culture against Germanic Arianism and civilizational barbarism. Rome became the chief instrument by which the fallen Old Rome culturally subdued its conquerors one after another. Thus the West and the East, as time went on, saw ever fewer reasons to yield anything to one another in the honor and significance of their patriarchs, and from their own points of view both were right; each side considered the claims of the other unjust, and the ground for discord was thereby laid.
Nevertheless powerful causes were still at work, causing both the East and the West to value the unity of the churches. Except for the period from 476 to 553, Rome and the patrimony of St. Peter in Calabria and Sicily, right up to 754, acknowledged themselves subjects of the Byzantine emperors. It was to the popes' advantage to acknowledge the authority of the empire, in order to preserve, in the eyes of the barbarians, the independent standing and the prestige of ancient imperial Rome. The Byzantine government needed the popes, properly speaking, only so long as it still cherished the hope of recovering all of Italy and so long as it still possessed the remnants of the exarchate of Ravenna. Nevertheless the Eastern Church needed the popes as an ecclesiastical authority lying outside the bounds of the emperor's actual power, so that, relying on him, it could successfully wage the struggle against heretical emperors and against Byzantine caesaropapism. Connection with Rome gave the East the possibility, in falling away from bishops and patriarchs obedient to the emperors, of preserving its connection with the Ecumenical Church. Through the labors of Saints Remigius, Augustine, Boniface, Pope Gregory the Great, and others, the authority of the Roman see was strengthened throughout the West; the popes acquired there a new material support in the person of the Western emperors (from 800). Even earlier (in 754) they had managed to become secular sovereigns, independent of Byzantium; their connection with the East could in future be of use to them only if the East agreed to acknowledge the papal primacy over itself in the sense in which the popes themselves had long understood it, that is, not as a place of honor and the highest moral authority, but as the actual supreme power of the pope in all branches of church life, dogma itself not excepted. Once the East refused the popes such recognition, it became not only unnecessary to them but actually hindered their activity in the West as well. The Pope wishes to act as head of the whole Church; the East refuses to obey, and there are no means to compel it to obedience; there remains nothing but to declare that the obedient churches are the whole true Church.
According to Melioransky's account, this formal-juridical view held by the popes regarding their primacy in the Church was closely tied to the original Western understanding of Christianity – an understanding traceable back to Christian antiquity (to the late 2nd century), in which the peoples converted from Rome were raised. The Greeks and Hellenized peoples of the eastern half of the empire, in keeping with their national character, understood Christianity primarily as a divinely revealed metaphysics and ethics, as a path indicated from above toward the moral perfection and salvation of the individual and toward knowledge of the essence of the Godhead. Hence the rich development of theological-philosophical literature in the East, the lively disputes over questions of Christian metaphysics, and the numerous heresies; hence also the weakness and underdevelopment of church organization, and at times even a hesitant implementation of the mass of Christian principles, but by contrast an abundance of examples of high personal sanctity and the creation of an entire science of how it is attained. Just as the Greeks had been leaders of the intellectual and aesthetic world in pre-Christian times, so they remained so during the period of the Ecumenical Councils, took pride in this position, and wished to preserve it for themselves forever. The Romans, and later the Romanized peoples of the western half of the empire, were little inclined toward metaphysical speculation; but being the most state-minded people in the world, the creators of exemplary law, they understood Christianity as a divinely revealed program of social order which, once realized on earth, leads infallibly to eternal salvation. Where the East saw a philosophical and moral idea, the West created an institution; and so it understood the primacy of its Roman see not morally, as the East did, but juridically. Pagan tradition came to its aid.
The best form of social order known up to that time seemed to be the pagan empire; there religion was a function of the state, and its head was both secular ruler and supreme pontiff; it was therefore natural for the Roman Christian mind to arrive at the idea of preserving the union of spiritual and secular power, but with religion placed at the head of the matter – that is, to make the head of the Church the head of society in general, and the state one of the functions of religion (papal caesarism). By virtue of that same tradition of pagan Rome, the Byzantine emperors claimed for themselves the right of a voice in many church affairs: already Constantine the Great considered himself an «external bishop» of the Church; his successors prescribed creeds, appointed bishops, and convened Ecumenical Councils (caesaropapism). The Eastern Church itself was almost indifferent to papal caesarism, as it was to caesaropapism; what mattered to it above all was not the form or the path by which religious truth was affirmed, but its inviolability. The «caesaropapism» of Orthodox emperors (Justinian I, for example) met with no protest in its midst, or only very weak ones; but it repelled the caesaropapism of heretics with tremendous and, in the end, always victorious energy.
This also determines its attitude toward papal caesarism – the popes' striving toward supreme authority in the Church. Seeing in conservative and always Orthodox Rome a model of concord and order, a faithful keeper of the apostolic doctrine against which, as against a touchstone, Eastern theologizing could be tested, the East remained silent and at first even outwardly yielded to Rome in its claims to a preeminent and exclusive position within the Universal Church. The East heaped upon the popes, for their services to Orthodoxy, the most honorable and flattering epithets – and this reinforced in the West the conviction that the East acknowledged its juridical primacy.
It could, however, have been foreseen in advance that as soon as the popes gained the opportunity to move from word to deed and wished to legislate on matters of dogma on the basis not of Sacred Tradition but of Western theological speculation, this attempt would meet with a rebuff just as strong – and even sharper – as the attempts of heretical emperors, and would appear to the East as an encroachment upon religious truth, upon the age-old role of Greek thought in the cultural history of the world. The external history of the great church schism, in its main outlines, is as follows. Already in the 5th–7th centuries, church communion between Rome and Byzantium was disrupted several times, whenever popes and emperors, or popes and patriarchs, came into conflict. The «Henotikon» of Patriarch Acacius and Emperor Zeno, which demanded, to please the Monophysites, a renunciation of the Council of Chalcedon, caused a 35-year division between the churches of Rome and Byzantium (482–519). Pope Vigilius's acceptance of the condemnation of the «Three Chapters» (554) led to the falling away from the papacy of Africa, northern Italy, and Illyricum; the schism was ended only by Pope Gregory the Great, who was nevertheless in extremely strained relations with the see of Constantinople over the title «ecumenical», adopted by the Patriarch of Constantinople John the Faster (died 595). At the Sixth Ecumenical Council, the legates of Pope Agatho once again secured a major victory for Rome-led Orthodoxy over the new «imperial» heresy – Monothelitism; but that same Council showed that in the East people had already begun to feel the weight of the papal hand and were preparing to defend their independence. At the same time, the Council for the first time shook confidence in the East in the infallibility of the Roman see by condemning Pope Honorius among the Monothelites, a condemnation confirmed by Pope Leo II.
At the Fifth-Sixth (Trullan) Ecumenical Council (692) the following was decreed: 1) the 28th Chalcedonian canon on the complete equality of the patriarchs of Old and New Rome was reaffirmed; 2) a list of sources of Ecumenical church law was compiled, in which almost all Western councils and papal decretals were passed over, and 85 apostolic canons were accepted, whereas in the West only 50 of them were recognized; 3) the obligatory celibacy of presbyters and deacons was condemned as an inhumane and unfounded requirement; 4) fasting on Saturday was forbidden; 5) the prohibition of the apostolic Council against eating strangled meat and blood, which was permitted by the Roman church, was reinstated; 6) it was forbidden to depict Jesus Christ in icons in the form of a lamb pointed to by the finger of the Forerunner – images of this kind having been quite widespread in the West. Pope Sergius I accepted the Sixth Council but rejected the Trullan Council and did not permit the publication of its canons in his patriarchate. If a final rupture did not follow at that time, it was because the Byzantine patriarchate was soon afterward struck by the last imperial heresy – Iconoclasm, which convulsed the Church for more than a hundred years.
Under the iconoclast emperors (725–784 and 815–843) the official churches were divided, but with all the greater energy the hierarchy overthrown by the iconoclasts (see), the Eastern monastics, and the people maintained ties with Rome; the other Eastern patriarchates likewise rose decisively against Iconoclasm. St. Theodore the Studite (759–826), relying in his opposition to Iconoclasm on the Universal Church, was the first among them to give the pope the leading voice. In his letters to Leo III and Paschal I he extols the Roman see in terms which, to this day, provide Catholics with an arsenal of proofs that the Orthodox East, before Photius, acknowledged papal primacy. In fact, the venerators of icons were just as little inclined to this as the iconoclasts were: at the Seventh Ecumenical Council, the letters of Pope Adrian I were read out in Greek translation, with the pope's declarations of his own primacy simply omitted or considerably softened.
When the empire and the official Byzantine Church returned to Orthodoxy, and Nicholas I and Photius – energetic and sincere representatives of the ideas of their respective churches – appeared on the sees of Rome and Byzantium, it at once became apparent how far the estrangement had gone; the unity was already purely external; and to preserve it, neither side wished to sacrifice its independence and distinctiveness. In 857, Caesar Bardas, the all-powerful uncle of Emperor Michael III the Drunkard, was excommunicated by Patriarch Ignatius, ostensibly for cohabiting with his daughter-in-law, but in reality for confining his sister, the Empress Theodora – the emperor's mother and a zealous devotee of monks and of Ignatius himself – to a monastery. Bardas deposed Ignatius and installed as patriarch the state secretary Photius, a skillful and experienced diplomat, the most learned man of his time, and an outstanding theologian. The legality of this appointment could well be doubted, since Ignatius was removed without trial, by secular power, and could in no way be compelled to abdicate; a schism arose within the Constantinopolitan church.
The dispute between Ignatius and Photius was not at all a personal one, and it cannot be judged from a personal-moral standpoint. In the person of Ignatius, the monastic party of the «Zealots» – extreme ascetics and conservatives, formed among the Orthodox as an extreme reaction against the reformist and secular-scholarly aspirations of the iconoclasts – ascended to the Byzantine patriarchal throne. In 859 a Council was held that confirmed Photius and excommunicated Ignatius for insubordination to the Church. In 861 a new Council was held; this Council once again confirmed Photius. The legates signed this decree contrary to the powers granted them, according to which the pope had instructed them only to investigate the matter, reserving the right of decision to himself. In 864 the Bulgarian prince Boris (Michael) was baptized: the baptism was performed by a bishop sent by Photius, and the emperor stood as godfather. In 866 Prince Boris turned to Rome with a request to send him bishops and priests. Photius subjected these innovations to sharp criticism, emphasizing in particular the illegitimacy of the distortion of the Creed, and invited the Eastern patriarchs to an Ecumenical Council to judge the pope. In 867 the Council was held; the pope was declared deposed. That same year Emperor Michael was murdered; his successor deposed Photius. Ignatius again became patriarch. In 869 a new Council was held in Constantinople: Photius was anathematized and sent into exile; the records of the acts of the 867 Council were condemned to destruction. Ignatius returned Bulgaria to dependence on Byzantium, against the wishes of the popes. The 869 Council proved to be poorly attended. Photius was restored, and Ignatius bequeathed the see to him (878).
Pope John VIII agreed to recognize Photius as patriarch in exchange for Bulgaria. The legates of Rome at the Council in Constantinople (879) were not even given the floor. Bulgaria was not mentioned at all; the legates were asked not to lift the anathema from Photius, but rather to anathematize the Council of 809 and anyone who dared to add anything whatsoever to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. This clearly condemned the filioque. The legates agreed to this, which provoked in the West the same indignation that the acts of 869 had provoked in the East. John VIII hastened to reject the Council and again anathematize Photius. The following popes did exactly the same; the total number of papal anathemas against Photius comes to 12. After Photius's second deposition (in 886) and up until the final schism (1054), relations between the churches were rare and sporadic; but whereas up to the end of the 10th century a sense of unity still predominated in them, from the beginning of the 11th century onward it was discord. Relations were at their worst precisely when the sees were occupied by the best men.
Patriarch Nicholas, a follower of Photius, refused in 905 to bless the fourth marriage of Emperor Leo VI the Wise and was deposed with the assistance of the legates of Pope Sergius III, since in the West a fourth marriage was considered permissible; but in 912 Nicholas again appeared on the throne and managed to reconcile with the party of his rival Euthymius; in the act of union the fourth marriage was forbidden. No rupture with Rome followed, since there was no one to break with: the papal see was, during this period, in an extremely complicated situation. At the Council of 995 or 996, eternal memory was proclaimed for all the patriarchs who had disputed with the popes. From 1024 to 1046 the papacy again fell into decline; in 1024 Pope John XIX very nearly agreed, for money, to recognize for the Patriarch of Constantinople the title «Ecumenical Patriarch of the whole East», but an outburst of indignation in the Western church forced him to break off the negotiations.
Finally, under Pope Leo IX (1049–1054) and Patriarch Michael Cerularius (1043–1054), the final rupture took place. Pope Leo IX demanded in vain from Emperor Constantine Monomachos the restitution to the see of St. Peter of all the lands listed in the «Donation of Constantine» and then held by the emperor, while Michael Cerularius commissioned the Bulgarian bishop Leo to compose an epistle listing and condemning the Latin innovations. To the reproaches already made by Photius were here added new ones, directed in particular against the custom of using unleavened bread for the Eucharist. The epistle was shown to Cardinal Humbert, who translated it into Latin and showed it to the pope. The pope sent the letter to the patriarch, demanding an explanation, «how they had dared to pronounce judgment upon the see which no mortal is permitted to judge». The emperor and the patriarch at first replied in a conciliatory spirit.
In May 1054 the legates arrived in Constantinople: Humbert, Peter, Bishop of Amalfi, and Frederick of Lorraine, cardinal and chancellor of the Roman church. At the emperor's insistence, the abbot Nicetas Stethatos burned his polemical treatise against the Latins in the presence of the legates, although it had been merely a response to an even sharper treatise by Humbert (the «Dialogue») against Bishop Leo's epistle. To the burned treatise Humbert responded with a new one, extremely harsh in tone. All this led to a situation in which, although Emperor Constantine sided with the legates, ordering Humbert's writings to be translated and disseminated among the people, it became clear to everyone that Rome was issuing an ultimatum: unconditional submission or rupture. The offended patriarch, on June 15, refused to continue the negotiations. The next day the legates publicly, during the divine service, laid upon the altar of Hagia Sophia the act of excommunication of the patriarch and his party, and on June 17 left Constantinople. Cerularius then convened a Council, which pronounced anathema against the legates, and sent out a circular letter warning the whole East against church communion with Rome. From that time on, the pope's name ceased to be commemorated during the divine service in all the Eastern churches.
As Melioransky concludes, in reading the countless treatises «against the Latins» written after the schism by the Byzantines and the Orthodox Slavs, one could easily gain the impression that the division of the churches arose out of minor disciplinary and ritual differences, to which, through blind malice and ignorance, a matter of principle came to be attached. Photius lists 10 such differences, Cerularius 20, others count 30, 60, 90, and even 250. But these differences had existed and had been known long before the schism, and in themselves were never considered sufficient cause for breaking church communion, unless they touched upon dogma. Photius himself, in his letter to Pope Nicholas of 861, justifies his elevation straight from the laity to the patriarchate (he passed through all the church ranks in six days) on the grounds that Eastern canon law permits this: thus were consecrated St. Nectarius (in the 4th century), and Saints Tarasius and Nicephorus. Having pointed to a number of differences between East and West, Photius says: «No one is required to observe a law not accepted in his own country, so long as the faith and the Ecumenical canon are not violated». In every attempt at reunion, the two sides very quickly agreed to recognize for each side its own practice, and the only, but insurmountable, obstacles proved always to be the primacy of the pope and the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit. All the other disagreements could not serve as the cause of the division of the churches, but only testified to the extent to which mutual irritation had grown, and to how carefully each side sought to guard itself against any contact with the other.
Часть 1 10. Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire: the development of the Christian
Часть 2 9. The Eastern and Western Churches: the history of their
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