The Great East-West Schism

Patristic theology, and traditional teachings of Orthodoxy from the Church fathers of apostolic times to the present. All forum Rules apply. No polemics. No heated discussions. No name-calling.
User avatar
尼古拉前执事
Archon
Posts: 5118
Joined: Thu 24 October 2002 7:01 pm
Faith: Eastern Orthodox
Jurisdiction: Non-Phylitist
Location: Euless, TX, United States of America
Contact:

Tome of Leo

Post by 尼古拉前执事 »

The Tome of Leo

"Bishop Paschasinus, guardian of the Apostolic See, stood in the midst [of the Council Fathers] and said, 'We received directions at the hands of the most blessed and apostolic bishop of the Roman city [Pope Leo I], who is the head of all the churches, which directions say that Dioscorus is not to be allowed to sit in the [present] assembly, but that if he should attempt to take his seat, he is to be cast out. This instruction we must carry out" (Acts of the Council, Session I)

Latins assert that The Tome of Leo gives evidence to their belief in papal primacy. They also give the example of the fathers at Chalcedon who proclaimed "Peter has spoken through Leo" as a result of examining Leo

User avatar
Seraphim Reeves
Member
Posts: 493
Joined: Sun 27 October 2002 2:10 pm
Location: Canada

Interesting post

Post by Seraphim Reeves »

Interesting post, Nicholas. However, I found myself with some questions after reading it (and some observations)...

Observations

  1. It is very obvious that the tradition of "Pope as unique successor of St.Peter" is not something new, that arose only as the "great schism" was dawning, but was held in much of the west at least from the fourth century on. It was also held to by not a few Popes that the Orthodox Church still commemorates as being holy and particularly pious.

  2. It appears to me what we have is not Rome simply "going off the deep end" at a late date, but two ecclessiologies slowly emerging. I am convinced however, no matter what the case, that since this period Rome's ecclessiology has "gone off the deep end", and tred into an area forcibly condemned by it's own traditions.

  3. Though the article you posted obviously has a argumentative purpose in mind, I found it's failure to even once address St. Leo properly, unnerving and dishonest. While the website you got it from does have a lot of interesting data on it, I find it's tone off putting and many of it's articles to have just a little too much editorializing in them.

Questions

  1. My understanding has been that the "ecumenicity" of canons (and of Councils as a whole) depends on their acceptance across the Orthodox world. Indeed, this is ultimatly what undoes "robber councils". I believe this is precisely why the Eastern Fathers of Chalcedon were intent on getting St.Leo's agreement to canon 28 - for the sake of ecumenicity. However, we know that St.Leo never accepted the canon, and as far as I know the Latins never accepted canon 28. What does that do for it's ecumenicity? That's an awfully large section of the Church to have rejecting a canon that's supposed to represent the mind of the Church Universal. I ask this question not to argue it's merit, but simply because I am confused as to where that "line" is in the sand, beyond which canons are to be viewed as representing the Church's mind on a subject.

  2. While it is quite clear that not even the Roman Pontiffs of this period had an ecclessiology at all like that "canonized" by the first Vatican Council (indeed, St.Gregory the Great's letter to St.John the Faster over the title "Ecumenical Patriarch" should make that very apparent), don't you think it's possible that the author of this article is understating Eastern recognition of Rome's primacy among the Bishops? While it's obvious that Rome's more grandiose claims where not fervently held to beyond it's immediate sphere of influence, it appears (from what I've read at least) that the "hyper egalitarian" view of the episcopate was not held to either. Perhaps this is simply a case of Easterners flattering Rome and supporting it's claims when it suited them? I am undecided, and would be interested if anyone can clarify all of this for me.

Seraphim

User avatar
Seraphim Reeves
Member
Posts: 493
Joined: Sun 27 October 2002 2:10 pm
Location: Canada

Some further thoughts

Post by Seraphim Reeves »

I think there may be a solution to at least some of my questions in this area, at least in so far as to why Roman claims (even amongst saints) had become so expansive.

Part of the solution has to do with distinct developments in the west, particularly while the western empire was in decline (and then finally collapsed.) Rome's centralization was seen as a practical necessity, as was it's tendency to rise above (and even dictate) western political affairs (where as in the East the tendency was for the Church to be subordinate to the state) Certainly there is no parallel anywhere else in the early Church, for the Pope acting both as shepherd of souls and temporal sovereign.

I think it's possilbe that while the seeds of "Petrine primacy" were always in Rome (just as the Copts still go on, to this very day, about the dignity of their Church is due to Egypt having been home to the Holy Family for a time, and the See of Alexandria having been founded by St.Mark), their formalization and growth were due to circumstances beyond anyone's control.

The late Fr.John Romanides also delves into this subject, theorizing (with not a few persuasive pieces of evidence) that the Imperial Court of Constantinople may have been (oddly enough) part of the creation of this problem. The theory is as follows - when Germanic conquerers began to run the show in the west after Rome's fall, for Rome to keep it's Roman identity (and prevent it from becoming a puppet of it's Frankish rulers, which included avoiding the heterodoxy of Charles "the Great", who seemed intent on de-legitimizing the rule of Constantinople), Rome's claims for herself were exalted. This included several forgeries (such as the infamous "Donation of Constantine"). The main target of these forgeries was not the Christian east, but the Germanic rulers themselves - the papal states for example, being very important to the Popes of this period, as a way of keeping some space between them and the new "Imperial" capital of the west, Aachen. Indeed, it was well known in Constantinople that these documents were bogus (and Fr.John maintains this was because Constantinople had some involvement in their manufacturing.)

However, like a game of "telephone", the west would forget the original import of this self exaltation - and once the Franks managed to occupy the Papacy itself, these bogus claims no longer served to keep proper order, but as the basis for further corruption (thus why the great west-east disruptions in communion, leading up to the "great schism", coincide with gradual Frankish occupation of the See of Peter.)

Therefore, the strictly regional growth of Papal prestige, may have been an accident of history and a misguided attempt to preserve Orthodoxy in the west. In a way, this "bad orientation" found amongst many later western Fathers and Saints (including Popes of Rome), is similar to the exagerations/distortions found in St.Augustine's theological speculations; while not blameworthy in themselves, and held to in good faith, they sadly became food for later, more serious problems at the hands of fiends (whether it be later Franks trying to push Byzantium out of the picture, along with the Orthodox East, or Calvinists claiming St.Augustine as their spiritual father.)

Seraphim

Seraphim

User avatar
尼古拉前执事
Archon
Posts: 5118
Joined: Thu 24 October 2002 7:01 pm
Faith: Eastern Orthodox
Jurisdiction: Non-Phylitist
Location: Euless, TX, United States of America
Contact:

Origin of the Melkite Catholic Church

Post by 尼古拉前执事 »

I just learned this last night:

As a background, in the area of the birth of the Melkite Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church was ordaining some unworldly, unlearned men.

The Jesuits were sent in to do some serious converting and convinced these unlearned priests that they could give spiritual direction to their parishioners and would focus on the things that Catholicism and Orthodoxy share and not go into newer RC dogma...

Well evidently, the Jesuits were secretly converting these people to Catholicism. After many years of this, an a synod meeting the Patirarch of Antioch announced that he had secretly been a Jesuit for 10 years and had secretly returned to communion with Rome and thus they all were in communion with Rome.

The Synod said, no we are not and elected a new Patriarch, while the old one decided he was still a Patriarch and thus started the Melkite Catholic Church.

Justin Kissel

Post by Justin Kissel »

Bump (been meaning to post on the thread, but haven't had the chance/patience)

Julianna

WHEN DID THE WEST FALL AWAY FROM ORTHODOXY?

Post by Julianna »

WHEN DID THE WEST FALL AWAY FROM ORTHODOXY?

Vladimir Moss

The recent discovery of the relics of the last king of Anglo-Saxon England, Harold II Godwinson, who was killed fighting a papist army at Hastings in 1066, has again raised the question: when did the West fall away from Orthodoxy? and consequently: which of the kings and bishops of the West can be considered Orthodox?

This is an important question, not only for Orthodox Christians of western origin, but also for the Orthodox Church as a whole. The Orthodox Church is now again (as it was in the first millenium) a Church of both East and West, so it is necessary for her to claim her inheritance in both East and West, to show that the saints of the West were and are precisely her saints, having the same faith as the saints of the East. But this can be done in a theologically well-founded manner only if it is clearly shown when and where the West fell away from Orthodoxy. Otherwise the double danger exists either of embracing pseudo-saints who were in fact heretics, or of rejecting some true saints and intercessors out of a zeal which is "not according to knowledge". In the first case, we find the "madman" Francis of Assisi (the description belongs to Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov) placed on the same level as a genuine saint such as Seraphim of Sarov. And in the second case, whole centuries of Orthodox history and sanctity are slandered, which cannot but anger God Who is jealous of the honour of those who honour Him and Who intervened to stop St. Cyril of Alexandria from dishonouring the memory of St. John Chrysostom.

There may seem to be a simple solution to this problem: those Western saints who died before the anathematization of the Roman papacy in 1054 are to be reintegrated into the Orthodox calendar, while all those "saints" who died after that date are to be counted as heretics. However the matter is not as simple as it appears. On the one hand, the argument is often heard that the West had in fact fallen into heresy well before 1054 through acceptance of the Filioque heresy, which was anathematized in 880, so that only those pre-1054 saints who clearly rejected the Filioque should be accepted in the menology. On the other hand, there is the argument that communion between parts of the West and the Orthodox East continued until well after 1054, and that the West cannot be considered to have lost grace completely until the Fourth Crusade of 1204. Thus we arrive at very different dates for the fall of the West depending on which of two major criteria of Orthodoxy we consider more fundamental: freedom from heresy, or communion with the True Church.

The truth is, of course, that both criteria are fundamental; for communion with the True Church is determined precisely on the basis of freedom from heresy. The apparent conflict between these two criteria arises from the fact that the seeds of a heresy may be present in the Church for a long time before it is formally condemned and the heretics expelled from the Church. And even after the heretics have been expelled, there may be some who remain in communion with them out of ignorance. Conversely, there have been many occasions when it is the confessors of the truth who have been expelled from the main Church body. Thus the question must not be approached in a formalistic manner, but only by calling on the Holy Spirit to reveal by other means - for example, by direct revelation (as in the case of St. John Chrysostom), or through miracles or the incorruption of relics - who His chosen ones are.

Let us consider some specific examples from the history of the English Church.

  1. St. Edward the Martyr. Some years ago, the question arose whether the martyred King Edward of England, whose relics had been returned to the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, should be recognized as a saint of the Universal Church. One hierarch queried the decision to recognize him in view of the fact, as he claimed, that the heresy of the Filioque was entrenched in England at the time. However, a Synodical decision declared in favour of St. Edward, and the doubting hierarch "agreed with the former decision after having been acquainted with the historical information compiled by His Grace, Bishop Gregory, who cited a list of names of Western saints of the same period who have long been included in our list of saints (among whom are St. Ludmilla, St. Wenceslaus of Czechia, and others)."

The present writer has argued that it is far from clear whether the Filioque was in general use in England at the time of St. Edward (late tenth century), and that in any case no less rigorous a theologian than St. Maximus the Confessor had declared, when the Roman Church first adopted the Filioque , that she did not in fact understood in a heretical sense. Thus the possibility exists of a heresy being accepted out of ignorance while those who hold it remain Orthodox.

Again, the very saint most closely associated with the condemnation of the Filioque , Photius the Great, wrote with regard to certain Fathers, such as St. Augustine, who were suspected of being tainted in this respect: "If [these] Fathers had spoken in opposition when the debated question was brought before them and fought it contentiously and had maintained their opinion and had persevered in this false teaching, and when convicted of it had held to their doctrine until death, then they would necessarily be rejected together with the error of their mind. But if they spoke badly, or, for some reason not known to us, deviated from the right path, but no question was put to them nor did anyone challenge them to learn the truth, we admit them to the list of Fathers, as if they had not said it - because of their righteousness of life and distinguished virtue and faith; faultless in other respects. We do not, however, follow their teaching in which they stray from the path of truth... We, though, who know that some of our holy Fathers and teachers strayed from the faith of true dogmas, do not take as doctrine those areas in which they strayed, but we embrace the men. So also in the case of any who are charged with teaching that the Spirit proceeds from the Son, we do not admit what is opposed to the word of the Lord, but we do not cast them from the rank of the Fathers."

The Roman Patriarchate in the early Middle Ages encompassed a very large area in which communications were very slow and difficult, and where the general level of education was low. This must be taken into account when considering whether an outlying province, such as England, was in heresy or not. The Filioque did not become an issue in England until the time of Anselm of Canterbury in about 1100. The only Englishman who even discussed the matter before that date, to the present writer's knowledge, was the famous Alcuin of York, who lived in France in about 800 and expressed himself strongly against the heresy in a letter to the brothers of Lyons: "Do not try to insert novelties in the Symbol of the Catholic Faith, and in the church services do not decide to become fond of traditions unknown in ancient times."

  1. King Edward the Confessor. Thus the Russian Church Abroad has decided in favour of the sanctity of King Edward the Martyr, who died in 979 at a time when the Filioque may or may not have been in common use in England. In this case, apart from the miracles and incorrupt relics of the martyred king, the witnesses in favour of his sanctity include: (a) his freedom from heresy in the sense of open defence of it against Orthodox opposition (see St. Photius' words quoted above), and (b) his full communion with the Orthodox Church in the East. But what are we to think of his nephew, also called King Edward, and also renowned for miracles and incorruption, but called "the Confessor" to distinguish him from his martyred uncle of the same name?

Two facts make it more difficult to accept Edward the Confessor as a saint of the Universal Church. The first is the fact that, from 1009, the Roman papacy, from which the English Church had derived its faith and to which it was canonically subject, again introduced the Filioque into the Symbol of Faith, which was followed in 1014 by its use at the coronation of the German Emperor Henry II. And the second is that Edward the Confessor died in 1066, twelve years after the Roman Church had been officially anathematized by the Great Church of Constantinople.

It has been argued that the use of the Filioque in the German emperor's coronation service may have been derived from its use in the English rite. However, this is highly unlikely. Although Germany had been largely converted to the Faith by English missionaries in the eighth century, it was never canonically subject to the English Church. Even her apostle, the Englishman St. Boniface, carried out his missionary work as a representative of the Roman Papacy, not of the English Church. Moreover, it is almost inconceivable that "the Holy Roman Emperor", as the German emperor called himself, should have derived his Symbol of faith and the rite of his coronation from anywhere else but Rome.

The English coronation service, on the other hand, was worked out independently of Rome and on a Byzantine model by St. Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury (+988), who was St. Edward the Martyr's spiritual father and who crowned both him, his father Edgar and his half-brother Ethelred, Edward the Confessor's father.

It is, of course, possible that the Filioque was introduced from the continent into the English coronation service after 1014. It must be remembered, however, that at least one son of the English Church from the period after 1014 was recognized as a saint in both East and West very shortly after his death. We are referring here to Martyr-King Olaf of Norway, who was martyred in 1030, who was glorified after an official investigation of his incorrupt relics by the English Bishop Grimkell of Nidaros (Trondheim), and to whom churches were dedicated in many other places, including Novgorod. Moreover, it was in connection with a miracle attributed to St. Olaf in about the reign of Alexis Comnenus or a little earlier that a chapel was dedicated to him in Constantinople and he was included among the saints of the Imperial City.

If Olaf is accepted as a saint of the Universal Church, then it is difficult to see how at least the possibility of sanctification can be denied to the other members of the English Church - at any rate until 1054.

In 1054, however, the final and complete break between Rome and Constantinople took place, and was sealed by a fearful anathema. From that moment it became imperative for all members of the Roman Patriarchate to separate from their cursed head on earth if they were to remain members of the Body of Christ Whose Blessed Head was in heaven. One is therefore struck to learn - and the believer in Divine Providence can hardly consider it a coincidence - that from 1052, two years before the anathema, until the completion of the Norman Conquest of England in 1070, the English Church was in fact not in communion with Rome, and was only reintegrated after the most bloody genocide of the English people!

The reason for the break in communion, it must be admitted, was not the Filioque or any other dogmatic question. The last archbishop of Canterbury before the schism had fled from England after the failure of a political cause which he had supported, and had dropped his omophorion , the symbol of his archiepiscopal rank, in his haste to escape. King Edward had then allowed the omophorion to be bestowed on Bishop Stigand of Winchester, and continued to support this new, but technically uncanonical archbishop in spite of the Pope's fulminations against the "schismatic" English. In fact, it was the papacy which fell into schism and under anathema only two years later, and the English who escaped anathema - temporarily, at any rate - by their non-communion with Rome. From this time, however, the Popes attempted to undermine support for the English king and archbishop.

This they failed to do in King Edward's lifetime because of his popularity among the people and manifest gifts of healing and prophecy (it is also asserted that he remained a virgin to the end of his life). Among other things, he prophesied that the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus had changed over from sleeping on their right sides to sleeping on their left - a sign of disaster to come which was verified by a commission sent by the Byzantine Emperor.

Still more important was the revelation he received on his deathbed from two holy monks: "Since," they said, "those who have climbed to the highest offices in the kingdom of England, the earls, bishops and abbots, and all those in holy orders, are not what they seem to be, but, on the contrary, are servants of the devil, on a year and one day after the day of your death God has delivered all this kingdom, cursed by Him, into the hands of the enemy, and devils shall come through all this land with fire and sword and the havoc of war." This prophecy was fulfilled exactly when, on January 6, 1067, one year and one day after the death of King Edward, the papist William of Normandy was crowned king of England, which was followed by a terrible devastation of England that resulted in the deaths of one in five Englishmen, the razing of most of the churches and the destruction of the whole fabric of English life. Then, on August 29, 1070, Archbishop Stigand was officially deposed in the presence of papal legates at the pseudo-council of Winchester.

This would appear to give two cut-off points for the death of English Orthodoxy: January 6, 1067 and August 29, 1070. (The last English Orthodox bishops were the brothers Ethelwine and Ethelric; the former solemnly anathematized the Pope before dying of hunger in prison, and the latter also died in prison "in voluntary poverty and a wealth of tears", his tomb being glorified by miracles.) But King Edward died before either of these dates...

  1. King Harold II. Every English schoolboy has heard of the most important date in English history, 1066, even if hardly any knows its real significance. In that year, after a short reign of nine months in which King Harold II accomplished almost superhuman feats in defence of his country, he finally died at the battle of Hastings on October 14, at the hands of the Catholic usurper William of Normandy. His terribly mutilated body was then buried secretly in his family church at Bosham until its discovery on the Feast of the Annunciation, 1954. However, it was recognized to be his only last year.

Was King Harold Orthodox?

If Edward the Confessor was Orthodox, as we have just argued, then it is difficult to deny the same to his successor. And the fact that he was formally anathematized by Pope Alexander II, who blessed William's invasion of England, only speaks in the English king's favour insofar as Alexander was certainly a heretic and an enemy of the truth. Also in his favour - although only indirectly - is the fact that his daughter Gytha fled, not to Rome, but to Orthodox Kiev, where she married the right-believing Great Prince Vladimir Monomakh, thereby uniting the blood of the Orthodox autocrats of England and Russia. Nor did most of his followers who refused to accept the new political and ecclesiastical order in England flee to any western country, but to - Constantinople, where they entered the bodyguard of the emperor and were allowed to erect their own English Orthodox basilica.

Was King Harold a saint?

This is much harder to establish, since he was glorified neither in the East nor in the West. However, if it can be established that he died as a martyr in defence of Orthodoxy, further proof of sanctity is not needed, according to the tradition of the Orthodox Church.

This question cannot be discussed further here; in any case, only a Synod of Bishops can decide such controversial cases. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that in the opinion of many historians, the transformation of English life that took place as a result of the battle of Hastings in 1066 was so great as to constitute an ecclesiastical, as well as a political and national revolution. In which case, King Harold II can truly be considered to have been "he that restrained" the Catholicization of England, just as his descendant, Tsar Nicholas II, was "he that restrained" the Bolshevization of Russia.

Finally, the parallel between England in 1066 and Russia in 1917 reminds us that official glorification of saints usually follows, rather than precedes, the unofficial veneration by the believing people. Just as the believing people of the West in the first generation after the schism instinctively knew who the real heroes of the faith and nation had been and venerated them, even when their new masters forbade it, in the same way the believing people of Russia venerated the new martyrs even while their new political and ecclesiastical leaders called them "political criminals". It therefore belongs to later generations, who come to the true faith in freedom from tyranny, to re-establish the veneration of the last champions of the faith before the (always temporary) triumph of heresy, remembering that "it is good to hide the secret of a king, but it is glorious to reveal and preach the works of God" ( Tobit 12.7).

April 4/17, 1997.

St. Ambrose of Milan.

Julianna

R U RED-E?

Post by Julianna »

Paradosis wrote:

Bump (been meaning to post on the thread, but haven't had the chance/patience)

Ready yet?

Post Reply