Great Schism (1054)

The division between the Church of Rome and the Orthodox Churches of the East, dated to 1054 but made over centuries. In July of that year Cardinal Humbert laid a bull excommunicating Patriarch Michael Cerularius on the altar of Hagia Sophia, and a synod in Constantinople anathematised the legates in turn. The quarrel beneath was older: the Filioque added to the Creed in the West, the claim of the Roman see to jurisdiction over the whole Church rather than a primacy of honour among the patriarchs, and differences of practice such as the unleavened bread. What made the schism real in the lives of the faithful was the Fourth Crusade, which sacked Constantinople in 1204 and set a Latin patriarch in it. The unions proclaimed at Lyons in 1274 and at Florence in 1439 were refused by the Orthodox people, and St Mark of Ephesus would not sign. In 1965 Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras removed the anathemas of 1054 from memory; communion was not restored, because the questions that caused it remain.