The Arsenite Schism was a conflict dividing the Byzantine Church between 1265 and 1310. The schism began when a church synod deposed the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Arsenios Autoreianos on the initiative of Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos.
The Council of Chalcedon divided the ecclesiastic administration of Christianity between the five most prominent bishops of the Roman Empire. They were the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, each of them styled as patriarchs. [1] Under this model of church administration, known as pentarchy, the four eastern patriarchs acknowledged the honorary primacy of the bishops of Rome (or popes), but maintained that the entire church was under the collective leadership of the five patriarchs, and denied the right of any patriarchal see to intervene in the affairs of an other patriarchate. [2]
During the following centuries, the western Church adopted practices, such as the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist and fasting on Saturday, that remained alien to eastern Christians. The unilateral modification of the Nicene Creed regarding the Holy Spirit—one of the three divine persons of God in Christianity—in the west caused further conflicts. The eastern Christians maintained that the Holy Spirit proceeded only from God the Father, whereas western Christians began to attribute a role to God the Son in the process. [3] The westen concept known as filioque ('and from the Son') was officially introduced in Rome early in the 11th century, demonstrating the papacy's claim to supreme authority. [4] The conflict culminated in the East–West Schism of 1054. This year papal legates excommunicated the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael I Cerularius (d. 1059) for his resistance to papal demands relating the use of unleavened bread; in response, Cerularius excommunicated the papal legates. [5]
During the Fourth Crusade in 1204–1205, a coalition of western knights and Venetian merchants captured Constantinople, and seized large chunks of the Byzantine Empire. The westerners transformed the conquered territories into the Latin Empire of Constantinople, but Byzantine resistance survived in the unconquered lands. The Byzantine aristocrat Theodore I Laskaris (r. 1205–1221) took control of the Byzantine lands in Asia Minor, transforming them in a Byzantine successor state, the Empire of Nicaea. [6] With his active support, the Eastern Orthodox clergy of Constantinople elected Michael IV Autoreianos (d. 1212) as the new Ecumenical Patriarch in 1208. The new Patriarch established his seat in Nicaea, and crowned Theodore emperor. [7]
The Second Council of Nicaea is recognized as the last of the first seven ecumenical councils by the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church. In addition, it is also recognized as such by the Old Catholics, the Anglican Communion, and others. Protestant opinions on it are varied.
Photios I, also spelled Photius, was the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople from 858 to 867 and from 877 to 886. He is recognized in the Eastern Orthodox Church as Saint Photios the Great.
Theodore I Laskaris or Lascaris was the first emperor of Nicaea—a successor state of the Byzantine Empire—from 1205 to his death. Although he was born to an obscure aristocratic family, his mother was related to the imperial Komnenos clan. He married Anna, a younger daughter of Emperor Alexios III Angelos in 1200. He received the title of despot before 1203, demonstrating his right to succeed his father-in-law on the throne.
Pope Nicholas I, called Nicholas the Great, was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 24 April 858 until his death. He is remembered as a consolidator of papal authority, exerting decisive influence on the historical development of the papacy and its position among the Christian nations of Western Europe. Nicholas I asserted that the pope should have suzerainty over all Christians, even royalty, in matters of faith and morals.
The Council of Florence is the seventeenth ecumenical council recognized by the Catholic Church, held between 1431 and 1449. It was convoked as the Council of Basel by Pope Martin V shortly before his death in February 1431 and took place in the context of the Hussite Wars in Bohemia and the rise of the Ottoman Empire. At stake was the greater conflict between the conciliar movement and the principle of papal supremacy.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is one of the fifteen to seventeen autocephalous churches that together compose the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is headed by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.
The Henotikon was a christological document issued by Byzantine emperor Zeno in 482, in an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the differences between the supporters of the Council of Chalcedon and the council's opponents. It was followed by the Acacian schism.
The Empire of Nicaea or the Nicene Empire is the conventional historiographic name for the largest of the three Byzantine Greek rump states founded by the aristocracy of the Byzantine/Roman Empire that fled when Constantinople was occupied by Western European and Venetian armed forces during the Fourth Crusade, a military event known as the Sack of Constantinople. Like the other Byzantine rump states that formed due to the 1204 fracturing of the empire, such as the Empire of Trebizond and the Despotate of Epirus, it was a continuation of the eastern half of the Roman Empire that survived well into the medieval period. A fourth state, known in historiography as the Latin Empire, was established by an army of Crusaders and the Republic of Venice after the capture of Constantinople and the surrounding environs.
The East–West Schism, also known as the Great Schism or Schism of 1054, is the ongoing break of communion between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches since 1054. It is estimated that, immediately following the beginning of the schism, a slim majority of Christians worldwide were Eastern Christians; most of the rest were Western Christians. A series of ecclesiastical differences and theological disputes between the Greek East and Latin West preceded the formal split that occurred in 1054. Prominent among these were the procession of the Holy Spirit (Filioque), whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used in the Eucharist, the Pope's claim to universal jurisdiction, and the place of the See of Constantinople in relation to the pentarchy.
Pentarchy is a model of Church organization formulated in the laws of Emperor Justinian I of the Roman Empire. In this model, the Christian Church is governed by the heads (patriarchs) of the five major episcopal sees of the Roman Empire: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
The Photian Schism was a four-year (863–867) schism between the episcopal sees of Rome and Constantinople. The issue centred on the right of the Byzantine Emperor to depose and appoint a patriarch without approval from the papacy.
The East–West Schism that occurred in 1054 represents one of the most significant events in the history of Christianity. It includes various events and processes that led to the schism and also those events and processes that occurred as a result of the schism. Eastern and Western Christians had a history of differences and disagreements, some dating back to the period of Early Christianity. At the very root of what later became the Great Schism were several questions of pneumatology and ecclesiology. The most important theological difference occurred over various questions regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit, and the use of the filioque clause in the Nicene Creed. One of the main ecclesiological issues was the question of papal supremacy. Other points of difference were related to various liturgical, ritual, and disciplinary customs and practices. Some political and cultural processes also contributed to the breakout of the schism.
Christianity in the 11th century is marked primarily by the Great Schism of the Church, which formally divided the State church of the Roman Empire into Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) branches.
The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) imperial church headed by Constantinople continued to assert its universal authority. By the 13th century this assertion was becoming increasingly irrelevant as the Eastern Roman Empire shrank and the Ottoman Turks took over most of what was left of the Byzantine Empire. The other Eastern European churches in communion with Constantinople were not part of its empire and were increasingly acting independently, achieving autocephalous status and only nominally acknowledging Constantinople's standing in the Church hierarchy. In Western Europe the Holy Roman Empire fragmented making it less of an empire as well.
Michael I Cerularius or Keroularios was the Patriarch of Constantinople from 1043 to 1059 AD. His disputes with Pope Leo IX over church practices in the 11th century played a role in the events that led to the Great Schism in 1054.
Arsenios Autoreianos, , Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, lived about the middle of the 13th century.
Germanus II Nauplius was Patriarch of Constantinople from 1223 until his death in June 1240.
Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire when Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, which recognized the catholic orthodoxy of Nicene Christians in the Great Church as the Roman Empire's state religion. Most historians refer to the Nicene church associated with emperors in a variety of ways: as the catholic church, the orthodox church, the imperial church, the imperial Roman church, or the Byzantine church, although some of those terms are also used for wider communions extending outside the Roman Empire. The Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Catholic Church all claim to stand in continuity from the Nicene church to which Theodosius granted recognition.
The timeline of the Latin Empire is a chronological list of events of the history of the Latin Empire—the crusader state that developed on the ruins of the Byzantine Empire after the Fourth Crusade in the 13th century.
Benedict was a Roman Catholic cardinal who served as the apostolic legate to the Latin Empire from 1205 until 1207.