If the Patriarch was the instrument of the new quarrel, its occasion was the darming increase in the power of the Normans in south Italy. On 17 July 10 j 3 Pope Leo IX, determined to eliminate these freebooting brigands once and for all, had attacked them with a large and heterogeneous army near the little town of Civitate; but he had suffered an ignominious defeat and had been held a virtual prisoner at Benevento for eight months, returning to Rome the following April only just in
1 See Chapter 6.
2 He seems, too, to have had in his character a streak of sheer vindictiveness, of which he gave an unpleasant demonstration in his treatment of his old enemy John the Orphanotrophus. Constantine on his accession had shown pity towards this now pathetic figure by transferring him from the dreadful Monobatae to his own former place of exile on Lesbos; one of the first acts of the new Patriarch, on the other hand, had been to have him blinded.
time to die. The Byzantine army had not turned up at Civitate - to the fury of the papalists, who understandably felt betrayed - but its leaders were every bit as apprehensive of the Norman menace as was the Pope himself, and it was plain enough to Argyrus, the Lombard-born commander of the imperial troops in the peninsula, that the only hope of saving the province for the Empire lay in an alliance with the Papacy. The Emperor, who admired and respected Argyrus, wholeheartedly agreed.
Cerularius, on the other hand, saw the issue in an exclusively ecclesiastical light and at once declared his bitter opposition. He disliked and distrusted the Latins; above all he hated the idea of papal supremacy, and he knew that such an alliance, even if it were to succeed in expelling the Normans, would effectively prevent the return of previously Norman-held territories to the jurisdiction of Constantinople. Even before Civitate he had struck his first blow: learning that the Normans, with papal approval, were enforcing Latin customs - in particular the use of unleavened bread for the Sacrament — on the Greek churches of south Italy, he had immediately ordered the Latin communities of Constantinople to adopt Greek usages, and when they objected he had closed them down'. Next and more disastrous still, he had persuaded the head of the Bulgarian Church, Archbishop Leo of Ochrid, to write to the Orthodox Bishop John of Trani in Apulia a letter - to be passed on 'to all the bishops of the Franks, to the monks and people and to the most venerable Pope himself — in which he violently condemned certain practices of the Roman Church as sinful and 'Judaistic'.
A copy of this letter, in a rough Latin translation, reached Pope Leo during his captivity at Benevento. Furious, he prepared a detailed reply -insultingly addressed 'to Michael of Constantinople and Leo of Ochrid, Bishops' — defending the Latin usages to which the Patriarch had objected and setting out all the arguments for papal supremacy; it was perhaps just as well that before it could be dispatched there arrived two more letters, one of which carried at its foot the huge purple scrawl of the Emperor himself. The text is lost, but is unlikely to have contained anything remarkable: Leo's surviving reply suggests that it expressed regrets for Civitate and made vague proposals for a further strengthening of the alliance. Far more surprising was the second letter which, apart from a few verbal infelicities, seemed to radiate conciliation and good will. It contained no reference to the disputed rites, it prayed for closer unity between the two Churches — and it was signed by Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople.
It tnay have been the Emperor himself who persuaded the Patriarch to extend this obvious olive branch - though it is perhaps more likely to have been the Bishop of Trani, for whom the issue was far more immediate and who would have understood all too well how much was at stake. At any rate Cerularius seems to have made a genuine effort; Pope Leo would have been well advised to overlook the occasional little dig - he was addressed, for example, as 'brother' instead of 'father' - and to let the matter rest. But Leo was sdll angry and, very probably, already mortally ill; and his principal secretary, Cardinal Humbert of Mourmoutiers — who in the events that followed was to show himself not a jot less bigoted and waspish than the Patriarch himself - had no difficulty in persuading him to put his name to two more letters, and to approve the dispatch of an official legation to deliver them personally in Constantinople.
The first of these letters, to the Patriarch, addressed him as 'Archbishop', which was at least one degree politer than before; but it castigated him for his unpardonable presumption in even questioning the Latin usages, accused him of having pretensions to ecumenical authority (which was probably due to a mistake in the Latin translation of his letter) and finally suggested that his election had been uncanonical - a deliberate slur for which there was no justification whatever. The second letter was addressed to the Emperor and was, as we have seen, largely devoted to political affairs. It carried, however, a sting in the tail: the last paragraph contained a vehement protest against Cerularius's 'many and intolerable presumptions ... in which if - as heaven forbid -he persist, he will in no wise retain our peaceful regard'. The Pope concluded with a commendation of the legates who would carry the two letters to Constantinople. He trusted that they would be given every assistance, and that they would find the Patriarch suitably repentant.
Leo was an able and intelligent man, but this time he had gravely miscalculated. Needing as he did all the help he could get against the Norman menace, he should have welcomed the opportunity of conciliation with the Orthodox Church; and had he been a little better informed about affairs in Constantinople he would have known that the Emperor
- who was by now, like himself, a dying man - would never attempt to override the Patriarch, who was a far stronger character and had the whole weight of public opinion behind him. Still more unwise was his choice of legates on this particularly delicate mission: Humbert himself-narrow-minded, opinionated and rabidly anti-Greek - and two others,
Cardinal Frederick of Lorraine (later Pope Stephen IX) and Archbishop Peter of Amalfi, both of whom had fought at Civitate and bore a bitter grudge against the Byzantines for having let them down.
The three prelates arrived in Constantinople at the beginning of April 1054. From the outset, everything went wrong. Calling on the Patriarch, they immediately took offence at the manner in which they were received and stalked away in a huff, leaving the papal letter behind them. When Cerularius read it, it was his turn to fly into a fury. His worst suspicions were confirmed: forced against his better judgement to make a gesture of conciliation, he now found it flung back in his face. And worse was to follow: the legates, who had been welcomed by the Emperor with his usual courtesy, had been encouraged by their reception to publish, in Greek translation, the full text of the Pope's earlier, still undispatched, letter to the Patriarch and the Archbishop of Ochrid, together with a detailed memorandum on the usages in dispute.
To Michael Cerularius, this was the final insult. Here was a letter addressed to him, of whose very existence he had been unaware until copies were circulating all over the city. Meanwhile a closer examination of the second letter - which had at least, after a fashion, been delivered -revealed that the seals on it had been tampered with. If - as seemed all too clear - the legates had opened it, to whom might it not have been shown? For all he knew, it could even have been tampered with. These so-called legates, he decided, were not only discourteous; they were downright dishonest. He announced forthwith that he refused to accept their legatine authority or to receive from them any further communications.
A situation in which a fully accredited papal legation, cordially received by the Emperor, remained unrecognized and ignored by his Patriarch could obviously not continue for long; and it was lucky for Cerularius that a few weeks after its arrival there came the news that the Pope had died in Rome. Humbert and his colleagues had been Leo's personal representatives; his death consequently deprived them of all official standing. The Patriarch's satisfaction at this development can well be imagined; it must however have been somewhat mitigated by the absence of any obvious discomfiture on the part of the legates. Their proper course in the circ
umstances would have been to return at once to Rome; instead, they remained in Constantinople apparently unconcerned by what had happened, growing more arrogant and high-handed with every day that passed. The publication of the papal letter had provoked a firm riposte from a certain monk of the Studium named Nicetas Stethatus, in which he had criticized in particular the Latins' use of unleavened bread, their habit of fasting on the Sabbath and their attempts to impose celibacy on their clergy. Though not a particularly impressive document, it was couched in polite and respectful language; but it drew from Humbert, instead of a reasoned reply, a torrent of shrill, almost hysterical invective. Ranting on for page after page, describing Stethatus as 'pestiferous pimp' and 'disciple of the malignant Mahomet', suggesting that he must have emerged from a theatre or brothel rather than a monastery and finally pronouncing anathema upon him and all who shared in his 'perverse doctrine' - which, however, he made no attempt to refute - the cardinal can only have confirmed the average Byzantine in his opinion that the Church of Rome now consisted of little more than a bunch of crude barbarians with whom no argument, let alone agreement, could ever be possible.
Michael Cerularius, delighted to see his enemies not only shorn of their authority but making fools of themselves as well, continued to hold his peace. Even when the Emperor, now fearing with good reason for the future of the papal alliance on which he had set his heart, forced Stethatus to retract and apologize; even when Humbert went on to raise with Constantine the whole question of the Filioque, repudiation of which had by now become a cornerstone of Byzantine theology, no word issued from the Patriarchal Palace, no sign that the Orthodox authorities took any cognizance of the undignified wrangle which was now the talk of the city. At last - as Cerularius knew he would — Humbert lost the last shreds of his patience. At three o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, 16 July 1054, in the presence of all the clergy assembled for the Eucharist, the three ex-legates of Rome, two cardinals and an archbishop, all in their full canonicals, strode into the Great Church of St Sophia and up to the high altar, on which they formally laid their solemn Bull of Excommunication. This done, they turned on their heel and marched from the building, pausing only to shake the dust symbolically from their feet. Two days later, having taken formal leave of the Emperor - who remained as courteous as ever and loaded them with presents - they left for Rome.
Even if we ignore the fact that the legates were without any papal authority and that the Bull itself was consequently invalid by all the standards of canon law, it remains an astonishing production. Sir Steven Runciman describes it thus:
Few important documents have been so full of demonstrable errors. It is indeed extraordinary that a man of Humbert's learning could have penned so lamentable a manifesto. It began by refusing to Cerularius, both personally and as Bishop of Constantinople, the tide of Patriarch. It declared that there was nothing-to be said against the citizens of the Empire or of Constantinople, but that all those who supported Cerularius were guilty of simony (which, as Humbert knew, was the dominant vice of his own Church), of encouraging castration (a practice that was also followed at Rome), of insisting on rebaptising Latins (which, at that time, was untrue), of allowing priests to marry (which was incorrect; a married man could become a priest but no one who was already ordained could marry), of baptising women in labour, even if they were dying (a good early Christian practice), of jettisoning the Mosaic Law (which was untrue), of refusing communion to men who had shaved their beards (which again was untrue, though the Greeks disapproved of shaven priests), and, finally, of omitting a clause in the Creed (which was the exact reverse of the truth). After such accusations, complaints about the closing of the Latin churches at Constantinople and of disobedience to the Papacy lost their effect.1
News of the excommunication spread like wildfire, and demonstrations in support of the Patriarch were held throughout the city. They were first directed principally against the Latins, but it was not long before the mob found a new target for its resentment: the Emperor himself, whose evident sympathy for the legates was rightly thought to have encouraged them in their excesses. Luckily for Constantine, he had a scapegoat ready to hand. Argyrus himself was in Italy, as yet unaware of what had happened and still working for the papal alliance; but those of his family who chanced to be in the capital were instantly arrested. This assuaged popular feeling to some extent, but it was only when the Bull had been publicly burnt and the three legates themselves formally anathematized that peace returned.
Such is the sequence of events, at Constantinople in the early summer of 1054, which resulted in the lasting separation of the Eastern and Western Churches. It is an unedifying story because, however inevitable the breach may have been, the events themselves should never - and need never - have occurred. More strength of will on the part of the dying Pope or the pleasure-loving Emperor, less bigotry on the part of the narrow-minded Patriarch or the pig-headed cardinal, and the situation could have been saved. The initial crisis arose in south Italy, the one crucial area in which a political understanding between Rome and Constantinople was most vitally necessary. The fatal blow was struck by the disempowered legates of a dead Pope, representing a headless Church - since the new Pontiff had not yet been elected - and using an instrument at once uncanonical and inaccurate. Both the Latin and Greek excommunications were directed personally at the offending dignitaries rather than at the Churches for which they stood; both could later have been rescinded, and neither was at the time recognized as introducing a permanent schism. Technically indeed they did not do so, since twice in succeeding centuries - in the thirteenth at Lyons and in the fifteenth at Florence - was the Eastern Church to be compelled, for political reasons, to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. But though a temporary bandage may cover an open wound it cannot heal it; and despite even the balm applied by the Ecumenical Council of 1965, the wound which was jointly inflicted nine centuries ago on the Christian Church by Cardinal Humbert and Patriarch Cerularius still bleeds today.
Despite the various disasters - political, spiritual and military — that marked the reign of Constantine Monomachus, life for the leisured classes in the capital must have been more agreeable than it had been for many years. The Emperor, for all his faults, possessed a sense of elegance and style that had been sadly lacking during the austere regime of Basil II and those of the ill-educated and boorish Paphlagonians who followed him. Not since the days of Constantine Porphyrogenitus had the court ceremonies been so magnificent, the entertainments so lavish. And if the basileus himself was no intellectual he was certainly not uncultured: he actively encouraged the arts and sciences and liked to surround himself with men of genuine learning. Of these the most remarkable was Michael Psellus: historian, politician, humanist, philosopher and by far the most distinguished classical scholar of his time. Moreover he was an orator of quite exceptional ability — at a period when that particular art was a good deal more important than it is today. The pity is that he should also have been self-seeking, sanctimonious, insufferably conceited - and, as we shall see, capable when the occasion demanded of the blackest perfidy.
Psellus's fellow-intellectuals in the inner circle around the Emperor were his oldest and most intimate friend, the lawyer John Xiphilinus of Trebizond, possessed of so prodigious a memory that he was said to carry the whole legal code of the Empire in his head; his old teacher, the poet and scholar John Mauropous; and the chief minister, Constantine Likhoudes. It was to them that the cultural renaissance of the mid-eleventh century was chiefly due, they above all who were responsible for the revival in 1045 of the University of Constantinople.- Their first concern was the Law School, which had sunk so low under Basil that by the accession of Monomachus there was not a single professor of jurisprudence remaining in the city. Now entirely reconstituted by Mauropous, it had at its head John Xiphilinus, who was given the resounding title of nomophylax, 'Guardian of the Law'. Courses at the new Faculty of Philosophy, entrusted to Psellus as 'Consul [hypatus] of Philosophers
', opened with the ancient trivium of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic, continued with the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music and ended with philosophy itself, the ultimate synthesis of all knowledge.
Within a very few years, the university had become once again famous throughout Christendom and even beyond. For the past two centuries it had been the Arabs, rather than the Greeks, who dominated the intellectual world; the so-called wise men of Constantinople, they used to say, were not even mules - they were donkeys. Now, thanks to Psellus and his friends - and the enlightened patronage of Constantine Monomachus - Byzantium regained its old reputation and became once again a meeting-point for the scholars of Europe and Asia. As Psellus modestly wrote to Michael Cerularius:
The Celts and the Arabs are now our prisoners. From East and West alike my reputation brings them flocking to our city. The Nile may water the land of the Egyptians, but it is my golden words that nourish their spirit. Ask the Persians and the Ethiopians: they will tell you that they know me, that they admire me and seek me out. Only recently there arrived a Babylonian, impelled by an insurmountable desire to drink at the fountain of my eloquence.
All this must have done wonders for the Empire's international reputation, which had been steadily declining in the quarter-century since the death of Basil II; but the greatest benefit was to be felt at home. For years already, properly qualified judges and even trained civil servants had been in short supply. By the end of Constantine's reign the new university was producing a steady stream of highly educated young men on which the government could draw for its senior administrators. Their expertise would be more than ever necessary in the years to come.
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