Pope: "It is a glorious day for the children of God. What can I do for you?"
Interviewer: "Can you please tell me about the Great Schism?"
Pope: "What is know as the Great Schism happened in 1054 during the Byzantine Empire in the Christian Church. As you know, I was the Pope of Rome and Michael Cerularius was the Patriarch of Constantinople. There were many schisms between our regions of West and East, but this one finally seperated the Eastern Orthodox Church and my Western Catholic Church. We had started to isolate from each other on these earlier issues, using different languages, rules for priests, use of icons, but from a mid-eleventh century disagreement, our communication would end. We wanted byzantine liturature practices and those fools wanted Latin. Anyways, I was the first to take some serious action and in 1053 I sent over some of my representatives to Constantinople. The Patriarch rudely denied my negotiation plans so I...excommunicated him."
Interviewer: "You excommunicated him?"
Pope: "Well yes! Left the papers on the altar of Hagia Sophia July 16, 1054, even got the emperor's blessing. The Patriarch then excommunicated me on the 20th and we were completely divided. Other later emperors tried to reunite us, but with no luck."
Interviewer: "What is the impact or importance of this Schism?"
Pope: "Why, it divided the Christian church between into Orthodox and Catholic. It also made Constantinople weak without our military support and they were sacked in 1453."
Interviewer: "Thank you for the interview."
Pope: "My pleasure, peace be with you."
No comments:
Post a Comment