4814 AM · 1054 CE · world history
The Great Schism
Christianity splits for good into the Catholic West and the Orthodox East.
The disagreements had accumulated for centuries: language, rite, the primacy of the bishop of Rome, the filioque clause. In 1054 papal legates lay a bull of excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia, and the patriarch replies in kind. A quarrel between two prelates hardened into a split between two civilisations.
Sources
Documents of the period
- the acts of mutual excommunication 1054 and church chronicles — the legates’ document on the altar of Hagia Sophia and the patriarch Cerularius’ counter-excommunication
Scholarship
- studies in Church history — the dispute over the filioque and Roman primacy; the mutual anathemas were lifted only in 1965
Basis: documents and evidence.