The Apogee - Byzantium 02 (50 page)

Constantine Monomachus was fond of telling people that he led a charmed life. After the failure - by another almost incredible stroke of good fortune - of this second military insurrection in four years, there must have been many of his subjects who agreed with him.

For the progressive weakening of the Empire's military strength during his twelve-and-a-half-year reign, Constantine must take the lion's share of the responsibility. Had Basil II been on the throne, it is impossible to imagine that he would have permitted the Pecheneg tribes to cross the Danube in 1047 or thereabouts and to settle permanently in imperial territory. Over a century before, Constantine Porphyrogenitus had stressed the need to keep this most dangerous of barbarian races
1
under

1
See p.
164.

constant surveillance. His own policy had been to buy their alliance with lavish presents, using them to attack his enemies - Bulgars or Magyars -in the rear and so to prevent any southward advance on the part of the Russians. With Basil's conquest of Bulgaria, however, and the extension of the imperial frontier to the banks of the Danube, the situation had changed. There was no longer a buffer state between Byzantium and the nomad hordes; their incessant plundering raids were now directed not against the unfortunate Bulgars but against the Empire itself. Constantine Monomachus, unable to stem the tide, sought to turn it to his advantage by using the Pechenegs as mercenaries, particularly for the garrisons of the border strongholds. They proved, however, too untrustworthy: instead of keeping the peace they rapidly reduced the whole region to chaos. Before long he had no choice but to take up arms against them once more, but once more he was doomed to failure. After several humiliating defeats he returned to the old system of bribery. By now, however, the Pechenegs were not so easily bought off. Only by grants of valuable land and several high honorific titles could he obtain so much as a truce.

For the greatest tragedy of his entire reign - indeed, one of the most shattering disasters ever to have befallen Christendom - Constantine can, on the other hand, be largely absolved from blame. The religious schism between East and West had many causes, but imperial apathy was not among them. Indeed, Byzantine Emperors had traditionally favoured the concept of Roman supremacy against their own Church, if only because they were anxious to preserve the universality of their Empire and to maintain their claims to south Italy. Nevertheless, as readers of this history will be aware, the two Churches had been growing apart for centuries. Their slow but steady estrangement was in essence a reflection of the old rivalry between Latin and Greek, Rome and Byzantium. The Roman Pontificate was rapidly extending its effective authority across Europe, and as its power grew so too did its ambition and arrogance - tendencies which were viewed in Constantinople with resentment and not a little anxiety. There was also a fundamental difference in the approach of the two Churches to Christianity itself. The Byzantines, for whom their Emperor was Equal of the Apostles and matters of doctrine could be settled only by the Holy Ghost speaking through an Ecumenical Council, were scandalized by the presumption of the Pope — who was, in their view, merely
primus inter
pares
among the Patriarchs — in formulating dogma and claiming both spiritual and temporal supremacy; while to the legalistic and disciplined minds of Rome the old Greek love of discussion and theological speculation was always repugnant, and occasionally shocking. Already two centuries before, matters had very nearly come to a head over Photius and the
Fi/ioque.
1
Fortunately, after the death of Pope Nicholas and thanks to the good will of his successors and of Photius himself, friendly relations had been outwardly restored; but the basic problems remained unsolved, the
Fi/ioque
continued to gain adherents in the West and the Emperor maintained his claim to rule as God's Vice-Gerent on Earth. It was only a matter of time before the quarrel broke out again.

That it did so at this moment was largely the fault of the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, who had succeeded old Alexis in 1043. From what we know of him, he does not appear as an attractive figure. After long service in the civil administration he had been involved in a conspiracy against Michael IV, and it was while serving a consequent sentence of exile that he had entered a monastery and decided - for he was consumed with ambition - on an ecclesiastical career. He was as unlike his distant predecessor Photius as can possibly be imagined. Where the latter had been the greatest scholar of his day, Cerularius was a mediocre theologian with only a sketchy knowledge of Church history; where Photius had been a highly cultivated man of intelligence and charm, Cerularius was rigid and narrow-minded: a bureaucrat through and through.
2
He was, however - as one might have expected - an able and efficient administrator; he possessed a will of iron; and - although it is not immediately easy to see why - he enjoyed considerable popularity in Constantinople.

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 Byzant
ine army had not turned up at Civ
itate - 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 littl
e 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 Amal
fi, both of whom had fought at Ci
vitate 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 circumstances 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
Fi
lioque,
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 sy
mpathy for the legates was rightl
y 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 jointl
y inflicted nine centuries ago on the Christian Church by Cardinal Humbert and Patriarch Cerularius still bleeds today.