The Eastern Schism
ME EASTERN SCHISM. By Steven Runciman. (O.U.P., 21s.) This book is based on the Waynflete Lectures which Mr. Runciman delivered at Oxford in the spring of 1955. It is a brief and able presentation of the main facts that led to the final breach between the Church of Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The date generally accepted for the schism was 1054, and it is true that the quarrel which took place that year between the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Caerularius, and the Pope's legate Cardinal Humbert was a bitter episode in ecclesiasti- cal history, which helped in creating an atmosphere of schism. But recent research has shown that it was neither the first nor the last episode in the long and sorry story that split the Universal Church of Christ, and had such far-reaching consequences for the Christian peoples both of the East and of the West. It is largely owing to the work of Professor Dvornik and Father Grumel that the traditional view of Photius and the part ha played in the schism has had to be greatly modified—the Photian episode ended with a complete reconciliation between the Papacy and the Patriarchate—and scholars are now reaching the conclusion that the year 1054 call no longer be held to mark the final separation of the churches. Indeed, as Mr. Runciman clearly shows, it is impossible to give a precise date for the schism; the separation came more slowly, more unevenly than had been generally thought, for it was not the result of a theological issue only, or the outcome of superficial jealousies, or conflicting ecclesiastical traditions. Behind it lay the deep gap between the Roman Western and the Greek Eastern world, the former legalistic and authoritarian, the latter more philosophical and individualistic.
These old and fundamental differences were brought to a crisis by the political events of the eleventh and twelfth centuries: the military aggression of the Normans, the commercial aggres- sion of the Italian maritime cities, and the savagely executed inovement of the Crusades. The horrors, for instance, of the sack Of Constantinople by the Franks in 1204 produced an intensity Of hatred that was never forgotten. It was these events that brought about the sharp reaction of the East against the West rather than the triumph of Germah theology in Rome through the addition of the word Moque to the Creed, or the question of the Pope
having the right to be the arbitrator of Christian doctrine without the sanction of an (Ecumenical Synod.
As Mr. Runciman so aptly says: 'Considering the divergent customs, interests and ideas, schism between Eastern and Western Christendom may well have been inevitable.' As the story of the schism has, on the whole, been treated by arid theologians or bigoted lay historians, this book is most refreshing and welcome. Mr. Runciman displays a deep understanding of both sides, an admirable grasp of the profound cultural as well as psychological differences between East and West, and the inevitable historical forces that led to the schism. He no doubt owes a great deal to the works of Professor Dvornik, Father Grumel, M. Jules Gay, whose history of Byzantine Italy was the first to. put the events of 1054 in a clear perspective, to Professor Michel, and the Catholic ecclesiastic historians Amann, Jugie and Lieb, a debt which he fully acknowledges both in his numerous footnotes and in his introduction. On the other hand, I know no other account of this vexed problem which is as clear, as fair-minded or as readable as Mr. Runciman's present book.
C. A. TRYPANIS
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