Medieval Christianity: Schism

This book,based on seven Waynflete Lectures delivered at Magdalen College,Oxford,in the spring of 1954,is an attempt to tell the story of the final breach between the Church of Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Churches in its proper historical perspective.It used to be supposed that the breach took place in A.D.1054 and was mainly caused by differences in doctrine and liturgical practice.Mr.Runciman shows that the arbitrary date of 1054 must be rejected.The Schism was due to the divergences in tradition and ideology between Eastern and Western Christendom,which had grown up during earlier centuries and which had grown up during earlier centuries and which were brought to a head by the Norman invasions of Byzantine Italy,by the eleventh-century reform of the Papacy,and by the whole movement of the Crusades,and it did not reach its final stage till the beginning of the thirteenth century.-Jacket.

The election of both Urban VI and Clement VII to the papacy in 1378, by the same body of cardinals,presented the church with an apparently insoluble constitutional difficulty.Dr.Swanson considers the reaction to this situation from a hitherto unconsidered perspective: that of the universities and their members,to whom Europe turned to formulate the theories which would resolve the difficulties,and thereby pave the way for the reunification of the church achieved by the election of Martin V in 1417.He examines how the attempts by the academics to gain national and international support for their various schemes produced conflicts on various levels:locally,between factions within the individual universities;nationally,between rival universities,and between the universities and their secular and ecclesiastical superiors;and internationally,as the universities of the rival obediences adopted mutually exclusive attitudes,and occasionally clashed with their own popes.-Jacket

The greatest Christian split of all has been that between east and west, between Roman Catholic and eastern Orthodox, which is still apparent today. This book provides an account of the emergence of divisions between Rome and Constantinople.

Out this tumultuous Conclave of 1378, when the Cardinals in terror created two simultaneous Popes and then a third-old Tibaldeschi (who refused), Urban (who promised to abdicate), and finally (when Urban proved intractable) Clement VII - came the Great Schism of the West. Forty disastrous years of rival Popes, rival armies on the march-years of moral chaos as the Church was split asunder, perhaps forever. Marzieh Gail recreates that turbulent age with the help of contemporary letters, memoirs and documents, superbly evoking the drama and texture of a world irrevocably divided between Urbanists, Clementines, and followers of John of Pisa. She uncovers the intricate web of intrigue running through all the courts of Europe, even to Islam. Above all, she brings to life the extraordinary men and women - saints, peasants, Kings, and the Popes themselves - who were the prime movers.

The traditional date of the beginning of the Oriental Schism is 1054, when the Papal Legate placed on the altar of Santa Sophia the Bull of Excommunication of Michael Cerularius, the Patriarch of Constantinople. In this book the author shows that the seeds of this formal break were sown many centuries before when the creation of Byzantium as a Second Rome, the crowning of Charlemagne as Roman Emperor, and the knife-thrust of Islam divided East and West politically. Further, in the course of the centuries, East and West had developed each its own cultural and intellectual milieu: divergent ways of thinking, a vastly different understanding of the nature of the Church and an ever-growing distrust and disdain. The first steps toward the reconciliation so ardently desired by John XXIII must be taken in humble charity and understanding. The West must accept the East for what it is, and the East must, in turn, come to an understanding of Rome and the West. Only in such an atmosphere of love and forgiveness of the past can the most grievous wound the Church as ever suffered, be healed.

In the second edition of this major work, Dominican theologian Aidan Nichols provides a systematic account of the origins, development and recent history—now updated—of the relations between Rome and all separated Eastern Christians. By the end of the twentieth century, events in Eastern Europe, notably the conflict between the Orthodox and Uniate Churches in the Ukraine and Rumania, the tension between Rome and the Moscow patriarchate over the re-establishment of a Catholic hierarchy in the Russian Federation, and the civil war in the then federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, brought attention to the fragile relations between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, which once had been two parts of a single Communion. At the start of the twenty-first century, in the pontificate of Benedict XVI, a papal visit to Russia—at the symbolic level, a major step forward in the ‘healing of memories’— appears at last a realistic hope. In addition, the schisms separating Rome from the two lesser, but no less interesting, Christian families, the Assyrian (Nestorian) and Oriental Orthodox (Monophysite) Churches, are examined. The book also contains an account of the origins and present condition of the Eastern Catholic Churches—a deeper knowledge of which, by their Western brethren, was called for at the Second Vatican Council as well as by subsequent synods and popes. Providing both historical and theological explanations of these divisions, this illuminating and thought-provoking book chronicles the recent steps taken to mend them in the Ecumenical Movement and offers a realistic assessment of the difficulties (theological and political) which any reunion would experience.

This masterly work of synthesis constitutes an interpretive essay on the history of the western church in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Francis Oakley addresses late-medieval church history in its own terms,pointing out not only discontinuities but also continuities with the earlier medieval experience. "By doing so," he writes, "I hope to have avoided the distortions and refractions that occur when that history is seen too obsesively through the lens of the Reformation."

Many western Christians are baffled by the complexity of the Christian east,which can appear to be a bewildering array of national churches and ethnic jurisdictions.The purpose of this survey is to provide a clear overview of the eastern churches for the non-specialist by furnishing basic information about each of them,and clearly indicating the relationship between them.Each church is placed in its historical,geographical,doctrinal,and liturgical context.Because this book is primarily intended for an English speaking audience,details are also provided regarding the presence of each of these churches in North America,Britain,and Australia.For those interested in the eastern churches or in the contemporary ecumenical movement,this book is an indispensable key to a highly complex reality.-Back cover.

"After supplanting the traditional pagan cults of the Roman Empire, Christianity became the dominant religion of Western Europe, converting the barbarian invaders of the empire to its own faith. The dominance of its teaching over a thousand years enabled it to set the moral agenda of society and determine the intellectual life of the period. How it did so, together with its struggle to preserve its autonomy from the power of secular rulers, are the central themes of this book."--Jacket.

The Donatist struggle was a torment to African Christianity almost from the moment that pagan Rome put down the sword of persecution; indeed, deep-seated tensions continued for centuries until barbarian hordes at last extinguished the light of Faith from the African coast.Into this gigantic struggle entered varied forces and personalities; but of all the men vitally concerned with a solution to the problems created by the emergence of Donatism none was more totally and dynamically committed than Aurelius Augustinus. In the course of the present work we shall attempt to understand Augustine's notions of schism and unity as these were developed and clarified in the Donatist controversy. Whether we shall agree with his conclusions is not of moment. The sheer genius of the great Doctor deserves to be revealed in a question of such current interest; all the more is this true since his genius is respected not only by the Catholics who claim him, but also by a surprising number of reformed Christians who regard him as the luminary of Christian Antiquity.-Foreword.

"Simon De Cramaud and the Great Schism" offers a new interpretation of the events leading to the resolution of one of the central crises of late medieval history.The Great Schism began in 1378 when the College of Cardinals elected first one pope then another;the rulers of Europe took sides,some recognizing the pope in Avignon,and the resulting schism lasted for more than thirty years.It was ended by the Councils of Pisa(1409) and Constance