Tia M. Kolbaba, Rutgers University
Source: Byzantine Orthodoxies,
edited by Andrew Louth and Augustine Casiday, Society for the Promotion of
Byzantine Studies, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2006, pp. 199-214.
In previous research, I have
dealt at length with those Greeks who knew - to the very depths of their
being - that the followers of the pope, the Latins, were heretics. Interesting
as it may be, however, the polemical output of these writers is not the whole
story. To understand the continuous, plentiful flow of anti-Latin polemic, we
must understand that works 'against the Latins' were hardly ever intended to
convince or to convert Latins. The challenge confronting those who believed
that the Latins were heretics and their rituals pollutions was a challenge
within their own world - the Greek-speaking, Greek-rite world. As Paul Magdalino
has put it, those who worked so hard in the twelfth century to define and guard
the boundaries between 'us' and 'them', between heresy and orthodoxy, between
'orthodox' Greeks and 'heterodox' Latins, were setting up barriers 'across the
main thoroughfares, and at the heart of the built-up area, of Byzantine
culture. In other words, [the barriers] were going up at precisely those points
where insiders and outsiders mingled and were therefore liable to become
indistinguishable - points where forbidden zones look very accessible, familiar
and safe .... In general, it can be said the guardians of Orthodoxy repressed
tendencies to which they themselves were susceptible.' [1] Among these
outsiders who mingled with insiders were the Latins-Christian brothers, fellow
adherents of the seven ecumenical councils, fellow readers of the church
fathers, fellow heirs to the philosophy of classical and Hellenistic Greece.
There was much about them that seemed 'accessible, familiar and safe'. So the Byzantines
who wrote anti-Latin treatises and diatribes were addressing compatriots who
believed in the orthodoxy of the Latins. To understand this is to get a fresh
perspective on their arguments and the forms and functions of the literature
they wrote - a point I have argued at length elsewhere and do not want to
belabour here. [2] Instead, this paper focuses on those Byzantines who
maintained that the Latins were orthodox. Given limits of time and space, it
can present only a few examples of such authors, but there were many more. This
paper is part of a larger project - a detailed study of those who argued in
favor of the orthodoxy of the Latins in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Throughout the early Middle Ages,
most Byzantine writers who perceived errors in ritual or doctrine within the
Latin Church were nevertheless not overly concerned with such matters. They
exhibited a certain condescension about Latin culture and a belief that Latins
would naturally adopt Greek practices and doctrines - which were, of course, superior
- if they were only instructed by magnanimous, charitable Greeks. Among other
things, the Greek-speaking Byzantines were certain that Latin was an inferior
language, incapable of adequately expressing theological ideas. Thus, for
example, the Patriarch Photius (858-67, 877-86) noted that one of the popes of
Rome had required that the creed be chanted in Greek because Latin was often
inadequate for 'expressing sacred doctrine'. [3] In the eleventh century, too,
such condescension was common, and many authoritative church figures considered
the Latins to be orthodox or in error concerning only one crucial matter: the Filioque.
If they were perhaps a bit out-of-line in their practices, they were
certainly corrigible. But in the twelfth century this position gradually became
untenable, more Byzantines adopted the opinion that the Latins were heretics,
and those who defended Latin orthodoxy often had to go beyond tolerance of
Latin differences to acceptance of them.
Two eleventh-century figures, in
particular, are famous for having continued the traditional condescension and
tolerance toward the Latins: Peter III of Antioch and Theophylact of Ohrid.
Peter III, Patriarch of Antioch (1052-56), is best known for his reply to a
heated letter from Michael Keroularios, Patriarch of Constantinople (1043-58).
In his letter, written shortly after the papal legates had delivered their bull
of excommunication and left Constantinople in 1054, Keroularios had included an
account of the legates' behaviour, had claimed that the popes had not been
commemorated in Constantinople since the time of Vigilius (537-55), and had
listed various Latin 'errors', such as clean-shaven priests. Peter corrected
him and admonished him for writing 'before examination and complete
understanding, from vain rumour', rebuking him also for his intemperate
criticisms of 'errors' and begging him not to make the schism worse through his
excessive rigor. In the end, Peter asserted that even the Latin use of
unleavened bread, which he had earlier considered a crucial difference between
the churches, was not important enough to dismember Christ's body, the Church.
[4]
Much more traditional than Keroularios's
insistence that the Latin customs were serious errors, Peter's position was
that of moderates throughout the history of Christianity. Confronted with the
New Testament's distinction between cultural differences that could be embraced
within a universal church and essential elements of the faith that could not be
compromised, such moderates always needed to balance two truths - both
important, but in constant tension with one another. Christ, they believed, was
bigger than cultural differences, and did not care whether you were Jew or
Greek, slave or free, male or female. Nevertheless, Christ himself surely made
distinctions between Jews and Greeks, men and women; and if the rituals of the
'old law' were superseded, there were nevertheless rituals of the 'new law',
including the Eucharist. If some cultural customs were irrelevant to God,
others mattered a great deal. For Peter of Antioch and others, the precise form
of rituals was important - wrong ritual might endanger one's salvation –
and there were marked liturgical differences between Greeks and Latins. [5] Nevertheless,
everyone also accepted that some differences in ritual were merely customary
and could be accepted, so long as each ritual symbolized orthodox belief.
Peter of Antioch was certainly
not the only person who held this position. Others in the later eleventh
century agreed that Latin errors were not important - or at least that very few
were (usually the Filioque and sometimes azymes). Theophylact of Ohrid
insisted that only the Filioque was an issue worth dividing the churches
over. To a correspondent who asked him about the Latin 'errors', he replied
that only the Filioque mattered; the other differences were neither
sufficiently numerous nor sufficiently important to divide the church. If there
was strife between Latins and Greeks it was because of 'the cooling of charity which
the present times have caused' and because everyone was in a rush to accuse his
brothers of heresy. [6] Theophylact mocked accusations similar to those in
Keroularios's letter to Peter of Antioch. On the other hand, the Filioque
was an essential matter, but even here Theophylact tried to clear the
Latins of blame for heresy. 'You err', he wrote, addressing the Latins, 'not so
much because of malignity of judgment as through ignorance of the truth. For
because you believe that "to proceed" [ekporeuesthai] is the same
as "to be provided" [choregeisthai] and "to be
given" [metadidosthai], and since you find that the Spirit was sent
[pempomenon ], and provided [choregoumenon], and given [metadidomenon]
by the Son, you think that you commit no error even if you say that the
Spirit proceeds [ekporeuesthai] from the Son.' Theophylact speculates
that this confusion results from the 'poverty' of the Latin language. Perhaps
Latin has no way of distinguishing 'proceeding' from 'being given' and 'being
sent'. If so, Latins may allude to the Spirit's procession from the Son in
everyday speech, but they must not add this to the creed. [7]
It is as important to note what
this opinion of the Latins is not as to note what it is. Theophylact and
Peter are not 'pro-Latin'; each assumes the superiority of the Greek church and
Greek culture. Far from admiring Latin ritual or theology, they barely tolerate
it. On the other hand, they also are not part of the 'anti-Latin' forces who
consider the Latins to be obstinate heretics. They are, in short, the moderates
in this debate. [8]
A meeting of the
Constantinopolitan synod in 1089 reveals that this moderate position - that is,
that the Latins erred in some matters, but were not heretical and were in
communion with the Constantinopolitan church - was common. In 1088, Pope Urban
II (1088-99) wrote to Alexios I and Patriarch Nikolaos III (1084-1111), seeking
an explanation of why the pope's name had been removed from the diptychs of the
Constantinopolitan church. Urban seems also to have heard that Latins in Constantinople
were being shut out of their churches, or at least that they were being
forbidden to use unleavened bread. [9] When Alexios received Urban's query, he
investigated the matter. It was true that the pope was no longer commemorated
in Constantinople, but the emperor could find only that 'It was not from
synodical judgment and decision that the church of Rome was cut off from us.' [10]
So he called the bishops together in the patriarchal synod to ask them. As the
emperor's report of the proceedings later explains it,
I presented the
letter of the pope to them and I asked whether there are in our most holy and
great church any documents that declare decisively that the church of Rome is
in schism and that, for this reason, the name of the pope is not to be
commemorated in the diptychs. On the one hand, the archbishops concluded that
there were no such documents. The removal [of the pope's name] ... was not
canonical, and yet for a long time it had been in force and existed among us.
On the other hand, they said that there were canonical matters between the two
churches and that these needed correction, since the Latins seem in these ways
to stumble. [11]
Given, then, that there was no
record of why the pope's name had been removed from the diptychs, Alexios
argued that it had been removed in violation of canon law, and that it should
be restored. But the patriarch and the synod, noting that the removal of the
pope from the diptychs had been in force for a long time, continued to insist
that the Latins needed correction of some 'canonical matters' before
commemoration of the pope could be restored. In the end, they compromised: the
emperor and patriarch would write to Urban and ask him to send a letter with
his profession of faith. If that confession was orthodox, he would immediately be
inscribed in the diptychs, but since the 'canonical matters' would still
remain, he should also plan either to come to Constantinople himself or to send
representatives to an ecumenical council that could render judgment about these
matters. This council should be held within 18 months of the receipt of the
pope's letter. After the synod, Patriarch Nikolaos III wrote to Urban, asking
him to send his profession of faith and denying that the Latin churches in
Constantinople had been closed. [12]
Alexios I and Urban II each had
pressing political motives for seeking peace in 1089, [13] and most discussions
of the synod's deliberations have focused on the political negotiations, rather
than on the reasons the synod accepted this compromise. Here I want to focus,
rather, on the metropolitans and archbishops gathered in the synod and their
reasoning. All accounts agree that there was a schism between Constantinople
and Rome, represented concretely by the absence of the pope's name from the diptychs
of the Great Church. It seems, though, that the patriarch and metropolitans
were open to friendly gestures from Rome that might heal the schism.
Apparently, anti-Latin sentiment and knowledge of Latin deviance was at such a
low ebb that they found Urban's question difficult to answer: Why and when had
the pope's name been removed from the diptychs? To get an idea of the
answers available to the synod in 1089, one could tum to a text written around
the beginning of the twelfth century, probably by a chartophylax of the Great
Church, and thus someone who had access to the archives of that church, which
reports that there was a schism under Sergios II (1001-19), 'for what reason I
do not know, but the quarrel was apparently over some sees.' [14] The main
purpose of this text is to produce a list of all of the previous schisms
between Rome and Constantinople, and it concludes that 'the schisms mentioned
above were brought about by our own people' - hardly a likely conclusion for someone
who shared Keroularios' view of Latin errors. Although the printed edition of
this text includes a paragraph about Keroularios and a 'final' schism of the
churches, that paragraph is at odds with the rest of the text, leading to the
conclusion that it is a later addition; Anton Michel argued that it must have
been added in the twelfth century. [15]
Thus, although Alexios' account
has rightly been viewed with some skepticism, we should perhaps believe him
when he writes that the bishops in the synod had no evidence for the reasons
for the current schism. They may have thought, as the emperor claimed, that the
Latins were erring in certain 'canonical' matters (such as the unleavened
bread), but that these matters were not serious enough to divide the churches.
[16] They therefore agreed that the pope should send his confession of faith and
that if that confession was in accordance with apostolic canons and the
decisions of the ecumenical councils, then his name should be restored to the
diptychs 'kat' oikonomian' ('in accordance with oikonomia') until
a council could be held regarding the other differences. [17] Oikonomia, an
age-old principle of the eastern church, literally means 'management' or 'administration',
but had come to mean the management or guidance of individual souls or of
Christ's body, the Church. [18] Such management could involve a kind of mercy
or compromise, within careful limits. In general, as John Erickson explains,
'By oikonomia a temporary concession can be made in matters of practice
to avoid irremediably damaging the peace of the Church.' [19] This
idea precisely matches Alexios's account of what the synod did in 1089: they temporarily
conceded that certain Latin practices could be overlooked for the
sake of peace. They did not exonerate the Latin church, and they did not
say that Latin errors could be condoned or tolerated for political reasons or
even for the sake of Christian unity. Indeed, as we have seen, they insisted on
an affirmation of the pope's orthodoxy and a resolution of other differences in
a council. This offer of a council was sincere, although there is also no
doubt- as has often been pointed out - that the Greeks expected such a council
to affirm their own ideas and condemn those of the Latins. [20] In other words,
the actions taken by the synod and patriarch in 1089 conform again to that condescending
tolerance which characterized the middle Byzantine attitude toward the west in
so many spheres. Even those who opposed the decision of the synod did so not
because they considered the Latins heretics, but rather because they considered
Urban II an anti-pope, put on the throne by the forceful and barbarous methods
of the 'godless Franks' (i.e., the Normans), who had also stolen imperial
territory in southern Italy and were 'Latinizing' the churches there. [21]
In sum, those who think the
Latins are not in error in any heretical way are still the dominant party in
1089. Not unaware of the complications caused by Norman conquests and papal
pretensions, these churchmen maintain none the less that the differences
between the churches are not sufficient to divide Christ's body. In this, they
are utterly traditional. Their attitude corresponds to the attitudes of
previous generations.
It should be noted that there is
a common opinion of the situation in 1189 and of Theophylact in particular that
is diametrically opposed to what I have presented here. In this view,
Theophylact wrote his treatise deriding the anti-Latin forces because the
Emperor Alexios asked him to. Given that Theophylact 'did not have the stuff of
a polemicist', as we know from the rest of his biography, he would not have
written his piece about the Latins without outside intervention. In short, he
would not have engaged in this battle unless asked to by someone he could not
refuse. Given his close connections with the imperial family, the proponents of
this view argue that Alexios asked him to write a piece to persuade the clergy
that the Latins were not heretics. Alexios did this because he knew that the
majority in the Church opposed his rapprochement with the Latins. In
other words, there was a gap between imperial needs (especially Latin military
help) and the rigid, uncompromising attitude of the vast majority of the Greek
clergy. [22]
This argument makes many invalid
assumptions, three of which are particularly important here. It assumes that
Theophylact's treatise about the Latins is essentially polemic; it assumes that
Theophylact had no opinions of his own that he would defend even if they went
against the communis opinio; and it assumes thatTheophylact's moderate
position was a minority one.
On the first point, it is
absolutely true that Theophylact 'did not have the stuff of a polemicist'. But,
as Margaret Mullett has noted, 'the generic term "polemic" describes
[the treatise regarding Latins] badly'. In its tone of moderation, it fits well
with other things Theophylact wrote regarding variety in religious customs and
beliefs. He consistently insisted 'on interpreting the spirit rather than the
letter of the law' and 'was always prepared to show oikonomia where it
would help.' [23] It is not, then, 'hardly credible' that 'Theophylact could
have expressed, sponte sua, a personal view of the problem' of union
with the Latin Church. [24] Quite the opposite, in fact; the treatise expresses
views that fit well with Theophylact's other works.
On the second point, I cannot, of
course, offer proof in any scientific sense. Nor, I think, will I persuade
those who are determined to see the vast majority of Byzantine churchmen as
lacking in backbone, performing proskynesis not only before the emperor, but
before his opinions. This is fundamentally not my view of Theophylact
and other secular clergy like him; it is a fundamental view of some
western historians and of many Byzantine monks. What I know of Theophylact's
character - and I acknowledge all the ways in which that knowledge is flawed
and conditional - does not lead me to believe that he would have argued so eloquently
and thoroughly for a theological position simply because the emperor asked him
to. In fact, if he was writing at the emperor's request, Theophylact's
insistence that the addition to the creed could not be accepted was probably
not what Alexios had in mind. He was more his own man than the essentially
negative view of Byzantine secular clergy will allow; in fact, I am willing to
be incendiary and call that negative view a product of centuries of western
prejudice. It seems that if Byzantine churchmen support union they are craven
tools of the emperor, and if they oppose it they are heedless of the dangers
that threaten the empire and hidebound in their conservatism. The idea that
some of them might support union and even be responsive to a changing world for
reasons which stem from genuinely Christian conviction is rarely expressed. [25]
Finally, we need have no
difficulty with the thought of Theophylact suddenly swimming against the tide
of anti-Latin opinion if we do not posit such a tide in the first place. My
argument - again, I claim not proof, but persuasive evidence - is that there is
no such tide of anti-Latin opinion in the late eleventh century. Instead,
anti-Latin sentiment both changes its content and grows in intensity during the
twelfth century. There are still Byzantines after 1100 who maintain roughly the
position of the synod in 1089: namely, that the Latins are at least to be given
a chance to explain themselves and to come to a council at which the
differences can be resolved. This was allegedly the position of Niketas,
Archbishop of Nikomedia, at the end of a public discussion with Anselm of
Havelberg in 1136. [26] But something has changed by 1136, as well, for Niketas
seems to have accepted the Latin teaching about the procession of the Holy
Spirit. Even if we doubt this - our only account of the debate was written by Anselm
some years later - we know that around the same time Niketas of Maroneia,
chartophylax of the Great Church and then archbishop of Thessaloniki, wrote
dialogues defending the Latin teaching on the procession of the Holy Spirit.
This position is unlike the one I defined as moderate earlier in this paper.
Theophylact of Ohrid, Peter of Antioch, and others were neither pro-Latin nor
anti-Latin, but tolerant and condescending, seeing the Filioque as an
error, but perhaps an accidental one. Niketas of Maroneia and a few otherS in
the twelfth century actually argue that the Filioque is acceptable; it
is not an error at all. Latin reasoning on the matter and Latin theological
understanding of the Fathers is, in this instance, superior to Greek reasoning
and understanding. This is a position more easily labelled 'pro-Latin' than the
opinions of the eleventh-century writers. Meanwhile, the arguments of the
anti-Latin forces were growing in strength, coherence, and vehemence. Byzantine
churchmen were therefore increasingly polarized and the moderate position less
and less viable. There are several reasons for this.
The most important reason for
increasing hostility toward the Latins throughout Byzantine society in the
twelfth century is too well known to be belaboured here: the conduct of
crusaders, who found it difficult to distinguish between Byzantines and
infidels; the permanent presence of Italian merchants in the empire with their
visible wealth and palpable arrogance; the Latin occupation of lands and cities
that Byzantines considered rightly theirs - these and many other aspects of
waxing Latin power and waning Byzantine power challenged and threatened the Byzantines
on many levels. In the religious circles we are dealing with here, the
vehemence of anti-Latin sentiment increased as the western threat increased.
The anti-Latin faction among churchmen of all kinds – from the more worldly
secular clergy of the imperial court and the Great Church to the monks of
Athas, Galesios, or Olympos - grew and became dominant. In part, this response
of churchmen was similar to that of their lay compatriots in both its causes
and its expression. Clerics did not inhabit a separate world. They suffered
from the same depredations of Normans and other crusaders; they chafed at what
they considered western arrogance; they resented the influence of Latins at the
imperial court.
But there were additional arenas
of contact between Latin and Greek churchmen, as well - arenas where issues of
particular concern to clergy and monks arose. The Norman conquest of southern
Italy, all of the multitude of enterprises we call the crusades, a continuing
Norman threat to both the German emperor and the Byzantine one, and a
continuing and complex set of relations between Byzantium and the crusader
states necessitated an unending exchange of embassies between Byzantium and various
western powers. The ambassadors in these negotiations - especially on the
western side, but also on the Byzantine side, at least when negotiations with
the papacy were part of the project - were often men of the cloth. [27] Their
presence in Constantinople could and did inspire debates between Byzantine and
western churchmen about their differing rituals and doctrines. So, for example,
Niketas Stethatos represented the Greeks in debates about the use of unleavened
bread in the Eucharist against the papal delegation led by Humbert of Silva
Candida. He addressed his treatise against azymes to 'men of Rome- both those
who dwell among us and those who are travelling to our cities.' [28] The travelling
men were the members of the papal legation with whom he was in direct contact;
the others would have included Italian merchants who lived in Constantinople.
He also wrote, 'I have often been questioned by various Romans who live among
us about the azymes.' [29] Nor was Niketas unique. In 1112, Pietro Grossolano,
Archbishop of Milan, part of a papal embassy, debated theology with several
Greeks, while Anselm of Havelberg, leader of German imperial delegations,
continued the tradition of discussing religious differences during his spare
time on at least two missions to the east - one in 1135-36 and the other in
1155. [30] There must be many more such occasions which left little or no trace
in the records. [31] Meanwhile, Latin churches and monasteries were established
in Constantinople; there again the differences between Greeks and Latins could
be noticed and debated - as, for example, when the Benedictine monks of St Mary
of the Amalfitans complained that Byzantine clergy were putting pressure on
them to abandon the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist. [32]
From southern Italy to the Holy
Land, then, Greeks and Latins - including clerics - were living side by side
and noticing one another's customs. Probably many people cared little about
those differences. Others, especially the clergy, who were more invested in the
ritual forms and doctrines of their churches, did care and heatedly discussed
and debated the differences between the Latin church and the Greek one. Emperors
sometimes encouraged such discussion and sometimes tried to suppress it.
Regardless, the evidence concerning twelfth-century Byzantine responses to the
Latins indicates a murmur of conversation and argument both between Greeks and
Latins and among the Greeks themselves.
Beyond these changes caused by
the general increase in contact, there were changes within each church. While
it risks distortion to extract analysis of the churches in either culture from
the larger society, I do so here because three major changes - two in
governance and one in theology - are among the necessary causes of the schism.
For one might imagine a world in which hatred and mistrust could fester between
Greeks and Latins without a permanent schism in the church. After all, the
Germans and the Normans, the French and the English fought with, hated, and
distrusted one another for decades at a time in the Middle Ages, but in the end
remained in the pope's fold. So it seems to me that we must look beyond the
general increase in hostility to explain the schism between Rome and
Constantinople: its depth, its finality, its perdurance. Here I think three
church-specific changes are crucial.
First, there were changes in the
ecclesiastical culture of the empire - changes detailed by V. Tiftixoglu, P.
Magdalino, M. Angold, and others. [33] In the early years of the Komnenian
dynasty, the cathedral clergy of the Hagia Sophia and the bishops who made up
the patriarchal synod had become the spokesmen of imperial orthodoxy, in large
part by cooperating with Alexios I's determination to wipe out heresy in his
empire. Their position was powerful, but not secure, and it required a kind of constant
maintenance - restricting the size of the group, protecting its special status,
spreading its values to the rest of society. This groupmaintenance led to a
kind of narrowing of the scope of acceptable ideas. It is probably fair to call
this narrowing repression; it certainly looked like repression if you were one
of its victims, punished for advocating an idea that had been acceptable in
earlier decades but was now anathema. [34] Most importantly for this paper,
much of the polemical writing that survives from the twelfth century is about
this group maintenance among the 'guardians of orthodoxy' - about protecting
their internal purity and their separate status from those within their own
society who threatened it. In the case of the Latins, this is clear:
'Anti-Latinism ... was directed at a group with a foothold, and sympathisers,
within the citadel of Orthodoxy' [35] - not only Manuel I, a notorious
Latinophile, but Niketas of Maroneia, Basil of Ohrid, and other churchmen.
Meanwhile, two other changes were
taking place in the Latin world. In the twelfth century, the Latins were
putting the finishing touches on a fully developed argument for papal plenitudo
potestatis, and the Greeks were becoming ever more aware of that Latin
argument. [36] To cite just one of many examples: in both of the debates
between Anselm of Havelberg and Niketas of Nikomedia, the tone shifts from
courteous to strident when the pope's authority is the subject. Anselm insists
on seeing the schism in the terms defined by the papal reformers of the west: Constantinople,
the daughter church, has wilfully separated herself from her mother. The Roman
Church is first after God in authority. The pope presided over the councils,
and his authority is the source of conciliar authority. Without his
participation, a council is not valid; his authority is valid without a
council. Niketas bridles and protests:
For if the Roman
pontiff, sitting on his highest throne of glory, wishes to thunder at us and
throw down his mandates from on high, and if he wishes, not with our counsel
but of his own judgment and his own good pleasure, to judge us and command us
.and our churches, what kind of brotherhood, or indeed what kind of parenthood,
can this be? Who would ever be able to bear this with equanimity? In such a
case, we should be and be called slaves of the Church - not her sons. [37]
Although Niketas and Anselm reach
agreement on the procession of the Holy Spirit, they cannot agree on the pope's
role in the church. On this subject, compromise with Rome has become
impossible, and the Greeks are starting to realize that it has.
Finally, in addition to the
development of an ideology of papal primacy, the Latin Church was also changing
in other intellectual realms. The twelfth century was a time of immense turmoil
and creativity in Latin theology. This, too, the Greeks knew, for they both
learned the substance of certain Latin theological positions that they could
not accept and became aware of the new methods in Latin theological reasoning.
That growing awareness of both substance and method manifests itself in three famous
Greek-Latin disputes of the twelfth century. Pietro Grossolano, Archbishop of
Milan, discussed the Filioque with Greek theologians in 1112. He seems
to have had no surprises for them. Probably educated in a monastery, he knew
his Scriptures, of course, but he quickly grew frustrated with the Greeks for
their over-subtle (as he saw it) use of logic. He himself invoked Scripture and
elaborate analogies to justify the Latin position, did not resort to logic, and
showed no knowledge of the writings of the Greek fathers of the church. In
contrast, Anselm of Havelberg, the Latin debater in 1136, had been educated at
the beginning of the twelfth-century renaissance in the cathedral school of
Laon and he was more than willing to use logic. Moreover, he was fascinated
with the Greek fathers and quoted them at length in defence of Latin doctrine.
Their writings were available to him because there were several important Latin
scholars living in Constantinople in the 1130s, translating Greek texts and becoming
ever more familiar with Greek theological traditions and reasoning. Niketas,
Anselm's interlocutor, was amazed and delighted at the Latin's knowledge of the
Greek fathers. He exclaimed, 'I see that I have found a Latin man who is truly
catholic! Would that [more] such Latins would come to us in these times!' [38]
But this positive response to
Anselm's learning was not unmixed with dismay. The Greeks in 1112 had
maintained the kind of condescension toward Latin learning that characterized
earlier Byzantine attitudes. Like Theophylact of Ohrid, they assumed a low
level of education in Latin lands and speculated that the Latin language was
too impoverished to express theological ideas adequately. Latins could not be
expected to understand theological subtleties. By 1136, such condescension was
no longer an option. Now those who defended the orthodoxy of the Latins did so
not as a matter of tolerance, but by actually claiming that the Latin use of
the Filioque could be accepted.
A further step in Latin
theological methods had been taken by the 1160s, when Hugo Eteriano, a Latin
theologian who had studied dialectic in Paris, became one of Emperor Manuel I's
(1143-80) theological advisers. When a controversy imported from the west began
to disturb the peace of the church, Manuel - himself not a bad theologian - intervened.
There ensued several heated debates in the imperial palace. The controversy was
about a Christological matter being hotly debated in the west at the time: what
did Jesus mean when he said, 'The Father is greater than I' (John 14:28)?
Seeking an explanation of the Latin position, Manuel summoned the best
authority on Latin theology he could think of: his friend and adviser Hugo
Eteriano. Hugo's explanation so pleased the emperor that he adopted it as his
own. Nevertheless, the controversy continued to divide the clergy of the
capital. In the end, Manuel persuaded and/or coerced the members of the
Constantinopolitan synod to accept the theological resolution he preferred. He
had the resolution inscribed on plaques and placed in a prominent position on
the walls of the Hagia Sophia.
Hugo's learned explanations, the
sophistication of Latin theology, and - perhaps most of all - the emperor's
support for the Latin position, caught many Greeks off-guard and put them on
the defensive. Probably more people now found Latin ideas threatening and were
prepared to resist them at all cost. It was bad enough that the Latins were
'innovators' and that they strenuously insisted that Greeks accept their
'innovations' because the pope commanded them to. It was even worse when they defended
their innovations with a logical and sophistic skill that left the Greeks
unable to answer. The only way to avoid their heresies was to utterly reject
not only the innovations themselves but also the reasoning which led to them.
Greeks did not stop talking about theology, of course, but they developed a
tremendous suspicion of Latin methods and ideas, which led, in tum, to a
rejection even of those Greeks who wished to use logic more intensively in
defence of the eastern church's position. In rejecting logic and dialectic as
'Latin', many Greeks rejected much of their own tradition. As Aristeides
Papadakis puts it, 'The rise of scholasticism has seldom been viewed as a cause
of schism', but it should be seen as 'another alarming symptom of the
disintegration of the common Christian tradition.' [39] The intellectual
traditions of Greeks and Latins were diverging in remarkable ways. Even without
the resentments stirred up by crusaders and merchants, Latin ideas about papal
primacy and Latin theological innovations were making it increasingly difficult
for Greeks to believe in the orthodoxy of the Latins. As the elite of the
church concentrated on building the barriers between insiders and outsiders,
the few Greeks who continued to defend Latin orthodoxy were usually forced -
both by Latin teaching and by the adamant resistance of their compatriots - to
choose between the two churches and the two systems of theology, between the
orthodoxy of the Greeks and the orthodoxy of the Latins.
FOOTNOTES
1. P. Magdalino, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143–1180
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 386–87.
2. T.M. Kolbaba, ‘Byzantine perceptions of Latin religious
“errors”: Themes and Changes from 850 to 1350’, in A.E. Laiou, ed. and R.P.
Mottahedeh, The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim
World (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001), 118–19, 129–32, 139, 141–43.
3. Photios, Logos peri tes tou Agiou Pneumatos Mystagogias
(PG 102.376); trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery, On the Mystagogy of the
Holy Spirit (Astoria, NY: Studion Publications, 1983), 110–11.
4. PG 120.795–816.
5. T.M. Kolbaba, The Byzantine Lists. Errors of the Latins
(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000), chaps. 4–5.
6. P. Gautier, Théophylacte D’Achrida. Discours, traités,
poésies (Thessaloniki: Association de Recherches Byzantines, 1980), 247.
7. Gautier, Théophylacte, 247–57.
8. Although I have been accused of being judgmental by the
mere use of the word—for in today’s academic circles, it seems, the
connotations of ‘moderate’ are all favorable—I maintain that it is still the
best term to describe people in the middle of a spectrum of opinion. I do not
mean by this to praise or condemn their moderation; one man’s moderation may be
another man’s lukewarm faith or politically inspired compromise.
9. The documents for this exchange were published by W.
Holtzmann, ‘Die Unionsverhandlungen zwischen Kaiser Alexios I. und Papst Urban
II. im Jahre 1089’, BZ 28 (1928), 38–67. Urban’s letter is not extant, but
Holtzmann, ‘Unionsverhandlungen’, doc. 2, records that he asked about
commemoration and about the Latins in Constantinople being shut out of their
churches, while the Latin chronicler Malaterra (cited by Holtzmann,
‘Unionsverhandlungen’, 47) records that Urban also reprimanded Alexios for
forbidding Latins the use of azymes in their worship. In his reply (Holtzmann,
‘Unionsverhandlungen’, doc. 3), Patriarch Nikolaos III denies that the Latin
churches had been closed. Other analyses of and commentaries on these texts: P.
Charanis, ‘Letter to the Editor of the American Historical Review’, American
Historical Review 53 (1948), 941–44. A. Papadakis and J. Meyendorff, The
Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy. The Church 1071–1453 A.D. (Crestwood,
NY: SVS Press, 1994), 76–77. Some important corrections to Holtzmann’s dating
were made by D. Stiernon, ‘Basile de Reggio, le dernier métropolite grec de
Calabre’, Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 18 (1964), 189–222,
with additional credit to C. Erdmann, The Origin of the Idea of Crusade,
tr. M.W. Baldwin and W. Goffart (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977),
319 n. 42 and F. Russo, ‘L’ultimo metropolita greca di Reggio’, Bollettino
della Badia greca di Grottaferrata N.S. 7 (1953), 163–78, repr. in F.
Russo, Scritti storici calabresi (Naples: CAM, 1957), 87–99.
10. Holtzmann, ‘Unionsverhandlungen’, 61.
11. Holtzmann, ‘Unionsverhandlungen’, 61.
12. Holtzmann, ‘Unionsverhandlungen’, 61–64; T.M. Kolbaba,
‘On the Closing of the Churches and the Rebaptism of the Latin: Greek Perfidy
or Latin Slander?’, BMGS (forthcoming).
13. Holtzmann, ‘Unionsverhandlungen’, 50–52.
14. PG 120.713–20. The text is credited merely to ‘Niketas
the Chartophylax’ and there is much disagreement about which of several
eleventh- and twelfth-century writers named Niketas might have authored this
text. A. Michel, following J. Hergenröther, dated the text to the beginning of
the twelfth century: Humbert und Kerullarios. Quellen und Studien zum
Schisma des XI. Jahrhunderts (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1930), I, 26. M.
Mullett pointed out that there could have been a Niketas in the office of
Chartophylax of the Great Church between 1106 and 1111: see Theophylact of
Ohrid. Reading the Letters of a Byzantine Archbishop (Aldershot: Ashgate,
1997), 356. B. Leib also placed the author of this text in the early twelfth
century: Deux inédits byzantins sur les azymes au début du XIIe siècle
(Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 1924), 150. J. Darrouzès believed that
the author of the history of the schism was Niketas tes Koronidos, Chartophylax
under Michael Keroularios: see V. Grumel, Les regestes des actes du
patriarcat de Constantinople, 2nd rev. edn, J. Darrouzès, vol. I, fasc. II
and III, ‘Les regestes de 715 à 1206’ (Paris: Institut Français d’Études
Byzantines, 1989), no. 858; Darrouzès, Recherches sur les offikia de
l’église byzantine (Paris: Institut Français d’Études Byzantines, 1970), 66
n. 2; Darrouzès, ed., Nicétas Stéthatos. Opuscules et lettres, Sources
chrétiennes 81 (Paris: Cerf, 1961), 15–17.
15. Michel (Humbert und Kerullarios, I, 30) based his
argument on the manuscripts; the best ones do not have this final paragraph.
Moreover, the final paragraph’s message differs from the preceding text and is
preceded by a paragraph that was evidently once the conclusion. Finally, the author
of the final paragraph refers to westerners as ‘Latins’ – an ethnonym rarely
used by Greeks before the crusades (A. Kazhdan, ‘Latins and Franks in
Byzantium: perception and reality from the eleventh to the twelfth century’, in
Laiou and Mottahedeh, The Crusades, 85–86) and never used by the author
of the rest of the text, who refers invariably to ‘Romans’.
16. The extant documents from 1089 contain no details about
these ‘canonical differences’. The main concerns of the Byzantines, c.
1060–1100, were azymes (Leo of Markianopolis, John II of Kiev, and others, as
well as the reference in Malaterra, cited above) and the Filioque (John
II of Kiev, Theophylact of Ohrid, and others). There is little radically
anti-Latin polemic in this period, nor is awareness of papal primacy high. See
H.-G. Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich (Munich:
Beck, 1959), 610; Leib, Deux inédits, 149.
17. Holtzmann, ‘Unionsverhandlungen’, 62.
18. For introductions to the history of oikonomia and
its definitions, see J.H. Erickson, ‘Oikonomia in Byzantine Canon Law’,
in K. Pennington, ed. and R. Somerville, Law, Church, and Society. Essays in
Honor of Stephan Kuttner (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1977), 225–36, and ODB, s.v., ‘Oikonomia’.
19. Erickson, ‘Oikonomia’, 231 (my emphasis).
20. See, for example, J. Boojamra, ‘The Byzantine notion of
the “Ecumenical Council” in the fourteenth century’, BZ 80 (1987),
59–76.
21. See, for example, Stiernon’s summary of Basil of Reggio’s
position: ‘Basile de Reggio’, 213. The question of the speed and extent of
‘Latinization’ is immensely complex and contested. For introductions to the
question, see G.A. Loud, ‘Byzantine Italy and the Normans’, Byzantium and
the West, c. 850–1200, ByzF 13 (1988), 215–33; A. Guillou, ‘Grecs
d’Italie du Sud et de Sicile au Moyen Age: Les moines’, Mélanges
d’archéologie et d’histoire 75 (1963), 79–110, repr. in Studies on
Byzantine Italy (London: Variorum, 1970), art. XII; and the collection of
articles in Italia sacra 20–22 – invaluable volumes dedicated to La
chiesa greca in Italia.
22. For the most recent expression of this view see M.D.
Spadaro, ‘Chiesa d’oriente e chiesa d’occidente sotto la dinastia dei Comneni’,
ByzF 22 (1996), 79–97.
23. Mullett, Theophylact, 239–40.
24. Spadaro, ‘Chiesa d’oriente’, 94.
25. Many scholars are not blinded by such prejudice and
present much more nuanced views; see, for example, Joseph Gill, ‘John Beccus,
Patriarch of Constantinople, 1275–1282’, Byzantina 7 (1975), 253–66; repr. in Church
Union: Rome and Byzantium (London: Variorum, 1979), art. VI. But the older
view which I have described here is still all too common.
26. For the context of this mission, the biography of Anselm,
and a thorough exegesis of the debate, see N. Russell, ‘Anselm of Havelberg and
the union of the churches’, Sobornost incorporating Eastern Churches Review 1:2
(1979), 19–41; 2:1 (1980), 29–41.
27. Eg., a mission from Venice to Constantinople in 1112 was
led by the Patriarch of Grado; Anselm of Havelberg led a mission from the
German emperor to Constantinople in 1135–1136 and two other missions to the
Byzantine emperor while he was in the Balkans and Greece in 1153 and 1155;
William of Tyre travelled to Constantinople on behalf of King Amalric I of
Jerusalem in 1168, and was again in Constantinople – this time for seven months
– in 1179–1180. For almost every year of the twelfth century, one could cite
one or more similar examples.
28. Michel, Humbert und Kerullarios, II, 321.
29. Michel, Humbert und Kerullarios, II, 322.
30. For introductions to each of these occasions, see J.
Darrouzès, ‘Les documents byzantins de XIIe siècle sur la primauté romaine’, REB
23 (1965), 42–88.
31. Niketas Seides, one of the Byzantine theologians who
participated in the debate of 1112, mentions that ‘ten or twelve years ago’ a
Latin – ‘one of your people, from among those you call cardinals’ was in
Constantinople. This reference has led more than one scholar to seek evidence
of an official papal legation between 1100 and 1102, but none has been found.
If Seides debated with Latin churchmen a decade or so before 1112, they were
not papal legates. J. Darrouzès then suggested that this ‘cardinal’ might be
connected to a mission sent by Baldwin I of Jerusalem (1100–18) to Alexios
(Darrouzès, ‘Documents’, 53). Albert of Aix tells us of this embassy: the
ambassadors were the Archbishop Gerhard and the bishop of Barzenona (a diocese,
and therefore a bishop, which we cannot identify). The latter travelled on to
Italy where he betrayed the confidence Alexios had in him and maligned the
emperor to the pope. If Darrouzès is correct in connecting this mission to
Seides’ reference, these bishops were emissaries of a secular lord, but that
did not prevent them from discussing religious differences with Greek clerics.
32. A. Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem im griechischen
Kirchenstreit (1054–1090), OCA 121 (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale,
1939).
33. V. Tiftixoglu, ‘Gruppenbildungen innerhalb des
konstantinopolitanischen Klerus während der Komnenenzeit’, BZ 62 (1969), 25–72;
P. Magdalino, ‘The Reform Edict of 1107’, in Alexios I Komnenos, 1,
Papers, M. Mullett, ed. and D. Smythe, Byzantine Texts and Translations 4.1
(Belfast: Belfast Byzantine Enterprises, 1996), 199–218; Magdalino, Empire
of Manuel I, chap. 5; M. Angold, Church and Society in Byzantium under
the Comneni, 1081–1261 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
34. R. Browning, ‘Enlightenment and Repression in Byzantium
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries’, Past and Present 69 (1975),
3–23, but see also the important qualifications of this idea of repression in
P. Magdalino, Empire of Manuel I, 382–412 and in Magdalino,
‘Enlightenment and Repression in Twelfth-Century Byzantium. The Evidence of the
Canonists’, in Byzantium in the Twelfth Century: Canon Law, State and
Society, N. Oikonomides, ed. (Athens: Etaireia Byzantinōn kai
Metabyzantinōn Meletōn, 1991), 357–73.
35. Magdalino, Empire of Manuel I, 386.
36. Darrouzès, ‘Documents’.
37. Anselm of Havelberg, Dialogi 3, De diverso
Eucharistiae ritu Graecorum et Latinorum, videlicet azymi et fermentati, et de auctoritate
Romanae Ecclesiae (PL 188.1219). J. Spiteris, La critica bizantina del
primato romano nel secolo XII, OCA 134 (Rome: Pontificio Istituto
Orientale, 1979), 91–108; Darrouzès, ‘Documents’, 59–65.
38. Anselm of Havelberg, Dialogi 2, De processione
Spiritus sancti (PL 188.1204).
39. Papadakis and Meyendorff, Christian East, 167.
