The Orthodoxy of the Latins in the Twelfth Century

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.