Читать книгу But For A Penis… - Welby Thomas Cox Jr. - Страница 18

The last fifty years of the eleventh century saw several major events which would have profound consequences for the future. In a vacuum we only hear the noise, when the dust settles we see the dirt.

​In 1054 the church of the east and west formally split in what scholars sometimes call the "Great Schism". The pope at Rome excommunicated his rival and enemy, the patriarch of Constantinople, who also excommunicated the pope and consigned his soul to hell. The churches thereafter would come to be called by separate names in order to distinguish them: the Roman Catholic Church in the west, and the Greek Orthodox Church in the east. "Catholic" merely means "universal," and "orthodox" means "correct"; of course, both churches considered themselves universal and correct. They maintained serious differences in Christian theology, but much of the long running dispute which had been going on for decades had more to do with politics than religion. It involved the support by the pope at Rome of the Norman invasion of Sicily, to which the Byzantine emperor had a claim, and it most especially involved the papal claim to superiority over all churchman, which was not recognized by the patriarch at Constantinople. Patriarch and Pope were merely honorary titles of bishops who were more equal than other bishops. Until this Great Schism, the unified religion of Christianity was seen as the one thing which was the unity in an otherwise fragmented world. Even though bishops and archbishops were separated by great distance, they rarely communicated, still the church was seen as one entity. From 1054 onward, that was no longer the case, and to this day the eastern and western churches have not reunited, although many attempts have been made at reconciliation.