Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/168

Rh could at one time boast 20 metropolitans and 103 bishops; now there are only 5 metropolitans (Caramit, Mosul, Maadan, Aleppo, and Jerusalem) without suffragans.

The decisions of Chalcedon, which were the occasion of the formation of all these sects outside, did not put an end to Christological controversy inside the Orthodox Greek Church. The most prominent question which emerged in attempting to define further the person of Christ was whether the will belonged to the nature or the person, or, as it came to be stated, whether Christ had two wills or only one. The church in the sixth œcumenical council at Constantinople declared that Christ had two wills. The Monotheletes refused to submit, and the result was the formation of another schismatic church — the Maronite Church of the Lebanon range. The Maronites, however, in the 12th century were reconciled to Rome, and cannot now be said to belong to the Greek Church.

Conflict with Rome.&mdash;The relation of the Greek Church to the Roman may be described as one of growing estrangement from the 5th to the 11th century, and a series of abortive attempts at reconciliation since the latter date. The estrangement and final rupture may be traced to the overweening pretensions of the Roman bishops and to Western innovation in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, accompanied by an alteration of creed. In the early church three bishops stood forth prominently, principally from the political eminence of the cities in which they ruled — the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. The transfer of the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople gave the bishops of Rome a possible rival in the patriarch of Constintinople, but the absence of an overawing court and meddling statesmen did more than recoup the loss to the head of the Roman Church. The theological calmness of the West, amid the violent theological disputes which troubled the Eastern patriarchates, and the statesmanlike wisdom of Rome's greater bishops, combined to give a unique position to the pope, which councils in vain strove to shake, and which in time of difficulty the Eastern patriarchs were fain to acknowledge and make use of, however they might protest against it and the conclusions deduced from it. But this pre-eminence, or rather the Roman idea of what was involved in it, was never acknowledged in the East; to press it upon the Eastern patriarchs was to prepare the way for separation, to insist upon it in times of irritation was to cause a schism. The theological genius of the East was different from that of the West. The Greek theology had its roots in Greek philosophy, while a great deal of Western theology was based on Roman law. The Greek fathers succeeded the Sophists, the Latin theologians succeeded the Roman advocates (Stanley's East. Ch., ch. i.). This gave rise to misunderstandings, and at last led to two widely separate ways of regarding and defining one important doctrine — the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father or from the Father and the Son. Political jealousies and interests intensified the disputes, and at last, after many premonitory symptoms, the final break came in 1054, when Leo. IX. smote Michael Cerularius and the whole of the Eastern Church with an excommunication. There had been mutual excommunications before, but they had not resulted in permanent schisms. "It was scarce two centuries since anathemas had been exchanged between Adrian I. and Photius, between Photius and Nicholas I. The sixth council had formally anathematized Honorius I. by name. There had been great violence of language in the 6th century between Gregory I. and John the Faster, and not many years before that the name of Vigilius had been deliberately erased from every one of the diptychs of the Eastern Church" (Ffoulkes's Christendom's Divisions, i. § 17). Now, however, the separation was final, and the ostensible cause of its finality was the introduction by the Latins of two words filioque into the creed. It is this addition which was and which still remains the permanent cause of separation. Ffoulkes has pointed out in his second volume (ch. 1-3) that there was a resumption of intercourse more than once between Rome and Constantinople after 1054, and that the overbearing character of the Norman crusaders, and finally the horrors of the sack of Constantinople in the fourth crusade, were the real causes of the permanent estrangement. It is undeniable, however, that the filioque question has always come up to bar the way in any subsequent attempts at intercommunion. The theological question involved is a very small one, but it brings out clearly the opposing characteristics of Eastern and Western theology, and so has acquired an importance far beyond its own worth. The question is really one about the relations subsisting between the persons of the Trinity and their hypostatical properties. The Western Church affirms that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from" the Father and from the Son. It believes that the Spirit of the Father must be the Spirit of the Son also. Such a theory seems alone able to satisfy the practical instincts of the West, which did not concern itself with the metaphysical aspect of the Trinity, but with Godhead in its relation to redeemed humanity. The Eastern Church affirms that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only. The Eastern theologian thinks that the Western double procession degrades the Deity and destroys the perfection of the Trinity. The double procession, in his eyes, means two active principles (αὶτἰαι) in the Deity, and it means also that there is a confusion be tween the hypostatical properties; a property possessed by the Father and distinctive of the First Person is attributed also to the Second. This is the theological, and there is conjoined with it an historical and moral dispute. The Greeks allege that the addition of the filioque was made, not only without authority, and therefore unwarrantably, but also for the purpose of forcing a rupture between East and West in the interests of the barbarian empire of the West.

Attempts at reconciliation were made from time to time afterwards, but were always wrecked on the two points of papal supremacy, when it meant the right to impose Western usages upon the East, and of the addition to the creed. First there was the negotiation between Pope Gregory IX. and the Greek patriarch Germanus. The Latin conditions were practically recognition of papal jurisdiction, the use of unleavened bread enforced on the Greeks, and the Greeks to be permitted to omit filioque on condition that they burnt all books written against the Western doctrine. The Greek patriarch refused the terms. Then came negotiations under Innocent IV. and Clement IV., in which the popes proposed the same conditions as Gregory IX., with additions. These proposals were rejected by the Greeks, who regarded them as attempts to enforce new creeds on their church.

The negotiations at the council of Lyons (1274) were, strictly speaking, between the pope and the Greek emperor, and were more political than ecclesiastical. Michael Palseologus ruled in Constantinople while Baldwin II., the last of the Latin emperors, was an exile in Europe. Palseologus wished the pope to acknowledge his title to be emperor of the East, and in return promised submission to the papal supremacy and the union of the Greek with the Latin Church on the pope's own terms. This enforced union lasted only during the lifetime of the emperor. The only other attempt at union which requires to be mentioned is that made at the council of Florence. It was really sugested by the political weakness of the Byzantine empire and the dread of tho approach of the Turks. John Palseologus the emperor, Joseph the patriarch of Constantinople, and several Greek bishops came to Italy and appeared at the council of Florence — the papal council, the rival of the

