Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/30



The Eastern and Western Churches are separated, probably for all time, by differences of dogma and above all by material interests and passions. Each member of the Christian world belonged, before the Reform, to one or other of the sects favouring these dogmas. He was supposed, as concerned the West, to be a « Greek» adherent; no particularity of country or race was recognised. The adherents of the Oekoumenikos of Constantinople were opposed to those of the Roman pontificate.

To explain the separation two periods have to be considered: that of the Byzantine Patriarch Photius in the ioth century and that of his successor Michael Kerullarios in the nth. Ruled by personal ambitions, both these leaders of the Eastern church had consciously employed all efficacious means to bring about unpardonable and criminal schisms.

A critical examination of the facts can usefully be made by means of such works as those of Cardinal Hergenroether on Photius, or the critical studies contained in Walter Norden's well-known treatise on the subject.

The presumed initiator of the first schism was neither a theologian by training nor a lover of theological disputes; nevertheless, as Patriarch, he was constrained to write, or at least to sign, treatises on this subject; he showed no instinct