Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/33



Admitting that the two Patriarchs had the schism as the primary object of their reigns, one fact stands forth: that in the time of Photius the emperors renewed their good relations to the pontifical seat of Rome whenever good policy demanded it. But a few decades after the « schism » of Kerullarios, after the exchange of excommunications — a common thing in the period (a little earlier or later and the most excommunicated of all rulers of his time, the emperor Henry IV, could have been buried in consecrated ground) — Alexios the Comnene agreed with the best of good will to help the crusaders of the western cross, who were led first by a monk and then by a legate of the western church. And in the Eastern world the Patriarch, despite his attempts to take precedence of the emperor who had elected him and could equally well expel, condemn or kill him, was not the arbiter of his own policy which, as in all other branches of public life, was dictated by the emperor alone. Thus the churches were divided only for the emperor’s sake, whereas under the Palaeologues, to the end of their domination (from the Council of Lyons to the Council of Florence), to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, all manner of offers were made by the chiefs of the Empire for the union of the churches, that is, for subjection to the Pope, who alone was presumed to hold powers of succour and salvation.

Separation in the true sense however did not occur in the loth and nth centuries. It could not occur notwithstanding the quarrels which continually arose between the two closely related religious organisations. First and foremost this was because the churches were never definitely united.

East and West, Byzantium and Rome, were almost two religions, so numerous, despite the apparent unity of tenet due to a commun fidelity to the creed of Nicaea, were the original differences.

Each of them held closely to a different heritage. The religious Byzantium of Christ continued the old oriental religion. The same authority of the clergy, actual high priests of the Asiatic Orient, the same nullity of the Worshippers during celebrations of the holy office, the same mystery surrounding the liturgy, which was concealed behind the closed doors of the iconostasis. And at the same time, as an open contradiction to theocracy founded on inscrutable mysteries, the marriage of priests, their intercourse with the people, the use of the vernacular in the church.

This was not peculiar to the Orthodox Greek