Page:Orthodox Eastern Church (Fortescue).djvu/133

Rh nople was on the wrong or heretical side; in every one Eastern and Western Christians now agree that Rome was right. Such continual breaches must gradually weaken the bond.

From all this then we see that, in spite of her acknowledgement of the Roman Primacy, the Byzantine Church, long before the schism, had entertained unfriendly feelings towards Latins; when the schism did come, it happened because the time was only too ripe for it. The troubles of the 9th and the 11th centuries cut Christendom in half along a line that jealousies, misunderstandings, quarrels of all kinds had already long marked out.

In this chapter we have considered the relations between Rome and the Eastern Churches. We have seen, first of all, that those Churches acknowledged the Primacy during the first eight centuries. The great Greek Fathers believed that St. Peter was the foundation of the Church, the chief of the Apostles, that he always lives and reigns in his successors the Bishops of Rome, that therefore the Roman See is the foundation of all sees, that her bishops are the chiefs of all bishops. This same conviction lasted through the Byzantine period (since Justinian, 527) till the schism. The Eastern Churches acknowledged the Pope as the highest judge and his see as the last court of appeal in their affairs too; their bishops constantly used this right of appealing to Rome. The Pope's Primacy is confirmed by all the councils that Catholics and Orthodox agree in considering œcumenical, except by the two that were irregular in everything but the papal confirmation. On the other hand we have seen that there were causes of friction and ill-feeling between East and West long before the final schism broke out. Eastern Christians had never stood in quite so close a relation to the Pope as his own Latins. The ambition of Constantinople was a continual source of dispute, and the Popes were not always wise in their relations to the East. The ill-feeling is shown in many ways, chiefly at the Quinisextum Synod, and by the fact that the Byzantine Church had already been many times in schism before Photius.