Page:Orthodox Eastern Church (Fortescue).djvu/223

Rh Now that the crash is coming, one asks oneself what else the Legates could have done. They had waited long enough, and if ever a man clearly showed that he wanted schism it was Cerularius. He had already excommunicated the Pope by taking his name off the diptychs. We should note that this is the only sentence that the Roman Church pronounced against the Eastern Communion. She has never excommunicated it as such, nor the other patriarchs. If they lost her communion it was because they too, following Cerularius's example, struck the Pope's name from their diptychs.

It was Saturday, July 16, 1054, at the third hour (9 a.m). The Hagia Sophia was full of people, the priests and deacons are vested, the Prothesis (preparation) of the holy Liturgy has just begun. Then the three Latin legates walk up the great church through the people, go in through the Royal Door of the Ikonostasis and lay their bull of excommunication on the altar. As they turn back they say: Videat Deus et iudicet. The schism was complete.

It is always rather dangerous to claim that misfortunes are a judgement of God, and indeed no one could have any thought of satisfaction at the most awful calamity that ever happened to Christian Europe. At the same time one realizes how, from the day the Legates turned back from the altar on which they had laid their bull, the Byzantine Church has been cut off from all intercourse with the rest of Christendom, how her enemies gathered round this city nearer and nearer each century, till at last they took it, how they overturned this very altar as Cerularius had overturned the Latin altars, took away the great church as he had taken away ours, and how since that the