Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/16



immediate causes of the great schism between the churches of the East and the West, in 1054, were ecclesiastical in their nature, but political events had material influence in preparing the way for the separation.

The partition of the world, in 395, between Honorius and Arcadius, aroused diverse and conflicting interests which had slumbered while the empire was united.

The transfer of the capital from Rome to Ravenna, the conquest of the West by the barbarians, and its final severance from the East, resulted in the rise of papacy to temporal as well as spiritual power. It obtained ascendancy over half the world, and claimed jurisdiction over the whole.

The foundation of Constantinople, the dismemberment of the empire, and the complete separation, in a political sense, of the East from the West, exalted the pride of the patriarch, and raised his see to an equality with that of Rome. He as indignantly resented the pope's pretensions to supremacy as they were vehemently asserted. 1