When the Homily is about Immunology

Will the real schism please stand up?

Most everyone knows what happened in 1054 at Constantinople, and it is usually cited as being the date of the "official" splitting of Eastern and Western Christianity. However, more educated amatuer historians know that there is a great deal of history that led up to this single event. More than that though, even after 1054, the perpetualty of the schism was not a foregone conclusion. Many say that the sacking of Constantinople by Latin Crusaders sealed the schism...but in may have actually occurred prior to 1204.

The diversion of the Crusaders to Constantinople in 1204 has always been a bit of a mystery to me. But, as you know I have been reading Runciman's History of the Crusades and he has done a fantastic job of clarifying the issue. Essentially, the first Crusade was welcomed and sought after by the Byzantine Empire as Islamic forces continued to expand and conquer more and more Byzantine territory.

However, as huge Crusader armies marched through the eastern empire, it became apparent that it could become problematic. Such armies needed vast hordes of food and they often got into deadly mischief which required the emperor to police them with his own troops since the leaders of the crusades had variable abilities to control their men. The Emperor was particularly concerned about recovering Asia Minor and so he had the Crusade leaders pledge to return such lands to the Empire, and sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't. There was varying degrees of distrust and competition between Constantinople and the Crusaders, and this would lead later in the face of failures to the dreaded blame game. Crusaders began to suspect the Byzantine Empire of treachery, while the Emperor began to realize that the Crusaders were as much or more interested in reaping their own personal benefits as they were in liberating formerly Christian lands from Muslim aggressors.

By the time the second Crusade got under way, the Byzantine Empire had grown apprehensive about the coming armies sweeping over their lands again. And in turn, the Crusaders were more and more suspicious of Constantinople.

In 1104 Bohemond, a Crusade leader, returned to the west to sway the Pope into seeing that Constantinople was as much an enemy of Christendom as the infidel Muslim. He was successful and Pope Paschal changed the theme of the Crusades, such that Bohemond would lead (unsuccesfully) a Crusader Army against the Byzantines. Runciman writes: "This unhappy agreement between Bohemond and Pope Paschal did far more than all the controversy between Cardinal Humbert and Michael Cerularius to ensure the separation between the eastern and western Churches."

I still have some most posts I wrote while in Paris, I'll get them up shortly along with some more pictures.