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AP®︎ World History
Great Schism or East-West Schism part 1
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th Century, division between the Latin Church in the West and the Greek-speaking church in the East widen over issues such as primacy of the Bishop of Rome, iconoclasm, filioque and the crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor.
Want to join the conversation?
- wasn't Germany called Prussia in that time?(3 votes)
- There was no Germany, nor was there any Prussia, at the time of the Great Schism. As a distinct nation (if we can even use the concept), Germany began to coalesce in the middle ages. Prussia didn't emerge as a state until around 1525.(1 vote)
- Do the Germanic tribes that conquered the Western Roman Empire have any correlation with today's Germany (the one with the best soccer teams ever) and the family of Germanic languages (including English)?(1 vote)
- Back up a bit and let "Germanic" stand for a single thing, people from north of the Alps and East of the Rhine. Leave it there. "Germany", as such, and even the Germanic languages are a later development after the "fall" of Rome.(2 votes)
- How did this Iconoclasm movement come to existence? Why did the Eastern church just decide that there shouldn't be representations of Jesus and Mary? Could it be the influence from Islam who came really close to the Orthodox church at the time?(Muslims claim that there shouldn't be any representations of Muhammad(pbuh) )(1 vote)
- The rise of Islam in the seventh century had also caused some consideration of the use of holy images. Early Islamic belief stressed the impropriety of iconic representation. Earlier scholarship tried to link Byzantine Iconoclasm directly to Islam by arguing that Byzantine emperors saw the success of the early Caliphate and decided that Byzantine use of images (as opposed to Islamic aniconism) had angered God. This does not seem entirely plausible however. The use of images had probably been increasing in the years leading up to the outbreak of iconoclasm.(Kitzinger, Ernst (1977), Byzantine art in the making: main lines of stylistic development in Mediterranean art, 3rd-7th century, Faber & Faber, ISBN 0571111548 (US: Cambridge UP, 1977), p. 105).(2 votes)
- How exactly the Byzantine emperors/empreses and Sharlamae(the holy roman emperor) played a role in church and the development of christianity?(1 vote)
- I will assume you are referring to Charlemagne, the king of the Franks. Both the Holy Roman kings and the Byzantine emperors and empresses helped expand the domain of Christianity. For example, Charlemagne and his conquest of Saxony: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Wars(2 votes)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] In
previous videos, we talked about the dramatic turnaround
in the fourth century in terms of how Christianity was treated in the Roman Empire. As you enter into the fourth
century, it's persecuted by Diocletian, but then
Constantine takes power. He's sympathetic to the Christians. He even convenes them in
order to unify the Christians, to have a more unified
sense of what it means to be Christian, in order to
settle things like the Arian Controversy, and he converts
himself to Christianity. And as we exit the fourth century, you have Theodosius,
who makes Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and then begins to
persecute other religions. Now, what we're going to do in this video is continue the narrative,
and in particular, we're going to see how
there's an evolution between the church in the west and
the church in the east. In previous videos, we already talk about how the Roman Empire itself
is initially administered between west and east, and
then that administration becomes more and more formal. Theodosius is the last emperor
to truly rule both halves. They start getting ruled separately. And as you get into the latter
half of the fifth century, the western empire itself
falls to Germanic conquerors. Now, in previous videos, we
talk about how the emperors who rule from Constantinople
consider themselves to continue the Roman Empire. They didn't call themselves
the Byzantine Empire, as we now call them. They call themselves the Roman Empire. They considered themselves Roman emperors. The west falls, as I just mentioned, into a bunch of Germanic kingdoms. Justinian is able to
reclaim a lot of the land formerly lost in the western Roman Empire. Now, there's some other interesting actors we see emerging on this map, and once again, we're
now in the sixth century. You have these Germanic
tribes, the Visigothic kingdoms here in modern-day Spain, and
here in modern-day France, you have the Franks. And the word France really is referring to land of the Franks,
another Germanic tribe. Now, they are able to factor
much, much more relevantly. And when I say about,
I'm saying over the next several hundred years in
this eventual division, culturally and religiously,
between east and west. As I mentioned in previous videos, the division, yes, it will
center on notions of language. In the west, especially in
the church, Latin is used. In the east, in the church, Greek is used. There are spiritual debates
that we will touch on in a few minutes, but there's
also a power struggle. You have the Byzantine Emperor
seated in Constantinople. You have the Bishop of
Rome, now known as the Pope, the Pope of Rome, who considers
themselves more and more the leader of all of Christianity, and their argument there
is look, this is the church that, according to tradition,
was founded by Peter, first amongst the apostles. You have the patriarch of Constantinople and patriarchs of other
significant centers of Christianity that say wait, hold on a second. Yes, Bishop of Rome,
you are very important. But we consider you to
be first amongst equals. You don't have jurisdiction
over all of Christendom. Together we have jurisdiction. And this was, to some degree,
the case under Justinian, and it was very clear at
this time that the Byzantine emperor was very powerful, not
just over the temporal realm, really referring to the
day-to-day material realm, but also a lot of influence
on the spiritual realm, which was really supposed to be the domain of the bishops or the
popes or the patriarchs. This notion of the pentarchy
was codified in the Justinian law, this idea that these
five centers of Christianity really have extra weight and collectively are really leading Christendom. Now, as I mentioned,
things get interesting as we fast forward about 250 years. So let's go to the year 800. So, one thing you might notice
is that group in yellow, the Franks, have now conquered a lot more, and they're conquering
it under the leadership of Charlemagne. At the same time, you
see this green over here. Islam has dramatically
spread from its founding in the early seventh
century, all the way now as we're exiting the eighth century, to cover most of the Middle East, Persia, bordering on modern-day Pakistan, India, north Africa, and even
going into modern-day Spain. At the same time,
especially because of these Islamic conquests, the Byzantine Empire and the Byzantine emperor
is significantly weaker. So you can imagine the
pope in Rome here saying, well, who's going to protect me, especially from my political enemies? Now, Charlemagne considers
himself something of a protector of Christianity, and Pope Leo III goes to him for protection, and Charlemagne is able
to actually provide it. And in exchange, or
perhaps in thanks for that, the pope crowns Charlemagne
as Holy Roman Emperor. Now, what's significant about this is it really introduces
a fourth actor here, because the title Holy Roman Emperor was intentionally given to say, look, now you, Charlemagne, you are the heir to the grandeur of Rome. You are the heir to the Roman emperors. Now, you might be saying,
wait, isn't that what the Byzantine emperors thought they were? Didn't they think this
was the Roman Empire? And at that time, their
emperor was an empress. It was Empress Irene of Athens. And so once again, this is
creating further tension. They're using different languages, Latin versus Greek. You now have the western
pope recognizing a different, I guess you could say, Roman
emperor in Charlemagne. The nature of the west is
becoming more Germanic, and using the language Latin,
while the nature of the east is continuing in Greek traditions. On top of that, what you
have in the year 800, you're actually in this
period where you've had several conflicts over
this notion of iconoclasm. This iconoclasm movement, you could say, started in 726 when the
Byzantine emperor said, enough of these images of
Jesus and the Virgin Mary and other figures of
Christianity in our churches, citing references in the Old
Testament saying that hey, we shouldn't have these images. And so this iconoclasm or
these destroying of icons starts to begin. Well, the pope in the west, they say, hey, we don't think we
have to listen to you. I am the Bishop of Rome. I have universal jurisdiction. And then to add insult
to injury, now, in 800, you have Charlemagne being
crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Now, a thread further running through this is something we've talked
about in a previous video, this notion of filioque, where in 381, the Council of Constantinople,
they augment the Nicene Creed where they say, and we believe
in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life who
proceeds from the Father. Well, in the west, they add
the Latin term filioque, which means and the Son. This is touching on some of
these notions in the Arian Heresy where, where does the
Holy Spirit proceed from, if the Father and Son
are really co-divine, co-equal, of the same substance,
shouldn't the Holy Spirit proceed from both rather than just one? Well, those in the east said, hey, this isn't what we agreed to,
while those in the west say, hey, we don't think it's
so important that you agree to things, because we
have the seat at Rome, the seat that was established by Peter.