Pope Leo vs. the East

When Byzantine Patriarch Michael I Cerularius made known to Pope Leo IX what he considered erroneous practices on the part of the Roman Church, Leo retaliated by reminding Michael that Leo "owned" him, Constantinople, and the Byzantine Empire. His argument for this was the Donation of Constantine.

The Donation (an action represented in the illustration) was an alleged decree from Roman Emperor Constantine I in the 4th century, offering to Pope Sylvester control over all the major dioceses and all the lands of the empire, both East and West. This was proven to be a forgery in the 15th century by the scholar Lorenzo Valla. Leo had no reason to think the Donation was a forgery, however; in fact, he had plenty of motivation to believe it was authentic.

Anyway, in 1054 Leo wrote to Michael, assuring him that the Donation was not a hoax and Michael had better accept that the pope in Rome was the only rightful head of the Church. Not trusting Michael to fall in line, Leo sent Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida to Constantinople to lay out the proper way forward for the Eastern Church.

Humbert was actually "in the thick" of this issue. Humbert was in Apulia in 1053, where he received a letter from the Byzantine Archbishop Leo of Ohrid that listed Patriarch Michael's complaints about Western Roman Church practices. It was partially this letter that caused Leo to invoke the Donation.

Humbert arrived in Constantinople in spring of 1054 and received a warm welcome from Emperor Constantine X. Michael was much colder, however, but the papal delegation and Byzantine clergy met several times, discussing religious issues with no real progress or compromise being made. During Mass on 16 July Humbert placed a papal bull on the high altar of the Hagia Sophia, excommunicating Michael and his supporters. Michael, in turn, gathered his clerics and four days later excommunicated Humbert and his entourage.

The papal bull is considered by many historians to be invalid, because Humbert delivered it even though Leo had died in on 19 April. Still, the events of 1054 brought to a head the doctrinal differences between east and west and guaranteed the East-West Schism, the official break between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.

This Schism had been building for many years, and we will look at a timeline of the conflicts that made it inevitable next time.

Pope Leo IX

So many medieval popes were Italian (and maybe French) that it is unusual to find one with a German name, but France and Germany were essentially once West Francia and East Francia, and Bruno von Egisheim-Dagsburg (1002 - 1054) was actually born in what is modern Alsace, France. A child of privilege, his father was Count Hugh IV of Nordgau (a cousin of the future Holy Roman Emperor, Conrad II). Bruno was the fourth of eight children, and the third son, so was not expected to succeed his father.

He was therefore handed off at the age of five to Berthold, bishop of Toul, who established a school for the sons of nobility. At the age of 15, Bruno became a canon at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Toul. In 1024, his father's cousin Conrad became Emperor, and Bruno was chosen to serve in the imperial chapel. Two years later, the then-bishop of Toul died and Bruno took over the diocese, managing it for the next two decades.

During that time he exerted his influence to reform and raise the moral standards of monasteries and the regular clergy in his diocese. He favored spreading Cluniac rules. When Pope Damasus II died in 1048, the emperor and Roman delegates at an assembly in Worms agreed that he should become pope. Bruno anted instead to travel to Rome and have a proper election. He arrived in Rome wearing pilgrim garb in early 1049, where he was duly elected and took the name Leo IX.

He immediately called a synod for that Easter. At the synod, he demanded celibacy for all clergy down to the rank of subdeacon, and said simony, the practice of selling church positions, had to stop. He traveled to Mainz to meet with Italian, French, and German clergy to declare his positions. At another Easter synod in 1051 he discussed the potential re-ordination of those priests who had been defrocked because their positions had originally been purchased through simony. These decisions all seemed to be sensible.

Leo's real challenge was with the Eastern Church. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael I Cerularius, criticized some of the positions of the Roman/Latin Church, particularly fasting the day before Sunday Mass and the use of unleavened bread. Michael's letter was addressed to Leo as "brother" instead of "father."

Leo's response was to remind that Michael that the pope "owned" the entire Byzantine Church. Leo did not make this idea up on his own; he had documentation to "prove" it! Why he thought that will be explained tomorrow.