Schism of the EAST: causes and consequences

The great schisms in religious history have been very important and world-changing events, one of the main ones being the Eastern Schism. Like any great event, two great elements of the Eastern Schism must be dealt with, these being the causes that originated it and the consequences it brought. For all these reasons, in this lesson from a Teacher we must talk about the Causes and consequences of the Eastern Schism.

The Eastern Schism, also called the East-West Schism, Great Schism or Schism of 1054, was the first great break in Christianity, causing the first ramification of religion. This event brought the end of the unity of the Roman Christian Church, based on the pentarchy and which had been the only way to follow Christianity since the time of Jesus.

The Eastern Schism is especially relevant for having brought about the rise of two big branches in the Christian religion, being the branch catholic and the orthodox, causing a great difference of beliefs between the western and eastern parts of Europe.

The Schism was the consequence of a very long process in which the continuous clash of ideologies between those who wanted to change the religion and those who wanted to keep it, clashed. Even so, the date of 1504 to refer to the division of religion, being the date on which the Schism took place.

Like any great historical event, the Eastern Schism was the consequence of a series of causes that led to the total division of religion into two parts. Being such a complex and interesting subject, we must list below the Causes of the Eastern Schism, being the following:

• The great political rivalry between the Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire, being the two great civilizations of Christianity, and both wanting to be the head of the religion.
• The Pope wanted to be the supreme authority of religion in the whole world, but the Byzantines considered The figure of the Patriarch of Constantinople was very important, being a very important figure for the Byzantines. The rivalry between the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople brought a huge clash of influences.
• The Byzantine emperor forbade the worship of images, considering that it was not something important within the religion. Meanwhile, the Pope kept defending the relevance of respecting religious images, trying to undermine the power of the Byzantine emperor.
• In the East it began change certain aspects of religion, being an important case that of the Holy Spirit, which the Easterners considered that it only came from God, while the Westerners defend that it came from God and Jesus.
• The areas had huge cultural differences, being the Orthodox those who had an Eastern culture and whose language was Greek, and the Catholics who had a Western culture and whose language was Latin.
• The Orientals had to put up with the continuous Muslim pressures, who tried to take the region constantly, while this did not happen with the westerners.

In this other lesson we will discover the main protagonists of the Eastern Schism.

To continue this lesson on the causes and consequences of the Eastern Schism, we must talk about the world after the Schism, to see the great consequences it brought.

The Eastern Schism was the first great division of the Christian religion, so we must understand that it brought enormous consequences for the history of religion. For all this, the consequences of the Eastern Schism were the following:

• The main consequence of the Eastern Schism was the division of Christianity into Catholics and Orthodox, being the first division of this religion, and thereby causing a huge division.
• The Schism caused the voices they saw to rise need a change in Christianity, causing that during the following years the number of councils to change elements of Christianity that were seen with bad eyes increased.
• Orthodox Christianity is born which does not depend on the figure of the Pope, and which created numerous small churches with their own total autonomy, ending with the centralizing ideal of Christianity. These small churches continue to this day, being for this reason the oldest slope of Christianity together with the Catholic one.
• Breaking of relations between the Holy German Empire and the Byzantine Empire, causing that two of the great powers of the time were no longer allies, and had to fight against the Muslims individually.
• Greater acceptance of Greek and Eastern traditions, so the Byzantines forgot their objective of recovering what had been Rome, and converted their customs to very different ones. This great change caused Europe to have two great cultures, ending the unity that had been characteristic for years.