Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to today's history lesson.

My name is Mr. Merrett, and I'll be guiding you through today's lesson.

So let's get started.

Today's lesson is looking at the Great Schism, and by the end of today's lesson, we'll be able to explain why the Christian Church split in two in 1054.

In order to do that, we need to use some key terms. And our key terms for today are church, Holy Spirits, liturgy, and schism.

Church with a capital C is the organisation of the Christian religion.

If it's got a small C, generally speaking, it's referring to the buildings, the church buildings.

It's got capital C, it's referring to the whole organisation.

In Christianity, the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of God in the world.

Liturgy means the form in which worship is conducted.

And a schism is a split between strongly opposed parties.

Our lesson today will be comprised of three separate learning cycles, and our first learning cycle is looking at differences in geography.

So let's begin.

Now, Christianity was the main religion in the Roman Empire by the fifth century, despite the fact that the empire becomes so big that it was necessary to split it into two halves in order to manage it.

And on the screen in front of you there, you can see the rough split of the Roman Empire.

So the green colour there, that became the Eastern Roman Empire, and that orangy, peachy colour there, that became the Western Roman Empire.

Now, unfortunately, in 476 CE, the Western Roman Empire collapsed, leaving just the Eastern Roman Empire intact.

Now the reason why it collapsed is, well, for a variety of reasons, but it's mainly because of barbarian incursions.

And what I mean by that is that barbarian tribes, generally speaking, coming from the east of the Roman Empire, from what is now modern-day Germany, into the Roman territory and cause problems. Sometimes they were invited in, and sometimes they came in and they settled peacefully, generally speaking along the borders.

And that they were there to defend the borders against other Germanic tribes.

In other cases, though, the Germanic tribes came to raid, whereby they entered Roman territory, they did some stealing, they burnt some villages, and they went back to their own territory after that.

And sometimes they came to invade, whereby they entered Roman territory and they took over land forcibly.

And by 476, the Roman Empire had effectively been split up into a, or the Western Roman Empire anyway, have been split into a variety of different Germanic kingdoms. And Rome itself had also been attacked a few times as well.

This was happening to a lesser extent in the Eastern Roman Empire as well.

They didn't escape the invasions from Germanic tribes and Slavic tribes.

They just fared better than what they did in the Western Roman Empire.

Now Christianity, though, continued to be the main religion in all of the regions of the former Roman Empire.

And in what used to be the Western Roman Empire, the most important bishop was the Bishop of Rome, also known as the pope.

The pope today is still called the Bishop of Rome, although his more common title is the pope.

And the reason why there's only really kind of one important bishop or super important bishop in the Western Roman Empire is that Rome was the most important city in the Western Roman Empire.

In the Eastern Roman Empire, there were several important bishops who were known as patriarchs.

And the reason being is that there were a greater number of important cities in the Eastern Roman Empire, cities such as Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem as well.

Now in the Eastern Roman Empire, the patriarchs continued to practise Christianity as they had always done, which is by working together to lead the Church.

And they were able to do this because the empire they lived in remained mostly stable.

In what had been the Western Roman Empire, the pope in Rome became isolated from the patriarchs and instead worked hard to lead the Church in Western Europe by himself.

Barbarian tribes established kingdoms of their own, as I've already stated, and many of them converted to Christianity in order to gain legitimacy, whereby they gain an acceptance from the local people.

But this also provided the pope with more authority to control the Church in these new kingdoms. And the pope in Rome had to act almost as a king himself in order to control the Church in Western Europe.

Whereas the patriarchs in the Eastern Roman Empire worked as a group, with no one member having complete authority over the rest.

There was an understanding that some patriarchs were higher in respect.

There was an order of respect, and actually it was the pope who had the highest amount of respect, but in terms of authority, they believed that they were all equal in that.

So the pope was referred to by the patriarchs as first amongst equals, whereas the pope himself felt that he was going it alone because, in the Western Roman Empire, he pretty much had to.

Now eventually there this led to the pope and the patriarchs arguing over whether the pope controlled the Church in Western Europe or everywhere, including in the East.

Right, let's have a quick check for understanding now then.

So true or false statement on the screen there.

Important bishops are called patriarchs in the Eastern Roman Empire.

Is that true, or is that false? All right, if you chose true, then congratulations.

It is indeed true.

But let's justify that statement now, though.

Why is it a true statement? Is it true because patriarchs worked together to lead the Church in the East but not in the West? Or is it true because patriarchs worked together to lead Church in both the East and the West? So make your justification now.

Okay, if you chose A, then very well done.

That is indeed the correct answer.

Now, in the seventh century, Muslims conquered a great deal of the Eastern Roman Empire, including Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch.

And if you look on the screen in front of you there, you can see a map of Europe in roughly 1000 CE.

We can see what used to be the Eastern Roman Empire is now referred to by historians as the Byzantine Empire.

It's there in yellow, and it is significantly reduced.

The Western Roman Empire has been destroyed completely, and you can see, instead, it's a variety of different kingdoms, some of which we would recognise today, such as the Kingdom of France, the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom became England, obviously.

Holy Roman Empire, a large part of that is now Germany.

Now the loss of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch meant that only the patriarch of Constantinople was left in the Eastern Church.

And this intensified the argument over who had more power between the pope in Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople.

And as the Western Roman Empire became just a memory, the main language used in the church services of the Eastern Roman Empire switched to Greek.

While the church services of Western Europe continued to be spoken in Latin.

And eventually, after many, many centuries, the number of people who could speak both languages decreased, which meant that church leaders from East and West could no longer communicate effectively with each other.

Right, let's have another check for understanding now.

So which two cities were the centres of Christianity by the seventh century? Was it Constantinople, Lhasa, Mecca, or Rome? Choose two from the screen now.

All right, if you chose Constantinople and Rome, then congratulations.

Those are the correct answers.

Right, let's go for our first task today now.

So what I'd like to do is read the statements on the screen, and I'd like you to colour code them, whereby one colour are features of the Western Church and the other colour of features of the Eastern Church.

So pause the video now while you do this, and I'll see you in just a moment.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully, you got on fine with that task.

So on the screen in front of you, there are the correct answers.

So hopeful you've got something similar.

Just to go through those now, make sure we're all happy with them.

So in terms of the Western Church, it was led by a single pope.

It was present in several kingdoms. The main language used was Latin.

And they thought that one person should have a complete authority over all of the Church.

In terms of the Eastern Church, it was led by several patriarchs.

It was present in a single empire.

The main language you used was Greek, and they thought that authority should be shared amongst several people in the Church.

Hopefully you've got the same answers to me there as well.

All right, let's go for our second learning cycle for today, which is looking at the differences in belief.

Now as the Eastern and Western Churches became increasingly isolated from each other, differences began to emerge in both belief and liturgy.

For example, the Western Church used unleavened bread for the Eucharist.

So that purely means that the bread that they used was flat, whereas the Eastern Church used leavened bread and dipped it in wine.

And if you're not to sure what the Eucharist is, another name for that is mass.

You might know it as mass instead.

It's one of the most important rights within the Christian Church.

The Eastern Church also allowed priests to marry not at the very, very highest levels, but at lower levels, kind of your average village or town priest was able to marry, whereas the Western Church completely forbade it.

So no priests were allowed to be marriage.

The most damaging difference, though, in both belief and liturgy was just a single word, which is filioque.

And this word, which means and the Son, had been inserted into the Nicene Creed, and the Nicene Creed was effectively Christianity's statement of belief.

This is what we believe.

And the Western Church had changed the Nicene Creed by inserting that one word, filioque, and they hadn't consulted the Eastern Church when they did that.

And the whole point of this is that the Western Church believed that the Holy Spirit came from both God and Jesus, and that differed from the original Nicene Creed, which we still use in the East, which only named God as the originator of the Holy Spirit.

And this change, especially this change without any sort of consultation of the Eastern Church, absolutely infuriated the high-ranking members of the Eastern Church.

And hopefully the diagrams on the screen in front of you there help to explain that difference there a little bit as well.

So in the Western Church, the Father begets a Son.

So God created Jesus, but together they created the Holy Spirits.

Whereas in the Eastern Church, God created both Jesus and the Holy Spirits.

Okay, let's go for a quick check for understanding now then.

So, what does filioque mean? Does it mean and the Father? Does it mean and the Son? Or does it mean and the Holy Spirits.

Make your choice now.

All right, if you chose B, and the Son, then very well done.

Let's have another check for understanding now, though, it's a discussion question.

Why do you think it was a problem that the Western and Eastern Churches began to show differences in belief and liturgy? So pause the video while you discuss this, and I'll see you in just a moment.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully got on fine with that discussion question.

So some of the things you could have said, you could have said that they showed that they were not united anymore.

That there was concerns that one Church is quite simply wrong.

And as a result, all followers of that church would not be able to enter heaven.

It could lead to further arguments as well, and it could result in two separate religions.

Right, let's go through our next task for today, then.

So I'd like you to write a paragraph, just a single paragraph, explaining how religious beliefs and liturgy were different between the Eastern and Western Churches.

And if possible, I'd like you to try and include the following terms in your answer as well.

So try and include the terms Holy Spirits, Eucharist, or mass if you prefer.

Unleavened bread and leavened bread.

So pause the video while you do this, and I'll see you in just a moment.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got fine with that task.

Let's look at this answer that I've got on the screen now, and hopefully yours is somewhat similar to mine.

So I said, "One way in which religious beliefs and liturgy were different between Eastern and Western Churches was their beliefs about the origins of the Holy Spirits.

The Eastern Church believed the Holy Spirit came only from God, whereas the Western Church believed it came from God and Jesus.

Another difference was what kind of bread each church used during the Eucharist.

The Western Church used unleavened bread, whereas the Eastern Church used leavened bread and dipped it in wine." If you've got different ideas, then that's absolutely fine, but hopefully you've got an understanding of how these two churches will begin to differ.

All right, let's go for our third and final learning cycle for the day, which is, why did the split happen in 1054? Now on the 16th of July 1054, delegates from the pope strode into the Hagia Sofia in Constantinople whilst a service was taking place and dramatically placed a letter on the main altar.

The Hagia Sofia there's a really important and beautiful building in Constantinople.

There's an image of it on the screen there.

Now this letter excommunicated, which means it excluded from the Church, the patriarch of Constantinople, a man called Michael Cerularius.

An image of him is on the screen as well.

He's the one that's sitting down on the screen there.

Understandably furious, the patriarch excommunicated the pope's delegates in return.

And so now we've this double excommunication marked the Great Schism, which is the permanent split between the Western Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian churches.

Well, let's have a quick check for understanding now.

So what does it mean to excommunicate someone? Does it mean to exclude them from the Church? Does it mean to publicly execute them? Or does it mean to stop talking to them? So make your choice now.

Okay, if you chose A, then very well done.

That is the correct answer.

Now, two years prior to 1054, so in 1052, the patriarch Michael Cerularius had closed any churches in Constantinople that followed Western liturgy.

So if they did things like they did in a Western church, they were closed down.

He ordered them to change their church services so that they followed what everybody else in the Eastern Empire, the Byzantine Empire as it was known at that point, was doing.

And if they refused, they were closed down.

As well as doing that, he also wrote an angry letter to the pope at the time, Pope Leo IX, which criticised Western belief and liturgy.

And it took him quite a while, but Leo did respond, he wrote an angry reply, and he sent delegates to take it back to the patriarch in 1054.

So it took about two years for one letter to get from Constantinople to Rome for the Pope to, he actually learned quite a bit of Greek in that time as well to make sure that he had a full understanding of the differences between the two Churches.

Then he wrote his reply, and then he sent delegates back again.

So it was a slow process, communicating between the two churches.

But that's the situation at that point in time.

Now, when the pope's delegates reached Constantinople, they felt that the patriarch was very rude to them, and that was part of the reason why they then stormed into the Hagia Sofia and excommunicated the pope.

And obviously in return, the patriarch then excommunicated them.

So rudeness was part of the reason why this split happened in 1054.

Having said that, the split in the church had been coming long before this event.

The isolation between the Eastern and Western Churches, the arguments over power, the differences in language, belief, and liturgy, they'd all caused cracks to appear long before 1054.

The Church had actually experienced arguments which had temporarily split the Church before, and they became known as the little schisms, and the earliest of these happened as far back as the third century.

So this argument between the Eastern and Western Church was not a new thing.

Having said that though, by the 11th century, the differences between east and west were effectively just too great to mend.

And this led to a change in the Church, which has lasted until the present day.

Right, let's have another check for understanding now.

So there's a true or false statement of the screen, the Great Schism of 1054 was the first time the Church had seen any splits.

Is that true, or is that false? Okay, if you chose false, then very well done.

It's a false statement, but let's justify it now.

Why is it false? Is it false because the Church had only recently recovered from another large schism just a few years previously? Or is it false because the Church had previously suffered several little schisms which had been repaired? So choose your justification now.

Okay, if you chose B, then very well done.

That is the correct answer.

Right, let's go for our third and final task for today.

So how important were the events of 1054 in creating a schism in the Christian Church? And I'd like you to explain your answer, and if it helps, you can include one of the following on the screen there to support your answer.

So you could talk about the excommunication of leading churchmen.

You could talk about arguments over power, you could talk about differences in language and location, or you could talk about differences in belief and liturgy.

There's no expectation that you write a huge answer, which is why I'm limiting that to just one.

If you wanna write more than one, that's absolutely fine.

You're more than welcome to, but there's no expectation to do so.

So pause the video now while you do that, and I'll see you once you're finished.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully, you got along fine with that task.

Let's go through a model answer we've got on the screen, and hopefully yours follows a similar sort of vein to mine.

So I said, "The events of 1054 were quite important in creating a schism in the Christian Church, but they were not the most important thing that caused the schism.

Other schisms had happened before but were repaired, so this one could have been repaired too, except the Church had been drifting apart for hundreds of years due to differences in belief and liturgy.

Therefore, the main reason the Church suffered the Great Schism was that the Eastern and Western Churches were just too different from each other by 1054." If you've got a different answer to mine, that's absolutely fine, as long as you've explained your answer and you justify why you think whatever it is you think.

That's the key aspect of this task here.

Right, let's summarise today's lesson now then.

So the Eastern and Western Churches began to drift apart due to being isolated from each other after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

The Eastern and Western Churches began to develop differences in belief and liturgy.

And the Great Schism of 1054 was a major change to the Christian Church, which led to the development of the separate Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Thank you very much for joining me today.

Hopefully you've enjoyed yourself, hopefully you learned something, and hopefully I'll see you again next time.

Bye-bye.