Humbert and Cerularius: The Events of 1054

In the summer of 1054 a Roman legation led by Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, sent to negotiate an alliance, instead laid a bull excommunicating Patriarch Michael I Cerularius on the altar of Hagia Sophia; a week later a synod under Cerularius anathematized the legates. This file narrates the actual course of events — the Norman background, Leo of Ohrid’s letter, the forged-seeming embassy, the pope’s death in mid-negotiation — on which the emblematic status of “1054” was later built.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Background: Normans, Azymes, and Two Proud Men

The road to the confrontation ran through southern Italy. Norman adventurers were conquering the Byzantine provinces there and, as they advanced, imposing Latin usages on Greek churches; Constantinople answered in kind, and around 1052–53 the Patriarch Michael I Cerularius (patriarch 1043–1059) required the Latin churches in Constantinople to adopt Greek usage — closing, according to the Latin accusation, those that refused (Runciman, The Eastern Schism: A Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches during the XIth and XIIth Centuries, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955, ch. 2; Smith, And Taking Bread… Cerularius and the Azyme Controversy of 1054, Paris: Beauchesne, 1978, on the background). In 1053 Archbishop Leo of Ohrid sent a letter to Bishop John of Trani in Apulia — intended for the pope and “all the bishops of the Franks” — attacking the Latin use of unleavened bread and the Saturday fast; whether Cerularius commissioned it is uncertain, but Rome read it as Constantinople’s manifesto (Leo of Ohrid, Letter to John of Trani [1053], in Will, ed., Acta et scripta quae de controversiis ecclesiae graecae et latinae saeculo undecimo composita extant, Leipzig/Marburg, 1861; Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 1955, ch. 2; on the azyme theology see Language, Rite, and Law).

The letter reached Pope Leo IX through Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, a Lotharingian monk of the reform party, fierce, learned by Latin standards, and wholly committed to the new Gregorian doctrine of Roman authority (see Papal Claims and the Frankish Factor). Humbert translated it, drafted the papal responses — which asserted Roman prerogatives in the strongest terms and invoked the Donation of Constantine — and was named head of the legation to Constantinople, with Frederick of Lorraine, chancellor of the Roman church (the future Pope Stephen IX), and Archbishop Peter of Amalfi (the dossier in Will, Acta et scripta, 1861; Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 1955, ch. 2). The political motive was pressing: after the Norman victory over the papal army at Civitate (June 1053), where Leo IX himself was captured, pope and emperor needed each other; the emperor Constantine IX Monomachos wanted the alliance and was prepared to be conciliatory (Runciman, ibid.; Papadakis and Meyendorff, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994, ch. 1).

The legates reached Constantinople in April 1054. Everything then went wrong that could. Cerularius, offended by the legates’ bearing and doubting their credentials, refused to receive them as a legation; Humbert published a Latin polemic against the Greek positions and humiliated the monk Niketas Stethatos in a staged disputation, forcing him to burn his own anti-azyme treatise; and in the middle of the negotiation, on 19 April 1054, Pope Leo IX died — leaving the legates, on the strict view, without a principal whose authority they could exercise (Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 1955, ch. 2; Smith, And Taking Bread, 1978; the Humbert–Stethatos exchange in Will, Acta et scripta, 1861).

The Bull on the Altar

On Saturday, 16 July 1054, as the clergy of Hagia Sophia prepared for the Liturgy, the three legates entered the Great Church, laid a bull of excommunication on the holy table, and walked out, shaking the dust from their feet; a deacon ran after them begging them to take it back, and they refused (the narrative in the Constantinopolitan synodal edict and Humbert’s own Brevis et succincta commemoratio, both in Will, Acta et scripta, 1861; Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 1955, ch. 2).

The bull itself — Sicut Humbertus dixit, as scholars wryly note, our chief source for it is Humbert — excommunicated not the Church of Constantinople but “Michael, neophyte and false patriarch,” Leo of Ohrid, the patriarchal chancellor Constantine, “and their followers,” while professing reverence for the emperor and the citizens. Its charges have embarrassed Latin apologists ever since: alongside simony and the closure of Latin churches, Humbert accused the Greeks of practicing clerical marriage like “Nicolaitans,” of rebaptizing Latins, and — the crowning absurdity — of having deleted the Filioque from the Creed, “like Pneumatomachi… cutting out from the Creed the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son” (the bull of 16 July 1054, in Will, Acta et scripta, 1861; on the charges, Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 1955, ch. 2; Ware, The Orthodox Church, new ed., Penguin, 1993, ch. 3, noting the Filioque charge’s ignorance; Smith, And Taking Bread, 1978). That the chief Roman theologian of the age did not know the original text of the Creed lacked the Filioque is the single most quoted illustration of the mutual ignorance documented in Section 02.

Cerularius answered with procedure, not a mob. The emperor, still hoping to save the alliance, tried to arrange a retraction; popular fury made protection of the legates impossible, and they were hurried out of the city. On 20 July a synod of the resident bishops (the synodos endemousa) convened; on 24 July 1054 its edict anathematized “the impious document” and those who had produced, advised, or subscribed it — the legates and their collaborators, explicitly not the Roman Church, whose name the edict avoids condemning (Synodal Edict of 24 July 1054, in Will, Acta et scripta, 1861; Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 1955, ch. 2). The precise scope of both anathemas, and the vast difference between what happened and what was later believed to have happened, is the subject of the companion file, The Scope of the Anathemas.

Assessing the Actors

Modern scholarship, Catholic and Orthodox alike, declines to make either protagonist a hero. Humbert exceeded any reasonable construction of his commission: he came to make an alliance and chose instead to make a demonstration; his bull was intemperate in tone, false in several charges, and of doubtful canonical force after Leo IX’s death (Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 1955, ch. 2, calling the bull’s contents deplorable; Kolbaba, “The Legacy of Humbert and Cerularius,” in Chrysostomides and Dendrinos, eds., Porphyrogenita, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003; even Catholic accounts concede the bull’s defects — e.g., Chadwick, East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Cerularius was proud, inflexible, and — many historians judge — not unwilling to see the negotiation fail, since a papal–imperial alliance strengthened at his expense held no attraction; his closure of the Latin churches was a provocation the crisis did not need (Runciman, ibid.; Smith, And Taking Bread, 1978, the fullest study of Cerularius’ role; Papadakis and Meyendorff, The Christian East, 1994, ch. 1). The Orthodox Church’s stake in 1054 is not the vindication of Michael Cerularius’ temperament; it is the faith and order for which even an unattractive patriarch stood, and the witness of the wiser voices around him — above all Peter III of Antioch, treated in the companion file (METHODOLOGY §4.1; see The Scope of the Anathemas).

[Disputed: several factual points in the 1054 narrative are contested. (a) The legates' canonical standing: whether Leo IX's death on 19 April 1054 voided their legatine authority — many Orthodox and some Western canonists have argued the bull was void ab initio; other historians reply that contemporaries did not raise the point and that legatine practice was less strict (Runciman, *The Eastern Schism*, 1955, ch. 2, noting the problem; Chadwick, *East and West*, 2003). (b) Cerularius' authorship or commissioning of Leo of Ohrid's letter: asserted by Humbert, doubted by Runciman, weighed at length by Smith (*And Taking Bread*, 1978). (c) Whether Cerularius closed the Latin churches at all, and if so how many — the charge comes from the Latin side; the Greek sources are silent (Smith, ibid.; Kolbaba, "The Legacy of Humbert and Cerularius," 2003). Per §4.2 these are left as the sources leave them.]

See Also

References

  • Will, Cornelius, ed. Acta et scripta quae de controversiis ecclesiae graecae et latinae saeculo undecimo composita extant. Leipzig/Marburg: Elwert, 1861. (The primary dossier: Leo of Ohrid’s letter, the papal correspondence, Humbert’s bull and Commemoratio, the Synodal Edict of 24 July 1054, the Stethatos exchange.)
  • Runciman, Steven. The Eastern Schism: A Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches during the XIth and XIIth Centuries. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955. Ch. 2. (The standard narrative and assessment.)
  • Smith, Mahlon H., III. And Taking Bread… Cerularius and the Azyme Controversy of 1054. Théologie historique 47. Paris: Beauchesne, 1978. (The fullest modern study of Cerularius and the azyme quarrel.)
  • Kolbaba, Tia M. “The Legacy of Humbert and Cerularius: The Tradition of the Schism of 1054 in Byzantine Texts and Manuscripts of the 12th and 13th Centuries.” In J. Chrysostomides and C. Dendrinos, eds., Porphyrogenita. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. (The event and its later construction.)
  • Chadwick, Henry. East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. (A Western scholarly assessment.)
  • Papadakis, Aristeides, with John Meyendorff. The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy: The Church 1071–1453 A.D. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994. Ch. 1. (The political context and Orthodox historical assessment.)
  • Ware, Kallistos (Timothy). The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993. Ch. 3. (Synthesis; the Filioque charge in the bull.)