The Great Schism
- When
- 1054 AD
- Where
- Rome and Constantinople
- Kind
- Division
Mutual excommunications formalised centuries of estrangement over papal authority and the filioque clause. Each side has given a different account of it ever since.
The mutual excommunications of 1054 were between a papal legate and a patriarch, not between the churches as such, and contemporaries did not treat the year as a rupture — the estrangement was already centuries old and the final break is better dated to the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The substantive issues were the filioque, added to the creed in the west without a council, and the extent of papal jurisdiction; the immediate quarrel was over leavened or unleavened bread. Each side has given a different account ever since. The anathemas were lifted by a joint declaration in 1965.
Bodies it bears on
Party to it
Either side of it
The whole timeline, from the apostolic communities to the present.