Church History in Plain Language

by Bruce L. Shelley

ONE SUMMER AFTERNOON IN the year 1054, as a service was about to begin in the spacious Church of Holy Wisdom at Constantinople, Cardinal Humbert and two other representatives (legates) of Pope Leo IX entered the building and made their way up to the sanctuary. They had not come to pray. They placed a Bull (an official papal document) of Excommunication upon the altar and marched out once more. As he passed through the western door, the cardinal shook the dust from his feet with the words, “Let God look and judge.” A deacon ran after him in great distress and begged him to take back the Bull. Humbert refused, and it was dropped in the street. For centuries Christians have considered this incident the beginning of the great division between Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Catholicism. Its counterpart in the sixteenth century was Martin Luther’s tacking the 95 Theses on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, precipitating the schism between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. This confrontation in Constantinople came only after a long and complicated process.