On July 16, 1054, Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Cerularius was excommunicated from the Christian church primarily based in Rome, Italy. Cerularius’s excommunication was a breaking level in long-rising tensions between the Roman church primarily based in Rome and the Byzantine church primarily based in Constantinople (now known as Istanbul). The ensuing cut up divided the European Christian church into two main branches: the Western Roman Catholic Church and the Japanese Orthodox Church. This cut up is called the Nice Schism, or typically the “East-West Schism” or the “Schism of 1054.”

The Nice Schism took place as a consequence of a fancy combine of spiritual disagreements and political conflicts. One of many many non secular disagreements between the western (Roman) and jap (Byzantine) branches of the church needed to do with whether or not or not it was acceptable to make use of unleavened bread for the sacrament of communion. (The west supported the apply, whereas the east didn’t.) Different objects of spiritual dispute embody the precise wording of the Nicene Creed and the Western perception that clerics ought to stay celibate.

These spiritual disagreements had been made worse by quite a lot of political conflicts, notably concerning the ability of Rome. Rome believed that the pope—the spiritual chief of the western church—ought to have authority over the patriarch—the spiritual authority of the jap church. Constantinople disagreed. Every church acknowledged their very own leaders, and when the western church finally excommunicated Michael Cerularius and the complete jap church. The jap church retaliated by excommunicating the Roman pope Leo IX and the Roman church with him.

Whereas the 2 church buildings have by no means reunited, over a thousand years after their cut up, the western and jap branches of Christianity got here to extra peaceful phrases. In 1965, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I lifted the longstanding mutual excommunication decrees made by their respective church buildings.

At this time, the 2 branches of Christianity stay distinct expressions of the same religion. Roman Catholicism is the only largest Christian denomination, with greater than a billion followers world wide. Japanese Orthodoxy is the second-largest Christian denomination, with greater than 260 million followers. Japanese Orthodoxy consists of nationwide church buildings, such because the Greek Orthodox Church and Russian Orthodox Church.

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