Timeline Sunday 16 July 1054

Events on Sunday 16 July 1054 2

• 1054 The Great Schism -- East and West divided On 16 July 1054, papal legates under Cardinal Humbert place a bull of excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia, excommunicating Patriarch Michael Keroularios and his supporters. Keroularios responds by excommunicating the legates. The immediate cause is a dispute about papal authority and the filioque clause (whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone or from the Father and the Son). The deeper causes are centuries of cultural divergence, political rivalry and mutual incomprehension. The Great Schism divides Christianity into Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy -- a division unhealed to this day.
• 1054 The Great Schism -- excommunications on the altar On 16 July 1054, Cardinal Humbert, legate of Pope Leo IX, places a bull of excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia, excommunicating Patriarch Michael Keroularios and his supporters. The Patriarch responds by excommunicating the papal legates. The Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches -- formally dated to this moment -- is played out in Hagia Sophia itself. The mutual excommunications are lifted in 1964 by Paul VI and Athenagoras I, but the schism remains unhealed.