$ 6. CHAP. II. enced general, had now assumed the command of the Byzantine army. The new emperor, Isaac II., had secured the good-will of the troops by distributing among them four thousand pounds of gold, in payment of their arrears and to furnish a donative. The courage of the imperial forces was revived, and their success was insured by the carelessness and presumption of the Sicilian generals, whose contempt for the Greek army prevented them from concentrating their strength. Vranas, taking advantage of this confidence, suddenly drove in the advanced guard and offered battle to the division at Mosynopolis, which he defeated with considerable loss. The Sicilians retreated to the site of Amphipopolis, where they had collected their scattered detachments, and fought another battle at a place called Demerizé, on the 7th November 1185. In this they were utterly defeated, and the victory of the Byzantine army decided the fate of the expedition. Count Aldoin and Richard Acerra, the generals, with about four thousand soldiers, were taken prisoners. The fugitives who could gain Thessalonica immediately embarked on board the vessels in the port, and put to sea. Tancred abandoned his station in the Propontis, and, collecting the shattered remnants of the army as well as he was able, returned to Sicily. Even Dyrrachium was soon after abandoned, for William found the expense of retaining the place far greater than its political importance to Sicily warranted. The prisoners sent by Vranas to the Emperor Isaac II. were treated with great inhumanity. They were thrown into dungeons, and neglected to such a degree by the government, that they owed the preservation of their lives to private charity.' SECT. VI. SEPARATION OF THE GREEK AND LATIN CHURCHES. The Normans of Italy were the vassals of the Pope. 1 Nicetas, 231. SCHISM OF THE GREEKS AND LATINS. 73 Robert Guiscard, the first Norman invader of Greece, adopted the style of "Duke by the grace of God and St Peter;" and the animosity and cruelty of the Sicilian troops against the Greeks were increased by the ecclesiastical quarrels of the Popes of Rome and Patriarchs of Constantinople. The influence of the Latin and Greek clergy rapidly disseminated the hatred caused by these dissensions throughout the people. The ambition of the Patriarch Photius laid the foundation of the separation of the two churches in the ninth century. He objected to the addition of the words, " and the Son," which the Latins had inserted in the original creed of the Christian church, and to some variations in the discipline and usages of the church which they had adopted; and he made these a pretext for attacking the supremacy and orthodoxy of the Pope. The Christian world was astonished by the disgraceful spectacle of the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople mutually excommunicating one another, and each pointing out his rival as one who merited the reprobation of man and the wrath of God. These disputes were allayed by the prudence of a Sclavonian groom, who mounted the throne of the Byzantine empire as Basil I.; but Christian charity never again took up her abode with the heads either of the Papal or the Greek church. The arrogance of the Patriarch, Michael Keroularios, induced him to revive the dormant quarrel in 1053. His character as a man condemns him as a Patriarch. When a layman, he plotted against his sovereign; when a priest, he rebelled against his superior. Whatever may have been his religious zeal, there is no doubt that the revival of the quarrel between the Eastern and Western churches was an unnecessary and impolitic act. A joint letter, in the name of the Patriarch Michael and Leo Archbishop of Achrida, was addressed to the Archbishop of Trani, then a Byzantine possession, in which A. D. 1054. § 6. CHAP. II. all the accusations formerly brought forward by Photius against the Latins were repeated. The Emperor Constantine IX. (Monomachos) attempted to appease the ardour of Michael; and, in the hope of averting a quarrel, prevailed on Pope Leo IX. to send legates to Constantinople. Unfortunately the Papal legates were quite as arrogant as the Patriarch himself; and thus the slumbering animosity of the Greek clergy was roused by their imprudent conduct. The legates, finding their exorbitant pretensions were treated with contempt, completed the separation of the two churches, by excommunicating the Patriarch and all his adherents; and they inflicted a sensible wound on the feelings of the Greeks by their success in depositing a copy of the act of excommunication on the high altar of the church of St Sophia. The Patriarch immediately convoked a council of the Eastern clergy, and replied by excom-. municating the Pope and all the Latins. The Papal act was ordered to be taken from the altar, and publicly burned. From the time of these mutual anathemas, the separation of the Greek and Latin churches has been attended with Antichristian animosity; and the members of the Eastern and Western hierarchies have viewed one another as condemned heretics. From this period, therefore, the conduct of the Byzantine government, and the actions of the Greeks, are judged by the Western nations under the influence of religious prejudices of great virulence, as well as of political and commercial jealousy. The crimes of which the Patriarch accused the Pope, and on account of which the Greeks deemed the Latins worthy of eternal damnation, were these: the addition of the words "and the Son" to the clause of the primitive creed of the Christians, declaring the belief in the Holy Ghost, who proceedeth from the Father; the use of unleavened bread in the holy communion; the use in the kitchens of the Latins of things strangled, and of blood, in INCREASE OF THE PAPAL POWER. 75 § 7. violation of the apostles' express commands;1 the indul- CHAP. II. gence granted to monks to make use of lard in cooking, and to eat meat when sick; the use of rings by Latin bishops as a symbol of their marriage with the church, while, as the Greeks sagaciously observed, the marriage of bishops is altogether unlawful; and, to complete the folly of this disastrous quarrel, the Greek clergy even made it a crime that the Latin priests shaved their beards and baptised by a single immersion. Whatever may be the importance of these errors in a moral or religious point of view, it is certain that the violence displayed by the clergy in irritating the religious hatred between the Greeks and Latins contributed to hasten the ruin of the Greek nation. SECT. VII.-INCREASE OF THE PAPAL POWER DURING THE The eleventh century witnessed a wide extension both of the spiritual jurisdiction and the temporal power of the Popes. The conversions effected by the zeal of the Catholic clergy tended to augment the authority of the Papal throne, as much as the colonisation of new possessions does to increase the influence of the crown of Great Britain. It is true that the Normans, Danes, Norwegians, Hungarians, and Poles, embraced Christianity in the tenth century; but it was not until the eleventh that their conversion added sensibly to the numbers and wealth of the Latin clergy, and augmented the power and dignity of the Popes of Rome. The events which particularly influenced the political relations of the Popes with the Byzantine empire were, the conquest of Transylvania by the kings of Hungary, the establishment of the Normans in Italy as vassals of the papal see, and the expulsion of the Greeks and 1 Acts of the Apostles, xv. 20. § 7. CHAP. II. Saracens from Sicily. The first of these conquests carried forward the banner of the Popes into the cast, and raised a strong bulwark against the progress of the Greek church to the westward, whether it attempted to advance from Constantinople or Russia; by the second, a number of rich benefices, which had been previously held by Greek ecclesiastics, were transferred to Latins; and by the Norman conquest of Sicily the clergy of that island, who, under the Saracens, had remained dependent on the Patriarch of Constantinople, became united to the Latin church. The commencement of the schism was thus marked by three important victories gained by the papal see. The Pope was also furnished with a numerous body of clergy from southern Italy and Sicily, who were familiar with the Greek language, then generally spoken in those countries. It was consequently in his power to carry the ecclesiastical contest into the heart of the Byzantine empire; while the Greek Patriarch, deprived by the emperor of all political authority, dependent on a synod, and subordinate to the civil power, offered but a faint representation of what was in that age conceived to be the true position of the head of the church. The territorial acquisitions of the Western Church, great as they really were, bore no comparison to the augmentation of the power of the Pope within the church itself. The authority of the Popes, in Western Europe, was based on the firmest foundation on which power can rest it was supported by public opinion, for both the laity and the clergy regarded them as the only impartial dispensers of justice on earth, as the antagonists of feudal oppression, and the champions of the people against royal tyranny. It is true that the general anarchy towards the end of the tenth century, and the social 1 1 Gregory VII., (the great Hildebrand,) dying at Salerno, under the protection of the Normans, in 1085, exclaimed, "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, and therefore I die an exile." |