It didn’t happen in 1054. Not really.
The date makes a nice marker in history books, but the split between East and West was centuries in the making. What happened in July 1054 was just the moment when Cardinal Humbert marched into Hagia Sophia and slapped a bull of excommunication on the altar. Dramatic, sure. But the marriage had been dying for a long time.
The real causes go deeper. They’re theological, political, and cultural all at once.
The Filioque Problem
Here’s the big one. The West changed the Creed.
The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, agreed upon by the whole Church in ecumenical councils, said the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father.” Clear enough. But starting in Spain and spreading through the Frankish kingdoms, Western churches began adding “and the Son” (filioque in Latin) to that line. By the 11th century, Rome had adopted it too.
The East objected on two grounds. First, you can’t just change the Creed unilaterally. It belongs to the whole Church. Only an ecumenical council can alter it. Second, the addition wasn’t just a translation issue or a harmless clarification, it changed how we understand the Trinity. The Father is the single source within the Godhead. The filioque muddies that by making the Spirit’s origin tied to both Father and Son, which risks confusing the relationships among the Persons.
This wasn’t a minor quibble about vocabulary. It cut to the heart of how we speak about God.
Papal Authority
Rome was claiming more and more power.
The East had always honored the Bishop of Rome as first among equals, holding a primacy of honor. But that’s different from what Rome increasingly claimed: universal jurisdiction over all churches, the right to make decisions binding on everyone without consulting the other patriarchs. The West was moving toward a monarchical papacy. The East held to a conciliar model where major decisions required agreement among the bishops, especially the five patriarchs.
When Pope Leo IX sent legates to Constantinople in 1054, they came with that Roman mindset. They expected compliance. Patriarch Michael Cerularius wasn’t having it. He’d already closed some Latin churches in Constantinople that were using unleavened bread for the Eucharist and following other Western customs he saw as departures from apostolic tradition. The papal legates, especially Cardinal Humbert, responded with escalating rhetoric. Neither side would bend.
By the time Humbert left that excommunication document on the altar and stormed out, the situation was beyond repair. At least for the moment.
Culture and Politics
Language divided East and West. Greek in the East, Latin in the West. Different theological vocabularies developed. Different liturgical practices. The East used leavened bread in the Eucharist, the West unleavened. Eastern priests could marry before ordination, Western priests were increasingly required to be celibate. These weren’t just customs, each side saw the other’s practices as theologically suspect.
Then there were the Normans. They were conquering southern Italy, which had been under Byzantine influence with Greek-rite churches. Rome backed the Normans. Constantinople resented it. Jurisdictional fights over territory got tangled up with theological disputes, and suddenly every disagreement carried political weight.
The Crusades made everything worse. When the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204, slaughtering Orthodox Christians and desecrating churches, whatever hope remained for quick reconciliation died. That’s 150 years after 1054, but it shows how the wound kept deepening.
What We Believe Happened
From an Orthodox perspective, the West departed from the faith once delivered to the saints. Not out of malice necessarily, but through a combination of theological innovation (the filioque), ecclesiological error (papal supremacy), and cultural drift. The East maintained what had been believed everywhere, always, by all, to borrow St. Vincent of Lérins’ formula.
We don’t say this to be mean. It’s what we genuinely believe. The Orthodox Church is the continuation of the Church founded by Christ and the Apostles, preserving the apostolic faith without addition or subtraction. Rome added to the Creed and altered the Church’s structure. That’s why we’re separate.
Could it have been avoided? Maybe. If there’d been more humility on both sides, more willingness to talk things through in council rather than issuing ultimatums. But by 1054, positions had hardened. Trust was gone.
Why This Matters for You
If you’re coming from a Protestant background here in Southeast Texas, you might be used to thinking of church splits as normal. Baptists split from Anglicans, Methodists split from Anglicans, Pentecostals split from everybody. It’s just what happens when people disagree.
But the Great Schism isn’t like that. This wasn’t a disagreement over secondary matters or a personality conflict that got out of hand. This was about the core of Christian faith: how we understand the Trinity, how the Church makes decisions, what authority looks like. The stakes were eternal.
When you walk into St. Michael Church and we say the Creed without the filioque, we’re not being stubborn or old-fashioned. We’re guarding something precious that was entrusted to us. When we talk about the Church as conciliar rather than monarchical, we’re describing how the Body of Christ actually functions, as a body, not a corporation with a CEO.
The schism grieves us. Christ prayed that we’d be one. But unity can’t come at the cost of truth. We can’t pretend the differences don’t matter or paper them over with vague ecumenical language. Real reconciliation would require the West to return to the faith of the undivided Church.
Until then, we preserve what we’ve received. And we keep praying.
