After Cerularius
In a sense the schism was complete. What had been from the beginning two portions of the same Church, what had become two entities ready to be divided, were now two rival Churches. Yet, just as there had been schisms before Photius, so there have been reunions after Cerularius. The Second Council of Lyons in 1274 and again the Council of Florence in 1439 both arrived at a reunion that people hoped would close the breach for ever. Unhappily, neither reunion lasted, neither had any solid basis on the Eastern side. The anti-Latin party, foreshadowed long ago, formed and organized by Photius, had under Cerularius become the whole "Orthodox" Church. This process had been a gradual one, but it was now complete.
At first the Slav Churches (Russia, Servia, Bulgaria, etc.) saw no reason why they should break communion with the West because a patriarch of Constantinople was angry with a pope. But the habit of looking to the capital of the empire eventually affected them too. They used the Byzantine Rite, were Easterns; so they settled on the Eastern side. Cserularius had managed cleverly to represent his cause as that of the East; it seemed (most unjustifiably) that it was a question of Byzantines versus Latins.
At Lyons, and again at Florence, the reunion (on their side) was only a political expedient of the Government. The emperor wanted Latins to fight for him against the Turks. So he was prepared to concede anything - till the danger was over. It is clear that on these occasions the religious motive moved only the Western side. The Latine had everything to offer, they were prepared to give their help. All they wanted in return was that an end should be made of the lamentable and scandalous spectacle of a divided Christendom. For the religious motive the Byzantines cared nothing; or, rather, religion to them meant the continuation of the schism. They had called the us heretics so often that they had begun to believe it.
Reunion was an unpleasant and humiliating condition in order that a Frank army might come and protect them. The common people had been so well drilled in their hatred of Azymites and creed-tamperers, that their zeal for what they thought Orthodoxy prevailed over their fear of the Turk. "Rather the turban of the Sultan than the tiara of the Pope" expressed their mind exactly. When the bishops who had signed the decrees of reunion came back, each time they were received with a storm of indignation as betrayers of the Orthodox faith. Each time the reunion was broken almost as soon as it was made. The last act of schism was when Dionvsius I of Constantinople (1467-72) summoned a synod and formally repudiated the union (1472). Since then there has been no intercommunion;, a vast "Orthodox" Church exists, apparently satisfied with being in schism with the bishop whom it still recognizes as the first patriarch of Christendom.
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