British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 892

CHAPTER XXII.

secutions and even showed some measure of good will towards his Christian subjects. The situation of the Christians in the Holy Land became once again tolerable, and in 1027 an agreement concluded between the Emperor Constantine VIII and Hakim's son, the Caliph Al Zahir , placed relations between Christians and Moslems on a footing of mutual tolerance and good will. At the same time the Caliph officially authorised the rebuilding of the" Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, which was completed in 1048 by the Patriarch Nicephorous, the Emperor Constantine X Monomachus contributing large sums of money towards its restoration. From 1027 until the death of Constantine X in 1054 the Byzantine Emperors thus exercised, in their turn, a protectorate over the Christians in the Holy Land analogous to that which had been exercised by the Western Emperors since the days of Charlemagne but was now in abeyance.

31. But the Byzantine protectorate was short lived, and before the close of the Xlth century two great events had taken place which were to have a profound influence, which has lasted to the present day, on the history of Christendom. These events were :-

(i) the rupture between the Christian East and West; and (ii) the beginning of the Crusades.

32. The causes of the deplorable breach in Christian unity which was consummated in A.D. 1054 are not for discussion in this note. For some two hundred and fifty years relations between East and West had been subject to an increasing strain ** , and in A.D. 863 there had been a serious rupture between Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and Pope St. Nicholas I. The rupture was healed but mutual distrust did not abate. Then suddenly, in 1053, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius , initiated a controversy with Pope St. Leo IX regarding certain Western (Latin) practices which Cerularius stigmatised as "unchristian", and closed all *** churches of the Latin Rite in Constantinople. Negotiations ensued but were unsuccessful, and
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* i. e. the Church of the Anastasia. The Church of the Martyrium was restored by the Crusaders shortly after their conquest of Jerusalem in 1099.

** The coronation of Charlemagne in A.D. 800 as Emperor of the West had given great offence in Constantinople where it was regarded as an affront to the prestige of the Byzantine Emperor. The underlying causes of the schism in 1054 were in reality political and not theological.

*** He also deleted the Pope's name from the list of the bishops for whom prayers were publicly offered in the course of the Liturgy. This deletion was tantamount to the renunciation of communion between himself and the See of Rome: it preceded by some little time the sentence of ex• communication delivered against him by the Pope after negotiations bad failed.

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