British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 893

CHAPTER XXII.

at last on the 16th July, 1054, the legates of Pope Leo laid upon the Altar of the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople the Papal Bull of excommunication. Four days later the Patriarch replied to the Pope in defiant terms: the three other Eastern Patriarchs, namely, those of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, supported the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the rupture between East and West became complete. Since that date the four Eastern Patriarchates (together with the Slav Churches in communion with them) constitute the Orthodox Church which is the largest Church in Christendom after the Church of Rome. It need hardly be said that among the unhappy effects of this rupture is to be found what is in fact the basic cause of the disputes over the Holy Places between Orthodox and Catholics today.

33. Ten years after the rupture, the Seljuk Turks, who had recently become masters of the Caliphate at Baghdad, had begun to threaten the frontiers of the Byzantine Empire, and a few years later launched an attack on the dominions of the Fatimite Caliphs of Cairo. They captured Jerusalem in 1070; invaded Asia Minor the following year; and by 1092 had seized the whole of Asia Minor and penetrated to the Aegean Islands. The Western Powers could not remain indifferent to these events, which threatened not only the complete destruction of the Byzantine Empire, but also the safety of the Christian East and the Holy Places in Palestine. Already indeed in 1073 the Byzantine Emperor Michael VII had written to Pope Gregory VII asking for the aid of the Christian West and promising the reunion of the Greek Church with the See of Rome.

34. The Pope, "who* in the midst of the diversity and division which characterised the feudal world of the Xlth century, alone kept the sense of Christian unity and of the interests common to all the faithful", promptly addressed letters to the Western princes in which he stressed the danger threatening the Byzantine Empire and invited their aid. At the same time he emphasised the importance of reunion between the Eastern and Western Churches which he saw to be an indispensable condition for a general understanding between all the Christian Powers. Offers of help were at once forthcoming, but events i11 the West precluded immediate action. Finally, however, on the 27th November, 1095, at the conclusion of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II addressed an impassioned appeal to the assembled clergy and barons, urging the Christians of Europe to take up arms for the delivery of the Holy Sepulchre and of the
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* Brehier : L'Eglise et I'Orieut au Moyen Age.

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