fer them to keep their own until the holy see otherwise orders." Such was the policy constantly followed by the Papacy in respect to the united Greeks; to tolerate them until they could be made to submit.
From that epoch there were in the East, by Papal authority, two Catholic churches opposed to each other. Schism was thenceforth an accomplished fact, (1206.) As the Bishop of Thessalonica justly wrote to Pope Adrian IV., no schism really existed before that period. There had merely been a protest of the Eastern Church against the Roman innovations. This protest was anterior to Michael Cerularius and even to Photius. It took a more decided character under those Patriarchs, because Rome innovated more and more, and wished to impose her autocracy upon the whole Church; but in reality the schism had not taken shape. As Fleury judiciously remarks, respecting the intercourse between Manuel Comnenus and Alexander III., "It cannot be said that in his day the schism of the Greeks had yet taken shape."[1] This cursory remark of the learned historian, who cannot be suspected of partiality for the Greek Church, has an importance which every one will understand. It necessarily follows from it that neither Photius nor Michael Cerularius created the schism. Who then was its author? It would be impossible to point one out among the Greeks. To our minds it is the Papacy, which, after having called forth the protests of the Eastern Church, and strengthened them by its own autocratic pretensions, was really the founder of the schism. The true author of it is Pope Innocent III. It had been commenced by the Latin Church of Jerusalem; it was consummated by that of Constantinople.
This is the testimony of authentic and impartial history. The Papacy, after having established the schism, strengthened it by establishing Latin bishoprics in cities
- ↑ Fleury Hist. Eccl. liv. lxxiii. § 82.
