Great Schism Timeline

Starting from the late 11th century, the dependency of the Byzantine Empire on the navies of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa led to the predominance of Catholic merchants in Byzantium, which had received major trading concessions since the 1080s, causing economic and social upheaval.

Image source: Republic of Venice

By the second half of the 12th century, rivalry among Italian city-states devolved to Italians raiding each other's quarters in the capital, and retaliatory draconian measures by Byzantine authorities deteriorated inter-religious relations.

Image source: Massacre of the Latins

When the regency of Empress Maria of Antioch, notorious for favoring Latin merchants, was deposed by Andronikos I Komnenos, the new emperor allowed mobs to massacre the hated foreigners, greatly deepening animosity between East and West.

The Massacre of the Latins in 1182 led to Western retaliation via the Sacking of Thessalonica in 1185, further poisoning relations between the Greek East and Latin West.

Image source: Sack of Thessalonica (1185)

Byzantine theologian Theodore Balsamon wrote in 1190 that no Latin should be given sacraments unless he first declares he will abstain from Latin dogmas and customs and conform to Eastern practices.

Motivated partly by lingering resentment over the massacre of the Latins, ill-fated crusade dynamics, and Alexios Angelos' request, the fourth crusader army arrived in Constantinople in April 1203.

Image source: Fourth Crusade

Latin crusaders and Venetian merchants sacked Constantinople in 1204, looting the Church of Holy Wisdom and other Orthodox holy sites, converting them to Latin worship, and imposing Latin patriarchs. Some scholars believe this contributed more to the schism than the events of 1054.

Image source: Sack of Constantinople

Emperor Baldwin II of Constantinople sold the relic of the Crown of Thorns while in France trying to raise funds to maintain his hold on Byzantium, part of the dispersal of looted religious artifacts to finance the Latin Empire.

Image source: Baldwin II, Latin Emperor

After successes in the Northern Crusades, the Teutonic Knights attempted in 1240 to conquer the Eastern Orthodox Russian Republics of Pskov and Novgorod, somewhat endorsed by Pope Gregory IX. One major defeat they suffered was the Battle of the Ice in 1242.

Image source: Battle on the Ice

In 1261, the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos brought the Latin Empire to an end, recovering Constantinople for the Greeks.

Image source: Michael VIII Palaiologos

The union effected at Lyon was a sham and political gambit, a fiction maintained by the emperor to prevent westerners from recovering Constantinople. In 1278, Pope Nicholas III sent legates demanding personal submission of every Orthodox cleric and adoption of the Filioque.

Seeing that the union was only a sham, Pope Martin IV excommunicated Michael VIII in 1281 in support of Charles of Anjou's attempts to retake the Eastern Roman provinces lost to Michael.

Image source: Pope Martin IV

Michael VIII's son and successor Andronicus II repudiated the union, and Patriarch Bekkos was forced to abdicate, being eventually exiled and imprisoned until his death in 1297.

Image source: Andronikos II Palaiologos

Orthodox theologians assert that the theological division of East and West culminated in a direct theological conflict known as the Hesychasm controversy during several councils at Constantinople between 1341 and 1351.

Image source: Hesychasm

Pressed hard by the Ottoman Turks, eastern emperor John VIII Palaiologos arranged with Pope Eugene IV for reunion discussions at the Council of Ferrara-Florence.

Image source: Council of Florence

On June 6, 1439, an agreement was signed by all the Eastern bishops present but one, Mark of Ephesus, who held that Rome continued in both heresy and schism.

At the time of the fall of Constantinople in May 1453, Orthodox Christianity was already entrenched in Russia, whose political and de facto religious centre had shifted from Kiev to Moscow. The Western attack of 1204 is seen as a factor leading to the Ottoman conquest.

Image source: Fall of Constantinople

The Russian Church, a part of the Church of Constantinople until the mid-15th century, was granted full independence (autocephaly) and elevated to the rank of Patriarchate in 1589.

Image source: Russian Orthodox Church

In Russia, anti-Catholic sentiments were entrenched by the Polish intervention during the Time of Troubles in the early 17th century, seen as an attempt to convert Moscow to Catholicism. Unity Day commemorates the Our Lady of Kazan icon believed to have saved Moscow in 1612.

Image source: Time of Troubles

A succession of Patriarchs of Antioch had been in communion with both Rome and Constantinople in the years preceding the Rome-Antioch schism of 1724, part of 16th- and 17th-century attempts at unions between the Roman Church and Eastern groups.

Image source: Melkite Greek Catholic Church

In 1729, the Roman Church under Pope Benedict XIII prohibited communion with Orthodox Churches, contributing to the final separation between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy in the 18th century.

Image source: Pope Benedict XIII

In 1755, the patriarchs of Alexandria, Jerusalem and Constantinople, in retaliation, declared the final interruption of sacral communion with the Roman Church and declared Catholicism heretical.

In their 1848 encyclical, the Eastern Patriarchs spoke of the Filioque as a heresy, reaffirming the condemnation first issued at the Council of Constantinople of 879–880.

The Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, claiming God protected the Virgin Mary from original sin through no merit of her own, was dogmatically defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854, widening doctrinal differences with Orthodoxy.

Image source: Immaculate Conception

The Orthodox Church does not accept the doctrine of papal authority outlined in the First Vatican Council (1869–1870) and taught today in the Catholic Church, remaining a key obstacle to reunion.

Image source: First Vatican Council

Inspired by Vatican II's adoption of the Unitatis Redintegratio decree on ecumenism in 1964, and a change of heart by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1961, new ecumenical initiatives between Catholics and Orthodox became possible.

In 1965, Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I lifted the mutual excommunications dating from the 11th century. This gesture of goodwill did not constitute a reunion.

The Vatican and 14 universally recognised autocephalous Orthodox Churches established the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue, which first met in Rhodes in 1980 and remains an ongoing endeavour.

In 1993, the Joint International Commission stated at Balamand, Lebanon, that 'uniatism' can no longer be accepted either as a method to be followed nor as a model of the unity the Churches are seeking.

In June 1995, Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople visited Vatican City for the first time and joined in the historic inter-religious day of prayer for peace at Assisi.

Image source: Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople

In May 1999, John Paul II was the first pope since the Great Schism to visit an Eastern Orthodox country: Romania, marking a milestone in Catholic–Orthodox reconciliation.

Image source: Pope John Paul II

In June 2004, Bartholomew I's visit to Rome afforded him another personal meeting with John Paul II and partial participation in the Eucharistic liturgy, following the program of past visits by Patriarch Dimitrios in 1987.

The declaration of Ravenna in 2007 re-asserted the belief that the bishop of Rome is indeed the protos, although future discussions are to be held on the concrete ecclesiological exercise of papal primacy.

The efforts of Orthodox patriarchs towards reconciliation with the Catholic Church have been strongly criticized by some elements of Eastern Orthodoxy, such as the Metropolitan of Kalavryta, Greece, in November 2008.

Image source: Panagia Trypiti

In 2010, Patriarch Bartholomew I issued an encyclical lauding the ongoing dialogue between the Orthodox Church and other Christian churches, lamenting criticism conducted in an unacceptably fanatical way despite mutual agreement among all local Orthodox Churches.

In February 2016, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church met in Cuba and signed a joint declaration expressing hope that their meeting may contribute to reconciliation wherever tensions exist between Greek Catholics and Orthodox.

Image source: Patriarch Kirill of Moscow