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1.3 Conversion of the Slavs
In the ninth and tenth centuries, Orthodoxy made great inroads into Eastern Europe and Russia. This work was made possible by the work of Saints Cyril and Methodius, who translated the Bible and many of the prayer books into Slavonic. They found themselves competing with missionaries from the Roman diocese in places like Great Moravia and Bulgaria. After being driven out of Great Moravia, they were later welcomed in Bulgaria, in part because they prayed in the people's native language rather than in Latin, as the Roman priests did. Today the Russian Orthodox Church, in spite of 70 years of persecution under the atheistic government of the USSR, is the largest of the Orthodox Churches.
1.4 The Great Schism
In the 11th century the Great Schism took place between Rome and Constantinople, which led to the Church of the West, the Roman Catholic Church, to become distinct from the Churches of the East . There were doctrinal issues like the filioque clause and the authority of the Pope involved in the split, but they were exacerbated by cultural and linguistic differences (Greek East and Latin West).
The final breach is often considered to have arisen as a result of the sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. This Fourth Crusade had the Latin Church directly involved in a military assault against the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, and the Orthodox Patriarchate thereof. The sacking of the Church of Holy Wisdom and establishment of the Latin Empire in 1204 is viewed with some rancor to the present day. In 2004, Pope John Paul II extended a formal apology for the sacking of Constantinople in 1204; the apology was formally accepted by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. (Many things that were stolen during this time: relics, riches, and many other items, are still held in various Catholic churches in Western Europe and have yet to be offered back to the Orthodox Church. This is one of the reasons why nearly all Orthodox view the Pope with extreme suspicion.)
Something also must be said about modern terminology in reference to the Orthodox and Catholic churches. The term Roman applied to all members of the Roman Empire. Even after the Emperor Constantine moved the capitol to Byzantium, any common man would have referred to himself as Roman. Long after the Great Schism the Orthodox East continued to refer to itself as Roman Catholic, however, what we in modern times refer to as the Roman Catholic Church they would have called the Frankish Church, referring to Charlemagne’s supposed re-establishment of the Roman Empire. As far as the Orthodox countries were concerned, they were the Roman Empire, and that empire did not fall until the 15th century. The Orthodox argues that they remain the same while the Frankish church had fallen into heresy. But because of the ascendancy of western ideas in modern literature, the Roman Empire of that period is now referred to as the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Catholic Church is now the Orthodox Church, Charlemagne’s Frankish empire is now called the Holy Roman Empire and the Frankish church, the Roman Catholics.
In 1453, the last of the Roman Empire (with its capital at Constantinople) fell to the Ottoman Turks. By this time Egypt was also under Muslim control, but Orthodoxy was very strong in Russia; and so Moscow, called the Third Rome, became a new major center of the Church at that time.
1.4.1 Orthodoxy and the Reformation
Orthodoxy did not undergo the Reformation, and attitudes of the Protestant churches towards it have been ambiguous since the beginning. Lutheran Bishops led by Melanchthon sent delegates to the Patriarch of Constantinople to explore ecumenical possibilities, but the discussions went nowhere. Both sides remained cordial and brotherly, but fundamental doctrinal differences came to light, specifically regarding Holy Tradition, The Procession of the Holy Spirit, free will, Divine predestination, justification, The number of sacraments, Baptism by immersion (Orthodox) vs. sprinkling or pouring (Lutheran), and the immediate performance of Chrismation and the giving of the Eucharist to those baptized (Orthodox), the meaning of the change in the Eucharist, and the use of unleavened bread, infallibility of the Church and of the Ecumenical Councils, veneration, feasts, and invocation of saints and their icons and relics, fasts and other ecclesiastical traditions. Ultimately, the dialogue was broken off (see 16th Century Lutheran & Orthodox Exchange in External links below).
