A. Edward Siecienski - Beards, Azymes, and Purgatory (OXFORD STU IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGY SERIES)

Series Editor

Richard A. Muller, Calvin Theological Seminary

Founding Editor

David C. Steinmetz

Editorial Board

Robert C. Gregg, Stanford University

George M. Marsden, University of Notre Dame

Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University

Gerhard Sauter, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitt Bonn

Susan E. Schreiner, University of Chicago

John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame

Robert L. Wilken, University of Virginia

THE SYNOD OF PISTORIA AND VATICAN II

Jansenism and the Struggle for Catholic Reform

Shaun Blanchard

CATHOLICITY AND THE COVENANT OF WORKS

James Ussher and the Reformed Tradition

Harrison Perkins

THE COVENANT OF WORKS

The Origins, Development, and Reception of the Doctrine

J. V. Fesko

RINGLEADERS OF REDEMPTION

How Medieval Dance Became Sacred

Kathryn Dickason

REFUSING TO KISS THE SLIPPER

Opposition to Calvinism in the Francophone Reformation

Michael W. Bruening

FONT OF PARDON AND NEW LIFE

John Calvin and the Efficacy of Baptism

Lyle D. Bierma

THE FLESH OF THE WORD

The extra Calvinisticum from Zwingli to Early Orthodoxy

K.J. Drake

JOHN DAVENANTS HYPOTHETICAL UNIVERSALISM

A Defense of Catholic and Reformed Orthodoxy

Michael J. Lynch

RHETORICAL ECONOMY IN AUGUSTINES THEOLOGY

Brian Gronewoller

GRACE AND CONFORMITY

The Reformed Conformist Tradition and the Early Stuart Church of England

Stephen Hampton

MAKING ITALY ANGLICAN

Why the Book of Common Prayer Was Translated into Italian

Stefano Villani

AUGUSTINE ON MEMORY

Kevin G. Grove

UNITY AND CATHOLICITY IN CHRIST

The Ecclesiology of Francisco Suarez, S.J.

Eric J. DeMeuse

RETAINING THE OLD EPISCOPAL DIVINITY

John Edwards of Cambridge and Reformed Orthodoxy in the Later Stuart Church

Jake Griesel

CALVINIST CONFORMITY IN POST-REFORMATION ENGLAND

The Theology and Career of Daniel Featley

Gregory A. Salazar

BEARDS, AZYMES, AND PURGATORY

The Other Issues That Divided East and West

A. Edward Siecienski

A. EDWARD SIECIENSKI

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To all those throughout the centuries who worked to bridge the gap between Christian East and West

You see, by this time I had spent several years dealing with the Filioque debates and I thought it might be a fun distraction to speak about the other issues that once divided Christendomthe beardlessness of the Western clergy and the Latins use of unleavened bread (azymes) in the mass. These questions, once thought so central to the genesis and maintenance of the East-West schism, were now regarded by most scholars as nothing more than relics of a bygone agethat is, as tools used by medieval polemicists to vilify the religious other that, even then, had little or no theological significance. To the twenty-first-century mind it seemed ridiculous that a church-dividing schism should occur on account of beards or different types of Eucharistic bread, and I used that fact in order to elicit a few laughs. As time passed I realized I was probably wrong to do so.

The more I worked through the material, especially as I was researching my second book (The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate), the more I came to regret the lighthearted way I treated the other issues that came to divide Christian East and West. It is true that today the Filioque and the papacy are the two (and perhaps only) significant barriers to restored communion between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Yet in working through these questions and examining the literature, it was impossible to escape the conclusion that for centuries the Filioque and papacy were not the only issues at stake, and indeed, for many of the participants in the medieval debates they were not even issues at all. For example, while the Roman primacy was never mentioned during the events of 1054, included in Cardinal Humberts anathema against Patriarch Michael Keroularios was the charge that preserving their hair and beards [the Greeks] do not receive into communion those who, according to the custom of the Roman church, cut their hair and shave their beards. Today the schism persists because of the Filioque and the papacy, but it did not begin that way.

By the Council of Ferrara-Florence (143839) another issue had raised its head and become an obstacle toward reunionthe Western doctrine of Purgatory. First raised during a thirteenth-century debate between the metropolitan of Corfu, George Bardanes, and a Franciscan friar named Bartholomew, the Latin teaching was viewed with great suspicion by the Greeks, who thought it advocated the sort of universalism once taught by Origen. Purgatory, although introduced rather late as a reason for the schism, had by the fifteenth century taken its place among its chief causes.

Purgatory, beards, and azymesthese were the other issues that separated East and West that few spoke of anymore. Today there are (quite literally) hundreds of books on the Roman primacy, and over the last fifteen years more than a few on the Filioque, but one has to look very hard for recent books or articles on azymes, or clerical beards, or the East-West debates on Purgatory. Having played so central a role in the genesis of the schism, they had simply receded into the background, not even considered worthy topics for modern-day dialogues between the two churches.

However, if ecumenical dialogue truly aims to heal the millennium-old schism between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, it will certainly be necessary to retrace the steps that separated them in the first place. Of course, when one asks what actually caused the Great Schism, there are a variety of possible answersdivergent theological methodologies and ecclesiological approaches, differences in language and culture, different political systems and ways of reading historyall of which are, to a certain degree, valid. Yet there is another level where one is forced to admit that the immediate cause of the schism was the simple fact that half the church used leavened bread and the other unleavened bread. One is forced to admit that beards (or their lack) among the clergy was seen as reason for breaking Eucharistic communion. One is forced to admit that divergent understandings of the souls fate after death helped poison the last attempt at repairing the breach at Ferrara-Florence. The other issues cannot, and should not, be laughed off.