Caerularios, Michael (d. 1059)
A. EDWARD SIECIENSKI
Michael Caerularios was the patriarch of Constantinople (1043–58) whose exchange of excommunications with Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida (d. 1061) in 1054 helped to formalize the “Great Schism” between East and West. Caerularios entered monastic life after an unsuccessful plot against the Paphlagonian Michael IV (1034–41), and was later appointed patriarch by Constantine IX Monomachos (1042–55). Many of Caerularios’s contemporaries noted the patriarch’s ambitious and volatile nature, which often brought him into conflict both with the Western Church and with political leadership in the East.
In 1054 Pope Leo IX (1049–54) sent Cardinals Humbert and Frederick of Lorraine (later Pope Stephen IX) to Constantinople in order to secure the emperor’s help against the Normans and to deal with recent Eastern complaints about Western ecclesiastical customs. Humbert, like Caerularios an unbending and often intolerant character, insisted that the East accept Roman practices as both orthodox and universally binding. After a series of unsuccessful negotiations, on July 16 Humbert entered Hagia Sophia attempting to place a bull of excommunication on the altar against Patriarch Michael and his followers, citing their many crimes and errors (e.g., omission of the filioque from the creed). The canonical validity of Humbert’s action has long been in doubt, especially since Pope Leo had died in April, a fact probably known to Humbert at the time. Caerularios, with the emperor’s consent, then issued a response to Humbert, attacking a number of Latin practices, including their use of the filioque, and anathematizing all those who had issued the excommunication. Although often dated as the beginning of the Great Schism, contemporaries (e.g., Peter of Antioch) regarded this exchange of anathemas as a localized matter between Rome and Constantinople and not (as later history would remember it) a church- dividing schism. In December of 1965 these excommunications were symbolically lifted by both Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I.
Initially very popular for his stand against the West, Patriarch Michael later came into conflict with the imperial household; especially with Empress Theodora (1055–6), Emperor Michael VI (1056–7), and Emperor Isaac I Comnenos (1057–9). Isaac eventually moved against him, exiling Caerularios to Madytus and calling a synod to depose him. The charges against the patriarch (which included treason, heresy, and witchcraft) were drawn up by Michael Psellos, although Caerularios died before the trial could begin. His body was then brought back to Constantinople and buried with honors in the Church of the Holy Angels, with Psellos himself delivering the eulogy.
SEE ALSO: Ecumenism, Orthodoxy and; Filioque; Papacy
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Kolbaba, T. (2003) “The Legacy of Humbert and Cerularius: The Tradition of the Schism of 1054 in Byzantine Texts and Manuscripts of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in C. Dendrinos, J. Harris, and J. Herrin (eds.) Porphyrogenita: Essays in Honour of Julian Chrysostomides. Aldershot: Ashgate Press, pp. 47–61.
Michel, A. (ed.) (1924–30) Humbert und Kerularios: Quellen und Studien zum Schisma des XI. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. Paderborn: Schoningh.
Will, C. (ed.) (1963) Acta et scripta quae de controversiis ecclesiae Graecae et Latinae saeculo undecimo composita extant. Frankfurt: Minerva.