The patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem adhered to the see of Constantinople.
Thus the schism between the Christian East and West was completed. The number of episcopal
sees at that time was nearly equal on both sides, but in the course of years the Latin church far
outgrew the East.
The Latin Empire in the East. 1204–1261.
During the Crusades the schism was deepened by the brutal atrocities of the French and
Venetian soldiers in the pillage of Constantinople (1204), the establishment of a Latin empire, and
the appointment by the pope of Latin bishops in Greek sees.^318 Although this artificial empire lasted
only half a century (1204–1261), it left a legacy of burning hatred in the memories of horrible
desecrations and innumerable insults and outrages, which the East had to endure from the Western
barbarians. Churches and monasteries were robbed and desecrated, the Greek service mocked, the
clergy persecuted, and every law of decency set at defiance. In Constantinople "a prostitute was
seated on the throne of the patriarch; and that daughter of Belial, as she is styled, sung and danced
in the church to ridicule the hymns and processions of the Orientals." Even Pope Innocent III.
accuses the pilgrims that they spared in their lust neither age nor sex, nor religious profession, and
that they committed fornication, adultery, and incest in open day (in oculis omnium), "abandoning
matrons and virgins dedicated to God to the lewdness of grooms." And yet this great pope insulted
the Eastern church by the establishment of a Latin hierarchy on the ruins of the Byzantine empire.^319
§ 72. Fruitless Attempts at Reunion.
The Greek emperors, hard pressed by the terrible Turks, who threatened to overthrow their
throne, sought from time to time by negotiations with the pope to secure the powerful aid of the
West. But all the projects of reunion split on the rock of papal absolutism and Greek obstinacy.
The Council of Lyons. a.d. 1274.^320
Michael Palaeologus (1260–1282), who expelled the Latins from Constantinople (July 25,
1261), restored the Greek patriarchate, but entered into negotiations with Pope Urban IV. to avert
the danger of a new crusade for the reconquest of Constantinople. A general council (the 14th of
the Latins) was held at Lyons in 1273 and 1274 with great solemnity and splendor for the purpose
of effecting a reunion. Five hundred Latin bishops, seventy abbots, and about a thousand other
ecclesiastics were present, together with ambassadors from England, France, Germany, and other
(^318) Cardinal Hergenröther (Kirchengesch. I. 903) admits that it was largely (he ought to say, chiefly) through the guilt
of the Latin conquerors ("grossentheils durch Schuld der lateinischen Eroberer") that "the hatred of the Greeks at the conquest
of Constantinople, 1204, assumed gigantic dimensions."
(^319) See Gibbon’s graphic description (in ch. LX.) of the horrors of the sack of Constantinople, gathered from the concurrent
accounts of the French marshall Villehardouin (who does not betray a symptom of pity or remorse) and the Byzantine senator
Nicetas (one of the sufferers). On the barbarities previously committed at Thessalonica by the Normans in 1186, see Eustathius
De capta Thessalonica (ed. Bonnae 1842, quoted by Gieseler II. 609); on the barbarities in the island of Cyprus after its delivery
by Richard to Guy, king of Jerusalem, in 1192, see the anonymous account in Allatius, De eccles. occident. et orient. perpet.
consens. 1. II. c. XIII. 693 sq. Leo Allatius was a Greek convert to the Roman church, and found no fault with these cruelties
against the church of his fathers; on the contrary he says: "Opus erat, effraenes propriaeque fidei rebelles et veritatis oppugnatores
non exilio, sed ferro et igne in saniorem mentem reducere. Haeretici proscribendi sunt, exterminandi sunt, puniendi sunt et
pertinaces occidendi, cremandi. Ita leges sanciunt, ita observavit antiquitas, nec alius mos est recentioris ecclesiae tum Graecae
tum Latinae."
(^320) See a full account of it in the sixth volume of Hefele’sConciliengeschichte, p. 103-147.