# Christianity, the Church and Spirituality, East and West

History II · Medieval History · https://tryals.app/learn/history-ii/christianity-the-church-and-spirituality-east-and-west

## Councils, Monks and a Schism

Christian doctrine was settled by **councils** called by emperors.

| Council | Year | Question settled | What broke off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nicaea I | 325 | Is the Son of the same substance as the Father? | Arian churches |
| Constantinople I | 381 | The Nicene creed confirmed | |
| Ephesus | 431 | How Christ's natures relate | Church of the East |
| Chalcedon | 451 | Two natures in one person | Miaphysite churches |

Chalcedon proved deeply divisive. Rejecting its formula created separate bodies: Coptic, Armenian, Syriac Orthodox, and Ethiopian churches. These formed the majority in Egypt and Syria.

**Monasticism** began as flight to the desert:
- **Anthony** went into the wilderness alone.
- **Pachomius** organised hermits into communal life.
- In the West, Benedict wrote the **Rule of St Benedict**.

This rule required prayer, manual work, obedience, and **stability**. Monks stayed in one house for life. This permanence turned monasteries into lasting institutions.

## The Papacy and the Schism

The **papacy** expanded its authority over centuries. **Leo I** argued Rome inherited the authority of Peter. **Gregory the Great** managed Rome and sent missionaries to England. Yet the official model was the **pentarchy**: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

Tensions between East and West grew over key disputes:
- The **filioque** clause added to the creed.
- Unleavened bread and clerical marriage.
- Papal jurisdictional primacy.

In **1054**, papal legates and Patriarch Michael Keroularios excommunicated each other.

Lay piety centred on **relics, saints and pilgrimage** rather than complex theology.

> **Common pitfall:** Dating the permanent East-West split neatly to 1054. The excommunications were personal and only formally lifted in 1965.

## Practice questions

10 of this lesson's 15 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Sort each item by whether the Council of CHALCEDON (451) settled it or whether it was settled at NICAEA (325).

**Answer:**

- Settled at Nicaea: Whether the Son is of the same substance as the Father, The condemnation of Arius’s teaching
- Settled at Chalcedon: How divine and human natures coexist in one person, The formula rejected by the Coptic and Armenian churches

**Why:** The distinction matters geographically as well as theologically. Nicaea’s losers were the Germanic kingdoms of the West, who eventually converted. Chalcedon’s losers were the populations of Egypt, Syria and Armenia, who did not, and whose alienation from Constantinople is part of the background to how quickly those provinces changed hands in the 630s.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/christianity-the-church-and-spirituality-east-and-west/sort-each-item-by-whether-the-council-of-chalcedon-451-settled-it

### 2. The Rule of St Benedict requires a monk to remain in one house for life. Why did that requirement matter so much for the transmission of texts?

A. It allowed monastic scriptoria to be entirely exempted from manual and field labour
B. It meant experienced scribes were regularly dispatched between abbeys to audit manuscripts
C. A community that cannot disperse accumulates land, books and archives across generations
D. It required all incoming novices to demonstrate advanced fluency in Latin grammar upon entry

**Answer:** C. A community that cannot disperse accumulates land, books and archives across generations

**Why:** Stability converts a gathering into an institution with a memory. Endowments can be given to a house that will still exist in fifty years; a scriptorium takes decades to build and a library longer. By the ninth century most systematic copying in the Latin West happened in monasteries, and the classical texts we have came through them.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/christianity-the-church-and-spirituality-east-and-west/the-rule-of-st-benedict-requires-a-monk-to-remain-in-one-house-for

### 3. Complete the account of the formal structure of church authority before the schism.

**Answer:** Authority was distributed among five sees, known collectively as the **pentarchy**: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and **Jerusalem**. Within it Rome held a primacy of **honour** rather than of jurisdiction, and the western claim that Peter’s authority passed to its bishops was argued most forcefully by Pope **Leo I**.

**Why:** The gap between honour and jurisdiction is where the schism eventually opens. Constantinople could accept that Rome came first in a list; it could not accept that Rome could overrule a patriarch. Every later dispute — the filioque, the bread, clerical marriage — became load-bearing because this one was unresolved.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/christianity-the-church-and-spirituality-east-and-west/complete-the-account-of-the-formal-structure-of-church-authority

### 4. Arrange these developments in church history, earliest first.

**Answer:**

1. Anthony withdraws into the Egyptian desert
2. The Council of Nicaea condemns Arius
3. The Council of Chalcedon defines two natures in one person
4. The Rule of St Benedict is composed
5. Gregory the Great sends a mission to England
6. Papal legates and the patriarch of Constantinople excommunicate each other

**Why:** The gap between Chalcedon and 1054 is six hundred years, which is a useful corrective: the separation of East and West is slow, and for most of that span the two halves are in communion while disagreeing loudly about bread, beards and creeds.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/christianity-the-church-and-spirituality-east-and-west/arrange-these-developments-in-church-history-earliest-first

### 5. The mutual excommunications pronounced in Constantinople were formally lifted by Paul VI and Athenagoras in 1965. Estimate how many years they stood.

**Answer:** 911 (within ±25)

**Why:** **911 years.** The annulment is the detail that undermines the date. If a single act in 1054 had separated two churches, reversing it in 1965 would have reunited them; it did not, because what the legates and the patriarch did was a diplomatic breakdown between individuals, and the real separation was built by centuries of divergent practice and finished by an army in 1204.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/christianity-the-church-and-spirituality-east-and-west/the-mutual-excommunications-pronounced-in-constantinople-were

### 6. Match each figure to what they are principally responsible for.

**Answer:**

- Anthony of Egypt → Withdrawal into the desert as a solitary
- Pachomius → Organising hermits into a common life
- Benedict of Nursia → A moderate written rule with stability and obedience
- Gregory the Great → Governing Rome and sending the mission to England

**Why:** The sequence from Anthony to Benedict is a domestication. Solitary asceticism is spectacular and unrepeatable; Benedict’s rule is deliberately unspectacular, explicitly aimed at beginners, and that is why it scaled, a form of life that ordinary people can sustain is the one that ends up owning the libraries.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/christianity-the-church-and-spirituality-east-and-west/match-each-figure-to-what-they-are-principally-responsible-for

### 7. In which year did papal legates and the patriarch Michael Keroularios excommunicate one another in Constantinople?

**Answer:** 1054

**Why:** **1054**: and the excommunications were annulled by Paul VI and Athenagoras in 1965. The nine hundred years in between are why the date is remembered; the fact that annulling them changed nothing structural is why historians distrust it as the moment of separation.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/christianity-the-church-and-spirituality-east-and-west/in-which-year-did-papal-legates-and-the-patriarch-michael-keroularios

### 8. Egypt and much of Syria rejected the Chalcedonian formula and were governed for two centuries by an empire that enforced it. How does that bear on the Arab conquests of the 630s?

A. Centuries of religious coercion from Constantinople weakened local loyalty to imperial rule
B. Alexandria's Chalcedonian bishops organised armed revolts to withhold regional tax revenues
C. Most non-Chalcedonians in both regions had converted to Islam before the military campaigns
D. Imperial suspicion of doctrinal heresy led the emperor to disband garrisons in each province

**Answer:** A. Centuries of religious coercion from Constantinople weakened local loyalty to imperial rule

**Why:** The point is a weak claim, not a strong one: alienation is not enthusiasm, and there is no evidence of mass welcome. But a province whose majority church has been harassed for two centuries has less reason to bleed for the emperor, and the new rulers taxed non-Muslims while leaving their church hierarchies in place.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/christianity-the-church-and-spirituality-east-and-west/egypt-and-much-of-syria-rejected-the-chalcedonian-formula-and-were

### 9. Early monasticism shifted from the solitary asceticism of Anthony to the cenobitic organisation of Pachomius. What structural challenge did this transition directly address?

A. Enforcing strict episcopal oversight across all desert cells
B. Replacing manual labour with constant contemplative devotion
C. Regulating shared life rather than managing radical isolation
D. Eliminating diverse regional customs in favour of papal rules

**Answer:** C. Regulating shared life rather than managing radical isolation

**Why:** Pachomius organised dispersed hermits into communal establishments, which required rules for communal labour and prayer. Regional liturgical variety and secular autonomy remained common features, while episcopal control and papal regularisation were later developments rather than immediate structural aims.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/christianity-the-church-and-spirituality-east-and-west/early-monasticism-shifted-from-the-solitary-asceticism-of-anthony-to

### 10. Arrange the stages by which the papacy’s claims developed, earliest first.

**Answer:**

1. Rome holds a primacy of honour within the pentarchy
2. Leo I argues that Peter’s authority passes to the bishop of Rome
3. Gregory the Great takes over the civil governance of Rome itself
4. Rome claims jurisdiction over other patriarchates, which the East rejects
5. Western legates and the eastern patriarch excommunicate each other

**Why:** Each step is a small enlargement of the previous one, which is why the East kept conceding the earlier ones and refusing the later. Precedence in a list is harmless; a doctrine of Petrine succession is arguable; a claim to overrule another patriarch is a different constitution for the church, and that is what was refused.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/christianity-the-church-and-spirituality-east-and-west/arrange-the-stages-by-which-the-papacys-claims-developed-earliest