Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-pfhbr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T16:22:43.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Latins and Greeks in Debate over Purgatory, 1230–1439

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Robert Ombres O.P.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

By the 1230s Latins and Greeks were riot short of issues for debate or polemic, but the topic of purgatory did have a novel feel about it. The doctrine seems to emerge on the common agenda fairly suddenly, finding no place, for example, in the wide-ranging list of 104 points of divergence drawn up by the Byzantine prelate, Constantine Stilbès, in the wake of the cruel sack of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204. The subject did, however, establish itself as a hardy perennial, and it is proposed to trace its main ramifications up to the death of Emperor Michael viii in 1282, and then to concentrate on the Council of Ferrara–Florence (1438–9). Without a doubt the debates and the constant attempts at reunion were not conducted in isolation from wider cultural, political and military considerations, the kind of considerations that in 1400 would lead the Byzantine emperor to journey as far as England. But here the emphasis will fall on the theological aspects. Moreover, there were also in play forces of inertia, ignorance and mutual incomprehension difficult to assess rationally. The thirteenth-century friar, Humbert of Romans O.P., in discussing what would make for reunion with the Greeks noted how a schism might be continued simply because it had existed for a long time, just like the feud between Guelf and Ghibelline.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , January 1984 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

* John Beccus, De Unione Ecclesiarum, P.G., cxli. 24A. My thanks go to Patrick Irvvin, Paul Parvis o.p. and, above all, to Joseph Gill S.J.

1 Darrouzes, J., ‘Le Mémoire de Constantin Stilbès contre les Latins’, Revue des Études Byzantines, xxi (1963), 50–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Gill, J., Byzantium and the Papacy 1198–1400, Princeton, N.J. 1979Google Scholar; Nicol, D. M., The Last Centuries of Byzantium 1261–1453, London 1972Google Scholar.

3 Humbert of Romans, Opus Tripartitum II, c.xi, in Brown, E., Fasciculus Rerum Expetendarum & Fugiendarum, London 1690, 2 vols. at ii, 216Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Fasciculus).

4 Roncaglia, M., Georges Bardanès, métropolite de Corfou, et Barthélemy de l’Ordre Franciscain, Rome 1953Google Scholar (= Studi e Testi Francescani 4); Setton, K. M., ‘The Byzantine background to the Italian Renaissance’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, c (1956) 1–76Google Scholar.

5 Gill, Byzantium and the Papacy, 66f.

6 Opus Tripartitum II, c.xi, Fasciculus, 216.

7 Gill, J., The Council of Florence, Cambridge 1959, 227Google Scholar. When a Latin speaker appealed to Aristotle as an authority, one of the Georgian envoys exclaimed. ‘“What about Aristotle?, Aristotle? A fig for your fine Aristotle.”‘What would be acceptable are ‘St Peter, St Paul, St Basil, Gregory the Theologian’; quoted by Gill at p. 227.

8 Richard, J., La Papauté el les missions d’Orient au moyen age (xiiie–xve siècles), Rome 1977Google Scholar; Roncaglia, M., Les Frères mineurs et l’église grecque orthodoxe au XIIIe siècle, 1231–1274, Cairo 1954Google Scholar.

9 P.G., cxl. 487–574; Dondaine, A., ‘“Contra Graecos”, premiers écrits polémiques des Dominicains d’orient’, Archivum Fratum Praedicatorum, xxi (1951), 320–446Google Scholar.

10 Dondaine, art. cit. 425.

11 ‘Hae sunt rationes, quas in eorum libris me invenisse recolo, et ab ore ipsorum audivisse in disputatione’, P.G., cxl. 519c.

12 ‘Quod similiter ita fuit olim certum Ecclesiae Graecorum, quod non solum in libris, verutn etiam parietibus ecclesiarum suarum, antiqui Patres manifestis indiciis imprimere curaverunt’, P.G., cxl. 513A; Walter, C., ‘Death in Byzantine iconography’, Eastern Churches Review, viii (1976), 113–27Google Scholar; Fedwick, P.J., ‘Death and dying in Byzantine liturgical traditions’, Eastern Churches Review, viii (1976), 152–61Google Scholar; Maguire, H., ‘The depiction of sorrow in middle Byzantine art’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, xxxi (1977), 123–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 ‘… et ipsi Graeci vere ac indubitanter credere ac affirmare dicantur, animas illorum, qui, suscepta paenitentia, ea non peracta, vel qui sine mortali peccato, cum venialibus tamen et minutis decedeunt, purgari post mortem, et posse suffragiis Ecclesiae adiuvari’: Enchiridion Symbolorum’, Denzinger, H. and Schönmetzer, A. (eds.), 34th edn, Friburg 1967Google Scholar, no. 838 (hereafter cited as Denz.); Gill, J., ‘The tribulations of the Greek Church in Cyprus 1196–c. 1280’, Byzantinische Forschungen, v (1977), 73–93Google Scholar; Vries, W. de, ‘Innocenz iv (1243–1254) und der christliche Osten’, Ostkirchliche Studien, ii (1963), 113–31Google Scholar.

14 Aquinas, Contra Errores Graecorum, prologue, Opera Omnia, Opuscula I, xl, Rome 1969Google Scholar; ‘Unde ad officium boni translatoris pertinet ut ea quac sunt catholicae fidei transferens servet sententiam, mutet autem modum loquendi secundum proprietatem linguae in quam transfert’. Elsewhere Aquinas notes, ‘Si quis recte consideret dicta Graecorum, inveniet quod a nobis magis differunt in verbis quam in sensu’, De Potentia q. 10 a. 5 Quaestiones Disputatae, Turin-Rome 1965, ii., 7–276 at p. 272Google Scholar; Congar, Y., ‘Valeur et portêe oecuméniques de quelques principes herméneutiques de Saint Thomas d’Aquin’, Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques, lvii (1973), 611–26Google Scholar.

15 ‘Quod si vere poenitentes in caritate decesserint, antequam dignis poenitentiae fructibus de commissis satisfecerint et omissis, eorum animas poenis purgatoriis post mortem purgari; et ad poenas huiusmodi relevandas prodesse eis fidelium vivorum suffragia, Missarum scilicet sacrificia, orationes et elemosynas et alia pietatis officia quae a fidelibus pro aliis fidelibus fieri consueverunt secundum Ecclesiae instituta’, Tautu, A. (ed.), Ada Urbani IV, Clementi IV, Gregorii X (1261–1276), Rome 1953, n. 23Google Scholar.

16 Guiraud, J. (ed.), Les Registres de Gregoire X (1272–6), Paris 1892, n. 220 of 11 March 12 73Google Scholar; Roberg, B., Die Union zwischen der Griechischen undder Lateinischen Kirche aufdem II. Konzil von Lyon (1274), Bonn 1964Google Scholar.

17 Denz. n. 856; Geanakoplos, D. J., Emperor Michael Palaeologus and the West, Cambridge, Mass. 1959Google Scholar; Matteucci, G., ‘Una Lettera del 7 Aprile 1274 da Leuca (Lecce) ed un “Nascosto” Unionista Costantinopolitano Giovanni Parastron O.F.M.’, La Chiesa Greca in Italia dall’ VIII al XVI Secolo, Padua 1973, III (= Italia Sacra 22), 971–1000Google Scholar.

18 Wadding, L., AnnaUs Minorum, iv, Rome 1732, 388Google Scholar.

19 Gill, J., ‘The Church union of the Council of Lyons (1274) portrayed in Greek documents’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica (hereafter cited as OCP), xl (1974), 5–45Google Scholar, at p. 25. The Greek bishops felt they could not sit idle and inactive, and therefore decided to use the weapons of deposition, excommunication and anathema.

20 Laurent, V. and Darrouzès, J., Dossier grec de l’union de Lyon (1273–1277), Paris 1976Google Scholar ( = Archives de l’Orient Chrétien 16), document no. 20.

21 d’Alès, A., ‘La Question du purgatoire au Concile de Florence en 1438’, Gregorianum iii (1922), 9–50Google Scholar; Gill, J., Personalities of the Council of Florence, Oxford 1964Google Scholar. The Latin and Greek texts are edited by L. Petit and G. Hofmann, De Purgatorio Disputationes in Concilium Florentinum: Documenta et Scriptores, Series B (hereafter cited as Cone. Flor.), vol. viii, fasc. 2, Rome 1969Google Scholar.

22 Escobar, Andreas de, Tractatus Polemico–Theologicus de Graecis Errantibus in Cone. Flor, vol. iv, fasc. 1, ed. Candal, E., Madrid-Rome 1952Google Scholar.

23 ‘Sed utrum sit ibidem virgo Maria, in corpore et anima assumpta (ut pie creditur), potest probabiliter dici, quod, sicut Christus est ibidem sacramentaliter, [quod] eciam beata virgo est ibidem quasi sacramentaliter’, Escobar, op. cit. p. 79.

24 A survey of the history of the doctrine of purgatory can be found in the elaborate article by Michel, A. and Jugie, M. in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, XIII–I, Paris 1936, cols. 1136–357Google Scholar. AlsoC. Mango, Byzantium, London 1980; Dagron, G., ‘La Perceptiond’une difference: les débuts de la querelle du purgatoire’, Actes du XVe Congrès International d’Études Byzantines, Athens 1980, iv. 84–92Google Scholar; Boase, T. S. R., Death in the Middle Ages, London 1972Google Scholar; Ombres, R., Theology of Purgatory, Dublin-Cork 1978Google Scholar; Goff, J. Le, La Naissance du purgatoire, Paris 1981, 376–86Google Scholar on the Greek position.

25 Council of Florence, Laetentur Caeli, Denz. no. 1304. The text, in Latin and Greek, can be found in Cone. Flor., vol. ii, fasc. 2, at pp. 95–101 (Latin) and pp. 101–5 (Greek).

26 Candal, E., ‘Bessarion Nicaenus in Concilio Florentino’, OCP xxv (1959), 417–66Google Scholar, especially 423f.

27 Gill, The Council of Florence, 119. Bessarion did not attach great importance to these preliminary debates; De Processione Spirilus Sancli, P.G., clxi. 337A.

28 Torquemada, Ioannes de, Apparatus super Decretum Florentinum Unionis Graecorum in Cone. Flor., vol. ii, fasc. i, Rome 1942Google Scholar.

29 Aquinas, IV Sent., dist. XLV q.2 a.2 sol.2 in Opera Omnia, XI, Paris 1874Google Scholar.

30 The passages in Aquinas are in the Summa Contra Gentiles III, c. 144–5 and IV, c. 93, Turin 1961Google Scholar.

31 Runciman, S., The Last Byzantine Renaissance, Cambridge 1970CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A significant part of Aquinas’s thinking on purgatory grew out of debate with Eastern Christians; see Ombres, R., ‘The doctrine of purgatory according to St Thomas Aquinas’, Downside Review, xcix (1981), 279–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Podskalsky, G., Theologie und Philosophic in Byianz (Byzantinisches Archiv; H. 15), Munich 1977Google Scholar, is a rapid but well-documented survey for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

32 Every, George, ‘Toll Gates on the Air Way’, Eastern Churches Review, viii (1976), 139–51Google Scholar; Meyendorff, J., Byzantine Theology, London & Oxford 1974, 110–11, 220–2Google Scholar.

33 Gill, The Council of Florence, 119–20.

34 Quoted in Gill, Personalities, 7–8.

36 Hofmann, G. (ed.), Andreas de Santacroce, Ada Latina Concilii Florentini in Cone. Flor. vol. VI, Rome 1955, at p. 254Google Scholar.

36 Tsirpanlis, C. N., ‘John Eugenicus and the Council of Florence’, Byzantion, xlviii (1978), 264–74Google Scholar.

37 Balfour, D., Politico-Historical Works of Symeon, archbishop of Thessalonica (1416/17 to 1429), Vienna 1979 (= Wiener Byzantische Studien, Band XIII), 247, no. 316Google Scholar.