Latin Patriarchs of the East

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The Latin Patriarchs of the East were patriarchs of the Roman Catholic Church (Western Church, Latin Church ) at the four ancient patriarchal seats in the historical area of ​​the Eastern Churches : Constantinople , Alexandria , Antioch and Jerusalem .

Since 1054 the Great Schism separated the Chalcedonian -minded churches in West and East, which excommunicated each other . The Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem formed the Byzantine Orthodox Church , the Patriarchate of the West (Rome) the Latin Church .

In the course of the Crusades , which from the beginning also carried the dimension of a conflict between Western (Latin) and Eastern (Byzantine) Christianity , with the conquest of the patriarchal seats by the Crusaders, patriarchates of the Latin Church in the ancestral territory of the Eastern Churches emerged (1098 in Antioch , 1099 in Jerusalem , 1204 in Constantinople and 1219 in Alexandria ). The Latin patriarchs took the place of the local patriarchs of the eastern churches and claimed jurisdiction over the old patriarchal areas, but were in fact only responsible for the Catholics who now formed the politically (but usually not numerically) ruling Christian faction in these places. All of these Latin patriarchies remained closely tied to the military fate of the Crusaders who built Crusader states around these cities .

After their disintegration, the Latin patriarchates only existed on paper and were awarded by the Pope as honorary titles associated with Roman titular churches . Specifically, the Roman title was Patriarch of Jerusalem of the Basilica of Saint Lawrence Outside the Walls , that of Patriarch of Constantinople to St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican , that of Patriarch of Alexandria to the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, and that of Patriarch of Antioch to the Basilica of Santa Maria Assigned to Maggiore (the so-called Patriarchal Basilicas in Rome ). Christian Rome thus became a fictional image of the universal Church with its five early church patriarchates.

In 1847 the Ottoman Empire allowed the Catholic Church to reestablish its hierarchy in Palestine . This took place on July 23, 1847 by Pope Pius IX. with the bull Nulla celebrior . Since then, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Jerusalem has again been the head of the Latin Catholics in the Holy Land (now Israel , the Palestinian Territories , Jordan and Cyprus ) and holds the title of Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem .

Unlike the Jerusalem Patriarchate, the other Latin Patriarchates of the East were never restored, but in 1964 during the Second Vatican Council and on the basis of an agreement between Pope Paul VI. and the Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople abolished. Before that, they had not been occupied for a long time ( vacancy of the Latin titular patriarchate of Constantinople since 1948, of Antioch since 1953 and of Alexandria since 1954).

The background to this is that the establishment of these patriarchates had from the beginning an aggressive ecclesiastical direction that was directed against orthodoxy. The enmity between the Western and Eastern Churches reached its devastating climax with the conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 (which practically meant the smashing of the Byzantine Empire ). This caused a trauma that lasted centuries and made overcoming the schism seem impossible for a long time. The abolition of the titles associated with these processes was therefore seen as a (necessary) sign of ecumenism .

See also

literature

  • Wilhelm de Vries , Octavian Bârlea, Josef Gill Michael Lacko: Rome and the Patriarchate of the East (= Orbis academicus. Problem histories of science in documents and representations. Series 3: Protestant Theology. Vol. 4, ZDB -ID 535414-6 ). Alber, Freiburg (Breisgau) et al. 1963.
  • Georgij Avvakumov: The emergence of the idea of ​​union. The Latin theology of the High Middle Ages in dealing with the rite of the Eastern Church (= publications of the Grabmann Institute for research into medieval theology and philosophy. NF Vol. 47). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-05-003715-6 (also: Munich, University, dissertation, 2001).