MICHELE CERULARIO. — Greek Patriarch of Constantinople (1043–58), born there at the beginning of the 11th century, famous for the definitive schism from the Roman See. He owed his career to Constantine IX Monomachus, with whom, while still a layman in 1040, he had taken part in a political conspiracy; he was poorly educated and always remained violent in character. He was highly intolerant toward the Latins and, as early as 1053, closed their churches and monasteries in Constantinople; his opposition increased when the Byzantine captain (catapan) in Lower Italy, Argyros, a Catholic, sought to establish an alliance with Pope Leo IX against the Normans, who were threatening Lower Italy. M. believed that this policy would increase the Pope’s religious authority. He therefore sought to stage an anti-Latin polemic in the religious sphere, through speeches and an anti-Roman letter that he dictated Leo of Acrida (v.). The emperor did not support these attacks, but induced the patriarch to send the Pope a peaceful letter, whose content did not fully satisfy the bishop of Rome. In order to clarify the religious situation in Constantinople, where the schism had already been smouldering for more than two decades, and to facilitate a political alliance with the Emperor against the Normans, who in June 1053 had defeated Argyros at Siponto and the Pope at Civitate, he sent a papal legation to the Byzantine court.
Its head was Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida (v.); associated with him were Federico (the future Pope Stephen X), chancellor, and the archbishop of Amalfi, Pietro. These three prelates departed in January 1054 and arrived in Constantinople toward the end of March. The relations of the papal embassy with the Byzantine Emperor were always good. The patriarch, on the other hand, already at the first and only audience granted to the legates, displayed a coldness that soon changed into open hostility. Indeed, the patriarch broke off relations with the legates and induced the Studite monk Nicetas Stethatos to engage in a polemic against the Latins, who had brought
had to submit to certain ceremonies, partly superstitious and partly shamanistic, which he refused to perform, considering them a defection from the Christian faith. He was therefore cruelly killed together with his companion Theodore. Both are venerated as saints by the Catholic Church. Feast: 20 September.
among the Greeks certain apologetic writings, unfortunately in a crude style, against Leo Achridensis and his anti-Latin associates. Nicetas’s temporary retraction, during the dispute favorable to the Latins at the monastery of Studios on 24 June 1054, did not improve the situation; on the contrary, M. C. prohibited the legates from celebrating Holy Mass in the Greek churches and spread propaganda against them among the people. The legates then, seeing the futility of their attempts to reconcile the patriarch with Rome, placed a document of excommunication upon the altar of Hagia Sophia during the solemn liturgy of 16 July 1054. The excommunication struck the patriarch Leo Achridensis and the sacellarius who had irreverently trampled upon the Latins’ Holy Eucharist. It should nevertheless be noted that this excommunication was not drafted in the form of a papal bull; indeed, it was promulgated after the death of Pope Leo IX. For his part, M. C. pronounced the anathema against the legates on 21 and 26 June, sent an encyclical to the Easterners, and probably composed the book Panoplia. Patriarch Peter of Antioch was not pleased with his colleague’s violent polemic, but he was unable to bring him to peaceful sentiments. M. C. again meddled in politics in 1057 and 1058, and his agitated life ended amid these disturbances on 8 November 1058. His name remains connected with the consummation of the Byzantine schism, which had already begun several decades earlier.