Beards, Azymes, and Purgatory: The Other Issues that Divided East and West(OXFORD STU IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGY SERIES)

The Catholic and Orthodox churches have been divided for nearly a thousand years. The issues that divide them are weighty matters of theology, from a dispute over the Nicene Creed to the question of the authority of the Pope. But while these issues are cited as the most important reasons for the split, they were not necessarily the issues that caused it. In Beards, Azymes, and Purgatory A. Edward Siecienski argues that other, seemingly minor issues also played a significant role in the schism. Although rarely included in modern-day ecumenical dialogues, for centuries these "other issues"--the beardlessness of the Latin clergy, the Western use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist, and the doctrine of Purgatory--were among the most frequently cited reasons for the dispute between East and West. Disagreements about bread, beards, and the state of souls after death may not, at first, appear to be church-dividing issues, but they are the nevertheless among the reasons why the church today is divided. This was a schism over azymes long before it was a schism over the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, and the beardlessness of the Latin clergy was cited as a reason for breaking communion with the Latin Church prior to all the subsequent arguments about the wording of the Nicene Creed. To understand the schism between East and West, Siecienski contends, we must grasp not only the reasons it remains, but also the reasons it began.

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction Part I - Beards Chapter 1: Beards in the Biblical and Patristic Tradition Chapter 2: Beards in the East-West Polemic Part II - Azymes Chapter 3: Bread and Leaven in the Biblical and Patristic Tradition Chapter 4: The Azyme Debate: The Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries Chapter 5: The Azyme Debate: The Fourth Crusade to the Modern Era Part III - Purgatory Chapter 6: Purgatory in the Biblical and Patristic Tradition Chapter 7: Purgatory in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries Chapter 8: Purgatory from Ferrara-Florence to Modern Times

About the Author :
A. Edward Siecienski attended Georgetown University before obtaining his M. Div/STL from St. Mary's Seminary and University and then a PhD from Fordham University in New York. In 2008 he returned to his home state, New Jersey, and began teaching at Stockton University, where he is Clement and Helen Pappas Professor of Byzantine Civilization and Religion. Married with two children, he supports Tottenham Hotspur, Bayern Munich, and Philadelphia Union.

Review :
Having published monographs on the Filioque and the Papacy, the most famous issues that divided East and West, Edward Siecienski now displays his mastery of the biblical, patristic, medieval, and modern literature on a trilogy of other issues that bitterly opposed medieval Greeks and Latins. Taking a broad chronological approach, yet with exceptional sensitivity to nuance, Siecienski offers a major contribution to Christian history that even the most obstinate will find ecumenically moving. Siecienski offers a thoroughly researched and thoroughly readable explanation of why seemingly small differences of custom and interpretation have mattered so much in past theological controversies. In doing so, he helps illuminate historical dynamics in Christian thought that still influence and divide communities of faith to this day. A. Edward Siecienski's erudite book offers a fresh perspective on the centuries-old and still existing schism between the Latin West and the Byzantine East. His choice of topics and analysis of sources underscores what deserves more attention in research and also in ecumenical dialogue today: that in addition to theological and ecclesiological conflicts, it is the extra-theological factors that have always been of great importance in the relations between East and West. Siecienski moves seamlessly across centuries of debate and controversy in this fascinating book, exploring issues that have been often neglected or underestimated in the study of Latin-Byzantine relations. Rich in detail, very readable, and spiced with occasional irony, his narrative is a fruit of meticulous research evaluating a great amount of source material and providing sharp insights into historiography. This work successively deals with three controversies whose importance in the rupture between East and West it recalls, although they have lost their acuity after the Council of Florence: the abandonment of the wearing of beards by Latin clerics... The author shows what was the ancient discipline, how it was able to evolve especially in the West and what were the arguments exchanged when the estrangement of the two partners led to the controversy and finally how they manifest themselves today . But this work also of course gives food for thought on the process of development of controversies and on their obsolescence. In this sense, his work goes beyond the now less significant character of these three debates, even if the question of purgatory and especially of indulgences, which is linked to it, remains an object of disagreement. Beards, Azymes, and Purgatory is an invitation to better understand the past, not just for the sake of the past, but ideally for the sake of constructing a better future. This book introduces readers to a neglected, and often simultaneously entertaining and sad, part of the history of one of the largest divisions in Christian history.