Rome vs Byzantine Church
Greek
(Byzantine Orthodox)
The Church of Hungary and it's Apostolic Succession can be traced to the establishment of the Eastern Rite by Gyula II in A.D.952-3. More info...
In the Middle Ages, the Kingdom of Hungary was christianized initially by Greek monks sent from Constantinople to convert the pagan Hungarians. In 950 the Gyula II, the ruler of Hungary and Transylvania, visited Constantinople and was baptized. Gyula also had his court officials and family baptized under the Orthodox Confession. The East-West Schism came about in a context of cultural differences between the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West and of rivalry between the Churches in Rome-which claimed a primacy not merely of honour but also of authority - and in Constantinople, which claimed parity with Rome. The rivalry and lack of comprehension gave rise to controversies, some of which appear already in the acts of the Quinisext Council of 692. The schism is conventionally dated to 1054, when the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Papal Legate Humbert of Mourmoutiers issued mutual excommunications that have since been revoked. However, estrangement continued to grow. In 1190 Theodore Balsamon, Patriarch of Antioch, declared "no Latin should be given Communion, unless he first declares that he will abstain from the doctrines and customs that separate him from Greek, or Eastern Orthodox Church"; and the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the participants in the Fourth Crusade was seen as the West's ultimate outrage. By then, each side considered that the other no longer belonged to the Church that was orthodox and Catholic. But with the passage of centuries, it became customary to refer to the Eastern side as the Orthodox Church and the Western as the Catholic Church, without either side thereby renouncing its claim to be the truly orthodox or the truly Catholic Church. The Churches that sided with Constantinople are known collectively as the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The opposition of the Latin (western) clergy and historical circumstances changed the situation, which provided the main reason for the rough period of latinization (e.g. prohibition of building Byzantine churches in towns, the vicars of the Byzantine rite on the mixed areas were subordinated to a western bishop...). To understand the Battle of Rozgony it is also necessary to understand a long-lasting dispute between Medieval Roman (Latin) Catholic Church (Church of Rome) and the Byzantine Church (Greek, or Eastern Orthodox Church). Geographical expansion of the Church of Rome and other political differences between these two churches preceded the Battle of Rozgony and the bloody battle itself reflected the magnitude of the dispute. The army of Charles Robert of Anjou, together with the Hospitallers, under a serene protection of Pope Clement V, were fighting for very obvious cause. The first being the acquisition of the Crown of Hungary by the Catholic pretender, dominance of the Church of Rome in Hungary, and the last but not least was the wealth of the country. The armies of the Samuel Aba and Mathias Csak were defending their ethic rule over their (Hungarian) sovereignty, and as well were defending their relationship to their ancestral Eastern Orthodox Church in Hungary. |