Already at the very beginning of the Crusades we find that the religious strife between the Latins and the Greeks was deep and decisive. One of the first leaders of the Crusaders wrote to another leader (Bohemond to Godfrey): "Know, my beloved, that you are dealing with the most dangerous beasts and the most unworthy people," he called the Greeks. "All their thoughts are directed only to the destruction of the entire Latin people. I know the malice and irreconcilable hatred of the Greeks towards the Latins." In response to this letter, a notice was received of the following kind: "I knew about all this before on the basis of public rumors, and now I am convinced of it by the very fact." Consequently, it was with blind hatred of the Greeks that the Latins came from the West to the East. It is not surprising, then, that the Latin chroniclers speak with shameful indifference of the burning by the Latins of the Greek cities, with their heretical inhabitants, as they called them. [35] For their part, the Greeks considered and called the Latins outright heretics and apostates from the Church.

The history of mutual relations between the Roman and Byzantine Churches in later times clearly indicates that such hostile feelings between the two Churches kindred in the spirit of faith not only did not weaken, but even greatly increased. The Roman high priests did not miss any opportunity to express their contempt, their contempt, their prideful and hostile attitude towards the Greek Church. In this sense, the epistle of Pope Adrian IV of the middle of the twelfth century, which he refers to the Thessalonian Archbishop Basil, is extremely interesting. Here the Pope compares himself to the Son of God, who deigned to descend from heaven to earth, and likens the Greeks to the lost coincis, the lost sheep of the Gospel, and compares them to the stinking Lazarus, whom he, the Pope, in his mercy wants to resurrect. [36] It is understandable in itself that such a tone must have offended the religious feeling of the Greeks to the highest degree. The famous Pope Innocent III at the end of the twelfth century also dares to describe the Eastern Church in the same features that are offensive to the Greek feelings. [37] Innocent began to treat the same Greek Church with even greater pride after the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins. In his epistle to the Latin clergy in the East, he calls it Samaria, which has departed from Jerusalem, Dan and Bethel, which are alien to Zion. [38] In the same epistle to the same clergy, the Pope, considering the apostolic activity of Peter and John, and debasing the activity of the latter before that of the former, of course, in order to present the Roman Church, founded by Peter, as superior to the Asian Churches, founded by Ap. John, wrote: "Peter founded only one Church, but he is the head of all the Churches, and John founded many Churches in Asia, as if many members of one head. Mary Magdalene proclaimed the resurrection of the Lord to Peter and John, but this one, i.e., John, although he came first to the tomb (of Christ), only looked, and did not enter into it: in the same way the Greek people, although they received the preaching of the Gospel earlier than the Latin people, they did not assimilate it, because the Greek teachers neither before nor now have attained a full understanding of the Old and New Testaments, they have not comprehended the deep mysteries of the Godhead; the exception was only a very few persons in Greece, while the Latin people, the Pope self-boasts, penetrated into the innermost and deepest mysteries" (by analogy with Peter, who entered the interior of the tomb of Christ). "Not in condemnation of himself, but precisely referring to the Greeks, the Evangelist John says that he (?!) he did not yet know the Scriptures (20:9). The Latin people are, the Pope wrote in a spirit of conceit, the image of Christ Himself, Lord of heaven and earth, and the Greek Church is the image of the Holy Spirit. Spirit; and as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, so the Greek Church must learn from the Latin." [39] The Latins were ready to consider the Greek Church even as some kind of kingdom of Satan, the destruction of which is the sacred purpose of the Westerners. The first Latin emperor in Constantinople, Baldwin, wrote to the pope in 1204: "We are convinced beforehand that whatever we do to the Greeks is the work of God, yet that whatever the Greeks undertake in their treachery must be considered the works of the devil (daemonum opera)." Then, after presenting the points of disagreement between the Greeks and the Latins as the greatest crimes of the Eastern Christian people, Baldwin remarked: "These crimes overflowed all measure, and God became the avenger of the Greeks; and we have become ministers of God's vengeance, being called upon to expel the enemies of God from the land, which will be taken away from them and given to us." [40] With such religious hatred of the Greeks, the Latins did not want to have any communion with the former in public worship. The presence of the Latins at divine services together with the Greeks seemed to be tempting. Persons famous for their scholarship among the Latins reasoned as follows: it is unseemly for the Latins (Franks) to enter into liturgical communion with Greeks excommunicated from the Church. [41]

Such a partly pretentious, partly contemptuous, partly proud, partly hostile attitude of the Church of Rome towards the Church of the East led, as a natural consequence, namely, that the adherents of the Eastern Church did not remain unresponsive at the sight of such mockery of them. The adherents of the Greek Church with all zeal proved the full rights of their Church to respect and reverence in the Christian world; sometimes they went so far as to humiliate the Church of Rome without proper grounds, and very often repaid it in the same coin for the obvious dislike shown by the Latin Church towards the Greeks. Here are a few facts. The porphyry-born historian Anna Comnena, who wrote her history in the twelfth century, of course, guided by the discord that had established between the Greek and Latin churches, introduced into her history arguments in which she expressed a desire to belittle the authority of the pope, which had then risen so highly, and to transfer to the person and authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople what the popes self-confidently appropriated for themselves. Here are the Historian's Discourses: "The Latins think and say that the Roman high priest is the head and lord of the entire universe; it is nothing more than an expression of their arrogance. Know that when the royal throne, the senate, and all the institutions of the state were transferred from Rome to Constantinople, the hierarchical privilege was also transferred there. From that time on, primacy was given to the cathedra of Constantinople, and especially the Council of Chalcedon (of course, the 28th canon) elevated this cathedra to the first degree, subordinating to it the dioceses in the whole earth." [42] That is, Comnena wants to say that, in spite of all the papal intrigues, the Patriarch of Constantinople in the eyes of Greece remains not only above all the patriarchal sees of the East, but also above the "apostolic" papal see. The idea is pretentious, but it arose under the influence of the strife between the Greek and Latin churches. We find this view of the historian often repeated in various Greek ecclesiastical writers of the period under study. This is what the Greek writer Nilus Doxopater did in the middle of the twelfth century. He develops the idea that since Rome fell away from the Eastern Empire, the latter has ceased to be the capital and at the same time the first see in the Christian world. Doxopater says: "Every living body is governed by five senses, and if one of these senses is lacking, then the organism is not perfect; so the Church of Christ, forming His one body, is governed by five patriarchs, as if by five senses. Therefore, since the Church needed five patriarchs, the Second Ecumenical Council, in the presence of four (?) patriarchs, decreed that Constantinople should have equal rights with ancient Rome." Then, citing the 28th canon of the Council of Chalcedon, which reinforces the previous legitimation of the Second Ecumenical Council, Doxopater remarks: "You see how this canon refutes the absurd assertion of those who insist on the idea that Rome received its advantage for the sake of the Apostle Peter. It is clearly stated here that the advantage of Rome was based on the fact that this city was the imperial capital. And of course, after Rome ceased to be the capital, it lost the privileges associated with this throne along with the deprivation of the imperial throne." Doxopater's conclusion: Constantinople has now become what Rome used to be in the hierarchical respect. [44] A little later, Doxopatra Basil, Archbishop of Thessalonica, in order to prick the pope, argued that there were two supreme high priests in Christendom: the Pope of Rome in the West and the Patriarch of Constantinople (also a kind of pope, according to Basil, in the East). [45] The famous Greek canonist Balsamon, not without the obvious intention of belittling the dignity of the Roman Church in comparison with that of Constantinople, speaks as follows about the importance of the Roman Church in the Christian world. "The five patriarchal sees remain to this day in veneration as the supreme heads of the Church in the whole earth; and the arbitrary exclusion of himself by the pope of ancient Rome from the number of patriarchs did not abolish such a canonical order." Nevertheless, according to Balsamon, Rome no longer occupies the first place among the patriarchal sees; this primacy belongs to the Patriarch of Constantinople. We cite the proof that this canonist uses to confirm his view; it must be said beforehand that Balsamon's argument is very artificial and strange. Balsamon argues as follows: the supreme authority of the Church, the patriarchs, is called by the Greek word κάραι (plural of the word κάρα – head). In this word κάραι, Constantinople is denoted by the first letter (kappa), and Rome by the third letter (p). From this Balsamon concludes that Rome has now ceded the hierarchical primacy to Constantinople, occupying the third place in the series of patriarchal sees. The other letters in the word κάραι are considered by the canonist to be the initials of the names of the other patriarchal sees, and he observes that the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch do not dispute which of them belongs to the first and to whom the second of the two alphas in the word κάραι belongs, since, according to Balsamon, as the five senses of man peacefully coexist together, so there is no dispute about rank between the patriarchs. At the conclusion of his arguments, Balsamon makes it clear that, although he does not single out the Roman see from a number of others, he nevertheless looks upon it as having deviated from the right path. Balsamon expresses this idea in the following words: "As some creeping plant, for example, ivy, coils around the trunk of a tree, so I hold fast to the Pope of Rome, and my heart breaks for his falling away, passionately awaiting the day of his conversion." [46] From these arguments of Balsamon it is evident that in the twelfth century the question of the division of the Churches was understood in a strange way: the pope at one and the same time occupied a certain place among the other patriarchs, he was looked upon as one of the heads of the Church, and at the same time regret was expressed for his falling away from the general union with the Church. In any case, this canonist, wishing to belittle the authority of the Church of Rome, or, more precisely, of its high priest, quite illegally assigns him the third place in the series of patriarchs: canon law demanded either to recognize the pope as the first patriarch, or, as he is soon considered to have separated from the Church, not to recognize him altogether as patriarch of the Universal Church. One thing is clearly seen in Balsamon's judgments: to the claims which Rome allowed herself in relation to the Church of Constantinople, the Eastern writer wants to respond in the same way to the bishop of Rome. The attack on the Roman Church in the person of its high priest was made even stronger and more decisive by the Byzantine patriarch of the same twelfth century, Michael Anchialus. This Patriarch – let us say so – wants to trample in the mud the ecclesiastical significance of the See of Rome; he completely denies such a significance in it. It was he who proved to the emperor Manuel Comnenus that the pope had lost his episcopal dignity, that he had now become a layman and himself needed grace-filled consecration from others (through the sacraments), that he could not teach consecration to others, that he could not ordain priests, deacons, elevate priests to the highest hierarchical degrees, and be a judge of priests. At the same time, Anchialus adds: "That priests ordained by the pope have the right to absolve sins, I consider this opinion to be at least the greatest absurdity. From this it follows, in the words of this Eastern Patriarch, that the Bishop of Rome is not a shepherd, but a sheep, and a black sheep (πρόβατον ψωριών) that needs healing, a sheep in many ways worse than all the other sheep of the flock of Christ that remain healthy." [47] Remarkable features in which the degree of dislike of the Greeks towards the Latin Church is expressed can also be found in an anonymous fragment dating back to the twelfth century, with the following title: "To those who assert that Rome is the first see." Here we find the following reasoning in the writings of an unknown author: if papal authority is derived from the Apostle Peter, who was bishop of Rome, then from this point of view Antioch will be higher than Rome, for Peter first served as bishop of Antioch, and then of Rome. If the Latins say that Rome received primacy because Peter died a martyr here, then Jerusalem is higher than Rome, for here the Lord Himself suffered. And in any case, Byzantium is higher than Rome, because Peter's elder brother Andrew, the first-called apostle, was bishop here before Peter went to Rome. The author derives the origin of papal authority from the pagan emperor of the third century, Aurelian, who entrusted the Bishop of Rome with the task of resolving the dispute over the possession of the Church of Antioch between the heretic Paul of Samosata, who had been deprived of his episcopal cathedra but had not left it, and Domnus, who had been appointed bishop of Antioch in place of Paul by a conciliar decree. "From this we see," declares the author, "that none else, but the pagan emperor, granted primacy to the bishop of his capital and made him tyrant over all." [49]

Let us now consider other facts, from which it is evident how far the dislike of the adherents of the Eastern Church and the Latin Church extended in the time we are studying. The alienation of the Eastern Church from the Western Church began, among other things, to be expressed in the fact that the Eastern Christians began to exclude Latin Christians from their worship. Theodore Balsamon, in response to the question of Mark, Patriarch of Alexandria, whether Latins should be allowed to be present at Greek services and to partake of Holy Communion. He answered in the negative, referring to the Gospel saying: "He who is not with Me is against Me" (Matt. 12:30). [50] On the other hand, Patriarch Germanus II of Constantinople (thirteenth century) considered worthy of excommunication those Greeks who would accept the prosphora from the hands of Greek priests, but who had expressed submission to the pope during the possession of Constantinople by the Latins. [51] In general, regarding the attitude of the Greeks to the Latins, one could find the following reasoning: "Since the Roman Church has long since fallen away from communion with the four most holy patriarchs and has deviated to teachings and customs far from the Orthodox Church, the Latins cannot receive the Holy Mysteries from the Greek priests, unless they promise in advance to renounce Latin dogmas and rites." [52] One Western chronicler, Odon, mentions that at the time in question the Greeks washed the altars on which the Latins worshipped; he assures us that the Greeks had already rebaptized the Latins (in the case of conversion to the Greek Church). [53] The canonist Balsamon forbids the giving of Greek women in marriage to Latins and considers it impermissible for Latins to be godparents of children among the Orthodox, equating in the present case the Latins with the Monophysites (Armenians), Monothelites, and Nestorians. [54] If we are to believe the Latin writers who lived at that time, then already in the twelfth century the antipathy of the Greeks towards the Latins reached the point of decisive hostility of the former to the latter. The Bishop of Münster, who had come to Constantinople to the Emperor Isaac Angelus as an ambassador from the Emperor Frederick I, informed Frederick that the Byzantine Patriarch Nicetas Muntanus in the Church of St. Sophia, in the presence of himself, the Bishop of Münster, and other ambassadors, had said the following in his sermon: "If a Greek kills a hundred Latin pilgrims, he will receive absolution for his sin, even though he at the same time stains himself by the murder of ten Greeks." [55] The story of such a sermon is, it must be said, incredible,[56] but it is nevertheless very characteristic.

To our consolation, it must be said that in all the facts cited of the religious dislike of the Greeks towards the Latins, not some blind fanaticism is expressed, but the deepest devotion to the faith of their fathers, to the Greek faith. There is no doubt that the Byzantines had many shortcomings in the religious sense, but on the other hand, it must be admitted that at that time there was no people so closely tied to their religion, to their Church, as the Byzantines exactly. It was this zeal for their faith and the Church that guided them when they shunned the Latins and showed hostile feelings towards them. Such zeal is evidenced by many facts that occurred during the clashes between the Greeks and the Latins. There were, no doubt, among the Greeks people who, seduced by worldly gains, fell away to the religion of the Latins, the temporary conquerors of the Byzantine kingdom, but the majority of the population stood firmly for Orthodoxy and, yielding everything else, did not betray it. Earlier we had occasion to note the following fact: the Byzantines, after the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins, told one of the Latin emperors (Henry) that he had dominion over the body, and not over their soul and conscience, and added that they were ready to die for him with arms in their hands, but declared "the decisive impossibility of renouncing the faith of their ancestors." [57] Or another fact: the best inhabitants of the Moray (i.e., Greece proper), when they agreed to assist Geoffrey de Villehardouin in the conquest of the fortified places of the country, first of all demanded of him an oath in writing, which they could convey to their children, that no Frank would compel them to change their faith, would not require them to become Latins. [58] Further, when the Latins had established themselves on the island of Cyprus, and the Latin metropolitan began to demand of the Greek Cypriot bishops that they should take an oath of obedience to him, as vassals do, the Cypriots appealed to the Patriarch of Byzantium, who was then living at Nicaea, asking him to explain to them what to do in such a case. The Patriarch, Germanus (II), replied to the Cypriots that such an oath would be an apostasy from the faith. He exhorted the Church of Cyprus to compete with their brethren in Constantinople (then already conquered by the Latins), who, being separated from their pastors, nevertheless firmly preserved their faith. [59] According to the judgment of one modern German historian, Catholic by faith, "in this answer of the Greek Patriarch was expressed a high moral force and dignity. The neglect of earthly things for the sake of religion is, as the same historian remarked, an essential difference between the Greek Church and the Latin Church." [60] And indeed, the Cypriots proved worthy of the admonition given to them by the Byzantine Patriarch. The very history of the Latin dominion in the Greek Empire shows that it was stronger and more durable where there was no or at least less oppression in the religious sense. However, it should be noted that the measures of meekness that the popes and Catholic sovereigns used to convert the Greeks also remained fruitless. [61]

But we continue to tell: in what, in what phenomena in the epoch under study was the increasing mutual religious hostility between the Greeks and the Latins, which was expressed more and more.

One of the most remarkable expressions of the mutual alienation of the Latin and Greek Churches, of mutual religious hostility, was the denunciation by writers belonging to one Church of various religious deviations from the norm of faith and church customs of adherents of the other. Only an overly skeptical attitude of one Church towards another could give rise to the scrupulousness with which the writers of the Latin Church sought out pretexts for exposing irregularities in the structure of the Greek Church, and vice versa. Accusations often, moreover, turn into vain, slander. Every writer-polemicist of the Latin or Greek Church presented another infinitely long list of its religious errors. The rivalry between writers in this field was very zealous, but it would have been better if there had been no such rivalry at all. The twelfth-century Latin writer Hugon Etherian, an Italian by birth, but who had lived in Constantinople for a long time, who was in close relations with the Emperor Manuel, who more than once conducted disputes both with this emperor and with the most famous Greeks, a skilful theologian, who with the diligence of a bee (as he put it) studied Greek and Latin ecclesiastical literature,[62] in the work attributed to him: Graecorum malae consuetudines, which became famous in the thirteenth century, [63] makes numerous accusations against the Greek Church. We will not critically examine under what conditions this or that accusation could have appeared, how true or false it is, for this would carry us too far; and often our searches of this kind would have to result in more or less probable hypotheses, and not any exact explanations. Let us confine ourselves to one objective exposition of Hugon's accusations. For the sake of greater clarity of the case, let us divide these accusations into several classes. The first class includes accusations regarding the dogmatic teaching of the Greeks. Thus, Hugon declared that the Greeks, by denying the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, thereby recognized the Son as less than the Father, like Arius, divided the divine essence, and abolished the distinction between birth and procession. With regard to the sacraments of the Greek Church, Hugon's accusations are as few as with regard to dogmatics. These accusations concern the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. About Baptism according to the Greek rite, Hugon writes that during Baptism the Greeks observe two very superstitious customs: the priests anoint the entire body of the person being baptized with oil so that water does not stick to him, then they heat the water to make the baby clean, which neither Christ nor His disciples did. Regarding the Eucharist, in addition to the reproach of performing it on leavened bread, Hugon accuses the Greeks of ascribing the sanctifying power in this sacrament to the leavened bread itself (and animated with leaven), and not to the words of blessing.

In general, in the Greek liturgy the Latin polemicist finds for himself many occasions to attack the Greek Church, attacks that are often strange and absurd. According to Hugon, the Greeks think that the name Lord means more than the name Christ, which is why they never sing during services: Christ, have mercy, but Lord, have mercy – very often.

The same polemicist reproaches the Greeks for fasting only on Holy Saturday, and on all the others they allow themselves feasts, pleasures, and baths; that the Greeks even eat meat without a twinge of conscience on some Fridays; that they fast only seven days during the year: five days instead of the entire Forty Days, on Great Saturday, and even on the eve of Theophany. For during the Forty Days they never fast until evening, moreover, their Forty Days consists of 30 days, or rather, writes the polemicist, they do not have a Forty Days at all. The polemicist sees many other aspects that deserve censure in the liturgical practice of the Greeks. The Greeks, declares Hugon, anoint their foreheads with paper soaked in oil from the lamps burning in front of the images, and sprinkle themselves with water, with which they wash the relics of the saints; moreover, on the first day of each month (in singulis calendis – an indication of the pagan origin of the custom) they bless the water with great care. They carry this consecrated water to their homes and not only sprinkle themselves with it, but also wash in it. The Greeks, according to Hugon, also allow themselves the following: they pray before the images of the Mother of God when they wish to have male offspring, and make Her their godfather by means of the same image, namely: they hang a cloth on Her image, so that She, like a real foster child, would receive the child to be baptized from the hands of the priest. In the category of this kind of profanation, Hugon includes some Greek religious rites concerning the saints.

While the Greeks, writes the polemicist, hate living brothers, they make holy saints their brothers against their will. It happens like this: they give money to the priest, and during the liturgy he lifts up a prayer for fraternization between the living sinner and the holy celestial. In order for the saint to enter into this relationship, the one who wishes to fraternize lights at least two candles in front of the image of the saint, anoints himself with oil from his icon and embraces the icon on which the saint is depicted, who is being chosen as a brother. Continuing his attacks on the liturgical practice of the Greeks, the Latin polemicist blames the Greeks for their burial habits. "When they gather for a funeral," says the polemicist, "relatives and acquaintances kiss the corpse, in which they act like pagans who said to the dead: 'Go where nature has called you, and we will follow you.' The polemicist interprets the last kiss in the sense of disbelief in the future life after death). The polemicist finds it unseemly to perform the service on weekdays, when there are few people in Derquay, and sneers at this custom. Here are the words of the polemicist: the Greeks' priests perform services without an audience, and what is strangest of all, being surrounded by his wife and son, they say, greeting the absent believers: "Peace be unto you." The wives of the Greek priests, according to Hugon, enter the altar platform (chorum), take bread from the altar (de altari), perform the deacon's service, and prepare everything necessary for the Liturgy. At the end of his attacks on the liturgical practice of the Greeks, Hugon reproaches the latter for intolerance towards the Latins. He points out, first, that if a Latin priest has celebrated the Eucharist on their altar, the Greek priest will not celebrate the Liturgy at it before he has washed it; secondly, that if a Latin goes over to the Greek Church, he must be baptized again either secretly or publicly.

Very extensive and rich material for reproaches against the Greek Church and for mockery of it is given to Hugon by facts, real or misinterpreted, from the life of the clergy and monasticism. Hugon was inexhaustible in all kinds of accusations against the Greek clergy and monasticism. The Greek bishops, according to the polemicist, belong to the followers of Simon Magus, since they will not open a church to anyone for free, will not perform a single service without payment, and will not send burials. The Greek clergy, in the opinion of the polemicist, is completely dependent on the laity, for their patriarchs, bishops and archimandrites are elevated to their dignity by the laity (here, without a doubt, the Byzantine attitude of the state to the Church is understood). According to the polemicist, the Greeks consider only monks to possess the priesthood par excellence, since among them only monks give absolution of sins. The polemicist blames the Greek clergy for the growth of hair. He writes: "Contrary to the commandment of the Apostle, who said, 'If a man grows his hair, it is a disgrace to him' (1 Corinthians 11:14), the Greeks take care of growing their hair, especially the clergy and monks; the latter (clerics and monks) do not cut their hair in the form of a circle on the crown of the head, but parting it on the forehead, like a woman." In the same way is Hugon's censure of the Greek clergy for growing a beard. The Greek priests, in his opinion, grow beards, which they moisten (through negligence) in the blood of the Lord when they eat it. The polemicist does not ignore the marital status of the clergy; He asserts that Greek deacons marry in order to attain the highest ecclesiastical degrees and not to lose their rank. Hugon reproaches the Greek Church for its unscrupulousness in the ordination of priests; According to him, in many places among the Greeks, their priests are men of blood, for they inflict wounds on others with their own hands· Hugon, finally, paints the most pitiful picture of the state of Greek monasticism. Their monks, complains Hugon, spend the night outside the monasteries like beasts, and eat every minute in the street; They always have some fruit and something edible in their mouths and hands. They go into taverns. Their monks do not have a common treasury, but each has his own, separate one.

Hugon finds a lot of shortcomings in the religious state of the people and tries to expose them, with the aim of humiliating the Greek Church. Of the Greek people, he says that the Greeks do not give their priests the honor they deserve, and make them stand at the dinners at which the latter are compelled to be. On the most trifling pretexts, the Greeks inflict heavy punishments on priests and clerics, as the pagans did, and beat them with whips, and in mockery they knock down and crumple the headdresses of their priests, whereas it is written: "Whoever lays his hand on a cleric without cause or under an imaginary pretext, let him be anathema" (similar to 27 Prov. Apostol.) The Latin polemicist reproaches the Greek people for intemperance in food: "The Greeks," says Hugon, "are distinguished by their immoderation, and do not eat twice a day, but as much as is imagined. They do not abstain from blood and strangled, for they eat thrushes and other birds strangled with snares, and eat entrails, i.e. intestines filled with pig's blood (sausages), and this is considered a dainty." According to the polemicist, the Greeks, who heal by means of bloodletting, in this case give human blood to pigs. According to the same Hugon, the Greeks do not value the marriage bond: as soon as one of the spouses does not like the other, they declare it to the city praetor, destroy the marriage documents and the belt (instrumentis et cingulis praecisis), and enter into a new marriage without any opposition.

The polemicist finds among the Greeks a lack of attention to public sanctuaries. In this regard, the polemicist notes: "In their homes the Greeks have chapels decorated with images of saints and lamps and candles; are honored by smoking; and on the contrary, they care little about the fact that the churches built by their ancestors are falling into decay and almost desolation." He reproaches women for addiction to false hair and rubbing. [64]

Thus we see that the Latins made very many accusations against the Greeks in the religious sense, but the Greeks did the same against the Latins in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Latin errors in the time from Photius to Cerularius, the number of points of these errors varied between 10 and 22. Cerularius, together with the Greek polemicist Nicetas Stiphates, significantly increased the number of accusations against the Latins. At the beginning of the twelfth century, Nicetas Seid already knew 32 points of apostasy of the Latins; in the thirteenth century, the number of errors of the same Latins more than doubled. And in the fourteenth century the Greeks were already talking about innumerable Latin heresies. [65] Let us review the most important accusations made by the Greek Church against the Latin. In doing so, we will mainly deal with those aspects of the case that are something new in comparison with the Greek polemics of the twelfth century. As for the Latin doctrine, the Greeks do not make any new accusations in this case, except that from the thirteenth century onwards they begin to mention the peculiarities of Western teaching concerning the condition of the dead before the general resurrection and regarding purgatory. But on the other hand, the Greeks see many errors in the Latin Church in the liturgical respect. Thus, in the thirteenth century, they primarily reproached the Latins for many deviations from the norm in the celebration of the sacrament of the Eucharist.