Feeling of hostility between the two churches

But the feeling of hostility between the two churches was too strong to allow of a harmonious working together of their respective forces. The great breach in the Christian Church had been, during several centuries, continually widening. The Eastern Church, which was the more educated, had occupied itself with philosophical and theological questions with which the churchmen of the West gave themselves little trouble. The West had been more engaged with the spread of Christianity than with the accuracy of its teaching.

The Eastern called itself £)rthodox. The Western claimed rather to be Catholic; and the difference in the names by which each chose to be called gives an indication of the difference of the leading tendency of each Church respectively. “ The East,” says Dean Milman, “ enacted creeds; the West, discipline.” The East was occupied with speculation, the West with practice. The want of harmony between the two churches continually displayed itself; and in the twelfth century, with which we are most concerned, there took place the definite, formal separation between the Catholic and the Orthodox churches.

Spirit of chivalry

Meantime in the “West, and in the latter half of the twelfth Decline of the century, the spirit of chivalry and the religious it among the thesis which had been the chief motive forces of crusaders. the first and second crusades were rapidly disappearing. The nobles of Western Europe were beginning to find occupation at home. A movement had begun among them which spread to England, and in the time of John produced lasting benefits at Kunnymead. The barons of the West were beginning to make common cause with the people against incompetent sovereigns. The noble and lofty ideal which the early Crusaders had tried to realize, which a few years later was revived in Saint Louis, was in great part forgotten. These men, from Godfrey downwards, had dreamed of establishing Christ’s kingdom, of trying to execute an almost impossible task, because it was that which God had given them.