The Eastern League: In Christ Ascendatus

(This post follows the first in the Eastern League miniseries, and is a proud component of the Great History of the League. )

The Eastern League was caught up in multiple controversies in the years following Constantine's acceptance of the Christian church. In the furor surrounding the Arian heresy, "the highways were covered with galloping bishops" going from one council to another seeking to find a suitable position on the Arian beliefs - Desmondite bishops not least among them. The Arian beliefs - which took a position on an abtruse and theoretical belief, and thus incited theological arguments, exiles, and executions for a century - were finally crushed in 381 AD.

Centuries rolled by. In 679, the League moved to Rome en masse, attracted by the Church's growing power there in the absence of strong temporal rulership. In 756, the Lombards (who ruled most of Italy at that time) destroyed the Byzantine enclaves in Italy; the papacy's call for help invited the Franks, who drove back the Lombards and established the Papal States. After the Franks again assisted the Pope against the Lombards, in 774, the Frankish King Charlemagne recieved papal support; twenty-five years later, he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor, and war erupted between the Eastern Roman Empire and this newly-declared Holy Roman Empire for a decade. In all of this, the League of Desmond remained a power in the Church, their power waning and waxing by the favour of the pope presently in office.


Ostensibly, the Western and Eastern churches were part of one whole; led by the Pentarchy of bishops, of whom the Bishop of Rome and the Bishop of New Rome (Constantinople) were the greatest. But the churches had drifted over the years, divided in language, population, and practices. By 1053, the Western and Eastern Christian churches quabbled frequently, fighting over issues such as celibacy for priests (which the Eastern church did not enforce), certain elements of the Christian creed, and the jurisdiction of border regions. The League of Desmond, in this time, was one of the most militant elements of the Western Church, always the first to protest at some new offense of the Eastern Church and the last to back down. In 1053, a dispute over the use of Latin customs in Constantinople churches caused the eastern patriarch to order all Latin churches in Constantinople closed; in response, the Pope sent a mission of League emissaries, ordered to get the churches re-opened. The Patriarch, furious at the League's insolence, refused to acnowledge the emissaries. In retaliation, the League legates walked into the Hagia Sophia - the largest and grandest church of Constantinople - and left a bull of excommunication on the altar.

This is commonly thought of as the date that the Western and Eastern Christian churches went separate ways.

The League of Desmond gained members for their daring, gaining strength and power. Soon, they would become one of the most famous - and later, infamous - orders in all of Christendom.

(Author's note: It's been about a week since I began writing this. I hope to have another up sooner, but... no promises.)
(Also, David: I'm not stupid.)