356 Scholasticism papacy, whose lands were threatened, and Byzantium, which also had holdings in southern Italy The Byzantine emperor wanted to maintain good relations with the papacy to ensure an alliance against the Normans, but the patriarch of Constantinople was little concerned with this political perspective Furthermore the Normans closed churches in their territory that used the Greek ritual, while the patriarch of Constantinople did likewise for those of non-Greek ritual in his territory When the legates of Pope Leo IX arrived in Constantinople in 1054, they demanded that the Eastern Church accept the Western view on the papacy and certain other practices When this failed, they excommunicated (cut off from communion) the patriarch and his associates Keroularios, in turn, anathematized (condemned) the authors of the excommunication There had been numerous schisms before between Constantinople and Rome that had been mended afterward, but the Schism of 1054 became permanent Historical circumstances in the following decades transformed the theological condemnations into a seemingly permanent cultural divide between Catholic and Orthodox The first change occurred shortly after the schism when the papacy shifted its policy toward the Normans from one of hostility to one of support The Normans now acted with the support of the papacy as they finished off the Byzantine possessions in southern Italy and seized Sicily With these positions the Normans began to eye the Byzantine Empire as their next goal for conquest This threat to the Orthodox empire was augmented by new challenges from the north (a pagan, Turkic tribe called the Pechenegs) and a massive challenge from the east in the Muslim Seljuk dynasty, who took control of Anatolia as well as much of the Muslim world The emperor Alexios I Komennos (1081–1118) appealed to Pope Urban II for military assistance Pope Urban called for a massive undertaking, not simply to assist Byzantium, but to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims Thus the First Crusade was born Tens of thousands of Western soldiers as well as clerics passed through Byzantium This movement of Westerners, including the Normans who were already actively hostile to Byzantium, increased tension between Orthodox and Catholic The emperors were concerned that crusaders might not simply move through the empire, but conquer parts of it This fear greatly increased during the Second and Third Crusades in the 12th century and was fully realized when the Fourth Crusade was diverted to Con- stantinople In 1204 Western crusaders sacked this city and conquered the Byzantine Empire A Catholic patriarch was installed at Constantinople (until 1261) These events, most particularly the last, transformed the Schism of 1054 from a theological dispute to a near permanent cultural divide between East and West, Orthodox and Catholic See also Constantinople, massacre of; Crusades; Nicaea, Second Council of; Norman kingdoms of Italy and Sicily; Papal States Further reading: Angold, Michael The Byzantine Empire (1025–1204): A Political History New York: Longman, 1984; Hussey, J M The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986; Runciman, Steven The Eastern Schism; A Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches during the XIth and XIIth Centuries Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956 Matthew Herbst Scholasticism Scholasticism is the system of education, especially in theology and philosophy, that dominated European schools and universities from the ninth to the 15th century These institutions blossomed in the High Middle Ages of the 12th century It was at this time that the mendicants, or begging orders, arose in the midst of a wider wave of religious revival They aimed to foster religious renewal among the urban populations and counter heretical movements The two pioneering mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, opened schools that combined to create the first universities Scholasticism was marked by formal and material characteristics The first formal element was the application of the rules of Latin grammar to all kinds of problems, on the assumption that the laws of language correspond to the laws of thought Thus analysis of language was prominent Second was the use of dialectic, or disputation This lies at the heart of the quaestio, the most typical literary form of Scholastic thinking, in which an issue is set, for example, the question of whether or not God exists The question is then settled by setting out objections to the proposition one intends to defend, stating a contrary position to that of the objector, and finally offering counterarguments to the objections Despite limitations dialectic could produce rigorous critical thinking and encourage consideration of all sides of a question