Between 11th and 13th century: The formation of the schism from a literary point of view

The history of the schism between the Greek and the Latin churches has been explored from the historical, the theological, the social, the ecclesiological points of view but never concentrating simply on the authors who wrote on the main differences between the churches and their texts. The conspicuous number of Byzantine intellectuals who dedicated at least one writing on one or more issues related to the schism is clearly a undoubtable proof of how profoundly the discussions between the churches signed these centuries, but even more than that what is particularly meaningful for our understanding of the formation of the schism between East and West is the analysis of the interactions between the authors, the reciprocal influences, the building up of stockpiles of argumentations and the consolidation of a strong tradition that, although certainly could not have the standing and the authority of Patristic literature, in two century formed an extremely solid stumbling block in the attempts at reuniting the two halves of the Christendom. This chapter, therefore, introduce the readers to the period of the enlargement of the gulf that still divides East and West following the thread of the polemical literature composed between the 11th and the 13th century