Catholic Christian history

The argument

The first schism in the early church was between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The two traditions began to divide, as the Roman Empire fragmented, after the seventh Ecumenical Council in 787 CE and is commonly believed to have finally split over the conflict with Rome in the so-called Great Schism in 1054. From 1378 to 1417 the Papal schism saw two, and later on three, popes all claiming jurisdiction, who each excommunicated the others. Unlike the other schisms this was a power play rather than a disagreement over religion. The Reformation of the 1500’s, where Protestantism broke away from the Church of Rome is the second most significant split in Christianity.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The chronology omits the earliest divisions altogether. The Church of the East separated after the Council of Ephesus in 431, and the Oriental Orthodox churches — Coptic, Armenian, Syriac and Ethiopian — after Chalcedon in 451, centuries before 1054; those communions exist today and number many millions, so the East-West estrangement was not the first schism in the church. The 787 starting point is also odd, since the Second Council of Nicaea settled the iconoclast dispute and was received by both Rome and Constantinople, marking agreement rather than the opening of a divide. The estrangement is more usually traced through the ninth-century Photian schism, the filioque controversy, and the sack of Constantinople in 1204, which did more to make the breach permanent than the mutual excommunications of 1054 — pronounced by a legate whose pope had already died, and lifted in 1965. Calling the Western Schism "a power play rather than a disagreement over religion" also understates it. The dispute turned on the validity of a papal election and therefore on where legitimate authority in the church resides, which is a theological question about the papacy itself, and its resolution at Constance generated conciliarist claims that a general council holds authority above the pope. Finally, this is filed as an account of what Catholic Christians believe, and a list of institutional divisions is history rather than belief — the doctrinal content the question asks for sits in the sibling descriptions of Catholic and common Christian belief.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The East-West division was not the first schism: the Church of the East separated after Ephesus in 431 and the Oriental Orthodox after Chalcedon in 451, both centuries earlier and both surviving today, while the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 was received by Rome and Constantinople alike. [Rejecting P2] Describing the Western Schism as a power play rather than a religious disagreement understates it, since it turned on the validity of a papal election and hence on where authority in the church lies, and produced conciliarist claims about councils outranking popes. [Rejecting P3] A chronology of schisms is institutional history rather than an account of belief, which is what the question asks for.