St. Jerome, Apostle to the Slavs, and the Roman Slavonic Rite

Abstract

It is ironic that Emperor Theodosius the Great, a famous advocate of a strong universal church and its alliance with the state, would inadvertently trigger the Great Schism of 1054 and the split into Eastern and Western churches. When Theodosius divided the Roman Empire between his sons in 395, he could not have foreseen the consequences that his administrative decision would have for the Christian world. As it turned out, the split of the great empire into two parts not only created two independent administrative territories but also indirectly led to the creation of two different cultural spheres, two civilizations: Roman Catholic and Byzantine Orthodox. As time went by, despite several unsuccessful attempts to reunite the two churches, the gap between them grew, as did the theological, ecclesiological, and political differences that disturbed prelates on both sides. One such difference was invariably a disagreement on the language of worship and Holy Scripture.