Schism

Schism (pronounced siz-uhm or skiz-uhm)

(1) Division or disunion, especially into mutually opposed parties.

(2) Parties or groups so formed.

(3) In ecclesiastical matters, a formal division within, or separation from, a church or religious body over some doctrinal difference.

(4) The state of a sect or body formed by such division.

(5) The offense of causing or seeking to cause such a division.

1350-1400: From the Church Latin schisma, scisma (and in the Medieval Latin as cisma), from the Ancient Greek σχίσμα (skhísma) (genitive skhismatos), (division, cleft), from σχίζω (skhízō) (I split), the stem of skhizein (to split), from the primitive Indo-European root skei- (to cut, split).  The word replaced the French and Middle English cisme scisme & sisme (a dissension within the church producing two or more parties with rival authorities) all of which were from the Old French cisme or scisme (a cleft, a split), again ultimately from the Ancient Greek σχίσμα (skhísma).  By the late fourteenth century, scisme (dissention within the church) had emerged although in the New Testament, schism (or an equivalent from the stem of skhizein) was applied metaphorically to divisions in the Church (eg I Corinthians xii.25).  The classical spelling was actually restored in the sixteenth century but pronunciation may have remained unchanged and the general sense of “disunion, division, separation” became common in the early fifteenth century, and within a few years the adjective schismatic (the original spelling being scismatik) was coined in the sense of “pertaining to, of the nature of, or characterized by schism”, something which referred specifically to “an outward separation from an existing church or faith on difference of opinion:, on the model of the Old French scismatique & cismatique (which endures in Modern French as schismatique), from the Church Latin schismaticus, from the Ancient Greek skhismatikos.  The adjective was used also as a noun in both the Old French and Late Latin and had actually been used thus in English in the late fourteenth century in the sense of “one who participates in a schism”.  In both French & English, the modern spelling was adopted in the late sixteenth century.  Schism is a noun, schismatic & schismatical are nouns & adjectives and schismatically is an adverb; the noun plural is schisms.

The East-West Schism of 1054 is sometimes casually referred to as the “Great Schism” but this is best avoided because it can be confused with the Great Schism of 1378-1417 (which followed the “Avignon Papacy” (1309-1376)), known as the “Babylonian captivity of the Papacy”.  The Avignon era was a confused period, presided over by seven popes and five antipopes, something to be recalled by those who think today’s squabbles between the Vatican factions are disruptive.  The schism of 1054 was the break of communion between what are now the (Eastern) Orthodox and (Western) Roman Catholic churches.  There were a myriad of ecclesiastical and theological disputes between the Greek East and Latin West before 1054 covering issues such as whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used in the Eucharist.  More serious perhaps were a cluster of arguments about power; the Pope’s claim to universal jurisdiction and the place of Constantinople in relation to Rome.

By 1053, there was open clerical warfare.  Greek churches in Italy were forced to close or to conform to Romish ways and, in retaliation, the eastern Patriarch closed the Latin churches in Constantinople; and harsh words were exchanged and by 1054 the hierarchies of both factions were busily excommunicating each other.  It’s a little misleading to cite 1054 as the date of the schism because the dispute actually dragged and technically, relationships wouldn’t fully be sundered for almost two centuries but historians accept that year as critical and in many ways, as a point on no return.  Now almost a thousand-years on, there seems no prospect of reconciliation.

Amusing Australian schisms

The Australian Rugby League (ARL), 1995-1997: Australia is well-known for schisms in sport.  The game of rugby league was the product of a schism in the rugby unions ranks, the essence of which was the disagreement about player payments and the amateur status of the game.  That schism happened in England in 1895 but exactly a hundred year later, in Australia, the professional rugby league competition endured its own when News Corp, seeing the game as the perfect content provider for the then novel platform of pay-TV, staged a raid and attempted to entice the clubs to join their breakaway competition, offering the traditional inducement of lots of money.  The established competition responded, backed with money from its broadcaster and a two-year war ensued until corporate realities prevailed and a merged entity divided the spoils between the media organizations.  The dispute and its resolution followed essentially the same path as the schism in Australian cricket a generation earlier.

The Australian Labor Party, 1955: By the mid-1950s, the strongly anti-Communist faction in the Australian Labor Party (ALP) was actively engaged in a campaign to counter communist infiltration of both the political (the ALP) and industrial (the unions) arms of the labour movement.  Had the ALP enjoyed more capable leadership, things might have turned out differently but, handled as it was, the ALP split, the schism most serious in NSW and Queensland but no state was wholly unaffected.  What emerged as a predominately Catholic splinter-party was the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), the existence of which adversely affected the ALP vote for a generation.  Thought exterminated in 1974, the DLP still shows up at the odd election and has won seats before succumbing to its own schisms.

Department of Law, Macquarie University, 1980s: More traditional (black-letter) academic lawyers at Macquarie became concerned at the teachings of others whom they called legal sociologists.  Styling themselves substantive lawyers, they didn’t especially object to the content of their opponents; they just though it had no place in a law school.  A pre-social media schism, the dispute manifested mostly in letters to the editor and bitchy comments in legal journals.  Eventually, the dispute faded as the factions either called a truce or simply ignored each other.

Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney, 1972: John Anderson (1893–1962) was a Scottish philosopher who held the Challis Chair of Philosophy at the University of Sydney from 1927 until retirement in 1958.  His influence continued even after his death and by the early 1970s, faculty were engaged in a quite bitter dispute about subject matter, educational techniques and the very nature and purpose of philosophical study.  The differences proved irreconcilable and in 1974 the department split into two separate units, the Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy and the Department of General Philosophy.  The latter thought the former little more than a polite discussion group re-hashing the thoughts of last two and a half-thousand years while the former considered the latter politically radical but philosophically barren.  The department eventually reunited some thirty years later.

Mean Girls (2004) is a tale of schism, back-stabbing and low skulduggery. That has attracted those in "media studies" departments and other such places who, drawing perhaps a long bow, have constructed textual analyses aligning the script with William Shakespeare's (1564–1616) The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1603), The Tragedy of Macbeth (1623) and The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (1599).