Translation Rights TQE / The Great Schism

In the year 1054, a great schism separated Christianity in Western and Eastern churches. This historical event still affects nowadays. The Great Controversy explores the roots of this conflict and analyses in detail its multiple historical, political and philosophical manifestations and transformations. Catholics and Orthodoxes, Latins and Greco-Russians: polarities that have served to accommodate the notions «heretic», and «enemy». Differences that give cause for ferocious fights, for devastating massacres and, in conclusion, for a not very evangelic violence.

With the rigour of a historian and the passion of the profound expert of the theme, Jean Meyer describes the schism gestation and the progressive alienation between the two churches, exploring different aspects of the conflict. On the one hand, he presents the medieval tensions between the temporal and the religious power. In addition, Meyer also explores the geopolitical turbulences that the fall of Constantinople caused. And on the other hand, the author analyses the fundamental role – often subterranean- of both churches in events like the Russian Revolution or the fall of Communism. Moreover, Meyer even reaches the present-day perils and complexities of the conflict, full of frustrated attempts to reconcile papacy with the orthodox patriarchy.

Jean Meyer was born in France in 1942. He graduated in History by the Superior Normal School and by Soborna School in Paris. In 1956 he went to Mexico as a researcher. Meyer has been professor at Mexico School, at the Universities of Soborna and Perpiñan and at Michoacán School. He founded the magazine Istor and is author of more than thirty books. With The Great Controversy, the prestigious historian Jean Meyer was finalist in the XVIIIth Comillas Prize.