The first council held between, at any rate, some members of either side after the schism was at Bari, in Apulia, in 1098. Pope Urban II (1088–1099) was carrying on the fight of Gregory VII against the Emperor Henry IV (1056–1106), and in 1095 had proclaimed the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont. Then, possibly in connection with that movement, he held this synod at Bari. The hero of the council was our St. Anselm of Canterbury († 1109), and as its Acts have been lost the little we know about it is from Eadmer's life of his master.[1] Anselm had fled from the Red King the year before (1097) and was now in the Pope's company.
The "Greeks" at Bari were probably bishops of the Byzantine rite in Southern Italy.[2] The Normans were then conquering those parts, and whatever pretence of jurisdiction the Patriarch of Constantinople had advanced over "greater Greece" was now coming definitely to an end (p. 46). But these Italian Greeks shared the ideas of their fellow-countrymen across the Adriatic about the Filioque, and this council was held to convert them on that point. Although Cerularius had made so little of the Filioque grievance, it will now be (with the Primacy) always the chief difference between the two Churches. It is not known how many Greeks were present nor who they were. Nor is the result of the council known, except that under the pressure of the Norman Government all these Italo-Greeks did eventually accept both the Pope's jurisdiction and the Catholic faith about the procession of the Holy Ghost. There was never again any question of schism in greater Greece. All we know of the council is this scene described by Eadmer, who was present with St. Anselm. Pope Urban begins by explaining our faith in the double procession. Then the Greeks answer him and the Pope seems to have got into difficulties, for he cries out: "Father and master, Anselm, Archbishop of the English, where are you?" St. Anselm was sitting in the front rank of the fathers, "and I," says Eadmer, "sat at his feet." Now he stands up and answers: "Lord and father, here I am, what do you want?" "What are you doing?" says the Pope, "why do
