At
the beginning of the 2nd millennium of Christian
history, the church of Constantinople, capital
of the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire,
was at the peak of its world influence and
power. Neither Rome, which had become a provincial
town and its church an instrument in the
hands of political interests, nor Europe
under the Carolingian and Ottonian dynasties
could really compete with Byzantium as centres
of Christian civilization. The Byzantine
emperors of the Macedonian dynasty had extended
the frontiers of the empire from Mesopotamia
to Naples (in Italy) and from the Danube
River (in central Europe) to Palestine. The
church of Constantinople not only enjoyed
a parallel expansion but also extended its
missionary penetration, much beyond the political
frontiers of the empire, to Russia and the
Caucasus.
Relations
between church and state
The
ideology that had prevailed since Constantine
(4th century) and Justinian I (6th century)--according
to which there was to be only one universal
Christian society, the oikoumene, led jointly
by the empire and the church--was still
the ideology of the Byzantine emperors.
At the heart of the Christian polity of
Byzantium was the Emperor, who was no ordinary
ruler, but God's representative on earth.
If Byzantium was an icon of the heavenly
Jerusalem, then the earthly monarchy of
the Emperor was an image or icon of the
monarchy of God in heaven; in church people
prostrated themselves before the icon of
Christ, and in the palace before God's
living icon - the Emperor. The labyrinthine
palace, the Court with its elaborate ceremonial,
the throne room where mechanical lions
roared and musical birds sang: these things
were designed to make clear the Emperor's
status as vicegerent of God. 'By such means,'
wrote the Emperor Constantine Vll Porphyrogenitus,
'we figure forth the harmonious movement
of God the Creator around this universe,
while the imperial power is preserved in
proportion and order.''
The
Emperor had a special place in the Church's
worship: he could not of course celebrate
the Eucharist, but he received communion
within the sanctuary 'as priests do'- taking
the consecrated bread in his hands and
drinking from the chalice, instead of being
given the sacrament in a spoon - and he
also preached sermons and on certain feasts
censed the altar. The vestments which Orthodox
bishops now wear are the vestments once
worn by the Emperor in church.
The
life of Byzantium formed a unified whole,
and there was no rigid line of separation
between the religious and the secular,
between Church and State: the two were
seen as parts of a single organism. Hence
it was inevitable that the Emperor played
an active part in the affairs of the Church.
Yet at the same time it is not just to
accuse Byzantium of Caesaro-Papism, of
subordinating the Church to the State.
Although Church and State formed a single
organism, yet within this one organism
there vvere two distinct elements, the
priesthood (sacerdotium) and the imperial
power (imperium); and while working in
close co-opcration, each of these elements
had its own proper sphere in which it was
autonomous. Between the two there was a
'symphony' or 'harmony', but neither element
exercised absolute control over the other.
This is the doctrine expounded in the great
code of Byzantine law drawn up under Justinian
(see the sixth Novel) and repeated in many
of the; Byzantine texts. Take for example
the words of Emperor John Tzimisces: 'I
recognize two authorities, priesthood and
empire; the Creator of the world entrusted
to the first the care of souls and to the
second the control of men's bodies. Let
neither authority be attacked, that the
world may enjoy prosperity." Thus
it was the Emperor's task to summon councils
and to carry their decrees into effect,
but it lay beyond his powers to dictate
the content of those decrees: it was for
the bishops gathered in council to decide
what the true faith was.
Bishops
were appointed by God to teach the faith,
whereas the Emperor was the protector of
Orthodoxy, but not its exponent. Such was
the theory, and such in great part was
the practice also. Admittedly there were
many occasions on which the Emperor interfered
unwarrantably in ecclesiastical matters;
but when a serious question of principle
arose, the authorities of the Church quickly
showed that they had a will of their own.
Iconoclasm, for example, was vigorously
championed by a whole series of Emperors,
yet for all that it was successfully rejected
by the Church. In Byzantine history Church
and State were closely interdependent,
but neither was subordinate to the other.
There
are many today, not only outside but within
the Orthodox Church, who sharply criticize
the Byzantine Empire and the idea of a
Christian society for which it stands.
Yet were the Byzantines entirely wrong?
They believed that Christ, who lived on
earth as a man, has redeemed every aspect
of human existence, and they held that
it was therefore possible to baptize not
human individuals only but the whole spirit
and organization of society. So they strove
to create a polity entirely Christian in
its principles of government and in its
daily life. Byzantium in fact was nothing
less than an attempt to accept and to apply
the full implications of the Incarnation.
Certainly the attempt had its dangers:
in particular the Byzantines often fell
into the error of identifying the earthly
kingdom of Byzantium with the Kingdom of
God, the Greek people - or rather, the
'Roman' people, to use the term by which
they themselves described their own identity
- with God's people. Certainly Byzantium
fell far short of the high ideal which
it set itself, and its failure was often
lamentable and disastrous.
The
tales of Byzantium duplicity, violence,
and cruelty are too well known to call
for repetition here. They are true - but
they are only a part of the truth. For
behind all the shortcomings of Byzantium
can always be discerned the great vision
by which the Byzantines were inspired:
to establish here on earth a living image
of God's government in heaven. The authority
of the patriarch of Constantinople was
motivated in a formal fashion by the fact
that he was the bishop of the "New
Rome," where the emperor and the senate
also resided (canon 28 of the Council of
Chalcedon, 451). He held the title of "ecumenical
patriarch," which pointed to his political
role in the empire. Technically, he occupied
the second rank--after the bishop of Rome--in
a hierarchy of five major primates, which
included also the patriarchs of Alexandria,
Antioch, and Jerusalem. In practice, however,
the latter three were deprived of all authority
by the Arab conquest of the Middle East
in the 7th century, and only the emerging
Slavic churches attempted to challenge,
at times, the position of Constantinople
as the unique centre of Eastern Christendom.
The
relations between state and church in Byzantium
are often described in the West by the
term caesaropapism, which implies that
the emperor was acting as the head of the
church. The official texts, however, describe
the emperor and the patriarch as a dyarchy
(government with dual authority) and compare
their functions to that of the soul and
the body in a single organism. In practice,
the emperor had the upper hand over much
of church administration, though strong
patriarchs could occasionally play a decisive
role in politics: Patriarch Nicholas Mystikus
(patriarch 901-907, 912-925) and Polyeuctus
(patriarch 956-970) excommunicated emperors
for uncanonical acts. In the area of faith
and doctrine, the emperors could never
impose their will when it contradicted
the conscience of the church: this fact,
shown in particular during the numerous
attempts at union with Rome during the
late medieval period, proves that the notion
of caesaropapism is not unreservedly applicable
to Byzantium.
The
Church of the Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia,
built by Justinian in the 6th century,
was the centre of religious life in the
Eastern Orthodox world. It was by far the
largest and most splendid religious edifice
in all of Christendom. According to The
Russian Primary Chronicle, the envoys of
the Kievan prince Vladimir, who visited
it in 987, reported: "We knew not
whether we were in heaven or on earth,
for surely there is no such splendor or
beauty anywhere upon earth." Hagia
Sophia, or the "great church," as
it was also called, provided the pattern
of the liturgical office, which was adopted
throughout the Orthodox world. This adoption
was generally spontaneous, and it was based
upon the moral and cultural prestige of
the imperial capital: the Orthodox Church
uses the 9th-century Byzantine Rite.
The
Development of Monasticism
Monasticism
played a decisive part in the religious
life of Byzantium, as it has done in that
of all Orthodox countries. It has been
rightly said that 'the best way to penetrate
Orthodox spirituality is to enter it through
monasticism'. 'There is a great richness
of forms of the spiritual life to be found
within the bounds of Orthodoxy, but monasticism
remains the most classic of all." The
monastic life first emerged as a definite
institution in Egypt and Syria during the
fourth century, and from there it spread
rapidly across Christendom. It is no coincidence
that monasticism should have developed
immediately after Constantine's conversion,
at the very time when the persecutions
ceased and Christianity became fashionable.
The monks with their austerities were martyrs
in an age when martyrdom of blood no longer
existed; they formed the danger of forgetting
that Byzantium was an image and symbol,
not the reality; they ran the risk of identifying
the kingdom of God with an earthly kingdom.
The monks by their withdrawal from society
into the desert fulfilled a prophetic and
eschatological ministry in the life of
the Church. They reminded Christians that
the kingdom of God is not of this world.
Monasticism
has taken three chief forms, all of which
had appeared in Egypt by the year 350,
and all of which are still to be found
in the Orthodox Church today. There are
first the hermits, ascetics leading the
solitary life in huts or caves, and even
in tombs, among the branches of trees,
or on the tops of pillars. The great model
of the eremitic life is the father of monasticism
himself, St Antony of Egypt (25l-356).
Secondly there is the community life, where
monks dwell together under a common rule
and in a regularly constituted monastery.
Here the great pioneer was St Pachomius
of Egypt (286-346), author of a rule later
used by St Benedict in the west. Basil
the Great, whose ascetic writings have
exercised a formative influence on eastern
monasticism, was a strong advocate of the
community life, although he was probably
influenced more by Syria than by the Pachomian
houses that he visited. Giving a social
emphasis to monasticism, he urged that
religious houses should care for the sick
and poor, maintaining hospitals and orphanages,
and working directly for the benefit of
society at large. But in general eastern
monasticism has been far less concerned
than western with active work; in Orthodoxy
a monk's primary task is the life of prayer,
and it is through this that he serves others.
It is not so much what a monk does that
matters, as what he is. Finally there is
a form of the monastic life intermediate
between the first two, the semi-eremitic
life, a 'middle way' where instead of a
single highly organized community there
is a loosely knit group of small settlements,
each settlement containing perhaps between
two and six members living together under
the guidance of an elder. The great centres
of the semi-eremitic life in Egypt were
Nitria and Scetis, which by the end of
the fourth century had produced many outstanding
monks: Ammon the founder of Nitria, Macarius
of Egypt and Macarius of Alexandria, Evagrius
of Pontus, and Arsenius the Great. (This
semi-eremitic its very beginnings the monastic
life was seen, in both east and west, as
a vocation for women as well as men, and
throughout the Byzantine world there were
numerous communities of nuns.
Because
of its monasteries, fourth-century Egypt
was regarded as a second Holy Land, and
travellers to Jerusalem felt their pilgrimage
to be incomplete unless it included the
ascetic houses of the Nile. In the fifth
and sixth centuries leadership in the monastic
movement shifted to Palestine, with St
Euthymius the Great (died 473) and his
disciple St Sabas (died 532). The monastery
founded by St Sabas in the Jordan valley
can claim an unbroken history to the present
day; it was to this community that John
of Damascus belonged. Almost as old is
another important house with an unbroken
history - the monastery of St Catherine
at Mount Sinai, founded by the Emperor
Justinian (reigned 527-565). With Palestine
and Sinai in Arab hands, monastic pre-eminence
in the Byzantine Empire passed in the ninth
century to the monastery of Stoudios in
Constantinople. St Theodore, who became
Abbot here in 799, reactivated the community
and revised its rule, attracting vast numbers
of monks.
Since
the tenth century the chief centre of Orthodox
monasticism has been Athos, a rocky peninsula
in North Greece jutting out into the Aegean
and culminating at its tip in a peak 6,670
feet high. Known as 'the Holy Mountain',
Athos contains twenty 'ruling' monasteries
and a large number of smaller houses, as
well as hermits' cells; the whole peninsula
is given up entirely to monastic settlements,
and in the days of its greatest expansion
it is said to have contained nearly forty
thousand monks. The Great Lavra, the oldest
of the twenty ruling monasteries, has by
itself produced 36 Patriarchs and more
than 144 bishops: this gives some idea
of the importance of Athos in Orthodox
history.
There
are no 'Orders' in Orthodox monasticism.
In the west a monk belongs to the Carthusian,
the Cistercian, or some other Order; in
the east he is simply a member of the one
great fellowship which includes all monks
and nuns, although of course he is attached
to a particular monastic house. Western
writers sometimes refer to Orthodox monks
as 'Basilian monks' or 'monks of the Basilian
Order', but this is not correct. St Basil
is an important figure in Orthodox monasticism,
but he founded no Order, and although two
of his works are known as the Longer Rules
and the Shorter Rules, these are in no
sense comparable to the Rule of St Benedict.
A
characteristic figure in Orthodox monasticism
is the 'elder' or 'old man' (Greek geron;
Russian starets, plural startsy). The elder
is a monk of spiritual discernment and
wisdom, whom others - either monks or people
in the world - adopt as their guide and
spiritual director. He is sometimes a priest,
but often a lay monk; he receives no special
ordination or appointment to the work of
eldership, but is guided to it by the direct
inspiration of the Spirit. A woman
as well as a man may be called to this
ministry, for Orthodoxy has its 'spiritual
mothers' as well as its 'spiritual fathers'.
The elder sees in a concrete and practical
way what the will of God is in relation
to each person who comes to consult him:
this is the elder's special gift or charisma.
The earliest and most celebrated of the
monastic startsy was St Antony himself.
The first part of his life, from eighteen
to fifty-five, he spent in withdrawal and
solitude; then, though still living in
the desert, he abandoned this life of strict
enclosure, and began to receive visitors.
A group of disciples gathered round him,
and besides these disciples there was a
far larger circle of people who came, often
from a long distance, to ask his advice;
so great was the stream of visitors that,
as Antony's biographer Athanasius put it,
he became a physician to all Egypt. Antony
has had many successors, and in most of
them the same outward pattern of events
is found a withdrawal in order to return.
A monk must first withdraw, and in silence
must learn the truth about himself and
God. Then, after this long and rigorous
preparation in solitude, having gained
the gifts of discernment which are required
of an elder, he can open the door of his
cell and admit the world from which formerly
he fled.
Both
in the capital and in other centres, the
monastic movement continued to flourish
as it was shaped during the early centuries
of Christianity. The Constantinopolitan
monastery of Studion was a community of
over 1,000 monks, dedicated to liturgicalprayer,
obedience, and asceticism. They frequently
opposed both government and ecclesiastical
officialdom, defending fundamental Christian
principles against political compromises.
The Studite Rule (guidelines of monastic
life) was adopted by daughter monasteries,
particularly the famous Monastery of the
Caves (Pecherskaya Lavra) in Kiev (in Russia).
In 963 Emperor Nicephorus II Phocas offered
his protection to St. Athanasius the Athonite,
whose laura (large monastery) is still
the centre of the monastic republic of
Mt. Athos (under the protection of Greece).
The writings of St. Symeon the New Theologian
(949-1022), abbot of the monastery of St.
Mamas in Constantinople, are a most remarkable
example of Eastern Christian mysticism,
and they exercised a decisive influence
on later developments of Orthodox spirituality.
Historically,
the most significant event was the missionary
expansion of Byzantine Christianity throughout
eastern Europe. In the 9th century, Bulgaria
had become an Orthodox nation and under
Tsar Symeon (893-927) had established its
own autocephalous (administratively independent)
patriarchate in Preslav. Under Tsar Samuel
(976-1014) another autocephalous Bulgarian
centre appeared in Ohrid. Thus, a Slavic-speaking
daughter church of Byzantium dominated
the Balkan Peninsula. It lost its political
and ecclesiastical independence after the
conquests of the Byzantine emperor Basil
II (976-1025), but the seed of a Slavic
Orthodoxy had been solidly planted. In
988 the Kievan prince Vladimir embraced
Byzantine Orthodoxy and married a sister
of Emperor Basil. After that time, Russia
became an ecclesiastical province of the
church of Byzantium, headed by a Greek
or, less frequently, a Russian metropolitan
appointed from Constantinople. This statute
of dependence was not challenged by the
Russians until 1448. During the entire
period, Russia adopted and developed the
spiritual, artistic, and social heritage
of Byzantine civilization, which was received
through intermediary Bulgarian translators.
(See also below under The church and the
world--Missions: ancient and modern).
Relations
with the West
Relations
with the Latin West, meanwhile, were becoming
more ambiguous. On the one hand, the Byzantines
considered the entire Western world as
a part of the Roman oikoumene of which
the Byzantine emperor was the head and
in which the Roman bishop enjoyed honorary
primacy. On the other hand, the Frankish
and German emperors in Europe were challenging
this nominal scheme, and the internal decadence
of the Roman papacy was such that the powerful
patriarch of Byzantium seldom took the
trouble of entertaining any relations with
it. From the time of Patriarch Photius
(patriarch 858-867, 877-886), the Byzantines
had formally condemned the Filioque clause,
which stated that the Holy Spirit proceeded
from the Father and from the Son, as an
illegitimate and heretical addition to
the Nicene Creed, but in 879-880 Photius
and Pope John VIII had apparently settled
the matter to Photius' satisfaction. In
1014, however, the Filioque was introduced
in Rome, and communion was broken again.The
incident of 1054, wrongly considered as
the date of the Schism (which had actually
been developing over a period of time),
was, in fact, an unsuccessful attempt at
restoring relations, disintegrating as
they were because of political competition
in Italy between the Byzantines and the
Germans and also because of disciplinary
changes (enforced celibacy of the clergy,
in particular) imposed by the reform movement
that had been initiated by the monks of
Cluny, France. Conciliatory efforts of
Emperor Constantine Monomachus (reigned
1042-55) were powerless to overcome either
the aggressive and uninformed attitudes
of the Frankish clergy, who were now governing
the Roman Church, or the intransigence
of Byzantine patriarch Michael Cerularius
(1043-58). When papal legates came to Constantinople
in 1054, they found no common language
with the patriarch. Both sides exchanged
recriminations on points of doctrine and
ritual and finally hurled anathemas of
excommunication at each other, thus provoking
what has been called the Schism.
The
Crusades
After
the Battle of Manzikert (1071) in eastern
Asia Minor, Byzantium lost most of Anatolia
to the Turks and ceased to be a world power.
Partly solicited by the Byzantines, the
Western Crusades proved another disaster:
they brought the establishment of Latin
principalities on former imperial territories
and the replacement of Eastern bishops
by a Latin hierarchy. The culminating point
was, of course, the sack of Constantinople
itself in 1204, the enthronement of a Latin
emperor on the Bosporus, and the installation
of a Latin patriarch in Hagia Sophia. Meanwhile,
the Balkan countries of Bulgaria and Serbia
secured national emancipation with Western
help, the Mongols sacked Kiev (1240), and
Russia became a part of the Mongol Empire
of Genghis Khan.
The
Byzantine heritage survived this series
of tragedies mainly because the Orthodox
Church showed an astonishing internal strength
and a remarkable administrative flexibility.
Until the Crusades, and in spite of such
incidents as the exchanges of anathemas
between Michael Cerularius and the papal
legates in 1054, Byzantine Christians did
not consider the break with the West as
a final schism. The prevailing opinion
was that the break of communion with the
West was due to a temporary take-over of
the venerable Roman see by misinformed
and uneducated German "barbarians," and
that eventually the former unity of the
Christian world under the one legitimate
emperor--that of Constantinople--and the
five patriarchates would be restored. This
utopian scheme came to an end when the
Crusaders replaced the Greek patriarchs
of Antioch and Jerusalem with Latin prelates,
after they had captured these ancient cities
(1098-99). Instead of reestablishing Christian
unity in the common struggle against Islam,
the Crusades demonstrated how far apart
Latins and Greeks really were from each
other. When finally, in 1204, after a shameless
sacking of the city, the Venetian Thomas
Morosini was installed as patriarch of
Constantinople and confirmed as such by
Pope Innocent III, the Greeks realized
the full seriousness of papal claims over
the universal church: theological polemics
and national hatreds were combined to tear
the two churches further apart.
After
the capture of the city, the Orthodox patriarch
John Camaterus fled to Bulgaria and died
there in 1206. A successor, Michael Autorianus,
was elected in Nicaea (1208), where he
enjoyed the support of a restored Greek
empire. Although he lived in exile, this
patriarch was recognized as legitimate
by the entire Orthodox world. He continued
to administer the immense Russian metropolitanate.
From him, and not from his Latin competitor,
the Bulgarian Church received again its
right for ecclesiastical independence with
a restored patriarchate in Trnovo (1235).
It was also with the Byzantine government
at Nicaea that the Orthodox Serbs negotiated
the establishment of their own national
church; their spiritual leader, St. Sava,
was installed as autocephalous archbishop
of Serbia in 1219.
The
Mongol Invasion
The
invasion of Russia by the Mongols had disastrous
effects on the future of Russian
civilization, but the church survived,
both as the only unified social organization
and as the main bearer of the Byzantine
heritage. The "metropolitan of Kiev
and all Russia," who was appointed
from Nicaea or from Constantinople, was
a major political power, respected by the
Mongol Khans. Exempt from taxes paid by
the local princes to the Mongols and reporting
only to his superior (the ecumenical patriarch),
the head of the Russian Church--though
he had to abandon his cathedral see of
Kiev that had been devastated by the Mongols--acquired
an unprecedented moral prestige. He retained
ecclesiastical control over immense territories
from the Carpathian Mountains to the Volga
River, over the newly created episcopal
see of Sarai (near the Caspian Sea), which
was the capital of the Mongols, as well
as over the Western principalities of the
former Kievan Empire--even after they succeeded
in winning independence (e.g., Galicia)
or fell under the political control of
Lithuania and Poland.
Attempts
at ecclesiastical union
In
1261 the Nicaean emperor Michael Palaeologus
recaptured Constantinople from the Latins,
and an Orthodox patriarch again occupied
the see in Hagia Sophia. From 1261 to 1453
the Palaeologan dynasty presided over an
empire that was embattled from every side,
torn apart by civil wars, and gradually
shrinking to the very limits of the imperial
city itself. The church, meanwhile, kept
much of its former prestige, exercising
jurisdiction over a much greater territory,
which included Russia as well as the distant
Caucasus, parts of the Balkans, and the
vast regions occupied by the Turks. Several
patriarchs of this late period--e.g., Arsenius
Autorianus (patriarch 1255-59, 1261-65),
Athanasius I (patriarch 1289-93, 1303-10),
John Calecas (patriarch 1334-47), and Philotheus
Coccinus (patriarch 1353-54, 1364-76)--showed
great independence from the imperial power,
though remaining faithful to the ideal
of the Byzantine oikoumene.
Without
the military backing of a strong empire,
the patriarchate of Constantinople was,
of course, unable to assert its jurisdiction
over the churches of Bulgaria and Serbia,
which had gained independence during the
days of the Latin occupation. In 1346 the
Serbian Church even proclaimed itself a
patriarchate; a short-lived protest by
Constantinople ended with recognition in
1375. In Russia, Byzantine ecclesiastical
diplomacy was involved in a violent civil
strife; a fierce competition arose between
the grand princes of Moscow and Lithuania,
who both aspired to become leaders of a
Russian state liberated from the Mongol
yoke. The "metropolitan of Kiev and
all Russia" was by now residing in
Moscow, and often, as in the case of the
metropolitan Alexis (1354-78), played a
directing role in the Muscovite government.
The ecclesiastical support of Moscow by
the church was decisive in the final victory
of the Muscovites and had a pronounced
impact on later Russian history. The dissatisfied
western Russian principalities (which would
later constitute the Ukraine) could only
obtain--with the strong support of their
Polish and Lithuanian overlords--the temporary
appointment of separate metropolitans in
Galicia and Belorussia. Eventually, late
in the 14th century, the metropolitan residing
in Moscow again centralized ecclesiastical
power in Russia.
Relations
with the Western Church
One
of the major reasons behind this power
struggle in the northern area of the Byzantine
world was the problem of relations with
the Western Church. To most Byzantine churchmen,
the young Muscovite principality appeared
to be a safer bulwark of Orthodoxy than
the Western-oriented princes who had submitted
to Catholic Poland and Lithuania. Also,
an important political party in Byzantium
itself favoured union with the West in
the hope that a new Western Crusade might
be made against the menacing Turks. The
problem of ecclesiastical union was, in
fact, the most burning issue during the
entire Palaeologan period.
Emperor
Michael Palaeologus (1259-82) had to face
the aggressive ambition of the Sicilian
Norman king Charles of Anjou, who dreamed
of restoring the Latin empire in Constantinople.
To gain the valuable support of the papacy
against Charles, Michael sent a Latin-inspired
confession of faith to Pope Gregory X,
and his delegates accepted union with Rome
at the Council of Lyons (1274). This capitulation
before the West, sponsored by the Emperor,
won little support in the church. During
his lifetime, Michael succeeded in imposing
an Eastern Catholic patriarch, John Beccus,
upon the Church of Constantinople, but
upon Michael's death an Orthodox council
condemned the union (1285).
Throughout
the 14th century, numerous other attempts
at negotiating union were initiated by
the emperors of Byzantium. Formal meetings
were held in 1333, 1339, 1347, and 1355.
In 1369 Emperor John V Palaeologus was
personally converted to the Roman faith
in Rome. All these attempts were initiated
by the government and not by the church,
for an obvious political reason; i.e.,
the hope for Western help against the Turks.
But the attempts brought no results either
on the ecclesiastical or on the political
levels. The majority of Byzantine Orthodox
churchmen were not opposed to the idea
of union but considered that it could only
be brought about through a formal ecumenical
council at which East and West would meet
on equal footing, as they had done in the
early centuries of the church. The project
of a council was promoted with particular
consistency by John Cantacuzenus, who,
after a brief reign as emperor (1347-54),
became a monk but continued to exercise
great influence on all ecclesiastical and
political events. The idea of an ecumenical
council was initially rejected by the popes,
but it was revived in the 15th century
with the temporary triumph of conciliarist
ideas (which advocated more power to councils
and less to popes) in the West at the councils
of Constance and Basel. Challenged with
the possibility that the Greeks would unite
with the conciliarists and not with Rome,
Pope Eugenius IV called an ecumenical council
of union in Ferrara, which later moved
to Florence.
The
Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-45) lasted
for months and allowed for long theological
debates. Emperor John VIII Palaeologus,
Patriarch Joseph, and numerous bishops
and theologians represented the Eastern
Church. They finally stage for the soul's
purification between death and heaven),
and the Roman primacy. Political desperation
and the fear of facing the Turks again,
without Western support, was the decisive
factor that caused them to place their
signatures of approval on the Decree of
Union (July 6, 1439). The metropolitan
of Ephesus, Mark Eugenicus, alone refused
to sign. Upon their return to Constantinople,
most other delegates also renounced their
acceptance of the council and no significant
change
occurred in the relations between the churches.
The
official proclamation of the union in Hagia
Sophia was postponed until December 12,
1452; however, on May 29, 1453, Constantinople
fell to the Ottoman Turks. Sultan Mehmed
II transformed Hagia Sophia into an Islamic
mosque, and the few partisans of the union
fled to Italy.
Theological
and monastic renaissance
Paradoxically,
the pitiful history of Byzantium under
the Palaeologan emperors coincided with
an astonishing intellectual, spiritual,
and artistic renaissance that influenced
the entire Eastern Christian world. The
renaissance was not without fierce controversy
and polarization. In 1337 Barlaam the Calabrian,
one of the representatives of Byzantine
Humanism, attacked the spiritual practices
of the Hesychast (from the Greek word hesychia,
meaning quiet) monks, who claimed that
Christian asceticism and spirituality could
lead to the vision of the "uncreated
light" of God. Barlaam's position
was upheld by several other theologians,
including Akyndinus and Nicephorus Gregoras.
After much debate, the church gave its
support to the main spokesman of the monks,
Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), who showed
himself as one of the foremost theologians
of medieval Byzantium. The councils of
1341, 1347, and 1351 adopted the theology
of Palamas, and, after 1347, the patriarchal
throne was consistently occupied by his
disciples. John VI Cantacuzenus, who, as
emperor, presided over the council of 1351,
gave his full support to the Hesychasts.
His close friend, Nicholas Cabasilas, in
his spiritual writings on the divine liturgy
and the sacraments, defined the universal
Christian significance of Palamite theology.
The influence of the religious zealots,
who triumphed in Constantinople, outlasted
the empire itself and contributed to the
perpetuation of Orthodox spirituality under
the Turkish rule. It also spread to the
Slavic countries, especially Bulgaria and
Russia. The monastic revival in northern
Russia during the last half of the 14th
century, which was associated with the
name of St. Sergius of Radonezh, as well
as the contemporaneous revival of iconography
(e.g., the work of the great painter Andrey
Rublyov), would have been unthinkable without
constant contacts with Mt. Athos, the centre
of Hesychasm, and with the spiritual and
intellectual life of Byzantium. |
