The transfer of the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople in 324 and the protection accorded to the church by Emperor Constantine and his successors created an entirely new condition in Christendom. In the West, barbarian invasions soon greatly reduced the influence of the empire, but in the East it stood firm. Constantinople, the "New Rome," survived in that role until 1453. For more than a millennium it was the recognized center of Orthodox Christianity for much of eastern Europe and the Middle East.
The survival of the empire in the East assured an active role for the emperor in the affairs of the church. This does not mean, however, that the relations between church and state in Byzantium can be expressed in any simple formula or concept. Unquestionably, the Christian empire inherited from pagan times the administrative and financial routine of overseeing religious affairs, and this routine was applied to the Christian church, almost automatically and without objections from anyone, by Constantine. Nevertheless, the Christian faith was incompatible with the Hellenistic and Roman idea of the emperor as a divine being: Christ was the only king, the only kyrios. So, following the pattern set by Eusebius of Caesarea, who delivered a funeral oration for Constantine (337), the Byzantines though of the emperor as Christ's representative or messenger, "equal to the apostles" (isapostolos), responsible particularly for the propagation of Christianity among pagans and for the "externals" of the Christian religion, such as administration and finances (so the title used by Eusebius, episkopos ton ektos).
The imperial role in the affairs of the church never developed into a fixed, legally defined system. Above all there was one decisive factor: the emperor's doctrinal orthodoxy. A heretical emperor was not to be obeyed. Numerous heroes of the faith - Athanasius of Alexandria (d. 373), John Chrysostom (d. 407), Maximus the Confessor (d. 662), John of Damascus (d. ca. 750), Theodore of Studius (759-826) - were venerated as saints after their deaths because of their resistance to imperial will, and the memory of many emperors, particularly Constantius I (337-361), Leo III (717-741), Constantine V (741-775), and Michael VIII (1259-1282), were formally cursed because of their support for heterodox doctrines.
In court ceremonial and in official texts they often described the emperor in terms of Old testament kingship; as David and Solomon anticipated the kingdom of the Messiah, so the emperor of the Christians was necessarily seen as an image of Christ. He convened councils and could, if he wished, exercise a decisive influence on ecclesiastical appointments including those of the patriarch of Constantinople and of those prelates who play an important diplomatic role in Byzantine foreign affairs (such as the archbishop of Ochrid, and the metropolitan of Russia). Out of 122 patriarchs of Constantinople elected between 379 and 1451, thirty-six were forced to reign under imperial pressure. However, we must understand the relative dependence of the patriarchal office upon the emperor in the context of the instability of the imperial office itself: two-thirds of all Byzantine emperors were either killed or dethroned, and many were, at least partially, the victims of their own religious policies.
As Christianity was becoming the official state religion of the Roman state - a process that began under Constantine and was completed under Theodosius I (379-395) - the church had no administrative structure of a universal scale. The Council of Nicaea (325) acknowledged only the authority of provincial episcopal synods, presided over by their "metropolitans" and invested with the power of appointing new bishops (canon four and five). It also recognized that some episcopal sees enjoyed traditional prestige that transcended the limits of a single province: the three sees mentioned specifically are Alexandria, Antioch and Rome (canon 6). In the East both Alexandria and Antioch played a significant role in ecclesiastical affairs and theological controversies of the fourth century; they were unquestionably the intellectual and cultural centers of Eastern Christendom, and by the fifth century their incumbents were generally using the title "patriarch."
The archbishop of Alexandria - also designated "pope" - headed a church that not only had its roots in early Christianity, but also controlled the three civil "dioceses": (large administrative units) of Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis, where the masses had early accepted the Christian faith. Alexandria was a hotbed of theological dispute and of schisms.
In Antioch, the exegetical tradition was different from that of Antioch, less philosophical and more oriented toward biblical history. There was a long resistance to the Nicaean identification of Christ as "one substance" with the Father, and after the triumph of Nicaean orthodoxy, some Antiochenes defended a Christology that emphasized the genuine humanity of Jesus. Ecclesiastically the "patriarchate" of Antioch, which included the civil "diocese" of the East, was less monolithic than Egypt: it included a mixed (Greek and Syriac) population and sent successful missions to Persia, Armenia and Georgia. After 431 some of its theologians who followed the condemned teaching of Nestorius emigrated to Persia. Divided, in the fifth and sixth centuries, between Chalcedonians and Monophysites, Antioch lost much of its prestige and influence before being taken over first by the Persians, then by the Arabs.
In the decades following the Council of Nicaea (325), a third major ecclesiastical center developed in the East. Constantinople had nothing of the antiquity and prestige of Alexandria or Antioch, but closeness to the imperial court gave its bishop a singular advantage in influencing ecclesiastical affairs. Thus in 381, as Theodosius I gathered the second ecumenical council to settle the Arian dispute, they formally recognized the bishop of the new imperial capital as having "priority of honor" after the bishop of Rome, because Constantinople was "the New Rome" (canon 3). The frankly political grounds for Constantinople's elevation were further emphasized in canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon (451), which became the charter of the capital's ecclesiastical rights. This Council gave the bishop of Constantinople jurisdiction over the civil diocese of Pontus, Asia and Thrace - creating a "patriarchate" comparable with those of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch - and bestowed upon him the right to send missionary bishops to "barbarian lands" situated beyond these dioceses.
Historically, the creation of a Constantinopolitan primacy by the councils of Constantinople and Chalcedon was directed primarily against what the emperors considered an exaggerated power of Alexandria, which tended to impose its particular (and sometimes extremist) interpretation of the faith defined in Nicaea and in Ephesus. The councils of Constantinople and Chalcedon gave a more balanced definition of that faith that was more acceptable in Antioch and in Rome.
The formulation of canon 28 of Chalcedon had even wider implications: it affirmed that the privileges of the "old Rome" were, like the new privileges of Constantinople, granted by "the Fathers," that consequently they were of human origin and had no connection with the logia of Christ addressed to the apostle Peter. In the fifth century the idea that the Roman bishop enjoyed primacy because he was the successor of Peer was firmly implanted in Rome, and served as the main argument for Pope Leo the Great (440-461) when he protested against the adoption of canon 28 at Chalcedon. Furthermore, the prevailing Roman interpretation of the Eastern primacies was that they also were created by Peter, who personally preached in Antioch (Galatians 2) and, according to tradition, sent his disciple Mark to Alexandria. In this scheme there was no place for any primacy of Constantinople.
To the Easterners the scheme seemed quite artificial. They did not consider that the apostolic foundation of a church involved jurisdictional rights, since so many Eastern cities - Jerusalem in the first place - could claim them, and they interpreted all primacies, including those of Alexandria, Antioch, and, indeed, Rome, in a pragmatic way, as a natural consequence of their being "major cities." Therefore, the new role of Constantinople appeared quite natural to them.
The difference between the Eastern and Western approach to the problem of primacies is best illustrated by the history of the church of Jerusalem. Mentioned under its Roman name of Aelia by the Council of Nicaea (canon 7), it remained in the orbit of Antioch until after 451. Using its prestige as a pilgrimage center, it then acquired the status of a separate patriarchate, including the three provinces of Palestine, because of clever maneuvering by its bishop, Juvenal (422-458). However, in the order of the five main patriarchates its apostolic, or indeed divine, foundation was never used to justify anything but last place.
Thus, as Justinian embarked on a major attempt to restore the empire's universality by reconquest of the West, the Byzantine vision of the universal church was that of a pentarchy of patriarchs - of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem - united in faith, equal in rights, but strictly bound by an order of precedence enshrined in imperial law. The Monophysite schism, the Islamic conquest, and, in the West, the rise of the papacy soon ended the pentarchy as a concrete historical reality, but it survived as an ideal of the Byzantine vision of the Christian universe.
With the decline of ancient Rome and internal dissensions in the other Eastern patriarchates, the church of Constantinople became, between the sixth and the eleventh centuries, the richest and the most influential center of Christendom. As a symbol and expression of this universal prestige, Justinian built a church that remains the masterpiece of Byzantine architecture: the temple of the Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia. Completed in the amazingly short period of four and a half years (532-537), it became the heart of Christian Byzantium. The term "Great Church," first applied to the building itself, also designated the patriarchate, of which Hagia Sophia would remain the cathedral church for more than nine centuries. Its main and most visible structure consists of an immense square hall, covered by a wide dome. The light coming from all directions, the marble walls, and the golden mosaics have often been seen as representing the cosmos, upon which heaven itself had descended. The overwhelming impression produced upon Greeks and foreigners alike is recorded in numerous contemporary texts.
Under John the faster (582-595) the title "ecumenical patriarch" was adopted by the archbishop of Constantinople. This title was interpreted by Pope Gregory the Great as a challenge to papal primacy, but in fact it did not imply a claim to universal jurisdiction but, rather, to a permanent and essentially political position in the oikoumene (the orbis christianorum, the Christian world), which the emperor ideally headed. Together with the latter, the patriarch was responsible for the well-being of society, occasionally substituting for the emperor as regent. The Epanagoge, a legal compendium of the ninth century, describes the respective rights and duties of the dyarchy of emperor and patriarch.
Ecclesiastical canons and imperial laws regulated the election of patriarchs. The metropolitans of the synod choose three candidates so that the emperor could pick one, while reserving for himself the option of making another choice as well. This openly admitted role of the emperor - which formally contradicted canonical proscriptions against the choice of clerics by civil rulers - was understandable in view of the political functions of the "ecumenical" patriarch in the state.
Once enthroned in Hagia Sophia, the patriarch administered the church together with a "permanent synod" of metropolitans and a large staff. His jurisdiction covered the civil dioceses of Asia, Pontus and Thrace. In addition numerous missionary dioceses, subject to the patriarchate, exist in the Caucasus, the Crimea and Slavic lands. A spectacular new expansion took place with the conversion of Russia (988-989).
Chosen mostly from the secular clergy of Constantinople in the earlier period, more frequently from the monasteries after the thirteenth century, and sometimes promoted directly from the lay state, the patriarchs, with few exceptions were men of learning - and sometimes authentic saints. The often stormy politics of the court and the never-ending christological controversies necessarily involved the patriarchs.
The Roman popes, although they never formally recognized the title "ecumenical patriarch" for the incumbents of the see of Constantinople and occasionally obtained from them the verbal acknowledgment of their "Petrine" succession as an important factor in the exercise of their primatial authority, could do nothing but accept the real influence of the imperial church, especially during their visits to Constantinople. One of them, Pope Martin I (649-655), was judged and deposed in Constantinople by an ecclesiastical tribunal presided over by the Monothelite patriarch Peter.
Thus, the see of Constantinople's "equal privileges" with "Old Rome" was essential fact of history but it certainly could not pretend to doctrinal infallibility.
In the seventh century, when the Islamic wave swept over the ancient Christian and Byzantine provinces of Palestine, Syria, Egypt and North Africa, stopping only at the gates of Constantinople, most Christians of those areas had already severed their ties with the imperial Orthodox church. Egypt had been almost entirely Monophysite since the middle of the fifth century; so were the Armenian regions in eastern Asia Minor and at least half the population in Syria. The efforts of Justinian, and later the doctrinal compromises of Heraklios and his Monothelite successors, had failed to unify the empire religiously. Furthermore, the Monophysite schism that started with a dispute between Greek-speaking theologians over the true identity of Jesus Christ had developed into cultural, ethnic and political antagonism. In the Middle East in the seventh century, the Chalcedonian Orthodox camp was composed almost entirely of Greeks loyal to the empire, whereas the indigenous communities of Copts, Syrians and Armenians refused to accept the decree of the Council of Chalcedon and resented the brutal attempts of the imperial authorities to exile their leaders and impose religious conformity by force.
The Monophysite schism, followed by the Arab invasion, the success of which was partially due to dissension among Christians, left the patriarch of Constantinople alone as the foremost representative of Eastern Christianity within the borders of the empire. In Alexandria, Antioch and particularly Jerusalem there remained "Melchite" (imperial) minorities, headed by their patriarchs, but they had little influence in the universal church. For them, during the long centuries of Islamic domination, the problem was one of survival, which they solved primarily by seeking and receiving cultural, psychological and material help from Constantinople.
Reduced in size to the limits of western Asia Minor, the southern Balkan Peninsula and southern Italy, the Byzantine Empire found enough strength for successful resistance to Islam. During that struggle, between 726 and 843, Byzantine Christendom went through a major crisis that contributed much to its medieval shape: the crisis of iconoclasm and the eventual triumph of Orthodox iconodulia (reverence for images).
We cannot reduce the doctrinal, philosophical and theological background of Byzantine iconoclasm to a simple scheme. The reluctance to use and venerate images in worship goes back to the prohibition of any representation of God in the Old testament Iconoclasm also was consistent with a certain Platonic spiritualism popular among Greek Christians, which explains why trends hostiles to images existed in early Christianity. It is beyond doubt, however, that imperial initiative started the iconoclastic movement of the eight century and that it had political implications in the framework of the struggle of the empire against Islam. Indeed, the Islamic beliefs in the absolute transcendence and invisibility of God and sharp polemics against Christian "idolatry" were essential arguments of the Muslim anti-Byzantine propaganda. Emperors Leo III (717-741) and Constantine V (741-775), sponsors of iconoclasm, decided to "clean" the Christian church of "idolatry," in order to fight Islamic ideology more successfully.
As images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints began to be removed from public places and churches by order of Leo iii (beginning in 726), the patriarch Germanos (715-730) - and also Pope Gregory II (715-731) - defended the veneration of icons, and John of Damascus, a theologian living in Muslim-dominated areas, wrote treatises gainst iconoclasm. The argument was that God, though invisible by nature, can and must be represented in his human nature, as Jesus Christ. According to the Orthodox, iconoclasm amounted to a denial of the Incarnation. An iconoclastic council, organized by Emperor Constantine V in 754, answered that a representation of Christ in his human nature implied either a denial of his divinity, which is inseparable from his humanity, or a Nestorian breaking up of his one person into two beings.
The debate continued - primarily on those christological grounds - for more than a century. Iconoclastic repressions were severe, and the Orthodox counted many martyrs in their midst. Besides John of Damascus, two major Byzantine theologians stood for the veneration of icons: Theodore of Studios (759-826) and Patriarch Nikephoros (806-815). Popular support of the veneration was led by the influential and numerous monastic communities, which then faced imperial wrath. Finally, Empress Irene in 787 gathered the seventh ecumenical council (also known as the Second Council of Nicaea). It rejected iconoclasm and endorsed the veneration (proskynesis) of icons, carefully distinguishing it from worship (latreia), which is due to God alone. After a second upsurge of iconoclasm there was a final "triumph of Orthodoxy" in 843.
The consequences of the crisis were both theological and cultural. In the orthodox East images were accepted as a major means of communion with God, so that art, theology and spirituality became inseparable. On another level the struggle on behalf of the icons enhanced the prestige of monasticism, which was acknowledged, more than in earlier centuries, as an effective counterweight to the arbitrary rule of the emperors. At the same time the iconoclastic crisis furthered the estrangement between the Eastern and Western halves of Christendom. Fully involved in the struggle with Islam, the iconoclastic emperors neglected their power and influence in Italy. Furthermore, in retaliation against the pope's opposition to their religious policies, they transferred Illyricum, Sicily and southern Italy from papal jurisdiction to that of the patriarchate of Constantinople. Humiliated and abandoned by his traditional protectors, and fearful of Lombard invasions, Pope Stephen II met with the Frankish king Pepin the Short at Ponthion (754), accepted the king's protection, and obtained his sponsorship in the creation of a papal state in Italy made up of former Byzantine territories.
The loss of the Middle East to the Arabs and the gradual estrangement between East and West could have led the patriarchate of Constantinople to become the center of a Greek church, limited ethnically and culturally. However, immediately following the end of iconoclasm, the church of Byzantium began a spectacular missionary expansion that led to the Christianization of eastern Europe.
In 860-861 two brothers from Thessaloniki, Constantine and Methodios, successfully preached Christianity to the Khazars in the Crimea. In 863, they were sent to the Slavs of central Europe because Rastislac, prince of the Moravians, had requested missionaries from Byzantium. The Moravian mission of the brothers began with a complete and literal translation of Scripture and liturgy into the language of the Slavs. In the process the brothers created a new alphabet and vocabulary suitable for Christian usage. Furthermore, they justified the policy of translating essential Christian texts into the vernacular by references to the miracle of Pentecost (Acts 3).
Competing Frankish missionaries fiercely opposed this policy, with whom the brothers had discussions in Moravia and later in Venice, and whom they accused of holding "the heresy of the three languages" (the belief that Christian worship is possible only in Hebrew, Greek and Latin). Within a prologue to the Gospel of John written in Slavic verse, Constantine (better known under his monastic name of Cyril) paraphrased St. Paul (1 Corinthians 14:19) in proclaiming the right of the Slavs to hear the Word in their own languages: "I had rather speak five words that all the brethren will understand than ten thousand words which are incomprehensible."
Eventually the Germans forced the Byzantine missionaries to leave Moravia. Traveling to Rome, they received the formal support of popes Adrian II (867-872) and John VIII (872-882). After the death of Constantine-Cyril in Rome, Pope John consecrated Methodios as bishop of Sirmium and charged him with the mission to the Slavs. However, the authority of the Pope was insufficient to secure the success of the mission; Methodios was tried and imprisoned by German bishops, so that Moravia joined Latin Christianity. Eventually the entire Western church adopted the principle of accepting only Latin in the Liturgy, in sharp contrast with the Byzantine missionary development, based upon translations and uses of the vernacular. The Moravian disciples of Constantine-Cyril and Methodios found refuge in Bulgaria, particularly in the Macedonian center of Ochrid (St. Clement, St. Naum), where Slavic Christianity prospered in accordance with the Byzantine model.
The conversion of Bulgaria was practically temporary with the Moravian mission. As in Moravia and many other areas of Europe, the political leadership of the country was instrumental in the conversion, which had been prepared by missionaries and diplomats from Byzantium. In 865 Khan Boris of Bulgaria became a Christian, with emperor Michael III acting as his godfather. After an attempt to join the jurisdiction of Rome (866-869), Boris placed his country in the Byzantine religious orbit. His son and successor, Symeon (893-927), and later the western Bulgarian czar Samuel (976-1014), made their respective capitals of Trnovo and Ochrid into important religious centers where Slavs successfully appropriated Byzantine liturgy, theology and religious culture. Since Byzantine canon law in principle admitted a multiplicity of ecclesiastical centers, Bulgarian czars created independent patriarchates in their capitals. However, as they began to claim the imperial title for themselves, Byzantium, having regained its former military might, especially under Emperor Basil II (976-1025), put a temporary end to the independent existence of Bulgaria, but it did not entirely suppress the principle and the practice of worship in the Slavic tongue.
Also contemporary was the Byzantine mission to the Russians. In 866, Patriarch Photios, in an encyclical to Eastern patriarchs, announced that the Russians had been converted and had accepted a bishop from Constantinople. This initial conversion concerned only Byzantine cities in the Crimea. More significant was the conversion of Olga, the powerful princess of Kiev in 957, who assumed the Christian name of Helen in honor of the reigning Byzantine empress, and the "conversion of Russia," which occurred in 988-989 under Prince Vladimir, who took the name of Basil and married Emperor Basil II's sister, Anna. Under Vladimir, Byzantine Orthodoxy became the official religion of the Russian state, with its major centers in Kiev and Novgorod.
At the same period missionary activities were happening in the Caucasus, particularly among the Alani, under the initiative of patriarch Nicholas Mystikos (901-907, 912-925).
Thus, around the beginning of the second millennium, the Byzantine church exercised its ministry in a territory extending from northern Russia to the Arab-occupied Middle East, and from the Adriatic to the Caucasus. Its center, Constantinople, seemed to have no rival - not only in terms of power or wealth but also in terms of intellectual, artistic and literary achievements.
A certain theological polarization between the Greek East and the Latin West goes back at least to the fourth century. For instance, Trinitarian theology was formulated differently by the Cappadocian fathers and by St. Augustine, with a greater insistence by the Greeks upon personal distinctiveness, and a greater emphasis by the Latins upon a philosophical definition of God as one simple essence. Also, Latins and Greeks often adopted divergent attitudes toward the Monophysites, with Rome remaining much more rigidly attached to the formula of the "two natures" adopted at Chalcedon, whereas Constantinople was more ready to remember that St. Cyril of Alexandria had spoken of "one incarnated nature." There was also increasing variety in disciplinary and liturgical practices.
More than any other difference, ecclesiological issues, in particular the increasingly divergent understanding of the primacy of Rome, began to strain relations between East and West. The leadership position of Rome - never denied in Byzantium - continued to be explained there (along with the eminence of the various Eastern sees) in a pragmatic way, without any decisive importance being attached to apostolicity. This explanation was enshrined in conciliar legislation, which the East considered as common tradition, even though the Romans in due time protested the publication of texts denying that Rome had received its primacy from Christ, though the apostle Peter. Fortunately both sides refrained for centuries from pushing these divergent positions to the point of final rupture. In the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, however, conflicts arose in which cultural and political elements were intermingled with doctrinal and disciplinary issues.
The issue of the Filioque became, in the iconoclastic and posticonoclastic periods, a major source of conflict. The creed of Nicaea-Constantinople, which served as the principal expression of faith in the universal church, had been interpolated in the West with the Latin word Filioque. This interpolation, first made in Spain in the seventh century, affirmed that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son. The interpolated text soon became popular - partly because it suited the Augustinian explanation of the Trinity better than the original version - and in the eighth century it was used throughout Frankish Europe.
Charlemagne and his theologians, who were looking for an opportunity to accuse the competing Eastern Empire of heresy, refused to accept the Acts of the Second Council if Nicaea (787) because they contained the original form of the creed and traditional Greek formulations of the Trinitarian dogma. The Libri Carolini addressed to the pope by Charlemagne to justify his position were thus the first written monuments in a polemic that lasted for centuries. At first the popes defended the Greek position and opposed the interpolation. Only in 866 did Pope Nicholas I sponsor the activities of German missionaries in Bulgaria, implicity condoning the use of the interpolated creed among newly converted Bulgarians.
Patriarch Photios, who considered Bulgaria part of his jurisdiction, became the first Greek theologian to give a complete refutation of the Filioque. The conflict between Pope Nicholas and Photios, which concerned issues of authority as well as the Filioque problem, was eventually solved. In 879-880 a solemn council, with legates of Pope John VIII present, condemned the interpolation and sanctioned a reconciliation between Rome and Constantinople. However, Frankish influence upon the weakened papacy of the tenth century led to an almost routine acceptance of the Filioque in Rome, which made the schism practically inevitable.
Other issues of discipline and liturgy contributed to the division. These included the use of unleavened bread (azymes) in the Eucharist by the Latins, the enforced celibacy of priests in the West (while the East allowed the ordination of married men), and differences in the rules of fasting. These issues were particularly prominent during the famous incident that opposed the legates of Pope Leo IX to Patriarch Michael Keroullarios (1054).
When the Latins condemned certain Greek liturgical practices in southern Italy, Patriarch Keroullarios at first retaliated by ordering Latin churches in Constantinople to adopt the Greek rite. He soon shifted to conciliation to comply with Emperor Constantine IX's policy of courting the support of Rome against the Normans. Subsequently, a papal legation was sent to Constantinople to negotiate. It pursued a strategy calculated to separate the emperor from the patriarch. Attacking Keroullarios only inflamed passions and increased support for him. What began as an effort to negotiate ended with mutual excommunications. The incident is frequently - and mistakenly - seen as the beginning of the schism. In reality it was an unsuccessful attempt to heal a division that already existed.
As polemics continued - and were greatly enhanced by the national hatred after the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 - other issues were added to the list, such as the Latin doctrine of purgatory and the exact moment of consecration of the holy gifts in the Eucharist ("the words of institution") in the Latin tradition, to which the Greeks opposed the existence in al Eastern liturgies of an invocation of the Holy Spirit, or epislesis, after the words of institution). They could have resolved each of these issues, like that of the Filioque, if the two churches had been able to agree upon a criterion of authority. Especially after the Gregorian reform of the eleventh century, however, the papacy could not allow its unique authority to be questioned. On the Byzantine side the official position of the church was always that differences between churches were to be solved only by councils, and that the honorary primacy of Rome did not exempt the pope from being answerable to conciliar judgment.
Provoked by gradual estrangement, the schism cannot be formally associated with any particular date or event. Its ultimate root, however, was clearly a different understanding of doctrinal authority, which in the West had been concentrated in the person of the pope; the East never considered that truth could be formally secured by any particular person or institution, and saw no seat of authority above the conciliar process, which involved the bishops but also required a popular consensus.
Throughout its history Byzantium maintained an uninterrupted tradition of learning going back to antiquity and to the Greek fathers of the church. Although the imperial university of Constantinople and, particularly, the separate patriarchal school were training future officials of state and church, these institutions neither were the exclusive nor even the principal centers of theological development. Byzantium never witnessed the role of universities and formal Scholasticism, which appeared in the West in the twelfth century. Most Byzantine theologians wrote in an ecclesiastical or monastic context. Theology never became a monopoly of clerics: books on theology were published not only by bishops or monks but also by lay intellectuals.
Consequently, Byzantine theologians seldom undertook systematic presentation of their theology. St. John Damascus (d. ca. 750) wrote Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, a short textbook that faithfully adheres to formulations accepted in the past, not an original "system." Overall, Byzantine theologians limited themselves to particular issues or denounced the heresies of their day. This lack of systematization does not imply that they did not believe in the effectiveness of theology. On the contrary, Byzantine spirituality, liturgy and thought always affirmed the possibility of communion with God, accessible to every Christian in the life of the church.
This accessibility did not include the essence of God, whose transcendence made intellectual or philosophical concepts the basis for all structured theological "systems" irrelevant, or at least unconvincing. This simultaneous perception of divine transcendence and accessibility was well expressed in the fourth century by St. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the most influential fathers of the Greek church: "In speaking of God," he writes, "when there is question of His essence, then there is the time to keep silence [see Ecclesiastes 3:7]. When, however, it is a question of His operation, a knowledge of which can come down even to us, that is the time to speak of His omnipotence by telling of His works and explaining His deeds, and to use words to this extent" (On Ecclesiastes).
In the East the definition of the canon of Scripture the basic source of all Christian theology did not receive its final form before the Council in Trullo, or Quinsext Synod (692), which endorsed the "longer" canon, including the Old testament books preserved in Aramaic and in Greek (also known as the Apocrypha). However, several earlier Fathers stood for the "shorter" (Hebrew) canon, and even John of Damascus, in the eighth century, considered Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus "Admirable," but did not include them in the canon proper. They generally omitted the book of Revelation from the canon in the fourth and fifth centuries, and it never entered liturgical usage in Byzantium.
The magisterium of the church - which obviously was not limited by Scripture alone - found its most authoritative expression in the ecumenical councils. (The word comes from oikoumene, meaning the entire inhabited world.) Seven ecumenical councils were formally accepted as such: Nicaea I (325), Constantinople I (381), Ephesus I (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople III (680), and Nicaea II (787). Imperial convocation and approval gave the councils their authority in the empire, but for the church a lasting consensus, or "reception," was also necessary. Thus, several councils - Ephesus II (449), Hieria (754) - received imperial sanction, but were eventually rejected by the church. They recognized other councils, though not formally "ecumenical," as highly authoritative for instance, the Photian "great council of Hagia Sophia" (879-880).
The Trinitarian theology of the Cappadocian fathers (fourth century) and Chalcedonian and post-Chalcedonian Christology, as defined by the recognized ecumenical councils, provides the fundamental framework of all theological thought. It is in the same framework that we must interpret the so-called mystical theology of the Byzantines.
The term "mystical theology" comes from the title of one of the treatises of Pseudo-Dionysius (ca. 500). It reflects the notion that communion with God cannot be identified with any form of created knowledge, and that it is best expressed in negative, or "apophatic," terms: God is nothing of what the created human mind is able to conceive. At the same time the Greek patristic tradition affirms deification (theosis) as the goal of human existence; it became accessible in the God-man, Jesus Christ.
Best formulated by perhaps the most creative of all Byzantine theologians, St. Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580-662), who was also the main spokesman against Monotheletism, the doctrine of deification inspired a number of spiritual and mystical writers. The Byzantines generally recognized that, inasmuch as deification "in Christ" was not a doctrine reductible to rational categories, it was best expressed by those who experienced it. Overall, Byzantine Christianity gave greater credit to saints or prophets as authorities in the field of theology then did Christianity in the Latin West. Perhaps the greatest and the most striking of Byzantine prophets and mystics in Symeon the New Theologian (d. 1022). In some circles, particularly monastic, charismatic mysticism led to a denial of sacraments and of the institutional church. The sectarian form of charismaticism, repeatedly condemned, is known as Messalianism, or Bogomilism.
One of the areas of intellectual and spiritual tension for Byzantine theology was the definition of relationships between Christian faith and the legacy of ancient Greek philosophy. As a Greek-speaking civilization, Byzantium preserved the writings of ancient authors, and in every generation there were scholars and intellectuals enthusiastically committed to the traditions of ancient philosophy. Some of them, following the example of Origen (d. ca. 254), attempted to synthesize Greek philosophy and Christian revelation.
Although Origen and Origenism were condemned (by the ecumenical council of 553), notions from Greek philosophy remained necessary tools to express the basic dogmas of Christianity. At the same time, however, a great number of Byzantine theologians, particularly among the monks, were insisting upon the basic incompatibility between Athens and Jerusalem, the Academy and the Gospel. They were particularly opposed to Platonic idealism and spiritualism, which they considered incompatible with the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. Sometimes they obtained from church authorities the formal condemnation of Platonism (a good example is that of John Italos, 1076-1077). Until the end of Byzantium, scholarly humanists (for instance, Michael Psellos, Theodore Metochites, Nikephoros Gregoras, Bessarion, and George Gemisthos Plethon) staunchly defended the heritage of antiquity, but they always did so against some opposition. The tension was never resolved, and in this respect we can easily contrast the Byzantine Christian tradition with the contemporary Latin West, where since the beginning of Scholasticism, a new synthesis between Greek philosophy and Christian theology was in the making.
As Byzantine theology avoided rationally structured systematization, so the Byzantine church never bound itself with an exhaustive code of ecclesiastical laws. The councils issues canons related to the structure and administration of the church and to discipline, but all these texts reflected the requirements of concrete situations. They saw the canonical requirements as absolute, since they reflected the permanent norms of Christian doctrine and ethics, but in many cases the Byzantine church also recognized the possibility that these same norms could be preserved not by applying the letter of the law, but by exercising mercy or condescension.
They identified this latter attitude as oikonomia. In the New testament this term is used to designate God's plan for the salvation of humanity (Ephesians 1:9-10, 3:2-3) and also the stewardship entrusted to the bishops (1 Corinthians 4:1; Colossians 1:24-25; Titus 1:7). This biblical origin of the term helps to explain the Byzantine canonical notion of oikonomia, which was not simply an exception to established rules but "an imitation of God's love for man" (Nicholas Mystikos), and implied repentance by the pardoned sinner. Thus, Patriarch Nicholas was ready to exercise oikonomia by recognizing the legitimacy of an imperial child born to emperor Leo VI (886-912) from his uncanonical fourth marriage, but refused to legitimize the marriage itself.
The sources of Byzantine canon law, as they included them in the most standard and comprehensive compendium the so-called Nomokanon in XIV Titles, issued by Patriarch Photios in 883 and including imperial laws (nomoi) and church canons (kanones) includes the so-called Apostolic Canons (a collection of rules reflecting the practice of the church in Syria in the fourth century), the canons of ecumenical councils, a collection of canons of "local" councils (mainly of the fourth century), and another collection of "canons of the Fathers" (an anthology of opinions by prominent bishops of the early church). Typically these materials were to be used as authoritative precedents rather than as formal rules. They were combined in the Nomokanon with imperial laws regulating the disciplinary matters, setting guidelines for the election of bishops, and defining borders of ecclesiastical provinces and patriarchates. Later, Byzantine canonists used these texts together with commentaries composed in the twelfth century ( a period of development in canon law) by Balsamon, Zonaras and Aristenos.
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Last modified: Mon Dec 14, 1998