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Byzantium - Church and State

In making the state Christian, Constantine made the Church a state institution, and therefore under imperial control. Caesaro-papism was the logical consequence. The sacerdotium was united with the imperium in the person of the monarch as in the pagan state. The Church acquiesced,and yet did not acquiesce, in this theory. When a heretical emperor sought to impose his views, champions of ecclesiastical freedom never failed to come forward.

At the very beginning Athanasius fought for the independence of the Church against the emperor Constantius. But the political principle which Constantino had taken for granted, and which was an indispensable condition of his adoption of Christianity, was fully recognized under Theodosius I, and, notwithstanding protests from time to time, was permanent. It is significant that Constantinople, which had become a second Rome politically, with its senate and capitol, became then a second Rome ecclesiastically, and that the elevation of the see of Constantinople to patriarchal rank next to the Roman see was due to Theodosius (381), who gave a permanent form to the dualism of the Empire.

The patriarch became a state minister for religion. The character of the Church as a state institution is expressed above all in the synods. The general councils are not only summoned by the emperor, but are presided over by him or by his lay deputies. The order of the proceedings is modelled on that of the senate. The emperor or his representative not only keeps order but conducts the deliberations and intervenes in the theological debates. It has been erroneously thought that at the council of Chalcedon (451) the legate of Pope Leo presided; but the acts of chat assembly teach us otherwise; the privilege which the Roman legates possessed was that of voting first (the right of the princeps senatus). The first general council at which a churchman presided was the seventh (at Nicaea, 787), at which the emperor (or empress) deputed, not a layman, but the patriarch Tarasius to preside. The resolutions of these ecclesiastical state-councils did not become the law of the Empire till they were confirmed by imperial edicts.

The emperors, in their capacity as heads of the Church, did not confine themselves to controlling it by controlling the councils. They soon began to issue edicts dealing with theology, by virtue of their own authority. It has been said that the council of Chalcedon closed an epoch of "parliamentary constitutionalism"; a general council was not summoned again for more than one hundred years, though the Empire during that period was seething with religious disunion and unrest. The usurper Basiliscus in his short reign set an example'which his successors were not slow to follow. He issued an edict quashing the decision of Chalcedon. Zeno's Henotikon a few years later was the second and more famous example of a method which Justinian largely used, and of which the Ectkesis of Heraclius, the Type of Constans II and the iconoclastic edicts of Leo III are well-known instances. It was a question of political expediency (determined by the circumstances, the intensity and nature of the opposition), whether an emperor supported his policy or not by an ecclesiastical council.

The emperor was always able to control the election of the patriarch, and through him he directed the Church. Sometimes emperor and patriarch collided; but in general the patriarchs were docile instruments, and when they were refractory they could be deposed. There were several means of resistance open to a patriarch, though he rarely availed himself of them. His participation in the ceremony of coronation was indispensable, and he could refuse to crown a new emperor except on certain conditions, and thus dictate a policy (instances in 812, Michael I; 969, John Zimisces). There was the power of excommunication (Leo VI was excommunicated on account of his fourth marriage).

Another means of resistance for the Church was to invoke the support of the bishop of Rome, who embodied the principle of ecclesiastical independence and whose see admittedly enjoyed precedence and primacy over all the sees in Christendom. Up to the end of the 8th century he was a subject of the emperor, and some emperors exerted their ecclesiastical control over Rome by drastic measures (Justinian and Constans II). But after the conquest of Italy by Charles the Great, the pope was outside the Byzantine domination; after the coronation of Charles in 800 he was associated with a rival empire; and when ecclesiastical controversies arose in the East, the party in opposition was always ready to appeal to him as the highest authority in Christendom. Under the iconoclastic emperors the image-worshippers looked to him as the guardian of orthodoxy.

As to the ecclesiastical controversies which form a leading feature of Byzantine history, their political significance was of great concern. After the determination of the Arian controversy in 381 new questions (as to the union of the divine and human elements in the person of Christ: one or two natures?) arose, and it may seem surprising that such points of abstruse theology should have awakened universal interest and led to serious consequences. The secret was that they masked national feelings; hence their political importance and the attention which the government was forced to bestow on them. The reviving sense of nationality (anti-Greek) in Syria and in Egypt found expression in the 5th century in passionate monophysitism (the doctrine of one nature): theology was the only sphere in which such feelings' could be uttered. The alienation and dissension which thus began had fatal consequences, smoothing the way for the Saracen conquests of those lands; the inhabitants were not unwilling to be severed politically from the Empire. This ultimate danger was at first hardly visible.

What immediately troubled the emperors in the first half of the 5th century was the preponderant position which the see of Alexandria occupied, threatening the higher authority of Constantinople. The council of Chalcedon, called by Martian, an able statesman, was as much for the purpose of ending the domination of Alexandria as of settling the theological question. The former object was effected, but the theological decision of the council was fatal, it only sealed and promoted the disunion. The recalcitrant spirit of Syria and Egypt forced Zeno, thirty years later, to issue his Henotikon, affirming the decisions of previous councils but pointedly ignoring Chalcedon. This statesman-like document secured peace in the East for a generation. Rome refused to accept the Henotikon, and when Justinian resolved to restore imperial supremacy in the Western kingdoms, conciliation with Rome became a matter of political importance. For the sake of this project, the unity of the East was sacrificed. The doctrine of Chalcedon was reasserted, the Henotikon set aside; New Rome and Old Rome were again hand in hand. This meant the final alienation of Egypt and Syria.

The national instinct which had been alive in the 5th century grew into strong national sentiment in the 6th. One of the chief anxieties of Justinian's long and busy reign was to repair the mischief. Deeply interested himself in matters of dogma, and prepared to assert to its fullest extent his authority as head of the Church, he has been called "the passionate theologian on the throne"; but in his chief ecclesiastical measures political considerations were predominant. His wife Theodora was a monophysite, and he permitted her to extend her protection to the heretics. He sought new formulae for the purpose of reconciliation, but nothing short of repudiation of the Chalcedon acts would have been enough.

The last great efforts for union were made when the Saracens invaded and conquered the dissident provinces. A new formula of union was discovered (One Will and One Energy). This doctrine of monothelism would never have been heard of but for political exigencies. The Egyptians and Syrians would perhaps have accepted this compromise; but it was repudiated by the fanatical adherents of Chalcedon. Heraclius sought to impose the doctrine by an edict (Ecthesis, 638), but the storm, especially in Italy and Africa, was so great that ten years later an edict known as the Type was issued by Constans forbidding all disputation about the number of wills and energies. Constans was a strong ruler, and maintained the Type in spite of orthodox opposition throughout his reign. But the expediency of this policy passed when the Saracens were inexpugnabjy settled in their conquests, and in his successor's reign it was more worth while to effect a reconciliation with Rome and the West. This was the cause of the 6th Ecumenical Council which condemned monothelism (680-681).

In the Hellenic parts of the Empire devotion to orthodoxy served as a chrysalis for the national sentiment which was to burst its shell in the 10th century. For the Greeks Christianity had been in a certain way continuous with paganism. It might be said that the old deities and heroes who had protected their cities were still their guardians, under the new form of saints (sometimes imaginary) and archangels, and performed for them the same kind of miracles. Pagan idolatry was replaced by Christian image-worship, which by the Christians of many parts of Asia Minor, as well as by the Mahommedans, was regarded as simply polytheism. Thus in the great iconoclastic controversy, which distracted the Empire for nearly 120 years, was involved, as in the monophysitic, the antagonism between different national elements and geographical sections.

Leo III, whose services as a great deliverer and reformer were obscured in the memory of posterity by the ill-fame which he won as an iconoclast, was a native of Commagene. His first edict against the veneration of pictures evoked riots in the capital and a revolt in Greece. The opposition was everywhere voiced by the monks, and it is not to be overlooked that for many monks the painting of sacred pictures was their means of existence. Leo's son Constantine V pursued the same policy with greater rigour, meeting the monastic resistance by systematic persecution, and in his reign a general council condemned image-worship (753).

Iconoclasm was supported by the army (i.e. Asia Minor), and a considerable portion of the episcopate, but it was not destined to triumph. When the Athenian Irene, wife of Leo IV, came to power after her husband's death, as regent for her son Constantine VI, she secured the restoration of the worship of icons. The Iconoclastic Council was reversed by the 7th Ecumenical Council of 787. The iconoclastic party, however, was not yet defeated, and (after the neutral reign of Nicephorus I) came again to the helm in the reigns of the Armenian Leo V. and the first two Phrygian emperors, Michael II and Theophilus. But the Empire was weary of the struggle, and on the death of Theophilus, who had been rigorous in enforcing his policy, iconworship was finally restored by his widow Theodora (843), and the question was never reopened. This was a triumph for the Greek element in the Empire; the "Sunday of orthodoxy" on which iconoclasm was formally condemned is still a great day in the Greek Church. The ablest champions who wielded their pens for the cause of icons, defending by theological arguments practices which really had their roots in polytheism, were in the early stage John of Damascus and in the later Theodore (abbot of the monastery of Studium at Constantinople). The writings of the iconoclasts were destroyed by the triumphant party, so that we know their case only from the works of their antagonists.

In this struggle the Greeks and Latins were of one mind; the image-worshippers had the support of the Roman see. When the pope resisted him, Leo III confiscated the papal estates in Sicily and Calabria; and the diocese of Illyricum was withdrawn from the control of Rome and submitted to the patriarch of Constantinople. But when iconoclasm was defeated, there was nd question of restoring Illyricum, nor could there be, for political reasons; since the iconoclastic schism had, with other causes, led to the detachment of the papacy from the Empire and its association with the Frankish power.

By the foundation of the rival Roman Empire in 800 the pope had definitely become a subject of another state. No sooner had the iconoclastic struggle terminated than differences and disputes arose between the Greek and Latin Churches which finally led to an abiding schism, and helped to foster the national self-consciousness of the Greeks. A strife over the patriarchal chair between Ignatius (deposed by Michael III and supported by Rome) and Photius the learned statesman who succeeded him, strained the relations with Rome; but a graver cause of discord was the papal attempt to win Bulgaria, whose sovereign Boris had been baptized under the auspices of Michael III (c. 865), and was inclined to play Old Rome against New Rome.

Photius stood out as the champion of the Greeks against the claim of the Roman see, and his patriarchate, though it did not lead to a final breach, marks the definite emancipation of the Greeks from the spiritual headship Of Rome. This is the significance of his encyclic letter (867), which formulated a number of differences in rite and doctrine between the Greek and Latin Churches, differences so small that they need never have proved a barrier to union, if on one side there had been no question of papal supremacy, and if the Greek attitude had not been the expression of a tenacious nationality.

There was a reconciliation about 900, but the Churches were really estranged, and the open and ultimate breach which came in 1054, when the influence of the Cluny movement was dominant at Rome (Leo IX was pope and Michael Cerularius patriarch), sealed a disunion which had long existed. Subsequent plans of reunion were entertained by the emperors merely for political reasons, to obtain Western support against their foes, or to avert (through papal influence) the aggressive designs of Western princes. They were doomed to futility because they were not seriously meant, and the Greek population was entirely out of sympathy with these political machinations of their emperors. The Union of Lyons (1274) was soon repudiated, and the last attempt, the Union of Florence in 1439, was equally bollow (though it permanently secured the union of the Rumanians and of the Ruthcnians).

Part of the historical significance of the relations between the Greek and Latin Churches lies in the fact that they illustrate, and promoted by way of challenge, the persistence of Greek national self-consciousness. The emperors legislated against paganism and against heresy, not merely under ecclesiastical pressure, but because they thought religious uniformity politically desirable. Theodosius the Great, a Spaniard, with no sympathy for Hellenic culture, set himself the task of systematically eradicating pagan institutions and customs.

Though his persecution accomplished much, paganism was far from being extinct either in the East or in the West in the 5th century. Not only did heathen cults survive in many remote districts, but the old gods had many worshippers among the higher classes at Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and Athens. The most distinguished Greek literati of that period were non-Christian. Justinian, who united theological enthusiasm with belief in the ideal of uniformity and, like Theodosius, was out of sympathy with Hellenism ("Hellen" now came to mean "pagan"), persecuted polytheism more earnestly and severely than his predecessors. His measures created a panic among the higher classes at Byzantium, of whom many, as he suspected, were addicted to the ancient religion. He instituted a regular inquisition, exacted oaths of orthodoxy from all officials and teachers, and closed the philosophical schools of Athens. Missionaries (and it is remarkable that he employed monophysite heretics) were sent to abolish the old heathen worship which survived in many parts of Asia Minor where Christianity had hardly penetrated. By the end of the 6th century formal paganism had practically disappeared.

In Asia Minor, especially in the east, there were many dissident communities which asserted independence of the Church of Constantinople and of all ecclesiastical traditions, founding their doctrines directly on the Bible. Most important of these heretics were the Paulicians, a dualistic sect whom the Church regarded as Manichaeans.