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CRISTO RAUL.ORG '

THE UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY

 

FROM JUSTINIAN TO LUTHER. AD 518-1517

 

CHAPTER III

 

THE CHURCH OF THE GREEKS, AD 610-968

 

 

THE seventh century (610-717) was a dark period for the Eastern Christian world. The Empire was exhausted both in its military strength and in its financial resources. It ceased to be Roman, and Latin ceased to be the official language, though the Greeks continued to call themselves “Roman” and did so until the nineteenth century. The Empire was Byzantine and its language was Greek. Though diminished, it was still capable of being consolidated; and it seemed as though it would revive under the honest toil, keen generalship, and religious ardor of the Emperor Heraclius. He tried, but failed.

Heraclius (610-642) was the first great Christian monarch who came into conflict with Muslim as well as pagan forces. From the pagan Persians he won back the Roman provinces in Asia, and in 628 he kept the Feast of the Epiphany in the palace of the Persian king, Chosroes. He recovered Jerusalem and the honored relic of the Holy Cross. He won marked successes in the Balkans. But he had other foes to face besides the Persians in Asia and the Avars in Europe. These were the Arabs, who had already started on their wild career of conquest. The story that Muhammad himself sent to Heraclius a messenger summoning him to acknowledge his divine mission, though possibly true, does not rest on a very secure foundation. But the Arab and the Byzantine armies saw one another in the face on the river Yarmuk in 636. The Arabs skillfully outflanked the Christians, inflicted on them a crushing defeat, and occupied Damascus. Jerusalem, which was practically a Greek city, surrendered in 638, and the Arab tribes, united by their amazing success, quickly began the conquest of Mesopotamia and Egypt.

The tragic surrender of the city of Alexandria to Amr, the Arab general, in October 642, sealed the fate of all Egypt and opened the way to further Muslim advance. It has been said that the conquerors were aided by the treachery of the Monophysites. On the other hand, it is held that Cyrus, the Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, was himself a traitor, if not actually a convert to Islam. In any case it is certain that the imperial armies were inefficient, and that the Copts of Egypt, unwarlike by nature and Monophysite by conviction, were as ready to obey an Arab as to follow Cyrus, who united in his person the representation of an alien government and a hated creed. If these Copts were disloyal to the Empire and the Church, their descendants for more than a thousand years have paid under the Muslim yoke a more than sufficient penalty. Nor should we forget that before the coming of the Muslims the Copts had spread the Christian religion among Abyssinians, Nubians, and even Arabs, who had proved worthy soldiers of the Cross.

Heraclius in his earnest attempt to secure moral unity in the Empire, at first met with a success similar to his early victories in war. At the advice of his staunch supporter, Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople, he opened negotiations with the leaders of the Monophysites. Some of them united with the Church in 633 on the basis of the statement that there is in Christ one divine-human operation. This was naturally regarded as a Monophysite triumph, and the triumph was rendered more complete when Honorius the Pope, in writing to Sergius, said “We confess one will of our Lord Jesus Christ”. In a second letter Honorius tried to shelve the question by opposing the use of both modes of expression, 'one operation' and 'two operations'. Disaffection and disturbances still continued, and in 638 Heraclius issued an edict composed by Sergius and known as the Ekthesis (Exposition of Faith). It deprecates the use of the expressions 'one operation' and 'two operations', but asserts 'one will'. This was simply an attempt to stop discussion and to do so in the interests of Monophysitism.

After the death of Heraclius the Emperor Constans II, by issuing an edict called the Type, made a similar vain attempt to enjoin silence on the disputed point. But the orthodox of Italy and Africa were not pacified, and in 649 Pope Martin I held a synod in the Lateran which anathematized the doctrine of one will in Christ as inconsistent with the decrees of Chalcedon, and also anathematized both Sergius and Honorius. Martin was punished for his boldness by being carried off to Constantinople, and he died in exile, after much suffering, in 655.

SIXTH ECUMENICAL COUNCIL

The Emperor Constantine Pogonatus (669-685), son and successor of Constans, finally found it imperative to pursue a different policy. The Muslim conquest of Egypt and Syria made an agreement with the Monophysites of those regions as politically useless for the Empire as union with Rome was desirable. The Pope, Agatho, left no room for doubt as to his belief, for he held a preliminary synod at Rome and wrote an official letter maintaining the doctrine of two wills and two operations in Christ. And then, in 680, there was held at Constantinople the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which confirmed this letter, carefully excluded the Monothelete doctrine of one will in Christ, and condemned Sergius and Honorius. The decision of the Council closely agrees with that of the Council of Chalcedon of 451. If our Lord had not a real human will, there would have been no full revelation to mankind of that purpose to which His humanity was true through sorrow and temptation.

The anathema pronounced upon Pope Honorius has caused considerable embarrassment to many defenders of the doctrine of papal infallibility. Sometimes it has been affirmed, with no reason whatever, that the manuscripts containing his name are at fault. Sometimes it has been said that he was not condemned as personally guilty of heresy, but “only as guilty of negligence”. And thirdly, it is now urged that though he was guilty of heresy, his heresy was not contained in any document intended by him to be an ex cathedra statement instructing the Christian Church. It is, however, clear that the repeated anathemas pronounced against Honorius were the expression of the Church’s belief that he had been guilty of something far more serious than negligence and imprudent silence. And with regard to the question whether his letters were intended to be ex cathedra, it is sufficient to quote Bishop Hefele, one of the most learned of Roman Catholic historians, Honorius wished to give a ruling on doctrine and faith in the first place to the Church of Constantinople and implicitly to the whole Church; in his second letter he even employs the following expression: “Further, so far as ecclesiastical dogma is concerned ... we ought not to affirm one or two operations in the Mediator between God and men”. The statement is clearly both official and heretical.

 

THE ICONOCLAST STRUGGLE

 

FIRST WAVE

The Emperor Leo III, the Isaurian (717-740), and his son Constantine V (740-775) have gone down in the pages of history as the first of the 'iconoclast' Emperors, men who made war against the pictures of Christ and his saints. They were capable men and they were fortunate.

When in 717 the Saracens with a great fleet and army bore down upon Constantinople, the Saracen vessels were burnt by 'Greek fire', and the hardy children of the desert were frightened by the sight of snow. They were dispersed with heavy losses after besieging the city for a year, and their defeat was both a signal disaster for Islam and a splendid opening to the reign of Leo III. During his reign and that of his son, the Bulgars, like the Arabs, were severely checked, and the internal administration of the Empire was put upon a strong and permanent basis. Both, and especially Constantine V, disliked the monks on account of the wealth of the monasteries and their immunity from taxation. Both highly disapproved of the respect paid by the majority of the Greeks to the sacred icons or pictures, a respect which sometimes degenerated into grave superstitions, and Constantine V added to this disapproval his condemnation of the orthodox practice of invoking the prayers of the saints. Their suspicion of Byzantine forms of piety can largely be explained by the fact that Leo III was an Anatolian, and that iconoclastic tendencies were vigorous in the Asiatic provinces of the Empire. The half-Unitarian, half-Puritan sect of the Paulicians flourished among the Syrians and the Armenians, large numbers of whom were planted by Constantine V in Constantinople and also in Thrace. In the latter region remnants of the Paulicians remained as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century. And in Asia the criticism of Jews and Muslims would be likely to make Christians peculiarly sensitive to the accusation of idolatry. In 732 the Muslim khalif, Yezid II, had actually issued an edict against the use of pictures in the Christian churches of his dominions.

The eruption of a volcano in 726 was considered by Leo III to be a token of a divine displeasure which he might avert by enacting that icons should be no longer venerated. They were to be removed or destroyed, and a picture of our Lord was taken from its place over the palace gate. The excitable populace broke out into a riot and the rioters were severely punished.

Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, refused to obey the Emperor’s orders and was deprived of his office, and replaced in 730 by an iconoclast named Anastasius. Greece and Italy were in a ferment, and Leo would have lost Italy if it had not been for the wisdom of Pope Gregory II.

Constantine V completed the work of Leo III by summoning a council of 338 bishops, held at the palace of Hieria on the Bosporus, in 753. They condemned the veneration of icons, and the Emperor followed up this condemnation by persecuting the recusants, who included in their number the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch. Monasteries were secularized and even turned into barracks, monks were tortured or forced to marry nuns. The Abbot St. Stephen the Younger was done to death in the streets of Constantinople. And the new Patriarch, Constantine, who had shown sympathy with the martyr, was first exiled and then brought back to Constantinople, where he was scourged, shaven, rebaptized, carried backwards on an ass, and drawn through the Circus. He was finally beheaded and his body thrown into a sewer. Two years later (769) a Synod of the Lateran anathematized the opponents of the icons. Not only was the religious schism between Rome and the East for a time complete, but the Byzantines lost all their possessions in Italy except Venice and a few places in the south of the peninsula.

When Leo IV, son of Constantine V, died in 780, his widow, Irene, seized the opportunities afforded to her by the tender age of her son, Constantine VI. For years she skillfully intrigued against him, provoked his opposition, and finally ordered his eyes to be put out in 797. An Athenian by birth, she was able, ambitious, and unscrupulous. She was a fervent enemy of iconoclasm. Rome was on her side. A great Ecumenical Council (the Seventh) was convened at Constantinople. It was broken up by the imperial guards and Irene herself escaped with difficulty. The Council assembled again at Nicaea in Bithynia in 787 in the presence of the papal legates. The Council declared that the sacred pictures were to receive a 'relative veneration' and salutation of honor, and denied that they should be given divine worship (latreia). The honor to be paid to them was to consist in the acts of respect shown to the book of the Gospels, i.e. kissing with the bowed head, and surrounding with lights and incense.

Order was restored or imposed, but Irene was banished on the accession of Nicephorus I in 802. She retired with dignity and supported herself by spinning, but died in the August of 803

SECOND WAVE

The second iconoclastic controversy broke out after the accession of Leo V, the Armenian, in 813. He was convinced that the misfortunes of the Empire were caused by the idolatry of his subjects. For a time he cloaked his real convictions. But in 815 he began his religious campaign. A fresh Council was convoked which denounced Irene and called the icons 'idols', and the opposing party was harshly persecuted. This persecution was relaxed under the Emperor Michael II, 'the Stammerer', who was at heart an iconoclast, but it became more violent than ever under his son Theophilus (829-842). Monasteries were closed, prisons were filled, and champions of the icons were branded with red-hot irons. But neither his able administration of the Empire, nor the dazzling pomp which he affected at home, reconciled the people to this impolitic persecution. At his death the Empress Theodora became regent. Methodius, a monk who had been persecuted by Michael II, became Patriarch of Constantinople, the pictures were restored to honor, and on February the 19th, 843, a triumphal procession, headed by the Empress, marched through the streets of the capital to St. Sophia’s. In memory of the event the so-called 'Festival of Orthodoxy' was instituted throughout the Eastern Church. The dramatic struggle which had lasted more than one hundred years was brought to its close by Theodora, who completed the work of Irene.

Two reflections can be fitly made with regard to the inward nature of the struggle. The first is that it was by no means a mere question of the use of the ornamental decoration of churches. The veneration of the pictures of the saints was subsidiary to that of the pictures of Jesus Christ. And His pictures were venerated because they were regarded as a guarantee of the truth that He who is eternally divine became really, visibly, tangibly human. The use of icons was therefore orthodox, excluding on the one hand the Paulicianism which denied Christ’s personal Deity and the Monophysitism which minimized His manhood. The second reflection is that opposition to iconoclasm drew much of its strength from a determination to resist State interference with the doctrine and discipline of the Church. In this way the champions of the icons resembled the ecclesiastics who, at a rather later time in the West, resisted the practice of the monarchs who claimed the right of investing bishops with the insignia of the Episcopal office.

The above facts explain why St. John of Damascus, the last of the great Greek theologians, and St. Theodore of the Studium, the courageous monk of Constantinople, so firmly resisted the iconoclasts. The latter openly opposed Constantine VI for dismissing his wife Mary, and when Leo V tried to impose silence on religious questions, declared that he would rather have his tongue cut out than fail to bear testimony to the faith. He was banished in 815 and died in Bithynia in 826. From the point of view of dogma St. John of Damascus and St. Theodore of the Studium won the victory. But the patronage of orthodoxy by Theodora and her successors permanently increased the dependence of the Church upon the imperial throne, and in this respect crowned the work of the iconoclastic Emperors with success.

The relations between Rome and Constantinople were soon to be seriously imperiled once more. Questions concerning Christian morality and good discipline in high places proved to be as disruptive as those which concerned the manhood of Christ and the veneration of His pictures. And behind the new dis­putes which arose we can trace two distinct and even opposed attitudes towards the Papacy on the part of members of the Greek Church. The higher clergy and the governing officials were cold or lukewarm in their respect for pontiffs who were the mainstay of the Emperors of the West. And on the other hand the monks, who had been the enthusiastic defenders of the icons, and championed the complete liberty of the Church from State interference, believed that an effective guarantee of this liberty could be found in a close union of the Greek Church with the Roman. The ebb and flow of these opposing tendencies can be illustrated from the career of the celebrated Photius.

 

THE PHOTIUS SCHISM

 

 

Photius (820-891), the Patriarch of Constantinople, who is held to be responsible for making the schism between East and West almost inevitable, is one of the great ecclesiastics whom it is hard to judge dispassionately. He was a highly born and fashionable secretary of state, and his elevation to the patriarchal throne was an outrage. It was occasioned by the fact that the austere Patriarch Ignatius, on the Feast of the Epiphany, 858, very properly refused to give Holy Communion to the Paphlagonian Bardas, who was guardian of the dissolute young Emperor, Michael III. He had been guilty of incest. Thereupon Ignatius was deposed and a gathering held in the palace selected Photius to fill his place.

Within a few days Photius went through the different grades of ordination and then quickly made his mark on history. No one denies his chastity, his extensive learning, and his intellectual acumen. He was a consummate savant, an aristocrat to the tips of his fingers, and not a favorite with the monks, who withstood the interference of the civil powers in the offices of the Church. The Pope of Rome was Nicholas I, an active and courageous pontiff, one more ready and better fitted for acting as the supreme arbiter of Christendom than any Pope since Gregory the Great. He supported Ignatius, and in 863 held a Council in the Lateran which decided that, unless Photius vacated the see of Constantinople, he should be anathematized and denied the Eucharist until the hour of his death. It is worth noting that two years later the same Pope, perhaps with entire sincerity, gave recognition to the False Decretals which had been forged in Gaul in order to strengthen the discipline of the Church and enhanced the power of the Pope, decretals which duped the Christian world for seven centuries.

Nicholas I, in 866, wrote his famous 'Response to the Inquiries of the Bulgarians', in which he both claimed these new converts for Rome and showed a genuine interest in their welfare.

Photius regarded the arrival of the Roman legates who carried this letter to the Bulgarians as an encroachment upon his own jurisdiction. In the meantime his ingenious mind had been looking for joints in the Roman armor. He applied himself to prove that the Latins had been guilty of innovation and heresy in adding to the Nicene Creed the words that the Holy Spirit proceeds 'from the Son', and he was at any rate able to assert truly that the creed as ratified by the whole Church was without the phrase in question. Thus he endeavored to insert a doctrinal basis under an existing schism. Aware of the importance attached by the vulgar to merely outward usages, he also condemned the Roman practice of fasting on Saturdays, eating eggs in Lent, and shaving the beard. In 867 he persuaded a Council at Constantinople to excommunicate as a heretic the Pope who had excommunicated him as a usurper, and he embodied his denunciation of Western usages in an encyclical sent to the Eastern Patriarchs and to Italy.

Shortly afterwards the young monster, Michael III, who had previously secured the assassination of Bardas, was himself murdered when drunk, by Basil I 'the Macedonian', who was Emperor from 867 to 886. Basil, who was an Armenian by descent, had been an unscrupulous adventurer, averse from neither debauchery nor bloodshed. But he showed himself a man of extraordinary capacities, a born ruler and administrator, who helped mightily to raise the Eastern Empire to the apex of its greatness. His struggle against the Saracens in the West was on the whole a failure, a failure which was sealed when the Saracens took Syracuse in 878. But he extended the frontier of his Empire eastward in Asia Minor and lived in peace with Armenia, Russia, Bulgaria, Venice, and Germany. Like Napoleon I at a later date, he saw the wisdom of having the Pope on his side, though he had no intention of granting all that the Pope might claim. He continued the policy of Photius in preventing Boris, the newly converted khan of the Bulgarians, from putting his country under the supremacy of Rome. But he disliked Photius, and saw that the restoration of the virtuous Ignatius would enhance his own personal popularity. Photius was therefore shut up in a monastery and Ignatius placed upon the patriarchal throne.

Basil then sent an embassy to the Pope, and at the end of 868 Pope Hadrian II solemnly condemned the Council which Photius had convoked, and summoned a new Council at Constantinople. His legates entered the city on September the 29th, 869. Basil received them with the highest honors, but he and they were not in full agreement. He desired a detailed judgment in the case of Photius: they made it plain that they had simply come to publish the sentence of the Popes against Photius and to reconcile those bishops of his party who were prepared to agree with that sentence. Photius remained resolutely silent before his accusers and was condemned, the legates observing that they were only publishing the sentence already formulated. Basil was obliged to accept what they said; but he took a speedy revenge. He assembled the fathers of the Council and tried to obtain from the legates a formal recognition of the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople over Bulgaria.

The legates protested and departed. But they had hardly gone when Ignatius himself consecrated an archbishop and ten bishops for Bulgaria. By this act he made it clear that his view of papal jurisdiction was essentially the same as that of his rival Photius.

Ignatius died in 877. Photius, who had gained the goodwill of Basil, became Patriarch once more, and in 879 held a Council to which Pope John VIII sent legates. The Pope was willing to recognize Photius if he would ask pardon for his past conduct before a Synod, and abstain from any interference in Bulgaria. Photius, far from asking pardon, defended his conduct and was applauded by the bishops present. The question of Bulgaria was referred to the decision of the Emperor. The Council also pronounced an anathema against all who added to the Nicene Creed. It was three years before John VIII learnt the full facts; and he then excommunicated Photius. The Churches of East and West were separated. The rupture was complete.

The triumph of Photius was not for long. In 886 he was banished by Basil’s successor, Leo VI, to a monastery, where he survived for five years. Pope John VIII was murdered by his own household. Bulgaria became politically and spiritually allied with Byzantium. But the struggle with Rome was not forgotten, and the intrepid and erudite Photius became regarded as an apostle of orthodoxy who had intellectually vanquished the barbarians of the West and 'illuminated the ends of the earth'.

STATE OF CHRISTIANITY DURING THE TENTH CENTURY

Leo VI, immediately after the deposition of Photius, endeavored to heal the breach with Rome. A serious obstacle lay in the fact that the recent Popes had refused to recognize any of the bishops consecrated by Photius. But agreement was reached and a general amnesty proclaimed in 898. Two papal legates arrived in Constantinople, and everything was happily arranged, including the order of precedence to be observed by the papal and patriarchal secretaries at the Emperor's table. A permanent papal embassy was established in the Eastern capital.

It was the Emperor himself who broke the peace. Determined to consolidate his dynasty and his Empire, he desired to ensure an heir to his throne. He therefore resolved to marry a fourth wife, his mistress Zoe, 'the black-eyed'. To marry a fourth wife was against the canons of the Church, and the Patriarch Nicholas Mysticus gave expression to his disapproval of the match. Nevertheless, he consented to baptize in St. Sophia the son that Zoe bore to Leo, if the latter undertook not to live with his mistress. Leo agreed, and immediately after the baptism of his child violated his promise by privately marrying Zoe. The Patriarch and bishops then forbade the Emperor to enter the churches. He appealed to the Pope. That Pope was Sergius III, the lover of the powerful and infamous Marozia. Sergius supported Leo, and Nicholas then made the mistake of corresponding with Andronicus Ducas, a conspirator against the throne. Leo taxed him with treason, forced him to abdicate, and made Euthymius Patriarch in his stead.

In 912 Leo VI lay dying. He repented and recalled Nicholas Mysticus, who after various vicissitudes wrote to Pope John X asking him to send new legates to Constantinople. Thus peace was restored in 920 and it lasted with slight interruptions until the great schism of 1054. The papacy was morally weak, ravaged by schism, simony, and nepotism, and the Patriarchs of Constantinople grew in influence and were engrossed in their own duties and ambitions. They were less friendly towards Rome than the Emperors, who found it useful to have on their side even the least worthy of the successors of St. Peter.

A singular proof of this alliance was shown in 933 by the Emperor Romanus Lecapenus. He had adroitly detached Bulgaria more completely from Rome by giving his granddaughter Mary in marriage to the young king, Peter. But he secured the approval of Pope John XI for the consecration of his son Theophylact as Patriarch, and the ceremony took place in the presence of four papal legates. The lad was sixteen years of age, devoted to pantomimes and horse-racing. Nevertheless, the dawn of better days was at hand. Theophylact was succeeded by prelates who were monks of austere life, inflexible in their principles, and resolute in asserting their independence of imperial power. To this period of spiritual revival belongs the foundation of the great monastery on Mount Athos (961) through the efforts of Athanasius, the spiritual director of the Emperor Nicephorus Phocas. It has remained to this day the very focus of Eastern Orthodox asceticism. Nicephorus carried his victorious arms to the West and to the East alike. He captured Crete from the Arabs, who had been the scourge of the Mediterranean, and he crushed the power of the Muslim emirs of Aleppo. It was not to be expected that he would leave Italy outside his projects. As far back as 726 Leo the Isaurian had taken provinces in southern Italy from the Pope and attached them to the Patriarch of Constantinople. In these regions large numbers of Greek monks settled as a result of the conquest of Egypt and Palestine by the Muslims and the troubles connected with the iconoclastic controversy. In the eighth century the clergy of Sicily were firmly attached to the Eastern Church. No Emperor or Empress, however devout they might be, ever thought of restoring southern Italy to Rome. And Nicephorus Phocas, without consulting the Pope, organized the churches of the Byzantine rite in that country by creating the province of Otranto. One episode after another shows that the Greeks took advantage of the weakness of Rome, not exactly in order to create a schism, but to obtain Roman recognition for the independent authority claimed by the Patriarch as Pope of another world.

The Byzantine Empire of the tenth century not only boasted of a powerful military organization and a perfected legal administration. There was a similar development of intellectual life. There were historians, philosophers, theologians, and poets.

It was an Empire of dazzling wealth and splendor and of superb artistic achievement. In bronze and ivory, silk and glass, in the craft of the goldsmith and the jeweler, the workshops of the Empire rivaled those of ancient Greece. There was a veritable renaissance, in which we can trace both the influence of classical models and that of the delicate decoration favored by the Muslims in Baghdad and Damascus. The religious art displayed in the churches gathered together the beauty and the charm fostered by this refined intelligence. The 'New Church' built at Constantinople by Basil I was, if we may judge by the descriptions given us in the pages of Greek writers, hardly less wonderful than St. Sophia. It has entirely perished. But other churches at Athos and elsewhere remain and show us how the older Byzantine style became modified. The outline became more picturesque, the exterior surface of the walls more varied. The broad low dome was replaced by loftier and more elegant cupolas. The somewhat stiff basilican nave was abandoned, and the favorite plan was that of a Greek cross set within a square, a plan capable of many new forms and motives. And within there was a wonderland of walls, lined with shaded marbles, and above the marbles were mosaics flashing with gold and silver, and harmonies of color, richer than any known hitherto. As a result of the iconoclastic controversy, precise rules were laid down concerning the composition of these pictures, but the pictures are a new and true expression of life and animation no less than of orthodox belief.

The Arab terror was not far away; and an ugly blow was dealt to the Byzantine claim to be the sole and universal Empire when the Empire of the West revived and Charles the Great was crowned in St. Peter's, Rome, on December the 25th, 800. But the Greeks had most of the consolations which the present world could offer, and their faith and worship fortified their belief that God and the mother of God were on their side. Nor was this belief mere vanity. For, in spite of much fanaticism among both monks and laity, there often existed a degree of piety, purity, and self-denial which adorned the doctrine of God our Savior and gave a moral splendor to the Church. To understand Byzantine civilization we must remember the Byzantine saints.

 

 

CHAPTER IV.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH FROM ST. WILFRID TO EDWARD THE CONFESSOR