CRISTO RAUL.ORG ' |
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THE UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY |
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FROM JUSTINIAN TO LUTHER. AD 518-1517CHAPTER 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
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'.
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
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