THE EMPIRE AND THE EASTERN CHURCH
(461-628)
When the death of Leo the Great in 461 removed from the world of
religious progress a saintly and dominant figure whose words were
listened to in East and West as were those of no other man of his day,
the interest of Church history is seen to turn decisively to the East.
[Sidenote: Character of the Greek Church.]
The story of Eastern Christendom is unique. There is the fascinating
tale of the union of Greek metaphysics and Christian theology, and its
results, so fertile, so vigorous, so intensely interesting as logical
processes, so critical as problems of thought. For the historian there
is a story of almost unmatched attraction; the story of how a people
was kept together in power, in decay, in failure, in persecution, by
the unifying force of a Creed and a Church. And there is the
extraordinary missionary development traceable all through the history
of Eastern Christianity: the wonderful Nestorian missions, the activity
of the evangelists, imperial and hierarchical, of the sixth century,
the conversion of Russia, the preludes to the remarkable achievements
in modern times of orthodox missions in the Far East.
Throughout the whole of the long period indeed {7} which begins with
the death of Leo and ends with that of Silvester II., though the Latin
Church was growing in power and in missionary success, it was probably
the Christianity of the East which was the most secure and the most
prominent. Something of its work may well be told at the beginning of
our task.
[Sidenote: The Monophysite controversy.]
The last years of the fifth century were in the main occupied in the
East by the dying down of a controversy which had rent the Church. The
Eutychian heresy, condemned at Chalcedon, gave birth to the Monophysite
party, which spread widely over the East. Attempts were soon made to
bridge over the gulf by taking from the decisions of Chalcedon all that
definitely repudiated the Monophysite opinions. [Sidenote: The
Henotikon.] In 482 the patriarch Acacius of Constantinople, under the
orders probably of the Emperor Zeno (474-91), drew up the _Henotikon_,
an endeavour to secure the peace of the Church by abandoning the
definitions of the Fourth General Council. No longer was "one and the
same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged _in two natures_,
without fusion, without change, without division, without separation."
But it is impossible to ignore a controversy which has been a cause of
wide divergence. Men will not be silent, or forget, when they are
told. Statesmanlike was, no doubt, the policy which sought for unity
by ignoring differences; and peace was to some extent secured in the
East so long as Zeno and his successor Anastasius (491-518) reigned.
But at Rome it was not accepted. Such a document, which implicitly
repudiated the language of Leo the Great, which the Fourth General
Council had adopted, could {8} never be accepted by the whole Church;
and those in the East who were theologians and philosophers rather than
statesmen saw that the question once raised must be finally settled in
the dogmatic decisions of the Church. Had the Lord two Natures, the
Divine and Human, or but one? The reality of the Lord's Humanity as
well as of His Divinity was a truth which, at whatever cost of division
and separation, it was essential that the Church should proclaim and
cherish.
In Constantinople, a city always keen to debate theology in the
streets, the divergence was plainly manifest; and a document which was
"subtle to escape subtleties" was not likely to be satisfactory to the
subtlest of controversialists. The Henotikon was accepted at Antioch,
Jerusalem, and Alexandria, but it was rejected by Rome and by the real
sense of Constantinople. In Alexandria the question was only laid for
a time, and when a bishop who had been elected was refused recognition
by Acacius the Patriarch of Constantinople and Peter "the Stammerer,"
who accepted the Henotikon, preferred to his place, a reference to Rome
led to a peremptory letter from Pope Simplicius, to which Acacius paid
no heed whatever. Felix II. (483-92), after an ineffectual embassy,
actually declared Acacius excommunicate and deposed. The monastery of
the Akoimetai at Constantinople ("sleepless ones," who kept up
perpetual intercession) threw itself strongly on to the side of the
advocates of Chalcedon. Acacius, then excommunicated by Rome because
he would not excommunicate the Monophysite patriarch of Alexandria,
retorted by striking out the name of Felix from the diptychs of the
Church.
{9}
[Sidenote: Schism between East and West.]
It was the first formal beginning of the schism which,--temporarily,
and again and again, healed,--was ultimately to separate East and West;
and it was due, as so many misfortunes of the Church have been, to the
inevitable divergence between those who thought of theology first as
statesmen and those who thought first as inquirers after the truth.
The schism spread more widely. In Syria Monophysitism joined
Nestorianism in the confusion of thought: in Egypt the Coptic Church
arose which repudiated Chalcedon: Abyssinia and Southern India were to
follow. Arianism had in the East practically died away; Nestorianism
was powerful only in far-away lands, but Monophysitism was for a great
part of the sixth century strong in the present, and close to the
centre of Church life. The sixth century began, as the fifth had
ended, in strife from which there seemed no outway. Nationalism, and
the rival claims of Rome and Constantinople, complicated the issues.
Under Anastasius, the convinced opponent of the Council of Chalcedon
and himself to all intents a Monophysite in opinion, some slight
negotiations were begun with Rome, while the streets of Constantinople
ran with blood poured out by the hot advocates of theological dogma.
In 515 legates from Pope Hormisdas visited Constantinople; in 516 the
emperor sent envoys to Rome; in 517 Hormisdas replied, not only
insisting on the condemnation of those who had opposed Chalcedon, but
also claiming from the Caesar the obedience of a spiritual son; and in
that same year Anastasius, "most sweet-tempered of emperors," died,
rejecting the papal demands.
{10}
The accession of Justin I. (518-27) was a triumph for the orthodox
faith, to which the people of Constantinople had firmly held. The
patriarch, John the Cappadocian, declared his adherence to the Fourth
Council: the name of Pope Leo was put on the diptychs together with
that of S. Cyril; and synod after synod acclaimed the orthodox faith.
Negotiations for reunion with the West were immediately opened. The
patriarch and the emperor wrote to Pope Hormisdas, and there wrote also
a theologian more learned than the patriarch, the Emperor's nephew,
Justinian. "As soon," he wrote, "as the Emperor had received by the
will of God the princely fillet, he gave the bishops to understand that
the peace of the Church must be restored. This had already in a great
degree been accomplished." But the pope's opinion must be taken with
regard to the condemnation of Acacius, who was responsible for the
Henotikon, and was the real cause of the severance between the
churches. [Sidenote: Reunion, 519.] The steps towards reunion may be
traced in the correspondence between Hormisdas and Justinian. It was
finally achieved on the 27th of March, 519. The patriarch of
Constantinople declared that he held the Churches of the old and the
new Rome to be one; and with that regard he accepted the four Councils
and condemned the heretics, including Acacius.
The Church of Alexandria did not accept the reunion; and Severus,
patriarch of Antioch, was deposed for his heresy. There was indeed a
considerable party all over the East which remained Monophysite; and
this party it was the first aim of Justinian (527-65), when he became
emperor, to convince or to subdue. He was the {11} nephew of Justin,
and he was already trained in the work of government; but he seemed to
be even more zealous as a theologian than as a lawyer or administrator.
The problem of Monophysitism fascinated him. [Sidenote: The Emperor
Justinian.] From the first, he applied himself seriously to the study
of the question in all its bearings. Night after night, says
Procopius, he would study in his library the writings of the Fathers
and the Holy Scriptures themselves, with some learned monks or prelates
with whom he might discuss the problems which arose from their perusal.
He had all a lawyer's passion for definition, and all a theologian's
delight in truth. And as year by year he mastered the intricate
arguments which had surged round the decisions of the Councils, he came
to consider that a _rapprochement_ was not impossible between the
Orthodox Church and those many Eastern monks and prelates who still
hesitated over a repudiation which might mean heresy or schism. And
from the first it was his aim to unite not by arms but by arguments.
The incessant and wearisome theological discussions which are among the
most prominent features of his reign, are a clearly intended part of a
policy which was to reunite Christendom and consolidate the definition
of the Faith by a thorough investigation of controverted matters.
Justinian first thought out vexed questions for himself, and then
endeavoured to make others think them out.
From 527, in the East, Church history may be said to start on new
lines. The Catholic definition was completed and the imperial power
was definitely committed to it. We may now look at the Orthodox Church
as one, united against outside error.
{12}
A period of critical interest in the history of Europe is that to which
belongs the difficult and complicated Church history of the East from
the accession of the Emperor Justinian to the death of S. Methodius.
The period naturally divides itself into three parts--the first, from
527 to 628, dealing with the Church at the height of its authority, up
to the overthrow of the Persian power; the second to 725, the period up
to the beginning of the iconoclastic controversy; and the third up to
its close and the death of S. Methodius in 847. With the first we will
deal in the present chapter.
[Sidenote: Church and State in the East.]
But throughout the whole three centuries, from 527 to 847, the
essential character of the Church's life in the east is the same. In
the East the Church was regarded more decisively than in the West as
the complement of the State. Constantine had taught men to look for
the officials of the Church side by side with those of the civil power.
At Constantinople was the centre of an official Christianity, which
recognised the powers that be as ordained of God in a way which was
never found at Rome. At Rome the bishops came to be political leaders,
to plot against governments, to found a political power of their own.
At Constantinople the patriarchs, recognised as such by the Emperor and
Senate of the New Rome, sought not to intrude themselves into a sphere
outside their religious calling, but developed their claims, in their
own sphere, side by side with those of the State; and their example was
followed in the Churches which began to look to Constantinople for
guidance. There was a necessary consequence of this. {13} [Sidenote:
Nationalism of the Churches.] It was that when the nationalities of the
East,--in Egypt, Syria, Armenia, or even in Mesopotamia--began to
resent the rule of the Empire, and struggled to express a patriotism of
their own, they sought to express it also on the ecclesiastical side,
in revolt from the Church which ruled as a complement to the civil
power. Heresy came to be a sort of patriotism in religion. And while
there was this of evil, it was not evil that each new barbarian nation,
as it accepted the faith, sought to set up beside its own sovereign its
patriarch also. "Imperium," they said, "sine patriarcha non staret,"
an adage which James I. of England inverted when he said, "No bishop,
no king." Though the Bulgarians agreed with the Church of
Constantinople in dogmas, they would not submit to its jurisdiction.
The principle of national Churches, independent of any earthly supreme
head, but united in the same faith and baptism, was established by the
history of the East. Gradually the Church of Constantinople, by the
growth of new Christian states, and by the defections of nations that
had become heretical, became practically isolated, long before the
infidels hedged in the boundaries of the Empire and hounded the
imperial power to its death. Within the boundaries the Church
continued to walk hand-in-hand with the State. Together they acted
within and without. Within, they upheld the Orthodox Faith; without,
they gave Cyprus its religious independence, Illyricum a new
ecclesiastical organisation, the Sinaitic peninsula an autonomous
hierarchy. More and more the history of these centuries shows us the
Greek Church as the Eastern Empire in its religious aspect. And it
shows that the division between East {14} and West, beginning in
politics, was bound to spread to religion. As Rome had won her
ecclesiastical primacy through her political position, so with
Constantinople; and when the politics became divergent so did the
definition of faith. Rome, as a church, clung to the obsolete claims
which the State could no longer enforce: Constantinople witnessed to
the independence which was the heritage of liberty given by the
endowment of Jesus Christ.
Such are the general lines upon which Eastern Church history proceeds.
We must now speak in more detail, though briefly, of the theological
history of the years when Justinian was emperor.
[Sidenote: Early controversy in Justinian's reign.]
Justinian was a trained theologian, but he was also a trained lawyer;
and the combination generally produces a vigorous controversialist. It
was in controversy that his reign was passed. The first controversy,
which began before he was emperor, was that, revived from the end of
the fifth century, which dealt with the question of the addition to the
Trisagion of the words, "Who was crucified for us," and involved the
assertion that One of the Trinity died upon the cross. In 519 there
came from Tomi to Constantinople monks who fancied that they could
reconcile Christendom by adding to the Creed, a delusion as futile as
that of those who think they can advance towards the same end by
subtracting from it. After a debate on the matter in Constantinople,
Justinian consulted the pope. Letters passed with no result. In 533,
when the matter was revived by the Akoimetai, Justinian published an
edict and wrote letters to pope and patriarch to bring the matter to a
final decision. "If One of the Trinity did {15} not suffer in the
flesh, neither was He born in the flesh, nor can Mary be said, verily
and truly, to be His Mother." The emperor himself was accused of
heresy by the Vigilists; and at last Pope John II. declared the phrase,
"One Person of the Trinity was crucified," to be orthodox. His
judgment was confirmed by the Fifth General Council.[1]
The position which the emperor thus assumed was not one which the East
alone welcomed. Rome, too, recognised that the East had power to make
decrees, so long as they were consonant with apostolic doctrine.
[Sidenote: The Monophysites.]
Justinian now gave himself eagerly to the reconciliation of the
Monophysites. In 535 Anthimus, bishop of Trebizond, a friend of the
deposed patriarch of Antioch, Severus, who was at least
semi-Monophysite, was elected to the patriarchal throne of New Rome.
In the same year Pope Agapetus (534-6) came to Constantinople as an
envoy of a Gothic king, and he demanded that Anthimus should make
formal profession of orthodoxy. The result was not satisfactory: the
new patriarch was condemned by the emperor with the sanction of the
pope and the approval of a synod. Justinian then issued a decree
condemning Monophysitism, which he ordered the new patriarch to send to
the Eastern Churches. Mennas, the successor of Anthimus, in his local
synod, had condemned and deposed the Monophysite bishops. The
controversy was at an end.
More important in its results was the dispute with the so-called
Origenists. S. Sabas came from {16} Palestine in 531 to lay before the
emperor the sad tale of the spread of their evil doctrines, but he died
in the next year, and the Holy Land remained the scene of strife
between the two famous monasteries of the Old and the New Laura.
[Sidenote: The Origenists.] In 541 or 542 a synod at Antioch condemned
the doctrines of Origen, but the only result was that Jerusalem refused
communion with the other Eastern patriarchate. Justinian himself,--at
a time when there was at Constantinople an envoy from Rome,
Pelagius,--issued a long declaration condemning Origen. A synod was
summoned, which formally condemned Origen in person--a precedent for
the later anathemas of the Fifth General Council--and fifteen
propositions from his writings, ten of them being those which
Justinian's edict had denounced. The decisions were sent for
subscription to the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem,
as well as to Rome. This sanction gave something of an universal
condemnation of Origenism; but, since no general council confirmed it,
it cannot be asserted that Origen lies under anathema as a heretic.
The opinion of the legalists of the age was utterly out of sympathy
with one who was rather the cause of heresy in others than himself
heretical.
[Sidenote: The "Three Chapters."]
But the most important controversy of the reign was that which was
concerned with the "Three Chapters." Justinian, who had himself
written against the Monophysites, was led aside by an ingenious monk
into an attack upon the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret
of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa. The Emperor issued an edict (544) in
which "Three Chapters" asserted the heresy of the incriminated
writings. Within a short {17} time the phrase "The Three Chapters" was
applied to the subjects of the condemnation; and the Fifth General
Council, followed by later usage, describes as the "Three Chapters" the
"impious Theodore of Mopsuestia with his wicked writings, and those
things which Theodoret impiously wrote, and the impious letter which is
said to be by Ibas." [2]
Justinian's edict was not favourably received: even the patriarch
Mennas hesitated, and the papal envoy and some African bishops broke
off communion. The Latin bishops rejected it; but the patriarchs of
Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem gave their adhesion. Justinian
summoned Pope Vigilius; and a pitiable example of irresolution he
presented when he came. He accepted, rejected, censured, was
complacent and hostile in turns. [Sidenote: The Fifth General Council,
553.] At last he agreed to the summoning of a General Council, and
Justinian ordered it to meet in May, 553. Vigilius, almost at the last
moment, would have nothing to do with it. The patriarch of
Constantinople presided, and the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria
appeared in person, the patriarch of Jerusalem by three bishops. The
acts of the Council were signed by 164 prelates. The Council, like its
predecessors, was predominantly Eastern; but its decisions were
afterwards accepted by the West. The precedents of the earlier
Councils were strictly followed in regard to Rome: no supremacy was
allowed though the honourable primacy was not contested.[3]
Justinian's letter, sketching the history of the controversy of the
Three Chapters, {18} was read, but he did not interfere with the
deliberations. It was summoned to deal with matters concerning the
faith, and these were always left to the decision of the Episcopate.
The discussion was long; and after an exhaustive examination of the
writings of Theodore, the Council proceeded to endorse the first
"chapter," by the condemnation of the Mopsuestian and his writings.
The case of Theodoret was less clear: indeed, a very eminent authority
has regarded the action of the Council in his case as "not quite
equitable." [4] But the grounds of the condemnation were such
statements of his as that "God the Word is not incarnate," "we do not
acknowledge an hypostatic union," and his description of S. Cyril as
_impius, impugnator Christi, novus haereticus_, with a denial of the
_communicatio idiomatum_, which left little if any doubt as to his own
position.[5] When the letter of Ibas came to be considered, it was
plainly shown that its statements were directly contrary to the
affirmations of Chalcedon. It denied the Incarnation of the Word,
refused the title of Theotokos to the Blessed Virgin, and condemned the
doctrines of Cyril. The Council had no hesitation in saying anathema.
Here its work was ended. It had safeguarded the faith by definitely
exposing the logical consequences of statements which indirectly
impugned the Divine and Human Natures of the Incarnate Son.
[Sidenote: The need for its decisions.]
So long as human progress is based upon intellectual principles as well
as on material growth, a teaching body which professes to guard and
interpret a Divine Revelation must speak {19} without hesitation when
its "deposit" is attacked. The Church has clung, with an inspired
sagacity, to the reality of the Incarnation: and thus it has preserved
to humanity a real Saviour and a real Exemplar. The subtle brains
which during these centuries searched for one joint in the Catholic
armour wherein to insert a deadly dart, were foiled by a subtlety as
acute, and by deductions and definitions that were logical, rational,
and necessary. If the Councils had not defined the faith which had
been once for all delivered to the saints, it would have been dissolved
little by little by sentimental concessions and shallow inconsistencies
of interpretation. It was the work of the Councils to develope and
apply the principles furnished by the sacred Scriptures. New questions
arose, and it was necessary to meet them: it was clear, then, that
there was a real division between those who accepted Christianity in
the full logical meaning of the Scriptures, in the full confidence of
the Church, and those who doubted, hesitated, denied; and it is clear
now that the whole future of Christendom depended upon the acceptance
by the Christian nations of a single rational and logically tenable
Creed. This involved the rejection of the Three Chapters, as it
involved equally the condemnation of Monophysitism and Monothelitism.
From the point of view of theology or philosophy the value of the work
of the Church in this age is equally great. The heresies which were
condemned in the sixth century (as in the seventh) were such as would
have utterly destroyed the logical and rational conception of the
Person of the Incarnate Son, as the Church had received it by divine
inspiration. Some Christian historians may seem for a moment to yield
a half {20} assent to the shallow opinions of those who would refuse to
go beyond what is sometimes strangely called the "primitive simplicity
of the Gospel." But it is impossible in this obscurantist fashion to
check the free inquiry of the human intellect. The truths of the
Gospel must be studied and pondered over, and set in their proper
relation to each other. There must be logical inferences from them,
and reasonable conclusions. It is this which explains that struggle
for the Catholic Faith of which historians are sometimes impatient, and
justifies a high estimate of the services which the Church of
Constantinople rendered to the Church Universal.
It is in this light that the work of the Fifth General Council, to be
truly estimated, must be regarded. It will be convenient here to
summarise the steps by which the Fifth General Council won recognition
in the Church.
In the first place, the emperor, according to custom, confirmed what
the Council had decreed; and throughout the greater part of the East
the decision of Church and State alike was accepted. In 553 there was
a formal confirmation by a synod of bishops at Jerusalem; but for the
most part there was no need of such pronouncement. African bishops and
Syrian monks here and there refused obedience; but the Church as a
whole was agreed.
[Sidenote: Pope Vigilius.]
Pope Vigilius, it would seem, was in exile for six months on an island
in the Sea of Marmora. On December 8, 553, he formally anathematised
the Three Chapters. On February 23, 554, in a _Constitution_, he
announced to the Western bishops his adhesion to the decisions {21} of
the General Council. Before the end of 557 he was succeeded, on his
death, by Pelagius, well known in Constantinople. He, like Vigilius,
had once refused but now accepted the Council.
When Rome and Constantinople were agreed, the adhesion of the rest of
the Catholic world was only a question of time. But the time was long.
In North Italy there was for long a practical schism, which was not
healed till Justin II. issued an explanatory edict,[6] and the genius,
spiritual and diplomatic, of Gregory the Great was devoted to the task
of conciliation. Still it was not till the very beginning of the
eighth century[7] that the last schismatics returned to union with the
Church: thus a division in the see of Aquileia, by which for a time
there were two rival patriarchates, was closed. Already the rest of
Europe had come to peace.
[Sidenote: The Aphthartodocetes.]
The last years of Justinian were disturbed by a new heresy, that of
those who taught that the Body of the Lord was incorruptible, and it
was asserted that the emperor himself fell into this error. The
evidence is slight and contradictory, and the matter is of no
importance in the general history of the Church.[8] But it is worth
remembering that little more than a century after his death his name
was singled out by the Sixth General Council for special honour as of
"holy memory." His work, indeed, had been great, as theologian and as
Christian emperor; there was no more important or more accurate writer
{22} on theology in the East during the sixth century; and he must ever
be remembered side by side with the Fifth General Council which he
summoned. There were many defects in the Eastern theory of the
relations between Church and State; but undoubtedly under such an
emperor it had its best chances of success.
[Sidenote: The work of Justinian.]
Justinian has been declared to have forced upon the Empire which he had
reunited the orthodoxy of S. Cyril and the Council of Chalcedon, and
the attempt has been made to prove that Cyril himself was a
Monophysite.[9] The best refutation of this view is the perfect
harmony of the decisions of the Fifth General Council with those of the
previous Oecumenical assemblies, and the fact that no novelty could be
discovered to have been added to "the Faith" when the "Three Chapters"
were condemned.
With the close of the Council the definition of Christian doctrine
passes into the background till the rise of the Monothelite
controversy. When its decisions were accepted, the labours of
Justinian had given peace to the churches.
[Sidenote: and his successors.]
From 565, when Justinian died, to 628, when Heraclius freed the Empire
from the danger of Persian conquest, were years of comparative rest in
the Church. It was a period of missionary extension, of quiet
assertion of spiritual authority, in the midst of political trouble and
disaster. Gibbon, who asserts that Justinian died a heretic, adds,
"The reigns of his four successors, Justin, Tiberius, Maurice, and
Phocas, are distinguished by a rare, though fortunate, vacancy in the
ecclesiastical history {23} of the East"; and the sarcasm, though not
wholly accurate, may serve to express the gradual progress of unity
which marked the years up to the accession of Heraclius. The history
of religion is concerned rather with those outside than those within
the Church. That history we need not follow, and we may pass over this
period with only a brief allusion to the development of independence
outside the immediate range of the ecclesiastical power of New Rome.
[Sidenote: Rise of separated bodies.] Heresies grew as an expression of
national independence. The Chaldaean Church, which stretched to Persia
and India, was Nestorian. The Monophysites won the Coptic Church of
Egypt, the Abyssinian Church, the Jacobites in Syria, the Armenians in
the heart of Asia Minor. In the mountains of Lebanon the
Monothelites--of whom we have to speak shortly--organised the Maronite
Church; and in Georgia the Church was aided by geographical conditions
as well as historical development to ignore the overlordship of the
Church of Antioch. So in Europe grew up with the new States, the
Bulgarian, the Serbian, and the Wallachian Churches.
[Sidenote: Missions and failures.]
It was thus that, alike as statesmen and Christians, the emperors were
devoted advocates of missions. Their wars of conquest often--as
notably with the great Emperor Heraclius--assumed the character of holy
wars. Where the barbarians of the East made havoc there too often the
Church fell without leaving a trace of its work. Without priest and
sacrament, the people came to retain only among their superstitions, as
sometimes in North Africa to-day, usages which showed that once their
ancestors belonged to the kingdom of Christ. Much {24} of the
missionary work of the period was done by Monophysites; the record of
John of Ephesus preserves what he himself did to spread Christianity in
Asia. And it would seem that even the most orthodox of emperors was
willing to aid in the work of those who did not accept the Council of
Chalcedon so long as they earnestly endeavoured to teach the heathen
the rudiments of the faith and to love the Lord in incorruptness.
[Sidenote: Organisation of the Church.]
The Church of the period was divided into five patriarchates, the
Church of Cyprus being understood to stand apart and autocephalous.
Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch still retained their old
power, while Jerusalem was regarded as somewhat inferior. The
patriarchates were divided into provinces, the capital of each province
having its metropolitan bishop. Under him were other bishops, and
gradually the title of archbishop was being understood,--as by
Justinian in the decree (Novel, xi.) in which he created his birthplace
a metropolitan see,--to imply jurisdiction over a number of suffragan
sees. Besides this there were still sees autocephalous in the sense
that they owned no superior or metropolitan bishop. It would seem from
the _Synekdemos_ of Hierocles (c. 535) that in the sixth century the
patriarch of Constantinople had under him about thirty metropolitans
and some 450 bishops. But the authority which the patriarch exercised
was by no means used to minimise that of the bishops. If the influence
of the Imperial Court on the patriarchate was always considerable and
sometimes overwhelming, Justinian was careful to preserve the
independence of the Episcopate and {25} to order that the first steps
in the election of bishops should be by the clergy and the chief
citizens in each diocese. And, as a letter of S. Gregory shows, the
bishops were elected for life; neither infirmity nor old age was
regarded as a cause for deposition, and translation from see to see was
condemned by many a Council. All the clergy under the rank of bishop
might marry, but only before ordination to the higher orders. In the
East it would seem that the number of persons connected in some way
with ecclesiastical office was very large. Even excluding the
monks,--a numerous and continually increasing body--the hermits, the
Stylites (who remained for years on a pillar, where they even received
Communion, in a special vessel made for the purpose), the different
orders of celibate women--there was still a very considerable number of
persons attached to all the important churches, in different positions
of ministry. The famous poem of Paul the Silentiary on S. Sophia
revels in a recital of the number of persons employed as well as in the
beauty of the magnificent building itself.
In architecture, indeed, the Byzantine Church of the sixth century was
supreme. No more glorious edifice has ever been consecrated to the
service of Christ than the Church of the Divine Wisdom at
Constantinople; and the arts which enriched it in mosaic, marble,
metals, were brought to a perfection which excited the wonder of
succeeding centuries. Before we end this sketch of the history of a
great age in the life of the Eastern Church, a word must be said about
its most splendid and enduring memorial. Among the most striking
passages in the {26} chronicles of the age are the famous descriptions
by Procopius and by Paul the Silentiary of the splendours of the great
church of Constantinople in the sixth century after Christ. [Sidenote:
S. Sophia at Constantinople.] In the wonderful art of mosaic, as it may
be seen to-day in some of the churches of the New Rome, in S.
Sophia--though much there is still covered--and in the Church of the
Chora, the West, with all the beauty that we may still see in Ravenna,
was never able to equal the East. In solemn grandeur of architecture
fitted for open, public, common worship, expressive of the profoundest
verities of Christ's Church, it would be difficult to surpass the work
of the great age of Byzantine art. Of this S. Sophia, the Church of
the Divine Wisdom, at Constantinople, built by the architects of the
Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, is the most magnificent
example. There the eye travels upward, when the great nave is entered
from the narthex, from the arches supporting the gallery to those of
the gallery itself, from semi-domes larger and larger, up to the great
dome itself, an intricate scheme merging in a central unity. "The
length and the breadth and the height of it are equal" is the
exclamation which seems forced from the beholder: never was there a
church so vast yet so symmetrical, so admirably designed for the
participation of all worshippers in the great act of worship. And the
splendid pillars, brought from Baalbek of the old heathen days, wrought
on the capitals with intricate carvings, with emblems and devices and
monograms, the finely decorated doors, and the gigantic mosaic seraphim
on the walls, still in the twentieth century dimly image something of
the glowing worship of the {27} sixth. Then the "splendour of the
lighted space," glittering with thousands of lights, gave "shine unto
the world," and guided the seafarers as they went forth "by the divine
light of the Church itself." Traveller after traveller, chronicler
after chronicler, records impressions of the glory and beauty that
belonged to the great Mother Church of the Byzantine rite.
Historically, perhaps no church in the world has seen, at least in the
Middle Ages, so many scenes that belonged to the deepest crises of
national life. From the day when the great emperor who built it
prostrated himself before God as unworthy to make the offering of so
much beauty, to the day when Muhammad the conqueror (says the legend)
rode in over the heaps of Christian dead, it was the centre, and the
mirror, of the Church's life in the capital of the Empire. And that is
what the worship of the East has always striven to express. It is
immemorial, conservative beyond anything that the West can tolerate or
conceive; but it belongs, in the present as in the past, to the closest
thoughts, the most intimate experiences, of men to whom religion is
indeed the guide of life. The Church of S. Sophia, the worship of the
East, are the living memorials of the great age of the great Christian
emperor and theologian of the sixth century.
And the fact that this building was due to the genius and power not of
the Church, but of Justinian, leads us back to the significance of the
State authority in the ecclesiastical history of the East.
As it was said in England that kings were the Church's nursing fathers,
so in the Eastern Empire might the same text be used in rather a
different {28} sense. The Church was in power before the Empire was
Christian; but the Christian Empire was ever urgent to proclaim its
attachment to the Church and to guarantee its protection. The imperial
legislation of the great lawgiver began always in the name of the Lord,
and the code emphasised as the foundation of society and civil law the
orthodox doctrines of the Trinity and of Christ. And step by step the
great emperor endeavoured, in matters of morality and of gambling, to
enforce the moral laws of the Church. Works of charity and mercy were
undertaken by Church and State, hand in hand, and the noble buildings
which marked the magnificent period of Byzantine architecture were the
works of a society which, from the highest to the lowest member, was
penetrated by Christian ideals. Thus, very briefly, we may epitomise
the work of the first period we have mentioned. A word must be said
later of later times.
[1] Mansi, _Concilia_, ix. 384. The phrase was preserved in the Hymn
'_O onogenês_, which was inserted in the Mass, and the composition of
which is ascribed to Justinian himself.
[2] Mansi, ix. 181.
[3] Cf. Nicaea, Canon vi.; Constantinople, Canons ii. and iii.;
Ephesus, Canon viii.; Chalcedon, Canons ix. and xvii.
[4] Dr. W. Bright, _Waymarks in Church History_, p. 238.
[5] See Hefele, _History of the Councils_ (Eng. trans.), iv. 311.
[6] Given in Evagrius, v. 4.
[7] A.D. 700, Mansi, _Concilia_, xii. 115.
[8] See Gibbon, ed. J. B. Bury, vol. v. pp. 139, 140, 522, 523; and W.
H. Hutton, _The Church of the Sixth Century_, pp. 204-240, 303-309.
[9] Cf. Harnack, _Dogmengeschichte_, ii. pp. 396, 396, 399, etc.
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