While the western half of the Roman Empire, with its capital at Rome, was invaded and overthrown by Germanic tribespeople, the eastern half of the Empire survived and thrived as a Christianised society with Constantinople as its capital.
Christian Empire
The most illustrious ruler of Constantinople was Justinian, who ruled 527-565. During that time, he was able, albeit temporarily, to reclaim some lands occupied by Germanic peoples (such as the Vandals in North Africa). He also engaged in a building programme – most famously reconstructing the Hagia Sophia after the Nika riot. And he is known for having codified Roman law. The two-headed eagle of Constantinople represents the "harmony" of the priesthood and the kingdom, i.e. the church and state working in tandem. In the East, unlike in the west, this always meant the state had the upper hand (this is sometimes termed "Caesaropapism") with the Emperor possessing divinely ordained power, and above the law.
After Justinian’s death, many of the lands in the west he had won back were lost again. However, the following century, Emperor Heraclius (r. 610-641) was able to hold the Sassinid Empire of Persia at bay until the rise of the Islamic caliphate. The period especially from the mid-600s to mid-700s is referred to as the "Dark Age" of Constantinople. This was a time of divisive controversy and it is thought that, until the dust settled, historians feared "condemning saints or canonising heretics". In fact we only have one surviving source dating to this period (the Chronography of Theophanes the Confessor).
Doctrinal controversies
The Church of the East, which held to the teaching of Nestorius, condemned in 431 at the Council Ephesus, were now outside the Empire. However, inside the Empire there were still the “Monophysites” (“Miaphysites” or “Oriental Orthodox”) who rejected the 451 Council at Chalcedon, and this was a major concern. The Monophysites engaged in missionary work and so were growing in number. They also represented disunity. Several attempts were made by Emperors to win them over with formulations they could accept, such as the Henotikon (482), the theological qualifications of Leontius of Byzantium (d. 543) in respect of “enhypostasia” (Jesus’ human soul and body had no existence apart from “in” the person of the divine Son), or the condemnation of the “Three Chapters” (writings by Theodore of Mopsuetia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa) at the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553). But this was all to no avail. A controversial Monophysite form of words used in worship in 512 (and later withdrawn) stated "one of the Trinity was crucified for us". The Ecumenical Council of 553 sought to express this truth in more careful language: "one of the Holy Trinity suffered in the flesh".
In the 600s, an attempt was made to reconcile the Monophysites by speaking of the "single will" in Christ. This was proclaimed in Imperial edicts, the Ekthesis (638) and the Typos (648). However, Maximus the Confessor and others perceived this compromise to undermine the full humanity and free cooperation of Christ's human nature in redemption - with implications for our participation in salvation. Echoing a principle from earlier controversies over the two natures of Christ, Maximus argued that the human will is the source of sin and the seat of our corruption. In order to heal our fallen wills, Christ must have taken up a human will. Maximus was tortured and mutilated for his stand, later dying of his wounds in 662. After Emperors and even a Pope (Honorius I) had supported what become a wrong teaching, the church finally ruled in 681 (at what became known as the Sixth Ecumenical Council) that there are in fact two wills in Christ: a divine will and a human will. (By this time, the churches that rejected the teaching of Chalcedon were living outside the Empire and under Muslim rule, and so the imperative to reunite the church became less urgent.) Some Christians in Lebanon maintained a belief in "one will" and were known as the Maronites; they reunited with the Roman Catholic church some centuries later in the 1200s.
By the 600s, the geopolitical and religious map of the Middle East had changed. In the space previously occupied by Zoroastrian Persia, and beyond, the new religion of Islam was gaining ground - both metaphorically and literally. Of the four eastern "patriarchal sees" (places where the leading bishops in the church had their official "seat"), three ended up under Islam, leading to Constantinople, already known as the "Ecumenical Patriarch", becoming even more prominent. At this time, an Arab-speaking Melkite Christian in Syria by the name of Theodore Abu Qurrah (750-820) was a pioneer in terms of Christian engagement and apologetics vis-a-vis Islam. He articulated the truths of the Christian faith using the terms and concepts of Islam. In the East Syrian "Church of the East" (Nestorians), Catholicos Timothy I (d. 823) likewise engaged in apologetics vis-à-vis Islam.
In the 700s, the church underwent another controversy, this time about the practice of venerating images of Christ and the saints. As Muslim advanced, there was a move away from the practice of venerating images of saints and of Christ, which many saw to be a violation of the commandment not to make graven images (and therefore subject to God’s judgment in the form of Islam). Those who opposed the practice of icon veneration were called iconoclasts, while those who supported it were called “iconodules”. The first period of iconoclasm began with the removal of the prominent icon of Christ the Saviour from a gate into the city of Constantinople in 726. This first phase of the controversy saw many prominent iconodules exiled and worse. A church council in 754 even condemned the veneration of icons. It was John of Damascus, in the paradoxical "safety" of Muslim Syria, who was able to articulate the iconodule position in theological terms, considering such images and their veneration a necessary consequence of the incarnation. "I shall not cease to honour matter, for it was through matter that my salvation came to pass . . . Do not despise matter, for it is not despicable; nothing is despicable that God has made." The controversy raged until the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787, which canonised (gave official church approval to) the reverencing of icons, drawing a distinction between the “adoration” (latria) due to God alone and the lesser “reverence” (proskynesis) afforded to, say, an icon of Christ, whereby "whoever venerates the image venerate in it the reality of what is there represented". Icon veneration became part-and-parcel of church practice, particularly in the Orthodox East. Protestant Christians do not hold to the rulings of this Council, and do not practise the veneration of images.
Mystical tradition
In the Eastern half of the church, theologians are not just Christian thinkers, but also mystics. As Gregory of Nyssa wrote in the 300s, “the one who is going to associate intimately with God must go beyond all that is visible and… believe that the divine is there where the understanding does not reach.” In this vein, a prominent writer, known to historians as Pseudo-Dionysius, spoke of God in apophatic terms i.e. in terms of what God is not (rather than what He is). According to this approach, a person progresses towards the knowledge of God in three stages: purification, illumination and union (theosis). A centre for eastern monasticism was Palestine, where Euthymius the Great (d. 473) and Sabbas the Sanctified (d. 532) were leading figures. In the 400s and 500s, the Eastern monastery on Mount Sinai became a second centre of eastern monasticism. This is where John Climacus (d. 649) was based. He wrote the “Ladder of Divine Ascent” as a sort of 30-step road-map to ascetic growth and achievement. The book includes an early form of inner mental prayer: what is known as the “Jesus prayer” or “hesychasm”.
Public worship
During this time, the form of Christian public worship also continued to develop and diverge between east and west. The typical architecture of an eastern church was no longer the Roman-inspired rectangular basilica, but rather the square-shaped “martyrium”. These buildings were conceived not merely as "meeting houses", but as images of the cosmic order, places of encounter between heaven and earth. The Divine Liturgy, as public worship was called in the east, took the command "do this in remembrance of me" as a principle for reenacting the drama of salvation. The western church father Augustine had written, “All that is beautiful comes from the highest Beauty, which is God.” Christian worship was, correspondingly, aesthetic in character. During the course of the service, first the Scriptures and then the elements for Communion (bread and wine) were ceremonially brought into the nave (the area of the church where the congregation stood). The culmination of the service were the eucharistic prayers (prayers before Communion), invoking the Holy Spirit (epiclesis) upon the bread and wine before the worshippers partake. The basic two-part structure of the service (liturgy of the Word followed by liturgy of the Eucharist), established in the early Christian centuries, was further embellished with more elaborate litanies (set petitionary prayers), eucharistic prayers (prayers before communion), and musical settings proclaiming doctrine, such as the “Trisagion” (438), the “Creed” (510) and “Only-Begotten Son” (536). Those who contributed to the development of the Eastern divine liturgy included Roman the Melodist (d. 556), John of Damascus (d. 749), Cosma the Melodist (d. 760) and Andrew of Crete (d. 740).
Christian Empire
The most illustrious ruler of Constantinople was Justinian, who ruled 527-565. During that time, he was able, albeit temporarily, to reclaim some lands occupied by Germanic peoples (such as the Vandals in North Africa). He also engaged in a building programme – most famously reconstructing the Hagia Sophia after the Nika riot. And he is known for having codified Roman law. The two-headed eagle of Constantinople represents the "harmony" of the priesthood and the kingdom, i.e. the church and state working in tandem. In the East, unlike in the west, this always meant the state had the upper hand (this is sometimes termed "Caesaropapism") with the Emperor possessing divinely ordained power, and above the law.
After Justinian’s death, many of the lands in the west he had won back were lost again. However, the following century, Emperor Heraclius (r. 610-641) was able to hold the Sassinid Empire of Persia at bay until the rise of the Islamic caliphate. The period especially from the mid-600s to mid-700s is referred to as the "Dark Age" of Constantinople. This was a time of divisive controversy and it is thought that, until the dust settled, historians feared "condemning saints or canonising heretics". In fact we only have one surviving source dating to this period (the Chronography of Theophanes the Confessor).
Doctrinal controversies
The Church of the East, which held to the teaching of Nestorius, condemned in 431 at the Council Ephesus, were now outside the Empire. However, inside the Empire there were still the “Monophysites” (“Miaphysites” or “Oriental Orthodox”) who rejected the 451 Council at Chalcedon, and this was a major concern. The Monophysites engaged in missionary work and so were growing in number. They also represented disunity. Several attempts were made by Emperors to win them over with formulations they could accept, such as the Henotikon (482), the theological qualifications of Leontius of Byzantium (d. 543) in respect of “enhypostasia” (Jesus’ human soul and body had no existence apart from “in” the person of the divine Son), or the condemnation of the “Three Chapters” (writings by Theodore of Mopsuetia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa) at the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553). But this was all to no avail. A controversial Monophysite form of words used in worship in 512 (and later withdrawn) stated "one of the Trinity was crucified for us". The Ecumenical Council of 553 sought to express this truth in more careful language: "one of the Holy Trinity suffered in the flesh".
In the 600s, an attempt was made to reconcile the Monophysites by speaking of the "single will" in Christ. This was proclaimed in Imperial edicts, the Ekthesis (638) and the Typos (648). However, Maximus the Confessor and others perceived this compromise to undermine the full humanity and free cooperation of Christ's human nature in redemption - with implications for our participation in salvation. Echoing a principle from earlier controversies over the two natures of Christ, Maximus argued that the human will is the source of sin and the seat of our corruption. In order to heal our fallen wills, Christ must have taken up a human will. Maximus was tortured and mutilated for his stand, later dying of his wounds in 662. After Emperors and even a Pope (Honorius I) had supported what become a wrong teaching, the church finally ruled in 681 (at what became known as the Sixth Ecumenical Council) that there are in fact two wills in Christ: a divine will and a human will. (By this time, the churches that rejected the teaching of Chalcedon were living outside the Empire and under Muslim rule, and so the imperative to reunite the church became less urgent.) Some Christians in Lebanon maintained a belief in "one will" and were known as the Maronites; they reunited with the Roman Catholic church some centuries later in the 1200s.
By the 600s, the geopolitical and religious map of the Middle East had changed. In the space previously occupied by Zoroastrian Persia, and beyond, the new religion of Islam was gaining ground - both metaphorically and literally. Of the four eastern "patriarchal sees" (places where the leading bishops in the church had their official "seat"), three ended up under Islam, leading to Constantinople, already known as the "Ecumenical Patriarch", becoming even more prominent. At this time, an Arab-speaking Melkite Christian in Syria by the name of Theodore Abu Qurrah (750-820) was a pioneer in terms of Christian engagement and apologetics vis-a-vis Islam. He articulated the truths of the Christian faith using the terms and concepts of Islam. In the East Syrian "Church of the East" (Nestorians), Catholicos Timothy I (d. 823) likewise engaged in apologetics vis-à-vis Islam.
In the 700s, the church underwent another controversy, this time about the practice of venerating images of Christ and the saints. As Muslim advanced, there was a move away from the practice of venerating images of saints and of Christ, which many saw to be a violation of the commandment not to make graven images (and therefore subject to God’s judgment in the form of Islam). Those who opposed the practice of icon veneration were called iconoclasts, while those who supported it were called “iconodules”. The first period of iconoclasm began with the removal of the prominent icon of Christ the Saviour from a gate into the city of Constantinople in 726. This first phase of the controversy saw many prominent iconodules exiled and worse. A church council in 754 even condemned the veneration of icons. It was John of Damascus, in the paradoxical "safety" of Muslim Syria, who was able to articulate the iconodule position in theological terms, considering such images and their veneration a necessary consequence of the incarnation. "I shall not cease to honour matter, for it was through matter that my salvation came to pass . . . Do not despise matter, for it is not despicable; nothing is despicable that God has made." The controversy raged until the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787, which canonised (gave official church approval to) the reverencing of icons, drawing a distinction between the “adoration” (latria) due to God alone and the lesser “reverence” (proskynesis) afforded to, say, an icon of Christ, whereby "whoever venerates the image venerate in it the reality of what is there represented". Icon veneration became part-and-parcel of church practice, particularly in the Orthodox East. Protestant Christians do not hold to the rulings of this Council, and do not practise the veneration of images.
Mystical tradition
In the Eastern half of the church, theologians are not just Christian thinkers, but also mystics. As Gregory of Nyssa wrote in the 300s, “the one who is going to associate intimately with God must go beyond all that is visible and… believe that the divine is there where the understanding does not reach.” In this vein, a prominent writer, known to historians as Pseudo-Dionysius, spoke of God in apophatic terms i.e. in terms of what God is not (rather than what He is). According to this approach, a person progresses towards the knowledge of God in three stages: purification, illumination and union (theosis). A centre for eastern monasticism was Palestine, where Euthymius the Great (d. 473) and Sabbas the Sanctified (d. 532) were leading figures. In the 400s and 500s, the Eastern monastery on Mount Sinai became a second centre of eastern monasticism. This is where John Climacus (d. 649) was based. He wrote the “Ladder of Divine Ascent” as a sort of 30-step road-map to ascetic growth and achievement. The book includes an early form of inner mental prayer: what is known as the “Jesus prayer” or “hesychasm”.
Public worship
During this time, the form of Christian public worship also continued to develop and diverge between east and west. The typical architecture of an eastern church was no longer the Roman-inspired rectangular basilica, but rather the square-shaped “martyrium”. These buildings were conceived not merely as "meeting houses", but as images of the cosmic order, places of encounter between heaven and earth. The Divine Liturgy, as public worship was called in the east, took the command "do this in remembrance of me" as a principle for reenacting the drama of salvation. The western church father Augustine had written, “All that is beautiful comes from the highest Beauty, which is God.” Christian worship was, correspondingly, aesthetic in character. During the course of the service, first the Scriptures and then the elements for Communion (bread and wine) were ceremonially brought into the nave (the area of the church where the congregation stood). The culmination of the service were the eucharistic prayers (prayers before Communion), invoking the Holy Spirit (epiclesis) upon the bread and wine before the worshippers partake. The basic two-part structure of the service (liturgy of the Word followed by liturgy of the Eucharist), established in the early Christian centuries, was further embellished with more elaborate litanies (set petitionary prayers), eucharistic prayers (prayers before communion), and musical settings proclaiming doctrine, such as the “Trisagion” (438), the “Creed” (510) and “Only-Begotten Son” (536). Those who contributed to the development of the Eastern divine liturgy included Roman the Melodist (d. 556), John of Damascus (d. 749), Cosma the Melodist (d. 760) and Andrew of Crete (d. 740).
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