Byzantine Orthodoxies

Papers from the Thirty-sixth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Durham, 23–25 March 2002

Augustine Casiday, Andrew Louth

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754654964
• eBook ISBN: 9781351953801
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Byzantine Empire - the Christianized Roman Empire - very soon defined itself in terms of correct theological belief, 'orthodoxy'. The terms of this belief were hammered out, for the most part, by bishops, but doctrinal decisions were made in councils called by the Emperors, many of whom involved themselves directly in the definition of 'orthodoxy'. Iconoclasm was an example of such imperial involvement, as was the final overthrow of iconoclasm. That controversy ensured that questions of Christian art were also seen by Byzantines as implicated in the question of orthodoxy. The papers gathered in this volume derive from those presented at the 36th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Durham, March 2002. They discuss how orthodoxy was defined, and the different interests that it represented; how orthodoxy was expressed in art and the music of the liturgy; and how orthodoxy helped shape the Byzantine Empire's sense of its own identity, an identity defined against the 'other' - Jews, heretics and, especially from the turn of the first millennium, the Latin West. These considerations raise wider questions about the way in which societies and groups use world-views and issues of belief to express and articulate identity. At a time when, with the enlargement of the European Union, questions of identity within Europe are once again becoming pressing, there is much in these essays of topical relevance.

1

Introduction

Andrew Louth

The notion of orthodoxy is one closely associated with the Byzantine Empire – the Christian continuation of the Roman Empire, as it thought of itself.¹ It was through councils or synods called by the Byzantine or Roman Emperor that orthodoxy was defined and, so defined, it was the system of belief required for full membership of the Empire. Those who failed to subscribe to orthodoxy, thus defined, were scarcely even second-class citizens of the Empire, the only exception to this being the Jews, who had a clearly defined status as, precisely, second-class citizens: formally permitted to exist and officially free from persecution, they were allowed to practise their religion and continue to worship in their synagogues, but they were not allowed to have Christians as slaves, nor to proselytize, work for the government, teach in public institutions, or serve in the army; nor were they allowed to build new synagogues, or even (in practice) to make major repairs to existing ones – they were to exist, until the second coming of Christ, as a standing witness to the truth of the Gospel they had rejected. Other than the Jews, those who failed to embrace orthodox Christianity were not even granted such second-class status; they had no right to exist, and if they did exist, did so either clandestinely, or because the inefficiency of the Byzantine State was not able to close the gap between theory and reality. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that no significant number of Manichees survived Justinian’s persecution of them in the sixth century. Even in the case of the Jews, there were periods, during which serious attempts were made to force on the Jewish community a choice between Christian baptism and death.

The Byzantine Empire was, then, in aspiration at least, an oppressive regime, and if its record of oppression does not match that of such twentieth-century regimes as the Soviet Union under Stalin that may only be because it lacked the machinery of oppression open to modern governments. The place of orthodoxy in the Byzantine Empire raises many questions. There are questions specific to the Byzantine Empire itself: What was this orthodoxy? How was it defined? How did it function within that society? How did it affect relations between the Byzantine Empire and other societies with which it had to do? There are more general questions about why some societies come to value and embrace orthodoxy, while others do not (among which is included the very society of which Byzantium claimed to be the Christian continuation, namely the Roman Empire, which, though oppressive, was not prescriptive in matters of religious belief). The question of orthodoxy can also be subsumed under the question of the place of orthodoxy in Christianity: Why did Christianity come to evolve the notion of orthodoxy (not all religions do – in fact, most do not, including those religions most closely related to Christianity, namely the other great monotheistic religions of Judaism and Islam)? Is it an essential aspect of Christianity (as over the centuries Christians have believed), or is it something accidental that evolved in the peculiar circumstances of the development of Christianity in the Roman Empire of Late Antiquity? This latter question has been the subject of prolonged debate in recent decades, especially since Walter Bauer’s Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum,² first published in 1934, suggested that most early forms of Christianity were heterodox by later standards, ‘orthodoxy’ being a response to the various forms of ‘gnosticism’ that prevailed in the second century. A recent collection of essays on the question of Orthodoxy in the early centuries of Christianity formed a Festschrift for Henry Chadwick (1989).³ Another collection on the subject of orthodoxy within Christianity, covering a somewhat wider field, forms the fruits of a collaborative venture between groups of French and American scholars.⁴ The present collection, consisting of papers given at the Thirty-Sixth Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held in Durham in the spring of 2002, concentrates on Byzantine Orthodoxy, principally in its historic form, that is, the Orthodoxy of the Byzantine Empire, understood as existing from the beginning of Constantine’s sole rule in 324 until the fall of the city he founded, Constantinople, to the Turks in 1453, nearly eleven and a half centuries later, although a number of papers are either directly or indirectly concerned with the continued, and continuing, vitality of that tradition in the centuries after the fall of Constantinople, and indeed today.

The papers have been arranged in three sections: Defining orthodoxy, Orthodoxy in art and the liturgy, and Orthodoxy and the other. A defining moment in definition and proclamation of Orthodoxy for the Byzantine Empire, as well as in its own self-conscious sense of itself as an Orthodox society, was the promulgation of the Synodikon of Orthodoxy in 843, as part of the final repudiation of iconoclasm. This Synodikon – a formal declaration, issued by the Home Synod in Constantinople, presided over by the new Patriarch Methodios – reaffirmed the decisions of the Seventh Œcumenical Synod that a little more than half-a-century earlier had declared the making and veneration of icons orthodox. The Synodikon was largely based on the records of the Œcumenical Synod, and therefore, not only reaffirmed the veneration of icons, but set that affirmation in the context of a recapitulation of the whole sequence of orthodox definitions and declarations that had occupied those synods accepted as œcumenical, from the first held at Nicaea in 325 under the Emperor Constantine to the last, also held at Nicaea, in 787 under the Empress Irene. It was therefore as much concerned with the doctrines of the Trinity and of Christology, both of which had been expressly invoked in the debates about the icons, as with a true understanding of the icons themselves. Indeed the debate about icons during the period of iconoclasm had never been simply a debate about the legitimacy of icons. The very first response to the iconoclast edict of the Emperor Leo III – the work known as the first of St John Damascene’s treatises Against those who attack the holy images – seeks to present the position of the iconoclasts, not as a mere attack on icon-veneration as idolatry, which is probably what it was to begin with, but a much more comprehensive attack on the fundamentals of Christianity: undermining the key role played by the concept of image or icon in Christian theology, seeking to ignore the significance of the Incarnation, whereby God, in himself beyond any circumscription or depiction, took on a particular human form, which could be circumscribed and depicted, and, in bypassing God’s embrace of material, creaturely humanity, offering a purely spiritual conception of Christianity, which John argued concealed an underlying dualism comparable to that of the Manichees. The early iconodule emphasis on the Incarnation, which John made central to his attack on iconoclasm, provoked the rejoinder of the iconoclasts in the reign of Leo III’s son, Constantine V, that the very attempt to depict Christ the God-man entailed Christological heresy: Nestorianism, if it was maintained that the icon depicted Christ’s humanity apart from his divinity, Monophysitism, if it was maintained that what was depicted was Christ’s humanity fused with his divinity. These arguments, found in Constantine V’s Peuseis or Inquiries and reaffirmed in the Horos or Definition of the iconoclast synod of Hiereia (754), turned the question of the icons into a matter of Christology, and as such it was to be debated right through to the second period of iconoclasm, introduced in 815 by Leo V. Icons, then, are not just an aspect of what is, or came to be, distinctive about Byzantine Orthodoxy; rather, icons became an emblem of what is, on any reckoning, central to Christian Orthodoxy, namely the confession as Christ as true God and true man.

The articles in the first part address various questions raised by the notion of Orthodoxy and its definition. John Behr addresses the fundamental theological issue, arguing against what is becoming a commonplace among patristic scholars, namely that orthodoxy is something that can only be held to have evolved in the fourth century, and is dependent on methods of theological argumentation and, in particular, scriptural exegesis that find little echo in current ways of theological thinking. In a closely argued paper – which is an epitome of something set out on a much broader canvas in the second volume of his multi-volume project The Formation of Christian Theology⁵ – John Behr argues that Christian orthodoxy is rooted in the acceptance of Scripture as the fundamental and indispensable witness to Christ, of which Christ himself is the final interpreter: an understanding – and acceptance – of Scripture, fundamental to Christianity from the time of the Apostles, only lost sight of in the excitement of the last couple of centuries of historical criticism, which still informs the criteria of much English-speaking patristic scholarship, though increasingly questioned by present-day biblical scholarship. In John Behr’s paper detailed historical analysis bears directly on issues of direct relevance for Christian theology today, and in particular on the appeal and challenge of Byzantine Orthodoxy in today’s world. For the rest of this volume the discussion is primarily historical, either unconcerned with the continuing tradition of which Byzantine Orthodoxy formed a distinctive part, or leaving such concern for the most part implicit.

Caroline Mace’s paper addresses an issue that is likely to come to be seen as of defining significance as patristic scholarship seeks to understand the dynamics of theological reflection in the period after the Council of Chalcedon (451), a period that has been opened up by the various parts of volume 2 of Aloys Cardinal Grillmeier’s life work – still continuing and being brought to completion after his death by the devoted labours and fine scholarship of Theresia Hainthaler – known in English as Christ in Christian Tradition.⁶ For Caroline Macé is concerned with the way in which, in the sixth century, the works of Gregory Naziamen, by then known as ‘St Gregory the Theologian’, came to acquire doctrinal authority. The wider significance of Gregory’s growing authority, on which Caroline Macé’s paper sheds signal light, lies in the fact that the central question for Orthodoxy, in the wake of the Council of Chalcedon, lay in matters of Christological definition, which had been defined at that council in the terms used in the debate between Cyril and Nestorius, terms rather different from those in which Gregory had discussed Christology. That council had, notoriously, settled very little with its Christological Definition, which left the Church in the Eastern provinces of the Empire divided, and also, because of the relatively uncomplicated support it found in the Church of the Latin West, made difficult to the point of impossibility any reconciliation of the Eastern Christians by attempts to reach back behind Chalcedon (such an attempt having provoked the Acacian schism that divided East from the West in the years 492–519). Gregory was also, perhaps more naturally, involved in the other great question that raised questions of orthodoxy in the sixth century, namely speculations, mainly about the origin of the created order and its final destiny (protology and eschatology), that were associated with the theological speculations of Origen, in which Gregory had interested himself. Gregory’s growing authority – witness to which is found in various collections of scholia on his works, far more than are found with any other Father of the Church,⁷ beginning with the so-called Ambigua (or Difficulties) of St Maximus the Confessor, which themselves constitute a theological work of immense stature – had a profound effect on the shaping of later Orthodoxy, something that is still only imperfectly understood.

The events of the sixth century make clear the extent to which orthodoxy was defined, on the one hand, in relation to what can either be seen as heresies, or sometimes, more usefully, as competing definitions of orthodoxy, and, on the other hand, by imperial authority, often, though not always, through councils deemed cecumenical, convoked by Emperors. In the sixth century, both those whom the Orthodox called monophysites – that is, those who regarded Chalcedon’s language of ‘two natures’ as entailing a dangerously divided account of Christ and also, perhaps just as important, as constituting a betrayal of St Cyril of Alexandria, soon to be acclaimed throughout the East as the ‘seal of the Fathers’ – and also the Latins of the West represented alternative ways of defining orthodoxy. But with this difference: the monophysites were regarded as beyond the pale of orthodoxy, while the Latins were still regarded as within the pale, despite their different doctrinal emphasis (in the sixth century, their adherence to Chalcedon was unproblematic, in contrast to the qualified acceptance in the East, sometimes called Neo-Chalcedonianism, that represented the kernel of Justinian’s religious policy, finding expression, for instance, in the ‘Three Chapters controversy’ – the condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestie and the attacks on Cyril by Theodoret of Cyrus and Ibas of Edessa – that was scarcely controversial at all in the East). How very slowly the differences between ‘Greek East’ and ‘Latin West’ developed into something amounting to schism is one of the underlying themes in this volume. Norman Russell’s paper on Prochoros Kydones shows how, even as late as the fourteenth century, there were those in the East whose openness to Latin ideas, by now the quite distinctive Latin ideas that found expression in Western Scholasticism, was not intended as any betrayal of Byzantine Orthodoxy, but rather a way of exploring its riches.

Byzantine Orthodoxy was, however, a matter for the Emperor. Patricia Karlin-Hat’ter’s paper is concerned with the questions that lay behind the promulgation of the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, and in particular with how it functioned as a standard of Orthodoxy. Patriarch Methodius, who had supplanted the iconoclast patriarch, John the Grammarian, is often regarded as a moderate; he was certainly regarded by the Stoudite monks as not sufficiently rigorous in his orthodoxy. However, as Karlin-Hayter points out, his restoration of Orthodoxy was not in the least moderate. Unlike Tarasius after the second Council of Nicaea in 787, Methodius showed little or no mercy towards those who had compromised over iconoclasm; very many bishops and priests were deposed. Karlin-Hayter explores the extent to which Methodius’ action was at the behest of the imperial throne, that is the Empress Theodora, acting for her infant son, Michael III. Though it was often maintained that the triumph of Orthodoxy, celebrated by the overthrow of iconoclasm, was a victory for the monks – an idea enshrined in the Triumph of Orthodoxy icon in the British Museum – the period of iconoclasm in fact saw a strengthening of the power both of the Emperor, despite the fact that iconoclasm had been an act of imperial policy, and also of the patriarchal court, which was closely allied with the imperial court. From 843 onwards, the celebration of the Triumph of Orthodoxy became an annual celebration on the First Sunday of Lent, known as the Sunday of Orthodoxy, at first probably only in Constantinople, but later in all churches throughout the Byzantine world, and later still throughout the whole Orthodox world; it continues today.⁸ This celebration, with the crowds gathered in Hagia Sophia presumably joining in the roared responses of Anathema, in the case of the condemnation of heretics, named or described, and Eternal memory!, in the case of the acclamation of the Orthodox, must have constituted a kind of act of complicity in imperial Orthodoxy. For the first two centuries, the Synodikon of Orthodoxy remained largely unchanged, but with the accession of Alexios Komnenos additions began to be made to the Synodikon to bring it up to date. First, there were the additions made after the condemnation of John Italos in 1082. Later, further additions were made under Manuel Komnenos, concerning the various theological debates he had fostered during his reign. In both these cases, the additions to the Synodikon highlighted the claim of the Komnene emperors to be guardians of Orthodoxy: an area not covered in the papers of the conference, as it has been thoroughly dealt with in recent works by Paul Magdalino and Michael Angold.⁹ Still later, in the fourteenth century, final additions were made to the Synodikon, acclaiming the triumph of the Palamites over Barlaam and Gregory Akindynos in the hesychast controversy. The manuscripts Gouillard drew on in his edition of the Synodikon show, too, that there were local versions of the Synodikon in which other heretics, such as the Bogomils, were condemned. A point, relevant to the form of the Synodikon, is explored in Dirk Krausmüller’s paper. For the Synodikon was not simply a matter of doctrinal definition, it was a public dramatic event, involving directly those who participated. The extent to which late antique and Byzantine theological literature is self-consciously literary, deliberately adopting li...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• List of Illustrations
• 1. Introduction
• Section I Defining orthodoxy
• Section II Orthodoxy in art and liturgy
• Section III Orthodoxy and the other
• Epilogue
• Index