Although technically they had only the right of nomination, they often virtually appointed the Patriarch of Constantinople. No Patriarch could hold office without their consent.
Until late in the eighth century elections to the Papacy were confirmed by them. The subordination of Church to state persisted and today is seen in the family of Orthodox Churches. In the West the Empire waned and the Popes stepped in to take its place in preserving order while in the East the Empire continued and the leading Patriarch of that region, he of Constantinople, was overshadowed by the Emperor and the state.
There may be deeper but more subtle reasons, such as the distinction between the Roman and the Greek genius, the one practical, the other, in its later Neoplatonic form, stressing spirit at the expense of flesh. It will be recalled that Monophysitism, belittling the human element in Christ, had much greater vogue in the East than in the West.
Whatever the reasons, the contrast was real. II: A. In Russia efforts of Nikon to make the Patriarchate preeminent failed and within a generation after his death Peter the Great allowed the office to remain unfilled and substituted for it the Holy Synod, completely a creature of the tsar. The true founder of the state church of the Eastern Empire was Constantius II, who was typically Byzantine alike in his passionate interest in theological controversy and in his belief in his imperial prerogative as the defender of the faith and the supreme arbitrator in ecclesiastical disputes.
This system met with vehement opposition from two quarters: from Athanasius, the great bishop of Alexandria, and from the West, where the doctrine of the independence of the Church was uncompromisingly maintained, above all by St. Hilary and Hosius, the famous bishop of Cordova. Hence there arose the long schism between the West and the state church of the Eastern Empire, which was not terminated until the faith of Nicaea was re-established by an Emperor from the West.
The primacy of the new Patriarchate [Constantinople] was explicitly based on its connection with the imperial government, as against the principle of apostolic tradition, on which the three great Sees of Rome, Antioch and Alexandria founded their authority. And its subsequent evolution was conditioned by the same principles. It developed as the centre of the state church and the instrument of imperial ecclesiastical policy.
While Rome and Alexandria each possessed a distinct and continuous theological tradition, the teaching of Constantinople fluctuated with the vicissitudes of imperial politics.
Its tradition was in fact diplomatic rather than theological, since in every dogmatic crisis the primary interest of the government was to preserve the religious unity of the Empire, and the Patriarchate became the instrument of its compromises.
And as the state church had been semi-Arian in the days of Constantus and Eusebius, so it was semi-Monophysite with Zeno and Acacius, and Monothelite with Heraclius and Sergius. These schisms themselves contributed to preserve the prestige of Rome in the East, since the defenders of orthodoxy from the days of Athanasius to those of Theodore of Studium regarded the papacy as the bulwark of their cause against the attempts of the imperial government to enforce its theological ideals on the Church.
The monastic party in the Eastern Church. Cobham, Cambridge: University Press, , pp. It may be noted that ninety-five Patriarchs reigned for less than a year. Also that of vacancies between A. In all so that only closed their term of office by a natural death. Probably no series of men, occupying through nearly eighteen centuries an exalted position, claim so little personal distinction as the Patriarchs of Constantinople. Ecclesiastical independence of Constantinople was declared thereafter and the Russian Church came to have its own patriarch, who became increasingly subservient to the Czar.
The more the connection with Byzantium was severed, the more the Byzantine pattern was transferred, and even exaggerated, for the term Caesaropapism applied better to Moscow than to Constantinople. Bainton received his Ph. Theologiae from the University of Marburg, and Litt. He was Titus Street professor of ecclesiastical history at Yale University. Lewis, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, , pp. The fifth century affected the Latin Church and the Greek Church quite differently.
The Church in Constantinople and in the part of Europe that was ruled by Eastern emperors had to face two special problems, heresy and Caesaropapism. When persecution proved ineffective, such emperors as Zeno and Anastasius attempted compromise, ignoring Chalcedon and defying the wishes of Constantinople and the Greek areas in an attempt to hold their Empire together. At the same time, fifth-century emperors in the East emphasized their roles as heads of the Church, a tradition they inherited from Constantine.
They did not hesitate to remove from office those churchmen with whose policies and views they disagreed. Since they felt it necessary to conciliate Monophysite Syria and Egypt, they were especially concerned with controlling the Church, lest controversy split their Empire apart. Thus, they laid the foundations of the Caesaropapism that, in later centuries, was often to distinguish the Greek Church from the Latin Church in the West.
The Byzantine emperors maintained almost complete control over the Church during this era [Carolingian: ]. It was Leo who, on his own initiative, promulgated the decrees that proclaimed Iconoclasm, while his son, Constantine V, did not hesitate to remove from office patriarchs and other high Church officials.
He even called together Church conclaves that were completely uncanonical, to implement an extreme Iconoclast program. A little while later, when Iconoclasm was revived, its restoration was the work of emperors who imposed their views on a somewhat reluctant Church.
Seldom in the history of the Church had there been a period in which Caesaropapism was as unrestrained as it was in the Byzantium of this period. The ending of the schism. Basil I and Leo the Wise showed this clearly. Although no emperor after the end of Iconoclasm in meddled with doctrine, all made it clear that they were masters of their Church and expected to be obeyed by the hierarchy.
By the early tenth century, the Eastern Church was under firm Imperial control, a fact that the Papacy was tacitly willing to recognize. The emperors after Constantine. They took part in all theological disputes, and thereby inflamed the passion of parties. They protected orthodoxy and punished heresy with the arm of power. Often, however, they took the heretical side, and banished orthodox bishops from their sees.
Thus Arianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, and Monophysitism successively found favor and protection at court. Even empresses meddled in the internal and external concerns of the Church.
Justina endeavored with all her might to introduce Arianism in Milan, but met a successful opponent in Bishop Ambrose. Eudoxia procured the deposition and banishment of the noble Chrysostom. Theodora, raised from the stage to the throne, ruled the emperor Justinian, and sought by every kind of intrigue to promote the victory of the Monophysite heresy.
It is true, the doctrinal decisions proceeded properly from the councils, and could not have maintained themselves long without that sanction. But Basiliscus, Zeno, Justinian I, Heraclius, Constans II, and other emperors issued many purely ecclesiastical edicts and rescripts without consulting the councils, or through the councils by their own influence upon them.
Justinian opens his celebrated codex with the imperial creed on the trinity and the imperial anathema against Nestorius, Eutyches, Apollinaris, on the basis certainly of the apostolic church and of the four ecumenical councils, but in the consciousness of absolute legislative and executive authority even over the faith and conscience of all his subjects.
There were bishops who justified even the most arbitrary excesses of the Byzantine despotism in religion by reference to Melchizedek and the pious kings of Israel, and yielded themselves willing tools of the court. But there were never wanting also fearless defenders of the rights of the church against the civil power. Maximus the Confessor declared before his judges in Constantinople, that Melchizedek was a type of Christ alone, not of the emperor.
In general the hierarchy formed a powerful and wholesome check on the imperial papacy, and preserved the freedom and independence of the church toward the temporal power. The Western church, as a whole, preserved her independence far more than the Eastern; partly through the great firmness of the Roman character, partly through the favor of political circumstances, and of remoteness from the influence and the intrigues of the Byzantine court.
In the Catholic system the freedom and independence of the church involve the supremacy of an exclusive priesthood and papacy. He founded the American Society of Church History and was an early ecumenist. Billington, New York: Random House, pages, with pages of elaborate footnotes , p.
Ivan the Terrible, the first ideologist to rule Muscovy, the first ruler to be formally crowned tsar, and the man who ruled Russia longer than any other figure in its history. In some ways Ivan can be seen as a kind of fundamentalist survival of Byzantium. Following his Josephite teachers, he used Byzantine texts to justify his absolutism and Byzantine rituals in having himself crowned in with the Russian form of the old imperial title.
His sense of imperial pretense, formalistic traditionalism, and elaborate court intrigue all seem reminiscent of the vanished world of Constantinople. Yet his passion for absolute dominance over the ecclesiastical as well as the civil sphere represented caesaropapism in excess of anything in Byzantium. Kesich, Chicago: Henry Regnery Co. Byzantium can in no way be considered merely a completed and outlived chapter of Church history.
From OrthodoxWiki. Jump to: navigation , search. Specific recommendations for its Orthodoxizing may be found on the talk page. You can help OrthodoxWiki by editing it. II, , pp. I revised ed. II 5th ed. David US English. Mark US English. Daniel British. Libby British. Mia British. Karen Australian. Hayley Australian. Natasha Australian. Veena Indian. Priya Indian. Neerja Indian. Zira US English. Oliver British. That would cause a terrible confusion of the two spheres of life.
In a mixed community we do not desire a theocracy; rather, we oppose it with all our might, for two cogent reasons: 1 Wherever such church rule was established, it always ended in tyranny and the corruption of a people.
A second answer might be: Let government itself be the church! This solution is known as caesaropapism and has been adopted especially in Russia. The Russian czar is emperor and pope, that is, sovereign and high priest, or if you will, government and church, combined in one person. This prevents clashes. The church retains its influence but cannot exercise it except through the sovereign. Its influence, therefore, is a sham. In Russia it is indeed the czar, either in person or through his agents, that determines what shall count as divine ordinance in his realm.
The Russian church serves only to accredit this for the common laity. On a different scale this caesaropapism was also introduced by Protestant rulers, particularly in Germany, and it must be said to our shame that during the events of even our foremost pastors were far from unwilling to follow King William I on his questionable steps toward caesaropapism.
This system, too, we reject most resolutely.
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