FIRST DIVISION. History of the Development of the Church during the Græco-Roman and Græco-Byzantine Periods. (continued 10)

§ 62. Heretical Reformers.

During the 4th century a spirit of opposition to the dominant ecclesiastical system was awakened, but as it manifested itself in isolated forms, it had no abiding result and was soon stamped out. This spirit showed itself in various attempts which passed beyond what evangelical principles could vindicate. It directed its attacks partly against the secularization of the church, branching out often into wild fanaticism and rigorism, and partly against superstition and externalism. Disgusted with the interminable theological controversies and heresy huntings of that age, many came to regard the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy as a matter of indifference so far as religion is concerned, and to look for the core and essence of Christianity not so much in doctrine as in morals.

§ 62.1. Audians and Apostolics.―As fanatical opponents of the secularizing of the church, besides the Montanists (§ 40, 1) and the Novatians (§ 41, 3) still surviving as isolated communities down to the 5th century, we meet during the 4th century with the Donatists (§ 63, 1), the Audians and the Apostolics. The sect of the Audians was founded about A.D. 340 by a layman, a monk, Audius or Udo from Mesopotamia. Having been challenged for his crude anthropomorphic views, in support of which he referred to Gen. i. 26 and other passages, he allowed himself to be chosen and ordained bishop over his adherents. Placed thus in a directly hostile relation to the Catholic church, they accused the church of most arrant worldliness and degeneracy, called for a return to apostolic poverty and avoided all communion with its members. They also rejected the Nicene canon on the observance of Easter and adopted the quartodeciman practice (§ 56, 3). On the motion of several Catholic bishops the emperor banished the founder of the sect to Scythia, where he laboured earnestly for the conversion of the Goths, founded also some bishoprics and monasteries with strict rules, and died in A.D. 372. The persecution of the Christians under Athanaric, in A.D. 370 (§ 76, 1), pressed sorely upon the Audians. Still remnants of them continued to exist down to the end of the 5th century.―The so-called Apostolics of Asia Minor in the 4th century went even further than the Audians. Of their origin nothing certain is known. They declared that the holding of private property and marriage are sinful, and unconditionally refused readmission to all excommunicated persons.

§ 62.2. Protests against Superstition and External Observances.―About the end of the 4th century lively protests were made against the superstitions and shallow externalism of the church. They were directed first of all to the worship of Mary, especially the now wide-spread belief in her perpetua virginitas as mother of Jesus (§ 57, 2). The first protesters against this doctrine that we meet with are the so-called Antidicomarianites in Arabia, whom Epiphanius sought to turn from their heresy by a doctrinal epistle incorporated in his history of heresies. In the West too there sprang up several opponents of this dogma of the church. One of the most prominent of these was a layman Helvidius in Rome in A.D. 380, a scholar of Auxentius, the Arian bishop of Milan. Then about A.D. 388 the Roman monk Jovinian opposed on substantial doctrinal grounds the prevailing notions about the merit of works and external observances, especially monasticism, asceticism, celibacy and fasting. And finally, Bonosus, bishop of Sardica, about A.D. 390, wrought in the same direction, though at a later period he seems to have given his adhesion to the Ebionite error that Jesus had been an ordinary man whom God adopted as His Son on account of His merit (Filius Dei adoptivus). At least his younger contemporary Marius Mercator describes him as an advocate of these views alongside of Paul of Samosata and Photinus. We also find many allusions during the 7th century to a sect of Bonosians teaching similar doctrines in Spain and Gaul, who are frequently associated with the Photinians. Even before Jovinian, Aërius, a presbyter of Sebaste in Armenia, about A.D. 360, entered his protest against the doctrine of the merit of external observances. He objected to prayer and oblations for the dead, would have no compulsory fasting, and no distinction of rank between bishops and presbyters. In this way he was brought into collision with his bishop Eustathius (§ 44, 3). Persecuted on all sides, his adherents betook themselves to the caves and forests. The two monks of Milan, Sarmatio and Barbatianus, about A.D. 396, were perhaps scholars of Jovinian, were at least of the same mind with him. Finally, Vigilantius, presbyter at Barcelona about A.D. 400, with passionate violence opposed the veneration of relics, the invocation of saints, the prevailing love of miracles, the vigil services, the celibacy of the clergy and the merit of outward observances.―The counterblast of the church was hot and violent. Epiphanius wrote against the Audians and Aërians; Ambrose against Bonosus and the followers of Jovinian; Jerome with unparalleled bitterness and passion against Helvidius, Jovinian and Vigilantius; Augustine with greater moderation discussed the views of Jovinian which in their starting point were related to his own soteriological views.184

§ 62.3. Protests against the Over-Estimation of Doctrine.―Even in the times of Athanasius a certain Rhetorius made his appearance with the assertion that all heretics had a right to their opinion, and Philastrius [Philaster] speaks of a sect of Rhetorians in Egypt who, perhaps with a reference to Phil. i. 18, set aside altogether the idea of heresy and placed the essence of orthodoxy in fidelity to convictions. The Gnosimachians were related to them in the depreciation of dogma, but went beyond them by wholly withdrawing themselves from the domain of dogmatics and occupying themselves exclusively with morals. They are put in the list of heretics by Joh. Damascenus. This sect had sprung up during the monophysite and monothelite controversies, and maintained that since God requires of a Christian nothing more than a righteous life (πράξεις καλάς), all striving after theoretical knowledge is useless and fruitless.

§ 63. Schisms.

The Novatian and the Alexandrian Meletian Schisms (§ 41, 3, 4) continued to rage down into our period. Then in consequence of the Arian controversy there arose among the orthodox three new schisms (§ 50, 8). Among them was a Roman schism, followed later by several others that grew out of double elections (§ 46, 4, 6, 8, 11). The most threatening of all the schisms of this period was the Donatist in North Africa. On the Johannite schism in Constantinople, see § 51, 3. Owing to various diversities in the development of doctrine (§ 50, 7), constitution (§ 46), worship (§ 56 ff.), and discipline (§ 61, 1), material was accumulating for the grand explosion that was to burst up the connection of East and West (§ 67). The imperial union attempts during the Monophysite controversy caused a thirty-five years’ schism between the two halves of the Christian world (§ 52, 5), and want of character in the Roman bishop Vigilius split off the West for half a century (§ 52, 6). The split between the East and West over the union with the Monothelite party (§ 52, 8) was soon indeed overcome. But soon thereafter the second Trullan Council at Constantinople, A.D. 692, which, as the continuation of the 5th and 6th œcumenical Councils (σύνοδος πενθέκτη, Concilium quinisextum), occupied itself exclusively with questions of constitution, worship, and discipline, which had not there been discussed, gave occasion to the later incurable and disastrous schism.

§ 63.1. The Donatist Schism, A.D. 311-415.―In North Africa, where echoes of the Montanist enthusiasm were still heard, many voluntarily and needlessly gave themselves up to martyrdom during the Diocletian persecution. The sensible bishop of Carthage Mensurius and his archdeacon Cæcilian [Cæcilius] opposed this fanaticism. Both had given up heretical books instead of the sacred books demanded of them. This was sufficient to make the opposite party denounce them as traditores. Mensurius died in A.D. 311, and his followers chose Cæcilian [Cæcilius] as his successor, and had him hastily ordained by bishop Felix of Aptunga, being sorely pressed by the machinations of the other party. The opposition, with a bigoted rich widow Lucilla at its head, denounced Felix as a traditor, and so treated his ordination as invalid. It put up a rival bishop in the person of the reader Majorinus, who soon got, in A.D. 313, a more powerful successor in Donatus, called by his own followers the Great. The schism spread from Carthage over all North Africa. The peasants, sorely oppressed by exorbitant taxes and heavy villeinage, took the side of the Donatists (Pars Donati). Constantine the Great at the very first declared himself against them. When they complained of this, the emperor convened for the purpose of special investigation a clerical commission at Rome in A.D. 313, under the presidency of the Roman bishop Melchiades, and then a great Western Synod at Arles in A.D. 314. Both decided against the Donatists. They appealed to the immediate decision of the emperor, who also heard the two parties at Milan, but decided in accordance with previous judgments in A.D. 316. Now followed severe measures, taking churches from them and banishing their bishops which powerfully excited and increased their fanaticism. Constantine resorted therefore to milder and more tolerant procedure, but in their fanatical zeal they repudiated all compromises. Under Constans the matter became still more formidable. Ascetics mad with enthusiasm, drawn from the very dregs of the people, who called themselves Milites Christi, Agonistici, swarmed as beggars through the country, Circumcelliones, roused the oppressed peasants to revolt, preached freedom and fraternity, forced masters to do the work of slaves, robbed, murdered, and burned. Political revolution was carried on under the cover of a religious movement. An imperial army put down the revolt, and an attempt was made in A.D. 348 to pacify the needy Donatists by imperial gold. But Donatus flung back the money with indignation, and the rebellion was renewed. A severe sentence was now passed upon the heads of the party, and all Donatist churches were closed or taken from them. Julian restored the churches and recalled the exiled bishops. He allowed the Donatists with impunity to take violent revenge upon the Catholics. Julian’s successor however again issued strict laws against the sectaries, and schisms arose among themselves. Toward the end of the 4th century bishop Optatus of Mileve opposed them in his treatise De Schismate Donatistarum Ll. VII. In A.D. 400 Augustine, bishop of Hippo Regius, began his unwearied attacks upon this sect. The mildest terms were offered to induce the Donatists to return to the church. Many of the more moderate took advantage of the opportunity; but this only made the others all the more bitter. They refused repeated invitations to a discussion, fearing Augustine’s masterly dialectic. Augustine, who at first maintained that force should not be used in matters of faith, was moved by the persistent stiffneckedness and senseless fanaticism of his opponents to change his opinion, and to confess that in order to restore such heretics to the church, to salvation, recourse must be had to violent compulsion (coge intrare, Lk. xiv. 23). A synod at Carthage in A.D. 405 called upon the Emperor Honorius to take proceedings against this stiffnecked sect. He did so by imposing fines, banishing their clergy, and taking their churches. Augustine renewed the challenge to a public disputation. The Donatists were at last compelled by the emperor to enter the lists. Thus came about the three days’ Collatio cum Donatistis of A.D. 411 at Carthage. There appeared 279 Donatist and 286 Catholic bishops. Petilian and Primian were the chief speakers on the side of the Donatists, Augustine and Aurelian of Carthage on the other. The imperial commissioner assigned the victory to the Catholics. In vain the Donatists appealed. In A.D. 414 the Emperor declared that they had forfeited all civil rights, and in A.D. 415 he threatened all who attended their meetings with death. The Vandals, who conquered Africa in A.D. 429, persecuted Catholics and Donatists alike, and a common need furthered their reconciliation and secured a good mutual understanding.―The Donatists started from the principle that no one who is excommunicated or deserves to be excommunicated is fit for the performance of any sacramental action. With the Novatians they demanded the absolute purity of the church, but admitted that repentance was a means for regaining church fellowship. They maintained that they were the pure and the Catholics were schismatics, who had nothing in common with Christ, whose administration of the sacraments was therefore invalid and useless, so that they even rebaptized those who had Catholic baptism. The partiality of the state for their opponents and confused blending of the ideas of the visible and invisible church led them to adopt the view that church and state, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world, had nothing in common with one another, and that the state should not interfere in religious matters.

§ 63.2. The Concilium Quinisextum, A.D. 692.―This Council claimed to be regarded as œcumenical and was recognised as such even by Pope Sergius I. The Greeks had not yet got over their vexation at the triumph which Rome had won at the last œcumenical Council (§ 52, 8). It thus happened that among the multitude of harmless decrees the following six were smuggled in which were in flat contradiction to the Roman practice.

In enumerating the sources of the canon law alone valid almost all the Latin Councils and Papal Decretals were omitted, and the whole 85 Canones Apostt. (§ 43, 4) included, whereas Rome had pronounced only the first 50 valid.

The Roman custom of enforcing celibacy on presbyters and bishops is condemned as unjustifiable and inhuman (§ 45, 2).

Fasting on the Saturdays of the Quadragesima is forbidden (§ 56, 4).

The 28th Canon of the Council of Chalcedon which makes the patriarch of Constantinople equal to the bishop of Rome is repeated and anew enforced (§ 46, 1, 7).

The Levitical prohibition against blood and things strangled is sanctioned as still binding upon Christians, although it had never been enforced by the Roman church.

Images of Christ in the shape of a lamb, which were very common in the West, were forbidden. The papal legates subscribed the decrees of the Council; but the Pope forbade their publication in all the churches of the West. Compare further § 46, 11.

VI. THE CHURCH OUTSIDE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.185

§ 64. Missionary Operations in the East.

The real missionarizing church of this period was the Western (§ 75 ff.). It was pre-eminently fitted for this by its practical tendency and called to it by its intimate connection with the hordes of the migrating peoples. Examples of organized missionary activity in the East are rare. Yet other more occasional ways were opened for the spread of Christianity outside of the empire, by Christian fugitives and prisoners of war, political embassies and trade associations. Anchorets, monks and stylites, too, who settled on the borders of the empire or in deserts outside, by their extraordinary appearance made a powerful impression on the surrounding savage tribes. These streamed in in crowds, and those strange saints preached Christ to them by word and work.

§ 64.1. The Ethiopic-Abyssinian Church.186―About A.D. 316 a certain Meropius of Tyre on a voyage of discovery to the countries south of Egypt was murdered with his whole ship’s company. Only his two nephews Frumentius and Aedesius were spared. They won the favour of the Abyssinian king and became the tutors of the heir apparent, Aizanas. Frumentius was subsequently, in A.D. 438, ordained by Athanasius bishop of the country. Aizanas was baptised, the church spread rapidly from Abyssinia to Ethiopia and Numidia. A translation of the bible into the Geez dialect, the language of the country, is attributed to Frumentius. Closely connected with the Egyptian mother church, it fell with it into Monophysitism (§ 52, 7). In worship and discipline, besides much that is primitive, it has borrowed many things from Judaism, and retained many of the old habits of the country, e.g. observing the Sabbath alongside of the Sunday, forbidding certain meats, circumcision, covenanting. Their canon comprised 81 books: besides the biblical, there are 16 patristic writings of the Pre-Chalcedonian age.

§ 64.2. The Persian Church.―The church had taken root in Persia as early as the 3rd century. With the 4th century there came a sore time of bloody persecution, which was constantly fed partly by the fanatical Magians, partly by the almost incessant wars with the Christian Roman empire, which aroused suspicion of foreign sympathies hostile to the country. The first great and extensive persecution of the Christians broke out in A.D. 343 under Shapur or Sapores [Sapor] II. It lasted 35 years and during this dreadful time 16,000 of the clergy, monks and nuns were put to death, but the number of martyrs from the laity was far beyond reckoning. Only shortly before his death Shapur [Sapor] stopped the persecution and proclaimed universal religious toleration. During 40 years’ rest the Persian church attained to new vigour; but the fanaticism of Bishop Abdas of Susa who caused a fire-temple to be torn down in A.D. 418, occasioned a new persecution, which reached its height in A.D. 420 under Bahram or Baranes V. and was carried on for 30 years with the most fiendish ingenuity of cruel tortures. The generosity of a Christian bishop, Acacius of Amida in Mesopotamia, who by the sale of the church property redeemed a multitude of Persian prisoners of war and sent them to their homes, at last moved the king to stop the persecution. The Nestorians driven from the Roman empire found among the Persians protection and toleration, but were the occasion under king Firuz or Peroz of a new persecution of the Catholics, A.D. 465. In A.D. 498 the whole Persian church declared in favour of Nestorianism (§ 52, 3), and enjoyed forthwith undisturbed toleration, developed to an unexpected extent, retained its bloom for centuries, gave itself zealously to scientific studies in the seminaries at Nisibis, and undertook successfully mission work among the Asiatic tribes. The war with the Byzantines continued without interruption. Chosroes II. advanced victoriously as far as Chalcedon in A.D. 616 and persecuted with renewed cruelty the Catholic Christians of the conquered provinces. Finally the emperor Heraclius plucked up courage. By the utter rout of A.D. 628 the power of the Persians was broken (§ 57, 5), and in A.D. 651 the Khalifs overthrew the dynasty of the Sassanidæ.

§ 64.3. The Armenian Church.―There were flourishing Christian churches in Armenia so early as Tertullian’s time. The Arsacian ruler Tiridates III., from A.D. 286, was a violent persecutor of the Christians. During his reign, however, Gregory the Illuminator, the Apostle of Armenia, carried on his successful labours. He was the son of a Parthian prince, who, snatched when a child of two years’ old by his nurse from the midst of a massacre of his whole family, received in Cappadocia a Christian training. In A.D. 302 he succeeded in winning over to Christianity the king and the whole country. He left behind him the church which he thus founded in a most prosperous condition. His grandson Husig, his great grandson Nerses I. and his son Isaac the Great held possession of the patriarchal dignity and flourished even in the hard times, when Byzantines, Arsacides, and Sassanidæ fought for possession of the country. Mesrop, with the help of Isaac, whose successor he became in A.D. 440 (dying in A.D. 441), gave to his church a translation of the bible into their own tongue, for which he had to invent a national alphabet. Under his successor, the patriarch Joseph, the famous religious war with the Persian Sassanidæ broke out, who wished to lead back the Armenians to the doctrine of Zoroaster. In the fierce battle at the river Dechmud in A.D. 451 the holy league was defeated. But Armenia still maintained amid sore persecution its Christian confession. In A.D. 651 the overthrow of the Sassanidæ brought it under the rule of the Khalifs.―The Armenian church had vigorously and earnestly warded off Nestorianism, but willingly opened its arms to Monophysitism introduced from Byzantine Armenia. At a synod at Feyin, in A.D. 527, it condemned the Chalcedonian dogma.―Gregory the Illuminator had excited among the Armenians an exceedingly lively interest in culture and science, and when Mesrop gave them an independent system of writing, the golden age of Armenian literature dawned (the 5th century). Not only were many works of classical and patristic Greek and Syrian literature made the property of the Armenians through translations, but numerous writers built up a literature of their own. The history of the conversion of Armenia was written in the 4th century by Agathangelos, private secretary of the king. Whether this was composed in Greek or in Armenian is doubtful; both texts are still extant, evidently much interpolated with fabulous matter and also in many points conflicting with one another. In the 5th century Eznik in his “Overthrow of Heretics” addressed a vigorous polemic against pagans, Persians, Marcionites and Manichæans. Moses of Chorene, also a scholar of Mesrop, composed from the archives a history of Armenia, and Elisaeus described the Armeno-Persian religious war, in which, as secretary of the Armenian commander in chief, he had taken part. On the service done by the Mechitarists to the old Armenian literature, see § 164, 2.187

§ 64.4. The Iberians, in what is now called Georgia and Grusia, received Christianity about A.D. 326 through an Armenian female slave Nunia, whose prayer had healed many sick. The church then extended from Iberia to the Lazians in what is now Colchias and among the neighbouring Abasgians. In India Theophilus of Diu (an island of the Arabian Gulf?) found in the middle of the 4th century several isolated Christian communities. He was sent by his fellow-citizens as hostage to Constantinople and there was educated for the Arian priesthood. He then returned home and carried on a successful mission among the Indians. The relations of the Indian to the Persian church led to the former becoming affected with Nestorianism (§ 52, 3). Cosmas Indicopleustes (§ 48, 2) found in the 6th century three Christian churches still surviving in India. Theophilus also wrought in Arabia. He succeeded in converting the king of the Himyarite kingdom at Yemen. In the 6th century, however, a Jew Dhu-Nowas obtained for himself the sovereignty of Yemen and persecuted the Christians with unheard of barbarity. At last Eleesban king of Abyssinia interfered; the crowned Jew was slain, and from that time Yemen had Christian kings till the Persian Chosroes II. made it a Persian province in A.D. 616. Anchorets, monks and stylites wrought successfully among the Arab nomadic hordes.

§ 65. The Counter-Mission of the Mohammedans.188

Abu Al’ Kasem Mohammed from Mecca made his appearance as a prophet in A.D. 611, and founded a mixed religion of arid Monotheism and sensual Endæmonism drawn from Judaism, Christianity and Arabian paganism. His work first gained importance when driven from Mecca he fled to Medina (Hejira, 15th July, A.D. 622). In A.D. 630 he conquered Mecca, consecrated the old Heathen Kaaba as the chief temple of the new religion, Islam (hence Moslems), and composed the Coran, consisting of 114 suras, which had been collected by his father-in-law, Abu Bekr. At his death all Arabia had accepted his faith and his rule. As he made it the most sacred duty of his adherents to spread the new religion by the sword and had inspired them with a wild fanaticism, his successors snatched one province after another from the Roman empire and the Christian church. Within a few years, A.D. 633-651, they conquered all Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Persia, then, in A.D. 707, North Africa, and, in A.D. 711, Spain. Farther, however, they could not go for the present. Twice they unsuccessfully besieged Constantinople, A.D. 669-676, and A.D. 717-718, and, in A.D. 732, Charles Martel at Tours completely crushed all their hopes of extending further into the West. But the whole Asiatic church was already reduced by their oppressions to the most miserable condition, and three patriarchates, those of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, were forced to submit to their caprices. Amid manifold oppressions the Christians in those conquered lands were tolerated on the payment of a tax, but fear and an eye to worldly advantages led whole crowds of nominal Christians to profess Islam.

§ 65.1. The Fundamental Principle of Islam is an arid Monotheism. Abraham, Moses and Jesus are regarded as God-sent prophets. The miraculous birth of Jesus, by a virgin, is also accepted, and Mary is identified with Miriam the sister of Moses. The ascension of Christ is also received. Mohammed, the last and highest of all the prophets, of whom Moses and Christ prophesied, has restored to its original purity his doctrine, which had been corrupted by Jews and Christians. At the end of the days Christ will come again to conquer Antichrist and give universal sovereignty to Islam. Most conspicuous among the corruptions of the doctrine of Jesus is the dogma of the Trinity, which is without more ado pronounced Tritheism, and conceived of as including the mother of Jesus as the third person. So too the incarnation of God is regarded as a falsification. The doctrine of divine providence is strongly emphasized, but is contorted into the grossest fatalism. The Mussulman is in need of no atonement. Faith in the one God and His prophet Mohammed secure for him the divine favour, and his good works win for him the most abundant fulness of eternal blessedness, which consists in absolutely unrestricted sensual enjoyments. The constitution is theocratic; the prophet and his successors the Khalifs are God’s vicegerents on earth. Worship is restricted to prayers, fastings and washings. The Sunna or tradition of oral utterances of the prophet is acknowledged as a second principal source for Islam, alongside of the Coran. The opposition of the Shiites to the Sunnites is rooted in the non-recognition of the first three Khalifs and the prophet’s utterances only witnessed to by them. Mysticism was first fostered among the Ssufis. The Wechabites, who first appear in the 12th century, are the Puritans of Islam.

§ 65.2. The Providential Place of Islam.―The service under Providence rendered by Mohammedanism which first attracts attention is the doom which it executed upon the debased church and state of the East. But it seems also to have had a positive task which must be sought mainly in its relation to heathenism. It regarded the abolition of idolatry as its principal task. Neither the prophet nor his successors gave any toleration to paganism. Islam converted a mass of savage races in Asia and Africa from the most senseless and immoral idolatries to the worship of the one God, and raised them to a certain stage of culture and morality to which they could never have risen of themselves. But also upon yet another side, though only in a passing way, it has served a providential purpose, in spurring on mediæval Christianity by its example of devotion to scientific pursuits. Syncretic, as its religious and intellectual life originally was, during its flourishing period from A.D. 750, under the brilliant dynasty of the Abassidean Khalifs at Bagdad in Asia, and from A.D. 756 (comp. § 81) under the no less brilliant dynasty of the Ommaiadean Khalifs at Cordova in Spain, driven out by the Abassidæ from Damascus, it readily appropriated the elements of culture which the classical literature of the ancient Greeks afforded it (§ 42, 4), and with youthful enthusiasm its scholars for centuries on this foundation kept alive and advanced scientific studies―philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, natural science, medicine, geography, history―and by their appropriation of those researches the Latin Middle Ages reached to the height of their scientific culture (§ 103, 1). But also the reawakening of classical studies in the Byzantine Middle Ages (§ 68, 1), which is of still more importance for the West (§ 120, 1), is preeminently due to the impetus given by the scientific enthusiasm of the Moslems of Bagdad, who shamed the Greeks into the study of their own literature. With the overthrow of those two dynasties, the culture period of the Moslems closed suddenly and for ever, but not until it had accomplished its task for the Christian world.189

THIRD SECTION. HISTORY OF THE GRÆCO-BYZANTINE CHURCH IN THE 8TH-15TH CENTURIES (A.D. 692-1453).

I. Developments of the Greek Church in Combination with the Western.

§ 66. Iconoclasm of the Byzantine Church (A.D. 726-842).190

The worship of images (§ 57, 4) had reached its climax in the East in the beginning of the 8th century. Even the most zealous defenders of images had to admit that there had been exaggerations and abuses. Some, e.g., had taken images as their godfathers, scraped paint off them to mix in the communion wine, laid the consecrated bread first on the images so as to receive the body of the Lord from their hands, etc. A powerful Byzantine ruler, who was opposed to image worship from personal dislike as well as on political grounds, applied the whole strength of his energetic will to the uprooting of this superstition. Thus arose a struggle that lasted more than a hundred years between the enemies of images (εἰκονοκλάσται) and the friends of images (εἰκονολάτραι), in which there stood, on the one side, the emperor and the army, on the other, the monks and the people. Twice it seemed as if image worship had been completely and for ever stamped out; but on both occasions a royal lady secured its restoration. In practice indeed the Roman church remained behind the Greek, but in theory they were agreed, and in the struggle it gave the whole weight of its authority to the friends of images. On the part taken by the Frankish church, see § 92, 1.

§ 66.1. Leo III., the Isaurian, A.D. 717-741.―Leo, who was one of the most powerful of the Byzantine emperors, after the attack of the Saracens on Constantinople, in A.D. 718, had been successfully repelled, felt himself obliged to take other measures against the aggressions of Islam. In the worship of images abhorred by Jews and Moslems he perceived the greatest obstacle to their conversion, and, being personally averse to image worship, he issued an edict, in A.D. 726, which first ordered the images to be placed higher in the churches that it might be impossible for the people to kiss them. But the peaceable overcoming of this deeply rooted form of devotion was frustrated by the unconquerable firmness of the ninety-year old patriarch Germanus in Constantinople, as well as by the opposition of the people and the monks. The greatest dogmatist of this age, Joh. Damascenus, who was secured from the rage of the emperor in Palestine under Saracen rule, issued three spirited tracts in defence of the images. A certain Cosmas took advantage of a popular rising in the Cyclades, had himself proclaimed emperor and went with a fleet against Constantinople. But Leo conquered and had him executed, and now in a second edict of A.D. 730 ordered all images to be removed from the churches. Now began a war against images by military force, which went to great excess in fanatical violence. Repeated popular tumults were quelled in blood. Only in Rome and North Italy did the powerful arm of the emperor make no impression. Pope Gregory II., A.D. 715-731, treated him in his letters like a stupid, ill-mannered school-boy. In proportion as the bitterness against the emperor increased enthusiasm for the pope increased, and gave expression to itself in the most vehement revolts against the imperial Council. A great part of the exarchate (§ 46, 9) surrendered voluntarily to the Longobards and so much of it in the north as remained with the emperor proved more obedient to the pope than to the sovereign. Gregory III., A.D. 731-741, at a Synod in Rome in A.D. 731 excommunicated all enemies of images. The emperor fitted out a powerful fleet to chastise him, but a storm broke it up. He now deprived the pope of all his revenues from Southern Italy, severed Illyria (§ 46, 5) in A.D. 732 from the papal chair and gave it to the patriarch of Constantinople, but in doing so he cut the last cord that bound the Roman chair to the interests of the Byzantine Court (§ 82, 1).

§ 66.2. Constantine V. A.D. 741-775.―To the son and successor of Leo the monks gave the unsavoury names of Copronymus and Caballinus in token of their hatred, the latter on account of his love of horses, the former because it was said that at his baptism he had defiled the water. He was like his father a powerful ruler and soldier, and in the battle against images yet more reckless and determined. He conquered his brother-in-law who had rebelled with the aid of the friends of the images, and caused him to be cruelly treated and blinded. As popular tumults still continued, he thought to get ecclesiastical sanction for his principles from an œcumenical Council. About 350 bishops assembled in Constantinople, A.D. 754. But, as the chair of Constantinople had just become vacant, while Rome, which had excommunicated the enemies of images, refused to answer the summons, and Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem were under Saracen rule, there was not a single patriarch present at the Synod. The Council excommunicated all who made images of Christ, for it declared that the Supper was the only true image of Christ, and condemned every kind of veneration of images. These decrees were now relentlessly carried out with savage violence. Thousands of monks were scourged, imprisoned, banished, chased through the circus with nuns in their arms for the sport of the people, or forced into marriage, many had their eyes gouged out, or had their nose or ears cut off, and the monasteries were turned into barracks or stables. Even in private houses no image of a saint was any longer to be seen. From Rome Stephen II. protested against the decisions of the Council, and Stephen III. from a Lateran Synod of A.D. 769 thundered a fearful anathema against the enemies of images. But in the Byzantine empire monkery and image worship were well nigh extinguished.

§ 66.3. Leo IV., Chazarus, A.D. 775-780.―The son of Constantine was of the same mind with his father, but wanted his energy. His wife Irene was an eager friend of the images. When the emperor discovered this, he began to take active measures, but his suspiciously sudden death put a stop to operations. Irene now used the freedom which the minority of her son Constantine VI. afforded her for the introduction of image worship. She called a new Council at Constantinople in A.D. 786, which also Hadrian I. of Rome attended, while the other patriarchs, being under Saracen rule, took no part in it. But the imperial guard attacked the place where they were sitting, and broke up the Council. Irene now arranged for the Seventh Œcumenical Council at Nicæa, A.D. 787. The eighth and last session was held in the imperial palace at Constantinople, after the guards had been withdrawn from the city and disarmed. The Council annulled the decisions of A.D. 754, and sanctioned image worship for it allowed the bowing and prostration before the images (τιμητικὴ προσκύνησις) as a token of the reverence which was due to the original, and declared that this in no way interfered with that worship (λατρεία) which was due to God alone.191

§ 66.4. The next emperors were friendly to image worship, but the victory had departed from their standards. Then the army, which had always been hostile to images, proclaimed Leo V., the Armenian, A.D. 813-820, emperor, an avowed opponent of images. He proceeded very cautiously, but the soldiers set aside his prudence and launched out into violent raids against images. At the head of the patrons of images was Theodorus Studita, abbot of the monastery of Studion (§ 44, 2), a man of unfeigned piety and unfaltering decision of character, the most acute apologist of image worship, who had even in exile been eagerly promoting the interests of his party. He died in A.D. 826. Leo lost his life at the hand of conspirators. His successor, Michael II., Balbus, A.D. 820-829, allowed at least that images should be reverenced in private. His son Theophilus, A.D. 829-842, on the other hand, made it the business of his life to root out entirely every trace of image worship. But his wife Theodora, who after his death conducted the government as regent, had it formally reintroduced by a Synod at Constantinople in A.D. 842. Since then all opposition to it has ceased in the Greek church, and the day of the Synodal decision, 19th February, was appointed a standing festival of orthodoxy.

§ 67. Division between Greek and Roman Churches and Attempts at Union, A.D. 857-1453.192

The second Trullan Council in A.D. 692 had given the first occasion to the great schism which rent the Christian world into two halves (§ 63, 2); Photius gave it a doctrinal basis in A.D. 867; and Michael Cærularius in A.D. 1053 completed its development. The increasing need of the Byzantine government drove it to make repeated attempts at reconciliation, but these either were never concluded or the union, if at all completed, proved a mere paper union. The Sisyphus labour of union efforts ended only with the overthrow of the Byzantine empire in A.D. 1453. The three stages referred to―the early misunderstandings, the avowed doctrinal divergence, and the final decisive separation―as well as the persistent rejection of attempts at reunion, were not wholly owing to the importance of ceremonial differences. After as well as before there had been free church communion between them. It was not owing to the importance of the almost solitary point of doctrinal difference between them, in reference to the filioque (§ 50, 7), where if there had been good will a common understanding might easily have been won. It was really the papal claims to the primacy to which the Greeks absolutely refused to submit.

§ 67.1. Foundation of the Schism, A.D. 867.―During the minority of the emperor Michael III., son of Theodora (§ 66, 4), surnamed the Drunkard, his uncle Bardas, Theodora’s brother, directed the government. Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople at that time, himself descended from the imperial family, lashed severely the godless, vicious life of the court, and in A.D. 857 kept back from the communion the all-powerful Bardas, who lived in incestuous intercourse with his own daughter-in-law. He was then deposed and banished. Photius, the most learned man of his age, previously commander of the imperial bodyguard, was raised to the vacant chair, and inherited the hatred of all the friends of Ignatius. He made proposals of agreement which were proudly and scornfully rejected. He then held a Synod in A.D. 859, which confirmed the deposition of Ignatius and excommunicated him. But nothing in the world could make his party abandon his claims. Now Photius wished to be able to lay in the scales the Roman bishop’s approval of his questionable proceedings. He therefore laid an account of matters highly favourable to himself before Pope Nicholas I., and sought his brotherly love and intercessions. The pope answered that he must first examine the whole affair. His two legates, Rhodoald of Porto and Zacharias of Anagni, were bribed and at a Council at Constantinople in A.D. 861 gave their consent to the deposition of Ignatius. Nicholas, however, had other reporters. He excommunicated his own legates and pronounced Ignatius the lawful patriarch. Bitterness of feeling reached its height in Constantinople, when soon thereafter the Bulgarians broke their connection with the Byzantine mother church and submitted to the pope (§ 73, 3). Photius now by an Encyclica of A.D. 866 called the patriarchs of the East to a Council at Constantinople, and charged the Roman church with the most extreme heresies; that it enjoined fasting on Saturday (§ 56, 1), allowed milk, butter and cheese to be eaten during the first week of the Quadragesima (§ 56, 7), did not acknowledge married priests (§ 45, 2), did not prohibit the clergy from shaving the beard (§ 45, 1), pronounced anointing by a presbyter invalid (§ 35, 4), but above all, that by the addition of the filioque (§ 50, 7) it had falsified the creed, recognising thus two principles and so falling back into dualism. With such heresies too the pope had now infected the Bulgarians. The meeting of the Council took place in A.D. 867. Three monks, tutored by Photius, represented the patriarchs under Saracen rule. Excommunication and deposition were hurled against the pope, and this sentence was communicated to the Western churches. The pope was evidently alarmed. He justified himself before the Frankish clergy and insisted that they should answer the charges of the Greeks in a scholarly reply. This was done by several, most ably by Ratramnus, monk at Corbie. But during that year, A.D. 867, the emperor Michael was murdered. His murderer and successor Basil the Macedonian undertook the patronage of the party of Ignatius, and asked of Pope Hadrian II. a new investigation and decision. A Synod at Constantinople, A.D. 869, counted by the Latins the 8th œcumenical, condemned Photius and restored Ignatius. The deciding about the Bulgarians, however, was not committed to the Council but to the reputed representatives of the Saracen patriarchs as impartial umpires. They naturally decided in favour of the Byzantine patriarch. In vain the legates remonstrated. Photius in other respects under misfortune displays a character worthy of our esteem. For several years he languished without company, without books, under the strictest monastic rules. Yet he reconciled himself to Ignatius. Basil entrusted him with the education of his children, and on the death of Ignatius in A.D. 878, restored him to the patriarchate. But still the ban of an œcumenical Council lay upon him. Only a new œcumenical Council could vindicate him. John VIII. agreed to this against the remonstrances of the Bulgarians. But at the ninth Council at Constantinople, A.D. 879, the eighth according to the Greeks, the papal legates were completely duped. There was no mention of the Bulgarians, the Council of A.D. 869 was repudiated, and every one excommunicated who dared add anything to the creed. The pope afterwards indeed launched an anathema against the patriarch, his Council, and his followers. The succeeding emperor, Leo the Philosopher, A.D. 886-911, again deposed Photius in A.D. 886, but only that he might put an imperial prince in his place. Photius died in monastic exile in A.D. 891.

§ 67.2. Leo VI., the Philosopher, A.D. 886-911.―This emperor was three times married without having any children. He married the fourth only when he had assured himself that she would not be barren. The patriarch Nicolaus [Nicolas] Mysticus refused (§ 61, 2) to celebrate the marriage and was deposed. A Synod at Constantinople in A.D. 906, attended by the legates of Pope Sergius III., approved the marriage and the deposition. But on his deathbed Leo repented of his violence. His brother and successor Alexander restored the patriarch Nicolas, and Pope John X. attended a Synod at Constantinople in A.D. 920, which condemned the Council of A.D. 906, and pronounced a fourth marriage absolutely unallowable, but showed no inclination to make any concessions to the pope. New negociations were begun by the emperor Basil II. In consideration of a large sum of money the venal pope John XIX. was willing to acknowledge the Byzantines as œcumenical patriarchs of the East, and to resign all claims of the chair of Peter upon the Eastern church. But the affair became known before it was concluded. The removal of the new Judas was loudly demanded throughout the West, and the pope was compelled to break off his negociations.

§ 67.3. Completion of the Schism, A.D. 1054.―Though so many anathemas had been flung at Rome by Byzantium and at Byzantium by Rome, they had hitherto been directed only against the persons and their followers, not against the respective churches as such. This defect was now to be supplied. The emperor Constantine Monómachus sought the papal friendship which he thought necessary to the success of his warlike undertakings. But the patriarch Michael Cærularius frustrated his efforts. In company with the Metropolitan of the Bulgarians, Leo of Achrida, he addressed in A.D. 1053 an epistle to bishop John of Trani in Apulia, in which he charged the Latins with the worst heresies, and adjured the Western bishops to separate from them. To the heresies already enumerated by Photius, he added certain others; the use of blood and things strangled, the withdrawal of the Hallelujah during the fast season, and above all the use of unleavened bread in the Supper (§ 58, 4), on account of which he invented for the heretics the name of Azymites. This letter fell into the hands of Cardinal Humbert, who translated it and laid it before pope Leo IX. A violent correspondence followed. The emperor offered to do anything to restore peace. At his request the pope sent three legates to Constantinople, among them the occasion of the strife, Humbert (§ 101, 2), and Cardinal Frederick of Lothringen, afterwards pope Stephen IX. (§ 96, 6). These fanned the flame, instead of quenching it. Imperial pressure indeed brought the abbot of Studion, Nicetas Pectoratus to burn his controversial treatise before the legates, but no threat nor violence could move to submission the patriarchs, on whose side were the people and the clergy. The legates finally laid a formal decree of excommunication on the altar of the church of Sophia, which Michael together with the other Eastern patriarchs solemnly returned, A.D. 1054.

§ 67.4. Attempts at Reunion.―The crusades increased the breach instead of healing it. Many negociations were begun but none of them came to much. At a Synod at Bari in Naples, in A.D. 1098, Anselm of Canterbury (§ 101, 1), who then lived as a fugitive in Italy, proved to the Greeks there present the correctness of the Latin doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Spirit. In A.D. 1113, Petrus [Peter] Chrysologus, Archbishop of Milan, vindicated it in a complete discourse before the emperor at Constantinople. And in A.D. 1135, Anselm of Havelberg, who went to Constantinople as ambassador for Lothair II., disputed with the Archbishop Nicetas of Nicomedia, and afterwards at the command of the pope wrote down the disputation with creditable faithfulness. The hatred and abhorrence of the Greeks reached its climax on the erection of the Latin empire at Constantinople, A.D. 1204-1261 (comp. § 94, 4). Nevertheless Michael Palæologus, A.D. 1260-1282, who brought this dynasty to an end, strove on political grounds in every way possible to overcome this ecclesiastical schism. The patriarch Joseph of Constantinople and his librarian, the celebrated Joannes Beccus, stubbornly withstood him. The latter indeed in imprisonment became convinced that the differences were unessential and that a union was possible. This change of mind secured for him the patriarch’s chair. Meanwhile the negotiations of the emperor with the pope, Gregory X., in which he acknowledged the Roman chair to be the highest court of appeal in doctrinal controversies, were brought to a point in the œcumenical Council at Lyons, A.D. 1274, reckoned by the Latins the fourteenth. The imperial legates here acknowledged the primacy of the pope and subscribed a Roman creed, while to them was granted liberty to use their creed without the addition and to practise their peculiar ecclesiastical customs. Beccus vindicated this union in several treatises. But a change of dynasty overthrew him in A.D. 1283. Joseph was restored and the union of Lyons was broken up leaving no trace behind.

§ 67.5. The advance of the Turks made it absolutely necessary for the East Roman emperors to secure the support of the West by reconciling and uniting themselves with the papacy. But the powerful party of the monks, supported by popular prejudice against the proposal, thwarted the imperial wishes on all sides. The patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem too were zealous opponents, not only animated by the old bitterness toward their more prosperous rivals on the chair of Peter, but also influenced against the views of the emperor by the policy of their Saracen rulers. The emperor Andronicus III. Palæologus won to his side the abbot Barlaam of Constantinople, hitherto, though born in Calabria and there educated in the Roman Catholic faith, a zealous opponent of the Western doctrine. Barlaam went at the head of an imperial embassy to Avignon where the pope at that time, Benedict XIII., resided, A.D. 1339. Negotiations, however, broke down through the obstinacy of the pope, who demanded of the Greeks above all unconditional submission in doctrine and constitution, and also showed not once any wish for renewing the conference.―On Barlaam, comp. § 69, 2.―The political difficulties of the emperor, however, continually increased, and so Joannes V. Palæologus took further steps. He himself in A.D. 1369 in Rome passed over to the Latin church, but neither did he get his people to follow him, nor did pope Urban V. get the Western princes to give help against the Turks.

§ 67.6. The union attempts of Joannes VII. Palæologus had more appearance of success. The emperor had won over the patriarch Joseph of Constantinople, as well as the clever and highly cultured archbishop Bessarion of Nicæa, and went personally in company with the latter and many bishops, in A.D. 1438, to the papal Council at Ferrara (§ 110, 8), where the pope, Eugenius IV., fearing lest the Greeks might join the reformatory Council at Basel, showed himself very gracious. The Council, nominally on account of the outbreak of a plague at Ferrara was transferred to Florence, and here the union was actually consummated in A.D. 1439. The primacy of the pope was acknowledged, though not altogether without dubiety of expression, the ritual differences as well as the priestly marriages of the Greeks tolerated, the doctrinal difference reduced to a misunderstanding and the orthodoxy of both churches maintained. In the Latin text of the decree referred to the pope was acknowledged as “Successor of Peter, the chief of the Apostles, and the vicar of Christ,” as “head of the whole Church, and father and teacher of all Christians, to whom plenary power was given by our Lord Jesus Christ to feed, rule, and govern the universal Church”―yet with the significant addition “in such a way as it is set forth in the œcumenical Councils and in the sacred Canons,” by which certainly the Greeks thought only of the Canons of Nicæa and Chalcedon referred to in § 46, 1, but the Latins mainly of the Pseudo-Decretals of § 87, 2; and thus it happens that in most of the Greek texts the propositions that define the universal primacy of the pope are either wanting, or essentially modified. The first place after the pope is given to the patriarch of Constantinople. In regard to the doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Spirit it was admitted that the Greek formula “ex Patre per Filium” was essentially the same as the Latin “ex Patre Filioque,” and by the definition “quod Sp. S. ex P. simul et F. et ex utroque æternaliter tanquam ab uno principio et unica spiratione procedit,” the latter was saved from the charge of dualism. A new difference, however, came to light in reference to Purgatory (§ 61, 4). The intercessions of the living and the presenting of masses for the dead were allowed by the Greeks as helping to secure the forgiveness of their still unatoned for venial sins, but they decidedly opposed the view that any of the dead could obtain this by his own temporary endurance of penal sufferings, and they would not hear of a fire as a means for its attainment. The Latins also taught that the unbaptized or those dying in mortal sin immediately pass into eternal condemnation and the perfectly pious immediately pass into God’s presence; while the Greeks maintained that this happens only at the last judgment. After long disputes, the Greeks, urged by their emperor, at last gave in on both points. Without much difficulty they accepted the seven sacraments of the Westerns (§ 104, 2). Thus was the union consummated amid embracings and jubilant shoutings. But in reality everything remained as of old. A powerful party at whose head stood archbishop Marcus Eugenicus of Ephesus, who had been shouted down at Florence, roused the whole East against the union that had been made on paper. The new patriarch Metrophanes, whom they repudiated, was ridiculed as Μητροφόνος, and in A.D. 1443 the rest of the Eastern patriarchs at a Synod at Jerusalem excommunicated all who maintained the union. When moreover the hoped for help from the West did not come even the union party lost their interest in it. Bessarion passed over to the Roman church, became cardinal and bishop of Tuscoli, and was as such on two occasions very near being made pope.193

§ 67.7. The Byzantine Christian empire went meanwhile rapidly to decay. On the 29th May, 1453, Constantinople was stormed by Mohammed II. The last emperor, Constantine XI., fell in a heroic struggle against tremendous odds. Mohammed conferred upon the patriarch Gennadius (§ 68, 5) the spiritual primacy and even temporal supremacy and full jurisdiction over the whole orthodox inhabitants of the empire, making him, however, answerable for their conduct. The other two patriarchates of Jerusalem and Antioch were in religious matters co-ordinate, in political matters subordinate, to him. For the executing of his spiritual power he had around him a Synod of twelve archbishops, of whom four as holders of the four divisions of the patriarchal diocese resided in Constantinople. The Synod chose the patriarchs and the Sultan confirmed the elections.―All union negociations were now at an end, for the Porte could only wish for the continuance of the schism. The enormous crowds of Greek refugees who sought protection in foreign lands, especially in Italy, Hungary, Galicia, Poland, Lithuania, either went directly over to the Roman Catholic church, or formed churches of their own under the name of United Greeks, purchasing liberty to observe their old church constitution and liturgy by accepting the Romish doctrine and the papal primacy.

II. Developments in the Eastern Church without the Co-operation of the Western.

§ 68. Theological Science and Literature.

The iconoclastic struggle, A.D. 726-842, was to some extent a war against art and science. At least no period in the history of the Greek Middle Ages is so poor in these as this. But about the middle of the 9th century Byzantine culture awoke from its deep torpor to a vigour of which no one would have thought it capable. What is still more wonderful, for six hundred years it maintained its position without a break at this elevation and prosecuted literary and scientific studies with a zeal that seemed to be quickened as its political condition became more and more desperate. What specially characterized the scholarly efforts of this time was the revival of classical studies which from the 6th century had been almost entirely neglected. Now all at once the decaying Greeks, who were threatened with intellectual as well as political bankruptcy, began to realize the rich heritage which their pagan forefathers had bequeathed them. They searched out these treasures amid the dust of libraries and applied to them a diligence, an enthusiasm, a pride, which fills us with astonishment. The Hellenic intellect had, indeed, long lost its genial creative power. The most ambitious effort of this age did not go beyond explanatory reproduction and scholarship. Upon theology, however, bound hard and fast in traditional propositions and Aristotelian formulæ, the revival of classical studies had relatively little influence, and where it did break the fetters it only gave entrance to a deluge of heathen Hellenic views that paganized Christianity.

§ 68.1. The shame caused by the zeal with which the Khalifs of the Abassidean line at the end of the 8th century applied themselves to the classical Greek literature seems to have given the first impulse to the Revival of Classical Studies. Behind this we must suppose there was the influence of the Byzantine rulers, unless they had lost all trace of national feeling. Bardas, the guardian and co-regent of Michael III. (§ 67, 1), if there is nothing else in him worthy of praise, has the credit of having been the first to lay anew the foundation of classical studies by establishing schools and paying their teachers. Basil the Macedonian, although himself no scholar, patronized and protected the sciences. Photius was the teacher of his children, and implanted in them a love of study which they transmitted to their children and children’s children. Leo, the Philosopher, the son, and Constantine Porphyrogenneta, the grandson, of Basil were the brilliant scholars in the Macedonian dynasty. Their place was taken by the line of the Comneni from A.D. 1057, which introduced a most brilliant period in the history of scientific studies. The princesses of this house, Eudocia and Anna Comnena, won high fame as gifted and learned authors. What Photius was for the age of the Macedonians, Psellus was for the age of the Comneni. Thessalonica vied with Constantinople as a new Athens in the brilliancy of its classical culture. The rudeness of the crusaders threatened during the sixty years’ interregnum of the Latin dynasty, to undo the work of the Comneni. But when in A.D. 1261 the Palæologi again obtained possession of Constantinople, learning rose once more to the front and won an ever increasing significance. And when the Turks took it in A.D. 1453 crowds of learned Greeks settled in Italy and spread their carefully fostered culture all over the West.

§ 68.2. Aristotle and Plato.―The revival of classical studies secured again a preference for Plato, who seemed more classical, at least more Hellenic, than Aristotle. But the ecclesiastical imprimatur that had been given to Aristotle, which had been formally expressed by Joh. Damascenus, formed a barrier against the overflowing of Platonism into the theological domain. The church’s distrust of Plato, on the other hand, drove many of the more enthusiastic friends of classical studies into a sort of Hellenic paganism. The eagerness of the struggle reached its height in the 15th century. Gemisthus Pletho moved heaven and earth to drive the hated usurper Aristotle from the throne of science. He called for unconditional surrender to the wisdom of the divine Plato and expressed the confident hope that soon the time would come when Christianity and Islam would be conquered and the religion of pure humanity would have universal sway. Of similar views were his numerous scholars, of whom the most distinguished was Bessarion (§ 67, 6). But Aristotle also had talented representatives in George of Trebizond and his scholars. Numerous representatives of the two schools settled in Italy and there carried on the conflict with increasing bitterness.―Continuation § 120, 1.

§ 68.3. Scholasticism and Mysticism (μάθησις and μυσταγωγία).―By the application of the Aristotelian method which Joh. Philoponus (§ 47, 11) had suggested, and Joh. Damascenus had carried out, the scientific treatment of doctrine in the Greek church had taken a form which in many respects resembles the scholasticism of the Latin Middle Ages, without being able, however, to reach its wealth, power, subtlety and depth. But alongside of the dialectic scholastic treatment of dogma there was found, especially in the quiet life of the monasteries, diligent fostering of the mysticism based upon the pseudo-Areopagite (§ 47, 11). Its chief representative was Nicolas Cabasilas. This mysticism never ran counter to the worship or doctrine of the church, but rather rendered to it unconditional acknowledgment, and was specially characterized by its decided preference for the symbolical, to which it is careful to attach a thoroughly sacramental significance. No reason existed for any hostile encounters between dialectic and mysticism.

§ 68.4. The Branches of Theological Science.―About the beginning of our period Joh. Damascenus collected the results of previous Dogmatic labours in the Greek church by the use of the dialectic forms of Aristotle into an organic system. His Ecdosis is the first and last complete dogmatic of the old Greek church. The manifold intercourse with the Latin church occasioned by the union efforts was not, however, without influence on the Greek church. In spite of the keenest opposition on debated questions, the far more thoroughly developed statement by Latin scholasticism of doctrines in regard to which both were agreed communicated itself to the Greek church, so that all unwittingly it adopted on many points the same bases and tendencies of belief. Polemics were constantly carried on with Nestorians, Monophysites and Monothelites, and fresh subjects of debate were found in the iconoclastic disputes, newly emerging dualistic sects, the Latin schismatics and the defenders of the union. By the changed circumstances of the time Apologetics again came to the front as a theological necessity. The incessant advance of Islam and the Jewish polemic, which was now gaining boldness from the protection of the Saracens, urgently demanded the work of the Apologist, but the dominant scholastic traditional theology of the Greeks in its hardness and narrowness was little fitted to avert the storm of God’s judgment. Finally, too, the revival of classical studies and the introduction of pagan modes of thought were followed by a renewal of anti-pagan Apologetics (Nicolas of Methone). In Exegesis there was no independent original work. Valuable catenas were compiled by Œcumenius, Theophylact and Euthymius Zigabenus. Church History lay completely fallow. Only Nicephorus Callisti in the 14th century gave any attention to it (§ 5, 1). Incomparably more important for the church history of those times are the numerous Scriptores hist. Byzantinæ. As a writer of legends Simeon Metaphrastes in the 10th century (?) gained a high reputation.

§ 68.5. The most distinguished theologian of the 8th century was Joannes Damascenus. He was long in the civil service of the Saracens, and died about A.D. 760 as monk in the monastery of Sabas in Jerusalem. His admirers called him Chrysorrhoas; the opponents of image worship who pronounced a thrice repeated anathema upon him at the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 754, called him Mansur. His chief work, which ranks in the Greek church as an epoch-making production, is the Πηγὴ γνώσεως. Its first part, Κεφάλαια φιλοσοφικά, forms the dialectic, the second part, Περὶ αἱρέσεων, the historical, introduction to the third or chief part: Ἔκδοσις ἀκριβὴς τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως, a systematic collection of the doctrines of faith according to the Councils, and the teachings of the ancient Fathers, especially of the three Cappadocians. His Ἱερὰ παράλληλα contain a collection of loci classici from patristic writings on dogmatic and moral subjects arranged in alphabetical order. He wrote besides controversial tracts against Christological heretics, the Paulicians, the opponents of image worship, etc., and composed several hymns for church worship.194―Among the numerous writings of Photius, who died in A.D. 891, undoubtedly the most important is his Bibliotheca, Μυριοβίβλιον. It gives reports about and extracts from 279 Christian and pagan works, which have since in great part been lost. In addition to controversial treatises against the Latins and against the Paulicians, there are still extant his Ἀμφιλόχια, answers to more than 300 questions laid before him by bishop Amphilochius, and his Nomo-canon (§ 43, 3) which is still the basis of Greek canon law, and was, about A.D. 1180, commented on by the deacon of Constantinople, Theodore Balsamon in his Ἐξήγησις τῶν ἱερῶν καὶ θείων κανόνων.―The brilliant period of the Comnenian dynasty was headed by Michael Psellus, teacher of philosophy at Constantinople, a man of wide culture and possessed of an astonishingly extensive store of information which was evinced by numerous works on a variety of subjects, so that he was designated φιλοσόφων ὕπατος. He died in A.D. 1105. Among his theological writings the most important is Περὶ ἐνεργείας δαιμόνων (comp. § 71, 3). As this work is of the utmost importance for the demonology of the Middle Ages, so the Διδασκαλία παντοδαπή, a compendium of universal science on the basis of theology, is for the encyclopædic knowledge of that period. His contemporary Theophylact, archbishop of Achrida, in Bulgaria, left behind him an important commentary in the form of a catena. Euthymius Zigabenus, monk at Constantinople, in the beginning of the 12th century, composed, by order of the emperor Alexius Comnenus, in reply to the heretics, a Πανοπλία δογματικὴ τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως ἤτοι ὁπλοθήκη δογμάτων in 24 bks., which gained for him great repute in his times. It is a mere compilation, and only where he combats the sects of his own age is it of any importance. His exegetical compilations are of greater value. The most important personality of the 12th century was Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica. As commentator on Homer and Pindar he has been long highly valued by philologists; but from the publication of his theological Opuscula it appears that he is worthy of higher fame as a Christian, a theologian, a church leader and reformer of the debased monasticism of his age (§ 70, 4). His friend and pupil, Michael Acominatus of Chonæ, archbishop of Athens, treated with equal enthusiasm of the church and his fatherland, of Christian faith and Greek philosophy, of patristic and classical literature, and in a beautiful panegyric raised a becoming memorial to his departed teacher. His younger brother, Nicetas Acominatus, a highly esteemed statesman of Constantinople, wrote a Θεσαυρὸς ὀρθοδοξίας in 27 bks., which consists of a justificatory statement of the orthodox doctrine together with a refutation of heretics, much more independent and important than the similar work of Euthymius. He died in A.D. 1206. At the same time flourished the noble bishop Nicolas of Methone in Messenia, whose refutation of the attacks of the neo-Platonist Proclus, Ἀνάπτυξις τῆς θεολογικῆς στοιχειώσεως Πρόκλου is one of the most valuable productions of this period. His doctrine of redemption, which has a striking resemblance to Anselm of Canterbury’s theory of satisfaction (§ 101, 1), is worthy of attention. He also contributed several tracts to the struggle against the Latins. During the times of the Palæologi, A.D. 1250-1450, the chief subjects of theological authorship were the vindication and denunciation of the union. Nicolas Cabasilas, archbishop of Thessalonica and successor of Palamas, deserves special mention. He was like his predecessor the vindicator of the Hesychasts (§ 69, 2), and was himself one of the noblest mystics of any age. He died about A.D. 1354. His chief work is Περὶ τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ ζωῆς. His mysticism is distinguished by depth and spirituality as well as by reformatory struggling against a superficial externalism. He also shares the partiality of Greek mysticism for the liturgy as his Expositio Missæ shows. From his contemporary Demetrius Cydonius we have an able treatise De Contemnenda Morte. Archbishop Simeon of Thessalonica belongs to a somewhat later time, about A.D. 1400, a thorough expert in classical and patristic literature and a distinguished church leader. His comprehensive work, De Fide, Ritibus et Mysteriis Ecclesiast. is an important source of information about the church affairs of the Greek Middle Ages. Marcus Eugenicus of Ephesus, the most capable opponent of the Florentine union (§ 67, 2), besides controversial tracts, wrote a treatise Περὶ ἀσθενείας ἀνθρώπου as a philosophico-dogmatic foundation of the doctrine of eternal punishment at which the emperor John VII. Palæologus had taken offence as incompatible with divine justice and human frailty. His disciple Gregorius [Gregory] Scholarius, known as a monk by the name Gennadius, was the first patriarch of Constantinople after it had been taken by the Turks. At the Council of Florence he still supported the union, but was afterwards its most vigorous assailant. In the controversy of the philosophers he contended against Pletho for the old-established predominance of Aristotle. At the request of the Sultan, Mohammed II., he laid before him a Professio fidei.

§ 68.6. A religious romance entitled Barlaam and Josaphat whose author is not named, but evidently belonged to the East, was included, even in the Middle Ages, among the works of Joh. Damascenus, read by many especially in the West, translated into Latin and rendered often in metrical form. It describes the history of the conversion of the Indian prince Josaphat by the eremite Barlaam with the object of showing the power of Christianity against the allurements of sin and its superiority to other religions. An uncritical age accepted the story as historical, and venerated its two heroes as saints. The Roman martyrology celebrated the 27th Nov. in their memory. Liebrecht has discovered that the romance so popular in its days was but a Christianized form of a legendary history of the life and conversion of the founder of Buddhism, which existed in pre-Christian times, and has come down to us under the title Lalita ristara Purâna, often copying its original even in the minutest details.

§ 69. Doctrinal Controversies in the 12th-14th Centuries.

With the mental activity of the Comnenian age there was also reawakened a love of theological speculation and discussion, and several doctrinal questions engaged considerable attention. Then there came a lull in the controversial strife for two hundred years, to be roused once more by a question of abstruse mysticism.

§ 69.1. Dogmatic Questions.―Under the emperor Manuel Comnenus, A.D. 1143-1180, the question was discussed whether Christ presented His sacrifice for the sins of the world only to the Father and the Holy Spirit, or also at the same time to the Logos, i.e. to Himself. A Synod at Constantinople in A.D. 1156 sanctioned the latter notion.―Ten years later a controversy arose over the question whether the words of Christ: “The Father is greater than I,” refer to His divine or to His human nature or to the union of the two natures. The discussion was carried on by all ranks with a liveliness and passionateness which reminds one of the similar controversies of the 4th century (§ 50, 2). The emperor’s opinion that the words applied to the God-man gained the victory at a Synod at Constantinople in A.D. 1166. The dissentients were punished with the confiscation of their goods and banishment.―Manuel excited a third controversy by objecting to the anathema of “the God of Mohammed” in the formula of abjuration for converts from Mohammedanism. In vain did the bishops show the emperor that the God of Mohammed was not the true God. The formula had to be altered.

§ 69.2. The Hesychast Controversy, A.D. 1341-1351.―In the monasteries of Mount Athos in Thessaly the Areopagite mysticism had its most zealous promoters. Following the example given three centuries earlier by Simeon, an abbot of the monastery of Mesnes in Constantinople, the monks by artificial means put themselves into a condition that would afford them the ecstatic vision of God which the Areopagite had extolled as the highest end of all mystic endeavours. Kneeling in a corner of the solitary closed cell, the chin pressed firmly on the breast, the eyes set fixedly on the navel, and the breath held in as long as possible, they sank at first into melancholy and their eyes became dim. Continuing longer in this position the depression of spirit which they at first experienced gave way to an inexpressible rapture, and at last they found themselves surrounded by a bright halo of light. They called themselves Resting Ones, ἡσυχάζοντες, and maintained that the brilliancy surrounding them was the uncreated divine light which shone around Christ on Mount Tabor. Barlaam (§ 67, 5), just returned from his unfortunate union expedition, accused the monks and their defender, Gregorius [Gregory] Palamas, afterwards archbishop of Thessalonica, as Ditheistic heretics, scornfully styling them navel-souls, ὀμφαλόψυχοι. But a Council at Constantinople, in A.D. 1341, the members of which were unfavourable to Barlaam because of his union efforts, approved the doctrine of uncreated divine light which as divine ἐνεργεία is to be distinguished from the divine οὐσία. Barlaam, in order to avoid condemnation, recanted, but withdrew soon afterwards to Italy, where he joined the communion of the Latin church in A.D. 1348, and died as a bishop in Calabria. A disciple of Barlaam, Gregorius [Gregory] Acindynos and the historian Nicephorus Gregoras [Gregory] continued the controversy against the Hesychasts. Down to A.D. 1351 as many as three Synods had been held, which all decidedly favoured the monks.

§ 70. Constitution, Worship and Life.

The Byzantine emperors had been long accustomed to carry out in a very high-handed manner their own will even in regard to the internal affairs of the church. The anointing with sacred oil gave them a sacerdotal character and entitled them to be styled ἅγιος. Most of the emperors, too, from Leo the Philosopher (§ 68, 1), possessed some measure of theological culture. The patriarchate, however, if amid so many arbitrary appointments and removals it fell into the proper hands, was always a power which even emperors had to respect. What protected it against all encroachments of the temporal power was the influence of the monks and through them of the people. In consequence of the controversies about images, Theodorus Studita (§ 66, 4) founded a strong party which fought with all energy against every interference of the State in ecclesiastical matters and against the appointing of ecclesiastical officers by the temporal power, but only with temporary success. The monks, who had been threatened by the iconoclastic Isaurian with utter extermination, at the restoration grew and prospered more than ever in outward appearance, but gave way more and more to spiritual corruption and extravagance. The Eastern monks had not that genial many-sided culture which was needed for the cultivation of the fields and the minds of the barbarians. They were deficient in those powers of tempering, renovating and ennobling, whereby the monks of the West accomplished such wonderful results. But, nevertheless, if in those debased and degenerate days one looks for examples of fidelity to convictions, firmness of character, independence and moral earnestness, he will always find the noblest in the monasteries.―Public worship had already in the previous period attained to almost complete development, but theory and practice received enrichment in various particulars.

§ 70.1. The Arsenian Schism, A.D. 1262-1312.―Michael Palæologus, after the death of the emperor Theodore Lascaris in A.D. 1259, assumed the guardianship of his six years’ old son John, had himself crowned joint ruler, and in A.D. 1261 had the eyes of the young prince put out so as to make him unfit for governing. The patriarch Arsenius then excommunicated him. Michael besought absolution, and in order to obtain it submitted to humiliating penances; but when the patriarch insisted that he should resign the throne, the emperor deposed and exiled him, A.D. 1267. The numerous adherents of Arsenius refused to acknowledge the new patriarch Joseph (§ 67, 4), seceded from the national church, and when their leader died in exile in A.D. 1273, their veneration for him expressed itself in burning hatred of his persecutors. When Joseph died in A.D. 1283, an attempt was made to decide the controversy by a direct appeal to God’s judgment. Each of the two parties cast a tract in defence of its position into the fire, and both were consumed. The Arsenians, who had expected a miracle, felt themselves for the moment defeated and expressed a readiness to be reconciled. But on the third day they recalled their admissions and the schism continued, until the patriarch Niphon in A.D. 1312 had the bones of Arsenius laid in the church of Sophia and pronounced a forty days’ suspension on all the clergy who had taken part against him.

§ 70.2. Public Worship.―In the Greek church preaching retained its early prominence; the homiletical productions, however, are but of small value. The objection to hymns other than those found in Scripture was more and more overcome. As in earlier times (§ 59, 4) Troparies were added to the singing of psalms, so now the New Testament hymns of praise and doxologies were formed into a so-called Κανών, i.e. a collection of new odes arranged for the several festivals and saints’ days. The 8th century was the Augustan age of church song. To this period belonged the celebrated ἅγιοι μελωδοί, Andrew of Crete, John of Damascus, Cosmas of Jerusalem, and Theophanes of Nicæa. The singing after this as well as before was without instrumental accompaniment and also without harmonic arrangement.―There was a great diversity of opinion in regard to the idea of the sacraments and their number. Damascenus speaks only of two: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Theodorus Studita, on the other hand, accepts the six enumerated by the Pseudo-Areopagite (§ 58). Petrus [Peter] Mogilas in his Anti-Protestant Confessio orthodoxa of A.D. 1643 (§ 152, 3) is the first confidently to assert that even among the Latins of the Middle Ages the Sacraments had been regarded as seven in number. The Greeks differed from the Latins in maintaining the necessity of immersion in baptism, in connecting the chrism with the baptism, using leavened bread in the Supper and giving both elements to all communicants. From the time of Joh. Damascenus the teachers of the church decidedly subscribed to the doctrine of Transubstantiation; but in regard to penance and confession they stoutly maintained (§ 61, 1), that not the priest but God alone can forgive sins. The Unctio inferiorum, εὐχέλαιον, also made way in the Greek church, applied in the form of the cross to forehead, breast, hands and feet; yet with this difference that, expressly repudiating the designation “extreme” unction, it was given not only in cases of mortal illness, but also in less serious ailments, and had in view bodily cure as well as spiritual benefit.―The emperor Leo VI. the Philosopher made the benediction of the church (§ 61, 2) obligatory for a legally valid marriage.

§ 70.3. Monasticism.―The most celebrated of all the monastic associations were those of Mount Athos in Thessaly, which was covered with monasteries and hermit cells, and as “the holy mount” had become already a hallowed spot and the resort of pilgrims for all Greek Christendom. The monastery of Studion, too (§ 44, 3), was held in high repute. There was no want of ascetic extravagances among the monks. There were numerous stylites; many also spent their lives on high trees, δενδρίται, or shut up in cages built on high platforms (κιονῖται), or in subterranean caverns, etc. Others bound themselves to perpetual silence. Many again wore constantly a shirt of iron (σιδηρούμενοι), etc. A rare sort of pious monkish practice made its appearance in the 12th century among the Ecetæ, Ἱκέται. They were monks who danced and sang hymns with like-minded nuns in their monasteries after the pattern of Exod. xv. 20, 21. Although they continued orthodox in their doctrine and were never charged with any act of immorality, Nicetas Acominatus proceeded against them as heretics.

§ 70.4. Endeavours at Reformation.―In the beginning of the 12th century a pious monk at Constantinople, Constantinus Chrysomalus, protested against prevailing hypocrisy and formalism. A decade later the monk Niphon took a similar stand. Around both gathered groups of clergy and laymen who, putting themselves under their pastoral direction and neglecting the outward forms of the church, applied themselves to the deepening of the spiritual life. Both brought down on themselves the anathema of the church. The patriarch Cosmas, who was not convinced that Niphon was a heretic and so received him into his house and at his table, was deposed in A.D. 1150. Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica (§ 68, 5), carried on his reformatory efforts quite within the limits of the dominant institutions of the church, and so kept himself safe from the machinations of his enemies. Relentlessly and powerfully he struggled against the corruption in the Christian life of the people, and especially against the formalism and hypocrisy, the rudeness and vulgarity, the spiritual blindness and pride, and the eccentric caricatures of ascetism that were exhibited by the monks, though he was himself in heart and soul a monk. Two hundred years later Nicolas Cabasilas (§ 68, 5) yet more distinctly maintained that a consistent life was the test and love the root of all virtue.

§ 71. Dualistic Heretics.

Remnants of the Gnostic-Manichæan heresy lingered on into the 7th century in Armenia and Syria, where the surrounding Parseeism gave them a hold and support. Constantinus of Mananalis near Samosata gathered these together about the middle of the 7th century and reformed them somewhat in the spirit of Marcion (§ 27, 11). The Catholics, sneeringly called by them Ῥομαῖοι, gave the name of Paulicians to them because they regarded Paul alone as a true apostle. Even before the rise of the Paulicians, a sect existed in Armenia called Children of the Sun who had mixed up the Zoroastrian worship with Christian elements. They, too, during the 9th and 10th centuries, by reorganization reached a position of more importance, and represented, like the Paulicians, a reformatory opposition to the formal institutions of the Catholic church. A similar attitude was assumed by the Euchites in Thrace during the 11th century. Like the old Euchites (§ 44, 7), they got their name from the unceasing prayers which they regarded as the token of highest perfection. Their dualistic-gnostic system is met with again among the Bogomili in Bulgaria. These were still more decidedly hostile to the Catholic church, and had adopted the anthropological views of Saturninus and the Ophites as well as the trinitarian theory of Sabellius (§ 27, 6, 9; 33, 7). All these sects were accused by their Catholic opponents with entertaining antinomian doctrines and practising licentious orgies and unnatural abominations.

§ 71.1. The Paulicians.―They called themselves only Χριστιανοί, but were in the habit of giving to their leaders and churches the names of Paul’s companions and mission stations. They combined dualism, demiurgism and docetism with a mysticism that insisted upon inward piety, demanded a strict but not rigorous asceticism, forbade fasting and allowed marriage. Their worship was very simple, their church constitution moulded after the apostolic pattern, with the rejection of the hierarchy and priesthood. They were specially averse to the accumulation of ceremonies and the veneration of images, relics and saints in the Catholic church. They also urged the diligent study of Scripture, rejecting, however, the Old Testament, and the Jewish-Christian gospels and epistles of the New Testament. The Catholic polemists of the 9th century traced their origin and even their name (=Παυλοϊωάννοι) to a Manichæan family of the fourth century, a widow Callinice and her two sons Paul and John. None of the distinctive marks of Manichæism, however, are discoverable in them, and their founding by Constantine of Mananalis is a historic fact, as also that he, in A.D. 657, assumed the Pauline name of Sylvanus. The first church, which he called Macedonia, was founded by him at Cibossa in Armenia. From this point he made successful missionary journeys in all directions. The emperor Constantinus Pogonnatus, A.D. 668-685, began a bloody persecution of the Paulicians. But the martyr enthusiasm of Sylvanus, who was stoned in A.D. 685, made such an impression upon the imperial officer Symeon, that he himself joined the sect, was made their chief under the name of Titus, and on the renewal of persecution in A.D. 690 joyfully died at the stake. His successor Gegnesius, who took the name of Timothy, was obliged by Leo the Isaurian to undergo an examination under the patriarch of Constantinople, had his orthodoxy attested, and received from the iconoclast emperor a letter of protection. Soon, however, divisions sprang up within the sect itself. One of their chiefs Baanes, on account of his antinomian practices, was nicknamed ὁ ῥυπαρός the smutty. But, about A.D. 801, Sergius Tychicus, converted in earlier years by a Paulician woman, who directed him to the Bible, made his appearance as a reformer and second founder of the sect. He died in A.D. 835. Leo the Armenian, A.D. 813-820, organized an expedition for their conversion. The penitents were received back into the church, the obstinate were executed. A mob of Paulicians murdered the judges, fled to the Saracen regions of Armenia, and founded at Argaum, the ancient Colosse, a military colony which made incessant predatory and retaliating raids upon the Byzantine provinces. They were most numerous in Asia Minor. The empress Theodora (§ 66, 4) carried out against them about A.D. 842 a new and fearfully bloody persecution. Many thousands were put to death. This too was the fate of an officer of high rank. His son, Carbeas, also an officer, incited by an ardent desire for revenge, gathered about 5,000 armed Paulicians around him in A.D. 844, fled with them to Argaum, and became military chief of the sect. New crowds of Paulicians streamed daily in, and the Khalifs assigned to them two other fortified frontier cities. With a well organized army, thirsting for revenge, Carbeas wasted the Byzantine provinces far and wide, and repeatedly defeated the imperial forces. Basil the Macedonian after two campaigns, at last in A.D. 871, hemmed in the Paulician army in a narrow pass and annihilated it. Their political power was now broken. The sect, however, still continued to gather members in Syria and Asia Minor. In A.D. 970, the emperor John Tzimisces transported the greater part of them as watchers of the frontier of Thrace, where Philippopolis became their Zion. They soon had possession of all Thrace. Alexius Comnenus, A.D. 1081-1118, was the first earnestly again to attempt their conversion. He himself appeared at Philippopolis in A.D. 1115, disputed a whole day with their leaders, promised and threatened, rewarded and punished, but all his efforts were fruitless. From that time we hear nothing more of them. Their remnants probably joined the Euchites and the Bogomili.

§ 71.2. The Children of the Sun, or Arevendi were a sect gathered and organized in the 9th century in Armenia by a Paulician Sembat in the country town of Thontrace into a separate community of Thontracians. In A.D. 1002 the metropolitan Jacob of Harkh gave a Christian tinge to their doctrine, went through the country preaching repentance and the performances of ritual observances, and obtained much support from clergy and laity. The Catholicus of the Armenian church caused him to be branded and imprisoned. He made his escape, but was afterwards slain by his opponents.

§ 71.3. The Euchites, Messelians [Messalians], Enthusiasts, attracted the attention of the government in the beginning of the 11th century as a sect widely spread in Thrace. In common with the earlier Euchites (§ 44, 7) they had great enthusiasm in prayer, but they were distinguished from them by their dualism. Their doctrine of the two sons of God, Satanaël and Christ, shows a certain relation to the form of Persian dualism, which derives the two opposing principles, Ormuzd and Ahriman, from one eternal primary essence, Zeruane Acerene. The germs of this sect may have come from the transplanting of Paulicians to Thrace by the emperor Tzimisces. The Byzantine government sent a legate to Thrace to suppress them. This may have been Michael Psellus (§ 68, 5) whose Διάλογος περὶ ἐνεργείας δαιμόνων is the only source of information we have regarding them.

§ 71.4. The Bogomili, θεόφιλοι, taught: that Satanaël, the firstborn son of God, as chief and head over all angels, clothed with full glory of the Godhead, sat at the right hand of the Father; but, swelling with pride, he thought to found an empire independent of his Father and seduced a portion of the angels to take part with him. Driven with them out of heaven, he determined after the pattern of the creation of the Father (Gen. i. 1) to create a new world out of chaos (Gen. ii. 3 ff.). He formed the first man of earth mixed with water. When he set up the figure, some of the water ran out of the great toe of the right foot and spread out over the ground; and after he had breathed his breath into it, that also escaped owing to the looseness of the figure by the toe, permeated the soil moistened with the water and animated it as a serpent. At Satanaël’s earnest entreaty the heavenly Father took pity on the miserable creature, and gave it life by breathing into it His own breath. Afterwards with the Father’s help Eve, too, was created. Satanaël in the form of the serpent seduced, deceived and lay with Eve in order that by his seed, Cain and his twin sister Calomina, Adam’s future descendants, Abel, Seth, etc., might be oppressed and brought into bondage. Jealous lest the latter should obtain that heavenly dwelling place from which they had been driven, Satanaël’s angels seduced their daughters (Gen. vi.). From this union sprang giants who rebelled against Satanaël, but were destroyed by him in the flood. Henceforth he reigned unopposed as κοσμοκράτωρ, seduced the greater part of mankind, and endowed Moses with the power of working miracles as the instrument of his tyranny. Only a few men under the oppression of his law attained the end of their being; the sixteen prophets and those named in Matt. i. and Luke iii. Finally, in the year 5,500 after the creation of man, the supreme God moved with pity caused a second son, the Logos, to go forth from His bosom, who as chief of the good angels is called Michael, and sent Him to earth for man’s redemption. He entered in an ethereal body through the right ear into the virgin to be born of her with the semblance of an earthly body. Mary noticed nothing of all this. Without knowing how or whence, she found the child in swaddling clothes before her in the cave. His death on the cross was naturally in appearance only. After his resurrection he showed himself to Satanaël in his true form, bound him with chains, robbed him of his divine power, and compelled him to abandon his divine designation, by taking the El from his name, so that he is henceforth called Satan. Then He returned to the Father, took the seat that formerly was Satanaël’s at His right hand, and sinks again into the bosom of the Father out of which He had come. This, however, did not take place before a new Aëon [Æon], the Holy Spirit, emanated from the Godhead, and was sent forth as continuator and completer of the work of redemption. This Spirit, too, after he has finished his task will sink back again into the Father’s bosom.―Of the Old Testament the Bogomili acknowledged only the Psalter and the Prophets; of the New Testament books they valued most the Gospel of John. Veneration of relics and images, as well as the sign of the cross they abhorred as demoniacal inventions. Church buildings were regarded by them as the residences of demons. Satanaël himself in earlier days resided in the temple of Jerusalem, later in the church of Sophia at Constantinople. Water baptism, which was introduced by John the Baptist a servant of Satanaël, they rejected; but the baptism of Christ is spiritual baptism (παράκλησις=Consolamentum). It was imparted by laying the Gospel of John on the head of the subject of baptism, with invocation of the Holy Spirit and chanting the Lord’s Prayer. They declared the Catholic mass to be a sacrifice presented to demons; the true eucharist consists in the spiritual nourishment by the bread of life brought down in Christ from heaven, to which also the fourth petition in the Lord’s Prayer refers. They placed great value upon prayer, especially the use of the Lord’s Prayer. So too they valued fasting. Their ascetism was strict and required abstinence from marriage and from the eating of flesh. But prevarication and dissimulation they regarded as permissible.―The emperor Alexius Comnenus caused their chief Basil to be brought to Constantinople, under the delusive pretext of wishing himself to become a proselyte of the sect, got him to open all his heart, and enticed him under the semblance of a purely private conference to make reckless statements, while behind the curtain a judge of heresies was taking notes. This first act in the drama was followed by a second. The sentence of death was passed upon all adherents of Basil who could be laid hold upon. Two great funeral piles were erected, one of which was furnished with the figure of the cross. The emperor exhorted them, at least to die as true Christians, and in token of this to choose the place of death provided with a cross. Those who did so were pardoned, the rest for the most part condemned to imprisonment for life. Basil himself, however, was actually burnt, A.D. 1118. The sect was not by any means thus rooted out. The Bogomili hid themselves mostly in monasteries, and Bulgaria long remained the haunt of dualistic heresy, which spread thence through the Latin church of the West.

§ 72. The Nestorian and Monophysite Churches of the East.

The Nestorian and Monophysite churches of the East owed the protection and goodwill of their Moslem rulers to their hostile position in regard to the Byzantine national church. Among the Persian Nestorians as well as among the Syrian and Armenian Monophysites we find an earnest endeavour after scholarship and great scientific activity. They were the teachers of the Saracens in the classical, philosophical and medical sciences, and with no little zeal pursued the study of Christian theology. The Nestorians also long manifested great earnestness in missions. Only when the science-loving Khalifs gave place to Mongolian and Turkish barbarians did those churches lose their prestige, and that stagnation and torpidity passed over them in which they still lie. In order to crown the Florentine union attempts of A.D. 1439 (§ 67, 6), Rome solemnly proclaimed in the immediately following year the complete union with all the detached churches of the East. But this was a vain self-delusion or a bit of jugglery. Men pretending to be deputed by those churches treated about restoration to the bosom of the church, which was accorded them amid great applause.

§ 72.1. The Persian Nestorians, or Chaldean Christians (§ 64, 2), stood in peculiarly friendly relations to the Khalifs, who, in the Nestorian opposition to Theotokism, worship of saints, images and relics, and priestly celibacy, saw an approach to a rational Christianity more in accordance with the Moslem ideal. The Nestorian seminaries at Edessa, Nisibis, Seleucia, etc., were in high repute. The rich literature issued by them is, however, mostly lost, and what of it remains is known only by Asseman’s [Assemani’s] quotations (Biblioth. Orientalia). Among the later Nestorian authors the best known is Ebed Jesus, Metropolitan of Nisibis, who died in A.D. 1318. His writings treat of all subjects in the domain of theology. The missionary zeal of the Nestorians continued unabated down to the 13th century. Their chief mission fields were China and India. At the beginning of the 11th century they converted the prince of the Karaites, a Tartar tribe to the south of Lake Baikal, who as vassals of the great Chinese empire had the name Ung-Khan. A large number of the people followed their prince. The Mongol conqueror Genghis-Khan married the daughter of the Karaite prince, but quarrelled with him, drove him from his throne, and took his life, A.D. 1202.―With the overthrow of the Khalifs by Genghis-Khan in A.D. 1219, the prosperity of the Nestorian church came to an end. At first the Nestorians attempted missionary operations not unsuccessfully among the Mongols. But the savage Tamerlane, the Scourge of Asia, A.D. 1369-1405, drove them into the inaccessible mountains and wild ravines of the province of Kurdistan.195

§ 72.2. Among the Monophysite Churches the most important was the Armenian (§ 64, 3). It boasted, at least temporarily and partially, of political independence under national rulers. The Armenian patriarch from the 12th century had his residence in the monastery of Etshmiadzin at the foot of Ararat. The literary activity in the translation of classical and patristic writings, as well as in the production of original works, reached a particularly high point in the 8th and then again in the 12th century. To the earlier period belong the patriarch Johannes Ozniensis and the metropolitan Stephen of Sünik, to the later, the still more famous name of the patriarch Nerses IV. Clajensis, whose epic “Jesus the Son” is regarded as the crown of Armenian poetry, and his nephew, the metropolitan Nerses of Lampron. The two last named readily aided the efforts for reunion with the Byzantine church, but owing to the troubles of the time these came to nothing. The Western endeavours after union which were actively carried on from the beginning of the 13th century, split upon the dislike of the Armenian church to the Western ritual, and found acceptance with only a relatively small fragment of the people. These United Armenians acknowledged the primacy of the pope and the catholic system of doctrine, but retained their own constitution and liturgy.―In the Jacobite-Syrian Church (§ 52, 7), too, theological and classical studies were prosecuted with great vigour. The most distinguished of its scholars during our period was George, bishop of the Arabs, who died in A.D. 740. He translated and annotated the Organon of Aristotle, and wrote exegetical, dogmatic, historical and chronological works, also poems on various themes, and a number of epistles important for the history of culture during these times, in which he answered questions put to him by his friends and admirers. The brilliant Gregory Abulfarajus is the last of the distinguished scholars of the Jacobite-Syrian church. He was the son of a converted Jewish physician, and hence he is usually called Barhebræus. He was made bishop of Guba, afterwards Maphrian of Mosul, and died in A.D. 1286. His noble and truly benevolent disposition, his extraordinary learning, the rich and attractive productions of his pen, and his skill as a physician made him universally revered by Christians, Mohammedans and Jews. Among his writings, for the most part still in manuscript, the most important and best known is the Chronicon Syriacum.―The Jacobite church suffered most in Egypt. The perfidy of the Copts, who surrendered the country to the Saracens, was terribly avenged. From A.D. 1254 the Fatimide Khalifs held them down under the most severe oppression, and this became yet more severe under the Mamelukes. The Copts were completely driven out of the cities, and even in the villages maintained only a miserable existence. Their church was now in a condition of utter stagnation. In Abyssinia (§ 64, 1) the national rulers maintained their position, though pressed within narrower limits from time to time by the Saracens. But here, too, church life became fossilized. At the head of the church was an Abbuna consecrated by the Coptic patriarch (§ 64, 1; 165, 3).