The Imperial Church from Constantine to the Early Middle Ages. // History of the Church. Ed. Hubert Jedin, John Dolan. Vol. II. 846 pp.

Content

PART FOUR

The Early Byzantine Church

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CHAPTER 22 The Henoticon and the Acacian Schism

The great ecclesiastical assembly at Chalcedon produced no peace, de spite the exclamation of the Council Fathers: "We are agreed; there is only one faith!" On 31 October 451, without the assent of the Pope's legates, the Synod had issued that celebrated canon 28, which, following the precedent of the First Council of Constantinople, further consoli dated the primacy of the "archsee" of Constantinople and thereby pro foundly disturbed RomeЧand, naturally, not only Rome. But it was also not to be expected that the dogmatic decisions of the Council would be readily accepted everywhere, and the fate of the Second Council of Ephesus of 449 had demonstrated that even imperial synods need not be unalterable. True, in their dogmatic decision the Fathers of Chalcedon had exerted themselves to praise Cyril of Alexandria, but they had made no effort to harmonize Cyril's famous formula mia physis tou theou logon sesarkomene with their own formula, en duo physesi hen prosopon kai mia hypostasis. Rather, with their definition they consoli dated a conceptual development which was in advance of the contempo rary state of the theological awareness of many bishops of the East and could only evoke the opposition of those to whom tradition was dearer than precision. It was not to be expected that the historically conscious Egyptians would submit to the renunciation of the Cyrillan theology parenthetically. Besides, the Synod had dared to depose the Patriarch Dioscorus, Cyril's successor, and to rehabilitate Theodoret of Cyrrhus, the bete noire of the Alexandrians.

In spite of a diplomatic letter of the Council Fathers to the Pope, especially in regard to canon 28, Leo the Great argued that the canon encroached upon the rights of Alexandria and Antioch and hence he tried to mobilize the eastern patriarchates. But in this he had no suc cess: the two superior sees intended to enforce their claims without Rome's help and so the Pope had to address himself in his polemic chiefly to the Patriarch of Constantinople, Anatolius (451-58), who had to experience all its severity, whereas the Emperor was treated more considerately.

Because of all these questions of rank, the Pope neglected far too long to come out, officially and energetically, for Chalcedon's theologi cal decisions. It was only on 21 March 453 that, under pressure from the

THE EARLY BYZANTINE CHURCH

Emperor, he could give a decision in their favor. And when, soon after, Anatolius gave his consent to a general letter, which expressed apologies and regrets,3 Leo had to regard this matter as settledЧin any event he no longer returned to it with vigor. Of course, the loss of time could never be made up. If the recognition of the Tome of Leo at the Council had meant a climax of papal influence on the theology of the East, there now quickly followed a cooling of relations, from which the East-West connection would never recover. Above all, the old bond between Alexandria and Rome, which had made possible the conciliar politics at Ephesus, split. True, the Pope's last years did not witness the collapse of his work in the East, but after account had been taken of his authority at a critical moment, people now tried to get along without Rome.

The fate of Chalcedon was in principle decided in Egypt. Out of fear of the deposed Patriarch Dioscorus, the Egyptian bishops had refused to accept the Tome of Leo. Dioscorus was living in exile. Now the Orthodox had to concern themselves with selecting a successor to him who was qualified to pacify the enraged Egyptians, who already saw in their patriarch their recognized "national" leader. Thus a former intimate of Dioscorus, the Archpriest Proterius, was designated as his successor, without its being possible, however, to gain more than four bishops for him. This election resulted in a revolt of the people: the soldiers who were supposed to establish order were driven back and burned in the Sarapeion. Without new troops from Constantinople there was no hope of calm. Dioscorus died in 454, and in 457 he was followed by the Emperor Marcian, who had held Chalcedon very dear. Again there was rioting in Alexandria, and the leader of Dioscorus's adherents, the Priest Timothy the Cat, was ordained by the anti-Chalcedonians as their Pa triarch on 16 March 457. The imperial governor immediately had him arrested, but the excitement among the people was so great that the measure had to be annulled. Nevertheless, the movement of revolt could no longer be checked, and a few days later the Orthodox Patriarch Proterius was murdered while he was officiating at Mass. Since the new Emperor Leo I (457-474)4 at first had to let go the reins in Egypt, Timothy the Cat was able to establish himself. He succeeded in filling the episcopal sees in the country with his followers, and a Synod at Alexandria excommunicated the Pope and the Patriarchs of Constan tinople and Antioch. The Alexandrian Pope, conscious of his power, provoked schism, and all the complaints made against him in Constan-

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tinople could accomplish nothing against it. Only the punishment of the assassins of Proterius could be achieved. On the whole, the activities of Timothy the Cat probably had little to do with dogmatic questions. The censure against Rome, Constantinople, and Antioch was probably intended to avenge Chalcedon's refusal to take Cyril's formulas into con sideration, but even more the deposition of Dioscorus, Timothy's pre decessor. And the new position which Constantinople was now deter mined to assume in the Universal ChurchЧa position which Alexandria had hitherto occupied in the EastЧwas certainly also included. If the rest of the East came to terms with Chalcedon only partially, this was probably less a sign of genuine conviction than a certain display of weariness. Anatolius was not a convinced defender of the dogmatic decision of 451, but the Council had to be of interest to him because its canon 28 concerned himЧhe was its beneficiary. Besides Egypt the chief centers of the opposition were the monastic circles in Palestine, to which the constant maneuverings of their Patriarch Juvenal, whose first concern at all ecclesiastical meetings was the independence of his pa triarchate, supplied an occasion for discontent. The monks blamed him for betrayal of Cyril's theology. In the Empress Eudocia, widow of the Emperor Theodosius II, who lived and intrigued in Jerusalem, they found the necessary, even financial, support. It was due to her influ ence that soon there was no monastery in the vicinity of the Holy City which maintained loyalty to Juvenal. Under the leadership of a monk, Theodosius, they gave the Patriarch on his return the alternatives of repudiating Chalcedon or resigning. Juvenal fled, swarms of monks raged in Jerusalem, bishops were murdered, and vacant sees were everywhere filled with adherents of this Theodosius. Only military units, which engaged in a pitched battle with the monks, were able to relieve Jerusalem and restore quiet. The leaders of the monastic revolt fled, but Eudocia maintained her position.

The Emperor Leo I was a military man who held himself aloof from religious questions; he had quite enough to do to reach an understand ing with his Protector, the powerful Aspar, and gave to Chalcedon only a part of that attention which his predecessor had devoted to it. Timothy the Cat thought he could demand of him the revision of the decrees of Chalcedon by a new council. However, he had no success with this. Nevertheless, the Emperor permitted an investigation to take place, which he hoped would clarify how people stood in regard to recogniz ing Timothy the Cat as legitimate Patriarch of Alexandria and whether the decrees of Chalcedon should be maintained. The replies from most ecclesiastical provinces of the Eastern Empire were unanimously against the recognition of Timothy, and only one voice rejected the Council.6 The answer of those provinces whose letters are no longer extant would be interesting. Perhaps they were more negative than positive in regard to the Council. In any event, Leo, probably under pressure from Aspar, long maintained a delaying policy, although the Pope did all he could to induce him to take steps against Timothy. It was only in 460 that the Emperor sent the Alexandrian into exile in Paphlagonia and finally to the Crimea. Timothy Salofaciol became Patriarch, but he did not suc ceed in restoring ecclesiastical unity in Egypt.

When the Emperor Leo I died in 474, the Isaurian Zeno, whom Leo had finally played off against the overmighty Aspar, had himself pro claimed Augustus by the Empress Ariadne and their minor-aged son, Leo II. He probably had even less interest in theology than his predecessor, but already, as Magister Militum per Orientem, he had been under the influence of the personality of a priest, Peter the Fuller (Gnapheus- Fullo),7 who, relying on the power of the Magister, had forced his elec tion by a synod as Patriarch of Antioch, contrary, of course, to all the canonical rules. The Emperor Leo soon had him arrested and deported to Egypt, but Peter succeeded in fleeing to Constantinople, and, since he promised to keep quiet, he was entrusted to the rigidly orthodox Acemetae monks in the neighborhood of Constantinople. Zeno, even as Emperor half-barbarian, did not know how to make himself popular. As early as 475 he had to give way before a conspiracy, and Basiliscus, a brother of Zeno's mother-in-law, the Empress Verina, tried to seize the throneЧwith no more luck than Zeno. He believed he could dismiss Verina and thereby isolated himself from both factions. Perhaps he was of the opinion that he could form a strong following if he met the anti-Chalcedonians halfway. Without consulting a synod, he issued an Encyclion,8 in which he decreed that people should be satisfied with the Nicene Creed and its confirmation by the First Council of Constan tinople and that of Ephesus. The Tome of Leo and the Horn of Chalcedon were anathematized, and anyone who did not agree with this anathema should, if he was a cleric, be deposed, and, if he was a monk or lay person, be banished. The Encyclion was in no sense an innovation in matters of faith or even a Monophysite document. The brief explana-

6 The replies are collected in the so-called Codex Ertcyclius; see ACO II, 5, 24-98; T. Schnitzler, Zum Kampf um Chalcedon, Geschichte und Inhalt des Codex Encyclius von 584 (Rome 1938).

8 U. Riedinger, LThK, 2nd ed., s.v., VIII, 384. E. Schwartz, Publizistische Sammlungen, 182ff.

10 Text in Evagrius, HE III, 4, 101-104; variant in Vat. gr. 1431, ed. E. Schwartz, "Codex Vaticanus gr., 1431, eine antichalkedonische Sammlung aus der Zeit Kaiser Zenons," AAM 32, 6 (Munich 1927), 49fc

A2A tions of the faith which it offers are orthodox, but only on the status of the period before the Council of Chalcedon: the tactic of backing down in terminology. The decree made it possible for Timothy the Cat to return to Egypt. He took the route via Constantinople, where the new Patriarch Acacius gave him the cold shoulder, and a majority of the monks would have nothing to do with him. On the other hand, he participated at Ephesus in a synod of the province of Asia: this must have been a satisfaction for him, because here Constantinople's detested patriarchal rights over the province were denied. Then he celebrated a triumphal entry into Alexandria, after Timothy Salofaciol had tamely withdrawn to a monastery. For the rest, Timothy the Cat adopted a moderate attitude and did not push his triumph to extremes. Peter the Fuller returned to Antioch and for some time again occupied "his" see. The Patriarch of Jerusalem also signed the Encyclion. The opposition to it was concentrated at Constantinople, where the Patriarch Acacius (471-489) mobilized clergy and people. Success was quick in coming, because the position of Basiliscus became even more difficult. In his need he now had the Encyclion followed by an Antiencyclion, which annulled the former pro forma and ordered that every bishop should keep his place and that the drama of Nestorius and Eutyches must be definitely closed. With this the chaos was complete. In September 476 Zeno was able to march back into Constantinople, and Basiliscus went into exile. Likewise, the Fuller and the refractory Archbishop of Ephesus had to leave their sees, and Timothy the Cat was supposed to be deported a second time, but finally the old man was allowed to die in peace in June 477. His adherents acted quickly and chose as his succes sor his old friend, Peter Mongus, who, following the proved models, at once disappeared to a hiding place and from there ruled his flock, while Timothy Salofaciol was recalled by the authorities and ruled officially as Patriarch of the Church of the Empire. Whoever else had signed the Encyclion hastened to ask pardon and to accept the Council of Chalce don. Everything seemed again in order, but anyone who watched more closely could hardly find this rapid pacification reassuring. Other means had to be thought of to give peace to the Church. The Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople took this task upon himself.

Acacius was certainly not a fiery adherent of the formulations of Chalcedon. But he knew that the privileges of his see depended on the recognition of this Synod; he was by no means a "Monophysite"; and also he saw clearly that the inextricable confusion in the Church of the East could not be corrected by formulas, because it had not originated in formulas, but that it was a question of dealing with personalities, and in

THE EARLY BYZANTINE CHURCH

this there was little promise of success by going too far into the past in examining such persons. It was important to rebuild a front of good will, to let oikonomia rule, and not to make any theologumenon into a shib boleth. It was especially urgent to understand that, despite Rome, the theological development could not be brought to a halt even with Chalcedon, any more than it had stopped with earlier synods. Experi ence had taught that nothing was gained in a situation where two bishops contradicted each other to choose a thirdЧleading only to a third factionЧthat one must rather balance the two candidates at the favorable moment and test their good willЧand do so hie et nunc. This was the policy of AcaciusЧa policy, depending on one's point of view, of cunning or of a desperate good will. To be able really to judge Acacius one must know just how in his own ideas and in those of his contemporaries there could be an "ecumenical" synod of obligatory validity, and whether Chalcedon was in accord with these ideas. But we do not know this, and it is to be surmised that the experiences with the two Synods of Ephesus did not ease the problem for people of that day. Also, to not a few decisive procedures at the First Synod of Ephesus the label latrocinium was suitable: Acacius cannot be denied a certain great ness. He had to founder, not because he himself had been wrong in his idea, but because this concept required a flexibility which only a few would grant him, since they suspected a betrayal of the faith where the subject in debate was solely an effort not to cut a Gordian Knot, but patiently and gradually to untie it.

In 481-82 there came to Constantinople at the order of the Pa triarch of Alexandria, Timothy Salofaciol, the monk John Talaia, with the request that, after the Patriarch's death, a successor be chosen who was an adherent of Chalcedon but also a member of the Egyptian clergy. The Emperor was in agreement, but he made John Talaia take an oath in the presence of the Patriarch and the Senate that, under no circum stances, would he, Talaia, accept the episcopal office. The Emperor was moved to this step because of Talaia's connection with the Isaurian Illus, in whose regard Zeno had reason to entertain suspicions. If Talaia be came Patriarch of Alexandria, Illus would find in refractory Egypt, so the Emperor believed, an all too powerful partisan. Salofaciol died in February 482 and Talaia pomptly became guilty of perjury by letting himself be elected as his successor. Rome was notified of the allegedly unanimous election, and the Pope was asked to confirm it. The furious Emperor Zeno had Talaia deposed, and since at the same time Egyptian monks in Constantinople vouched for the person of the Patriarch Peter

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Mongus, the Patriarch Acacius undertook the first attempt for a solution of the Egyptian question: Peter should be recognized in so far as he gave guarantees which were incorporated into an imperial edict, the manu script of which clearly points to Acacius as its author. The Edikton Zenonos stressed first of all the inviolability of the decisions of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus. New was the canonical recognition of the anathemas of Cyril of Alexandria. It was modified by the acceptance of the Formula of Union of 433. There was no mention of Cyril's mia physis formula and its disavowal by Chalcedon was not annulled. Who ever did not accept this faith was punished with anathema, as was any one who now or previously thought otherwise, whether "at Chalcedon" or at another synod.13Accordingly, the edict formally glided over the Synod of Chalcedon, but it was no more rejected than was the Tome of Leo. It was not the Council that was rejected, but apparently an anti- Cyrillan interpretation of its decrees, whereas excessive "Cyrillanism" had been repudiated by the Formula of Union of 433 and the disregard of the mia pbysis formula. The edict thereby anticipated to a certain extent an interpretation of the Chalcedonian decrees which did not prevail in Orthodoxy until the sixth century, but then for ever. Natur ally the die-hards could only view the glissando over Chalcedon as a treachery to the Synod, just as the die-hard "Monophysites" felt the failure to condemn this same Synod. Acacius, the composer of the edict, which has entered history under the title of the Henoticon, could never theless hope to establish peace on the basis of this document. He suc ceeded in gaining Peter Mongus for the Henoticon and received him into the communion of the Church. Of course, the monks who supported John Talaia upbraided him, as before, as a heretic. Many renounced communion with him; he agreed to a few concessions which satisfied no one, and it required all his shrewdness to keep the excesses within bounds. At Antioch the Patriarch Calandion refused to sign the Henoti con, but he was unwise enough to conspire with the faction of Illus against the Emperor and hence had to go into exile in 484. Once again Peter the Fuller found the opportunity to occupy the coveted See of Antioch. He signed the Henoticon, but Acacius did not for that reason see the possibility of accepting ecclesiastical communion with this scin tillating personality. Jerusalem made no difficulties. On the other hand,

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it was ominous that Rome showed no appreciation for the personality politics of Acacius. Unfortunately the Emperor had failed to publish the Henoticon at Rome, probably because he saw in the document no new regulation but only an explicatio fidei.14 In any case, people at Rome were apparently pleased with it, for it presented no serious dogmatic confrontation but rested entirely on questions of law and discipline, which were essentially more congenial to the Roman mentality. The Emperor himself announced to Pope Simplicius the recognition of Peter Mongus.15 The Pope protested to the Emperor and exhorted Acacius to have the Emperor change his mind. Acacius shrewdly cloaked himself in silence. In 483 Felix II became Pope, and this vigorous defender of Roman interests did not let himself be put off. He wrote to Emperor and Patriarch and again represented the view that Peter Mongus was a condemned heretic. The fact that Peter had professed the orthodox creed of the Henoticon was not mentioned at all, nor was the perjury of Talaia.16 The last-named, meanwhile, had arrived in Rome and filed an official complaint against Acacius. In these circumstances the Pope de cided on the extraordinary step, contrary to the tradition that a Patriarch could be condemned only by an imperial synod, of summoning Acacius before his court, spurred on by a letter from the Acemetae monks of Constantinople, who had at that time claimed a monopoly of Orthodoxy and now accused the Pope of being too remiss in the defense of the true faith.17 His legates received instructions first to get into contact with precisely these Acemetae and obtain advice from them. As would hap pen all too often later, Byzantine skill succeeded in bringing the papal legates to the right way "with pastry and the lash," as E. Schwartz expressed it. Soon after their arrival in Constantinople, they were seen going solemnly, with Acacius and the envoys of Mongus, through Con stantinople to the church. They kept themselves aloof from the Acemetae and promised the Patriarch to push forward at Rome the case of Mongus against Talaia. After their return, Pope Felix had the unfor tunate legates deposed by a synod. Peter Mongus was again refused communion as a heretic, and Acacius was declared deserving of the most severe penalties. Soon after, the Pope took the further step of formally excommunicating the Patriarch of Constantinople. The reasons were the Patriarch's interference in the affairs of the other Eastern ChurchesЧhence, fundamentally, the exercising of his primatial rights

14 Coll. Avell. 60, 152.

16 The letters of the Pope to Emperor and Patriarch, ed. E. Schwartz, Publizistische Sammlungen, 63-69, 69-73, and A. Thiel, Epistulae Romanorum Pontificum genuinae I (Brunswick 1868), 222-239.

18 E. Schwartz, Publizistische Sammlungen 3, no. 1.

20 Evagrius, HE III, 19, 117.

THE HENOTICON AND THE ACACIAN SCHISM

on the basis of canon 28 of ChalcedonЧand his measures taken by order of the Emperor, but above all his communion with Mongus. Nothing was said about his faith. By his not having obeyed the Pope's summons he had declared his own guilt. This was in 484 and, since Acacius did not submit, the so-called Acacian Schism was a fait accompliЧa schism in which questions of faith were consciously evaded by both sides, and questions of personalities were tormented to the limits of the impossible. For this reason Acacius probably thought he should not reply, because the Pope had not at all looked into the expla nations by the Emperor Zeno of Acacius's personal politics. What would he have been able to add to what had been said? The fact that Felix continued to uphold John Talaia gave little hope of the possibility of an agreement.

Acacius died in 489, and his policy seemed to crumble. His successor, Fravitas, was able, apparently under pressure from the Acemetae, to induce the Emperor to resume negotiations with Rome. However, the memory of Acacius was supposed to be spared, and the communion with Mongus to be maintained. Hence, Fravitas was evidently under the incorrect impression that at stake was the recognition of Or thodoxy and not of primatial rights. Pope Felix undeceived him and insisted on the deletion of the names of Acacius and Mongus from the diptychs. Fravitas died in 490 without having seen the Pope's reply. His successor was Euphemius, a Syrian, the man of the AcemetaeЧor so it has been assumedЧbut in any event a strict Chalcedonian. On his own authority he removed Peter Mongus from the diptychs and in a letter to the Pope acknowledged the Synod of Chalcedon without reservations. He was unwilling only to condemn Acacius, and in such a champion of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy this fact was a powerful testimony in favor of Acacius. It also prevents one from seeing in Euphemius an unscrupu lous creature of the Acemetae, who roundly hated Acacius. Evidently Euphemius saw no Christian necessity to condemn Acacius after his death, as Rome demanded, even though the deceased Patriarch's policy may have been questionable to him also. Pope Felix remained obstinate and thereby prolonged the schism for some twenty years unnecessarily. The Emperor Zeno died in 491. The new Emperor Anastasius I (491- 518) had been a high court functionary, not inexperienced in ecclesias tical matters and at one time even a candidate for the patriarchal See of Antioch.21 In contrast to the last years of his predecessor, he was deter mined not to stake the politically undeniable successes of the Henoticon in the East and not to sacrifice them even to a Pope who, in his eyes, living under the protection of an Ostrogoth outside the actual sphere of power of his Empire, was pursuing a policy which did not take into consideration the difficult circumstances of the Eastern Churches and the idea of imperial unity. But at Rome Pope Gelasius I (492-496) unflinchingly continued the policy of his predecessor; Euphemius did not receive the least support, and with each day it became clearer that, for Rome, not the question of Chalcedon but that of the primatial position of Constantinople represented the questionable heart of the matter. Even though the Patriarch informed the Pope that the condem nation of Acacius would inevitably lead to a revolt of the "demes," that is, the so-called circus factions,22 Gelasius persisted in his demand, and, even when the Emperor Anastasius sought to put pressure on him by means of King Theodoric, this was of no avail, probably because the

¶i King had at that time no interest in attaching the Pope to Constan tinople.

In 495 Euphemius was succeeded as Patriarch of Constantinople by Macedonius (495-511), whom the Emperor invested only after he had signed the Henoticon. At Rome the intransigent Gelasius was followed by Pope Anastasius II (496-98), who apparently exerted himself to prepare for an end to the schism by a judicious policy. But he died as early as 498, and hence his plans could not mature. In addition, there \ now broke out in Rome the so-called Laurentian Schism, which made I any eastern policy impossible until 502.

If the opposition at Rome to the Henoticon, or, more precisely, to Acacius, was thus impeded, the vacillation of Acacius's successors in the East strengthened the opposition to the Hemoticon, which proceeded from theologians, to whom, it is true, the label of Monophysites can be simply attributed, but who energetically rejected the Synod of Chalce don and saw in the Henoticon an all too compliant document. For them Cyril's theology was the starting point and the goal of Christological terminology: they rejected its explanation by Chalcedon. The most im portant men of this faction were Xenaia (Philoxenus) of Mabbug (Hierapolis) and Severus of Antioch. Already as a teacher at the school of Edessa, Xenaia23 had bitterly

. 21 L. Brehier, "Anastase," DHGE II, 1447-1457.

22 The letter is lost but is partly reconstructable from the Pope's reply in A. Thiel, op. cit., 312-321; E. Schwartz, Publizistische Sammlungen, pp. 49-55.

24 A. de Halleux, Philoxene de Mabboug (Louvain 1963).

IHT MEINUL 1LUIN AINU 1HE ACAC1AIN SCH15M

attacked the theology of the old Antiochene School, which for him represented nothing but pure Nestorianism. Peter the Fuller promoted him to the episcopal see of Mabbug and here he developed in the Syriac language, with which he alone was familiar, an active literary activity not only against the Council of Chalcedon, but also against the old An- tiochenes, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa. He even sought to explain the "True" faith to the Emperor and for this purpose came to Constantinople, where, of course, Macedonius did not receive him, and so he soon angrily departed.^cverus^a Greek from Pisidia, had considerably more success in the"capital. He had first studied law and then was gained for the monastic life at Maiuma near Gaza. He employed the time in the monastery not only for the exercises of the ascetical life but also for a deeper study of all theology. Thus Severus became an opponent of the Synod of Chalcedon, whom the Chalcedonians could counteract only with difficulty. What led him to Constantinople was, first, the conflict with a certain Nephalius, who had originally belonged to his own faction but now vehemently defended the interests of the Chalcedonians and slandered the monastic groups around Severus to the Patriarch Elias of Jerusalem to such a degree that Elias had them driven out of their monasteries. Accompanied by crowds of monks, Severus traveled as their counsel to the Emperor, who re ceived him with the greatest honor. Even when his case had been de cided, he remained in the city from 508 to 511, and, in word and writing, developed a mighty propaganda against Chalcedon and, im plicitly, also against the Henoticon. He gathered the opponents of the Patriarch Macedonius around himself, and people did not hesitate to spread falsehoods in order to compromise the Patriarch and to bring about his ruin. The shibboleth of Severus's cause became the so-called "Theopaschite Trisagion," that is, the Hagios ho theos, hagios ischyros, hagios athanatos, to which had been appended ho staurotheis di'hemasЧ hence a formula, which meant nothing more, if the Trisagion itself was understood Christologically and not in a Trinitarian sense, which was possible both historically and formally, but which could not but lead to misunderstandings if it was employed as a substitute for the controver sial mia physis tou theou logou sesarkomene. Macedonius was sacrificed by the Emperor because of all the difficulties caused him and the calumnies alleged against him, and replaced by Timothy (511-18), who could not really please any faction. The Monophysites wanted Severus in his place; the Alexandrians demanded of him an anathema against Chalce- don and the Tome of Leo; in Syria Xenaia continued to agitate and pro cured the deposition of the Patriarch of Antioch, Flavian, who had tried to champion the Henoticon in an orthodox manner. Severus was elected to replace him in 512, and he thoroughly exploited his new position of power to destroy all further opposition to his own theologumena¶ He solemnly declared, of course, that he accepted the Henoticon, but soon interpreted it in a way that could leave no doubt about his hostility to the Synod of Chalcedon. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, Elias, also fell victim to Severus. His successor, John, was ready to make any conces sion to Severus, but the great superiors of the lauras and cenobiarchs, Sabas and Theodosius, thwarted him, and, flanked by the two monastic superiors, he was compelled solemnly to condemn not only Nestorius and Eutyches but now Severus also. In the capital also an outspoken pro-Chalcedon opposition was constituted: it collected the adherents of the deposed Macedonius and even found powerful supporters in the imperial family. When in November 512 a procession of Severans once again marched through the streets with the "Theopaschite Trisagion," the opposition attacked, a revolt erupted, the statues of the Emperor were thrown down, and the rioters entrenched themselves in the forum Constantini. Again the Emperor succeeded in restoring calm by prudent conduct, but now the opposition spread dangerously to the province. A Gothic officer in the imperial service, Vitalian, exploited the dissatis faction of the imperial foederati in the Balkan Peninsula and marched on Constantinople. To acquire friends in the capital, he made use of pro- Chalcedon catchwords. At first the Emperor thought he could overcome the danger by proceeding tactically. When this did not succeed, he saw himself compelled to appoint Vitalian as Magister Militum Per Thraciam and to promise to invite the Pope to a council at Herachea, at which the schism should be healed. A corresponding Sacra left for Rome. Pope Hormisdas, who had succeeded Symmachus in 514, took his time, evi dently in order to consult Theodoric. And so the date of the council, set for 1 July 515, passed. In the meantime Vitalian appeared again before the walls of Constantinople. This time he was annihilated by the impe rial troops and so the council, in which no one else had testified to a special interest, lost its raison d'etre for the Emperor. The Pope twice sent legates, it is true, but they had to turn back without success. And so the Acacian Schism continued until the death of the Emperor Anas- tasius in April 518.

If one looks back to the years since 482, the period has a unique important turning point in the pontificate of Pope Anastasius II. At that time appeared the hope and the possibility of again achieving unity on the basis of an orthodox interpretation of the Henoticon, to which Acacius had always held. The death of the Pope wrecked the hopes. Neither his predecessors nor his successors took into account the diffi culty of the situation in the East. They saw their obedience in the Vicariate of Thessalonica imperiled; they did not know how to acquiesce in a linking of the conciliar definition of Chalcedon with the notorious canon 28, although the latter had brought scarcely anything new in respect to the First Council of Constantinople, and they built their policy on the only apparently stable foundation of Ostrogothic rule in Italy. The Popes failed to note that Constantinople and its Patriarch had to remain victorious, precisely because they appeared, vis-a-vis the Em peror, in an independence which they owed solely to the Ostrogoth and Arian Theodoric. The Henoticon united the Eastern Churches in the face of Rome, and Alexandria was no longer a point of departure for Rome. The first years of the next imperial dynasty only seemingly justified the papal policy. John II and Vi^ilius would soon have to pay for the policy of a Felix and a Gelasius.

CHAPTER 2 3

The Elaboration of the Church of the Byzantine Empire in the Age of the Emperor Justinian I

With the Emperors Justin I (518-527) and Justinian I (527-565) there began not only a new and important epoch of the secular history of the Eastern Roman Empire; just as important, not to say questionable, was their period of power for the history of the Christian Church. In this regard we may, probably from the start, regard Justinian as the spiritus rector of the policy of his uncle, Justin, also. Even if we do not unreser vedly go along with the historian Procopius in his evaluation, on care fully weighed grounds, of the motive for the ecclesiastical policy of the later Emperor, there remains enough that is enigmatical for modern historians to speak now of a zigzag course pursued by the Emperor, now of his imperturbably consistent policy. Some points of departure can be fixed with certainty; which of them at any one time was decisive, to what extent they collaborated and in what proportion, can only rarely be stated. There was, first, the dream of the restoration of the ancient extent of the Imperium, of a world empire ruled from a glorious centerЧa dream which in the spiritual climate of the sixth century could not disregard the disunity of the Church. Second, there was a scarcely to be denied particular interest in ecclesiastical and religious matters, and this interest may in part have sprung from a genuine piety, but a zealous piety which, contrary to the Lord's word, wanted to burn every alleged weed long before the harvest. To this was added a special theological commitment of the Emperor, the bases of which were, naturally, judged in various ways: for some he was an experienced student of contemporary theology; for others, an amateur, an unlucky lover, who unfortunately was Emperor and hence disposed of the force to make his notions into law. There always remains the question of his own part in the creeds and formulasЧa question which underlies the same criteria as the question of his role in the entire Justinianean legisla tion. And, finally, there was Theodora, the great and much maligned Empress, whose influence must surely be taken into account in the ecclesiastical policy of the age, even when its impact can be determined only with difficulty. One should hardly speak, with Procopius, of a conscious, even crafty, political sharing, according to which, for exam ple, Justinian would have on occasion complied with the orthodox de mands, whereas Theodora retained the freedom indirectly to assure to the Monophysites the ability to continue to live and to operate, so that no faction could complain. This smacks too much of sophistry. The hand-in-hand and the mutual opposition of the imperial pair seems more complicated, dependent on the circumstances, and could hardly have happened without clashes. That the system still functioned proba bly lay in the character of the Empress and was based on the Emperor's bond with her.

The fact that Justin and Justinian were at once prepared to put an end to the so-called Acacian Schism and to comply with Rome's demands is certainly explained not by any already planned clutching at Ostrogothic Italy. It could no longer be doubted that the Henoticon policy of Anas- tasius had been mismanaged in the capital itself. Every new Emperor, especially if he had reached the throne under such precarious circum stances as had Justin, had, in any case and first of all, to gain the capital for himself. The dangerous Vitalian was still in the Thracian coun tryside, waiting to see what the new Emperors would begin to do. It may be that Justinian was basically a convinced Chalcedonian. In any event, Theodora had only been his wife for a short time and apparently was at first preoccupied with assuring her position, which might not have been too easy, in view of her past.

If Justin and his nephew had at first been of another view, events soon after the coronation of the new Emperor could only undeceive them. The pro-Chalcedon monks, the Acemetae at their head, organized a popular tumult at the Sunday liturgy of the Patriarch John II (518-520) and forced him and his synod solemnly to recognize Chalcedon, re pudiate the Henoticon, excommunicate Severus, and resume relations with the Holy See. Justin was induced to ratify this decision by edict. And now envoys went to Rome to begin negotiations for peace. Pope Hormisdas, who received not only a formal letter from the Emperor, but also an extraordinarily promising one from Justinian, was in the best position to negotiate and did not want to let this opportunity slip by. The dogmatic position had long ago been delineated by the cele brated Regula fidei Hormisdae, which the Pope had prepared as early as 515 for the union council that was supposed to meet that year. This libellus proceeded from the Primate of the Roman See and condemned first Nestorius and Eutyches and then also Timothy the Cat, Peter Mon- gus, Peter the Fuller, and especially Acacius. For the rest, the decision of Chalcedon together with the Tome of Leo was imposed as the norm of faith. Now people even in Constantinople were ready for the damnatio memoriae of Acacius, and in a meekness required by the Emperor and vigorously demanded by the monks, the Patriarch saw himself induced to accept the Regula fidei without discussion and to consign posthumously to Satan not only Acacius but also his successors, Euphemius and Macedonius, who certainly had done their best. The same fate befell also the Emperors Zeno and Anastasius, without any protest from the court. This took place on the memorable 28 March 519, a day which seemed to seal the victory of the Pope over the self-willed and, in Rome's eyes, illegitimate Patriarchate of ConstantinopleЧbut it was still only a pyrrhic victory, as the following decade proved. Shortly before the concluding of the negotiations the papal legates of Hormis das in Constantinople had had to deal with a remarkable group, the

J. nc, X XJ x ї W "V^. -

so-called "Scythian," but really probably Gothic, monks from the Dob- rudsha, men of the Goth Vitalian, who belonged to those ingenious types that are always proposing for Orthodoxy new formulas from which they anticipated salvation. Their formula read: Heis tes triados pathon, or "Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin, one of [or in] the Trinity." Presumably they intended by it to prevent any Nestorian interpretation of the formula of Chalcedon, but in reality they approached that appen dage to the Trisagion, which had meanwhile long ago become the pre cious possession of the opponents of Chalcedon. The legates could not do anything with this contribution of Latin theologyЧMaxentius, leader of the "Scythians," had received a "Latin education"Чbut Justinian let himself be gained for the formula, presumably out of consideration for Vitalian. A sign of the future: In a letter to Hormisdas, in which he recommended to him the monks and their formula, he attested, on his own initiative, the Orthodoxy of this fad. But Hormisdas, at the climax of his success, did not intend to give to the heir to the throne even this satisfaction, apart from the fact that the monks made themselves so unpopular in Rome that he had them removed from the city. Justinian could wait.

The Emperor Justin, together with his nephew, may have pacified the capital by the Union of 519, but in not a few places it appeared that the Henoticon was still alive or, respectively, that the Emperor's surrender of the Henoticon now cleared the ground for the opponents of Chalcedon. The bishops, who were now supposed to renew communion with Rome, could not always make up their minds to condemn their predecessors or even Acacius. This was especially the problem in the European prov inces of the Empire. An example was Thessalonica, the center of the Papal Vicariate in Illyricum, whose archbishops were plunged by the Acacian Schism into the greatest conflicts, since on the one hand they were to look after the papal interests and on the other hand they lived within direct range of the imperial city without Rome's being able to offer them effective aid. When the papal legates now journeyed through the city, they were actually assaulted and their host was murdered. At Ephesus the Synod of Chalcedon was vigorously condemned. At Anti- och Severus had, of course, to leave his see and flee to Egypt, but wherever new bishops were installed in Syria, it was often possible to maintain them only with military aid. In addition, now the Nestorians sensed their advantage and began here and there publicly to celebrate as saints, in addition to Theodoret, also Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius himself. But from Egypt Severus again held all the strings in his hand, admonished, warned, wrote treatises and sermons, and di rected the resistance. Hormisdas, in a complete misreading of the situa tion, thought he could have one of his legates, who happened to be an Alexandrian, elevated to the See of St. Mark. But the situation was so tense that finally the election had to be left to the Alexandrians: it fell on the Monophysite Timothy III, who rejected Chalcedon and the Henoti- con, without a hair on his head being harmed. With the Henoticon the last clamp of the Church of the Empire was smashed.

The new alliance of the Pope with the Emperor could, however, only arouse mistrust in the Pope's ruler at Ravenna, King Theodoric. It is possible that the hypothesis that the Roman senatorial nobility began now to conspire with Constantinople was more than a suspicion. Per haps the process against Boethius was related to it, and perhaps there was also a certain connection with it when Justin now, by an edict from the end of 524 ordered the closing of the Arian Gothic churches in Constantinople and excluded Arians from all offices and military posi tions.8 Theodoric accepted the challenge and sent Pope John I himself, who was thereby put completely into his hand by way of diplomacy, as a messenger to Constantinople to demand of the Emperor the withdrawal of the edict. Pope John stayed in the capital from November 525 till Easter 526 and was received and treated with the greatest honor.9 That Justin had himself crowned again by him is, of course, a mistaken in terpretation of a simple "festive crown-wearing" in the sense of a con stitutional act! A real success was not allowed to the Pope's mission. Most of the Arian Goths seem to have drawn the necessary conclusions from the imperial edict and to have converted so that the Emperor could with light heart promise the return of the churches. Apparently now the return to Arianism should also again be allowed. But here the Emperor remained firm, and Theodoric made his papal messenger pay for his lack of success by imprisoning him at Ravenna after his return.

Furthermore, Theodoric died soon after, in the fall of 526, and eleven months later the Emperor Justin followed him. Now Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Justinianus was sole ruler. There began an epoch of Church history which, like no other, bore the stamp of a single person. Its goal was unambiguously one Empire, one Church, outside which there were

"Theophanes the Chronicler on the Year 6016: p. 109 (de Boor). 9 W. Ensslin, "Papst Johannes I. als Gesandter Theoderichs des Grossen bei Kaiser Justinos I.," ByZ 44 (1951), 127-134.

THE EARLY BYZANTINE CHURCH

no salvation and no hope on earth, and one Emperor, whose principal care was precisely the welfare of this Church. In the pursuit of this goal Justinian knew no fatigue and with fanatical thoroughness he pursued what to him seemed false into the farthest hiding places, not of course without tactical skill and not without accommodation to the circum stances of the time and especially to the ratio of forcesЧlikewise, not without the ability to close both eyes where there was question of men who actually should be subordinated to his will if they were not so extraordinarily useful. Finally, he had each and every thing in the Church also depend on his own decision, even when, in case of need, he treated the bishops so respectfully. For him the Pope of Rome was without doubt the Head of Christendom. He understood the primacy not only as a rank of honor, but also as the primacy of doctrine and faith, but the Primate was well advised to decide as seemed good to the Emperor.

The one and only Church: to please it there must be no more pagans. The earlier legislation against paganism aimed at pagan worship and the legality of pagan meetings. Justinian decreed by law that every pagan must have himself and his family instructed and baptized under penalty of confiscation of his property. The relapse of a Christian into paganism was punished by death.11 The law was no empty threat. There were still pagans in the learned circles of the capital and at historical spots such as Athens; there was still a pagan rural population in the hills of Anatolia, for whose conversion a Monophysite, John of Asia, was good enough for even the Emperor; there were pagan shrines on the Upper Nile, in the oases, and in the Syrian Desert. The closing of the Neoplatonic School of Athens, a thiasos with slight philosophical ap peal, probably was due to the imperial edict. The philosophers found a cordial reception at the court of Chosroes of Persia, who was presuma bly not especially attracted by their muddled philosophy, since in the Peace of 532 he insisted on their unimpeded return to the Empire. This closing of the School of Athens was in no sense an event of importance in world history. In Constantinople also grammarians, sophists, and physicians of the highest circles were arrested as pagans and forcibly converted or flogged and, in individual cases, even executed. All this, however, did not stop the Emperor from taking into his service at court a Tribonian as Quaestor Sacri Palatii and a John of Cappadocia as Praefec-

THE CHURCH IN THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN I

tus Praetorio, whose paganism and pure atheism are vouched for by contemporary observers.

The Jews had it "easier" than the pagans because their worship had long ranked as religio licita. To be sure, for a long time this license, which was alleged to be guilty of Christian doctrinal shadowboxing, had been surrounded by a crown of thorns of vexations, which Justinian unscrupulously increased with deeper spikes. He denied Jews the abil ity to testify in court in cases with Christians, forbade them to buy Church property and land concerning which there was question of building a church; true, he did not exempt them from the burden of curiales in their communities, but he forbade them any of the precarious honors which this burden could involve. Finally, he even interfered in the synagogue worship and forced the permission to read the Torah in Greek or Latin but obliged the Jews in this case to use the Septuagint or at most Aquila's translation. The Samaritans, on the other hand, were treated like pagans: their synagogues were closed, leading to frightful rebellions of this Palestinian minority, which were put down with un precedented severityЧ20,000 are said to have perished in the revolt of 529. Nevertheless, they rebelled again in 555, without any more suc cess. It is noteworthy that in 551 even the Bishop of Caesarea stood up for them.

The remnant of heretics in the Empire was excluded by the Emperor from all offices and dignities and from teaching and the practice of law. These men hardly had any more rights in the courts. Their churches were to be closed.

If the Emperor thus served the Church with his legislation against everything that was outside it, the Church was also expected to serve him. It would be false to assume that the Emperor made state officials out of the bishops, but he enveloped them in a whole series of discre tionary duties in the service and for the benefit of the State. The bishops

were charged with the control of prisoners, they obtained the functions of arbiter if there was a circumventing of the law by a governor or if such was suspected and in disputes in the province to which the gover nor was a party. They had also, together with their economi, "to lend a hand" in the levying of the taxes of the community and, with a group of outstanding citizens, to examine the community's rendering of its ac counts. They had also to make a discreet report on the governor's administration of his office to the Emperor. In other words: Justinian saw in the bishop a reliable representative of the municipal nobility without taking him into the imperial service in the real sense. He used him in order to play him off against the community as well as against the provincial administration. The bishop thereby obtained a position, the social consequences of which remained completely open. He could become the "feudal lord," like the notables of the city, with whom he was confused, but also the guardian of the interests of the people, covered by the protection of the central imperial authorit^. In order to make the bishops' position easier, the Emperor again and again had recourse to the expedient of guaranteeing the stability of the episcopal revenues through legislation. Here there was question especially of assuring the endowments from which the ecclesiastical patrimony came for the most part. The church of a city received the right to legacies which were bequeathed by the testator in an unspecified manner to religious and charitable ends, for example, by designating Christ or a saint as heir; furthermore, the Emperor established brief terms within which legacies which had been set aside for charitable institutes had to be applied to their purpose. Church property could not in principle be alienated or otherwise impaired. No imperial law was to be valid accord ing to which the support of troops was to be assured by Church prop erty, no sacred utensils were to be employed for profane purposesЧthe single exception was constituted by the redemption of captives, for which no means could otherwise be raised. Gifts to the Church were exempted from the tax on profits. Outstanding gifts of money and endowments could be exacted at any time. Prescription took place only after 100 years. The leasing of Church property was limitedЧthe terms were short, even when they differedЧand it was possible only for the wealthy, who were in a position to pay the rent determined by the Emperor. But Byzantine legislation never knew a general exemption of Church property from taxation. There were, of course, exceptions, and the most important in Justinian's reign was undoubtedly the tax-

exemption for the more than 1,000 farms (ergasteria) of the "Great Church" at Constantinople.

Even if Justinian guaranteed to the Church in principle the free ad ministration of its property, he still meddled vigorously in the methods of this administration. The number of administrative personnel in the provinces was exactly determined, the documentation in the administra tive system was regulated in detail, even the dates of the rendering of accounts to the bishop and the amount of rent.

On the clergy themselves, especially the bishops, the legislation of Justinian used the finest phrases. In order to assure this rank, it en gaged in a thousand decrees on prerequisites for entry into the clergy, the behavior of clerics, their training, and so forth. Much of this was already contained in earlier ecclesiastical canons, but much also was due to the painstaking thought of the Emperor and was in some respects the expression of the mentality of Justinian and his age. Typical, for exam ple, even if hardly new, was that it was now regulated by law that the share of the people in the election of the bishop was restricted to the outstanding men of the city, and likewise that the one to be ordained had to sign an orthodox creed and swear that he had refrained from simony; but it was also typical that the ordination fees were regulated in detail and that they were considerably highЧfor the patriarchs no less than twenty pounds in goldЧand in this way, according to the Em peror's intention, an impoverishment of the churches should be pre vented! Apparently the illegal charges were considerably higher. The Emperor emphatically inculcated the duty of residence and exerted himself especially to check the notorious Byzantine urge to travel to the imperial court. The bishop could be subjected to secular jurisdiction only with imperial permission.

With equal zeal the Emperor interested himself in synodal law, de cided the dates for local and provincial synods, and regulated their modus procedendi. In accord with tradition, he reserved to the Emperors

inc EAIVL.1 UlL/U^lllili; V>1JIїJ A

the right to convoke an ecumenical synod.26 And synodal canons were put on a footing of equality with the laws of the State.27

Significant for the complex of ideas of the legislator, not lacking in illusions, was the fact that he wanted to define Byzantine monasticism as far as possible according to cenobitic norms.28 For anchorites and hesychasts within the monastery there were a couple of exceptional rules. But they too were to be subject to the abbot. The head of the monastery was the abbot elected by the community; the election was subject to the control and ratification of the bishop, who also possessed the supreme jurisdiction over the monastery. The law of Justinian knew no exemption. The monastery's property rights corresponded to the general ecclesiastical law of property.

The Universal Orthodox Church was divided, in the Emperor's view, into the five great patriarchates in order of precedence: Rome, Constan tinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. In this, as already men tioned, an absolute precedence was allotted to the Roman Patri archate.29

This brief summary of Justinian's regulations cannot include, even approximately, everything that Justinian decided to the tiniest details, and in fact he not rarely went far beyond the ecclesiastical canons. He did this out of his awareness of high-priestly power, not in the sense of a modern State Church, just as there was no question at all of State and Church, but of Church and Emperor. That he felt himself to be inspired and especially favored not only as organizer but also as theologian was in itself nothing new in the notions of the age: Pope Leo the Great himself had acknowledged such an inspiration in an Emperor like Marcian. New was only the degree to which Justinian made use of this inspiration for his ecclesiastical policy. He thereby became the one who completed the Constantinian Church system, in so far as he fixed in law what had had only a "numinous" character in Constantihe or Theodosius and at the same time marked out the infinitely broad extent to which a Byzantine Emperor could go in the Church, even if not without the Church. A perfect example of this is the second phase of his union policy in regard to the Monophysites, which was only apparently concluded with the Agreement of 519Чapparently all the more for Justinian, who in this

28PG 86, 1035. 27Codex I, 3, 44.

28 A. Tabera, "De ordinatione status monachalis in fontibus Justinianeis," Commentarii pro Religiosis 14 (1933), 87-95, 199-206, 15 (1934), 412-418; B. Granic, "Die Rechtsetellung und Organisation der griechischen Kloster," ByZ 29 (1928-29), 6-34. Especially important is Novel 133 (539). 28 Cf. Codex I, 1, 7, and Novel 131.

L 442

first phase had to make only too many concessions to the self- consciousness of Rome.

CHAPTER 24 Justinian's Zigzag Course: The Origenist Troubles

No one could maintain that the Union of 519 was a complete success. But despite all the severity of the antiheretical legislation, the refractory Monophysites and opponents of Chalcedon never fully felt it. Justinian, who was certainly in no way connected with Manichaeans, Novatians, and Montanists, was probably of the opinion that he could come to terms theologically with the moderate Monophysites, especially those who followed Severus. In regard to them, it was also not a question of any dwindling minority but of considerable proportions of the popula tion of whole imperial provinces. Furthermore, now the Empress Theodora self-assuredly moved into the foreground. At the period of her roving life, she had apparently found Christian understanding only from Monophysite bishops, who were not rarely at loggerheads with the established society, and now, as Empress, she was prepared to forget this fact for their sake. During the dangerous Nika Riot in January 532 she had been the one who through her pluck thwarted the flight of the Emperor and thereby saved him his throne. It goes without saying that this especially put the Emperor under obligation to her. Still, the new policy cannot be termed simply a consequence of the Nika Riot, apart from the fact that this political event had little or nothing to do with denominational opposition. Instead, soon after he had begun his reign as sole Emperor, Justinian had recalled Monophysite monks and bishops from their exile, and in the summer of 531 he invited six of them to Constantinople. They guarded themselves against a surprise by imperial theologians by means of a forestalling dogmatic declaration and then came to the city, where, soon after the Nika Riot, following rather lengthy preliminary negotiations, a religious discussion was staged, the so-called Collatio cum Severianis, conducted on the Orthodox side chiefly by Hypatius of Ephesus. The outcome was jejune: the

Severans acknowledged that Theodoret and Ibas of Edessa had rightly been rehabilitated by the Fathers of Chalcedon, and one bishop even let himself be induced to recognize Chalcedon. But that was all. The chief objection of the Monophysites against the decrees of Chalcedon was obviously the danger of a Nestorian interpretation of them, and this objection seems to have made a lasting impression on the Emperor, who participated only indirectly in the Collatio, and motivated him to under take something in return. In any event, the Monophysites at first had a considerable breathing-space, and Justinian was ready to oblige them further. He published dogmatic letters4 to the people of Con stantinople and the cities of Asia and to the Patriarch of Constantinople, Epiphanius, and his synod, which once again represented a remarkable gliding over the decrees of Chalcedon. Instead, the Theopaschite For mula was now expressly accepted, which had deeply interested the Emperor since 520. It goes without saying that the Acematae monks were not pleased and, in keeping with their tradition, at once mounted a sharp attack against it, apparently without being clearly aware that the days of the Emperor Anastasius were past. They were said to have then gone so far in their "Nestorian" interpretation of Chalcedon that they even refused to Mary the title of Theotokos, which probably means no more than that the Acemetae did not want the communicatio idiomatum to be regarded as the ultima ratio of Christology. In keeping with their custom, they complained to the Pope. But Hormisdas was long since dead, and an imperial edict followed in their steps. Pope John II bowed to the imperial pressure and condemned the Acemetae on 23 De cember 534 and in so doing swallowed the Theopaschite Formula, which Hormisdas had loathed; in fact, in the letter to Emperor and Senate referring to this he even censured one of Cyril's Anathemas, in which the formula had been anticipated by way of suggestion.5

Now, at the Emperor's invitation, even Severus came to Constan tinople and found lodging in the palace, where he remained until March 536. And with Severus there came to Constantinople, as they had al ready come on their own initiative under Anastasius, all the monks possible, openly and secretly, most of them living on the hospitality of the Empress Theodora and behaving in Constantinople as though it was the metropolis of the opponents of Chalcedon. When in 535 the pa triarchal see became vacant, the Emperor nominated a certain Anthimus, who had previously been Bishop of Trebizond but had given up that see

* Cod. Just. I, 1, 6 and 7.

5 Letters of the Emperor to the Pope: Coll. Avell. Ep. 84, 7-21, and Cod. Just. I, 1, 8. Letter of the Pope: Coll. Avell. ep. 84. Cf. also V. Grumel, "L'auteur et la date de la composition du tropaire T) novoyevrfs," ?0 22 (1923), 398-418.

in order to live at Constantinople as an ascetic. Now he also appeared from one of Theodora's palaces, which aroused the suspicion that it had been she who had made him acceptable to the Emperor as a candidate. Apparently nothing could be objected against his orthodoxy; but, hav ing become Patriarch, he accepted the communion of Severus and sent his announcement of enthronement not only to the bellicose Orthodox Patriarch Ephrem of Antioch but also to his Monophysite colleague in Alexandria. The total situation undoubtedly recalled that under the Henoticon, and the question may be raised whether it was not precisely toward this situation that Justinian was purposely steering.

The turning point came surpisingly fast, not indeed as the result of an organizational development, but, as it were, ex machina. For the second time since Justinian was in power, a Pope came to Constantinople in the spring of 536, Agapitus I, successor of John II. He came as envoy of the Ostrogothic King Theodhad. For, in the meantime, Justinian, using the assassination of Amalasuntha, daughter of Theodoric the Great, as his reason, had decided to roll back Ostrogothic rule in Italy from the south upward: Belisarius had already landed in Sicily. Reluctantly the Pope undertook the King's errand to induce the Emperor to withdraw. The Pope's mission had no political success. But Agapitus did not make his journey only as a royal envoy. Informed from all sides in regard to the remarkable proceedings in Constantinople, he had decided to utilize his stay in the capital to affirm his primatial rights, which indeed Justinian had frequently solemnly averred that he highly esteemed. From the very start Agapitus refused his communion to the Patriarch Anthimus, formally on the far-fetched pretext that, as a transfer from Trebizond, he could not be a valid Bishop of Constantinople, but de facto probably because he suspected him of Monophysitism. Justinian at once aban doned the submissive Anthimus, who disappeared to where he had come from, probably into one of Theodora's hiding places. Menas, from Alexandria, became the new Patriarch and was ordained by the Pope after he had signed an expanded Formula Hormisdae. A synod should decide the future fate of Anthimus: at least, such was Agapitus's plan. But he died at Constantinople on 22 April 536 before it could be realized. Nevertheless, the Emperor also fulfilled this wish of the Pope and on 2 May of that year the Synod met under the presidency of Menas and with the participation of a whole group of Latin bishops and Roman clerics who had come with the Pope, at their head the papal Deacon Pelagius, the future Pope. Antioch and Jerusalem were represented by apocrisiarii and delegations.6 The formal charges against Anthimus were lodged by abbots from Constantinople. Since Anthimus did not appear, even though he had been summoned three times, and no one defended him, he was condemned in absentia and degraded. The jSynod could have come to an end, but monks from Palestine also demanded the condemnation of Severus. Menas hesitated, but Justinian gave leave and so Severus also, together with his adherents, was anathematized. Hence the policy of Pope Agapitus bore fruit even after his death. The new Henoticon movement had ended.

What induced Justinian to this change of course is difficult to deter mine. It is certain that, for him, the Pope was always theoretically the highest court of the faith, but in practice the Emperor knew how to manipulate this court. It must not be overlooked that, after all, all his exertions to win back the Monophysites were without any particular successЧeven the Theopaschite Formula could not satisfy them. Per haps the Emperor was content to leave the counteraction, which had to affect Theodora also, to the Pope, who was glad to undertake it. But presumably the situation in Italy also played a not unimportant role. We do not know how actively or carelessly Agapitus had represented the concerns of his King Theodahad. In any event, Belisarius was on the way to Rome, and perhaps the Pope was able to convince the Emperor how very much it would aid Belisarius's campaign, if, as representative of a blameless imperial Orthodoxy, he could confront the Ostrogoths, those heretics! It must not be excluded that at the time Italy was more important to Justinian than the recalcitrant Monophysites of the East. The success of Belisarius should not be jeopardized by an affront to the Roman Pope and his Catholic obedience in Italy.

After he had once made up his mind, Justinian drew the reins tight. Severus and the Severans were expelled from the capital, and Severus went again to Egypt as a refugee. Theodora did what she could to thwart these measures, but now her activity was solely defensive, no longer offensive. Pelagius, Agapitus's deacon, remained at Constantinople as papal apocrisiarius and seems to have played an important role as the Emperor's adviser. The Patriarch Ephrem of Antioch, a former general, occupied himself with the forcible conversion of Syria to Orthodoxy. In Egypt Monophysitism was already so much at home that it had split into factions, especially into that of the moderate Severans and that of the "Phantasiasts," the adherents of Julian of Halicarnassus, who saw in Christ's body an aphtharton (Aphthartodocetists). The Patriarch Theodosius, a friend of Severus, had become Patriarch of Alexandria in 535 at Theodora's instigation, but he had had the greatest difficulties in establishing himself in opposition to the Julianists' man, Gainas. Now in 537 Theodosius was summoned to Constantinople; since he was Unable to make up his mind to sign the horos of Chalcedon, he had to go into exile. After some time Theodora managed to have him come to Con stantinople, where he enjoyed her protection and could do everything to govern his Egyptian Church from a distance. But, using his plenitude of power, the Emperor now named a certain Paul as Patriarch of Alexandria and supplied him with full authority, which corresponded to that of an imperial governor. Still, what the Emperor's theology had been unable to achieve, so also his policy of force could not do.

Precisely around this time the repertory of theologumena on which people could become alienated increased unnecessarily, but now con cerning a new point which had been regarded as long deadЧOrigenism. After the first Origenist controversy around the turn of the fifth cen tury, there had been silence in regard to the doctrine of the great Alexandrian. Here and there someone took up his pen to refute him, but the Christological controversy troubled spirits to such a degree that there remained no more room for the esoteric questions which had preoccupied Origen. In monastic circles, however, Origen, now as be fore, could not but exercise a mysterious power of attraction, to which Evagrius had already succumbed. And when the confrontation gradually hardened again in the first half of the sixth century, the difficulty seems to have been the same as it was a century and a half earlier: an extreme spiritualization of the spiritual life, seized upon by the raptus of the ascent to God in order to lose itself in him even to the loss of identity, in order to find again in him all that had fallen in one final transfigura tion. What the Origen-minded monks took, as regards individual points, from their master, or more directly from the writings of his devoted Evagrius Ponticus, whether they were more concerned about a cosmological interpretation of the occurrences within the soul or whether they made Origen their "private domain," cannot now be de termined, for what was written against them was only too remote from spirituality.

The starting point and center of the new movement was Palestine. Here, since the second half of the fifth century, monasticism in both its cenobitic as well as in its anchoretic (laura) form had known vast prog ress. One of the most important foundations was the laura of the monk Sabas from Cappadocia (d. 532), which was founded in 483ЧMar Saba. In 494 Sabas became Archimandrite of all the anchorites of Palestine, that is, representative of the Patriarch for these monastic groups. He was a great organizer, an eager builder, and a loyal champion of a problem-free Orthodoxy, but not the man who would be able, on the basis of his education, to evoke an understanding for Origenist currents. This tendency was present also among his monks, and, because Sabas was as he was, he faced opposition. Finally there occurred the exodus of the "cranks," of those dissatisfied with him, who c. 507 gathered in a new foundation, the "New Laura." Their leader was a certain Nonnus. After some time, Sabas succeeded in getting the New Laura also under his control to some degree and in imposing his abbots on it. One of these abbots, Agapitus, finally expelled the strict Origenists from the new foundation. Only after his death in 519 did they return and follow the technique of silence and of the secret importing and cultivating of their doctrine. This apparently succeeded, especially when in 511 the aged Sabas, as deputy of the province, traveled to the imperial court with a petition for remission of taxes; he included in his retinue, from the monks of the New Laura, a certain Leontius, a native of Constan tinople, who was one of the most convinced Origenists. At Constan tinople, his home, Leontius saw no further reason to adhere to the obligation to silence of the New Laura and carelessly preached his doc trines. Now Sabas's eyes were opened and he indignantly expelled Leontius from his escort and very imprudently returned to Palestine without him; there he died in 532. Leontius received reinforcements from the Palestinian Eremos, notably the monks Dometian and Theo dore Askidas. What they told the Emperor, to whom they gained access, and what he understood of it, we do not know. In any event, they gained him for their cause, and he made Theodore Metropolitan of Caesarea in Cappadocia and Dometian Metropolitan of Ancyra. But Theodore preferred to linger in proximity to the Emperor and left his bishopric to take care of itself.

Meanwhile, the Patriarch Paul of Alexandria had disappointed all the hopes which the Emperor had set on him. His acts of violence became intolerable, and even complicity in the murder of a deacon could be charged to him. Hence the Emperor had him banished to Gaza, where a Synod was supposed to depose him. The Synod did its duty, and the imperial delegates who had attended it were now confronted on the spot with Origenism. One of them, Papas Eusebius, influential at court, sought to finish with the problem by giving to the Abbot of the New Laura the order either to receive back the expelled Origenists or to drive the most determined anti-Origenists from the monastery. The

Abbot Gelasius decided tor tne latter coursc. mu* turned to the Zealous Patriarch of Antioch, Ephrem, who at once anathematized the Origenists. Dometian and Theodore Askidas, who learned of this at Constantinople, sought to induce the Patriarch of Constantinople, Menas, to renounce Ephrem's communion. But in the meantime a detailed written complaint arrived from the anti-Origenists from Palestine, who spoke out against the intrigues of their opponents. The Patriarch sent it on to the Emperor Justinian, who soon issued a severe edict against the person and doctrine of Origen.

If the question is asked, who at court was sufficiently influential to put through such a measure against Papas Eusebius, against Askidas and Dometian, the answer is hardly the Patriarch Menas; most probably we may see the initiator in the Deacon Pelagius, who as apocrisiarius had taken part in the Synod of Gaza. Whoever it may have been, once he had been called upon, the Emperor completely plucked the strings of his theological instrument. His edict was not only the proclamation of measures but a theological treatise in the form of a conciliar decree. It not only proposed to refute Origen but also to defame him: with quota tions, chiefly from Peri Archon, it made fun of the doctrine, which it then summarized in ten anathemas, to which the obedient theologians and prelates had only to submit. The edict may be dated at the beginning of 542. The Patriarch Menas was instructed to have it signed by all the clergy of the capital and to send the report of it to all other bishops for their signature. Neither the Pope nor any other Patriarch declined to sign. Of course, the leading Origenists refused to accept this decision and preferred to leave the laura for good and look for a place of refuge elsewhere. Dometian seems likewise to have rejected the edict after some hesitation, whereas Theodore Askidas apparently was able to force himself to sign it.

Origenism seemed to have received a mortal blow. But the appear ance was deceptive, for under an assumed name the great mystics of the Byzantine Church again came under Origen's spell.

CHAPTER 2 5

The Controversy over the Three Chapters and the Fifth General Council. End of the Age of Justinian

By the "Three Chapters" are understood the person and the work of three theologians who played a certain role in the period between the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, and gradually, without the situa tion having required it, became a bone of contention between the dif ferent factions in ecclesiastical politics. In the first place was a letter of Ibas of Edessa from the period after the Union of 433, which by no means defended Nestorius but expressed other than friendly feelings toward Cyril of Alexandria. The letter recognized the Union of 433, but its author was not inclined to see in the great exegete, Theodore of Mopsuestia, the father of Nestorianism and hence to condemn him. Next, Theodore of Mopsuestia himself. People had long ago begun to characterize his theology as Nestorian, and now efforts were made to condemn him and his work posthumously, even though neither Ephesus nor Chalcedon had been prepared to do so. In the third place were some writings of Theodoret of Cyrrhus, which were directed against Cyril's Anathemas. As early as 431 Cyril himself had exerted himself in vain for the condemnation of Theodore. But he was opposed on the ground that in his lifetime Theodore had not been accused of a heresy and that he had died in peace with the Church. It would not do to insult such a man after his death. Ibas as well as Theodoret had, it is true, been deposed by the Robber Synod in 449, but Chalcedon had rehabilitated both. The latter Synod had as little to find fault with in Ibas's letter as in the anti-Cyrillan writings of Theodoret. In other words: an attack on these three kephalaia was basically an attack on the authority of the Council of Chalcedon. To be obstinate in regard to the letter of Ibas and then to argue that it was not from Ibas and in this way to respect the authority of the Council, which had thus rehabilitated someone other than the author of the letter, was clearly hairsplitting, since the Council had also implicitly recognized the content of the letter. The attack on Theodore revealed not only a complete lack of understanding of the development of ideas, but also simply a loss of decency in ecclesiastical politics. But Theodoret simply had to be sacrificed, because he had put his finger too well on Cyril's weaknesses. What could induce circles which pretended to stand for Chalcedon to make these Three Chapters the target of ruthless attacks and thereby shake confidence in the Coun cil? Looked at as a whole, probably only the persistent anxiety of ap pearing in the eyes of the Monophysites as Nestorians, of abetting a Nestorian interpretation of Christological dogma with the formulas of Chalcedon, and of compromising the sincerity of the adherence to Or thodoxy with the just-mentioned personalities and their work. They might have been of the opinion that, if the Three Chapters were thrown overboard, the Severans could be induced to return. The backbiting of Church history, of course, gives more concrete motives. It knows the name of the man who had systematically prepared the attack and it knows his motives: Theodore Askidas, in the role of adviser of the Emperor, was exposed to the gravest risks through the attacks on Origenism, which were not least of all aimed at him, and he was intent on revenge, which should be aimed at the strict Chalcedonians, who had denounced Origenism to the Emperor. In the attack on the Three Chap ters he found the way, under the pretext of purging Chalcedon of disagreeable concomitants, of striking at the very heart of the Council and at the same time of involving the Emperor in a theological conflict of such magnitude that, for its sake, he would have to forget about Origenism and would be happy to retain Askidas as adviser.

However matters may have proceeded, Askidas was successful in convincing the imperial theologian of his ideas. Justinian was quickly prepared to compose a scholarly treatise in which he explained the Three Chapters in detail. To it were appended anathemas against Theo dore of Mopsuestia and his writings, against the works which Theodoret had composed against Cyril, and against the letter of Ibas and all those who claimed that Ibas was its authorЧprobably the first censure in Church history in the question of literary criticism! Justinian explicitly felt he had to make sure that these anathemas had no other purpose than to confirm the decrees of 451. The treatise has been lost. It must have been composed and published in the period between 543 and 545. While one could acknowledge in the case of the imperial decree against the Origenists that a single one summarized the arguments of the first Origenist controversy and that therefore the condemnation produced nothing substantially new, in his decree against the Three ChaptersЧ for the treatise claimed to be just thatЧJustinian acted in a totally authoritarian manner as master of the Church and of dogma, without the backing of a synod and even for a long time without envisaging a confirmation by a synod. The bishops received the formal command to sign the anathemas. But this time there were difficulties. The Patriarch

Menas of Constantinople finally signed, together with his synod, but obtained the promise that he could withdraw his signature if the Pope refused to sign. Alexandria caused hardly any difficulties, but the Patri arch Ephrem of Antioch probably did, although he likewise finally yielded. More trouble came from Palestine, where especially the pro- Chalcedon monks put pressure on the Patriarch. A great number of the bishops of the West maintained a decidedly negative attitude. The Pope's apocrisiarii at Constantinople refused the communion of the Patriarch Menas because he had signed; the African episcopate and most of the bishops of Italy and Gaul made the most vigorous opposi tion. And so it had to be the Emperor's chief task to gain the Pope. Pope Vigilius had succeeded to the See of Peter in Rome in 537; his role in the deposition of his predecessor Silverius by Belisarius had given occa sion for suspicions, and he seemed, in relation to the Byzantine gov ernment, to have always had a bad conscience. Now, for simplicity's sake, Justinian summoned him to Constantinople; only when he arrived there, in 547, was the new document officially presented to him for his signature. The conduct of the Pope now and in the sequel hardly re quires commentary. To brand it as weak and purposeless is to make use of mild expressions. At first everything appeared quite promising. Like his apocrisiarii, he refused the communion of Menas, who apparently did not bother any longer to speak of the assurance that he could with draw his signature. Menas got his revenge by no longer mentioning the Pope in the liturgy. But Justinian employed every possible means of pressure to induce the Pope to give in. Thus in the course of 547 Vigilius resumed communion with Menas and in April 548 he issued his famous Judicatura, in which he abandoned the Three Chapters, even if not without qualifications. The agitation over this yielding by the Pope grew mightily and affected even his immediate entourage. Finally, Vig ilius saw himself compelled to excommunicate even a group of deacons who had come with him from Rome to Constantinople, in order to defend himself from their disagreeable criticism. In return, he was him self excommunicated by a Synod of African bishops. The situation reached a dangerous climax for the Pope especially in the West, causing him to spread abroad that he had been induced by ignoble methods to publish the Judicatum. Justinian yielded for a moment and conde scended to let the Pope abandon the Judicatum with the assurance that the matter should be decided at a synod. In return, he of course had the

Pope give a written and sworn assurance that he would cooperate with all his power for the condemnation of the Three Chapters and under take nothing without coming to an understanding with JustinianЧa complete surrender of the Pope, which naturally was kept secret. The Synod was a long time in coming: bishops on whose appearance the court set great store did not arrive, and it was desired to keep others as far as possible from the capital. Thus it was not difficult for Askidas to persuade the Emperor again solemnly to condemn the Three Chapters by a decree with thirteen anathemas in July 551. Askidas himself undertook to deliver the decree to the Pope. But, now, probably under pressure from the western bishops, the Pope demanded the withdrawal of the edict and threatened Askidas and the Patriarch Menas with ex communication. At the same time he regarded it as necessary to seek security after this attack, and so he fled from his lodgings in the Domus Placidiae to seek asylum in the Church of St. Peter in the Palace of Hormisdas, where he then officially excommunicated Askidas.8 Justin ian tried by means of police power to drag the Pope from his asylum but Vigilius literally defended himself -yith hands and feet. Only when the Emperor gave him a guarantee of his personal freedom could he be induced to return to the Domus Placidiae. However, since Justinian did not keep his promise, but treated him like a prisoner, he fled a second time, now across the Propontis to the Council Church of St. Euphemia at Chalcedon. Again there were on the Emperor's part all possible assur ances, broken by roughness and acts of violence. Even Belisarius could not move the Pope to return. Here Vigilius published an encyclical, in which he sought to justify his behavior and declared the deposition of Askidas. The Pope's followers even succeeded in publicly posting in various places the bulls of excommunication against Menas and Askidas. A definitive break seemed to be in preparation, but Justinian did not want matters to go so far. He got Menas and Askidas to apologize to the Pope, who then returned to Constantinople. Soon after, in August 552, Menas died, and the new Patriarch Eutychius declared from the begin ning his loyalty to the Pope. Now there was definitive agreement to entrust the final decision to a synod. There followed difficult negotia tions on the make-up of the Council; the Emperor succeeded in impos ing his own ideas, which aimed only at the condemnation of the Three Chapters, in such a way that there remained to the Pope slight prospect of letting the opposition of the West exercise its impact; he was de facto deprived of any power of decision and accordingly decided not to partic ipate in the sessions of the Council. The SynodЧthe so-called Fifth Ecumenical CouncilЧmet on 5 May 553, with 166 bishops present, of whom only a dozen represented the West. For tactical reasons Justinian also stayed away, but he let the bishops know that they had already condemned the Three Chapters by their signatures on the imperial edict, that the Pope also had condemned them, and that now there was in principle only a question of a ratification of these decrees. The Coun cil exerted itself to persuade the Pope to participate, but Vigilius was content with holding out the prospect of an official opinion. Now as earlier, he made his participation in the sessions dependent on a stronger representation of western bishops. The Council proceeded to the agenda and began with the preparation for the condemnation of the Three Chapters. At this moment, on 14 May, the Pope published a Constitutum, which he signed together with nine Italian bishops, two from Africa, two from Illyricum, and three from Asia Minor. "By virtue of his apostolic authority," Vigilius condemned sixty propositions from the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia but strictly refrained from condemning this Church Father himself, just as he declined to anathematize Theodoret or the author of the Ibas letter, because thereby the decrees of Chalcedon would have been brought into ques tion. The Constitutum forbade any polemic against the Three Chapters which went beyond this decree. True, the Emperor refused absolutely to receive the Constitutum, but nevertheless its content became known; causing the Emperor to pursue the route of publicity. He laid before the Council Fathers a packet of documents with letters of the Pope in which he defended his Judicatum and especially the minutes of his taking of his oath in 550. Thereupon the Fathers expunged the Pope's name from the diptychs, without excommunicating him. The authority of the Apostolic See as such was not to be impugned.

On 2 June 553, at the last session, the Synod finally accomplished, in fourteen anathemas taken from Justinian's decree, the condemnation of the Three Chapters in due form. Theodore Askidas seemed to have won all along the line: Justinian had indeed no longer spent any time in implementing his decree against the Origenists; they dominated in the monasteries and episcopal sees of Palestine. But in Abbot Conon of the Great Laura there now arose unexpectedly a dangerous opponent, who knew exactly that they had their protector in Askidas. In 5 51 he himself appeared at Constantinople and denounced their doings to the Em peror. Justinian awoke and decided by means of a letter to the bishops who had come to the Council to bring up the matter again. To facilitate the proceedings he garnished his treatise again, likewise with fifteen anathemas. Although we do not know the course of the negotiations, it is certain that the bishops made no difficulties. Their sentence was di rected not only and not first against Origen himself, but against the Origenists of Palestine and concomitantly now also against Evagrius Pon- ticus. The negotiations must, in all probability, have been concluded in March 553 before the beginning of the Council, and Vigilius seems to have assented without hesitation.

After everything had thus been "settled," the Emperor demanded all bishops who had not taken part in the Synod to sign its decrees. In the East there were only slight difficulties. The Origenists were expelled from the New Laura, and some bishops were removed from their sees. More important was the decision of the Pope. Rome, again firmly in Byzantine hands since 552, urgently called for the return of its Bishop. Justinian required as a preliminary that Vigilius recognize the condem nation of the Three Chapters. Once again the Pope yielded and on 8 December 553 uttered the condemnation. On 23 March 554 a new Constitutum was published by the Poge, in which he denied the authen ticity of the letter of Ibas and his vindication by the Council of Chalce- don. Finally, in the spring of 555, the Pope was able to leave Constan tinople. But en route he died at Syracuse. Thereby the opposition in the West obtained a still freer course and, despite severe police reprisals, stood firm. When finally the deacon Pelagius, who had again and again kept Vigilius on the path of the old convictions and hence had been imprisoned by the Emperor, also followed the route of recognition of the Council, this was now reason enough for the Emperor to impose him on the Romans as their Bishop in 556. The resistance which he encoun tered in Rome induced him, of course, to revise his attitude. But the schism between the Apostolic See and important portions of the west ern episcopate could not be prevented any longer.

As regards the Monophysites, the decrees of 553 left them com pletely unmoved. The Emperor's secret hope of still winning them back sadly miscarried, and Justinian seems never to have got over it. Perhaps this is the explanation of a renewed approach to a Monophysite faction, the final caprice of the imperial theologian. Allegedly it was a Palestin ian bishop who made him more conversant with the doctrine of Julian of Halicarnassus, the so-called Aphthartodocetism, according to which the body of Christ was an aphtharton, an incorruptible being, so that he could suffer on the Cross only because a special miracle made this possible. The representatives of this doctrine, also called Gaianites from one of their leaders, were especially widespread in Egypt, and perhaps once again the Emperor indulged in the hope of being able to gain, if not the Severans, at least this faction of Monophysites. He let himself be convinced of the correctness of Aphthartodocetism, and, as was his custom, he then at once drew up a decree for a creed in favor of this doctrine, which was to be submitted to all bishops for their signature. The Patriarch Eutychius in the capital itself refused any sort of assent. But since the Emperor knew better, the Patriarch had to go into exile in 565. Whether the decree was really officially published is unknown. In any event, its content quickly became known and stirred up general displeasure, not only in the West but also in the East. Before the new conflict broke out fully, however, the Emperor died on 14 November 565, and no one was found who would accept and carry out his last idea.

With Justinian an era in Church history came to an end. From his own political viewpoint, his work may have been conclusive in the sphere of the Church; for Church history itself it started out promisingly or thodox, then was modified by the Theopaschite Formula, only to act in direct loyalty to the Pope in the years around 536. But then the route led to the Three Chapters, and he sacrificed an old, sober, precious theological legacy on the altar of a policy which in itself was hopeless. That great portions of the Church followed him along these dangerous roads of dilettantism meant for the Church a theological impoverish ment, which could not be balanced for a long time, entirely apart from the fact that it gave no good testimony to the theological firmness of the bishops. Especially noteworthy was the style with which the Emperor put over his ideas. As he changed dogma and faith without regard for the Church's doctrinal authority, so before him no Emperor had so acted, and scarcely anyЧapart perhaps from Manuel I in the twelfth centuryЧfollowed him in this: a proof that such a behavior cannot be derived simply from the Byzantine imperial idea, from the imperial "priesthood," and so forth. It may surprise, but, thus seen, Justinian was not even typical of the Byzantine imperial officeЧhe was almost a unique phenomenon. Of course, with this manner of his, he established limiting values, which always remained perilously visible in Byzantium.

CHAPTER 26

Justinian's Successors: Monoenergism and Monothelitism

If it is pretty certain that the Empress Theodora decisively influenced Justinian's ecclesiastical policy and no less decisively impeded it, so too it is not improbable that her niece Sophia, wife of the new Emperor Justin II (565-578), who until shortly before his accession to the throne is said to have sided with the Monophysites, had a hand in the affair when the Emperor began, after the start of his reign, to steer a course of meeting the Monophysites halfway. Imprisoned and exiled Monophy- site bishops were permitted to return, efforts were undertaken through the mediation of imperial emissaries to settle intra-Monophysite dissen sions, and finally Jacob Baradai was invited, together with the leading members of his Church, to a union conference at Constantinople. The discussions lasted for months without, of course, producing any con crete results. And so Justin II tried, as had the Emperor Zeno earlier, a new Henoticon in 567, which again imposed Zeno's formulas, con demned the Three Chapters, granted amnesty to the Monophysites, recommended the rehabilitation of SeverusЧand did not mention Chalcedon. But for the Monophysites this was not enough. An imperial agent was supposed to persuade bishops and monks to accept it at a conference held at Callinicum on the Euphrates. Jacob Baradai and his loyalists would have been inclined to agree with the document with a few clarifications, but the monks especially wanted to have nothing to do with an imperial effort at union, so that the meeting ended with a shrill dissonance within the faction. Now the Emperor prepared a new version of the edict, which recognized "the one nature of the Logos- made-Man" and spoke of a mental distinction of the natures, again without mentioning Chalcedon, but also without returning to the re habilitation of Severus. The decree was to be implemented by force, and the Patriarch John the Scholastic of Constantinople (565-577) did all he could to let compulsion run its course. There were arrests and deportations in all areas. The persecution did not cease until Justin II gradually lapsed into insanity, and Tiberius II in 574 assumed control of the government in his stead and, after Justin's death, mounted the throne (578-582). The Patriarchs, including Eutychius, who had been called back from exile after John's death in 577, sought to continue the persecution, but the Emperor did not care to have much to do with it, and Eutychius himself soon became implicated in a doctrine on the resurrection of all flesh, which made him suspect of heresy.3 The policy of Tiberius was probably also influenced by the aim of not antagonizing the Monophysite Arabs on the important Persian frontier. He solemnly received their Phylarch, al-Mundir, at Constantinople and did much to oblige his demands for the release of persecuted Monophysites. If he later abandoned al-Mundir on the advice of Maurice, his successor, there were other reasons for this.4 The religious policy of Tiberius was continued by Maurice (582-602), who without doubt was personally a Chalcedonian. Under Phocas (602-610) and in the early years of the reign of Heraclius (610-641) the great attack of the Persians, who occupied parts of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, made such demands on the policy of the Emperors that there remained little time for the old denominational quarrels. In addition, the Persian occupation withdrew especially the Monophysites more or less from the imperial power. The problems did not again appear until Heraclius in long campaigns had forced the Persians to their knees, even if the preliminaries lay further in the past. The Jews, who, even if they had not encouraged the Persian invasion, had warmly greeted it, could hardly hope for mercy. The imperial troops made short work of them, and the struggle against them culminated in the imperial edict of compulsory conversion.5 How should the Monophysites be dealt with, that is, not a minority but the population of entire provinces? Some of them, such as the Ghassanid Arabs, whom Maurice had treated so shabbily because of military dis trust, may have done little to oppose the Persians, and the latter seem to have repaid this attitude. Michael the Syrian reports from this period: "The memory of the Chalcedonians was wiped out from the Euphrates eastward." Could the imperial government further disregard the separatist tendencies of the heterodox Syrians and Copts? Heraclius reflected on a solution and again sought the remedy in ecclesiastical union. His loyal and outstanding assistant in this was the Patriarch Ser- gius (610-638),6 who had not the slightest interest in fishing in the troubled waters of Church policy. To make him suffer for what people are unwilling to charge to Pope Honorius I is one of the indiscretions of Church history. If it is said to have been the weakness of the Chalcedo nian Christology that it did not clearly enough elaborate the unity over the duality, and if on the other hand the duality of natures in Christ

3 Cf. Beck, 380. * See infra, p. 466.

5 F. Dolger, Regesten der byzantinischen Kaiserurkunden, no. 206.

7 Grumel Reg, no. 279-292; J. L. van Dieten, Geschichte der Patriarchen von Sergius I. bis Johannes VI. (610-715) (Amsterdam 1972).

could no longer be sacrificed, but the idea of person was still somewhat colorless, one could then seek the unity in Christ's will and activity. Already in some neo-Chalcedonian theologians were found formulas which referred to the mi a energeia, the unique divine principle of activ ity in Christ. To the Patriarch this formula seemed promising, and very soon he worked on a patristic florilegium which could multiply the tes timonies in favor of it. In this Sergius seems to have relied especially on Bishop Theodore of Pharan, about whose loyalty to Chalcedon there was no doubt; and also on Bishop Cyrus of Phasis, who in 631 was appointed by the Emperor as Patriarch of the Church of the Empire in Alexandria. Cyrus was prepared to forge out of this stock of ideas those formulas which should be presented to the Christian public as the basis of the common faith. In nine propositions, which had as content the fruit of the neo-Chalcedonian theology, that is, the reconciliation be tween Cyril and 451, the "Pact" was solemnly proclaimed at Alexandria on 3 June 633: its principal item was the doctrine of one and the same Christ, operating divinely and humanly, "with the one theandric energy" (theandrine energeia)Чa term for which one could appeal to the "unquestionable" authority of the Pseudo-Areopagite. The Monophy- sites exulted: "Now we no loriger need to come to the Council of Chalcedon: it comes to us!" But the opposition was not slow to appear. The monk Sophronius, who soon after became Patriarch of Jerusalem (634-38), protested against the Formula of Union. He held to the Aristotelian principle that energy flows from nature, that hence in Christ two energies were to be admitted. He journeyed to the Patriarch Sergius at Constantinople, and it was characteristic of the latter that he was prepared to negotiate. Agreement was reached that for the future it was proper not to speak of energies at all but of the one operating Christ (heis kai autos energon); in other words, the one Operator should be stressed, not the principle of operation or the agency. Sophronius ap parently deviated from his two energies because he could not refer to any patristic passages for the use of this formula. In any case, he relied on the agreement with the Patriarch when he also in his encyclical left no doubt that in theory two natures have two principles of operation as their consequence. But now the Patriarch Sergius published a Judicatum, which likewise abandoned the abstract formula of the one energy in favor of the concrete personal energy of the one operating

I TIC CAA.LI D X A JJI V^LLUIW/14

Christ. Even Maximus Confessor later regarded the formula as a good solution. For the Monophysites, of course, it could only be boring, for with it the problem of whether there was one or two natures was again wiped off the table. Sergius described the content and trend of his doctrinal decision in a letter to Pope Honorius.12 The Pope agreed that there should be no talk of two energies; that it had not happened up to now and could produce confusion in terminology. He accepted the Patriarch's formula and inferred from it that it is appropriate to speak of one will (iuna voluntas) in Christ.13 The vindication of the Pope needs no sophisms: He quoted the words of Jesus: "I have come, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me" and "Not my will be done, but thine," and so he somehow accepted a basic human principle of willing in Christ. If he then spoke of una voluntas, he obviously did not mean this basic principle but the concrete act of the will at a given time, which is determined by the divine will and only by it. The misfortune was that now again, instead of one word, an unclarified substantive was employed, which could be interpreted both as the basic principle as well as, in the final analysis, a decisive arbitrium.

Sergius was delighted with the initial help which the Pope offered him. And if the Pope preferred the formula una voluntas, then the Patriarch was prepared to put it in place of the mia energeia, which had anyhow already been abandoned; it became ben thelema in Greek. He gained the Emperor for a decree and in 638, the very year of the deaths of both the Patriarch and the Pope, there appeared Heraclius's Ec- thesis,14 in which the prohibition was issued against speaking of one or two energies, and instead one will in Christ was decreed as the state ment of faith, again with the reason that Christ in the flesh had never been separated from the will of the Logos or had willed anything against it; that is, thelema was not interpreted as a theoretical faculty but as the actual will. What was harmful here was not theology but terminology.

Maximus Confessor, who had once been in the service of Heraclius, had then become a monk, and had fled from the Persians to Africa, first revealed himself as the man who was competent to deal with the linguis tic difficulties of a philosophical nature. After a long period of prepara tion, in which he did not pin himself down, around 640 he vigorously intervened in the controversy.15 For him, thelema physikon was a basic principle which belonged to the nature, and, since he was an enthusias-

aMansi XI, 529-537.

13Mansi XI, 537-544. Cf. P. Galtier, "La premiere lettre du pape Honorius," Gr 29 (1948), 42-61.

14 Mansi X, 992-997; see the synodal decree, op. cit., 1000-1001 in fragmentary form.

16 Cf. P. Sherwood, An Annotated Date-List of the Works of Maximus the Confessor (Rome 1952).

A?.C\

tic adherent of the Council of Chalcedon, he was thus a Dyothelite. He had to reject the formula of Pope Honorius and the Ectbests; true, he interpreted the Pope in an orthodox manner, whereas he did not do likewise with the Greek term. Otherwise, there was a predicament with the "gnomic" thelema, which was identical with the arbitrium, a property of the person; in Christ there can be only one since he subsists in the divine Person. The wretchedness of the following discussions consisted in this, that too little regard was had for this saving distinction, and probably also in this that Maximus demanded too much; that is, in the case of each one who spoke of one thelema without distinction he sus pected that he thereby meant the physical faculty in itself. Hence, while in the eastern part of the Empire here and there the desire for union on the basis of the Ecthesis appeared, there arose in Byzantine Africa a center of resistance to the imperial policy. In view of the situation, the Emperor Constans II (641-668) decided on a new decree. His Typus16 of 648 forbade any discussion at all of one or two energies and of one or two wills and abrogated the Ecthesis. Naturally, this prohibition had not the slightest prospect of being observed. Finally, Maximus turned to Rome, where the new Pope, Martin I, showed a complete sympathy for his train of thought. And so in 649 there was held a Lateran Synod which was entirely under the influence of Maxrmus's ideology. The Council Fathers repudiated both the Ecthesis of Heraclius and the Typus of Constans. They defined the doctrine of the two wills in Christ and excommunicated Sergius, his successor Pyrrhus, and Cyrus of Phasis, as if the distinctions of Maximus had in their day been common property. That they excepted Honorius from censure can be understood then really only on the basis of the ideas of the papacy. The Emperor Con stans reacted with extreme violence. In 653 he had Pope Martin taken from Rome to Constantinople, where he was tried for high treason, probably because the Exarch of Ravenna, who was supposed to have arrested him in 650, had let himself be acclaimed as anti-Emperor in Rome and had come to an agreement with Pope Martin, which certainly could not be thought of without a tacit recognition of the usurpation by the Pope. In any event, there was no further mention of the original reason for the arrest, and every effort of the Pope during the trial to bring the Typus and the Monothelite controversy into the discussion was rejected by the court. Finally, the Pope was condemned to death for high treason, and then reprieved with banishment, in which he died in 655. In 653 the imperial police were also able to take Maximus into custody and deport him to Constantinople, where he too underwent a trial for high treason. It seems that his friendship with the Byzantine

wMansi X, 1029-1032.

461

Exarch Gregory of Carthage became his cause of doom, because this Exarch likewise had himself acclaimed as anti-Emperor. Mutilated in hands and tongue, Maximus died in exile in 662. With this the climax of the controversy was overstepped. Constans II still attempted personally to make his authority felt in the West, but he was assassinated in Sicily in 668.

Constans II was succeeded by Constantine IV (668-685). He had no interest in the continuation of the quarrel, which had reached a dead lock. The Monophysites could not be gained back. The greatest propor tion of them had not been under Byzantine rule for a long time, and there was no hope that the Empire would recover the lost eastern provinces. Africa, which had been the center of the opposition for a considerable time, had lost its leader with Maximus and besides had now likewise come under the control of Islam. The new orientation of Byzantine policy, which allowed greater weight to Byzantine Italy, made it seem appropriate to draw the Pope away from an opposition that was not without danger to the Empire. In 680 Pope Agatho could hold a preparatory Synod with 125 bishops, which in the spirit of that of 649 condemned Monothelitism. Then in 680-81 the Sixth Ecumenical Council was held at Constantinople, with the Emperor himself presid ing. A letter from the Pope17 was submitted to the Council Fathers which indicated the route to be followed. Almost all the bishops ac cepted the papal decree. Only six constituted an exception, including the Patriarch Macarius of Antioch, who seems to have remained the sole representative of the doctrine of Sergius. All were anathematized, and this censure was later extended to Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus of Phasis, the Patriarchs Sergius and Pyrrhus, and finally even to Pope Honorius. What was thereby condemned was a terminology, which could meanwhile be regarded as out of date. Historically, the verdicts were hardly justified, as the explanation of the Patriarch Macarius at the Synod made clear. The definition of the Synod itself spoke of two physical faculties of will in Christ, whose goals were not directed against each other, because the human will was in everything subject to the divine, almighty will.18 The condemnation of the unyielding bishops produced no schism. The act was over, and no one wanted to go back to it. A question was disposed of, which had long ago lost its ecclesiastical and political meaning. After the Monophysites on the whole no longer belonged to the Empire, all these controversies had lost their threaten-

17 MPG 87, 116lff.

19 Hefele-Leclercq III, 472-538; K. Hirsch, "Papst Honorius und das VI. allgemeine Konzil," Festschr. der 57. Vers, der Philol. in Salzburg 1929 (Baden 1929), 157-179; J. Rissberger, Das Glaubensbekenntnis des Patriarchen Makarius von Antiochien (Rome 1940; dissertation, partly printed).

ing background: Orthodoxy withdrew into itselfЧByzantium had be come smaller.

There was one more episode when in 711-13 the Emperor Philip- picus Bardanes in an imperial edict repudiated the decrees of the Sixth Ecumenical Council and declared Monothelitism to be the sole admissi ble ecclesiastical doctrine. With his overthrow, the phantom disap peared. And if later the Iconoclast Struggle was shoved into the Christ- ological rut, intellectual connections cannot, it is true, be denied, but orthodox Christology in the precise meaning of the word was settled for all the Byzantine centuries by the'Sixth Ecumenical Council. The vic tory was fragile, because all too much that was sound had been sac rificed, but an ever more schematized dogma did not in any case track down these losses, and some things that had earlier been regarded as Monophysite had meanwhile become orthodox through the work of the neo-Chalcedonians or had become the property of piety. Monophysitism and Monothelitism could be regarded as defeated, but they had long before brought a part of their religious concerns to safety in Orthodoxy.

CHAPTER 2 7

The Rise of National Churches on the Frontiers of the Byzantine Empire

The Church of the Nestorians

The theological problem of so-called Nestorianism was first decided at the Council of Ephesus in 431. But for the Orthodox world only the Fifth Ecumenical Council of 553 at Constantinople, with its condemna tion of the Three Chapters, drew the final conclusions, in part unneces sary, but in any case dogmatically not without danger. The decision of Ephesus would perhaps not have led to a breaking away of a separate Church, if, together with Nestorius, there had not also been a target in the great theologian of the Syrian Church, Theodore of Mopsuestia, the head of a school of exegesis which possessed canonical recognition for the East Syrian region and whose doctrines had found their domicile in the theological school of Edessa, one of the most exemplary educational institutions of Christianity. It is true that the Bishop of Edessa, Rab- bula, sought by every means to enforce the decrees of Ephesus and the Union of 433, but Ibas, the head of the School of Edessa, continued in

"MPG 87, 1161?

18Hefele-Leclercq III, 472-538; K. Hirsch, "Papst Honorius und das VI. allgemeine Konzil," Pestscbr. der 57. Vers, der Philol. in Salzburg 1929 (Baden 1929), 157-179; J. Rissberger, Das Glaubensbekenntnis des Patriarchen Makarius von Antiochien (Rome 1940; dissertation, partly printed).

ing background: Orthodoxy withdrew into itselfЧByzantium had be come smaller.

There was one more episode when in 711-13 the Emperor Philip- picus Bardanes in an imperial edict repudiated the decrees of the Sixth Ecumenical Council and declared Monothelitism to be the sole admissi ble ecclesiastical doctrine. With his overthrow, the phantom disap peared. And if later the Iconoclast Struggle was shoved into the Christ- ological rut, intellectual connections cannot, it is true, be denied, but orthodox Christology in the precise meaning of the word was settled for all the Byzantine centuries by the Sixth Ecumenical Council. The vic tory was fragile, because all too much that was sound had been sac rificed, but an ever more schematized dogma did not in any case track down these losses, and some things that had earlier been regarded as Monophysite had meanwhile become orthodox through the work of the neo-Chalcedonians or had become the property of piety. Monophysitism and Monothelitism could be regarded as defeated, but they had long before brought a part of their religious concerns to safety in Orthodoxy.

CHAPTER 2 7

The Rise of National Churches on the Frontiers of the Byzantine Empire

The Church of the Nestorians

THE EARLY BYZAN JLlJNti uiunui

the opposition, so that the Bishop finally dismissed him from the school. But Rabbula died in 435, and the following of the expelled teacher was so large that Ibas could now be elected his successor. To call him a Nestorian presupposes some arbitrariness. What he did not want was that Alexandrian terminology of a Christological enthusiasm should simply drive Antiochene sobriety from the field. Ibas had quite a hard time during his episcopate. The Robber Synod of 449 deposed him, but Chalcedon restored him, and he died in 457. He was followed by a metropolitan who now sought strictly to enforce Chalcedon. The oppo sition of the school was a thorn in his side, and the head of the school, whom Ibas had appointed, Narses, had to quit the field. As early as 433, when the Formula of Union had come into existence, some bishops of the Antiochene patriarchate, who were unwilling to accept this com promise, had settled in Persia. Also condemned by the Robber Synod, a disciple of Ibas named Bar-Sauma (d. before 496) followed them and became Bishop of Nisibis. Narses now joined him and at Nisibis they established as an offshoot of the school of Edessa the "School of the Persians," in which Nestorianism found a new home. It may be said that, with this flight of Narses, Nestorianism as a denomination with the ability to develop into a Church came to an ead in the Byzantine Empire. Instead, it now found a home in the Persian Kingdom, where it grew into the Christian "territorial Church." The School of Nisibis was in great demand; the organization was exemplary, the resources abun dant, so that here generations of theologians and clerics could be trained who gave the Persian Church its best framework and helped it over come the dangers of its isolated position on the border of the Universal Church. Bar-Sauma himself was one of the most vigorous representa tives of this territorial Church. He was a tireless missionary, opposed the spread of the Monophysites and Messalians, maintained a good relationship with the Great King of Persia, and knew how to use every means that could serve his ideas. That Nestorianism found entry into the Persian Church so easily is certainly connected with the fact that the School of Edessa had already established a reputation as a school whose graduates had for a long time spread their ideas in Persia; but probably also with the fact that the Church of Persia, which must have expressed itself emphatically in a Synod of 424 for its autonomy, that is, for its independence of Antioch, could develop in Nestorianism something like a theological self-awareness as opposed to West Syria and the Byzantine Empire.

At the head of this Persian Church there stood, at the latest from the beginning of the fifth century, a "Great Metropolitan," also called Katholikos episkopos, with his see in the twin cities on the Tigris, Seleucia-Ctesiphon. He soon had the position of a Patriarch: it was incumbent on him to determine the dates of the great festivities, to convoke synods, to summon the bishops to him every two years. On occasion, synods expanded his powers: then he intervened in the divi sion of the bishoprics and probably also named the bishops himself, and at times an effort was made in important matters to supply him with a board by whose decisions he was to be bound. But in general he ruled monocratically, and not improperly the Synod of 424 designated him as "our Peter." Intrusions into this closed jurisdiction and hierarchy be came noticeable in the sixth century, when in 540 the Persian King captured Antioch and deported a large part of the city's population to his kingdom. He settled them in a city of their own near Ctesiphon, called New Antioch or Romagyris (Rumagan). The new population must have been, if not Monophysite, in any event not Nestorian, and anti-Nestorian propaganda from these circles soon made itself apparent. But on the whole the Patriarchate of Antioch did not succeed in extend ing its jurisdiction over Persia by means of this base. The opportunity offered itself again only in the tenth to the eleventh centuries, but under entirely different historical presuppositions.

The Catholici gradually progressed into a position which was not unlike that of the Byzantine patriarchs. The Great King influenced their election and apparently also reserved to himself on occasion their con firmation and installation. In return the patriarchs had a high rank at court and were not rarely appointed to state functions, for example, for embassies to Byzantium and the like. Now and then the King lent them his bracchium saeculare when there was question of pursuing heretics or of energetically settling other internal ecclesiastical matters.

The most important Catholici of the fifth and sixth centuries were Babai II (d. 502) and Aba Mar I (d. 552). The former governed in a period of peace between Byzantium and Persia, and so the latent Monophysitism promoted by the Emperor Anastasius I was able to have a missionary effect in Persia. Babai tried to keep everything about his Church pure, but the influence of the Byzantine Emperor on the Great King was strong enough so that the persecution of Monophysites was not too serious. Aba Mar was a convert from Zoroastrianism, the Per sian State religion, and as such especially suspect and exposed to perse cution on the part of the State priesthood. Before his ordination he had made long journeys into the Byzantine Empire and he now tried to consolidate the canonical bases of his Church. For this purpose he did not hesitate to receive into the canonical collection of his Church even the canons of the Synod of Chalcedon in so far as they seemed pertinent to him. He founded new bishoprics and in addition to the School of Nisibis there now arose a special one at Seleucia, whose significance is clear from the fact that it could on occasion have a say in the election of the Catholicus. The activity of Aba Mar was all the more esteemed as it came in a period in which King Chosroes I imposed not inconsiderable restrictions on Christianity in Persia. Aba Mar himself finally fell victim to the persecution. He barely escaped death and had to go into exile, from which he tried to govern his Church with unbroken spirit. He died in 552, soon after having received amnesty. That Chosroe's personal physician was appointed as Aba Mar's successor was a singular expres sion of the circumstances. The position of the new Catholicus was for that reason substantially better than that of his predecessor, but he also misused it autocratically. Under King Chosroes II (590-628) the Chris tians long remained unmolested. He was under the influence of his Christian wife, Shirin, but probably more importantly, he owed his throne to the Byzantine Emperor Maurice. After the overthrow of this Emperor, he posed as his avenger against the Emperor Phocas, and there followed the great Persian-Byzantine war, which finally brought about the collapse of Sassanid rule. The more this war expanded, the more precarious became the situation of the Nestorian Christians. Apparently they were regarded as potential allies of the Greeks, and hence in 608 Chosroes forbade the election of a new Catholicus, and the Church remained without a head until 628. It was one of the most important theologians of the Church, Babai the Great, who, as a sort of abbot- general of the North Persian monasteries, found at this time the oppor tunity to assume the actual direction of the Church and to guard it against the worst. The difficulties increased, the more Byzantine ter ritories came under Persian occupation. The population of Syria and Egypt was to a great extent Monophysite. Persecuted as Monophysites by the imperial central government, they apparently offered only slight resistance to the Persian occupation and hence won their sympathy. With this began a new wave of missionary propaganda of the Monophy sites in regard to their opposites, the Nestorians, in Persia, and for a moment it even seemed that they would succeed in getting the Catholi- cate into their hands. In these circumstances the Persian bishops were glad to waive the election of a Catholicus, which would then have been possible. Not until 628, when Chosroes II was overthrown by his son with the help of a Nestorian Persian, was it again possible for the Nestorians to breathe freely, and a new Catholicus was elected. Babai, on whom the election deservedly fell, refused it. In his place was chosen Ishar Yahb (628-644 or 646). The years of his reign saw the collapse of Sassanid rule and the compulsory peace with Byzantium, in the conclud ing of which he took part as an official delegate. But they also saw the assault by Islam on the Persian Kingdom and thus the beginning of a new epoch for his Church.

The inner life of this Church in the period described was to a great extent determined by the development of the canonical foundations and of the organization. A series of synods was occupied with this task and sought to accommodate the legal prescriptions to the times. Still more important was the confrontation with the advancing Monophysites, who not only succeeded in gaining a number of monasteries for themselves but also in establishing at Tagrit an episcopal see, which became the center of their exertions. The Nestorians, who were not a State-Church in the sense that the Byzantine Church was, but a tolerated, not rarely encouraged, and occasionally also persecuted denomination alongside the Persian State-Church, saw themselves forced to the defensive. It could happen that they had to appear before the Zoroastrian Great King for religious discussions with the Monophysites, which, of course, like all such undertakings, yielded success to neither side. In the Nesto rian Church there were even formed groups which reached the convic tion that a certain union with Byzantine Orthodoxy, which for its part persecuted the Monophysites, could be practicable. Of course the fac tions soon fell between two fires, for the same Byzantine Orthodoxy had finally, under Justinian, just condemned the spiritual father of the Persian Church, Theodore of Mopsuestia. Thus all these exertions .had no success, and finally at the Synod of 612 the Persian Church decided to make officially its own the Nestorian creed of Babai the Great. In this there was question of a proposition, which, translated into Greek, could be rendered with the doctrine of two natures (physeis) and two hypostaseis in Christ, but one single prosopon. A concise interpretation will assume that here hypostasis meant the complete existence of all characteristics of a nature, the divine as well as the human, while by prosopon was to be understood the actual historical manner of the total phenomenon. In other words, a formula which was only approximately covered by the corresponding Greek terms with which it could be rendered, and so it remained free for interpretation; a formula which could be interpreted not only as strongly Nestorian but perhaps even as approximately Chalcedonian. After the defeat of the Persians by Hera- clius, on the occasion of the concluding of peace, religious discussions were also organized with the aim of a union of the two Churches. Accordingly, the Catholicus submitted a profession of faith which the Orthodox partners regarded as orthodox. Hence the formula of the Nestorian Church was interpreted in the sense of the Council of Chalcedon. But neither the Emperor Heraclius nor the Catholicus could make his view of such an agreement in faith palatable and credible to his respective Church. A long and differently proceeding ecclesiastical and political development of 200 years had long before erected barriers that were all too high. The Nestorian bishops would not accept the condem nation of Theodore and swallow the term "Mother of God."

And so the Nestorian Church was forced into a life of its own, which it kept closed against the entire West, hence against Europe and Asia Minor. For this reason the mighty missionary elan which especially characterized this Church in contradistinction to the Orthodox Church of the Early Byzantine period, pushed ever farther eastward. Even at this period there began that grandiose missionary activity which achieved its climax in the Middle Ages. As early as the sixth century Nestorian missionaries reached the western frontiers of India in Malabar. Cosmas Indicopleustes discovered them on the island of Socotra between the South Arabian and the African coasts and on the island of Sri Lanka. Even in Tibet the Nestorian mission probably dates back to the middle of the seventh century, and the first traces of Nesto- rians in China likewise extended to this time. The representatives of this mission were first of all monks. The origins of Persian monasticism are probably to be sought in the area of Nisibis, from which it spread powerfully. Abraham of Kashkar (d. 586) is regarded as its organizer.

If now, from the middle of the seventh century, this Church fell under Islamic domination, this fact produced no decisive changes. In fact, now Monophysites and Nestorians were again under one secular rule, the Caliphate. But this seems to have been the aim: to permit each denomination its status quo, so that the Nestorian Church could develop further relatively peacefully. If the Catholicus and some other Nestorian Christians enjoyed high dignities and offices under Persian rule, collec tively the Nestorians were still second-class citizens in Persia, so that the Islamic system of government brought nothing new.

The Coptic Church

If it is desired forcibly to assign a date of birth to the Coptic Church as an unorthodox Christian denomination in the sense of the later Byzan tine Imperial Church, the year 536 could be designated, when the Emperor Justinian I, under the influence of the Pope and probably out of regard for his war plans in Italy, put an end to his policy of friendli ness toward the Monophysites and allowed the Patriarch of the capital, Anthimus, to be deposed and expelled Severus of Antioch from Con stantinople. Of course, the period of incubation began in 451 with the then incipient resistance to the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon. Timothy the Cat and to some extent Peter Mongus represented the most important stages, and the activity of a Severus, of a Julian of Halicarnassus, and of similar figures consolidated interiorly what the ecclesiastical leadership of Alexandria carried through or tried to ac complish in relation to Byzantium. Then in 536 Justinian summoned the Patriarch Theodosius of Alexandria to Constantinople to demand from him submission to the decrees of the Synod of 536Чthe condem nation of Severus and so forth. Theodosius refused to sign and was banished. Like so many other Monophysites, he touched down in a palace of the Empress Theodora, where, in the company of like-minded monks and clerics, he had full scope to supervise the Monophysite faith of his flock in Egypt by means of dogmatic treatises and pastoral letters until his death in 566. He could do this all the more effectively as the imperial central government had little luck with its Orthodox Patriarch, forcibly imposed on Alexandria: in 542 Paul had to be deposed by an imperial judgment at a Synod of Gaza; his successor Zoilus refused to conform to the imperial policy in the Three Chapters Controversy and hence lost his see in 551. John II (569-579) did not even obtain recog nition from all his Orthodox colleagues. But this unhappiness did not in any way ease the lot of the persecuted Copts. In 551 the imperial Patriarch Apollinarius came to Alexandria with the full authority of governor and high commissary and ruled with unprecedented violence. He confiscated all Coptic, that is, Monophysite churches and prevented the Monophysite clerics from even entering the city. In addition, the Monophysites were at odds among themselves. There was the powerful faction of the adherents of Julian of Halicarnassus, usually called Gaianites from one of their first champions; there were the partisans of the middle line of Severus; then the Tritheists, for whom was claimed also the famous philosopher, John Philoponus; and there were others besides. If it could have been achieved, there would have been as many patriarchs as factions. Actually, the unity of the Church was based on the people and on monasticism, especially popular with the people. The really religious figures of monasticism were Monophysites because of the belief that only this confession guaranteed the Redemption through the Logos-made-Man, but they were more interested in the ardor of this faith and the purity of life corresponding to it than in the scholarly distinctions of the heads of the schools. The most important representa tive of this attitude was probably Abbot Schenute of Atripe," the superior of the "White Monastery" in Upper Egypt, who however had died in 451.

After the death in 566 of the Patriarch Theodosius of Alexandria, who was residing at Constantinople and who, while not uncontested in Egypt, had been something of an Ecumenical Patriarch of the Monophysites, it was not possible for some time to find a successor for him in Egypt itself. Jacob Baradai, the "Ecumenical" Metropolitan of the Syrian Monophysites, had sought during the lifetime of the Alexandrian to appoint a locum tenens for Egypt, without finding any requited love on the Nile. This meant that now also Jacobites and Copts were at one another's throats. When the Syrian Church believed it had to intervene and the Syrian Archimandrite Theodore was appointed as Egyptian Patriarch, he encountered decisive repudiation in Alexandria. Then the aged deacon Peter was elected as anti-Patriarch in 575. As his first act, he immediately ordained seventy bishops and thereby created not only a large obedience but also filled up the great gaps in the hierarchy that had been caused by the dissensions, and by this coup established a counterpoise to the Imperialists, the Melkites, against which the government could for a long time only exert itself in vain. However, because Peter was not the candidate of the Syrians, there were new discords. Finally Jacob Baradai himself arrived to see that everything was done properly, but he soon submitted to the majority which Peter had acquired. Peter died as early as 577. On the occasion of the election of his successor, which again was a long time in coming, something like a compromise with the Jacobites was apparent: the new Patriarch came from Syria but had been a monk in an Egyptian monas tery. But he, Damian (578-605), also brought no definitive peace. After Jacob Baradai had died in the same year on a second journey to Egypt, Damian claimed supremacy over the entire Monophysite Church, but with the single result that the strife between Syria and Egypt flared up again. Occasionally even the Monophysite monks refused him obedi ence, perhaps only because he was not an Egyptian.

But if the Monophysite Church of Egypt was still so often split, if it could really agree so seldom on a patriarch, still the opposition to the Council of Chalcedon and to the Chalcedonian patriarchs imposed by Byzantium again united it. In addition, it even happened that the impe rial governors, the Augustales, inclined to this confession, contrary to their official mandate, so that the outlaws could defy the imperial policy time and again. In any case, for the future the succession of Coptic Patriarchs continued unbroken, and if the Orthodox Patriarch had his seat guaranteed by troops in Alexandria in the Caesarium part of the city with the Cathedral of St. Mark, the monastery of Enaton in the vicinity of the capital constituted a more secure place for the Coptic chief shepherds because it scarcely curtailed their freedom of action. In the figure of the Orthodox Patriarch John III the Almoner (610-19) the Imperial Church once again had a representative whose pastoral zeal, whose blameless life, and whose legendary charity did not fail to make an impression also on the Monophysite population. Nevertheless, no union was achieved even under him. Besides, in 619 the Persians invaded Egypt and occupied it for almost ten years. The blow affected Monophysites and Orthodox equally, but if in the course of the years a certain alleviation occurred, in any case the Orthodox Church could not rely on any State privileges so as to persecute the Copts. And when the Emperor Heraclius, after the defeat of the Persian armies, also relieved Egypt again, he brought along that new "Monoenergist" creed which both sides could face with a common optimism. In 633 the Imperial Patriarch, Cyrus of Phasis, proclaimed this Formula of Union of the one divine energy in Christ. True, Cyrus reported a great success to Con stantinople, but the Copts sneered, not that they had come to the Council of Chalcedon, but that it had come to them. In the long run this effort had no success, and soon Islam replaced the Byzantines. In 642 the same Patriarch Cyrus had to surrender Alexandria to the Muslim general Amr, and after a few years all Egypt was in Arab hands. The

Patriarch Benjamin, the Chief Shepherd of the Copts, soon under stood how to come to an arrangement with the Arab conquerors and to obtain for his Church a guarantee of that freedom for which the Islamic law of the Koran was always prepared. The same status would have been given to the Orthodox Church, but it was characteristic of the different treatment of the confessions that Benjamin could soon pro ceed to the reorganization of his Church, whereas the Melkites could not fill the See of St. Mark again for a long time. When then, from the eighth century, new patriarchs of the Orthodox faith were named for the See of Alexandria, it is frequently unclear how they arrived at their office and see and how large was the part of the population for which they could declare themselves at all responsible. The Egyptian Church of the Middle Ages was the Coptic Church and no other.

The formation of a special Coptic Church can certainly be explained from the opposition to the decrees of the Synod of Chalcedon, in which people were convinced they had to see a condemnation of the theology and of the sacrosanct figure of the Patriarch Cyril of Alexandria. But even then this opposition was not of a purely dogmatic nature, but to a great extent the opposition of a proud self-awareness, residue of a time in which the Church of Alexandria, governed by its patriarch in a monarchical and autocratic manner, played the first role in the East, could always pride itself on the support of Rome, and had no serious competitors. But the Synod of Constantinople in 381 and, even more, canon 28 of Chalcedon had inflicted a blow on this position which the self-conscious patriarchs of Alexandria were not prepared to take. The people followed them blindly, for in the patriarch they saw not only the leader of the Church but also the representative of their Coptic individualityЧa national individualityЧin relation to which Byzantium and everything that came from Byzantium was regarded as foreign and inappropriate. This self-consciousness then led to a de-Hellenization of the ecclesiastical system, and it may be maintained that this de- Hellenization of the ecclesiastical system required a proper denomina tion in order to be able clearly to present itself, and Monophysitism was just the form for this. It led also to the development of a Coptic ecclesiastical literature. This consisted for the most part of transla tions, since, where it is original, there is almost always question of a literary plane which corresponds rather to a scarcely differentiated reli gious consciousness than to dogmatic or juridical definitions, for exam ple, hagiography, which is devoted to Coptic saints, such as the patron of the desert, Menas, the saint of the camel-drivers and of the merchants on camel-back. Another example is the whole monastic literature, the literature of monastic rules and of monastic sayings, which was then translated into Greek, Syriac, and Arabic, and this authentic Egyptian institution, in so far as it deserves the name of institution at all, spread throughout the world. Schenute of Atripe was again one of the best representatives of this literature, which never sought to theorize but took its cue from occasion to occasion. Here belong also many sermons with a remarkable preference for angels and archangels, the vitae of monks and hermits, whose unconcealed Monophysitism bore the de nominational opposition on the plane of the miraculous, but also serious catecheses and admonitions of provincial bishops and monastic superiors. Interest in "worldly" subjects was slight, and equally slight was the liking for history or chronicles.

Behind this literature there more and more stands monasticism. This monasticism was Coptic in its origins and in Egypt remained Coptic to an eminent degree. It withdrew into the desert from the threatened economic world of Romanized Egypt of late antiquity, but the world pursued it, the entire contemporary world, and dragged it back into political publicity. The patriarchs of Alexandria, without regard for which dogmatic color they wore, saw in it their accomplice and used it unscrupulously. Not a few monks found pleasure in this role and gradually rose to positions of control over the religious and ecclesiasti cal life of the country, in fact not only of Egypt but far beyond. In any event, the Monophysite Church of Egypt can be understood not only from its ecclesiastical leaders, the self-conscious patriarchs. It was like wise a Church of a self-conscious monasticism. In connection with the state of consciousness of these monks, it has to be self-evident that strict denominational boundaries could not always be drawn. The fronts changed, but the self-consciousnessЧand that was what was en duringЧa Coptic self-consciousness made it more and more the backbone of the Monophysite opposition.

Just as was the case with the Nestorian Church, so too a strong urge to mission to the outsider was characteristic of the Monophysite Church. For the Coptic Church the region south of EgyptЧNubia and

EthiopiaЧoffered itself as a principal mission field. It seems that an intensive missionary activity among the Nubians could not begin until the middle of the sixth century. Until then the Nubians, in so far as they belonged loosely to the Empire, enjoyed, in opposition to the otherwise current laws against pagans, the privilege of still honoring, undisturbed, their goddess in the shrines at Philai on the Upper Nile. In 541 Justinian ended this privilege, and the Empress Theodora sent the Monophysite Priest John, who succeeded, with the support of a likewise Monophysite Bishop of Philai, in converting parts of the Nubians to Christianity. But Orthodox missionaries could also point to some suc cesses. In the long run, however, the Monophysite propaganda was victorious, and Nubian Christianity was oriented totally in its organiza tion to the Coptic Patriarchate of Egypt.

For Ethiopia this propaganda meant the second mission wave, fol lowing the first in the fourth century. But here too only this second wave seems to have included an intensive evangelization. That Monophysitism found a quite natural admission to Ethiopia was con nected with the fact that since the fourth century the country had been ecclesiastically oriented to Alexandria. Now in the fifth century there were especially mentioned as missionaries the "Nine Roman Saints," that is, men from the Roman Byzantine Empire, among whom are probably to be understood Syrian Monophysite monks, to whom in all probability the founding of a group of Ethiopian monasteries goes back. But this mission was unable to end the connection with Alexandria. The doctrine of the Ethiopian Church from that time seems to have shown no special interest in the inner Monophysite controversies, but, consid ering the distances from the centers of the disputes, this is not surpris ing. In any event, people saw in the Coptic Patriarch of Egypt the supreme court, and from the seventh century they had their own su preme bishop, the Abuna, ordained by him.

The Jacobite Church

If the policy of Justinian had made its own contribution to enable the Coptic Church to become consolidated as an autonomous denomina tion, it was the same policy which, not only through its pressure, but also through its leaving matters alone, occasioned the rise of a Monophysite Church in Syria. After the Council of 536, the Emperor, as reported above, had had the Patriarch Theodosius of Alexandria come to Constantinople in order to gain him to the Council of Chalce- don. He had no success; but instead of being sent into exile, the Pa triarch found secure lodging with the Empress Theodora and governed his Church as well as he could from his hiding place, which was one only in name. In 542 the thoroughly Monophysite Client King of the Arabs, the Ghassanid bar Harith bar Gabala, in the Syrian Desert, urged upon Theodora the appointment of some bishops for his territory. The Em press induced the Alexandrian Patriarch to ordain as bishops two Monophysites, who had been staying for some time at Constantinople: Theodore "of Arabia" and Jacob Burdeana (Baradai). Theodore was given as his bishopric "the camp of the Arabs," hence mainly the Syrian Desert and the Transjordan area. We do not know any details of his activity except the fact that the Ghassanid Arabs remained for the fu ture unambiguous representatives of Monophysitism. Jacob Baradai (d. 578) was entrusted with the entire East on a vast scale, beginning with the Greek islands by way of Asia Minor to Syria and Armenia, with his seat at Edessa. With immense enthusiasm, among all imaginable dangers and privations, disguised as a beggar, he evangelized wide territories, ordained thousands of priests, not always applying the strictest stan dards, and finally proceeded to organize for these priests a special Monophysite counterhierarchy that no longer concerned itself with the existing Orthodox hierarchy. The ground had long been prepared. As early as the first half of the century most of the Syrian bishops, espe cially in Syria Prima, in Osrhoene, in Euphratesia, and in Mesopotamia, had been adherents of Severus of Antioch. Now Jacob ordained some thirty new bishops of his denomination for episcopal sees that were mostly in the hands of the bishops of the Imperial Church. In 557-58 he appointed for his hierarchy in Sergius of Telia also a Patriarch with his "seat" at Antioch. He apparently regarded him as the sole legitimate successor of Severus. The succession of patriarchs was thereafter hardly ever interrupted, except through inner Monophysite schisms and quar rels. From a vague Monophysitism there had now come a Church in its own right. That neither the Patriarch nor most of the bishops could live in their cities mattered little. There were enough monasteries to give them shelter, and the imperial policy favoring Chalcedon was unable to harm them at all.

When Chosroes II, the Persian Great King, who had some votive offerings left over for the Christian churches, conquered broad areas of the Byzantine Empire, especially those territories in which the Monophysites lived could expect relief. In fact, the King expelled some Melkite bishops, but he felt it safer to fill the vacant posts with clerics from the Persian Kingdom. We do not know, however, whether there was a question here of Nestorians. Nevertheless, the Jacobites now suc ceeded in establishing themselves more firmly in Persia also and even obtained possession of a church in Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Nestorians' stronghold. This, however, ended with the assassination of Chosroes. Soon after the victory of the Emperor Heraclius over the Persian King dom, Monophysite Syria came again under Byzantine rule. Now, here and there, the Byzantines were perforce greeted as liberators, but it happened that, as in Edessa, the bishop, a Monophysite, denied the Orthodox Emperor participation in the liturgy, which naturally only evoked fresh reprisals. Still, it was precisely Heraclius who, with the so-called Monoenergistic doctrine, sought ecclesiastical union for the last time, and for this end even convoked a special Monophysite Synod in which he took part. Since this attempt also miscarried, the persecution of the Monophysites was begun again by the imperial officials, so that they welcomed as deliverers from the ecclesiastical yoke of Constan tinople the Muslims who arrived soon thereafter. With this began also for the Syrian Church a period characterized by legal relations which Islam had developed vis-a-vis the "Peoples of the Book," partly com plemented by agreements between the conquerors and the bishops, who in the period of distress, as "city lords," had arranged the capitula tion to Islam, but also interrupted by occasional persecutions, which of course were not basically of a dogmatic nature.

The supreme head of this Syrian Church remained, now as earlier, the Patriarch of Antioch, even if he did not succeed until 720 in estab lishing his seat in this city and even then only for a brief time. Ordinar ily, the patriarchs, like the bishops, lived in the monasteries, from which they had for the most part come. What distinguished the new Church from the Imperial Church was certainly not in the areas of liturgy or canon law. Here no great break appeared. What really mattered was faith or, better put, dogma, and here not even so much a Christology which would have been essentially different from the orthodox, as rather the resistance to the Council of Chalcedon and its Christological formulas, a resistance which the Church shared with the father of its theology, Severus. This resistance was the real shibboleth, to which of course was gradually added an even stronger and stifling rejection of everything that the Greek imperial central government and its agents had to offer in ecclesiastical political ideas, that is, an awareness which, to be sure, cannot be termed a Syrian national mind, but represented a sort of preliminary of such a mind, a form which was essentially charac terized by the linguistic distinction from Greek and not merely by an antipathy to the positive elements in the Greek intellectual world. Severus had written only Greek and hardly understood Syriac. But the longer, the more decidedly, the language of the Jacobite theologians became Syriac, there developed a literature which produced a time of flowering of the Syriac language. Here must be mentioned especially Xenaia of Mabbug (d. c. 523), then James of Sarug (d. 521): the former was a classic author of Syriac literature, a dogmatician, a polemicist, a preacher, and an exegete at the same time, the latter was a representa tive of that metrical sermon literature which in similar form found admission even into the Byzantine world. No less important was the famous John of Edessa (d. c. 586), whom Justinian in his time for obscure reasons had appointed as missionary of the pagan remnant in Asia Minor and who, until his expulsion from Constantinople by the Emperor Justin II, had governed the Monophysites there. We are in debted to him not only for a Syriac Church history but also for the History of the Eastern Blessed, that hagiographical collection which be came at least as important for the self-evaluation of his Church as all the dogmatic treatises. As regards the history of the Church, he obtained an important successor in Cyrus of Batna. For the seventh century there must be mentioned preferably Paul of Telia, the collaborator on the Syro-Hexaplaris of the Old Testament, and Thomas of Harqel, to whom the same credit may be attributed for the Syriac New Testament. One of the most important representatives of extensive scholarly interests was James of Edessa (d. 708). His educational road led him by way of Alexandria, he then became Bishop of Edessa, lost this see again, and taught in the monastery of Qennesrin, which was perhaps the outstand ing Jacobite educational center of the time. He left a rich literary legacy.

He gave lessons in Greek over the opposition of those who now chose to despise not only the Imperial Church but everything else Greek; he is said to have known Hebrew also. Many translations from Greek can be traced back to him. His Chronography was much read and he was proba bly the author of the oldest Syriac grammar. Finally, he attempted a harmony of profane and biblical knowledge of the origin of the world in an uncompleted Hexaemeron. It should be mentioned only in passing that, as in the area of Greek speech, there were compiled dogmatic catenae, collections of spiritual talks of monastic superiors, that ecclesias tical poetry flowered, and that finally there was thereby supplied the presuppositions for a development of the liturgical texts. All this led to that grand-scale Syriac mediating activity in the eighth century which passed on to Arabic Islam the union with the intellectual life of the Mediterranean world.

In this world of the Jacobite Church monasticism played a significant role. It was multiform, as elsewhere in the East. There were many hermits in cells and mountain caves, on pillars, and in huts. But there was also a whole multitude of well-populated cenobia, where meditation was cultivated, where asceticism was, just as in Egypt, intensified to virtuosity, and where economic activities were to some extent regarded with very mixed feelings. Above all, the monastic settlements in the desert developed styles of life purely in relation to the environment; these were suited to those of the Bedouins and were not without an affinity to ascetical forms of Islam. Theoretically, each monastery was subject to the bishop, without whom there was no blessing of the abbot, no founding of a monastery, and no external activity. But it remains noteworthy that the community in the Jacobite Church never lost its influence: it was always in a position to oppose its own weight to an exaggerated hierarchization of the Church.

This Monophysite Church, frequently called "Jacobite" from its great missionary, became not only a Church of the Syrians but also of the Arabs. That it had its champions in the Ghassanid Princes in the Syrian Desert has already been mentioned. And this form of Christianity pressed forward along the caravan routes into northern and central Arabia, but these Arabian territories did not constitute a separate eccle- sial body of their own. Their Christianity remained loosely united to that of the Syriac Church. On the other hand, the Arabs had long pressed forward from the heart of their country into the Syrian area, and indeed not only into the Syrian Desert, but also as settlers inside the walls of the cities in the country east of the Jordan. The centers of Arabian Monophysitism were the episcopal city of Bosra and the great Sergius Pilgrimage in Rusafa, the headquarters of the Ghassanids (Ser- giopolis). The Byzantine Emperors of the second half of the sixth cen tury were not always successful in their treatment of the nomadic masses of Arabs on the frontiers of their Empire. They especially all too readily accused the Ghassanid Princes of treason, and so it happened that Islam, storming forward, found allies in these Christian Arabs who very soon submitted to the new religion, whose styles of life and worship in some respects were not all too different from their own. This interaction between Christian and previously pagan Arabs was probably responsi ble for the fact that there are Christian elements in the Koran, which have been designated, with some probability, as substantially Mono- physite.

Concerning Christianity in South Arabia, the time and starting point of evangelization are uncertain. In any event, we encounter this Chris tianity around the turn of the sixth century, especially in the Nedshran under rulers who were probably of the Jewish faith. In 573 a persecu tion broke out here also, which gave this young Christianity the first martyrs, especially Saint Arethas (Harith), who was then honored by the Monophysites of Syria as one of their own. The persecution evoked an action, supported by Byzantium, on the part of the Axumite Kings, who brought the Arabian Kingdom under vassalage to themselves until they in turn had to relinquish the area to the Persians, who were then re placed by Islam.

The Church of the Armenians

In the Armenian Church may be seen a Jacobite denomination so far as the basic interests of the doctrine are concerned. Of course, the histori cal origins were different. They reflected in a special way the vicissitudes of this people between Byzantine and Persian domination on the one hand and their own peculiar political system on the other. The Arme nian Church became as it is, less on the basis of dogmatic and ecclesias tical political succession of imperial synods than on the basis of just these historical dangers. If Nerses the Great, the chief Armenian

Bishop (d. c. 373), the alleged great-grandson of the evangelizer of Armenia, Gregory the Illuminator, has rightly been called the organizer of the Armenian Church, this was an organization along the lines of the Greek Church, specifically the Church of Cappadocia, just as Nerses himself had been educated and ordained a bishop in Caesarea. In his organization was reflected the relation of respect of Armenian Chris tianity toward the point of departure of the Armenian mission, Cap padocia. Already his successor, a bishop of the King, had to have himself ordained, to the great annoyance of Caesarea, in the rival met ropolitan see of Tyana, until finally the King definitively renounced the ecclesiastical connection with Cappadocia. The period of this separation cannot be exactly pinpointed; there were many connections back and forth which existed then as previously, but the beginning of the ecclesiastical independence of Armenia had been made, even if not the beginning of a new Church of a different denomination. Soon after, the intellectual self-consciousness of the Armenians was also consolidated. Mesrop (d. 440) gave the nation its own handwriting, and this achievement very soon led to an independent Armenian literature. It is self-evident that at first this was a matter of translations from Greek and Syriac, and in this borrowing the orientation to the intellectual center of the Byzantine Empire acquired a new importance. Of course, ecclesias tically it was now no longer Caesarea that played the great role, but Constantinople, which meanwhile had acquired the supremacy over Cappadocia, to which the Armenians turned.

From 429, however, Persian pressure on Armenia was especially strongly evident, and the connection with the Byzantine Empire to a great extent ended. No Persarmenian bishops could take part in the Synod of Ephesus, and only by means of Nestorian missionaries was it learned what had been done there. In 435 there went to Byzantium an inquiry from the Catholicus, which was answered with the Tomus of Prochus. Chalcedon too took place without any Armenian representa tion worthy of mention, and the events of the second half of the fifth century brought no improvement of the situation. Meanwhile, in the Armenian Church people held fast to the doctrine of the unity in Christ. But Chalcedon had rendered decisions which, to Armenian ears, seemingly introduced scarcely familiar distinctions into this unity. The Armenians came in time to know of the Tome of Leo, but in a translation which was misleading. It was monks from the School of Severus who finally acquainted the Armenians with the Henoticon of the Emperor Zeno and interpreted it contrary to the Synod of Chalcedon. When in 505 and 506 the Emperor Anastasius could force the Persians to an armistice which again brought the Armenian Church a certain freedom, since the Byzantine Church was strongly oriented by this very Emperor to a Monophysite interpretation of the Henoticon, this interpretation was now also adopted by the Armenian Church. The Catholicus Babgen (490-516) in 506 convoked a Synod at Dvin with Armenian and Ibe rian bishops, who accepted the Henoticon, less, it is true, as a rejection of Chalcedon, which they scarcely knew, than to repudiate Nestorianism, which under Persian rule had evangelized powerfully in Armenia. Under the domination of Justinian there was no change in this position of the Armenian Church. In 554 a Synod again met at Dvin, which completed the break with the Imperial ChurchЧan important decision, especially in view of the ever present threat from the Persians and the Persian Nestorian Church standing behind it; but also in so far as the self-consciousness of the Church vis-a-vis Byzantium was consolidated and new impulses were supplied to the Armenian striving for indepen dence and a new latitude in the confrontation between the two great Churches.

It was the Byzantine Emperor Maurice who sought to put an end to this autonomy of the Armenian Church, as well as to the political free dom and exerted the strongest pressure to convert the Armenians to the Synod of Chalcedon. This produced a schism. The Catholicus Moses II refused to take part in a Synod at Constantinople, whereupon the Em peror in 590 appointed an anti-Catholicus for the Armenians under direct Byzantine rule. Only a new attack on Byzantine Armenia by the Persians settled the matter in 610 in favor of the Monophysite Arme nians. At this time also the Iberian Catholicus, Kiurion, forced himself, as an adherent of the Greeks and thereby of Orthodoxy, out of the close connection with and dependence on the Armenian Church.33

The great Persian-Byzantine war under the Emperor Heraclius again led to Byzantine domination of Armenia. The Peace of 629, which the Persians had to conclude after their defeat, relinquished the greatest part of the country to the Byzantines. On the whole, the Armenians were on the side of the Byzantine Emperor in these serious conflicts. But now the clergy of Armenia were again called upon to declare their adherence to the formulas of Chalcedon: if they would not, the Emperor would appoint an anti-Catholicus. The Catholicus Yezr yielded, and the Greek clergy offered a weak formula which culminated in the condem nation of Nestorianism, while Chalcedon was passed over in silence, apparently in order to gain the Armenians more easily. True, there was

33 N. Akinian, Kiurion the Catholicus of Georgia (Vienna 1910; in Armenian); see P. Peeters, AnBoll 30 (1911), 106-109.

J&1.

also resistance to this formula, but there can be no question of a real schism. That soon after, in the Monoenergist formula, Heraclius moved near to the ideas of the opponents of Chalcedon made the rallying easier. But from as early as 640 the Muslims were steadily advancing against Armenia, and with this the connection with the Byzantine Church was ended, even before the Arabs were definitively masters of the country. A Synod of Dvin under the Patriarch Nerses III in 648-49 completely rejected the formulas of Chalcedon, and the nation's leader at that time, Theodore Rechtuni, surrendered his country to the Caliph, who granted the Armenians a status of extensive autonomy. In 654 the Byzantine Emperor Constans II made an energetic effort, it is true, to recover Armenia politically and ecclesiastically, but in the long run he had no success.

The direction of the Armenian Church lay in the hands of a supreme bishop, a "Great Archbishop" or Catholicus, as he was frequently calledЧthe title Patriarch gained the upper hand only relatively late. These Catholici were very firmly rooted in the feudalism of the country, and the ups and downs of their history is in some respects comprehensi ble only because of the rivalries of the tribes and tribal princes, the kings and sub-kings. Even the ecclesiastical organization, the erecting of honorary metropolises, and so forth, was not rarely determined by these political circumstances. The special way of life of the Church was ex pressed most purely in the literature, which to a great extent was re stricted to the religious sphere. With Mesrop, already mentioned, began the so-called Golden Age of Armenian literature.35 From Mesrop him self we know religious writings, talks, and circulars. What in individual cases is to be assigned to his pupilsЧbiblical commentaries, homilies, sermons, and the likeЧcan today be decided only with difficulty. Of special importance for the fifth century are Eznik of Kolb, who not only shared in the Armenian translation of the Bible but also turned against heresies in a polemic and published writings of a religious nature, and also John Mandakuni, the author of sermons and of hymns which were adopted into the liturgy. It was also in the fifth century that Mesrop found his biographer in his pupil Korium and that a man who called himself Agathangelus wrote a history of the evangelization of Armenia and of the missionary GregoryЧthe classic legend of the early Church history of the country.

The Church history of Armenia in Islamic times hardly differed from the history of any other Church under the domination of the Arabs. Noteworthy, to be sure, is the fact that many Armenians, under the pressure of the Arabs or because of the inner political situation of the country, migrated to the Byzantine Empire and there often achieved the greatest importance, so that the separation of the Armenian Church, despite the dogmatic differences, never meant that deep abyss between Byzantium and Armenia, such as had developed between the Jacobite Church and Byzantium or the Coptic Church and Byzantium.

CHAPTER 28 Early Byzantine Monasticism

The explosive growth of monasticism in the fourth and early fifth cen turies was, it is true, accompanied by crises and setbacks, but its further expansion could not be halted by them. Egypt remained the mother country, goal of pilgrimages to the famed sites of the first enthusiasm, but gradually other imperial provinces also pushed themselves more powerfully into the foreground. Especially noteworthy was the power of attraction which Palestine exerted from the early fifth century. The stream of pilgrims from the whole world which hastened to the Holy Places brought along many a one who finally settled in Palestine for a life pleasing to God. Thus there arose here a monasticism which was less self-contained than in Egypt, more receptive in what concerned geo graphical provenance as well as social status.

The most important founders of the period were without doubt Euthymius the Great, Theodosius the "Cenobiarch," and Sabas. Euthymius (d. 473) founded a laura, whose church Juvenal dedicated in 429- Its very beginnings reflected "internationalism." Euthymius himself came from Melitene on the Euphrates, some of his first monks from the Sinai Peninsula, others were Cappadocians and Syrians, a "Roman" was mentioned, and finally a single Palestinian. The founder's life did not move only in the framework of monastic aims; no great abbot of the day could avoid the ecclesiastical political strife centering on the Patriarch Juvenal and ignore Chalcedon. The desert of Palestine was too near Jerusalem. Euthymius did not take part in the revolt of the monks around Theodosius in 452, and finally his exertions succeeded in inducing the ex-Empress Eudocia, who preferred to hatch her plots in Jerusalem if in this way she could thwart the Orthodox course of the Court of Constantinople, to become reconciled with Juvenal and aban don the propaganda against Chalcedon. The "Cenobiarch" Theodosius (d. 529) laid out his foundation east of Bethlehem as a monastery of cenobites from the start. His home was Cappadocia and he had early entered the service of the Church as a psalmist. This circumstance and his familiarity with the writings and aims of his great countryman, Basil, were probably the reason why, against the trend of the age, he estab lished a strict cenobium. It was apparently regarded in Palestine as a model of its type, and finally the Patriarch appointed Theodosius as Abbot-General, or Archimandrite, over all cenobia. Abbot-General of the archorites and lauras, that is, of the isolated or loosely associated monastic settlements, was Saint Sabas (d. 532) son of a high official from Cappadocia. After some vicissitudes in various monasteries of the Holy Land, he withdrew into a hermitage in the vicinity of the west bank of the Dead Sea. Around 483 he made it into a laura, which soon attracted 150 monksЧa "City in the desert," as it was called. Despite his gifts as an organizer, he had many difficulties, apparently because higher ques tions of spirituality did not interest him. When the controversy over the evaluation of Origen's doctrines flared up again, it led to a succession of a whole group of monks and the founding of the New Laura in 508, the center of the Origenist movement, and Sabas and his successors were able only gradually to assert their authority over it.

On the whole it can be said that, despite all difficulties, the three great founders contributed much to make Palestine gradually a refuge of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy. The two named as archimandrites by the Patriarch found it difficult, of course, to exercise their authority in the southwest of the country also: here arose centers of Monophysite prop aganda, which were oriented rather to Coptic Egypt than to Jerusalem. The Georgian Prince Nabarnugi, who became a monk in Palestine under the name PeterЧPeter the Iberian Чhad founded a monastery of Iberians at Jerusalem but had then withdrawn because of Juvenal and moved to this area. During the monks' revolt of 452 he was made Bishop of Gaza. He was able to occupy his see only temporarily, but through his activity he made the coastal strip of the country a refuge for Monophysites. It is significant that Severus, the later Patriarch of Anti- och, was his pupil and finally settled near Gaza as a monk before he began his career in Constantinople.

The flowering of Palestinian monasticism left its mark also on the literature of the age. Whereas the spiritual content of Egyptian monasti cism found expression in the collections of Apophthegmata of the great monastic fathers, Palestine gave to monastic literature a great biog rapher in the person of Cyril of Scythopolis in the sixth century. He devoted great biographies to Euthymius and Sabas and also treated other monastic founders. He was certainly not entirely detached in regard to the ecclesiastical political procedures of the monks of his time. But he was still able to describe the monks and their life "from within" and to show how, despite all the politics, the great enthusiasm of the past again and again found new life. A half-century later the monastic life found in John Moschus, whom the desire for travel took to all countries, the kind, enthusiastic miniaturist of anecdotes and stories of miracles, who in his spiritual "meadow" captured the charm of the final days before the onslaught of the Persians and Arabs.

At this period the Sinai Peninsula also moved into the full light of the history of the monastic life. In the vicinity of the episcopal city of Pharan on the east bank of the Gulf of Suez the monastic settlement of Raithu (el Tor) is attested from c. 400. On Sinai itself rose the Brier Monastery, later called the Monastery of St. Catherine, which Justinian had surrounded with a fortified wall and for which he built the church.

In Syria around this time the village of Telnesin became a great pilgrimage spot of Christianity, for here there arose around the column on which Simeon the Stylite had led his ascetical life (d. 459) a mighty complex of churches, monasteries, and pilgrims' hostels, which of course the Monophysites soon claimed for themselves, just as they claimed the saint himself. The Orthodox attached themselves instead to the younger Simeon the Stylite (d. 596), who had had his pillar on the Mons Admirabilis near Antioch.10

In the capital, Constantinople, monasticism made only slow progress. First, it was established in Bithynia and in the Asiatic suburbs, and almost always it was foreigners, especially Syrians, who appeared as founders: the hermit Auxentius (d. c. 473), for example, who settled on Mount Scopus and organized other colonies of monks around himself. The area around Prusa seems not to have become a country of monks until the seventh century. In Constantinople itself, despite all the legends, there were no monasteries from the time of Constantine the Great. Foundations from the period of Constantius II are a part of the history of the heresies of the age. For "Orthodox" Constantinople the history of monasticism began with the foundation of the Syrian Isaac, later called Dalmatus. The most famous and, for the ecclesiastical politi cal events of the capital, most significant foundation was that of the Monastery of the Acemetae by the Syrian Alexander, who had already been active as a founder on the Euphrates and came to Constantinople c. 405. The Studium Monastery was founded in 463, however, it did not experience its flowering until the early Middle Byzantine period. In the sixth century there suddenly appeared in Constantinople not a few "national monasteries" of Egyptians, Syrians, Bessi, Sicilians, "Romans," and so forth, which were perhaps no more than temporary lodgings of the groups mentioned, administered by some monks. They disappeared from the monastic history of Constantinople as quickly as they had appeared.

It is possible that there was a monastery in the neighborhood of Thessalonica as early as the sixth century; what else we know of monas teries in Greece proper from this period is almost all legend.

The decades around and after the Council of Chalcedon saw monasti cism at a climax of its activity in Church politics and for this reason at the height of the danger to its ideas and the ideals of the age of foundation. The peril was so obvious that people were concerned for a remedy. Characteristically, it was the Emperor who produced a corresponding proposal, which was then enacted by the Council Fathers of Chalcedon with slight modifications as canons 3 and 4. Canon 4 denounced those monks who, relying on the esteem for their state among the public, created disturbances in Church and State, moved from place to place without fixed dwelling places, and founded "monasteries" where they pleased. The canon prescribed that no one must establish a monastery or oratory without the permission of the local bishop, that every monk was subject to the bishop's supervision and had to stay in his monastery in quiet (hesychia); further, that no slave might be accepted into a monastery without the consent of his master. For the first time also marriage was forbidden to the monk by canon law (canon 7).

It may be that in this way, for the first time, monasteries and monasti- cism were recognized at all in canon law or, respectively, were regarded as an institution of public law. However, the purpose which the imperial proposers had in mind was hardly achieved. At first it was often bishops themselves who misused monks for their own ecclesiastical political ends. After canon 4 granted them a power of dispensation, they con tinued unhindered in these activities. On the other hand, I believe that the monastic character in its details remained so undefined in regard to its external appearance as well as its legal description that it was always an easy thing to evade the prescriptions of the Council. And, third, the hierarchy itself was undecided in the midst of the struggles over the faith to the extent that "for the sake of the higher good" very religious but also fanatical and fanaticized monks again and again found reason to conduct themselves as saviors of the faith against the bishops. In any case, Church history after Chalcedon shows that the success of canons 3 and 4 was only meager. The monastic system of the Eastern Church was from the very beginningЧif one excepts such as Pachomius and Basil, who, however, had only slight aftereffects as organizersЧa movement rather than an institution. One was a monk by his own will, and an abbot by his own will. The action of the hierarchy had always to lag behind, since juridical concepts remained foreign to the essence of this move ment. Without doubt, many educated men also found the way to the monastery. But to the great mass of monks, who rejected all culture, the enthusiastic awareness of a mission could always become a danger. Of course, it pertained to the essence of spirituality that historically it rarely moved into the light of day. Hence in Byzantium the history of monas- ticism easily became the history of its scandals. But the Apopbthegmata Patrum, those precious collections of monastic epigrammatic sayings, the great monastic vitae of the sixth century, the spiritual letters of a Barsanuphius in the sixth century, the conferences of the Palestinian Abbot Dorotheus, and the Spiritual Ladder of John Climacus of the seventh century say more on the heart of the movement than all the scandalous reports of fanaticism and squabblers in monasticism. In Maximus Confessor monastic mysticism found that height of synthesis which would never again be achieved in later Byzantium.

The legislation of the Emperor Justinian also tried to bring this monasticism under definitive control. It was due to him that more pre cise rules defined the details of vocation, of the reception, period of trial, and profession, and facilitated ecclesiastical control. But if he made the effort to make the strict vita communis generally obligatory, this was a failure, which disregarded the very nature of the "move ment."

If one speaks of a total "monasticization" of Byzantine culture since the sixth century, this is false. There can be absolutely no word of such. Monasticism was strong, numerically and in its ideas, but it was not in the process of changing the rhythm of the life of late antiquity and of the Early Byzantine period, especially that of the cities. Many educated persons continued to be skeptical in regard to this state and took it to be rather a threat than something positive. Of course, the episcopal sees were occupied by monks, all the more frequently those of long dura tion, but it remained important thatЧas I see itЧfor example, the patriarchal see of Constantinople was never occupied by a monk be tween 450 and 650, unless Eutychius may be seen as an exception! The importance of monasticism for Byzantine life was that of a limiting value, not that of an integrating factor of daily life.

CHAPTER 29 Theological and Religious Literature

Mighty as may have been the dogmatic struggles which convulsed the Imperial Church from the mid-fifth century until the onslaught of IslamЧthis period by no means belongs to the great periods of classical theology. The formula of Chalcedon imposed on its champions rather the task of the masterly distinction than that of a synthesis, and the distinction had to keep separate what could be presented for religious experience only as a unity. Where there was question of unity, it found expression in a terminology which was not yet the common property of the age and in adjectives and adverbsЧadiairetos, achoristosЧwhich as serted the privative rather than the positive. An outstanding theologian would have been needed to make these necessarily colorless statements susceptible of religious experience. But for a long time the Chalcedo- nian theology had no such representative. And so philosophemes were sought with which to do justice to the distinctions. For the most part they lived on the vocabulary of the Aristotelian school, but no one who made use of them could without more ado be called an Aristotelian. In the Tome of Pope Leo I, this theology still had the powerful appeal with

< A AU V BV^ VIJI V^/IL, REUUIUUS LITERATURE

which the language of Latin rhetoric knew how to construct its antith eses in monumental precision. In the Greek syntax, more adept at modulation, it revealed its indigence very much more easily. Thus the strict Chalcedonian theology languished to some extent; it longedЧto express it differentlyЧfor that Formula of Cyril, discriminated against at Chalcedon, of the one incarnate physis of the Logos or of the one physis of the Logos -made-Man.

That is not intended to mean that the history of theology of the age can supply no names. Perhaps Leontius of Byzantium may be men tioned here, even though his position in the framework of the totality of the theology of the epoch remains disputed. Of course, the majority of the theologians very soon began to give way to their yearning for Cyril. The occasion was provided by the so-called communicatio idiomatum, that is, the possibility of uniting the divine and the human in one single statement in regard to the Person of Christ, that is, with the hen prosopon of Christ as the real bearer of the predicates. In this manner of speaking, one could no longer join the "qua hen prosopon," presuppose it as self- evident, or consciously pass over it in silence. What then appeared was the desire for "Baroque formulations," impressive antitheses, and a fas cinating inexactitude. The tendency went farther. Partly in conscious, partly in unconscious approximation of the standpoint of the opponents of Chalcedon, persons insisted on these formulations as a shibboleth of Orthodoxy, whereby they were plunged into serious internal confronta tions, such as that over the Three Chapters. Many theologians of the time followed this trend, the Scythian monks as well as John the Grammarian of Caesarea in Palestine or the Patriarch Ephrem of An- tioch, and in the Emperor Justinian I they all found their powerful helper, who assisted their theology to its break-through in the Imperial Church. Purest in its point of departure and most exact in its formula tion was probably the doctrine of Bishop John of Scythopolis, who characteristically was also preoccupied in detail with the writings of the pseudo-Areopagite. Furthermore, soon thereafter the champions of Monoenergism would derive precisely from the writings of the so-called Neo-ChalcedoniansЧthe most recent representatives of this faction were so calledЧa part of their arguments, especially from Theodore of

Raithu, in so far as he is not identical with the initiator of Monoener- gism, Theodore of Pharan.

The attempted approximation to the standpoint of the Monophysites had, of course, no ecclesiastical political success. For these possessed in Severus of Antioch the greatest theologian of the day, to whom the Chalcedonian faction could oppose nothing of equal weight. Based above all on a biblical-patristic culture, without involving himself overly in the uncertainty of philosophical terminology, he again took hold of the theology of Cyril of Alexandria. He always kept in view the con crete, historical appearance of Christ, and, proceeding directly from this concrete idea, he identified physis, hypostasis, and prosopon to a great extent. The idea of unity was the predominating one; in relation to the unity, the concrete unity in Christ, there cannot be two naturesЧunio deletrix dualitatis. The Synod of Chalcedon had entangled itself pre cisely in this contradiction and so, despite all appeasing interpretations, no recognition could be given to its decrees. The terminus of the unity in Christ could always be only the one divine nature.

But what made Severus the undisputed Church Father of the Monophysites was not only his consistent dogmatic system, the fact that he had an answer ready for every attack on the part of the Orthodox theology, but also the circumstance that his comprehensive literary work was concerned with all aspects of religious life. An extensive correspondence, festive homilies and sermons, liturgical poetry, and so forth enriched the life of a Church which found with him its route to independence.

There were, to be sure, also in the Monophysite Church deviations from this classical doctrine; but, beside Severus, Julian of Halicarnassus, the father of the Aphthartodocetists, and the representatives of the Theodosianists, Aktists, and Agnoites, and whatever else they may have been called, were all poor examples. Only John, nicknamed Philoponus, could stand beside Severus for the period of origin. His work was intended as the balance between philosophy and dogma, and in it he of course fell into a sort of tritheism in the eyes of those who distrusted himЧan interpretation which in its justification is dependent on how his notion of the Trinitarian nature and essence is interpreted. The

Monophysites themselves, in the long run, did not admit the reproach but set him alongside Severus, whom he had himself always defended. His work is still too little investigated and evaluated. Apparently he was one of the most important representatives of that philosophical and scientific viewpoint which so advantageously distinguished the higher schools of Alexandria from the teaching profession at Athens. Sig nificant was his commentary on the biblical account of creation, which was based partly on the exegesis of the great Basil and, through his method of taking hold of problems, profitably contrasted to that Topog raphy of Cosmas Indicopleustes, which was really only an effort to explain the work of the six days, of course, in an awfully old-fashioned manner. The importance of the work lies in some interesting reports from the travel experiences of the author, not at all in the theological content.

Outside the framework of the dogma and polemics of the age stands the figure of the obscure pseudo-Areopagite, an author with an indes tructible preference for mystification and doubtless also with the talent for it. If he is not identical with Peter the Fuller, then the latter must be postulated as his twin-brother! Compared with the turbulent career of the Fuller, rarely blessed with success, his literary activity can be regarded as an attempt to construct an unreal view of life and to favor it with an indisputable authorityЧa cosmos which was ideally set off to advantage from the environment with which the author never got along, together with its everyday authority. And he succeeded to the extent that his centuries-long respectful acceptance cannot be explained by the pseudonym alone. The pseudo-Areopagite, with his treatises on the heavenly and earthly hierarchies, created a polished system of analogies which not only came halfway to meet the demands of the bishops of his own and later times but also gave to the liturgical achievement an in depth focus which became very important for the liturgical theology, as well as for the liturgical art of the Byzantines of the future. With his work on the divine names, of course, he made the attempt, condemned to founder in its innermost essence, to create a system of negative theology. And if his terminology on the via supereminentiae in the state ments on God caused him to become lost in linguistic impossibilities, nevertheless he thereby set a standard for the necessary breakdown of all talk about God. In other respects it spoke for his mystic instinct that, in addition to a system of illumination, which proceeded in a strictly

hierarchical manner and separated the simple man from God by a pro tracted series of degrees rather than united him with him, he stressed again and again the notion of the "nearness" of God, compared to which the distances in his "hierarchies" became irrelevant.

In any case, the pseudo-Areopagite stands outside his age; and if Severus is disregarded, it can be said that only the Monoenergist Con troversy of the seventh century again gave Byzantium a theologian of his rankЧMaximus Confessor, who, of course, even less than Severus, can be restricted to dogma and polemics. It was certainly to his merit to have created, in the confusion over the definition of the energies and will in Christ, by means of a clear-sighted terminology, the presupposi tions which were necessary in order to grasp the heart of the problem at all. Maximus was a Dyothelite as regards the physical faculty of willing in Christ, but in thelema gnomikon he saw a property of the hypostasisЧa distinction which would have been suited to prepare a speedy end to the confrontation if attention had really been paid to it. But this was only one aspect of the importance belonging to the Confessor. It was proba bly decisive that in him exact dogma and mysticism achieved an insolu ble connection. He hardly showed the importance of any new elements in the mysticism of the Byzantine Church: he was linked to Evagrius and through him to Origen, whereas pseudo-Dionysius, on whom, however, he wrote a commentary, remained rather on the fringes; he had incorpo rated Christology, which in my opinion Evagrius was little concerned for, into this system, and out of the dialectics of the Christological formulas, which had hitherto been handled all too abstractly, not to say negatively, he constructed a mystical theology of the Cross, on which a suffering and glorified Christ collected all antitheses into an ultimate unity. He was the greatest master of the mysticism of Christ in the Byzantine sphereЧnever again equalled, and, sadly, in the course of the centuries, if not forgotten, at least all too little regarded.

Besides Maximus there must be named the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, one of the first champions of the two energies in Christ as opposed to the Alexandrian Union of 633; he must be mentioned also as preacher, hagiographer, and religious poet; then also Anastasius of Sinai, whose work and personality are still not sufficiently delineated, a sort of summist of anti-Monophysite polemics, but one who with some of his sermons determined the homiletics of the entire Byzantine pe riod.

It is curious to establish that, alongside the great Christological con troversies of the age, the newly popular Origenism of the same ageЧif one disregards official notifications and, perhaps, Maximus ConfessorЧ found hardly a literary expression. The presumption is natural that the pateres pneumatikoi in the monastic settlements of Palestine and else where could hardly extract much from the system of the great Alexan drian to the extent that they could understand it at all, and that there were probably only individuals among the Palestinian monks who were conversant with more than single basic elements of Origenism, while the mass of the "Origenists" were only their followers. Individual traces of Origenism can be discovered here and there, but they are of no great importance. On the other hand, we know some collections of simple instructions for the spiritual life of the monks, especially in community, who, far removed from losing themselves in speculations, displayed an astonishing knowledge of the deep psychological processes of life in seclusion from the world and from it drew their concrete conclusions for the guidance of hermits and still more of cenobites. The collection of questions and answers of, for example, the recluse Barsanuphius, who lived in Palestine in the mid-sixth century, with its very discreet method of direction of souls, the spiritual conferences of the Abbot Dorotheus, from the same period and the same environment, which later enjoyed a great repute in the monastery of Studium, to name only some, especially happily represent this trend. If there was danger, then Origenism was not the only answer for the spiritual life of the time. Messalianism, with its dualistic world view, at least in praxi, its exclusive concern for the "pure," and its longing for a physical experience of the state of grace, gave much trouble to the guardians of Orthodox monas- ticism. Of course, in the spiritual instructions of Diadochus of Photice they had a manual which came to meet the legitimate wishes as far as it staked out firm boundaries. Here a spiritual organ was discovered, the aisthesis noera, which should guide to the sure distinction between physi cally perceptible mystical phenomena and demoniacal delusionsЧa work of amazing psychological insight.

The classical Evagrian mysticism, here and there thoroughly indebted to Origenism, found only in the seventh century its revival in a form which made it acceptable to Orthodoxy. In addition to Maximus there must be mentioned here especially the Libyan monk Thalassius.16 Prob ably also under obligation to this system was that treatise of the seventh century which had the widest impact, the Klimax (Ladder of Paradise) of John of Sinai, even if in him the final stages of the union with God are rather hinted at than worked out. Interesting is the confirmation that in this work the famous Jesus-Prayer, the mneme lesou more precisely, whose method goes much farther back, already appears as an integrating ingredient incorporated into the system of ascent, without the entrance into the spiritual behavior which this mneme presupposes as having al ready been simplified and rendered less demanding. It is proved that from this "Sinaitic" mysticism the route goes directly to Late Byzantine mysticism.

If the later Byzantine biblical exegesis again and again had recourse to the sixth century, this is so not because the explanation of Scripture at this period had been especially deep, but rather because in the sixth century the basis for those catenae was laid, which at the same time presented material and form in an outstanding way for the exegesis of long generations. Thus, as the dogmaticians collected ever more fre quently anthologies of patristic passages for specific themes that in terested them, finally to argue only from such florilegia, so now also the biblical exegetes began to assemble and arrange for every verse of a scriptural book the commenting texts of the most varied older authors. It remains noteworthy that these florilegists, consciously or uncon sciously, in this always remained most strongly influenced by the great Antiochene exegetes even when these had fallen under the anathema of ecclesiastical synods as theologians, but this still speaks for the exegeti- cal taste of the collectors.

One of the first compilers of catenae was apparently Procopius of Gaza in the sixth century, famed as head of a school of Christian sophists in the Palestinian city. His catena of the Octateuch became the model for all later ones. He also commented in this manner on other books of the Old Testament. The homiletics of the sixth and seventh centuries did not occupy in the whole of theological literature anything resembling the place it had had at the end of the fourth and the begin ning of the fifth centuries. In the epoch of controversial dogmatic nomenclature rhetorical emphasis and amplification were apparently more dangerous than a collection of definitions! Only isolated oratorical

talent appearsЧfor example, in Severus or in Sophronius of Jerusalem and in Anastasius of Sinai. Then in the seventh century there emerged numerous preachers, whose more precise determination as to time and place still offers difficulties, for example, a Leontius of Jerusalem, who is perhaps identical with a Leontius of Constantinople, a Pantaleon, and others.20 Important for the future was also the homiletic legacy of the Cypriote Bishop Leontius of Neapolis,21 who was at the same time the most important hagiographer of the century. With his Life of the Alexandrian Patriarch John the Compassionate he created a monument of the ecclesiastical life of Egypt before Islam22 and, with the presenta tion of the "Fool in Christ," Simeon of Emesa, a precious document of bizarre popular religious life in the Middle East.23

If the totality is surveyed, it may perhaps be said that the systematic theology of the age, apart from a few exceptions, lacked the trend toward the creative. Quotes and prayers were repeated mechanically; it was a period in which the so-called patristic proof, handled schemati cally, supplanted the creative interpretation of the Bible; the fact that some of the dogmaticians were at the same time impassioned and often unscrupulous ecclesiastical politicans does not make the picture more appealing. On the other hand, a Peter the Fuller, identified with the pseudo-Areopagite, reveals what these querulous people were spiritu ally capable of and thereby discloses something of the disunited breadth of the talents of these men of late antiquity. And if the monasticism of the time was in general no better than the hierarchy, it must not be forgotten that here too for the most part only the hotheads of history have been preserved. The above-mentioned ascetical writers from the desert spoke another language. Here the theology of spirituality made its supreme achievement.

20 Beck, 456-458.

22 Beck, 455-456.

24 Edited by H. Gelzer (Freiburg-Leipzig 1893).

26 Cf. H. Lietzmann, Byzantinische Legenden (Jena 1911).

CHAPTER 3 0 Organization and Inner Life of the Eastern Imperial Church

The Council of ChalcedonЧand no end. Even for the organization of the Imperial Church the Synod constituted a decisive date. The famous

canon 28, to be sure, took up the decisions of the Synod of 381, but to a primacy of honor were now added jurisdictional privileges: the right of ordination in the ancient, hitherto autonomous great metropolitan areas of the provinces of Asia, Pontus, and Thrace, and beyond them a sort of missionary primacy for the frontier areas of the Empire that were until now subject to no metropolis. And if in 381 there was mention of a primacy of honor "after that of Rome," in 451 one spoke of an equal rank with Rome. But, basically there was no question of a novelty in this canon. We must not forget that at the latest from 421 we have to reckon with the political equalization between Constantinople and Rome. Moreover, earlier John Chrysostom, as Archbishop of Constantinople, had made an energetic effort to deduce from canon 3 of 381 substantial rights of his see in regard to the ecclesiastical provinces of Asia Minor. Finally in 421 the Emperors Honorius and Theodosius II had already attempted to establish the authority of the bishop of their capital in Illyricum. Hence it is not unlikely that Chalcedon with its canon only consolidated what had already begun promisingly as a development. In a decree of All2 the Emperor Zeno took a further step. When, on the occasion of the restoration of Orthodoxy in Constantinople in opposi tion to Arianism, the Emperor Theodosius I had decreed as the norm the faith of Rome and Alexandria, so Zeno called the Church of Con stantinople "mater nostrae pietatis et christianorum orthodoxae reli- gionis omnium." Nothing was said of Rome. Of course, the Emperor Justinian I again very strongly stressed the Roman primacy and in a critical situation took it into account de facto. But soon Rome's freedom of action was for political reasons no longer all too great, and the East quickly became used, not indeed to writing Rome off, but to exerting itself only when no alternative remained. Rome's primacy was in no sense denied, but apparently it was believed that the claims of this primacy were satisfied with "honorable mention." That the old patriarch ates and metropolitan sees of the East had submitted with pleasure to the new Primate in Constantinople is by no means true. But the more the chief bishops of the Imperial Church in Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt had to do to maintain themselves and prevail against the Monophysites, the more they were dependent on the protectorate of the Bishop of the capital. Then the occupation of broad areas of Chris tian territory by Islam only furthered this development. What canons and imperial laws prepared, what the activity of the Patriarch of Con stantinople emphasized, was confirmed by the development of pro tocol, especially of the title of "Ecumenical Patriarch." The Patriarch Dioscorus of Alexandria had already tried, of course unsuccessfully, to adopt this title, and in other bishoprics there are also traces of its em ployment. From the Acacian Schism at the latest this designation was tendered to the Byzantine Patriarch, probably at first rhetorically rather than officially. Apparently no one took it amiss. Only Pope Pelagius II, to whose ears it came that now even the synod officially used this title for the Patriarch, entered a protest against it with the Patriarch John the Faster (582-595). Gregory the Great, who in other respects, contrary to Leo the Great, in practice recognized canon 28, took up this protest. The Emperor Maurice thought he must urge peace, but Gregory argued that by his protest he was defending the rights of the other bishops, which were curtailed by such a title. He had no success. Of course, the title can be translated by a colorless "Patriarch of the Empire." But the Patriarchs of Constantinople themselves proved that it was susceptible of a weighty interpretation. It is significant that Photius was the first to introduce the title into the protocol of the patriarchal charters, that Cerularius was the first to adopt it on his seal, and that the patriarchs included it in their signature only from the thirteenth century. In other words: the stages in the development of the title occur together with the stages of the strained relations between Rome and Constantinople.

Since the patriarchs of Constantinople were not content with the right of ordination in their new sphere, but exercised in it that jurisdic tional and doctrinal authority which earlier the patriarchs of Alexandria called their own in Egypt and Libya, the development of their primacy was accompanied by a weakening of the old metropolitan organization. The entire life of the Imperial Church gradually concentrated on Con stantinople, and it is significant that in the seventh century we obtain ever more sparse information on the individual life of great met ropolises and great metropolitans, such as in Cappadocia or Pontus. Even at Chalcedon the Fathers complained that the organization of provincial synods had gradually fallen into oblivion and inculcated the holding of such meetings. The weaker the attendance at these synods in the province became, the more popular became the synod which assem bled around the patriarch, the so-called Synodus Endemusa, which can be traced back to the fourth century and where all metropolitans met who were staying in the capital for any reason. The ancient structure of

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the metropolitan organization was upset also by the ever more frequent creation of autocephalous archbishoprics, that is, by the elevation of simple bishoprics to the rank of archbishoprics, which however ob tained no suffragans. This exemption was mostly the outcome of politi cal or personal rivalries. Basically, the most recent patriarch, that of Jerusalem, owed its origin to such an exemption. And the same is true of the autocephalous Archbishopric of Cyprus, and also for such ephemeral foundations as the city of Justiniana Prima by the Emperor Justinian.

Again and again the effort was made to fix the status of the individual churches also in writing, and to these efforts we owe the so-called Notitiae episcopatuum,1 which present the rank of the individual sees among themselves. Such a list for the Patriarchate of Constantinople may have come to a certain completion under the Emperor Justinian. Perhaps it was revised under the dynasty of the Emperor Heraclius. At that time it gave a number of thirty-three metropolises and now already thirty-four autocephalous archbishoprics. The Notitia Antiochena may have originated in the second half of the sixth century. Whether such lists were prepared for Jerusalem and Alexandria in this early period is doubtful.

All these problems strongly interfered with the legal status of the Church. If the Bible and the tradition of the Fathers were regarded as the primary sources of the canonical life of the Church, in the course of the generations the need arose for individual statements of norms and decisions, and soon the Imperial Church, like the Empire itself, saw itself faced with the problem of codifying the material as a whole. At Antioch there occurred the first extant attempt at a systematic collection of the valid canon law. The redactor was one John the Scholastic, who later became the Patriarch John III of Constantinople (565-577). He divided the matter into fifty categories (titloi), under which he arranged the pertinent canons or parts of canons of the synods held up to then and regarded as binding and material from the canonistic writings of the Fathers. In this John relied on an unknown predecessor, who c. 545 had made a collection of canons in sixty titles and had added to it an appen dix of twenty-one imperial laws on canonical matters. In addition to his collection of canons, John now also arranged a collection of civil law enactments on ecclesiastical material by excerpting the most important Novels of Justinian. Today this collection is known as the Collectio 78

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capitum. John was not alone in this zeal to excerpt canonical matters from the Novels. From there it was then only one step to collections which took into account also the canon and nomos, the so-called nomocanones, that is, collections which brought into a single system canon law as well as imperial lawЧthe latter in so far as it affected the Church. The oldest nomocanon, the so-called Nomocanon of Fifty Titles, likewise perhaps originated at Antioch. A second nomocanon, called the Nomocanon of Fourteen Titles, may belong to the age of the Emperor Heraclius. From it then proceeded later the so-called Photian Nomo- camon.

If the life of the Byzantine Church is gauged by the pitiless dogmatic struggles, the harsh personal rivalries of the bishops and patriarchs, the blood that flowed, and the hatred that produced this bloodletting, the question arises where was the Christianity of this Church. Perhaps this impression, which the external events convey, is to some extent soft ened if one turns to the liturgy of the period. How this is of significance to the origins of the so-called Liturgy of St. Basil and the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom will long remain a puzzle. In all likelihood, both liturgies came from the Syrian area. But it was precisely our centuries in which they found at Constantinople their completion and a noteworthy enrichment. It is not useless to mention here a few small elements in the construction which were at that time inserted into the liturgy and which greatly account for its fascination. The fifth century enriched the liturgi cal formularies with the Trisagion, over whose Trinitarian or Chris- tological interpretation there was so much wrangling, but which, as an element of liturgical rhythmization and intensification vigorously pre pared for the scriptural reading. Again, without the dogmatically disputed background of the time, that hymn, perhaps composed by Justin ian himself, with the opening words Ho monogenes huios,10 is unthink able; it is one of the best examples of how in liturgical dress dogmatic strife could find the way back to its religious origin. The Emperor Justin II (565-578) is said to have introduced two hymns into the liturgy, which are probably older but in their new place incomparably repro duce briefly and deeply all that pertains to the essence of the Byzantine liturgy: first, the so-called Cherubikon, which presents all liturgical action in the Church as a duplication of the liturgy of the cherubim before the throne of the Most High, and then the communion song Tou deipnou sou tou mystikou, in which is expressed something of the humility of or thodox piety, which again and again, unobserved, cuts the ground from under the pageantry of the ecclesiastical organization. Probably the elaboration of those processions, which, as "the great" and "the little entrance," represent the dramatic climax of the Byzantine Foremass, may also be placed in the fifth to the sixth centuries. Also in this period the festal calendar acquired an important enrichment. The introduction of one of the chief Marian feasts, that of the evangelismos Чthe AnnunciationЧmay have occurred in the age of Justinian. The Emperor Maurice decreed the celebration of the Koimesis (Mary's Assumption), and the feast of the Triumph of the Cross on 14 September may indeed go back to earlier days, perhaps as a feast accompanying the dedication of the Anastasis at Jerusalem, but only the recovery of the relic of the Cross by the Emperor Heraclius after his victory over the Persians gave it its special brilliance for all succeeding ages. The sixth century also gave to the Byzantine Church its greatest liturgical poet, Romanus the Melode, the creator of the Kontakion. This form of liturgical hymn is, one may say, rhythmic prose, and, as rhythmic prose, nothing other than a sermon. But this literary definition cannot obscure the high poetic gifts of Romanus, in whom the stylized antithetical dogmatic statement is joined in a special manner with an almost pic turesque talent of typical viewpoint. Never again in Byzantine literature were the limits between speech and the art of poetry so fundamentally laid down as here. And what the Byzantine Church later produced in liturgical poetry lived on the not always sound amplification of this early creation.

Perhaps it is somewhat daring to designate another branch of the devout life of the Byzantine Church, which developed especially in this period, as a turning from the logomachy of the theologians of the time: the cult of icons. It can be pinpointed that the ancient Christian hostility to images came to an end precisely in the sixth century and that indiffer ence in regard to icons could no longer be maintained. The people seized upon icons not as a Biblia pauperum but honored them with the fervor which belonged to the bearers of grace, and the icons came to meet the people by dispensing grace, doing signs and wonders, consol ing, and helping wherever the trust of the faithful demanded this. If it has been said that the cult of icons was an expression of Orthodoxy as such, this is correct certainly at the earliest only from the seventh cen tury, but from then on all the more emphatically. As escape from the dogmatic misery it was a religiously intelligible process, which of course introduced in a fatal manner the dichotomy which gradually would determine the Byzantine ecclesiastical system ever more strongly. But perhaps one may go a step farther. There is question not only of escape but probably also of a religious event which in a remarkable manner decided the dogmatic struggle in its own favor. Without using the slo gan, "Monophysitism of the Byzantine icon of Christ," the notion can not be rejected that that vacuum which the formula of Chalcedon left unresolved was again filled in the icon, in an icon which, although artisti cally it could represent only nature, went beyond this nature to a degree and deified it, so that if it is desired to add a postscript to the Byzantine icon of Christ, the Cyrillan formula would be more adapted to this than the Chalcedonian.

The religious life of the people was reflected also in the "life" of their saints. Mention has been made elsewhere of monastic vitae. But it is interesting that the hagiographer Romanus made noticeable in this period that accumulating of legendary and not rarely piquant traits which occasionally even evoked the mistrust of the ecclesiastical au thorities but apparently satisfied the taste of the people better than some of the labored expositions of hagiographical rhetoric. Certain products of this sort, such as the martyrium and the miracles of Saint Conon,17 probably formed a kind of pilgrimage guide, which was on sale at the saint's cult center. The same may have been the case with the great reports of miracles, such as those about the two physicians, Cos- mas and Damian,18 who characteristically obtained the nickname Anar- gyroi, who cured without payment, and who were especially venerated at Constantinople, or about Cyrus and John,19 the pair of healers, who became the successors of Menuthis in Egypt. Other romances were related to contemporary events. Thus the report of the miracles on the death of Mary may probably be connected with the introduction of the feast of the Assumption toward the end of the sixth century,20 and the appearance of miracle-working saints from Persian territoryЧfor ex ample, we may mention Golinduch,21 who "remained a martyr during life"Чwith the effort to stir up enthusiasm for the war against the fire- worshipers. Of noteworthy edification is also the life of the economus Theophilus of the Church of Adana, in which has been seen a precursor of the Faust saga, and still more remarkable the leap which Saint George made from the pagan myth to the sphere of the Christian slayer of dragons; both reports, as also the first records in the long series of stories about Saint Nicholas of Myra and the Greek version of the romance of Alexius, are products of the seventh century. In regard to this fictitious hagiography a "political" treatment of the saints must not be forgotten. Testimonies are probably the incipient collecting of the miracles of Demetrius, the city patron of Thessalonica, whose deeds reflected the fortunes of this city; other testimonies are texts, such as the report on the martyrdom of Arethas, the bishop in southernmost Arabia, or the gradual introduction of the legend of the Apostle An drew on the soil of the imperial capital, which would lead to the accord ing of apostolic rank to the episcopal see of this city.

If canonical decrees on discipline and order among clergy and laity are at all capable of giving information on the inner life of the community, this applies to the canons of the Synod of 691-92, which, because of the meeting-place in the imperial palace at Constantinople, is called the Synod "in Trullo" and regarded itself as an ecumenical completion of the Fifth and Sixth Synods, both of which had issued no disciplinary canons. Without any systematic arrangement, these canons, 102 in number, presented a comprehensive and very instructive collection of prescriptions on the inner life of the Church of the periodЧat the same time a reflection of the difficult situation into which the Byzantine Church had fallen through the invasions of numerous barbarian tribes, through imperial measures of resettlement, and through new heresies. It was in accord with the negative type of canons that almost only the shad^y sides of ecclesiastical life were mentioned. Behind them stood an inner ecclesiastical development, to which far too little thought has been given, in view of the denominational and dogmatic struggles that claimed all the interest. The life which is visible here, in part clearly, in part in a shadowy way, was of variegated profusion. Jewish and pagan elements take up much room, developments in the direction of entirely specific contracting of the total view are under way, features of pre- Christian custom and non-Christian piety make their way. We meet clerics with virgines subintroductae, clerics as tax collectors and pawn brokers, as frequenters of circus games and horse races, and some who join in conspiracies against their bishops; then types of asceticism or apparent asceticism which recall the doings of the so-called Saloi, the fools in Christ, Jews as the most popular physicians of the time, carnival performances with the wild antics of law students, common baths for men and women, false martyrologies, offensive rites, and so forth. Without doubt the Synod intended to legislate for the Universal Christ, but it is also certain that it had in mind the specifically Byzantine canon law and in a series of canons took a stand expressis verbis against the usages of the Western Church, for example in canon 13 on clerical marriage, canon 55 against fasting on the Saturdays of Lent, and in canon 67 with its prohibition of the use of kosher meat, quite apart from the repetition of the anathema against Pope Honorius I in canon 1.

The Emperor Justinian II sought to compel Pope Sergius I (687-701) to sign, but his emissaries were frustrated by the Italian militia, and the Emperor himself soon had to go into exile. But in 705 he recovered the throne and now tried by peaceful means; finally in 711 Pope Constan- tine went personally to the East, and everything indicates that he agreed orally with the Emperor on the recognition of the canons while expung ing those that were expressly directed against Rome. The tradition of the canons in the Eastern Church did not take this reconciliation into account, but in the West people were gradually content.

If the picture in these synodal decrees is not without spot and wrinkle, these shady sides were brilliantly covered over in thefecclesias- tical art of the time. The age of Justinian represents in this respect a climax of secular importance. The most excellent expression is the ecclesiastical architecture, to which Justinian devoted enormous sums. Here we cannot go into the abundance of the individual achievements. But in Hagia Sophia not only was a unique result achieved technically, but at the same time the mystical unity of God's Kingdom, Church, and Empire was expressed at one time. It was not only the Church which could do this. To architecture belonged the liturgy, and indeed ecclesiastical and imperial liturgy together in one interlacing, which means a sublimation of all that was called ByzantiumЧa sublimation which the Empire needed all the more, the more unfermented the juridical and canonical bases of just this interlacing were. Hagia Sophia is the expression of the Byzantine illusion of an Imperial Church, whose historical becoming and growing never measured up to the dream in

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stone. This flight from reality is, regarded from the viewpoint of Church history and not from that of art history, in my opinion also a movens within the Byzantine painting of the period, which more and more went in the direction of the icon, and in fact of the icon understood as a picture which bears grace and imports graces. The revolutionary change of the times after the break-through of the Justinianean restoration policy in the sixth centuryЧbarbarians and war on all frontiers and into the heartland of the EmpireЧawakened a great longing for the visible and tangible Savior, and what had begun as painting technique emptied under the eyes of the believer into a sort of real presence of the thing represented, brusque echo of the idea of a "hypostatic union" in the dress of art. The theologians, in so far as there were any, resigned or tried, themselves carried away, to lag behind with likewise clumsy for mulas of the development of popular piety.

CHAPTER 31 Missionary Activity of the Early Byzantine Imperial Church

A good portion of the missionary activity of Eastern Christianity from the middle of the fifth century, both toward the South and the East, benefited the gradually growing independent denominations of the Nestorians and Monophysites. This has been dealt with in another chap ter. The Imperial Church itself had taken a long time, after its liberation by the first Christian Emperors, until it again remembered its missionary commission.1 At first little incentive can be detected in regard to bring ing Christianity to the barbarians dwelling beyond the imperial fron tiers. Perhaps this was connected with the incipient identification of Orbis Romanus and Christian Ecumene. If there was evangelization, then it was rarely an action which was organized by the hierarchy residing in the Empire, but for the most part the effort of individuals, who as merchants, slaves, or prisoners of war were taken to a remote area and here came upon pagans; in this again their first concern was only for those pagans who, like themselves, came from the Empire and were likewise war-prisoners or slaves. Then only from this nucleus of a "for eign congregation" did the work go farther and embrace the indigenous "barbarians." A second mission field was provided by those foreign tribes which gradually infiltrated the Empire or procured admission by force. Partly they themselves pressed for baptism, because they had

1 E. A. Thompson, "Christianity and Northern Barbarians," A. Momigliano, The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford 1963), 56-78.

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recognized that with it they could more easily demand acceptance into the imperial community than without it, and because they identified or confused the blessings of the culture of the Empire with those of Chris tianity. Thus in the Byzantine mission the Christian idea entered into a symbiosis with the imperial idea, which basically only put the concept of Eusebius of Caesarea into practice.

Especially interesting from this point of view was the mission to the Bedouins in the hinterland of Syria and in Palestine. Cyril of Scythopolis tells us about it in the vita of the monastic father Euthymius. A Bedouin sheik from the area of Persian domination migrated with his tribe to imperial territory. The Comes Orientis Anatolius received him and now entrusted him with the border patrol opposite the Persian Kingdom. But he had a son who was ill. Hence he went, together with his tribe and property, to Euthymius in the Pales tinian Desert, and Euthymius performed on the little Arab a miraculous cure, which moved the sheik to have himself and his family baptized. After some time the recent convert returned with crowds of Bedouins to the vicinity of Euthymius's monastic colony. Euthymius assigned them places for pitching camp and grazing, instructed them, baptized them, and built them a church in their camp. But this was not enough: he persuaded the Patriarch Juvenal to give these Bedouins their own bishop of Arabian blood, and Juvenal ordained the Bedouin sheik, who since his baptism was called Peter, as bishop of his people with his seat in the Parembolai, that is, the Bedouin camp. The tribal prince became also the bishop, and, in accord with the life habits of the Bedouins, no episcopal city was assigned to him: his seat was his own tent. The bishopric was not an ephemeral phenomenon: it played a role in the ecclesiastical life of Palestine, and the bishops themselves soon accom modated themselves to the ways of their colleagues in the cities. Around the middle of the fifth century we know a second tent-bishopric in Phoenicia Secunda, as the conversion of the Arabs seems generally to have made no insignificant progress deep into the interior of the coun try. A remote and yet important point of this mission was, for example, the island of Iotabe in the Gulf of Aqaba, where c. 470 there was organized an almost independent client state of the Empire, consisting of Arabs, who also had their own bishop; but we do not know where the missionaries came from. In 498 the "kingdom" again came under Roman rule, but the bishopric continued. All together, the lists of those

THE EARLY BIZ.AIN IIJXE. ONUNI.. I

attending the Council of Chalcedon enumerate no less than twenty Arabian bishops.

It is self-evident that, under the Emperors Justin I and Justinian I and their political and ecclesiastical concept, the imperial mission acquired stronger political tones than ever before.4 The Persian policy, for exam ple, played no insignificant role in this, in which a great importance was attributed to the Caucasian frontier area, a boundary of both Empires. It was Persian pressure on Caucasian Lazica that induced the local King Tzat to flee to Byzantium. This meant that he had to have himself baptized. The christening gifts of Justin I brought to the refugee an imperial patrician as wife and, in addition, the insignia of the royal dignity: the neophyte only had to become a vassal of the Empire.5 Depending on the importance which policy had in a missionary enter prise, it could happen that Justin I, as later Justinian, knew exactly how to disregard the "denomination" of the missionaries, even if it did not correspond to the Emperor's denominational policy. Among the Himyarites in South Arabia a Jewish King, Dhu Nuwas, had seized power and begun to impede the expansion of Christianity and to perse cute the native Christians. A combined action of the Byzantines and of the King of Ethiopia, who was friendly to them, was intended to restore order.6 The operation was successful, Dhu Nuwas was defeated and killed, and the freedom of Christianity was renewed. People throughout the Empire were interested in the jeopardized situation of Christianity under Dhu Nuwas, especially the Monophysites, even when the Or thodox Emperor took charge of the settlement. And the Ethiopians, who carried out the occupation of South Arabia, must likewise have been closer to the Monophysite confession than to Orthodoxy. But besides the freedom of Christianity, the Emperor was concerned with something more. The territory of South Arabia may have interested the Empire relatively little, but again and again the Persians tried to estab lish themselves there so they could control Byzantine commerce through the Red Sea and probably also over the so-called Frankincense Route, which the Empire could not possibly allow. Even in the Passio of Saint Arethas, a report on the martyrdom of one el-Harith under Dhu Nuwas, the political background is pretty clear.

The Emperor Justinian adhered to the same line in his mission

4 I. Engelhardt, Mission und Politik in Byzanz. Ein Beitrag zur Strukturanalyse byzan- tinischer Mission zur Zeit Justins und Justinians (Munich 1974).

6 See A. A. VasiliJustin the First (Cambridge, Mass. 1950), 259ff.

8 Criticism of the sources and presentation of this controverted episode in A. A. Vas- iliev, op. cit., 15-17, 283ff.; I. Engelhardt, op. cit., 171 ff.; J. Ryckmans, La persecution des chretiens himyarites au VIe siecle (Istanbul 1956); I. Shahid, The Martyrs of Najran (Brussels 1971).

C policyЧonly thus can it rightly be called. He sent missionaries to the Heruli, who had settled south of the Danube and were living in constant conflict with the native population. The Emperor expected to "tame" them through their christianization, and, so to say, to make them "de voted to the Empire." The historian Procopius, a witness of a conserva tive Romanism, was of the opinion that it would hardly be worth the trouble to convert inferior barbarians of such a type. But Justinian saw farther. His missionaries were successful: even the King had himself baptized, and Justinian was his sponsor. Finally even Procopius himself had to recognize that the situation on the Danube had substantially improved.

Justinian devoted the same care as his uncle to the Caucasian lands, and here again in connection with the Christian mission. He was espe cially interested in the Abasgi, to whom he sent priests as missionaries, and these discharged their commission so thoroughly that the Abasgi expelled their pagan prince and oriented their policy entirely according to instructions from Byzantium. Grand-scale planning is revealed also in the evangelization of the Tzanes in the vicinity of Lazica. Here chris tianization was at the same time "colonization;" Procopius reports that Justinian had insinuated that the conditions of life of the country must be changed if people did not want to risk a relapse into paganism. Thus he had the forests cleared and routes laid out for new roads; pastures for horse breeding were established; and commerce with the neighboring tribes was fostered. The prehistory of this progress toward civilization is found, of course, not in the desire of the Tzanes for baptism but in the fact that, protected and inaccessible through their geographical posi tion, they had resisted the political wooing of the Byzantines, but under Justinian they had been defeated by the General Tzittas. With the missionaries came also Roman officers, who laid out forts and staffed them with Roman garrisons. Evangelization was intended to bind the Lazi as well as the Tzanes "ideologically" with the Empire and thereby turn them away from Persia.

The great reconquest in the West also posed new missionary tasks for the Empire. Not in Italy, for the conversion of the Arian Ostrogoths constituted no problem for Justinian, since they only remained isolated in the Emperor's sphere of control. But the conquest of Africa required a securing of the frontiers in the direction of the Sahara, and here the mission was instituted. How much success it had is difficult to estimate. In any case, Christian communities existed in this area after the occupa- i m: En.

tion by IslamЧin contradistinction to Egypt and SyriaЧonly in decreas ing numbers. Under Byzantine rule we hear, so far as can be seen, only once that an entire Berber tribe asked missionaries from the Emperor Justin II.

It has already been briefly mentioned that Justinian also had planned the mission to the pagans. For Asia Minor he entrusted the task to a monk of Amida, John, who later was nicknamed John of Asia, a Monophysite by origin, who apparently knew how to accommodate himself to the requirements of the Imperial Church. He has himself told us about his work, and he did not belittle his achievement. In any event, it is interesting for the evaluation of the religious circumstances in the heartland of the Empire that in the hill country east of Smyrna and Ephesus it was possible to evangelize pagans systematically. John boasts of having converted a hundred thousand of them. For them he built about 100 churches and approximately a dozen monasteries. The money came from Justinian's till; he also donated the white baptismal robes.10 In other respects, the qualitatively important remnant of paganism was to be sought not in remote hilly areas but in the great cities among the intellectuals. And it would probably be a euphemism to speak of a mission to the pagans there. They were simply persecuted. An intellectual confrontation with paganism, such as had been at tempted as late as the first half of the fifth century by, for example, Theodoret of Cyrrhus on a broad apologetic basis, occurred in this epoch only in inadequate starts, except in the sphere of philosophical doctrines, where, for example, John Philoponus and others took up the struggle against the pagan Neoplatonism of Proclus and his followers.

It would also be misleading to speak of a mission to the Jews. As religio licita, their faith was under the protection of the law, although no preacher failed to follow in the tracks of the great opponent of the Jews, John Chrysostom, by condemning them as the plague of mankind. One could only speak of mission if one could call vexation a mission. It occurred to the Emperors at the beginning of the seventh century to seek to convert them forcibly and to make the obligation of conversion a law. This must scarcely have influenced larger masses of Jews. Instead, the number of polemics against the Jews increased powerfully from the beginning of the seventh century. Especially to be mentioned is Leon- tius of Neapolis. The writings reveal rather clearly here and there that the Christian polemicist did not have an easy time in dealing with the arguments of the Jews, for example, in regard to the cult of icons.

We know scarcely anything about efforts at conversion directed to those new hordes of barbadians, the Bulgars and Slavs, who were pour-

10 ROC 2 (1897), 482ff.

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ing into the Empire from the North since the sixth century. Planned and centrally directed actions cannot be proved and are hardly imaginable. For the most part, the mission first began when the political situation had become a little clearer. This is true especially also of Islam. We have no information that shortly after the invasion of Islam into the ancient Byzantine provinces noteworthy efforts had been made to gain the conquerors for the Christian faith. In the intoxication of victory this would probably have been asking dangerously much of the conquerors. The intellectual confrontation with the new faith on the former imperial soil could be undertaken on literary grounds only several generations later, a discussion of which does not belong to the period here under consideration.

CHAPTER 32 The Assault of Islam

In less than one generation Islam inundated great parts of Eastern Chris tendom and ended many quarrels simply by cutting them off from the capital of the Roman Empire. This storm did not arise by accident, and the permanence of its success lies to a considerable degree in the fact that large portions of the Christianity conquered by it were Arabic or already strongly infiltrated by Arabs. Along the commercial route which led from Damascus to southern Arabia, the so-called Frankincense Route, the city-system had considerably developed in the sixth century, due to the active traffic in goods in contrast to other provinces of the Empire.1 These cities played their role as stopping places and commod ity depots for the caravans from Mecca, which at that time became the center of Arabian commerce. Outside the walls of the cities arose caravanseries with Arab personnel. These centers of Arabic life more and more attracted seminomads from the nearby desert; and finally whole tribes, if they were not already urbanized, were still drawn into the city's sphere of influence. This development became all the stronger, the more frequently the other commercial routes of the Byzantine Empire to the East were closed by the wars with Persia.

But also the great desert around the Dead Sea beyond the Jordan and south from Damascus to the Persian Gulf had long ago become the exercise-ground of Arabian tribes. They could only partly be kept under control by the great powers, Byzantium and Persia. To the extent

1 R. Paret, "Les villes de Syrie du sud et les routes commerciales d'Arabie a la fin du VIe siecle," Akten des XI. Intern. Byzantinistenkongresses (Munich I960), 438-444; R. Dus- n saud, Les Arabes en Syrie avant l'Islam (Paris 1907).

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that this succeeded, they served their respective overlord as vanguard against the other great power. Thus in the East, at the mouth of the Euphrates, the Arabs under the leadership of their sheiks of the Lakhmid family were again and again won by the Persians for service against the Byzantines. Their chief place was al-Hira, and from Persia they were partly gained for Nestorianism, even if the Lakhmids them selves accepted the Christian religion later than many of their followers. The "Byzantine" Arabs in the Syrian Desert had their chief place at Rusafa, east of Homs. Their leaders were the sheiks of the Ghassanid house, who had early been won for Monophysitism. Much depended for both Empires on their careful handling of these desert tribes. The great Persian wars in the sixth century made great demands on this skill. It is probably not incorrect to assume that the denominational charac ter of the Christianity of both tribal groups, on the one hand Monophysitism, on the other Nestorianism, was not any too deep. Monophysitism bound the Ghassanids to a denomination in which a self-consciousness in regard to the imperial central government could maintain itself more strongly than in Orthodoxy, and the Nestorianism of the Lakhmids was not the result of dogmatic considerations but of the mission of the Church of that country in whose direction the political ambitions of these Arabs moved. In addition, both denominations were united in the struggle against the ancient Arabian paganism, and the balance seemed to have been discovered especially happily in the monastic foundations in the desert. These monasteries became, pre sumably independently of their confessional denomination, popular halting places for all Arabs. The harsh life in the desert must not have differed substantially from the asceticism of the Christian monks. Sim ple cult forms, frequent genuflection, fasting, religious invocations ar ranged in litany form, and so forth, easily impressed the Arabs, and the famed formula Heis theos, which had found wide diffusion in the Syrian areas as a Christian religious invocation, placed on the believer no excessive demands. Many Arabs, drawn either by this religiosity or weary of their severe life as Bedouins, became monks in these monas teries, where people were prepared to accommodate their individuality. The best example without doubt was the treatment which very early in the fifth and sixth centuries Arabs who were devoted to the solitary life in the caves and lauras of Palestine found with the great monastic fa thers, Euthymius and Sabas. Here, probably for the first time, the Arabs received a bishop of their blood, who was furnished no stable seat but, as Bishop of the Camps, was responsible for the evangelization of other tribes. And here also must be sought the beginnings of the further progress of a thus modified Christianity toward the South to the oases of North Arabia via the caravan routes to Mecca and Medina.

Thus for Muhammad at the time when he had his religious experi ences and wrote them down, Christianity was just as well known as was Judaism, regardless of whether or not he himself had come to Syria as a commercial traveler. Christian elements have frequently been iden tified in the Koran, and an exact analysis of these elements probably indicates specifically Monophysite features, by which the Christiantity which was familiar to Muhammad was affected. That Muhammad at first saw his confederates in Judaism and Christianity is well known. This was not only naivete but based on the common possession of a basic monotheistic attitude and on the strong doctrine of unity of the Monophysites, even if there cannot be denied what in my view is much too little emphasized; that the position which the Koran assigns to Jesus, if it should be traced to Christian influencss, looks to Nestorianism rather than to Monophysitism. Of course, in the long run both the Jews as well as the Christians refused adherence to the Prophet. They thereby fell under the verdict of persecution, but without the aim of compulsory conversion. As "Peoples of the Book," that is, possessors of revealed scriptures, they could, to the extent that they submitted and paid trib ute, count on toleration and free exercise of their religion.

Nevertheless, the question remains whether this policy of toleration is sufficient to explain the enormous successes of Islam in the Christian area. One must certainly reckon with the unhappy treatment of the Christian Arabs by the Persians and the Byzantine Emperors. In the twenty-years' war between Persia and Byzantium in the second half of the sixth century the attitude of the Arabs on the frontier obtained especially great importance. The Byzantine commander and later Emperor Maurice (582-602), who was especially hostile to Monophysi-

THE EARLY BYZAJSI11JN a LtiunLn

tism, suspected the Ghassanid client-king al-Mundir of treason, finally went so far as to entice him into a trap, arranged with the Emperor his deportation to Sicily, and cut off from the Ghassanid Arabs the annona, the provision of the means of livelihood, to which they had a claim as foederati of the Empire. Naturally, revolt broke out. The Arabs fell on the Byzantine garrisons and plundered their supply camps, at first not in order thereby to prove their defection from Byzantium, but simply to assure their basic material existence. When Maurice had become Emperor, they exerted themselves for a new link with the Empire, but Maurice made the demand, absurd in the political situation, that they should renounce Monophysitism. Noman, a son of al-Mundir, is said to have retorted: "All Arabian tribes are Jacobites, and if they learn that I have accepted your communion they will kill me." The negotia tions came to nothing; Noman followed his father into exile, although previously a safe-conduct had been promised him. Maurice divided up the Arabian Kingdom among a dozen sheiks, who had enough to do to deal with their inner conflicts and with the dream and the restoration of their Kingdom so that they again sided powerfully with Maurice's policy directed against Persia.

Meanwhile, matters were no better for the Lakhmid Arabs. King Chosroes II was afraid that these Arabs would become too powerful and so he too enticed their sheik, also named Noman, into a trap and had him murdered. The results were the same as in the sphere of interest of the Byzantines: revolts and raids. The Persian governor, who should have dealt with them, could maintain himself in only one for tress, and domination over the country at large was lost. Thereby the loyalty of the Arabs toward their former overlords was seriously harmed; a dangerous vacuum appeared, and Islam was prepared to fill it.

It is unlikely that Muhammad himself had planned the great preda tory raids of Islam. But his looting expeditions reached ever wider cir cles, and in the struggle with the oases in the North he came for the first time into hostile contact with united Christian Arab tribes. Shortly before his death he risked the first attack on imperial territory and at the same time sought contact with the Ghassanids, but without success. Finally there occurred a defeat of Islam near Mu'ta east of the Dead Sea. An expedition for revenge did not take place, since the Prophet died in 632 before carrying out his plans. The relations between the Arabs and the new Emperor Heraclius (610-641) had meanwhile improved again, and this was probably the reason for the first successes of the Empire against the Prophet's forces. However, unfortunately the Empire now again failed to supply the confederated Arabs with the means of liveli hood. The reasons are difficult to discover, but it is not unlikely that the Patriarch of Antioch, who hitherto had turned over the tax payment of his Church in regard to the Empire entirely or partly as annona to the Arabs, stopped these deliveries, because the Emperor had taken enor mous sums from the Church for the preceding Persian war, with the payment of interest for which he was now in arrears. In any case, in this critical situation the Empire could hardly count any longer on the loy alty of the Arabs. And so, after the Prophet's death, there began a mighty victorious advance. That these wars were begun is probably connected also with the fact that after Muhammad's departure the reli gious development in Islam was not yet concluded and hence his fol lowers had to be kept at this task by every means. All too many of the Prophet's promises of booty were still unfulfilled, and the claims to leadership among his successors were still unclear. A diversion was necessary, and the weak flank of both the great Empires showed the direction. In the battle on the Yarmuk, a tributary of the Jordan, on 20 August 636, the fate of Byzantine Syria was decided, and it was not least of all the Ghassanids who turned the scales in favor of Islam. Jerusalem fell in 638, Mesopotamia was conquered in 639-640, from 640 the Arabs were in Armenia; Alexandria, the gate to Egypt, fell in 640, in 643 the Pentapolis, and as early as 647 began the raids into Cappadocia.

What was the situation of Christianity under the new rule? It was by no means without legal bases. The conquerors proceeded, apart from the inevitable cases of harshness under such circumstances, in accord with treaties of capitulation, and the besieged Christian cities seem to have known this well enough. The precedent for the Arabs was appar ently the treaty with the Christians of South Arabia, which assured them the free exercise of religion and a certain self-government, while on the other hand it required the payment of tribute, provisions for the sup port of the troops, and, as needed, the supplying of auxiliary contingents. The basic lines of this treaty were employed also in the Syrian and Mesopotamian cities. The situation of the Christians was also eased by the circumstance that at first the conquest scarcely affected the adminis trative system. True, Muslim governors were installed, but the adminis tration itself remained, after as before, in the hands of native powers, hence mostly of Christians. The same taxes had to be paid, and ecclesiastical life was not substantially upset. Of course, it not rarely happened that the chief church of a city was transformed into a mosque, but in principle churches and monasteries enjoyed a relative freedom. In individual cases, naturally, much depended on the attitude of the governors. Occasionally, churches were destroyed, and the building of

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new ones forbidden; occasionally there were compulsory conversions or even martyrdoms, and the election of bishops and patriarchs could be impeded and postponed. But by and large these were exceptional phe nomena. Only under the Caliph Abd-al Malik (685-705) did the situa tion deteriorate. Christians were dismissed from the administration, the poll tax was introduced for them, a distinctive dress was prescribed, and so forth.

Seen in its totality, of course, the Arab conquest meant an enormous loss of territory for the Imperial Church. Provinces in which Chris tianity had spent its earliest youth, great patriarchal sees of the Early Church, intellectually vigorous centers, such as Edessa, Antioch, and Alexandria, pilgrimage sites such as Jerusalem were forever lost to the Imperial Church. The fiction of the identification of Empire and Chris tian Ecumene was destroyed, just as the dream of one Emperor and one Church. This high price, however, brought to the Imperial Church a greater unity, for in so far as the denominations could then be kept apart geographically, the conquered territory to a great extent coincided with the country of the Monophysites and Nestorians, whereas the remain ing imperial territory could in the main be claimed as orthodox. On the other hand, the Islamic law in the occupied territories brought in prin ciple an equalization of the denominations and hence ended the ecclesiastical strife. The Melkites were no longer in a position to perse cute the Monophysites. Conversely, there existed the possibility, be cause it could not be entirely disregarded, that precisely the "imperial" Christians still kept an eye on Byzantium, even politically, probably because of the fact that Monophysite resistance at the time of the con quest was apparently less than was that of the Orthodox, even if it might be difficult to cite much evidence for this thesis.

In the course of time the Islamic rulers, each in accord with the situation, employed the Christians of their lands as agents in their politi cal game with Byzantium and not seldom recognized the Byzantine Emperor as the born protector of these Christians. The Byzantine Church profited from this, for since the Melkite patriarchs of Syria and Egypt disposed of only slight means of power, the patriarchs of Con stantinople in the retinue of their Emperors would likewise appear as protectors of these patriarchates and from this position unhesitatingly deduce papal claims.