Index

RELIGIOUS STRIFE

Theodosius was succeeded in the eastern part of the Roman Empire by his eldest son Arcadius and in the western part by his younger son Honorius. The western part did not fare well because of the invasions of Germanic tribes and Rome was sacked in 410 and eventually, in 476, it came under the rule of the German king Odoacer. The Roman empire held onto the lands of the Balkans south of the Danube river, Asia Minor, the lands west of modern Iraq, Egypt, and part of modern Libya. It had lost permanently the lands of modern England, France, and Spain.

The empire continued to be called Roman, even though it no longer included Rome. A major feature of the empire is that it had not only a state religion but also a state imposed orthodoxy. That in turn added thought control to the power of the emperor and this arrangement was probably inspired by Persian Sassanid practice. The fact that the official religion was Christianity (rather than, say, Zoroastrianism) was secondary and one may argue (as Protestants did a millennium later) that the imperial favor corrupted Christianity into a form that was very far from its form in the Gospels. (You can find several difference between church practice and what is attributed to Jesus by reading just a small part of the Gospels, such as Mathew 6.)

Matthew 6

6:1 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

6:2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

6:3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:

6:4 That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

6:5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

6:6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

6:7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

6:8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

6:9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

6:10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

6:11 Give us this day our daily bread.

6:12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

6:13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

6:14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:

6:15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

6:16 Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

6:17 But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face;

6:18 That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.

6:19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

6:20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

6:21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

6:23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

6:24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

6:25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

6:26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

6:27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

6:28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

6:29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

6:30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

6:31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

6:32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

6:34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

It is worth mentioning that for thought control, the state imposed orthodoxy need not be based on religion. Any ideology would do as the modern examples of thought control in the Soviet Union and Maoist China that were based on Marxism. The persecution of the science of Genetics under Stalin matches the persecution of any heresis under the Roman emperors.

The territorial as well as the religious changes resulted in a state was quite different from the empire of 200 years earlier and historians use the appellation Byzantine Empire to refer to it. There are differences of opinion on when it is appropriate to start applying the term because the empire continued to change. For example, in the seventh century Latin was replaced by Greek as the official language.

Even though there was an official orthodoxy, or maybe because of it, there were bitter religious disputes..

Religious Disputes

Christianity may have become the sole religion of the empire and Arianism may have been defeated but new issues arose. Most of them focused on the nature of Jesus. Was he divine, human, or both? From a modern viewpoint these appear to be subtle theological issues and it is difficult to see how they would excite so much civil strife. It is possible that behind the theological differences there were regional or other mundane issues. A power struggle between the new patriarchate of Constantinople and the old patriarchate of Alexandria seems a plausible cause behind the disputes. Or, maybe, in that era people could get really excited about theological issues. Gibbon has a long chapter [EG, Chapter XLVII, vol. 5, pp. 1-71] that details the various disputes and I provide only a few highlights here.

The first major controversy involved whether the Virgin Mary should be called "Mother of God" or just :"Mother of Christ". The Syrian born patriarch of Constantinople Nestorius advocated the latter and he was bitterly opposed by the patriarch of Alexandria Cyril. Cyril won in the synod of Ephesus that took place in 431 and Nestorius was declared a heretic. However his creed survived in the lands of the Persian empire. The Persian kings supported Christians that followed the creed of Nestorius because such Christians were unlikely to support the Byzantine empire. Eventually Nestorianism spread to different parts of Asia and Africa and the Nestorian church is very much alive today and there is an "unofficial" Nestorian web site www.nestorian.org. That site offers some interesting material about the political motivation behind the theological disputes (The Lynching of Nestorius).

Less than 20 years after the condemnation of Nestorius a second synod was convened in Ephesus (in 449) to deal with the issue of whether Jesus had one nature or two (divine and human). The proponents of one nature (monophysites) won. Gibbon [ibid, p. 27] provides a quote from the decision that shows the extend of the passions raised by the issue: "May those who divide Christ be divided with the sword, may they be hewn in pieces, may they be burned alive". Gibbon also provides the Greek original in a footnote and, because of the terseness of ancient Greek, it is more forceful than the translation. The monophysite doctrine had been advocated by the Alexandrian clergy and they repeated their earlier victory against the views of the Constantinople clergy, but this time the results of the synod were dispute by Leo, the pope of Rome. On his insistence a new synod was convened in Chalcedon, near Constantinople (starting on October 8, 451) and it reversed the decisions of the Ephesus synod. In addition, the patriarch of Alexandria Dioscurus was stripped from his office.

A sign of the times is that Dioscurus was accused of entertaining prostitutes in his episcopal palace. According to Gibbon [ibid, p. 30] one of them was named Irene (it means Peace in Greek) and the local wits had made a pun with the episcopal blessing "Peace be to all."

Dioscurus was replaced by Proterius who was guarded by 2,000 soldiers because the people of Alexandria were still adhering to the monophysite doctrine. In five years Proterius was murdered in the cathedral. A contemporary writer quoted by Gibbon [ibid, p. 33] writes " ... the people of Alexandria and all Egypt, were seized with a strange and diabolical frenzy: great and small, slaves and freedmen, ... who opposed the synod of Chalcedon, lost their speech and reason, ..."

One hundred years later there was a new twist. A bishop was appointed to ferret out crypto-pagans and he succeeded in identifying several prominent citizens in the capital, including lawyers, physicians, and city officials who "still cherished the superstition of the Greeks" [ibid, p. 39]. One of them committed suicide, the rest submitted to baptism. The inquisition extended to Asia Minor where 70,000 pagans were detected and converted to Christianity. (These events were taking place more than 150 years after the decree of Theodosius [Chapter 4].) Next came the turn of the Jews who were forced to observe Passover on the same day as the Christian Easter. The Samaritans were asked to convert into Christianity but they rebelled and over 20,000 of them were killed while the imperial army suppressed their rebellion.

One result of the heavy handed imposition of religious orthodoxy was the extinguishing of intellectual life outside the church (see Chapter 2). The other was the alienation of the population of Egypt that eventual led to the loss of large parts of the empire to the Arabs. The rise of Islam and the Arab expnasion followed a long war between Byzantiens and Persians that left both sides exhausted.

While the Zoroastrians were fighting the Christians, a new religion was rising, not too far away, in the Arabian peninsula. The prophet Mohammed had started preaching in Mecca and he wrote to Chosroe asking him to embrace the new faith. Chosroe tore Mohammed's letter and threw the pieces in the river that was near his encampment. It is reported that when Mohammed heard Chosroe's reaction the prophet exclaimed "it is thus that God will tear the kingdom and reject the supplications of Chosroe" [ibid, p. 514]. This sentiment comes forth in the 30^th surah of the Quran that is titled "The Romans" and contains the verses "The Roman Empire has been defeated- In a land close by; but they, (even) after (this) defeat of theirs, will soon be victorious- Within a few years. With Allah is the Decision, in the past and in the Future: on that Day shall the Believers rejoice-" (verses 2-4) [Quran].

Indeed, the Persian conquests did not last long. Heraclius made a bold move by loading his troops on boats and sailing around Asia Minor to the gulf of Iskanderun, in what is now southern Turkey, just north of the Syrian border. In 629 he entered Jerusalem and restored the relic of the true cross in its rightful place.

However the victor was not in much better shape than the loser. Gibbon [ibid, p. 533-534] provides an estimate that the Romans lost 200,000 soldiers during the war. In addition, the agriculture had been disrupted and the empire was financially exhausted. Heraclius was also aware about the divisive effects of the religious disputes and the alienation of Egypt where people still favored the monophysite doctrine. He managed to obtain an opinion from the bishops that while Christ may have had two natures, he had one will, the monothelite doctrine. He had hoped that this would be a conciliatory gesture towards the Egyptians but it was not meant to be. The new doctrine was opposed first by the patriarch of Jerusalem and then by the pope of Rome.

The split between the patriarchates of Alexandria and Constantinople proved to have ominous consequences when the wars with the Arabs came. Mobilized by the new religion of Islam, Arab armies started invading the lands of the Roman empire. The first such foray actually occurred during Heraclius triumph in Constantinople.

The Arab Advance

By the time Heraclius died in 641, the lands recovered from Persia had been lost and Persia itself had been conquered by the Arabs. The Arab advance against the Romans was stopped at the Taurus mountains (in what is now southeastern Turkey) but the Roman (Byzantine) empire had lost all its African and Asian territories except for Asia Minor. These territories included the ancient patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. This loss resulted in increasing the importance of the patriarch of Constantinople and the pope of Rome [Hu61, p. 26].

It is worth pointing out two factors that made the Arab advance easier. The first is the alienation of the people of Syria and Egypt from the capital of the empire as a result of the religious disputes. Islam allowed people to follow their own religion as long as they paid a tax, therefore for Nestorians or Monophysites, a Muslim ruler was less oppressive than the Roman emperor. The second factor is the exhaustion of the Roman and Persian empires after nearly 30 years of mutually destructive warfare.

History of the Icon Controversy

Icons have been objects of veneration in Christian churches and homes for centuries. This practice is known as iconolatry and its practitioners as iconolaters. The systematic destruction of such icons is called iconoclasm and its practitioners are called iconoclasts. The terms are Greek and the first one can be translated as icon worship while the latter means icon breaking. The terms came into prominence during the reign of Leo III and that of his successors because they attempted to stop the practice of iconolatry. The term iconodules, meaning servants of the icons, is also used as a synonym for iconolaters.

The very fact that emperors became deeply involved in a religious issue is a reminder of how close the connection between church and state was. In modern times we are familiar with case where religious leaders try to influence state policy. But in the Byzantine empire the state leader took active part in religious issues.

Theologically, the argument against icons is based on the second Commandment "You shall not make for yourself an idol ... " and, indeed, early Christians did not use icons because they were considered as signs of idolatry and explicitly condemned by a synod that took place around 300AD [EG, Chapter XLIX, vol. 5, pp. 142-143]. However, things changed quickly in the following centuries and the worship of icons spread widely. Miracles were often attributed to them (and they still do today).

It is probably no coincidence that the worship of icons spread roughly at the same time as Christianity was legislated to be the only religion of the Roman Empire. Pagans who converted to Christianity needed something concrete to replace their idols and we have discussed this issue already (Chapter 4). Not all Christian churches went along, the Armenians allowed only a depiction of the sign of the cross but no other icons.

Jews and Muslims were quick to criticize icons worshiping Christians as idolaters and historians attribute such criticism as a motivating factor for Leo III (Gibbon [ibid, pp. 148-149], Whittow [MW96, p. 142]). One of the caliphs went as far as to order all icons in Syria to be destroyed, but ironically that act was later used by the iconolaters to support their own position (Gibbon [ibid, p. 147]).

A more important motivation might have been the interpretation of the Arab successes as divine punishment of the Christians for their idolatry. "The cities of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt had been fortified with the images of Christ, his mother, and his saints; ... In a rapid conquest .. the Arabs subdued those cities and these images; ... the Lord of Hosts pronounced a decisive judgment between the adoration and contempt of these ... idols" (Gibbon [ibid]). Whittow [ibid] and Treadgold [WT97, pp. 350-52] also support this view.

Treadgold [ibid] adds that in 722 Leo tried to force the baptism of all the Jews of the empire in order to appease the divine wrath and in 725 he issued a revised law code, the Ecloga or Selection (from the Justinian code). The new code was in Greek and much shorter than the Justinian code and it seemed to be motivated by a literal reading of the Bible. It outlawed abortion and limited the use of death penalty, but on the other hand it expanded it to cover homosexual acts and also expanded the use of mutilation as a punishment. Finally, it restricted the grounds for divorce.

Others point out that a major volcanic eruption at the island of Thera (modern Santorini) in 726 may have been seen as a sign of divine wrath [WT97, p. 352, CM02, p. 155]. Because of the ultimate defeat of the iconoclasts, history has been written by their opponents and we do not know what other political factors might have been involved.

Leo III proceeded cautiously. First he had a council of senators and bishops legislate that icons should be displayed at a proper height so that people could see them but not touch them. Later he banned their display completely (Gibbon [ibid]). The patriarch Germanus dissented quietly, but the Pope Gregory rejected openly the imperial edict. In 727 were revolts in Italy and Greece that Leo had to put down. Soon after there was a new Arab that reached and besieged Nicaea. One of the Byzantine officers smashed an icon of the Virgin and, for whatever reason, the Arabs withdrew. Leo declared that the destruction of the icon had saved the city [WT97, p. 352-53].

Leo replaced patriarch Germanus by Anastasius but the pope refused to recognize that appointment and also called a synod to condemn Iconoclasm as a heresy. In 733 Leo III tried to discipline the pope but sending a naval force but that was shipwrecked in the Adriatic. In order to punish the pope, Leo removed Sicily, Calabria, Greece, and the Aegean islands from his jurisdiction and placed them under the patriarch of Constantinople [ibid, p. 355]. Greece and the Aegean would remain for ever under the patriarch.

Leo died in 741 from dropsy, the first emperor to die in his bed in nearly a century. The year before he died he inflicted a smashing defeat on an Arab army, attributing it to a divine approval of Iconoclasm. He was succeeded by his son Constantine V who in 754 convened a council of 338 bishops that issued a unanimous decision that "image-worship was a corruption of Christianity and a renewal of Paganism" (Gibbon [ibid, p. 150], MW96, p. 144).

There was enormous opposition against the imperial policy. The leaders were clergy and monks with significant popular support. When Constantine V left the capital in an expedition against the Arabs his brother-in-law Artavasdes staged a coup, crowned himself emperor and restored the worship of the icons. Artavasdes reign was brief and Constantine came back to power but the incident is indicative of the strength of the opposition. The pope of Rome, who was beyond the reach of the emperor, was quite vociferous in his opposition to the iconoclasts and Gibbon considers such opposition as the start of the "papal monarchy" [ibid, pp. 151-154].

Eventually, the iconoclasts lost. When Leo IV (grandson of Leo III) died in 780 he was succeeded by his nine year old son Constantine VI with his mother emperor Irene serving as regent. Irene liked power and she did not want to give up the regency as her son reached legal age. Eventually, there was a coup against Constantine and in 797 Irene became officially empress. Constantine was blinded and he died from the injury. Immediately after her husband's death Irene had started working for the restoration of the worship of the icons. Historians think that this was a calculated move for consolidation of her power. Because all those who might be rivals to her power were iconoclasts, Irene looked for a power base amongst the iconolaters [EG, Chapter XLIX, vol. 5, pp. 174-175, MW96, pp. 148-150]. A new synod was called and the worship of the icons was made part of orthodox faith in 787. For more on Irene see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_(empress).

Irene was overthrown in 802 and she died a year later. Leo V became emperor in 813 and he banned the worship of icons again but the ban did not last long. The widow of another emperor was responsible for their restoration. Theodora became regent in 842 and the next year she ended iconoclasm for good. The occasion is commemorated by the eastern churches in the "Sunday of Orthodoxy" that falls on the first Sunday of the Great Lent. (In 2010, it was on February 21.)

What was Behind the Icon Worship Issue

Because the Iconoclasts lost we do not have their side of the story [MW96, pp. 155-159] and we can only surmise their true motives. Certainly the movement coincided with a major defeat of the Empire in the hands of the Arabs thus Iconoclasm can be seen as an effort for reform. We are told that amongst the "crimes" of the Iconoclasts were confiscation of monastic property and forced marriages for monks and nuns. We may speculate that Iconoclasm was, in essence, an attack on the practice and power of monasticism.

We may remark that Protestant churches reject both icon worship and monasticism, but that movement came several centuries after the Byzantine Iconoclasm. The Roman Catholic church allows both icons and statues while the Orthodox churches allow icons but not statues. The tradition of miraculous icons is widespread amongst the Orthodox but it is also encountered amongst Roman Catholics, especially in Italy. In the early 1990s a crying icon in a Greek church in Queens made the news. The then mayor of New York, David Dinkins, did not miss the opportunity to court the votes of the iconodules and visited the church to witness the "miracle."

Some writers credit the Protestant work ethic for the industrial revolution and economic development of the 19th century. It is true that the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, the Scandinavians countries, the United States, Canada, and Switzerland had all a strong Protestant culture. France, while Catholic, had limited the influence of the church significantly after the 1789 revolution. (We may also note that even today the five problematic countries in the Euro zone, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Ireland are either Catholic or Orthodox.) Many Greeks like to use that observation as the basis for arguing that if the Iconoclasts emperors had succeeded, the Byzantine empire would have fared much better and the industrial revolution might have started in the East. However, the parallel to the Protestant Reformation is disputed by some scholars who also claim that Iconoclasm was not the dominant issue that other historians claim to be (Patricia Karlin-Hayter in [CM02, pp. 153-162]).

Gibbon provides another argument against drawing too close parallels with the Protestant Reformation by stating that "the seventh and eighth centuries were a period of discord and darkness". He describes the Iconoclasts as anti-intellectuals and enemies of antiquity and he adds that they abolished the royal college and burned its library. It was only under Michael III and by the initiative of his uncle Caesar Bardas that a school was opened in mid-ninth century [EG, Chapter LVIII, vol. 5, pp. 482-483]. Treadgold describes in some detail the decline of education under Heraclius and the Isaurians [WT97, pp. 395-399] and points out that most religious writers in Greek lived in the Arab Caliphate [ibid, p. 398].

The schism between the Pope and the Byzantines

At one time the pope of Rome was only one of the four patriarchs of the Christian church, the other three being the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Constantine I add a fifth, the patriarch of Constantinople. When Theodosius I made Catholic Christianity the sole religion of the Roman empire he mentions in his decree two bishops: those of Rome and Alexandria (Chapter 4). In Justinian's time one pope was even removed from office as a result of machinations by a general's wife (Chapter 5). The Arab conquests changed the picture dramatically. Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem came under Muslim rule and Christian population in their areas declined significantly. Another important bishopric, that of Carthage, was also lost to the Arabs. These changes increased the relative importance of both the pope of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople. However, the tenuous control of Italy by the Byzantine emperors put the pope outside imperial control and he was able not only to take positions in opposition to those advocated by Constantinople, against iconoclasm in particular, but also to become a temporal monarch (Chapter 9). During the same period the pope entered into alliances with the Frankish kings in the West culminating with the crowning of Charlemagne as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 800.

In 858 the last emperor of the Isaurian dynasty, Michael III, forced Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople to resign and in his place appointed Photius. Photius was a layman and he was rushed through the clerical orders to reach the highest office of the church. Pope Nicolas I did not object immediately because he was hoping for a deal that would transfer some dioceses from the authority of Constantinople to that of Rome. When that did not happen, the pope raised the issue and in 866 excommunicated Photius who immediately reciprocated. When Basil I became emperor a year later, he restored Ignatius and the schism was patched. One factor might have been the Arab threat in Southern Italy for which the pope needed support from the Byzantines [MW96, pp. 283-284].

The final break between the two churches took place in 1054 during the reign of Constantine IX (1042-1055), the third husband of Zoe, a niece of Basil II. During that time the patriarch of Constantinople was the strong willed Michael Cerularius who insisted on traditional Byzantine practices throughout the empire. By that time there were several differences between such practices and those in use in the West, in particular whether lower level clergy could be married (they could in the East but not in the West), whether unleavened bread should be used in the Eucharist (it was not in the East but it was in the West), etc. There was also a dogmatic difference, the filioque, whether the Holy Spirit emanates from the Father and the Son (the western opinion) or only from the Father (the eastern opinion) [WT97, pp. 688-690]. The Pope sent the equally strong willed Cardinal Humbert to negotiate with Cerularius but they clashed and the result was mutual excommunications [Hu61, p. 48]. Both Treadgold [WT97, ibid] and Hussey [Hu61, ibid] claim that the schism was in essence a misunderstanding and, except for subsequent events, the two churches could have reconciled. The trouble with such views is that they ignore the geopolitical reality. Western Europe was becoming a place quite different from the Byzantine empire and there were bound to be conflicts between the states of the West and the Byzantines. While the visible causes of the schism may appear trivial, they reflect deeper geopolitical divisions. Regardless of whether the schism reflected deep divisions or superficial differences, it did not help the diplomatic position of the Byzantine empire because it could no longer rely on alliances with states of Western Europe.