pagan institutions, customs, doctrines, and ideas. The Byzantine empire maintained itself for more than a thousand years, whereas the western empire was only reestablished after the lapse of several centuries, and then with the help of the papacy and in Germanic form.
After the fall of Constantinople, Moscow, the third Rome, perpetuated Byzantium. In comparison with the west, Moscow, like Byzantium, was distinguished by knowing nothing of any Augustine, of any Gregory VII, of any Aquinas with radical disciples, or of any Boniface VIII, to maintain the prestige of the church vis-à-vis the state. Neither Byzantium nor Moscow produced monarchomachists to defend the right of tyrannicide—but in the west the theological defenders of the supremacy of the church, representing the secular chieftain as inferior and even as morally worthless, gave an initial impulse to the democratic principle of popular sovereignty (in accordance with which the people has the right to elect, depose, or punish the ruler) by defending the right of tyrannicide.
Neither in Byzantium nor in Moscow do we find indications of any struggle between patriarch and emperor analogous to the struggle between pope and emperor in the west. In Byzantium, doubtless, and in Moscow, there were defenders of the supremacy of church and priesthood as against state and secular chieftainship (§ 3), but this antagonism never developed into any such condemnation of secular chieftainship as was voiced by Gregory VII. Despots and criminal rulers like John the Terrible were not deposed. When the boyars struggled against him, it was merely on behalf of the privileges of their caste; they never challenged his right to supreme rule. Thus in Moscow as in Byzantium the emperor was recognised as head of the church in the sense previously explained.[1]
- ↑ Kattenbusch contends that the term caesaropapism is more applicable to ancient days than to recent times. The Russian tsars, he says, are mere guardians of the existing order; they have identified themselves, with the church, not the church with themselves, whilst the latter identification was the true index of caesaropapism.—I have in an earlier chapter referred to the passages in the state fundamental law wherein the relationship of the tsar to the church is defined. Distinctive is the fact that the church consecrates and voluntarily recognises tsarist absolutism, and in return is protected by the state with the absolutist powers thus consecrated by religion. We have seen the efficiency of this protection against hostile churches and against the enlightenment. As we have learned, the emperor does not venture to formulate new dogmas, for in the view of the eastern church this is a closed
