Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/299

 

CHAPTER IX

LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH

 

(a) Greek historians named in earlier chapters.

(b) Neale, Eastern Church, Introd., and Hymns of the Eastern Church, 1876; Pitra, Hymnographie de l'Église Gréque, 1867; Brownlie, Hymns of the Holy Eastern Church, 1902; Curzon, Monasteries of the Levant, new edit., 1897; Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii., 1868; Krumbacher, Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur von Justinian bis zum Ende des Oströmischen Reiches, 1897.

 

The organisation of the Greek Church which was completed during the patristic period has never since undergone vital modifications in any of the three branches of its constitution—its dogma, its ritual, its government—excepting in so far as the last has been affected by political influences. The Monophysite and Monothelete controversies about the nature and will of Christ were the last serious discussions on the creed. Henceforth it became the duty of scholars and logicians to defend the settled dogmas of the Church, which was deemed to be holy chiefly because orthodox. The Western Church still felt free to develop truth, and it was the clash of new ideas with conservative loyalty to settled doctrine that produced the final and irrevocable breach with Rome. Henceforth the Greek theologians were to be apologists, but not primarily in the region of Christian evidences; they were more concerned with the polemics of heresy within the Church than with the war with unbelief outside her borders. Nevertheless, the insistent presence of Islam also demanded a defence of