The Orthodox Eastern Church/Chapter 3

by Adrian Henry Timothy Knottesford Fortescue

 

CHAPTER III

 

THE FAITH AND RITES OF THE BYZANTINE CHURCH BEFORE THE SCHISM

 

To complete our picture of the first period we may in this chapter add some notes about the beliefs, rites, and customs of the other half of Christendom during the eight centuries in which they still formed one Church with our fathers. Eastern people are notoriously the most conservative of all, and so, except for the differences brought about by the schism, nearly all these things, even unimportant customs, have remained unchanged till to-day. It will be convenient to describe their liturgy more exactly when we come to our account of their present state. In this chapter a few general observations will be enough.

 

1. The Faith of the Byzantine Church.

We have already considered the great question—their belief in the Roman Primacy. Other points are much less in dispute and may be passed over more quickly. In the first place, inter-communion has always meant agreement in faith. The immediate result of a heresy being officially condemned was that every Catholic was bound to condemn it too; those who would not do so, heretics, at once broke off all relations with the Orthodox. So from the fact that there was communion between the Churches, that each in its liturgy prayed for the chief bishops of the others, we may certainly conclude that they agreed in faith.

The development of doctrine (for there was development from the very beginning) went on in parallel lines in East and West. It is true that the great Trinitarian and Christological heresies arose in the East, and that often for a time they seemed to swallow up great parts of those Churches. This produced a temporary schism; but in every case the East at last rejected the heresy as the West had done; some heretics remained separate from the great body of Christians, but between the main parts of the Church union was restored and the heresy was equally condemned by all. We have seen that Nestorianism and Monophysism produced the greatest and most lasting effects. Since the 5th century great bodies of Christians have remained separate from both Rome and Constantinople. The Nestorians use the Nicene Creed, accept the first two general councils, but, of course, reject the third (Ephesus, 431). Still greater schisms were caused by Monophysism. The Copts in Egypt, Jacobites in Syria, and the Armenian Church all look upon the Council of Chalcedon (451) as an abomination. We must then leave these bodies out of account. We have only to consider the faith of what we may call the Orthodox Eastern Churches, that is, those in communion with Constantinople and, until the 9th century, in communion with Rome.^[1] Both East and West then used the same creeds. What we call the Apostles' Creed is a Roman baptismal form, but Eusebius of Cæsarea († c 340), Marcellus of Ancyra († 372), St. Cyril of Jerusalem († 385) and other Eastern bishops drew up practically identical creeds.^[2] The great test of Orthodoxy was the Nicene Creed, first drawn up at Nicæa, then modified considerably by the First Council of Constantinople. This creed was used officially by all Orthodox Churches, Eastern and Western.^[3] It is still recited in our liturgy and in theirs. It is, however, well known that the addition of a word to this creed in the West afterwards became and still is the chief charge made against us by the East. We shall come back to the question of the Filioque.^[4] Meanwhile, till the 5th century, the creed was exactly the same everywhere. And when the Filioque was added to it, first in Spain, eventually in Rome, the Easterns did not trouble about it—no one ever asked them to adopt it—till Photius found in it a convenient grievance against the Latins.

About the foundations of the Christian faith, then, the worship of one God in the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation of God the Son, our redemption through his death, the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come, about these things there was not, there has never been any dispute.

The Easterns also agreed with us about the Catholic Church. That there may be Christians cut off from her communion was a fact as patent to them as to our fathers. We had Donatists and Priscillianists, they had many more schismatics outside their gates. But that in order to be a member of the Church of Christ one had to belong to the visible unity of the Church, this they knew as well as the Latins. In spite of passing schisms, in spite of all manner of unfriendly feeling, they never conceived the theory of a Church divided into mutually excommunicated bodies yet still mocked with the title of one.^[5] Dionysius of Alexandria († 264) wrote to Novatian: "If you were unwillingly forced to do so (break away from communion with the rest of the Church), as you say, prove it by now willingly coming back. It would have been better to suffer anything rather than that the Church should be torn; nor would it have been less glorious to suffer even martyrdom rather than to tear the Church in pieces, than to suffer in order not to sacrifice to idols; indeed, in my opinion it would be even more glorious, for in the latter case one would suffer only for one's own soul, in the former for the whole Church."^[6] The Bishop of Alexandria then agrees with our St. Augustine († 430): "Nothing is worse than the sacrilege of schism, because there is no just reason for breaking the unity."^[7] But as long ago as the 3rd century schismatics made the same excuse that we still hear from their successors—they have returned to a more primitive faith; they find communion with Rome impossible, because of her later corruptions. The followers of one Artemon (an obscure heretic of the 3rd century) "say that all the ancients and the Apostles received and taught just what they themselves teach, and that the true doctrine had been kept down to the time of Victor, who was the thirteenth Bishop of Rome after Peter, but that the truth has been corrupted since the time of his successor Zephyrinus."^[8]

After our long discussion about the order of the hierarchy we need hardly produce more texts to prove that in the East the Church was ruled and served by the ministry of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. Here, too, minor orders were founded later to give a share in the deacon's office to lesser clerks. Sub-deacons (first mentioned in the East by St. Athanasius, † 373)^[9] as well as Readers, Exorcists,^[10] and Doorkeepers,^[11] were counted as having minor orders.

The fruits of Redemption were applied in the Seven Great Mysteries, our Sacraments. They do not seem to have been drawn up into a list till later (the "Orthodox Confession" of Peter Mogilas does so in 1640), but there is abundant evidence of their use in the Byzantine Church.^[12] A very long list of Eastern Fathers might be quoted to prove that they believed in the Real Presence and in the real and objective change of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. Macarius the Great, an Egyptian monk († 390), wrote a sentence that is famous as condemning the Reformers of the 1 6th century 1,200 years before their time with a force of expression that we should now not allow ourselves: "He said: This is my Body; therefore the Eucharist is not the figure of his Body and Blood, as some have said, talking nonsense in their stupid minds, but it is in very truth the Blood and Body of Christ."^[13] St. Gregory of Nyssa,^[14] St. Cyril of Jerusalem,^[15] St. John Chrysostom,^[16] St. Cyril of Alexandria,^[17] St. John Damascene,^[18] and indeed almost all the Greek Fathers speak of this mystery at length, use words that can only be translated by "Transubstantiation,"^[19] and say that after the words of consecration what is present is the very Body of Christ, that was born of the Virgin, scourged and crucified, the Blood that flowed from his side.^[20] The old liturgies express the same faith. As one example for all, in the Coptic Liturgy the priest says: "The Body and Blood of Emmanuel our God this is in truth.—Amen. I believe, I believe, I believe, and I confess unto the last breath that this is the quickening flesh which thine only-begotten Son our Lord and our God and our Saviour Jesus Christ took of the lady of us all the holy Mother of God, St. Mary."^[21] The Orthodox liturgies are equally plain.^[22]

The East always exceeded the West in the ardour of the reverence it paid to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to the Saints, as also in the wealth of language with which it invoked them. The sober Roman mind never produced such ornate prayers to the Saints, or such enthusiastic praises of them as the great Greek Fathers.

Most of all Saints of course was the "All-holy Mother of God" the object of their devotion. Of all the generations that have called her blessed, none have done so with such eloquence as the Eastern Christians.^[23] And devotion to our Lady is still a special mark of all these Churches. It seems useless to bring quotations to prove what no one will deny.

The old liturgies, the sermons of the Fathers, are full of the Invocation of Saints in every century, back to the days when the Christians wrote prayers to their martyrs over their tombs in the catacombs. As one example from a Greek Father we may quote St. Chrysostom's sermon on SS. Berenice and Prosdoce: "Not only on this their feast, but on other days too, let us cling to them, pray to them, beg them to be our patrons. For not only living, but also dead they have great favour with God, indeed even greater favour now that they are dead. For now they bear the marks (stigmata) of Christ; and by showing these marks there is nothing that they cannot obtain of the King."^[24]

But the Byzantine Calendar contains some very astonishing names. It is well known that even far into the middle ages there was no regular process of canonization. Our present law, by which canonization takes place in Rome after a formal trial, was made by Urban VIII in 1634.^[25] In earlier ages a sort of popular consent controlled by the bishop, who admitted the Saint's name to his local litany or martyrology, was enough. There are numberless instances of a person being honoured as a Saint in one place but not in another. It is therefore quite natural that the Byzantine Church should have her own Saints. She prayed first of all to those who belong to all Christendom, St. John the Baptist, the Apostles, St. Stephen, and so on; she also admitted to her Calendar some of the greatest Roman Saints, St. Laurence, St. Gregory the Great, St. Martin, &c., just as we pray to St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. John Damascene. And then she had her own local Saints. It is these who astonish us. Never did the kingdom of heaven suffer violence as at Constantinople. Almost every Emperor who did not persecute the Church (and many who did), almost every patriarch who was not a heretic (and some who were) becomes a Saint. St. Constantine (May 21st) was in his life perhaps hardly a model to be followed, but then he was baptized on his deathbed, and baptism removes all stain of sin and guilt of punishment, St. Theodosius I (January 17th) was at any rate a great man, St. Marcian (February 17th) had a very holy wife, St. Justinian (November 15th) deserves the credit of two immortal works, the Codex and the Church of the Holy Wisdom, but what can one say for St. Theodosius II (July 29th), St. Leo I, the Emperor (January 20th), St. Theodora, the public dancing woman who became an Empress, and was always a Monophysite (November 15th), St. Justinian II (July 15th), St. Constantine IV (September 3rd)?

An even easier road to heaven is open to patriarchs, as long as they do not quarrel with Cæsar. St. Anatolius († 458, his feast is on July 3rd), we have heard of at Chalcedon (p. 36); he had been a Monophysite and Dioscur's legate at court, but he was a poet who wrote some of the earliest Greek Stichera. St. John IV the Faster († 599) deserves the gratitude of his successors for having left them the proud if ill-omened title of Œcumenical Patriarch. But not only he, every Patriarch of Constantinople from Epiphanius († 535) to Thomas I († 610) is a Saint, except only Anthimus I. It seems invidious to leave him out; but then he was a Monophysite, deposed by Pope Agapitus in 536. From 669 to 712 again every patriarch is canonized with five exceptions, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, the four Monothelites condemned by the sixth general council (680), and John VI, the accomplice of the usurper Philip Bardesanes (711–713).^[26] But the Byzantine Church has some more respectable Saints than these. There are numbers of Confessors, monks from every Laura,^[27] and a great crowd of Martyrs, massacred by Saracens, or executed by Iconoclast Emperors.

That the Eastern Churches used and reverenced Images and Relics of Saints is also too well known to need proof. This custom also they had inherited from the catacombs. In all Eastern Churches the first thing that met a stranger's eye, then as now, was the great Ikonostasis, the screen across the church shutting off the sanctuary and covered with pictures of Saints.^[28] In the East as in the West the holy Sacrifice must be offered over the relics of Saints. The enormous number of relics at Constantinople made that city a place of pilgrimage second only to Rome or Jerusalem. It is true that during the Iconoclast persecutions (726–775 and 813–842) the great majority of the Byzantine hierarchy gave way and condemned the images as much as the Emperor could wish. But that only shows their servile fear of the tyrant. The same bishops came back at once to the old custom when the persecution ceased. It was a council composed almost entirely of Eastern bishops (Nicæa II, 787) that approved of reverence paid to holy images; the great leaders of the anti-Iconoclast side were all Greeks, St. Germanus of Constantinople, St. Theodore of Studium, St. John of Damascus. The Orthodox Eastern Church still keeps every year the memory of the day (February 19, 842) on which the images were finally brought back to the Cathedral at Constantinople.^[29] The Iconoclast troubles, however, have left an interesting result to this day in the East. The old Greek idols were all statues, therefore there may be no statues in a church. There are hosts of pictures, painting, mosaic, even bass-relief, as long as the work is quite flat and shallow, but no statues (p. 129).

Three questions require some discussion. Purgatory, the Immaculate Conception and Predestination.

It has been disputed whether the Orthodox Eastern Church now agrees with the Catholic faith concerning Purgatory. That faith consists in these two articles only: 1. The souls of the just may after death still keep some stain of sin. 2. Such stain must then be expiated by punishment before they go into everlasting happiness. Whatever the modern Orthodox may think about these propositions,^[30] both were taught by the Eastern Church before the schism. The Greek Fathers, in the first place, all pray for the dead, a practice that supposes at any rate some sort of middle state after death. Saints in heaven do not want our prayers, souls in hell cannot be helped by them. So St. John Chrysostom: "It was not in vain that the Apostles settled this by law, namely, that in the venerable and sacred mysteries we should remember the dead. For they knew that the dead have much profit and advantage therefrom. At the moment when all the people stand around, their hands lifted up, and the company of priests as well, and when that Sacred Victim is offered, how should we not appease God for them by our prayers?"^[31] So also the Apostolic Constitutions: "Let us pray for our brothers who rest in Christ, that the merciful God who has received the souls of the dead, may forgive all their sins and may graciously admit them to the land of the just."^[32] Equally explicit are St. Cyril of Jerusalem,^[33] his namesake at Alexandria,^[34] St. Epiphanius,^[35] But they speak of the fire of purgatory as well. St. Basil does so in several places. "If we reveal our sin in confession, we make it like dry grass which is fit to be burnt away by the cleansing fire … but, if it does not become like dry grass, it will not be devoured and burnt up by the fire."^[36] He describes hell, and then says there is "a place fit to cleanse the soul."^[37] He certainly distinguishes the fire of purgatory from that of hell, but his obvious allusions to 1 Cor. iii. 15 make it difficult to know whether he does not conceive the fire of purgatory to be that of the Last Day. This is the case with other Fathers, both Eastern and Western. At any rate there is no doubt about the principle: there is a pain by which those are cleansed who are eventually saved. "Some shall be saved yet so as by fire." This is the essence of the doctrine of Purgatory. St. Gregory of Nyssa says of the soul of a dead man: "It will be brought before the judgement-seat, it will hear the sentence on its past life, it will receive punishment and reward according to its desert, either to be cleansed by fire according to the words of the Gospel or to be blessed and comforted in the dew of grace."^[38] A fire that cleanses, one may urge, is not the fire of hell. On the other hand, it is true that we do not find such a clear or definite conception of purgatory in these Fathers of the 4th century as in our modern catechisms. The essence of the belief is there—a middle state after death in which souls are helped by our prayers; out of this the Church gradually realized more and more clearly what she was to deduce. It is again an example of development. It seems that the Eastern Church has remained in a vaguer state of mind about this point. But there has been no serious disagreement in the past. At the Council of Florence (1439) the Greeks objected to a material fire in purgatory. They were assured that the Latin Church does not define that either and then declared themselves in agreement with the doctrine.^[39]

The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin was the subject of much discussion between the Scotist and Thomist schools during the middle ages in the West. It was not finally defined by the Pope till 1854. We can certainly not claim that it had been defined earlier by the Easterns. But it is to be noted that the devotion which culminated in that definition came to us from the East. All the Eastern Churches, orthodox or heretical, keep the feast of our Lady's Conception.^[40] It is first mentioned by Eastern theologians (St. Andrew of Crete in 675, St. John Damascene, † 744, St. Theodore of Studium, † 826, and others), whereas we hear of it in the West much later, in the 11th century.^[41] By keeping its feast then, as distinct from our Lady's birthday on Sept. 8th, these Churches imply that her conception itself is holy and worshipful. But a conception in original sin, which makes a man a child of wrath, whose stain is only removed afterwards, is not to be honoured by a feast.^[42] Moreover, there are Eastern Fathers who imply the Immaculate Conception plainly enough, joining our Lord and his Mother together as the only two who were all stainless. So St. Ephrem († c. 379) addresses our Lord: "You indeed and your Mother are the only ones who are beautiful in every way; for in you, O Lord, there is no spot, in your Mother no stain."^[43] The Acts of St. Andrew say: "As the first man was formed from immaculate earth (that is, from the earth before it was cursed by God, Gen. iii. 17), who by the sin of the tree brought death into the world, it was necessary that the perfect man, the Son of God, should be born of an Immaculate Virgin."^[44] The development of this dogma, then, went on in parallel lines in both Churches before the schism. It is to be noticed that it did so equally after the schism; the Eastern theologians, never behindhand in giving honour to the all- holy Theotokos, taught her Immaculate Conception more and more plainly, till the influence of Protestants produced an opposing school, and at last the fact that the Pope defined the doctrine was a sufficient reason for altogether denying it (p. 391).

The question of Grace and Predestination is interesting as showing the different attitude of mind in the two Churches. Although Pelagius was condemned at Ephesus side by side with Nestorius,^[45] this question never took hold of Eastern minds as it did those of the Latins. Their theological discussions were all Christological, ours Soteriological. St. Augustine, whose influence in the West has always been so great, remained almost unknown in the East, and their schools never produced any one like St. Augustine. Harnack thinks that the Greek Church is just a school of Greek philosophy overlain with a thin veneer of the Gospel, and the Roman Church is the Roman Empire with the same veneer.^[46] We may, perhaps, say that the Greek philosophical mind found the questions of Christology—of nature and person, unity and distinction—congenial, while the Latin mind, that had built up the legal system of the Empire, was naturally attracted to legal questions, such as those of predestination. In any case, the subtle system explained by St. Augustine in his de Dono perseverantiæ and de Prædestinatione sanctorum, the great field of discussion that he left to his Church, the endless controversy that has gone on amongst us ever since about the fine line between antecedent reprobation on the one hand and semi-Pelagianism on the other—all these things have never troubled Easterns at all. As always happens to people who have not gone far into the matter, they rather inclined to the opposite of St. Augustine's system, to loose and kindly principles which, if driven out of their vagueness, would become semi-Pelagian. St. John Chrysostom is an example of this. He did not intend to formally discuss the matter, he had never heard of Pelagianism, and was concerned to defend free will against Manichæism. He does in many places maintain the need of grace for every good deed,^[47] but he also, inconsistently, in other places uses such expressions as "We must first choose what is right, and then God will do his part,"^[48] expressions that would be inconceivable in Augustine. This want of definiteness about Grace and Predestination has always been a note of the Eastern Church. Long after the schism, in 1575, when the Tübingen Protestants sent an exposition of their belief to Jeremias II of Constantinople (1572–1579), the Patriarch in his answer to their Calvinism teaches pure semi-Pelagianism.^[49] Lastly, Mgr. Duchesne sees a different attitude of mind between the two Churches in the 3rd and 4th centuries even about the mystery of the Holy Trinity. They agreed, of course, entirely in the definition, in the worship of one God in three Persons; but it often happens that people see things, especially mysteries, from different angles. The Western Fathers, he thinks, start from the consubstantial nature, from the Unity of God, and they subordinate to it the mystery of the three Persons; the Easterns first consider the three Persons, each truly God, and then add to this consideration the mystery that they are nevertheless one God. He goes on to notice how this representation comes from Origen, how it reached the great Greek Fathers through semi-Arian channels, and he sees in it a reason even for the later quarrel about the Filioque. "The faith unites," he says, "but theology sometimes divides us. St. Augustine in his theory of the Trinity, in his philosophic conception of the mystery, is very far from St. Gregory of Nazianzum."^[50]

The most general observation of all would be, perhaps, that Eastern theology seems to us vague. They have had no lack of subtle philosophers before the schism and after it;^[51] but they do not seem to have ever felt that need of tabulating their articles of faith, of arranging them into a clear and consistent system, that has been a characteristic of the Western mind.^[52] Dr. Ehrhard says that the Greek Church has not had a mediæval period.^[53] She has certainly not had a scholastic period, nor any one like St. Thomas Aquinas. The perfection of system in his two Summas, that has always remained the ideal of our theology since, has never been an ideal to them.^[54] One can realize that a tradition of theology, that is influenced neither by St. Augustine nor, later, by St. Thomas, must be in many ways very different from ours. One notices this difference most plainly in modern times, but it existed already in the time before the schism. Our Fathers had no St. Thomas then, but they had the tendencies that would afterwards give his work such enormous importance.

The faith of the Orthodox Eastern Church, then, during the first eight centuries was the same as that of Rome, although naturally the difference of race and of theological traditions (since they could not understand our Fathers) gradually formed a different system of philosophy and a different way of looking at certain articles of faith. But these differences did no sort of harm to the unity of faith.

 

2. Eastern Liturgies.^[55]

After the faith come rites. Here there is a real difference. None of the Eastern Churches ever knew anything of our Roman Liturgy. In this matter the different Churches followed their own traditions from the very beginning. There has never been a parent-rite from which the later ones were derived.

The Apostles left only in the most general way the practice of meeting together for prayer, for reading the Scriptures, for singing psalms, and especially for the Breaking of Bread. This was, of course, the chief thing. As our Lord had commanded, the first Christians met together to do what he had done at the Last Supper, in memory of him. The story of that Supper in the New Testament gave the general outline of the rite. They did what he had done. They took bread and wine, gave thanks, broke, said again his own words, and then received the Blessed Sacrament in Communion. They certainly also said prayers and read parts of the Bible. This office gradually crystallized into the liturgy, and it crystallized into different liturgies in different places. Nor did any one feel any need of uniformity in rites. The faith was the same everywhere, and the essence of the liturgy was the same. For the rest, for the particular ceremonies that grew up, the prayers, and the language used, each Church was content to let the others follow their own customs.

And the Church of Rome was no exception. When her own use was at last definitely formed, she never thought of imposing it on sister-Churches in the East. It is true that the Roman rite at last became almost the only one used throughout the West; that is the result of the very close union of all Western Churches in her patriarchate. But the Eastern Churches before the schism, the Uniate Churches now, keep their own liturgies without challenge. In modern times the Popes have repeatedly ordered that these Eastern uses shall be respected, they forbid any priest to leave his own rite in order to use ours.^[56] These rites have changed very little since they were first formed. We may leave a more exact description of the actual service till we come to the Byzantine Church in modern times (p. 412) and now only trace the rise and spread of the chief liturgies.

During the first three centuries we have only a few allusions to the liturgy, too vague, or, if quotations, too short for us to be able to reconstruct the service from them. Three such allusions are famous. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (about the end of the 1st century) tells Christians "to come together on the Lord's Day, to break bread and give thanks, having confessed your sins, that your sacrifice be pure."^[57] To "give thanks" (εὐχαριστεῖν) is already the technical word for, as we still say, the Eucharist. It also tells how to celebrate this service: "Concerning the Thanksgiving (Eucharist), you shall thus give thanks. First over the cup: We give thee thanks, our Father, for the holy vine of thy son David, which thou hast shewn us by thy son Jesus; glory be to thee for ever. And over the broken (bread): We give thee thanks, our Father, for the life and knowledge which thou hast shown us by thy son Jesus; glory be to thee for ever. As this broken (bread) was scattered over the mountains^[58] and is now joined together and made one, so may thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth to thy kingdom; for thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ for ever. But no one may eat or drink of your thanksgiving, except those who have been baptized in the name of the Lord, for about this the Lord said: Do not give the holy thing to dogs."^[59]

St. Clement of Rome († 104) quotes a very beautiful prayer for all sorts and conditions of men, ending in a doxology, which, although it contains no allusion to the Holy Eucharist, has always been supposed to be an early liturgical prayer.^[60] St. Justin Martyr († 166) gives in his first Apology a much more detailed account of what Christians do on "the day of the Sun." They kiss each other and pray. "Then to him who presides over the brethren bread is brought and a cup of water and wine, and he receives them and gives praise and glory to the Father of all through the name of the Son and Holy Ghost and performs the Eucharist." St. Justin then describes how the deacons give people Holy Communion. He says, "This food we call the Eucharist … for we do not receive it as common bread nor as common wine; but, just as by the word of God Jesus Christ our Saviour, being made man, had flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we are taught that the food made a Eucharist by his prayer of thanksgiving, by which our blood and flesh are nourished, is the body and blood of Jesus made man." He then quotes our Lord's words at the Last Supper, and adds an interesting note: "And the wicked demons have imitated this, teaching it to be done in the mysteries of Mithra. For you know, or may learn, that bread and a cup of water are brought with certain words in the mysteries of the initiated."^[61]

It is in the 4th century that we find definitely constructed liturgies. By that time four types have evolved, that are the parents from which all others have since been derived. These four uses are the Roman, Gallican, Egyptian, and Syrian.^[62] These last two are the original Eastern liturgies.

The story of their development is very like that of the patriarchates that used them. In the first period the rites of the two greatest Eastern sees, Alexandria and Antioch, divide the allegiance of the East; then Constantinople evolves a rite of her own, and this rite gradually drives out the older ones, and becomes practically the only one used by the Orthodox Churches. But the heretics in Egypt and Syria keep the older liturgies.

 

3. The Syrian Rite.

This is the first that we find formally drawn up. The Apostolic Constitutions contain a liturgy that is evidently a form of the one we find soon after used all over Syria. The Apostolic Constitutions are a collection of eight books, purporting to be drawn up by the twelve Apostles, really put together from different sources in Syria in the beginning of the 5th century.^[63] The first six books are an enlargement of another apocryphal work, the Didascalia,^[64] the seventh of the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,^[65] the eighth book contains the liturgy, then follow the eighty-five apocryphal "Canons of the Apostles" that were accepted by the Quinisextum in 692.^[66] Two circumstances about the liturgy have led people to suppose that it is the oldest we have: First, it contains no Memory of the Saints, no names are mentioned, not even that of the Blessed Virgin; secondly, it has no Our Father. These two omissions are unique. How far they prove greater antiquity is another question. Undoubtedly after the Council of Ephesus (431) a greater devotion to the holy Mother of God spread throughout the Orthodox Churches, and the invocation of her under this title was a protestation of orthodoxy. But prayers have been added to liturgies continually, and the very oldest now contain later additions, so that a use that has a Memory of Saints, even of late Saints, may be an old one to which this addition was made afterwards. The omission of the Our Father is curious, but proves nothing at all. Christians are told to use it "as the Lord commanded in his Gospel," three times a day, in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. Indeed the perpetually fluid state of a liturgy in use makes it impossible to fix its date. They all gradually evolved and became fixed from what were at first extemporary prayers, and after having been written down they still received additions and modifications.^[67]

Goar and Renaudot thought that this liturgy had never been in actual use anywhere. On the other hand Probst^[68] and Bickell^[69] think it was used even in the West during the first three centuries. Connected with this use is the Liturgy of St. James, the original rite from which all the other Syrian ones were derived. It still exists in Greek.^[70] It was probably first used in Jerusalem, since it alone contains a reference to that city. The "Intercession," immediately after the prayer of Consecration, begins: "We offer this to thee, O Lord, for thy holy places, which thou hast glorified by the appearance of thy Christ, and by the coming of thy Holy Ghost, chiefly for the holy and glorious Sion, the mother of all Churches, and then for thy holy. Catholic and Apostolic Church throughout the world."^[71] As its name says, it was believed to have been composed by St. James the Less, the first Bishop of Jerusalem, and from that city it spread throughout Syria. The order of this liturgy is roughly as follows: first the Mass of the Catechumens, consisting of prayers, unrhythmical hymns, and readings from the Old and New Testaments (corresponding to our Mass to the end of the Gospel). Then follows the Mass of the Faithful: the bread and wine are solemnly brought to the altar, the Nicene Creed is said, then follow the Kiss of Peace and the "Anaphora," that is, the Consecration prayer, beginning "The Lord be with you," "Lift up your hearts," "It is truly meet and just," &c., as our Preface. The long prayer contains the words of Institution: "Take, eat, this is my Body broken for you and given for the remission of sins," and "Drink of this all; this is my Blood of the New Testament, shed for you and for many and given for the remission of sins." These words are said aloud, and each time the people answer Amen. Then comes the Invocation (Ἐπίκλησις), a prayer that God may send the Holy Ghost to change this bread and wine into the Body and Blood of his Son, some more prayers, the reading of the Diptychs containing the names of people to be prayed for, the Memory of the Saints (our Communicantes), the Our Father, a sort of Elevation with the words "Sancta Sanctis" (τὰ ἁγια τοῖς ἁγίοις), the breaking of the Host of which a part is put into the chalice, the communion of priest and people (always under both kinds), then a prayer of thanksgiving and the blessing and dismissal of the people. That is in general terms the order of the liturgy in Syria in the 5th century. At first there was no special liturgical language. Greek was used where the people understood it best, that is, in Antioch and probably the other chief towns, and Syriac in the country where the people spoke nothing else. Then came the great Monophysite schism after Chalcedon, and each language became a distinctive mark of one of the two sides. The Melkites used Greek,^[72] the Jacobites Syriac. But as the Melkite Patriarchate gradually became more and more dependent on Constantinople, it began to use the Byzantine rite, till at last the Greek Liturgy of St. James almost entirely disappeared (p. 395). But the Jacobites always kept their Syrian Liturgy of St. James and evolved out of it with slight changes a number of daughter-rites.

 

4. The Egyptian Rite.

Here exactly the same development took place. The original rite of the Church of Egypt is the Liturgy of St. Mark. The manuscripts that exist of it are much later than those of the Syrian Liturgy, and show it only after the Monophysite schism and after both Melkites and Copts have added to and otherwise modified it. But by noticing what is common to all the liturgies that grew out of it, one can form a fairly clear idea of the original service of about the 4th century, before the divisions came. That liturgy follows in general the same construction as the Syrian one. The chief difference is this. All liturgies have a great supplication for people of every class, living and dead, together with a Memory of the Saints by name. Our Roman rite has now for some reason got its Memory of Saints and Supplication divided; some of it comes before and the rest after the Consecration ("Te igitur, Memento vivorum, Communicantes"; then the Consecration; then "Memento defunctorum, Nobis quoque peccatoribus," with a second list of Saints).^[73]

The Syrian rite has it all after the Consecration; but in Egypt it all came before, between the "Vere dignum et iustum est" and the Sanctus, in the middle of what we should call the Preface;^[74] so their Preface is much longer and their Consecration comes at a much later point in the Mass than in Syria or at Rome. For the rest, the Liturgy of St. Mark (which, of course, was really no more composed by him than the Syrian one by St. James) is divided into the Mass of the Catechumens and the Mass of the Faithful, has an Epiklesis, the words of Institution said aloud and communion under both kinds, just as that of St. James and indeed all Eastern uses. But the actual prayers are different. One of the petitions in its Supplication is: "Draw up the waters of the river to their proper measure; gladden and renew the face of the earth in their rising."^[75] This is, of course, the yearly rising of the Nile. At first Greek or Coptic were used indiscriminately; then the Melkites kept to Greek and the Copts to their own language.^[76] The Copts evolved a number of liturgies out of the old one. Since the 12th century the Melkites use the Byzantine Liturgy.

 

5. The Byzantine Rite.

The Church of Constantinople had a liturgy of her own attributed to St. Basil († 379). It seems to be a modification of the Syrian rite. Later it was much shortened by St. John Chrysostom († 407), and this shorter form was the one commonly used, though on a few days in the year that of St. Basil was kept; for the Mass of the Presanctified, which we have only on Good Friday, but which they celebrate every day in Lent, except Saturdays and Sundays, they use the Liturgy of St. Gregory Dialogos (our St. Gregory the Great, to whom they attribute it). These three liturgies make up the use of Constantinople, which spread throughout the Orthodox East as the Church for which it was composed became the head of all the others. It is now celebrated almost exclusively in a number of languages throughout the Orthodox Churches, and is, after our Roman Liturgy, by far the most widely spread of all (p. 397). The Armenian Liturgy is modified from that of Constantinople. Lastly, ever since the Nestorian schism there has been a group of Nestorian Liturgies in Syriac, used by that Church. In the Byzantine Church, then, the three liturgies it used were to the people as obvious and necessary a way of celebrating the Holy Mysteries as at the same time the Roman Mass was at Rome. The rite they saw most often was that of St. John Chrysostom. It was accompanied by a great deal of ritual, and said in gorgeous vestments, but in great part behind the screen that cut off the sanctuary from the church. The preliminary prayers (before the "Little Entry") had not yet been added to it; otherwise hardly anything has changed since, so that any Orthodox church to-day will show almost exactly the same vestments, ceremonies and rites as those that Justinian knew (p. 412). Besides the liturgy in every church the Divine Office (p. 418) was sung daily.

 

6. Byzantine Piety and Morals.

Pilgrimages to the tombs of saints, famous sanctuaries, most of all to the holy places of Palestine, were very popular. There were a great number of Sacramentals. The sign of the Cross is used by every one continually. At Constantinople was a large piece of the true Cross on which people swore to keep their engagements, and they wore relics of it in little crossshaped reliquaries of gold or silver round their necks. Holy water was blessed on the Epiphany (the Feast of our Lord's baptism)^[77] and used for sprinkling houses, ships, and anything that was to be blessed. Water was poured into a chalice and then out again, and became holy water; even water used by any specially holy monk for washing was kept as sacred.^[78] Oil taken from lamps that burned before sacred pictures and relics was used as a Sacramental; so also the holy bread (Ἀντίδωρον) broken oif from the host before consecration and given to the people who did not receive Holy Communion. A favourite devotion was the Metanoia (Μετάνοια, repentance). It consists in prostrating oneself till the forehead touches the ground, while the weight of the body rests on the feet and hands; this was repeated a great number of times, and each time the penitent said, "Kyrie eleison," or some such formula.^[79] The Eulogion was a holy gift, any small object given by a holy man and kept as a sort of Sacramental. Besides the Sacrament of Penance, it was considered a pious practice to confess one's sins to any virtuous person, chiefly to a monk, who was not a priest and could therefore not give absolution. The extreme punishment that the Church could inflict on her children was excommunication. All heretics and schismatics were ipso facto excommunicate. Any ecclesiastical intercourse with them involved the same punishment; to sign their formulas, receive any sacrament from them, sing psalms in their company, even to dine with them, or to have any civil relations, beyond what was absolutely necessary, involved excommunication. One may not accept their gifts to churches, nor pray for them publicly, nor say Mass for them after their death.^[80] Even after they are converted back to orthodoxy, some of the stigma of their former heresy clings to them. Priests may not celebrate the liturgy, at any rate until they have done a long penance; if an orthodox Christian dines with a converted heretic, the convert may not say grace.

Meanwhile the great popular feasts, most of which have come down from pagan days—the Carnival, the feast of Spring in May, the Brumalia in November, &c.—are the occasion of every sort of licence; magic flourishes, and strolling magicians make fortunes by curing diseases, finding riches, and making women beautiful. The Court continually becomes a hotbed of unnameable vice.^[81] Byzantine society during all the middle ages, from Constantine (330) till the city fell (1453), was by far the richest, most splendid, and most comfortable in Europe. It was also an old society, long established, and, at any rate comparatively, secure. These circumstances generally make for luxury, and then for vice. But it was not wholly bad. The Moslems first attacked the legions in 634, two years after Mohammed's death; from that time they never ceased making war on the Empire; they came to the gates of Constantinople in 673, and again in 716, but they did not succeed in taking the city till 1453. A State that could keep such fierce enemies, first the Saracens and then the Turks, at bay for eight centuries could not have been altogether corrupt. And there was repeatedly a revival at the Roman Court. After a time of utter corruption and decay, some strong man would get hold of the power and would sternly reform everything. Then the legions would again go forth and drive the barbarians back from the provinces they had taken.

In the long list of Emperors, from Constantine I to Constantine XII, there is a fair proportion of great names: some of them were very great indeed. Justinian I (527–565) was one of the greatest men that ever ruled anywhere. While he was drawing up the Code of Roman Law, that has been the standard for almost all the States of Europe ever since, while he was building the most wonderful church that the world has ever seen, his legions were defeating the Persians and driving the barbarian out of Italy, Spain, and Africa, till once more Cæsar ruled from the Pillars of Hercules to the Euphrates, and from the Danube to the African desert, Heraclius (610–641) finally broke the power of the old enemy of Rome, the "Great King" of Persia; Leo III, the Isaurian (717–740), met the first rush of the Saracens, and first stopped their victorious career by driving them back from the walls of his own city; Basil II, the Slayer of the Bulgars (963–1025), shattered the power of other barbarians, who threatened to overrun the Empire, and once more carried the Eagles back to the Danube. Most of these Emperors interfered in theological discussions, and persecuted the Church with their edicts; but they were very valiant men and mighty lords, who again joined to the Roman name the terror of the Roman arms. Indeed no State could hold out for ever against the endless hordes of enemies that one after another came pouring up against the frontiers of the Empire. That it withstood them for so many centuries; that it was the leader of Europe in civilization, while it was its bulwark against the common enemy for so long, gives New Rome a right to be remembered as one of the very greatest States in history.

 

7. Byzantine Art.

The manner of building and painting, the tradition of jewellery, metal work and decoration that we call Byzantine, are so closely connected with the history and liturgy of the Orthodox Eastern Church, that we ought not to pass them over here without some notice. The Byzantine question is one of those that are most disputed by archaeologists. When the Romans had come under the influence of Greece, they, or their Greek artists, covered the Empire with the buildings and statues that we call Roman-Greek. This manner lasted without much development till about the end of the 3rd century. As far as Christians during this time were able to practise the fine arts, they naturally followed the tradition of their time. The catacomb paintings obviously belong to the same school as those of Pompeii. They are, of course, poorer and rougher, because they are the work of a poor and persecuted community that could not afford the service of any great artist. About the time of Diocletian (284–305) a new influence crosses this Roman-Greek school. For centuries there had been an Asiatic manner quite distinct from Greek work. It had come down from an almost fabulous age. The temple that Solomon had made Phœnicians build for him, the city of Ninive, the palace where Daniel stood before Nabuchodonosor, were built in it. The Persians had learnt it from the Babylonians, the Seleucid kings from the Persians. In the North of Syria there still stand a number of cities built in the Asiatic style, though already under Greek influence. Palmyra and Baalbek are the best known examples. They have arches and cupolas set on a square. Diocletian went to live at Asia for a time, and he brought back a taste for Asiatic architecture that still may be seen in his palace in Dalmatia. It is the crossing of these two traditions, Roman-Greek and Asiatic, that produced what we call Byzantine art. Just as they began to be combined two events happened that gave to the new style a sudden importance. Constantinople was built and the Christians, at last set free, began to cover the Empire with churches. Both the new city and the new religion naturally used the manner of building that was then in vogue. Of course no one was conscious of founding a new style. Architecture, like every other art, has followed a natural and gradual development from the beginning, at any rate till the Renaissance. First one improvement was added, then another; and it is only long afterwards that people, seeing their buildings, can mark changes sufficiently important to warrant a new name. Generally the change is so gradual that no one can say exactly when it took place. But in this case the city of Constantine and the Churches appear at such a definite moment of the evolution and themselves help so much to mark and spread the new movement, that nowhere in the history of architecture before the Renaissance can one draw so clear a line as between the old Roman-Greek and the new Byzantine styles. And no style is so well named as this last. The buildings of Byzantium are its classical examples, and represent its highest perfection. It has always been the artistic expression of the Churches that obey the Byzantine Patriarch, or were founded by him, and it still exists, being the only real and unconscious artistic tradition in Europe, in the Byzantine monasteries. The Byzantine question is only whether it really spread over Southern Europe from Constantinople, or whether the same influences, working in parallel lines, produced the same effect independently. In Italy and Southern France, at Rome, especially at Ravenna, are buildings, carving, most of all mosaics, that obviously belong to the same school as those in Constantinople, Illyricum, and Asia Minor. It used to be supposed that these were the work of Greek artists sent from the Bosphorus, and the fact that the best examples of such work are found in Ravenna, which had most connection with Constantinople (since the Emperor's Exarch sat there), was looked upon as proof. It was in this sense that people used to call the Ravenna mosaics Byzantine. But now the other theory has come to the fore. It is urged that much of the work at Ravenna was done while the Goth ruled there, before Belisarius conquered it back for the Emperor (540),^[82] and that Theodoric was not likely to have sent to Constantinople for workmen. As far as there is any evidence from documents it points to Italian artists: there seem to have been schools in Rome, Naples, Milan and Ravenna, that owed nothing to Constantinople.^[83] In spite of this, since all the work from the 4th century till the Lombards came to Italy (568) forms, together with Eastern work, as much one style as any in history, and since one must have a name for this style, the word Byzantine will do as well as any, and is far more reasonable than most such names of periods. We are here concerned with what was Byzantine in every sense, the local manner of Constantinople. From Constantine to Justinian is the period of formation. The city was begun in 328, dedicated on May 11, 330. Very little of the work of this first period remains. Constantine planned out the imperial quarter of the city as it has been ever since. On the southern point of the promontory, looking over the Propontis, he set up a series of connected buildings that made up the Residence. Right over the water was the palace, where Csesar might watch his ships sailing out with the legions on board, or bringing the spoil back through the Hellespont. Behind the palace was the Hippodrome, where the races were held, the real centre of the life of Constantinople, the Forum, Senate-house, and the Emperor's church, dedicated to the Holy Wisdom of God. All these buildings have gradually been replaced by others even more sumptuous than the ones to adorn which Constantine ransacked the Empire.^[84] The problem of this first period was to set a cupola on a square plan. The cupola is for Byzantine building what cross-vaulting is for Gothic. The older Romans had set it on a round wall, as at the Pantheon. Now they wanted to set it on a square base over their churches. At first all Christian churches had been built as long basilicas, even in the East; an example is St. Demetrius at Thessalonica (Saloniki). Then throughout Eastern Europe they began to build churches rather of the type of our baptisteries—round, or square, or eight-sided figures with apses on every side. Constantine's Golden Church at Antioch was the first famous example of this; it was copied in a few cases even in the West.^[85] In Thessalonica is also one of the earliest of these round churches, St. George, a huge circle with a dome, like the Pantheon. But a circle is not a convenient plan for a church, so they wanted to put their cupola on a square. At first they simply cut off the corners by bridging across them, and on the eight sides thus made they set their round dome. The triumph of Byzantine engineering, and the greatest event of this development, was the discovery, gradually approached through infinite clumsy makeshifts, of the pendentive.

Then the time had come for the most splendid of all churches. In 532, while Justinian was reigning, for the second time the cathedral church of his city was burned down. The Emperor determined this time to build a church that should be the wonder of the world. Like its predecessors, it was to be dedicated to the Holy Wisdom (ἡ ἁγία σοφία), that is, to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, God the Son, the Word, to whom the text is understood to refer: "I, Wisdom, dwell with prudence … the Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way," &c. (Prov. viii. 12–36). No other building has anything like as much importance in the history of architecture as the Hagia Sophia. Other great churches are, each of them, only one out of many of the same kind; this church rose, after humble and tentative efforts, as the one great example, the model on which a whole style was founded. It is not the daughter, it is the mother, of Byzantine architecture. Nothing that went before can be compared to it, and afterwards for centuries, down to our own time, Byzantine artists have had before them this one model, copied and imitated by all, but never rivalled.

PLAN OF THE CHURCH OF HOLY WISDOM. The architects of Justinian's great church deserve that their names should be remembered: they were Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus, both from Asia Minor. Under them were one hundred foremen, under each foreman a hundred masons. These ten thousand workmen built with small bricks a church on this plan. A vast cupola rests, through pendentives, on four great arches that join as many massive piers. East and west against these arches rest half cupolas on semicircles; from each of them, again, open out three smaller domed apses. North and south the arches are filled in with walls pierced by two galleries of arcading that open on to aisles divided into two stories. The outer walls of these aisles meet eastern and western walls, forming an almost perfect square.^[86] Along the west front runs a double narthex, from which nine doors lead into the church, and in front of the narthex was a great atrium (forecourt), now destroyed. The cupola which crowns the pyramid of curving lines is not high. The Byzantine builders always understood the difference between a dome and a tower, and made their domes low and very broad, like the curve of the sky. No other covering gives such a sense of vastness to a space as these saucer-shaped cupolas.

To adorn his great church Justinian spent fabulous sums. The old Greek builders had been content with the more reticent beauty of white marble. Justinian wanted a dazzling gorgeousness of gold, coloured marble, mosaic, precious stones. So from every corner of the Empire the governors had to send columns taken from old temples, marble, jewels, and incredible sums of money. Eight pillars of verde antico came from Ephesus, as many of porphyry from Rome. Egypt was the richest province of the Empire, and a year's taxes from the whole of Egypt went to pay for one ambo. The altar was of solid gold, gleaming with emeralds. Six thousand gilt candlesticks hung around, and the light from their burning candles glowed back from rubies and sapphires, sheets of gold and silver, enamel and mosaic and marble of every colour, so that the church must have shone with a dazzling splendour, like that of the city of God in the Apocalypse. Above the doors of the narthex, in the tympanum, was a huge mosaic of our Lord. It is the type of the Byzantine Christ. Very stately he sits on a throne, looking across the city with a calm majesty that makes him seem far removed from our troubles. His right hand is lifted up to give the "Eastern" blessing—two fingers raised, and the third touching the thumb; in the left hand he holds a book: "Peace be with you. I am the Light of the world." On either side are medallions of our Lady and St. Michael, and, kneeling, before him is Cæsar in his diadem. It is the lord of the world worshipping the Lord of Heaven.

The church was dedicated on St. Stephen's Day, December 27, 537.^[87] When Justinian saw it finished he said: "Glory be to God, who has found me worthy to do such a work. Solomon, I have beaten you." Alas! next year an earthquake brought down the cupola. They built it up again at once, and used bricks specially made at Rhodes, of which five weighed no more than one ordinary one. They were so anxious not to shake the building that, when they had to bring down the inner scaffolding, they flooded the church with water, and let the great poles fall into that. This is the cupola that one may still see rising, a gleaming white curve, above the marble quays and the slender, dark cypress trees from the waters of the Propontis. No church is of such importance in the history of architecture, and no church has been so bound up with the history of a people as the Holy Wisdom. It was under this dome that seventy-four Emperors were crowned. Here Ignatius refused Holy Communion to Bardas; the Synod of 869 deposed Photius; the three Legates, in 1054, said, "Let God see to it and judge," as they laid the Bull of Excommunication on the altar. It was at the old altar under the dome of the Holy Wisdom that, in 1204, the Latin Mass announced to the angry Byzantines that they must now obey a Latin lord, and that, fifty-seven years later, the Greek Liturgy told them that their own Emperor was restored. Here Constantine XII received Holy Communion on the morning of May 29, 1453, before he went out to die for his city and his Empire, and now, on a column in the church, you may still see the blood-red mark of Mohammed the Conqueror's hand. Since the Turk sits on the throne of Justinian, his faith is preached in Justinian's church. He has covered up the old Saints with the names of the four Khalifahs, and has put a Mihrab pointing to Mecca behind the place where the old altar stood. To the Turk the church has been almost as important as to the Christian: it has been the model of a whole school of his architecture, too.^[88] But whatever remnants of enthusiasm or chivalry remained among the Christians under his rule clung to the great church they had lost. The Holy Wisdom was a type of the old Empire, and the rayahs who dreamed of the day when their land should once more be Christian and free, summed up all their hope in the one picture of its reconsecration.

They have taken the City, they have taken it, they have taken Thessalonica,
They have taken the Holy Wisdom, the great Cathedral,
Which had three hundred altar-bells and sixty two great bells to chime.
For every bell was a priest, for every priest a deacon.
And as the Most Holy was taken, and the Lord of the world went out,
A voice was heard from heaven, a voice from the Angels' mouth:
"Leave off your psalms," they said, "set down the Most Holy, and send
Send to the land of the Franks, and tell them to come back to take it,
To take the golden Cross, and the book of the holy Gospels,
And to take the holy altar, lest the Turks should destroy or defile it."
But when our Lady heard of this, she wept that the city had fallen.
Queen and Lady, do not weep, do not lament, but take comfort.

Some day, after years have gone past, once more the great Church shall be yours.^[89]

But architecture was not the only Byzantine art. It seems at first strange that, whereas the sculpture of the human figure was the greatest achievement of old Greek art, it should have suddenly and entirely come to an end about the year 300. But this fact is the result of Christian feeling. To Christians the beautiful Greek statues were simply the homes of unclean devils. It was for refusing to worship these gods that their fathers had been torn and mangled in the circus; so they would have nothing like them. They had no prejudice against images; on the contrary, theologically, they have always held the same position as we do, and practically the holy Ikons play a much more conspicuous part in the East than in the West. But the Ikon must be flat—it may be mosaic, painting, even bass-relief, but—especially since the Iconoclast troubles—the flatter the picture the more orthodox it is. The Byzantine artists could carve stone with amazing skill, as the capitals of their columns show, only it must not be the human figure. They carved twisted leaves and networks of twining branches, geometric patterns and crosses, baskets with birds peeping out, lions and lambs, doves and peacocks. The feeling of their carving alone shows that Byzantine work has quite definitely crossed the line from the classical to the mediæval manner. Their instinct was for gorgeousness, and they found a natural outlet for it in the glowing colours of marble and small mosaic. The Romans had used mosaic for their pavements, but now it became incomparably richer and brighter, and was put along walls and spandrils and to line domes. Whether made by Greek artists or not, the mosaics at Ravenna are the classical example of this work, Byzantine in manner at any rate. There is no perspective, no multitude of shades to make the figures look plastic, no shadows. Against backgrounds of gold or blue the figures stand all in one plane, Justinian and his Court, Theodora and her ladies, long processions of Saints in blues and greens and scarlet, the colours put sharply against one another in broad, flat masses, sometimes covered with patterns and with black lines to outline the folds. Very rich and sumptuous, standing as calm and as stately as the palm trees between them, these figures still show the image of that court by the Bosphorus, where the Roman name still lingered, that was lifted above the new world our fathers were hewing out of its lost provinces by the unapproachable majesty of its memories. Byzantine jewellery and metal work, too, were famous throughout Europe all through the middle ages. To set rubies and sapphires in gold with glowing enamel and strings of pearls was work in which these artists revelled. When the Crusaders came from their grey castles to Constantinople, they were dazzled by the magnificence they saw at the Emperor's Court. They told, when they came back, almost fabulous tales of the wonders they had seen, the costly toys, golden lions that roared, trees of jewels where enamelled birds flapped their wings and sang, thrones of ivory and sheets of porphyry, and then the incredible cleverness of those "Romans" in the East. No wonder the plain-living Frankish knights were intoxicated with the sight of such splendour, and that all over Western Europe the distant Roman Court became a sort of fairy tale of half mythical sumptuousness.^[90] And the influence of what the Franks had seen there, of the treasures they sometimes brought back, was felt during all the middle ages. Still the King of Hungary wears a gorgeous piece of Byzantine jewellery with Byzantine enamels as the crown of St. Stephen and the symbol of the Apostolic kingdom, and amid the fields of Essex you may go into Copford Church and see above the altar the figure of the Byzantine Christ in glory, with his court of Saints and the signs of the zodiac, who has come all this way from the Church of the Holy Wisdom.

 

Summary.

Until the schism, then, the faith of the Eastern Churches was that of Rome. The development of doctrine went on in parallel lines in East and West, and the communication between the Churches, the councils, where bishops from different countries met, controlled and guided it. What differences there were did not affect points of faith; they were the natural result of different temperaments and attitudes of mind. There were real differences in ritual. The Eastern Churches have always had their own liturgies, as venerable and as beautiful as ours. But all the liturgies contain the same essential elements, they all obey our Lord's command to do as he did at the Last Supper, in memory of him. The other religious practices of Eastern Christians already had a markedly Eastern character. The morals of the Emperor's Court often sank very low; but there were continual revivals, and Constantinople succeeded in keeping off the Moslem for eight centuries. It was the leading city in Europe in the arts of civilization. Its architecture, painting, mosaic, form the bridge between classical Greek work and our mediæval art, while the unequalled splendour of the Court where the Roman Emperor still reigned made it the wonder of the world. In all these things the line that connects our civilization with that of the old Roman world and with the Greek States, the unbroken chain of continuity in European civilization, runs for many centuries through Constantinople.

 

1. That is, generally so in spite of a number of schisms, p. 96.
2. Quoted in Denzinger, I, I, L, N, &c.
3. In Rome apparently only since the time of Justinian (527–565); Duchesne Ég. sép. p. 80.
4. P. 372.
5. Nor do their descendants now, see p. 365.
6. The letter is quoted by Eusebius, H.E. vi. 45.
7. Ep. ad Parmen. ii. 11.
8. Eusebius, H.E. v. 28.
9. Hist. Arian. 60, M.P.G. xxv. 765.
10. Both mentioned by the Synod of Antioch in 341, Can. 10.
11. Syn. Laod. 370, Can. 24.
12. Pargoire: Église byzantine, pp. 93, 224, 336. They must have been tabulated long before 1640. At Lyons in 1274 the number seven was recognized by the Greeks.
13. M.P.G. x. 1374.
14. Or. Cat. M.P.G. xlv. 93, seq.
15. Catech. Myst. 4, 20; M.P.G. xxxiii. 1098, 1123.
16. Hom. 82 (al.83) in Mt. Hom. 45 (46), 42, 17; M.P.G. lxi. 199; lxiii. 131, &c.
17. In Mt. xxvi. 27; M.P.G. lxxiii. 519.
18. De fide orth. M.P.G. xciv. 1146, seq.
19. μεταστοιχειοῦσθαι, μεταβάλλεσθαι, μεταποιεῖσθαι, μετουσίωσις, κ.τ.λ.
20. In the texts referred to. Cf. Pesch: Præl. dogm. vi. prop. lxiv.
21. Brightma: Eastern Liturgies, p. 185.
22. Brightman, p. 387, the Epiklesis of St. John Chrysostom's liturgy: "Make this bread the precious Body of thy Christ," &c.; p. 393, the Manual Acts: "The Lamb of God is broken and divided," &c. All the Epikleses are equally explicit.
23. Hurter: SS. PP. opuscula selecta, xii. and xxxiv. de gloriosa Dei Genitrice Maria.
24. Hom. de SS. Berenice et Prosdoce, n. 7.
25. Alexander III in 1170 had already forbidden any one to canonize a Saint without the consent of the Roman See. The decree is in our Corpus Juris, in the Decretals, iii. 45, "de rel. et ven. SS." i. Audivimus.
26. Philip was an Armenian soldier who murdered the Emperor Justinian II. After two years' reign he was deposed, and his eyes were put out by Anastasius II (713–716), The Patriarch John promptly implored forgiveness of the Pope and the Emperor; he was allowed to be Patriarch till his death (715), but he had ruined his chance of being canonized.
27. A Laura (λαῦρα) is a Greek monastery.
28. εἰκωνόστασις = Picture-stand.
29. This is the "Feast of Orthodoxy" kept on the first Sunday of Lent.
30. See p. 388.
31. In Phil. hom. 3, 4. M.P.G. lxii. 204.
32. Const. Apost. viii. 41. M.P.G. i. 1143.
33. Cat. Myst. v. 9. M.P.G. xxxiii. 1115.
34. M.P.G. lxxvi. 1423.
35. Hær. lxxv. 3, 7, 8. M.P.G. xlii. 514, seq.
36. M.P.G. XXX. 519. This fire is certainly a purgatorial one, since it is to be desired that it should burn away our sins.
37. In Is. V. 14. M.P.G. xxx. 435.
38. M.P.G xlvi. 167.
39. For the whole question see Pesch: Præl. dogm. ix. p. 285. Hergenröther: Photius, iii. pp. 643–652. Loch: Das Dogma der griechischen Kirche vom Purgatorium (Regensburg, 1842).
40. Dec. 9. "The child-begetting of the mother of the Mother of God, Anne." This feast is kept by Melkites, Albanians, Jacobites, Copts, Armenians, Nestorians, Maronites, and all Churches in communion with Constantinople.
41. It is supposed to have been introduced by St. Anselm of Canterbury († 1109).
42. St. Augustine's sermon on St. Cyprian: "We should not keep his birthday even if we knew the date, because on that day he contracted original sin" (Sermon 310, n. 1). The Church only keeps three birthdays—of our Lord, our Lady, and St. John the Baptist, because he, too, was sanctified before his birth.
43. Carm. Nisibena, ed. Bickell, p. 122.
44. M.P.G. xi. 1226. The point of the comparison is that Adam was made from the earth as yet unstained by the curse of original sin—so also Christ. For this question see Hurter: Theol. dogm. comp. iii. pp. 464–479. Pesch: Præl. dogm. iii. pp. 160–172.
45. Can. i. 4.
46. Wesen des Christentums, ii. 3, 4.
47. Hom. in Mt. lxix. 2. M.P.G. lxviii. 2. In Mt. xxxix. 4. M.P.G. lvii. 438. In Eph. 2. M.P.G. Ixii. 33, seq.
48. Hom. xii. in Hebr. M.P.G. lxiii. 99. See also Hom. xlii. in Gen. i. M.P.G. liv. 385.
49. Acta theolog. Vitenb. et Hier. Pt. i. 143. (See p. 253.)
50. Duchesne: Églises'séparées, pp. 83–87.
51. To discuss theology has always been the delight of Greeks of every rank. It was the theological Emperors who caused the endless troubles of the Church from Constantius (337–361) to the schism. At the other end of the social scale "the city is full of workmen and slaves who are all theologians," says St. Gregory of Nyssa († c. 395), "if you ask a man to change money, he will tell you how the Son differs from the Father; if you ask the price of a loaf he will argue that the Son is less than the Father; you want to know if the bath be ready and you are told that the Son was made out of nothing."
52. An example of this is their confusion about the meaning of the words οὐσία, ὑπόστασις, πρόσωπον. Cf. Franzelin, de Verbo incarn. Th. 21.
53. Der Kathol. u. d. xx Jhrdt. (1902), p. 23.
54. The Summa theol. was first done into Greek by Demetrios Kydones in the 14th century.
55. The word Liturgy in classical Greek means a public work (λεῖτον ἔργον. λειτουργεῖν, to perform a public service). The LXX and N.T. (Luke i. 23; Heb. ix. 21) use it for the temple service. In the East of Europe Liturgy means only the service of consecrating the Holy Eucharist, i.e., exactly the same as our word Mass.
56. So various constitutions of Clement VIII (1592–1605), Paul V (1605–1621), Benedict XIII (1724–1730), Benedict XIV (1740–1758), and the Constitution Orientalium dignitas Ecclesiarum of Leo XIII on November 30, 1894.
57. Doctrina XII Apost. xiv. 1.
58. When it was growing as corn. The idea is that, just as the grains of corn are gathered together from all parts and kneaded into bread, so may Christians from all lands become one in the kingdom of God.
59. Doctr. XII Ap. ix.
60. Clem. Rom. 1, ad Cor. lix.–lxi.
61. Iustini Apologia, I 65, 66.
62. Mgr. Duchesne thinks that these four may be reduced to two. The Gallican use is derived from the Syrian, and the Egyptian one may be taken from Rome. Origines du Culte chrétien, p. 54.
63. Epiphanius († 403) quotes them.
64. Discovered in a Syriac version in 1854.
65. This is the famous Didache (διδαχὴ τῶν δώδεκαι ἀποστόλων) found by Philotheos Bryennios, Metropolitan of Nicomedia, in 1883.
66. Ed. princ. by Fr. Turrianus, Venice, 1563. Cf. Funk, Die Apost. Konstitutionen (Rottenburg, 1891), and Bardenhewer's Patrologie (Freiburg, 1894), pp. 28–31.
67. The text of the liturgy in the Apost. Const. is given by Brightman, op. cit. pp. 2–30.
68. Liturgie der ersten 3 Jhrhten (Tubingen, 1870), § 86.
69. Kraus: Realenz. ii. p. 310.
70. Brightman, pp. 31–68.
71. Ibid. p. 54.
72. There was, however, a Melkite Liturgy in Syriac.
73. The order in which our Canon now stands is a great problem. Cf. P. Drews: Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Kanons in der römischen Messe (Tübingen, 1902). He connects it with the Syrian Liturgy and thinks it was turned right round and the second half put first in the time of Gelasius I (492–496).
74. It must be remembered that, although our missals now have the words "Canon Missæ" printed after the Preface, from the beginning of the Preface to the end of the "Libera nos, quæsumus, Domine," is all one long prayer, the Eucharistic prayer, of which then the Preface is a part.
75. Brightman, p. 127.
76. Greek St. Mark in Brightman, pp. 113–143; Coptic St. Mark, pp. 144–188.
77. On the Epiphany both East and West keep the memory of three things—the coming of the Wise Men, our Lord's baptism, His first miracle. The first of these things has become the most important to us, the second to them.
78. All Eastern people, especially Mohammedans, follow this unclean custom. In the days of the Mahdi in the Sudan his followers drank the water in which he had washed as a protection against sickness. Cf. Ohrwalder: Ten Years in the Mahdi's Camp (1895), p. 182.
79. This also is a common practice among Eastern people of every religion. Every one knows how much Mohammedans use it.
80. To offer the holy liturgy for the repose of a person's soul was a universal custom long before the Byzantine period. The Apost. Const. determine that it shall be done on the third, ninth, fortieth and anniversary days after death.
81. Cf. Pargoire, op. cit. pp. 319, seq., 344, 348, 350, seq.
82. The "Orthodox Baptistery" (S. Ioannes in Fonte) was built and decorated about 430, the tomb of Gallia Placidia about 450, St. Apollinaris the New and the Arian Baptistery (S. Maria in Cosmedin) by Theodoric (493–526), St. Vitalis, in which are the portraits of Justinian and Theodora, in 547 by the Bishop Maximian, who stands in his dalmatic, pænula and pallium, holding a cross, by Justinian's side. Maximian was bishop from 546 to 556, and also built St. Apollinaris in Classe, in 549. The green colour of these mosaics is special to Ravenna, green and gold, like its marshes.
83. Kraus (Gesch. der Christl. Kunst, i, pp. 427, seq.) distinguishes three periods at Ravenna—pure Roman, Ostrogothic, Byzantine. Beissel (Altchristl. Kunst u. Liturgie in Italien, kap. 4, pp. 118–221) is inclined to see Roman and not Constantinopolitan work throughout, even in the mosaics of St. Vitalis that represent Justinian and Theodora with their courts. For the Byzantine question see especially Strzygowski: Orient oder Rom. (Leipzig, 1901), who traces all Byzantine work almost exclusively to Asia.
84. St. Jerome says: "Constantinople was dedicated amid the nakedness of almost all the other cities" (Chron. a.d. 332).
85. See p. 15, n. 2.
86. It is 77 by 76·70 metres.
87. That is their St. Stephen's Day. On December 26th they keep the Memory of the holy Mother of God.
88. The great mosque of Ahmed is the best known example of a large class built in imitation of the Holy Wisdom.
89. A poem written soon after the fall of the city. I have kept the rather halting metre of the original. The last two lines are quite beautiful:

    σώπα, κύρα δέσποινα, μὴ κλαίῃς, μὴ δακρύζῃς,
    πάλε μὲ χρόνους, μὲ καιρούς, πάλε δικά σου εἶναι.

    The whole text in Artemides: Ὀρφικὴ λύρα (Athens, 1905), 141.

90. Jordanes the Goth († 560) wrote after he had seen Constantinople: "Now I see what I have often heard, but have never believed, the glory of so great a city. … The Emperor of this land is indeed a god upon earth, and if any man lift his hand against him, that man's blood be upon his own head."