Man talkingONE RELIGION,ONE CHURCH
Man talking
Last of the things that made the Byzantine Empire strong and powerful was the Byzantine church. In some ways, it was the most important of all.
The Byzantine Empire was much more than just one half of the old Roman Empire dragging out its days for another thousand years. It was a new Roman Empire based on Christianity. Practically every Byzantine was a Christian, and so it was Christianity that united all the many races and languages into a single people. In spite of all the arguments about this doctrine and that doctrine, practically every Byzantine believed in the official Orthodox faith, and as the emperor was head of this faith, that gave him additional power.
Even a weak emperor could point to the Bible. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” But the emperor wascaesar, and he was God’s representative too. He had to be obeyed on both counts.
The Byzantines were by nature an intensely religious people. They were Middle Easterners as well as Greek, and more than half of the world’s great religions were born in the Middle East—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, to name just the most important three.
The Byzantines had been religious from the very beginning, and the Greek side of their nature made them like to talk and argue about their religion as well.
Saint Gregory of Nyssa visited Constantinople when it was only forty years old, and even this holy man threw up his hands in astonishment. The money changer who converted his Asiatic money into Byzantine gold, the white-faced baker who sold him a loaf of bread, even the slave boy who mixed hot and cold water for him at the public bath, all wanted to discuss the fine points of Christian beliefs with him.
Saint Gregory shook his head. “Everybody in this city seems to be a doctor of theology,” he said. “Everybody!Even the slaves and day laborers. There isn’t a man in the city who can’t preach a good sermon, and they all do if you give them half a chance. If you don’t believe me, just stand at any street corner! Just go into any shop!”
But it was not merely the servants and shopkeepers who were deeply wrapped up in religion. High or low, virtually every Byzantine, even including those who spent most of their time making money and amassing worldly goods, had been taught from childhood and absolutely believed that life in this world was a vain shadow and the important thing was to win everlasting bliss in heaven. But this could only be done through religion and the church.
That may have been why many rich Byzantines and evenmany a Byzantine emperor or empress liked to endow monasteries, just as in modern times many rich men set up foundations. In fact, so many monasteries were set up in this way that it became necessary to pass a law stating that if you wanted to found a monastery, you must sell the land and only give the money. Many of the greatest estates were being left to the church and since they then didn’t have to pay taxes any more, it grew more and more difficult for the state to raise all the money it needed.
Many Byzantines, including emperors, became monks before they died. They felt more sure of their reward in the future if they actually entered a monastery, had their heads shaven, and exchanged their golden garments for a hair shirt or a cowl.
Boy pointing and man talking
That may also have been why so many patriarchs—the title of the head of the Byzantine church—did not fear the emperor, even though the emperor had appointed them.
One patriarch boldly told an emperor that no one had to obey his laws if they went against the church. The emperor exiled him but did not dare to harm him.
Another went even further.
“I made you emperor, you ignorant fool!” he shouted at Isaac Comnenus. “I can bring you down as easily.”
He even put on the imperial purple shoes, saying the patriarch had a right to wear them. Of course, he didn’t get away with this, but at least he had tried.
Sometimes, to be sure, Byzantine religion was very close to superstition, particularly among women and children.
You could make yourself a saint by becoming a stylite like Saint Simeon Stylites, who lived most of his life on top of a column sixty feet high without ever coming down. Simeon was venerated and even prayed to.
Many Byzantines were certain that cures could be effected by touching the arms, legs, and even the congealed sweat of some holy man. On the other hand, a doctor was howled down by the mob when he suggested ending a plague by letting fresh air into the crowded tenements.
“Blasphemy!” cried the Byzantines. “God decides when a man shall die, not fresh air!” When the doctor persisted, and died himself, they said God had punished him.
Others believed that cities had been saved by the apparition of some saint as much as by soldiers. For instance, when the Goths stormed toward Thessalonica (modern Salonika), the second city of the empire, Saint Demetrius appeared and led the East Roman army to victory. When the Avars reached Constantinople, the khagan saw a majestic female figure pacing the walls. It was the Theotokos, the Greek word for “Mother of God,” which the Byzantines called the Virgin Mary. He turned back in panic.
Almost all the Byzantines paid great attention to fortunetelling, palm reading, and prophecies. Everybody believed in them. There were even more than a few emperors of humble birth who would not have even dared to try seizing the throne if it had not been for a fortuneteller or a prophecy. But, although sometimes the monks and abbots themselves told some of these fortunes, none of this had much to do with the church.
The Byzantine, even the most superstitious Byzantine, was truly Christian, but that did not mean he tolerated every kind of Christianity in existence. The Byzantine did not believe,as most of us do, that religion is a personal matter and that every man has a right to worship God in his own way, according to his own conscience. To the Byzantine, there was only one religion—the official religion. And there was only one church—his own Orthodox Church. If you believed anything else, you were a heretic and to be persecuted or fought.
This had been so from the very beginning. Constantine himself had called council after council to work out the details of the Christian creed, and the emperors who followed carried on his work. In council after council, they wrote down in black and white what every Byzantine had to believe. When it was written down, that wasit. No further discussion about it, unless you enjoyed exile or having insulting poetry branded on your forehead; and this last really happened to one poor monk who refused to conform.
It was still true in the last days of the empire, but by then not even the emperor could change what had been agreed on earlier. Some of the later emperors tried to. They journeyed to France, Italy, and even England seeking help against the Turks, and in order to get the Western nations on their side they promised to make the Orthodox Church join the Roman Catholic Church, with the Pope as head of both.
The Byzantine people rose in protest. Lucas Notaras, a relative of the emperor and the last Megadux, or Great Admiral, shouted at his cousin angrily. “Better a Turkish turban than a papal miter!” he cried.
Although a huge Turkish cannon was already battering the walls, the mob shouted its approval.
“The Latins are trying to destroy the Greek city, the Greek religion, the Greek race, even the Greek language!” the people roared.
Even before there had been riots with the “democracy in rags,” the poor people, joining the monks and abbots to make certain that the old-time religion of the Byzantines was kept true and pure even if this made the empire fall.
Nevertheless the old-time Orthodox Byzantine faith did not come into being just as it was and all at once. Since religion was so important, and since the Greeks loved to argue, the whole history of the Byzantines is filled with violent discussions and bitter differences of opinion about exactly what a man was supposed to believe. Some of the arguments were so complicated that it does not seem that the Byzantines themselves always understood them, even though they were willing to rush into the streets and fight about them. The arguments are even more hard to understand today.
One of the most bitter disputes was about the use of the single letteri. There is a Greek wordhomoioswhich means “similar,” and another Greek wordhomoswhich means “same.” Men and women were sent to distant sunless provinces or shipped to lonely islands; they were locked in damp, rat-infested cells; and volume after volume was written and published over whether the Saviour washomoi-ousion(similar to God) orhomo-ousion(the same as God). But this was only one of many arguments and discussions. It would be impossible to tell you even a small part of them. But that does not mean that these differences were not important. Many people think that the reason the Arabs conquered Egypt and Syria so easily and converted the inhabitants to Islam was that most of the emperors were Orthodox Christians who tried to make the Egyptians and Syrians Orthodox, too.
The most important controversy that troubled the Byzantines is easier to understand. It is called the Iconoclast (imagebreaker) controversy, and it agitated the empire for more than a hundred years.
Although the early Christians had opposed images and paintings, calling them heathen idols, most Byzantines attached great importance to them. In fact, some of their finest art went into the making of statues, portraits, and even small portable mosaics of saints, apostles, and other holy persons. They called theseeikons, and they certainly paid them great reverence. Their enemies said they even worshiped them.
But not every Byzantine was an image worshiper. The hardy mountaineers from Isauria and other parts of Asia Minor still held to the Puritan-like thoughts of their ancestors. They hated images. Then an Isaurian general seized the throne. In addition to hating images, he realized that image worship greatly increased the power of the monks and priests who were now just about as strong as the emperor.
Because they hated images, and also to break the power of the church party, he and his son and the other emperors who followed ordered every image to be torn down and many of them destroyed. Then they abolished many monasteries. In some cases they made the monks and nuns parade hand in hand before howling crowds in the Hippodrome, forcing them to choose between marriage or torture and death.
These Iconoclast emperors were supported by the soldiers (most of whom were also image breakers; and all wanted a chance to loot church treasures) and by much of Asia Minor. But the monks would not give in, many of them suffering martyrdom first, andtheywere supported by the people; by the superstitious sailors of the fleet; by all the women; and by many of the empresses who were as stubborn as the monks. Saint Theodora, for instance, although her husbandwas a strong Iconoclast, never gave up image worship in private and she taught her daughters and granddaughters to do the same. When she was surprised by a dwarf who told the emperor, she said that the figures they were praying to were really dolls and that she was playing with her grandchildren. But later she had the dwarf beaten for good measure.
With opposition like that, the Iconoclasts could not hope to win, and in the end they compromised. The images were restored, but they were to be placed high and out of reach. Worshipers could look at them or reverence them, but they could not kiss them or touch them.
Men pulling down statue
It was at this time, and probably because harmony now reigned, that the Byzantine church at last felt powerful enough not only to take care of its own peoples’ religion, but to set out to convert their heathen neighbors. Particularly their Slavic neighbors! Many of these still worshiped pagan gods 800 years after Christ.
It was Michael the Drunkard, a much better emperor than the name seems to indicate, who ended the Iconoclast controversy. And it was the same Michael who sent out Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius to do their work. They were the most famous missionaries eastern Europe had ever seen.
They prepared themselves like generals going into battle, and in a way they were like generals. They carefully restudied the Slavic languages, for since they were from a part of the empire where there were many Slavs, they already knew some Slavic languages. They learned all about Slavic culture and Slavic history. Finally they invented what is known today as the Cyrillic alphabet, which is still used in much of the Slavic world.
To be sure, their mission was not a complete success. They converted Moravia, now a part of Czechoslovakia, without too much difficulty, but when the Moravian king was defeated by a German king the country became Roman Catholic. Cyril and Methodius or saints trained by them, for they actually trained saints, went into Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Serbia. The people there stayed converted and stayed Orthodox. Indeed, Bulgaria soon boasted that it was the “eldest daughter of the eastern church,” and had its own patriarch, and its own Santa Sophia, too.
But the most important conversion made by the Byzantines took place a hundred years later. It was the conversion of the Russians. The Russians themselves say this was done moreby Byzantine splendor than by the talk of Byzantine missionaries, or even by the marriage of the Russian Prince Vladimir to the emperor’s sister, Anna.
In 989, this huge ruler with his forest-shaking voice decided to make his people abandon their Norse gods and goddesses. He sent ambassadors to the four great religions that he knew about to find out which one was the best to adopt.
First the ambassadors went to the Black Bulgars, who were Moslems. But the mosques were smelly and dirty, and the Black Bulgars told the Russians that they would have to give up wine.
“Drinking is the joy of the Russians!” roared Vladimir.
Next they visited the Jewish Khazars, but how, asked Vladimir, could the Jews be God’s chosen people if he had scattered them all over the earth?
Then they went to the German Roman Catholics.
“The Germans say that they worship the truth,” the ambassadors reported, “but they have day after day of fasting, and there is no magnificence.”
“I do not like to fast,” said Vladimir.
Finally, they visited the Greeks, that is, the Byzantines.
“The Greeks,” they said, “led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for nowhere have we seen such splendor and beauty. We are at loss how to describe it, but we do know that God must dwell there.”
Then they added, “If the Greek faith was not good, your grandmother Olga would not have adopted it.”
For they knew that this straw-haired princess had never stopped talking about the domes of polished copper, the pavements of rare stone, the magnificent decorations, the pearl-encrusted psalm books and Bibles, the incense andthe music in Constantinople. They knew too that she had never stopped talking about the God-chosen emperor who had wanted to marry her, and how she had tricked him into giving her rich gifts instead.
Vladimir agreed. He ordered his subjects to be baptized, and told his boyars to give up worshiping Odin and Thor, and to burn their idols or cast them into the Dnepr River.
This conversion of the Slavs was as important to the Byzantines as a victory by their army or by their diplomats, and indeed it was a victory. For although they still fought with the Serbs and with the Russians and particularly with the Bulgarians, these people were gradually drawn into the Byzantine way of life and became more and more friendly. Thus the flanks of the empire were protected.
It was, of course, far more lasting than any military victory. The Byzantine Empire came to an end more than 500 years ago, but if you were to go into the Balkans or Greece today, you would find that the work done by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius still remains. Even after forty years of communism, you might find that the seeds of Christianity, and particularly Greek Orthodox Christianity, which had been sown by Vladimir’s conversion, were still living in some Russian communist hearts.