Everyday Life in Byzantium Page 6
When an emperor died his body was laid out in the Hall of the Nineteen Couches, showing him wearing his crown, divitission, chlamys and purple slippers. The clergy who were attached to the cathedral of Haghia Sophia and the senators stood round him singing dirges. After crying three times, ‘Depart Emperor: the King of Kings, Lord of Lords calls you’, the body was removed to the Chalke by members of his bodyguard. From there it was taken along the Mese to its final resting place. Sometimes a church was chosen for the purpose, Romanus Lecapenus and his wife Theodora being buried in the church of the Mirelaion. On reaching the late sovereign’s final resting place it fell to the master of ceremonies to step forward and again proclaim, ‘Enter Emperor: the King of Kings, Lord of Lords calls you’; then he would cry ‘Remove your crown’. At these words the crown of state was lifted from the dead man’s brow and in its place a purple circlet was laid on it. Then the coffin was closed and the burial performed. A similar ritual was observed in the case of an empress.
3 - THE CHURCH AND CHURCHMEN
Emperor Justinian wrote the preface to the collection of legal codes issued under the title of The Sixth Novel. In it he expressed the opinion that the ‘greatest gifts which God in his love of mankind has given to men from above are the Priesthood and the Empire, for the one ministers to things divine whilst the other guides and takes care of human affairs’. This belief was shared by the Byzantine people, many of whom were in the habit of comparing the Empire and Church to the human body and its soul. Such an attitude naturally led every layman to take as passionate an interest in religion and the Church as did the emperor and his clergy. It is hardly surprising that this should have been the case in early Byzantine times, for the years which witnessed the establishment of Christianity were marked by an ever-increasing dissatisfaction with such older and, until recently, popular creeds as the sun cult, Mithraism, Zoroastrianism or veneration of the gods worshipped in Greece and Rome. Christianity presented a code of ethics which raised new hope in the most disenchanted hearts. Its affirmation of a single God as the ultimate source of all life appealed to those who had lost faith in the squabbling, malicious inhabitants of Olympus. The opportunities which Christianity offered to women opened the way to developments which were ultimately to affect every aspect of daily life. Furthermore, every convert believed that the fulfilment of the promise of a better life on earth and the salvation of his soul in the hereafter depended upon his ability to conform to every canon of the new faith. This conviction in its turn led him to attach immense importance to Christian dogma. The belief that a theological error might well jeopardise a Christian’s chance of entering the celestial kingdom remained firmly embedded in the Byzantine mind throughout the Empire’s history and, as a result, even during the final years of its existence, every practising Christian remained as profoundly concerned with Church affairs as were the earliest converts. Furthermore, the imperial constitution itself helped to tighten the bonds between Church and state, until each played an almost equal part in making the rules which governed the life of the people.
Christianity was essentially eastern in character, and for that reason found its earliest, most fervent supporters in Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor. The spiritual elements in the new creed evoked a spontaneous response from the inhabitants of those areas, their minds being far more closely attuned to it than were those of the somewhat cynical Greeks or the cold, logical Romans, both of whose outlook was clearly reflected in the cult of the gods of the classical age. Though Constantine remained a pagan he must have been aware of the existence of these contradictory elements, for soon after legalising Christianity, as early as the year 325, he convened a council of clerics at Nicaea. They met under his chairmanship to discuss matters of dogma, and more particularly what is known as the Arian Heresy, that is to say to decide whether God and Christ were of like nature or, as the Arians maintained, whether they differed in kind, since Christ, as God’s son, came into being after God the Father.
Seven major religious assemblies were held between then and the ninth century. They came to be called General Councils of the Church. The Second Council, convened in 381, gave the patriarch the second place in the state, ranking him next after the emperor. The Third, meeting at Ephesus in 431, discussed the Nestorian sect whose members agreed with the opinion expressed by Nestorius of Antioch that Christ’s human nature was more important than His divine. The Fourth Council met at Chalcedon in 451 to discuss the two natures of Christ, and as a result of the conclusions reached by that assembly the Egyptian Church broke away from the main Orthodox institution and became known as the Coptic. By the ninth century all the major doctrinal issues had been dealt with by the Church’s General Councils. As a result, until about the middle of the eleventh century, so few clerics attended the meetings of the assembly that these lost their former international character. The first assembly of the Church’s General Council was probably the most important of all since it established the procedure to be followed at future meetings. Constantine, as chairman, had taken the initiative then and had modelled the debates on the lines of those held in Rome’s senate, retaining for himself the powers of a moderator. As a result the Byzantine emperors were able to exercise far greater influence over Church affairs than were the rulers of any other Christian state. If an emperor found it impossible personally to preside over one of the Councils he was entitled to appoint anyone he wished to act as his representative. In early times the pope and his legate had ranked as next in importance to the emperor at these conventions, but although the pope was entitled to vote before the emperor, it was essential for the final communication issued by the General Council to be signed by the emperor, not the pope. This naturally led people to assume that the emperor was primarily responsible for all doctrinal decisions as well as for combating heresies.
19 The Gospels on the Sacred Throne, Church Council session in the Emperor’s presence, Constantinople 362
Byzantium never lacked heresies. Many were based on genuinely mistaken interpretations of the scriptures. In early Christian times pagan beliefs and observances were still so widely upheld that there was as much need to stamp out any deviation from the established doctrine as any form of idolatry. The Quini-Sectus Council held at Trullo in 692 passed sweeping measures to that end; though often revised and added to, they remained in force till the twelfth century. They banned such pagan customs as, for example, the Bacchic feasting at the time of the grape harvest or the celebration of May Day, yet the Church never succeeded in suppressing these ancient, essentially jovial and festive customs. Realising this, it quickly set out to absorb them into the Christian ritual by giving them a Christian basis, harvest festivals replacing the Bacchic rites whilst events in Christ’s life were celebrated on days which had ranked as holidays in pagan times. This proved far easier than correcting false interpretations of the Gospels.
Doctrinal problems profoundly worried the Byzantines, and the Church quickly decided that anyone whose views differed from those which it had laid down was a heretic. The Arians were ranked as ungodly because they questioned the fullness of Christ’s divinity. The even larger sect of Monophysites came under similar censure because its members believed in the existence of a single divinity, regarding the Father, Son and Holy Ghost as parts of the one entity and thereby, in the opinion of the Church, denying Christ’s human attributes. Of other passionately propounded heresies two proved particularly difficult to dislodge. These were spread by members of the Paulician and Bogomil sects. The first developed in the ninth century when a man called Paul, the son of a Manichaean woman, maintained that God (representing the three in one) created only the celestial sphere comprising heaven and its inhabitants, whereas the god of evil created men and the visible world; he maintained also that Christ was an angel and the son of an ordinary woman (whom it was wrong to venerate) and had been sent by God to combat evil on earth. The Bogomils were offshoots of the Paulicians; they gained a particularly large number of converts in Bulgaria and their cu
rious tombstones survive there and in Yugoslavia as intriguing monuments of a now forgotten past.
20 A Bogomil tombstone
Superstitions proved as difficult to stamp out as heresies. Beliefs in demons and evil spirits led many to support the Paulicians and to worship Satan, some going as far as to assert that he was God’s eldest son. Six types of demons were believed to be especially dangerous; they inhabited the air, the ether, fire, and earth, and also lived underground; all required constant propitiation. The evil eye was dreaded to such an extent that belief in it still persists today in remote districts of the Near East, where amulets are worn —as they used to be in early Byzantine times—to counteract it. Witches and soothsayers were both feared and consulted. Even the library of the Great Palace contained a book illustrated with portraits of emperors which purported to foretell the Empire’s future. As late as the eighth century Constantine V consulted his astrologers before attacking his enemies and so did Alexius I Comnenus in the eleventh century. As a result astrology was believed to be closely associated with magic; it was therefore strongly disapproved of by the Church even in the twelfth century when, though recognised by many men of learning as a science, it continued to be widely used for purposes of divination. The stigma which had been attached to it in earlier times persisted throughout the Byzantine period. In order to assist the faithful in avoiding all major sins the Church enforced stringent rules for church attendance, excommunicating those who failed to attend a service on three consecutive Sundays. On Sundays, as well as on all days falling between Easter and Pentecost, all had to pray standing, which suggests that the early Christian custom of standing to pray was no longer in force; the Russians applied this ordinance to all church attendance, and still abide by it today.
The emperor was assigned so important a part in Church affairs that in church his throne, sometimes a gold one, was placed beside the patriarch’s and he was called upon to perform a number of special functions in many religious services. Thus, from a very early date he appeared in the Easter Day service swathed in white bandages and accompanied by 12 attendants; from the tenth century he censed the High Altar during the Christmas Day services; during Lent he headed the procession round the High Altar in the church of the Magnaura and he also carried out specific duties on Palm Sunday and Holy Thursday. Nevertheless, he was never able to impose his own views on the Church if these ran counter to those held by the clergy. The Church remained independent where matters of dogma were concerned and, even though it lived under the emperor’s protection, it yet enjoyed powers equal to his. Even so the emperor was able, when investing the patriarch of Constantinople in his office as head of the Orthodox Church, to proclaim that: ‘This man is appointed Patriarch of Constantinople by the Grace of God and by our Imperial Authority, which stems from the grace of God’. Nor could the patriarch excommunicate an emperor. In the eleventh century Patriarch Michael Cerularius attempted to make the Church more important than the Crown. He failed, yet his efforts enhanced the Church’s prestige so that when the emperor’s reputation and powers declined with the steady advance westward of the Ottoman Turks, those of the Church survived intact. At the Turkish Conquest of Constantinople the Church was still so strong that the patriarch was able to persuade the sultan to recognise his jurisdiction over all Orthodox Christians living in Ottoman lands, the Balkans not excepted, and to permit him to establish a school in the patriarchate in Constantinople where Byzantine theology could be taught and the Greek tongue spoken and written. The patriarchate in Constantinople thus came to play an invaluable role in keeping Christianity and Greek culture alive in Ottoman territory, even though no printing presses could be installed there. When printing was invented the books needed in the patriarchate had to be printed in Venice and shipped to Constantinople. Partly because of this, and partly too because many senior clerics fled from vanquished Constantinople to seek safety there, Venice also became an outpost of Orthodoxy.
The constitution of the Orthodox Church was worked out, at any rate in its essentials if not in detail, during the fourth and fifth centuries, but minor adjustments continued to be made throughout the Byzantine era. The decision to adopt the Julian calendar, devised in late Roman times, and to start the religious year with the civil year on 1 September, and to number the years from the supposed date of the world’s creation some 5,000 years earlier, was made by the Church and not the emperor. The Church was also responsible for dividing its territory into provinces which were placed under the jurisdiction of metropolitans. Five patriarchs were created; three were established in the Empire’s ancient cities of Rome, Antioch and Alexandria, two in the new cities of Constantinople and Jerusalem. Rome as the older capital was given precedence over all the others. Constantinople, in its role of the new capital, was ranked second, but in its capacity of the New Rome it was called upon to fulfil duties which had been performed by the Old Rome; it therefore became entitled to the same privileges and honours as those enjoyed by the latter. When, in the course of the seventh century, Alexandria and Antioch were captured by the Arabs and incorporated into the Muslim empire, their loss did much to add to the stature of the patriarch of Constantinople.
His position had already been considerably strengthened by Leo III’s decision in 732 to transfer southern Italy, Greece and Illyria from the see of Rome to that of Constantinople. The change was bitterly resented by the pope. Ill-feeling between the leaders of the two churches increased as a result of the iconoclast controversy. This reached its height at the end of the eighth century when Charlemagne took advantage of the breach to persuade the pope to crown him ‘Emperor of the West’. This move greatly angered the emperor of Byzantium, for it not only affronted his dignity as emperor, but it challenged the claim of the Orthodox Church to be accepted as the supreme authority. Relations deteriorated still further. They were gravely impaired in 1045 when the infuriated papal legate, Cardinal Humbertus, threw down the Bull of Anathema on the silver altar of the cathedral of Haghia Sophia and swept out in a rage. Manuel II (1143-80) tried, but failed, to effect a reconciliation. This marked the final rift between Orthodox Christianity in the East and Catholicism; it remains unhealed.
In 1204, on the eve of the Latin occupation of Constantinople, the emperor wanted to improve relations with western Christendom by an act of union with the Church of Rome. The move was fiercely opposed by the patriarch of Constantinople who was warmly supported by the Byzantine clergy and nation. The Latin conquest of the capital fanned the anger of the Orthodox. Nevertheless the emperor tried to mend matters at the council convened in Florence in 1439, when he attempted to obtain military aid from the western world with which to stem the ever-more threatening advance of the Ottoman Turks. Though the council deliberated till 1443, no aid was forthcoming; Europe’s failure to fight Islam is still resented by the Orthodox Church. At the time it aroused such indignation throughout Byzantium that, when the victorious sultan advised Genadios (whom he had appointed patriarch of conquered Constantinople) to unite his Church to that of Rome, the Greek prelate stubbornly refused even to consider doing so.
In Byzantine times the patriarch of Constantinople lived in great state. He had a set of apartments within the cathedral of Haghia Sophia and in an adjoining building, and in addition had his own palace. He was in the habit of breakfasting in one of the former apartments after celebrating the morning service in the cathedral. He often entertained the emperor there. He also possessed a series of offices and conference halls from which he administered the Church’s affairs with the aid of an assembly of churchmen known as the Holy Synod. To begin with, only the bishops of Constantinople were entitled to serve on it, but when the Church’s territory was divided into provinces called metropoliae, headed by metropolitans who subdivided these into bishoprics placed in the charge of bishops, both the metropolitans and the auto-cephalous (or self-governing) bishops were called upon to attend its meetings.
Metropolitans were nominated to their office by the patriarch who selected t
hem from a list of three names submitted to him by the Holy Synod. The metropolitans appointed their bishops in a similar manner, choosing them from a short list of three drawn up by the local Synods. However, certain bishops were appointed direct by the emperor and were therefore not subjected to the metropolitan’s jurisdiction. These autocephalous bishops wielded great influence in the Holy Synod.
To be eligible for a bishopric a priest had to be aged over 35 and able to recite the Psalter by heart; it was also necessary for him to be well educated. In early times a married man was considered eligible for high office provided that his wife had left him to live as a nun in a convent, but before long only monks were regarded as fitted to serve as bishops, metropolitans or—the highest office of all—as patriarch. The distinction which was then drawn between the Black Clergy (that is to say, those who had taken their vows) and the White or parish priests (who were permitted to marry) survives to this day in Orthodox communities throughout the world.