The Greek and Eastern Churches/Part 1/Division 2/Chapter 9

by Walter Frederic Adeney

 

CHAPTER IX

LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE BYZANTINE CHURCH

 

(a) Greek historians named in earlier chapters.

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

 

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

Faint echoes of old controversies agitated the Church from time to time. In the reign of Manuel Comnenus there was a scholastic discussion as to whether Christ presented His sacrifice for the sins of the world only to the First and Third Persons of the Trinity, or also to the Second, the Logos. A synod at Constantinople in the year 1156 decided for the latter contention, and therefore decreed that Christ offered His sacrifice in part to Himself. Ten years later a question of the two natures was revived on the words of Christ, "My Father is greater than I." To which nature did they refer—the Divine or the human? Heated discussions followed, and much excitement was roused among all classes of society. The Emperor Manuel favoured the view that the phrase applied to the God-man, to the whole incarnate personality, and this view was confirmed by a synod held in the year 1166. It is mournful to note that even with regard to so obscure a question as this no freedom of thought was permitted. Those who refused to accept the decree of the synod were banished and their goods confiscated. But these discussions, though very exciting at the time, left no permanent effects on the established orthodoxy, and therefore they cannot be regarded as landmarks of any importance in the history of doctrine.

Since the Greek Church has not changed materially in its doctrine or ritual through all the intervening centuries down to our own day, it may be as well to state here once for all the principal points of interest concerning the latter subject—namely, the ritual. The doctrine has been illustrated in the previous pages.

The seven sacraments are accepted by the Eastern as well as by the Western Church. Baptism continues to be observed in the form of immersion. It is administered to infants, and at the same time they are anointed on the eyes, mouth, nose, ears, and breast. Confirmation, which follows immediately, can be administered by presbyters— a difference from the Western canonical arrangement, which confines this rite to the bishop. Penance is enacted, but it never developed in the East to the elaborate proportions and with the mechanical devices which gave rise to the sale of indulgences in the West. The priest tells the penitent that he is a sinner himself, he cannot forgive; only God forgives. Nevertheless he pronounces absolution. The Eucharist is treated equally in both churches as the most sacred office of religion. Ordination can only be conferred by a bishop, and throughout the hierarchy the inferior is ordained by his superior. Marriage is a sacrament carefully guarded by the Church. The higher clergy may not marry after ordination. Bishops may not have wives at all, and therefore the episcopate is mainly supplied by monks. Presbyters are married before ordination and retain their wives for life; but if one becomes a widower he may not take a second wife. Second marriages among the laity are permitted, or rather condoned, but not favoured. Third marriages are forbidden and treated as sinful. Unction is practised not so much as the viaticum, known as "extreme unction," but for the benefit of the sick who may be restored.

The government of the Church is maintained without material alteration in a settled hierarchical form. But the pre-eminence of the patriarch of Constantinople becomes more pronounced in his own provinces, and less effectual elsewhere. This twofold development was wholly due to political causes. The weakening of the Byzantine government gave greater scope and wider range to the authority of the Church. Next to the accession of a new emperor the most important event in Constantinople was the election of the patriarch. We now find patriarchs rebuking and even defying the throne with a force and a freedom hitherto unknown in the East, and more like the spirit of the great ecclesiastics of Rome. On the other hand, the absorption of Syria and Egypt into the realm of the caliphs and sultans made the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem prisoners in their own cities, and cut them off to a great extent from intercourse with Constantinople. This enforced isolation of the three Eastern patriarchs became an important factor in the final severance of the Churches.

The conduct of worship in the Byzantine Church was also continued without serious alteration during this period, the ritual becoming more and more stereotyped. This was centred in the communion office, which, known as the "mass" in the West, is named in the East the "liturgy."^[1] At first every bishop was free to adopt his own forms of prayer, though the liturgy of St. James was largely accepted as the common basis. In its present form this cannot be older than the end of the fourth century, but no doubt it is a development from more ancient times. It was primarily intended for use in the Church at Jerusalem. Next came the liturgy of St. Basil, which is founded on the liturgy of St. James, but is much longer and more elaborate; and after that the liturgy of St. Chrysostom, which is not so long. These two together constitute the Byzantine liturgies, the lengthy liturgy of St. Basil being used only on certain occasions.^[2] Originating in Asia Minor this became the basis of the Armenian liturgy. The liturgy of St. Chrysostom was primarily the form of worship adopted in Constantinople, and it became the normal service for the Byzantine Church on all Sundays except the few to which the liturgy of St. Basil was assigned.

The service books of the Greek Church are in fourteen quarto volumes. They consist of three parts—hymns, poetry, portions of Scripture. No separate Bibles are published for the use of the people, although the action of the British and Foreign Bible Society in circulating the Scriptures is not hindered by the Greek Church officials as it is by the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and in some cases it is welcomed gratefully and encouraged. This Church provides manuals, vade mecums for services, especially for the burial service. It looks askance at the Russian Church for its alterations of the old service books and other innovations.

In the Greek Church the communion service is more lengthy, elaborate, and dramatic than the Roman mass. There are prayers and lessons, but every function of the service is accompanied by some action. While the Western ceremonial appeals to the soul mainly through the ear, the Eastern seeks to awaken the interest and chain the attention more by its appeal to the eye in richly varied symbolical acts performed by the priests and deacons. The congregation watches the stir and movement of an elaborate moving function. Now the candles are lighted; now they are extinguished; doors are opened, closed again; the clergy kiss the altar, kiss the gospel, cross the forehead, mouth, and breast; there is the swinging of the censer; the liturgical vestments are frequently changed so that the worshipping spectator may have passing before his gaze a kaleidoscopic variation of colour—each tint having its special symbolism; processions, genuflections, prostrations, all have their part in the great ceremonial. Much of this is to be witnessed in a Roman high mass, but not with the volume and variety of symbolism seen in the performance of the Greek liturgy. The pomp and ceremony of the Church is parallel to the pomp and ceremony of the court described with so much unction by the literary Emperor Constantine Pogonatus. It agrees with the stiff embroidered and jewelled vestments, the enamelled icons, the gold and mosaic decorations of the basilicas in which it is the scenic drama of worship. There is no attempt in all this to rouse enthusiasm; that can be done by the sermon which precedes and prepares for it, when the excitable congregation clap and shout and wave their handkerchiefs at the eloquent periods of some popular preacher.^[3] In the liturgy, on the other hand, all is decorum. The people join in the responses; they wail the Kyrie Eleison; they make the dome ring again with the mighty chant of the Trisagion; but it is all ordered and disciplined, and the desired result is awe and faith, rather than energy and action.

Nevertheless, while so much was done to make the central facts of Christianity as embodied in the life-story of Christ vivid and impressive by means of elaborate appeals to the sensuous imagination, it was not here that people found satisfaction for their strongest religious appetites. Through much of our period preaching was still prominent, Bible reading has always been encouraged in the Greek Church. People could go to the churches and read the Bibles there for themselves. Unlike the modern Roman service in an unknown tongue, the Greek service was conducted in Greek, the language of the people. All the ancient services were carried on in the languages spoken by the congregations engaged in them. In spite of this fact the intellectual element was not the most prominent, nor did the ideas so skilfully interwoven into the rich symbolism of the liturgy really grip the people who watched the ceremonial and took part in the reponses. This is proved by what we have seen in the historic controversies of the Byzantine age. Relics were deemed more important than ritual, icons than liturgy. To treasure a saint's bone or kiss a picture of Christ—this was what most concerned the Greek Christian of the Byzantine period in the matter of religion. The best teachers of the Church deprecated the fetishism of relic worship; but they were powerless to stem the tide of superstition that swept over East and West alike.

After this the stoutest Protestant may regard the invocation of the Virgin and saints, and even the worship offered to them, as intelligent in comparison with such childish superstition. A new mythology sprang up, and legends of the saints took the place of pagan myths. Thus the martyr Phocas, a gardener at Sinope in Pontus, superseded Castor and Pollux as the sailors' guardian. On board ship he had his portion set for him at table and then sold, the proceeds being given to the poor as a thankoffering for a prosperous voyage.

Learning and literature flourished during the Byzantine period, though not so as greatly to enrich the libraries of bibliophiles in later ages. Like the Benedictine monasteries in the West, the Basilian monasteries of the Greek Church guarded and transmitted the writings of the great Church teachers, the monks diligently copying manuscripts and laboriously constructing catenæ of the opinions of the Fathers. But while their reading was wide, it was not deep; they were scholarly, but uncritical. They lacked imagination, invention, constructiveness. It is a striking fact that the stream of ecclesiastical history which flowed so copiously through the previous centuries now began to run dry, or rather perhaps we should say, was now diverted into the main river of political and secular history. This is the age of the voluminous Byzantine historians. Anybody who attempts to wade through their pages must soon be wearied with their unhappy attempts at cumulative rhetoric. The style reminds us of popular Victorian prose at its worst. There is a constantly recurring effort at producing effects by piling up clauses one upon another till a sentence is sometimes expanded to the extent of a page of print. Theophanes is about the last of the writers who retain some traces of the literary spirit of Thucydides. He gives weight to his narrative by his own contributions of poetical wisdom. But, for the most part, these narratives are choked with colourless details—details which neither characterise nor vitalise the narrative. They are barren of serious reflection, in place of which we have pages of flat narrative varied by bursts of adulation or vituperation.

After allowing for undeniable defects, we must perceive that these were not dark ages, nor were they inert or infructuous according to their kind. After John of Damascus, the last of the Fathers, the next great writer and the last of his own calibre is Photius,^[4] who died in the year 891. His chief work is the Bibliotheca,^[5] an encyclopædia of literature, containing accounts of nearly three liuudred Christian and pagan works together with "elegant extracts"; unfortunately a great part of this book has been lost. His Nomocanon is the basis of Green canon law, the first systematical arrangement of which known to us was drawn up by Johannes Scholasticus (John the Lawyer), a presbyter at Antioch, who afterwards became patriarch of Constantinople (a.d. 565).^[6] About the year 1180, Photius's Nomocanon was commented on by Theodore Balsamon, a deacon of Constantinople, as the standard collection of canon law for the Eastern Church. Photius was a voluminous writer, narrow in view, bitter in tone. His works include controversial treatises against the Latins and against the Paulicians, and among other books the Amphilochia,^[7] containing answers to more than three hundred questions put to him by Amphilochius of Cyzicus. With Photius we come to the end of the great Greek Church writers whose names are known to fame. But the period of the Comnenian dynasty was the Augustan age of the Byzantine Empire—in some respects comparable to our age of Queen Anne rather than to our glorious Elizabethan period. Then we have that fierce opponent and libeller of the Paulicians, Michael Psellus, a man of wide culture, and a writer on a variety of subjects, who earned a reputation as a teacher of philosophy.^[8] He died in the year 1105, leaving, among other books, a work on demonology^[9] which contains an invaluable store of information with respect to mediæval notions on a subject then deemed of vital importance, and a compendium of universal science based on theology,^[10] useful as a cyclopædia of the knowledge of his age. Theophylact, the archbishop of Achrida in Bulgaria, was a contemporary of Psellus, who composed a commentary in the form of a catena. Euthymius Zigabenus, a monk at Constantinople, wrote a reply to the heretics at the command of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus, a mere compilation, though famous in its day. Eustathius, the archbishop of Thessalonica, was a commentator on Homer and Pindar, but also a Christian theologian and a reformer of monasticism. Michael Acominatus, a respected statesman at Constantinople, produced a defence of orthodoxy in opposition to the heretics, which is deemed an abler and more independent work than Euthymius's official book written to order. Nicolas of Methone in Messenia composed a reply to the Neo-Platonist Proclus, in which he anticipated Anselm's doctrine of redemption. All these writers belong to the same prolific period of late Greek literature. The emperor's own daughter Anna has already been mentioned. She takes her place among the Byzantine historians.

Coming to the next period, which follows the disorders and miseries of the Latin usurpation, we have two centuries of less brilliant, but still more or less continuous literary activity under the Palæologi (a.d. 1250–1453), chiefly occupied with the question of reunion with Western Christendom. It is refreshing to discover in the midst of this controversy a man who would direct our attention away from arid theological and ecclesiastical polemics to the eternal verities. This is Nicolas Cabasilas, archbishop of Thessalonica, a mystic, who defended his brother mystics at Mount Athos when they were charged with heresy, and that with a depth of spirituality which throws a favourable light on what, when seen among the monks, has been regarded as an ignorant superstition. The very title of this book is like a gleam of light from heaven in a world of very secular ecclesiasticism, for that title is Concerning the Life in Christ.^[11] The mystics are of no age or of all the ages. They stand apart from the logical development of doctrine and pursue a method of their own, which is always essentially the same. Cabasilas was a contemporary of John Tauler, for he died in 1354, while Tauler died but seven years later (in 1361). These two, the former in Greece, the latter in Germany, apparently having no connection one with the other, agree in their vital principles and join hands with the pseudo-Dionysius in the patristic period and with William Law in modern times. Like our Western mystics who were forerunners of the Reformation, but more openly and actively so, Nicolas Cabasilas was an opposing influence against the deadening formalism of the Greek Church. He wrote a mystical exposition of the liturgy to bring out its spiritual meaning. Other writers of this later period are Demetrius Cydonius, a contemporary of Cabasilas, who wrote on "Contempt of Death"—Simeon of Thessalonica, who comes about fifty years later, and whose book on The Faith, The Rites, and the Mysteries of the Church is a valuable storehouse of ecclesiastical archaeology—Marcus Eugenicus of Ephesus, the ablest opponent of the reunion which was supposed to have been effected at Florence, who also wrote a defence of the doctrine of eternal punishment in answer to John vii., Palæologus, who had objected to it as inconsistent with God's justice and man's frailty—Gennadius, afterwards known as George Scholarius, whom we have already met,^[12] forced to be a supporter of the union when at Florence, but afterwards its most energetic opponent. More popular by far than any of these works was the romance of Barlaam and Josaphat, a book which was to the Middle Ages what the Shepherd of Hermas had been to the early Church at Rome, and what Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress has become to modern readers. It was their favourite religious book, because concrete and dramatic. In fact it was the one religious novel of the time. In the Latin version of it, this book was even more widely read in the West than in its earlier Eastern home. It is found complete or in part in an immense number of manuscripts. An uncritical age attributed it to John of Damascus, among whose works it appears; but this tradition cannot be maintained. The book was long read as veritable history, and accordingly the Roman Martyrology honours its two heroes as saints and assigns the 27th of November as their day. But its remarkable resemblance to the legendary life of Buddha in the Latita Vistara led to its being traced back to that Indian source by Dr. Liebrecht.^[13] Josaphat is the son of the king of "the land of the Æthiopians called India," who is kept by his father in the royal park and palace in close seclusion so that he may see nothing of the evil or misery of the world, and especially that he may not come into contact with Christianity and monasticism, which his father is endeavouring to repress. But he gets leave to ride abroad, and then sees a cripple and a blind man, with the result that he is greatly depressed and saddened. While he is in this state he receives a visit from Barlaam, a monk disguised as a merchant, who has been sent to India by a Divine vision. The result is Josaphat's conversion. When the king learns of this he is much distressed, and in order to distract his son's attention divides with him the government of his realm, but at length he too is led over to Christianity by his son's influence. Finally, Josaphat renounces his high position, goes on a journey in quest of his spiritual father Barlaam, whom after two years of weary wandering at length he finds living as a hermit in a cave. He stays with Barlaam for the rest of his life, and there the dead bodies of the saints are found long after untouched by decay in the odour of sanctity.

It remains for us to notice one other form of literature originated in this period, the Greek Christian poetry, consisting chiefly of hymns. Much of this has been made familiar to English readers by the versions of Neale and others. We have traces of Christian hymns in the New Testament, and Pliny refers to the singing of them in the churches of Bithynia at the time of Trajan.^[14] St. Basil refers to a hymn of the martyr Athenogenes, who died in the year 169, "Which as he was hurrying on to his perfecting by fire he left as a kind of farewell gift to his friends."^[15] Hymns and psalms always had their place in Christian worship.^[16] During the fourth century Church psalmody was much advanced, first in Syria by Ephraim, then at Constantinople by Chrysostom and others, later in the West, especially under the influence of Ambrose. There is a question whether the Greek hymns of the fourth century were metric; but though that may have been the case, there is no doubt that from the eighth century onward Greek hymns were simply rhythmic, not metric, and were used like the psalms for chanting. Three or more stanzas, called troparia,^[17] constituted an ode, three odes a triodeon, and three triodia a canon. It was usual for each ode to end with a doxa, i.e. a doxology, and a theotokion,^[18] which was a stanza in honour of Mary as the mother of God. These hymns occupy the greater part of the Greek service book. Most of them are rubbish;^[19] but among them are gems of immortal value.

The great age of hymn-writers commences with the eighth century, and at its head stands John of Damascus, who was thought to be inspired by the Virgin Mary, the patron of his convent at Mar Saba. His canon for Easter Day, known as the "golden canon," sung at midnight on Easter Eve, begins with the words, "Christ is risen," to which the antiphonal shout is "Christ is risen indeed." Then we have John's foster-brother and fellow-monk, Cosmas of Jerusalem, "the Melodist," whom Neale regards as the most learned of the Greek poets. Stephen the Sabaite, a nephew of John of Damascus, who spent fifty-nine years in the convent of Mar Saba, is the author of the Greek composition on which Neale founded his well-known English hymn—

"Art thou weary, art thou languid?"

Another hymn-writer was Theophanes the historian, known as "the Branded," who was mutilated for his devotion to the icons and died about a.d. 820. Theodore of Studium and his brother Joseph come half a century later (about a.d. 890). Lastly, there is Theocristus, in the same monastery at Constantinople, the author of "a suppliant canon to Jesus," which Dr. Neale anglicises in the hymn^[20]—

 

"Jesu, name all names above,
Jesu, best and dearest,
Jesu, Fount of perfect love,
Holiest, tenderest, nearest!
Jesu, source of grace completest,
Jesu truest, Jesu sweetest,
Jesu, well of power Divine,
Make me, keep me, seal me Thine," etc.

 

The Church which could produce such a hymn as that will be entirely misjudged if it is only viewed in the light of the quarrels of its bishops with heretics and schismatics. It was the end of the ninth century, too, that age which was the darkest of the Dark Ages in the West, when a monk in the great Constantinople monastery poured out his soul in one of the hymns of truest adoration and love for his Lord ever produced, anticipating similar hymns of personal devotion to Christ in the two Bernards at Clairvaux and Cluny. It is in its hymns that we can trace the course of a pure stream of genuine spiritual religion that is sometimes forced underground when we are watching the external course of Church history—its angry debates, greedy ambitions, and bitter antipathies. These ugly phenomena make up too much of the history of the Church; they are scarcely at all indicative of the history of Christianity, the history of spiritual religion. For understanding this we are better helped by the stories of obscure lives and the breathing of simple souls. The hymn-writing continued through the tenth century and on into the middle of the eleventh, when it sank into silence. It was no time for song when the Turks were pouring over the larger part of Eastern Christendom, and the very existence of Church and empire were at stake; nor again when the West came to their relief in the dubious garb of Crusaders commissioned by the pope of Rome, with whom they would have nothing to do.

During all this time, both in the West and in the East, monasticism was cherished as the ideal of the religious life and the true monk was regarded as the typical saint. Two great monastic centres are now especially conspicuous. One of these is the monastery at Studium, made famous as the scene of the work of Theodore. Here a very active common life was maintained. We have seen how it was a centre of opposition to the iconoclastic movement. It was the home of a succession of writers of devout hymns of the Greek Church. It was also the place where the reproduction of literature in the form of beautifully written manuscripts was carried on with the greatest assiduity guided by the best taste, so that this monastery may be regarded as taking the place of a modern university press and school of technology in one of the finest and most characteristic arts of the Middle Ages.

The other great monastic establishment was the collection of convents and cells, the many laura, of Mount Athos. This mountain, rising to a peak of white marble 6,350 feet above the sea, is a conspicuous landmark visible from the plain of Troy and the slopes of Olympus. It gives its name to the peninsular in the Ægean Sea of which it is the southernmost point; but it is known in the East as The Holy Mountain^[21] on account of its collection of religious houses. Curzon counted 935 places of worship, including churches, chapels, and oratories, every large convent containing from six to twenty chapels, the walls of which are covered from top to bottom with frescoes.^[22] The family of the Comneni (a.d. 1058–1204) bestowed special privileges on the monks of Mount Athos. Persecuted and pillaged under the Latin dominance, they appealed to Pope Innocent iii. for protection and were favourably regarded by him. With the recovery of Constantinople by the Palæologi their prosperity returned. Several emperors retired here from the cares of the world. The shrines richly decorated with goldsmith work of a high order, the libraries with their fine illuminated manuscripts, the splendid frescoes, reckoned among the finest specimens of Byzantine art, and the natural advantages of its retreats among rocks and ravines and woody slopes, with glimpses out to the sunny sea, combined to render Mount Athos the choicest spot in Eastern Christendom. The monks were wise in making timely submission to the Turks, with the result that, though they had suffered from earlier Saracen raids and though they had been very cruelly treated by their fellow-Christians from the West, when Constantinople was taken by Mohammed and the rest of the Eastern Church came under the Turkish yoke, Mount Athos was allowed virtual independence subject to a tribute—a unique privilege which it has maintained down to the present day.

But it is neither its lovely situation, its size, its numerous population of monks, its many sacred buildings, its treasures of art and literature, nor its home rule that have given Mount Athos its high honour in the Greek Church. That is due to the renowned sanctity of its monks, and especially to one peculiar characteristic which may be deemed either a sign of the highest spirituality or a mark of the grossest, most ignorant superstition, influenced by the mysticism of the pseudo-Dionysius, and following the example of Simeon, an abbot of a Constantinople monastery, the monk of Mount Athos practised the self-hypnotism of an Indian fakir. Sitting in a corner of his cell, pressing his chin firmly into his breast, fixing his eyes on his navel, and holding his breath as long as possible, till his vision became dim, the devotee passed through a condition of profound depression of spirit into an ecstasy in which he saw himself surrounded by a halo of light, the light of God that shone around Christ at the Transfiguration. A rapture of what he took to be unearthly joy seized him, and he felt himself brought into the very presence of God by his experience of the beatific vision. His cell, his monastery, his companion monks, the world, his own personality, vanished from his consciousness, and he sat enthralled, without thought, or wish, or movement, entirely occupied with his supernatural experience.

The quietness and passivity, the entire emptying of the mind of all thought, and the exclusion of all sensations, which were the condition of the trance, led those who indulged in it to be called "Hesychasts."^[23] Accordingly the controversy to which they gave rise has been designated the Hesychast controversy. This was originated by Barlaam, who had been the ambassador of Andronicus iii. to the pope at Avignon on the question of the reunion of the Churches. No sooner was this man back at Constantinople than he accused the monks of Mount Athos of the heresy of Ditheism—scornfully describing them as "navel souls."^[24] Gregory Palamas, afterwards archbishop of Thessalonica, defended them. For doing so he was included in Barlaam's accusations. A council was held on the subject at Constantinople in the year 1341, when the unpopularity of Barlaam's negotiation for the union came to the aid of the Mount Athos monks. The council gave its sanction to the doctrine of the uncreated light, connecting it with a Divine energy,^[25] which was to be distinguished from the essence^[26] of God. The accuser would have been condemned if he had not recanted, after which he withdrew to Italy and joined the Latin Church. But this did not end the controversy, which was taken up by Barlaam's admirer Gregory Acnidynus and Nicephorus the historian. Two more synods were held on the subject—the last in a.d. 1351, and these both followed the example of the earlier synod and declared in favour of the monks. Thus the idea of the uncreated light was repeatedly pronounced to be orthodox by the Greek Church.

It is difficult for a Western, and especially an Anglo-Saxon Protestant, mind not to feel contempt and disgust for what appears to be a gross and degrading superstition. And yet when we remember the trances of the prophets—especially of Ezekiel—and take note of the curious phenomena brought to light by recent experimental psychology, we may be led to suspend our judgment and allow the possibility that to some, if not all, who went through the abnormal experience, it may have been the condition of realising genuine spiritual communion, by means of its complete mastery of the distractions that come from the world of sense. Therefore, although itself apparently so completely materialistic, after all it may not have been so very alien to that internal light preached by George Fox, which his followers regard as the secret and source of their deepest religious life.

When we turn from the monks to the main body of the Church, and ask, What was its religious and moral condition during these later centuries of the Byzantine era? we are faced with a tantalising question which it is always difficult to answer. For most historians confine their attention to large movements and prominent personages. Suetonius's gossip of court scandal at Rome under the Cæsars does not give us any idea of the habits of the farmers on the plains of Italy, nor does Juvenal's satire on the fashionable society of his day teach us anything about the behaviour of the respectable citizens of the country towns. Still less do the Byzantine chroniclers throw light on the conduct and character of the subjects ruled by the Comneni and the Palæologi. Nevertheless, now and then we have hints of the existence of a public conscience reflecting the private morals of the people. Finlay repeatedly asserts his opinion that a high standard of morality was maintained in the Greek Empire at this time, and that morally as well as intellectually the Eastern Church was now much superior to the Western. We have seen that these were by no means dark ages in regard to culture, scholarship, and art. They were centuries of luxurious life and refinement, contrasting strongly with the ignorant barbarism of the barons who conducted the Crusades. The disapproval of second marriages and the grave condemnation of third marriages indicate some strictness in the public conscience which a fortiori would reprobate more serious offences in the relation of the sexes. But even Finlay admits the degradation of morals in the eleventh century under the unscrupulous Empress Zoe. The patriarch Alexius declined to celebrate the third marriage of this empress, although he had performed the ceremony when she married her second husband—a court servant well known to be her accepted lover—the very night of the death of her first husband. The third husband was the dissolute Constantine ix., who had had two wives. Yet the patriarch crowned the new emperor with the usual Church ceremonies the day after his marriage.

In reading the history of these centuries, we are horrified at the frequent cases of mutilation of their rivals and victims perpetrated by the emperors. Blinding was quite the rule when a dangerous person was so unfortunate as to fall into the hands of his enemy. A young prince would be suddenly torn away from all the splendour and luxury of the court, and flung into a dungeon, there to languish for decades. The operation of blinding was carried out with cold-blooded, scientific skill. It was deemed an act of humanity and refinement when, in place of the brutal act of gouging out the eyes, a copper globe was held in front of them reflecting and concentrating the sun's rays so as to ruin the sight without actually destroying the organs themselves. This shows that the purpose of the cruel punishment was not mere torture or the savage revenge of mutilation for its own sake. "Perhaps we should say that the precise purpose of this common expedient of blinding was not so much to incapacitate the victim physically, as to render it improbable that people should wish to restore him to a position of power, that is to say, to incapacitate him in the eyes of the public."^[27] It is true that the blind Dandolo was the leader of the Latin expedition against Constantinople; but he was a man of known ability and trusted integrity, loyal to Venice, with none of the self-seeking that actuated most of the barons.

 

1. λειτουργία.
2. Lent (except Palm Sunday), the eve of Epiphany, Easter, and Christmas, and the feast of St. Basil.
3. This was the ancient custom. To-day preaching is rarely heard in the Greek Church.
4. See pages 235, ff.
5. Μυριοβίβλιον.
6. This work by John the Lawyer was based on still earlier collections. It reduced the sixty heads of canon law in the older writers to fifty, and added to the canons of Nicæa, Ancyra, Neo-Cæsarea, Gangra, Antioch, Ephesus, and Constantinople, already collected and received in the Greek Church, the "Apostolical canons," the canons of Sardica, and those contained in the canonical letter of Basil. When at Constantinople John edited an abridgment of his earlier work with the addition of a comparison of the imperial rescripts and civil laws (especially the Novels of Justinian) under the title Nomocanon. See Smith's Dictionary of Chr. Biog. vol. iii. p. 366, col. 2.
7. Ἀμφιλόχια.
8. He was called φιλοσόφων ὕπτατος.
9. περὶ ἐνεργειάς δαιμόνων.
10. Διδασκαλιὰ παντοδαπή.
11. περὶ τῆς ἐν Χριστῶ ζωῆς.
12. See page 269.
13. See Ebert's Jahrbuch für rom. und engl. Literatur, 1860, ii. pp. 314–334; cf. St. Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa Religion, and Max Müller, on "Migration of Fables," Contemporary Review, vol. xiv. pp. 572–599.
14. Epist. 97.
15. De Spiritu Sancto, xxix. 73. This has been identified with two early hymns, the Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις (Gloria in excelsis), and the φῶς ἱλαρόν, still used in the Greek daily service.
16. e.g. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 28.
17. τροπάριον, a small τρόπος or mode.
18. Θεοτοκίον.
19. A "deluge of worthless compositions," Neale, Hymns of the Eastern Church, 3rd edit. p. 38.
20. The Greek begins, Ἰησοῦ γλυκύτατε, etc.
21. Ἅγιον ὁρος.
22. Monasteries of the Levant, p. 18.
23. ἡσυχάζοντες.
24. ὀμφαλόψυχοι.
25. ἐνέργεια.
26. οὐσία.
27. A suggestion made by Prof. Gwatkin in conversation with the present writer.