Alexander Schmemann

3. The Age Of The Ecumenical Councils (50 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 4

Constantinople vs. Alexandria

In the fourth century there arose really two new centers of attraction for the Church: Constantinople and Jerusalem. Constantine’s interest in the Holy Land, his mother Helen’s search for the wood of the Cross, the adornment of Jerusalem with magnificent churches, all have a special significance if we take into account the fact that the second holy city for Constantine was Constantinople, which he founded. There was perhaps even a subconscious sense of a special mission in the history of salvation: the city of the Cross and the city arising out of the victory of the Cross; the reign of Constantine crowning the victory of Christ; the world with two centers — the King of the Jews and the king of the Romans — reconciled in His sight. Through the centuries this mystical vision of Constantinople as a holy city would broaden and deepen, but it undoubtedly originated with its first emperor. Eusebius of Nicomedia made no mistake when he exchanged his ancient and celebrated see for the still obscure city of Constantinople, for here lay the highway of historical Christianity.

When the new capital was founded in 330, this imperial center was allotted a suitable position in the Church. It was at first the modest seat of one of the suffragans of the metropolitan of Heraclea; but it was doomed to elevation, if the expression may be allowed. Constantinople was created to be a second Rome, and the Christian center of the empire as well. In the Church of the Twelve Apostles, which he had built, Constantine prepared in the midst of the twelve symbolic tombs of the apostles a thirteenth, for himself. Did not this conversion of the empire fulfill the prophecy of the apostles? It is from this thirteenth tomb that his title as “equal to the apostles” came.

True enough, the omens of Constantinople were sometimes doubtful; for many years it was a center of Arianism, and Athanasius had elevated Alexandria in the eyes of the Church by his struggle for truth and freedom. Even when Constantinople became orthodox, the hostility of Alexandria did not slacken; it reappeared in a ridiculous attempt to support a certain Maxim the Cynic against St. Gregory the Theologian; in a passionate and hasty “Council at the Oak” in 402, which condemned Chrysostom; and also during the struggle of Cyril against Nestorius, despite the justice of that cause in the main.

Yet fifty years after the founding of the city, the Fathers or the Second Ecumenical Council were already proclaiming that the bishop of Constantinople held primacy of honor after the bishop of Rome, because Constantinople was the “New Rome, the city of the Emperor and the Senate.”[6] For a time this changed nothing in the basic structure of the Eastern Church, which was defined at the same council. Constantinople was not allotted any region and formally its bishop continued to be one of the bishops of the diocese of Thrace, headed by the metropolitan of Heraclea. In fact, however, the canon that confirmed his “primacy of honor” made him a unique center of the whole Eastern Church and defined the entire empire as his region. The two forms of ecclesiastical structure — that which had developed organically and that which Constantinople now symbolized — obviously did not coincide, and one of them would sooner or later have to submit to the other. Here lay the explanation of the prolonged conflict between Alexandria and Constantinople, which kept smoldering and flaring up intermittently into bright flame throughout these centuries.

 

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