Alexander Schmemann

4. Byzantium (22 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 17

We have seen already the quite exceptional importance achieved by the patriarch of Constantinople in the Eastern Church by the end of the seventh century. But the further time progresses, the fewer traces does he leave in history; little by little these traces are reduced to the mere listing of names. Of course exceptions are encountered. But it is enough to compare, for example, the tenth century — the era of the Macedonian dynasty — with the twelfth, the age of the Comneni. The remarkable patriarchs of the iconoclastic epoch — Germanos, Tarasius, Nicephorus, Methodius — are followed by no less eminent men: Ignatius, Photius, Nicholas the Mystic (who was victorious over Emperor Leo VI in the question of the latter’s fourth marriage), and Polyeuctus. In the eleventh century we still meet with such princes of the Church as Michael Cerularius (under whom communion with Rome was finally severed). Of course not all patriarchs in these centuries can be compared to these figures of the first rank. One may point to the scandalous Patriarch Stephen (a brother of Emperor Leo VI — elevated to the patriarchate at the age of nineteen), and in particular to Theophilactus, son of the Emperor Romanus Lecapenus, who for thirty years shamed the Byzantine Church with his disgraceful behavior. But after 1081, when Alexius Comnenus ascended the throne, the patriarchs seem to withdraw into the background. We find very meager information about them in the Byzantine chronicles through which we establish their names, their chief “acts” and the years in which they were appointed or died. A curve could be traced, showing a gradually fading image of the patriarch side by side with the ever-increasing splendor of the basileus, as the Eastern emperors were called. And this is not accidental. It gives proof that the scales of the unattainable harmony were inclined in the direction of imperial power.

It is important to emphasize that this painful weakness cannot be explained solely in terms of the government’s coercing the Church — in terms of the superiority of physical force, so to speak, as at the beginning of the Constantinian union. This was an inner, organic weakness of the representatives of the Church. Their dual situation made them not just the victims but also the agents of their own destiny. The thirst for a sacred theocracy, the desire to illumine the sinful stuff of history with the light of Christ; everything that could justify the union of Church and empire — this ideal required for its attainment a very subtle but very clear distinction between the Church and the world. For the Church is thoroughly fulfilling its mission to transform the world only when it completely feels itself to be a kingdom not of this world.

 

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