Theodore the Studite.

Theodore was in the ninth century both the model and the ideologist of the rigorist monastic party which played a decisive role in the entire life of Byzantine Christendom.

In the preceding chapter, Theodore’s contribution to the theology of images as an aspect of Chalcedonian Christological orthodoxy was discussed. His impact on the history of monasticism is equally important. Severely challenged by iconoclastic persecutions, Byzantine monasticism had acquired the prestige of martyrdom, and its authority in Orthodox circles was often greater than that of the compromise-minded hierarchy. Under Theodore’s leadership it became an organized and articulate bulwark of canonical and moral rigorism.

For Theodore, monastic life was, in fact, synonymous with authentic Christianity:

Certain people ask, whence did the tradition of renouncing the world and of becoming monks arise? But their question is the same as asking, whence was the tradition of becoming Christians? For the One who first laid down the apostolic tradition, six mysteries also were ordained: first ― illumination, second ― the assembly or communion, third ― the perfection of the chrism, fourth ― the perfection of priesthood, fifth ― the monastic perfection, and sixth ― the service for those who fall asleep in holiness.¹

This passage is important not only because monasticism is counted among the sacraments of the Church — in a list strikingly different from the post-Tridentine “seven sacraments” — but also, and chiefly, because the monastic state is considered one of the essential forms of Christian perfection and witness. Through detachment, through the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and through a life projected into the already-given reality of the kingdom of God, monasticism becomes an “angelic life.” The monks, according to Theodore, formed an eschatological community, which realizes more fully and more perfectly what the entire Church is supposed to be. The Studite monks brought this eschatological witness into the very midst of the imperial capital, the centre of the “world” and considered it as a normal being in almost constant conflict with the “world” and with whatever it represented. They constituted a well-organized group. Their abbot abhorred the spiritual individualism of the early Christian hermits and built Studios into a regimented, liturgical, working community in accordance with the best cenobitic traditions stemming from Basil and Pachomius.

For Theodore and his disciples, “otherworldliness” never meant that Christian action was not needed in the world. Quite to the contrary. The monks practised and preached active involvement in the affairs of the city so that it might conform itself as far as possible to the rigorous criteria of the kingdom of God as they understood it. The iconoclastic emperors persecuted the monks for their defence of the icons, of course, but also for their attempts to submit the earthly Christian empire to the imperatives and requirements of a transcendent Gospel. Their Orthodox successors obliged to recognize the moral victory of the monks and to solicit their support also found it difficult to comply with all their demands. The conflict over the second marriage of Constantine VI (795), which Patriarchs Tarasius and Nicephorus tolerated but which Theodore and the Studites considered “adulterous” (“moechian schism”), provoked decades of discussion over the nature of oikonomia — i.e., the possibility of circumventing the letter of the law for the ultimate good of the Church and of the individual’s salvation. This principle invoked by the council of 809 and discussed at greater length in the next chapter was challenged by Theodore not so much in itself as in the concrete case of Constantine VI. “Either the emperor is God, for divinity alone is not subject to the law, or there is anarchy and revolution. For how can there be peace if there is no law valid for all, if the emperor can fulfil his desires — commit adultery, or accept heresies, for example — while his subjects are forbidden to communicate with the adulterer or the heretic?”²

Theodore was certainly not an innovator in his attitude toward the state; for his was the attitude of Athanasius, of John Chrysostom, of Maximus the Confessor, and of John of Damascus, and it would be that of a large segment of Byzantine churchmen in later centuries; it merely illustrates the fact that Byzantine society was far from having found the “harmony” between the two powers about which Justinian spoke in his Novella 6. The action and witness of the monks was always present in Byzantium to demonstrate that true harmony between the kingdom of God and the “world” was possible only in the parousia.

Theodore’s ideology and commitments normally led him away from the Constantinian parallelism between the political structure of the empire and the structure of the Church, a parallelism endorsed in Nicaea and best exemplified in the gradual elevation of the bishop of Constantinople to “ecumenical patriarch.” Theodore, of course, never formally denied the canonical texts, which reflected it but, in practice, often referred to the principle of apostolicity as a criterion of authority in the Church, rather than to the political pre-eminence of certain cities. The support given to the Orthodox party during the iconoclastic period by the Church of Rome, the friendly correspondence, which Theodore was able to establish with Popes Leo III (795-816) and Paschal I (817-824), contrasted with the internal conflicts that existed with his own patriarchs, both iconoclastic and Orthodox. These factors explain the very high regard he repeatedly expressed toward the “apostolic throne” of old Rome. For example, he addressed Pope Paschal as “the rock of faith upon which the Catholic Church is built.” ― “You are Peter,” he writes, “adorning the throne of Peter.”³ The numerous passages of this kind carefully collected by modern apologists of the papacy⁴ are however not entirely sufficient to prove that Theodore’s view of Rome is identical to that of Vatican I. In his letters side by side with references to Peter and to the pope as leaders of the Church, one can also find him speaking of the “five-headed body of the Church”⁵ with reference to the Byzantine concept of a “pentarchy” of patriarchs. Also addressing himself to the patriarch of Jerusalem, he calls him “first among the patriarchs” for the place where the Lord suffered presupposes “the dignity highest of all.”⁶

Independence of the categories of “this world” and therefore of the state was the only real concern of the great Studite. The apostolic claim of Rome, no less real but much less effective, claims of the other Eastern patriarchs, provided him with arguments in his fight against the Byzantine state and Church hierarchies. Still, there is no reason to doubt that his view of the unity of the Church, which he never systematically developed, was not radically different from that of his contemporaries including Patriarch Photius who, as we shall see, was always ready to acknowledge the prominent position of Peter among the apostles but also considered that the authority of Peter’s Roman successors was dependent upon (not the foundation of) their orthodoxy. In Rome, Theodore the Studite saw that foremost support of the true faith and expressed his vision and his hope in the best tradition of the Byzantine superlative style.

The ancient monastic opposition to secular philosophy does not appear in Theodore’s writings. Theodore himself seemed even to have liked exercises in dialectics as his early correspondence with John the Grammarian, a humanist and later an iconoclastic patriarch, showed. But the anti-humanist tendency would clearly appear among his immediate disciples, the anti-Photians of the ninth century.

Photius (ca. 820 ― ca. 891).

The dominant figure in Byzantine religious and social and political life in the ninth century, Photius, is also the father of what is generally called Byzantine “humanism.” In his famous Library, an original and tremendously important compilation of literary criticism, he covers Christian writers of the early centuries as well as a number of secular authors; similarly in his Responses to Amphilochius, a collection of theological and philosophical essays, he displays a wide secular knowledge and an extensive training in patristic theology.

In all his writings, Photius remains essentially a university professor. In philosophy, his main interests are logic and dialectics; hence, there is his very clear predisposition to Aristotle rather than to Plato. In theology, he remains faithful to the positions and problematics of the early councils and Fathers. His love for ancient philosophy does not lead him to any tolerance toward a man like Origen whose condemnation by the Fifth Council he accepts without reservation,⁷ or like Clement of Alexandria in whose main writing the Hypotyposeis Photius found the “impious myths” of Platonism.⁸

His extensive erudition often provides us with detailed critical analysis of and exact quotations from authors about whom we should know nothing without his notes. The Christological controversies of the fifth and sixth centuries in particular attracted Photius’ attention. Despite his predilection for Antiochian exegesis and for theologians of the Antiochian school,⁹ he remains rigorously faithful to the Cyrillian exegesis of the Council of Chalcedon, which prevails in Byzantium under Justinian, and devotes long and, for us, precious attention to some of its important spokesmen.¹⁰

On other theological issues, Photius remains in very formal agreement with traditional patristic and conciliar positions. But he does not seem to accept fully or to understand the implications of the absolute apophaticism of a Gregory of Nyssa, and his doctrine of God in relation to creation seems to approach the Latin Scholastic concept of the actus furus.¹¹ But careful analysis of Photius’ thought would be required to assert his exact position on this point. In any case, his authority was invoked by the Byzantine anti-Palamites of the fourteenth century against the real distinction between essence and “energy” in God maintained by Palamas and endorsed by the councils of the period.¹² In addition, his devotion to secular learning and his liberal use of oikonomia made him during and after his lifetime rather unpopular in monastic circles.

In one aspect, Photius obviously dominated his contemporaries and the Middle Ages as a whole: his sense of history, of historical development, and of tradition. This sense is apparent in every codex (chapter) of the Library. Thus in analyzing the book of a priest Theodore, who defended the authenticity of the Dionysian writings, Photius carefully lists the arguments against authenticity and concludes with the simple statement that the author “tries to refute these objections and affirms that in his opinion the book of the great Dionysius is genuine.”¹³ Even if, on other occasions, Photius takes Dionysian authenticity for granted, the passage just cited clearly shows Photius’ intellectual honesty in acknowledging the impossibility of explaining the way in which Dionysius can foretell “traditions, which grew old only gradually in the Church and took a long time to develop.”¹⁴

This acknowledgement of the development of tradition and also of a possible and legitimate variety in ecclesiastical practices and rules plays a significant role in Photius’ attitude toward Pope Nicholas I and toward the Church of Rome. Accused by the pope of having been elevated from the lay state to the patriarchate in six days, a practice forbidden in Western tradition but never formally opposed in the East, Photius writes, “Everyone must preserve what is defined by common ecumenical decisions, but a particular opinion of a Church Father or a definition issued by a local council can be followed by some and ignored by others...” He then refers to such issues as shaving, fasting on Saturdays, and a celibate priesthood and continues: “When faith remains inviolate, the common and catholic decisions are also safe. A sensible man respects the practices and laws of others; he considers that it is neither wrong to observe nor illegal to violate them.”¹⁵

Photius’ concern for the “common faith” and “ecumenical decisions” is illustrated in the Filioque issue. Since modern historical research had clearly shown that he was not systematically anti-Latin, his position in the dispute can be explained only by the fact that he took the theological issue itself seriously. Not only he did place the main emphasis on the Filioque in his encyclical of 866, but even after ecclesiastical peace restored with Pope John VIII in 879-880 and after his retirement from the patriarchate, Photius still devoted many of his last days to writing the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, the first detailed Greek refutation of the Latin interpolation of Filioque into the Creed.

As the Mystagogy clearly showed, Photius was equally concerned with this unilateral interpolation into a text, which had won universal approval, and with the content of the interpolation itself. He made no distinction between the canonical and theological aspects of the issue and referred to the popes, especially to Leo III and to John VIII, who had opposed the interpolation, as opponents of the doctrine of the “double procession.”

The Mystagogy makes clear the basic Byzantine objection to the Latin doctrine of the Trinity: it understands God as a single and philosophically simple essence in which personal or hypostatic existence is reduced to the concept of mutual relations between the three Persons. If the idea of consubstantiality requires that the Father and the Son together are the one origin of the Spirit, essence in God necessarily precedes His personal existence as three hypostases. For Photius however “the Father is the origin [of the Son and of the Holy Spirit] not by nature but in virtue of His hypostatic character.”¹⁶ To confuse the hypostatic characters of the Father and the Son by attributing to them the procession of the Spirit is to fall into Sabellianism, a modalist heresy of the third century, or rather into semi-Sabellianism; for Sabellius confused the three Persons into one, while the Latins limited themselves to the Father and the Son, but then fell into the danger of excluding the Spirit from the Godhead altogether.¹⁷

Thus, Photius clearly demonstrates that behind the dispute on the Filioque two concepts of the Trinity lie: the Greek personalistic concept, which considers the personal revelation of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit as the starting point of Trinitarian theology, and the Latin, Augustinian approach to God as a simple essence within which a Trinity of persons can be understood only in terms of internal relations.

In opposing the Latin view of the Trinity, Photius does not deny sending of the Spirit through the Son to the world in the “economy” of salvation as the link between the deified humanity of Jesus and the entire body of the Church and of creation.¹⁸

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 648