Excerpts from

4. The Church and the Churches.

The East.

It was in the sphere of foreign politics that the interests of Church and State in Byzantium were beginning to drift apart. The Emperor’s chief concern was with the preservation of his tottering Empire, the Patriarch’s with the unity and well-being of the Orthodox world.

Where the few remaining independent Orthodox states of the East were concerned, the Patriarch was prepared to work in harmony with the Emperor. The past had shown that independent Orthodox rulers had been far too eager to proclaim the autonomy of their Churches and to appoint, however uncanonically, their own Patriarchs. That had been the policy of the Kings of Bulgaria and Serbia when their kingdoms had been powerful. But by the end of the fourteenth century Bulgaria had been entirely overrun by the Turks; and all that was left of the Serbian kingdom was a small principality, vassal to the Turks and in no position to indulge ecclesiastical ambitions. The two upstart Patriarchates had disappeared, and their congregations were glad to keep in touch with Constantinople. Across the Danube the Princes of Wallachia and Moldavia were similarly placed and similarly unlikely to pursue an independent ecclesiastical policy. Further to the East the Metropolitan of Trebizond, so long as he enjoyed autonomy in practice, was ready to admit the Patriarch as his superior. The Christians of the Caucasus, encircled by infidels, clung eagerly to their connection with the Empire, even though it was obviously dying.1 Indeed in 1453, when the news reached him that the Turks were massing to besiege the Imperial capital, the King of Georgia was preparing to dispatch his daughter, enriched with a handsome dowry, to be the bride of the Emperor Constantine.¹⁰² The Orthodox Church of Cyprus, despite its historic claim to autonomy, anxiously sought help from Emperor and Patriarch alike in its struggle against the Latin rulers of the island.¹⁰³

Among the Orthodox a challenge to Patriarchal authority came only from Russia. The Grand Prince of Moscovy, having asserted his rule over his rival Russian princes and having virtually freed himself from Tatar suzerainty, showed a natural but inconvenient desire to run his Church himself. To curb this ambition the Patriarchate had recourse to the mystical prestige of the Empire. As the Patriarch Antony reminded the Grand Prince Vassily, the Emperor was still the Holy Emperor; he was still God’s viceroy on earth. Vassily accepted the rebuke. To the Russians Constantinople was still a sacred city, a place of pilgrimage for the pious and the fountain of their faith and their culture. But it was doubtful how much longer the Russian Church and the Russian ruler would be content to have their chief hierarch nominated from Constantinople. In the old days there had been advantages in having a Greek archbishop. He could stand above the quarrels and intrigues of the rival Russian princes as no Russian could have done; and in the dark days of Tatar domination he could maintain a connection with the free Orthodox world and its great traditions. But such advantages were now out of date. Already the Russian ruler had insisted on appointing at least every alternate archbishop. The Patriarch had need to rely upon the ancient mystique of the Holy Empire to check further impertinence.¹⁰⁴

This support would, however, be useless unless the Emperor himself showed tact. The quarrel between the Patriarch Euthymius and Manuel II over the Emperor’s transference of a Macedonian bishop to the see of Moldavia, though the nominal issue was canonical, was almost certainly due to the Patriarch’s fear of offending the Moldavians.¹⁰⁵ A worse instance occurred when the Emperor John VIII, in his desire to have good intellectual support in his negotiations for union with the West, appointed the Greek Isidore as head of the Russian Church. Isidore’s adherence to the union was angrily repudiated by the Russians, who insisted on his deposition as a heretic.¹⁰⁶ Therein lay the main problem. If the Emperor used his control of the Byzantine Church to enforce on it a policy which the Orthodox in general and in particular the Orthodox outside of his dominions detested, could the unity of the Patriarchate and its authority be maintained? As we shall see, opposition to union with Rome came not only from fanatical monks but from many thoughtful Byzantines who realized that it would mean the secession of the Russians and other independent Orthodox congregations. If we accept the figures given in 1437, union would mean that sixteen out of the sixty-seven metropolitan sees of the Patriarchate would almost certainly go at once into schism.¹⁰⁷

There was a similar danger over the thirty-six metropolitan sees in Turkish territory. Even if their congregations were to favour union, it was unlikely that the Turkish authorities would approve of such a strengthening of ties with Western Europe. It would be risky for any Patriarch of Constantinople who wished to maintain his religious hold over the Sultan’s Christian subjects to follow the Emperor on a policy which few of those Christians desired and which the Sultan would certainly oppose. Hitherto those Christians had not fared too badly, in comparison with their Orthodox brethren in Cyprus or in Latin Greece, where their masters tirelessly tried to drag them into the Latin net. They suffered from civil disabilities; but at least they were allowed to retain their own form of religion.

In the East it was traditional to group peoples not according to their nationality in any modern sense of the word, but according to their religion; and members of a group with a distinctive religion differing from that of the paramount power were treated as an autonomous community under its religious head. The Persians had thus treated the Jews in Achaemenid days; and the Sassanids extended the system to include Christian communities. The Persian word ‘melet’ or ‘milet’, meaning a nation, was used to describe such a group. The Muslim Arabs adopted the practice, along with the word milet, when they overran lands where older religions were established. Each milet, so long as it was formed of ‘people of the Book’, that is to say, Christians and Jews, whose faiths the Prophet had emended but did not condemn, and, by courtesy, the Zoroastrians, was treated as a unit and governed itself according to its own laws, in all matters in which a Muslim was not concerned. The religious head of the group was responsible for its good behaviour. So long as its members paid their taxes and did not cause riots or indulge in treasonable activity, they were, at least in theory, left in peace. This worked well enough for such communities as were situated entirely or mainly within the Arab Caliph’s dominions, such as the Monophysite Churches, the Copts and the Jacobites, or the Nestorian Church, or the Sephardic Jews. They might occasionally be oppressed by some fanatical local governor or have their homes sacked by a jealous Muslim rabble. But in general the Muslim rulers, though they taxed them highly and often arbitrarily, behaved justly and without rancour towards them. The Orthodox Christians were in a different position. The three Patriarchs whose sees were in the Caliph’s territory, of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, might answer for them administratively, but to them the head of their community was God’s viceroy on earth, the Emperor at Constantinople. They were thus potential traitors and had to walk warily. But the Emperor felt responsibility for them; it was his duty to intervene in their favour were they persecuted. The Caliph accepted this, so long as the Orthodox avoided open treason. If they were maltreated without due cause, the Emperor’s protests were legitimate. When the Fatimid Caliph Hakim burnt down the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, his successor apologized to the Emperor; who was allowed to rebuild the shrine and to keep his own officials there. Earlier on, we find John of Damascus, who had been a civil servant in the Ommayad Caliph’s administration, writing to the Emperor as though he were a citizen of the Empire — but one who was fortunately out of reach of the Emperor’s fiercely iconoclastic arm.¹⁰⁸

The Turks inherited the milet system. It seemed to them natural that the Orthodox in their dominions should continue to regard the Emperor as their ultimate sovereign; and they did not object to it, so long as the Orthodox milet did not take up arms against them in support of the Emperor. The Christians were more heavily taxed than the Muslims, on the ground that they were not required to join the Sultan’s armed forces; though on an average they were less heavily taxed than their free brothers in the Emperor’s territory. There were certain restrictions on their acquisition of landed property. If they were involved in a lawsuit against a Muslim it was unlikely that they would obtain justice. Their worst hardship was that, from the later fourteenth century onwards, their sons might be taken from them and forcibly converted to Islam, to be enrolled in the Sultan’s corps of Janissaries; and if their daughters were coveted by a local Muslim magnate it might be difficult to preserve them from his seraglio. Inevitably a number of Christians passed over to the faith of their rulers, in order to enter the ruling classes; and these renegades were apt to be, as is the way of converts, fanatical and intolerant. But the Christian communities lasted on. Prudence taught them to be self-effacing; and by the end of the fourteenth century few of them had any hope left of regaining full freedom. Constantinople, however, remained to them the capital of their polity and of their Church.¹⁰⁹

The Emperor was conscious of his duty towards them. If at times he appeared to be unnecessarily subservient to the Sultan, it was often because the interests of these Christians were at stake. Indeed, when he submitted himself as vassal to the Sultan, it somewhat eased his position with regard to them. The Sultan was readier to let him intervene on their behalf.

To the Church they presented a special problem. As the Turks advanced the regular pattern had been for the Imperial civil administration to withdraw from each doomed city, leaving the bishop to make terms with the invaders. Muslim law held that, if a city surrendered to the Muslims, its Christian inhabitants might retain their churches and worship in them freely. If it were taken by storm, the Christians lost their rights. It was sometimes difficult to draw a distinction; and, if there were any great church building that the Turks especially desired, it was usually possible to find an excuse to justify its annexation. But in most cases the church buildings and the church organization were unharmed by the conquest, although, as we have seen, the consequences of the conquest involved movements of population and ecclesiastical reorganization. The Turks did not prevent the bishops of the conquered territories from keeping in touch with Constantinople. They were seldom forbidden to make the journey thither if they were summoned by the Emperor or the Patriarch to attend a Council, or if the business of their sees demanded their presence. But the business of their sees was changing its nature. In the absence of Christian civil officials they were left to administer the Christian communities. They had to enlarge their ecclesiastical courts to deal with all the litigation that concerned their congregations; they had to negotiate as administrators with their Turkish overlords. It was all haphazard and chaotic, and we have scant evidence to show how it worked. To many of such Christians, with their hope of liberty vanished, it seemed that the only chance of bettering their lives would be if the Sultan were to take over Constantinople and the Patriarchate.¹¹⁰

The Patriarch did his best to keep in touch. Bishops were summoned to Constantinople to report to him; but if they tried to avoid returning to their sees they were reprimanded, and the Emperor would be called in to put pressure on them. But, if the sees were to survive, the Patriarch had to maintain relations with the Sultan’s court; and this might be difficult if the Emperor’s foreign policy took a turn that the Sultan disliked, in particular if it veered towards union with the West.

There were also the Orthodox in other Muslim lands to consider. Hitherto the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem had not been entirely cut off from Constantinople. They had seldom been prevented from sending representatives to Church councils there; and each of them had occasionally been able himself to pay a visit to the Emperor. But would they continue to be allowed such facilities by their overlords if the Emperor tried to integrate himself with the militant Christian West?

It was the question of the union of the Church with Rome which presented the vital problem.