Chapter VI: The Church Outside of the Roman Empire.185 (2)

§ 68.6. A religious romance entitled =Barlaam and Josaphat=
whose author is not named, but evidently belonged to the East,
was included, even in the Middle Ages, among the works of
Joh. Damascenus, read by many especially in the West, translated
into Latin and rendered often in metrical form. It describes
the history of the conversion of the Indian prince Josaphat
by the eremite Barlaam with the object of showing the power of
Christianity against the allurements of sin and its superiority
to other religions. An uncritical age accepted the story as
historical, and venerated its two heroes as saints. The Roman
martyrology celebrated the 27th Nov. in their memory. Liebrecht
has discovered that the romance so popular in its days was
but a Christianized form of a legendary history of the life
and conversion of the founder of Buddhism, which existed in
pre-Christian times, and has come down to us under the title
_Lalita ristara Purâna_, often copying its original even in the
minutest details.

§ 69. DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES IN THE 12TH-14TH CENTURIES.

With the mental activity of the Comnenian age there was also reawakened a love of theological speculation and discussion, and several doctrinal questions engaged considerable attention. Then there came a lull in the controversial strife for two hundred years, to be roused once more by a question of abstruse mysticism.

§ 69.1. =Dogmatic Questions.=--Under the emperor Manuel
Comnenus, A.D. 1143-1180, the question was discussed whether
Christ presented His sacrifice for the sins of the world only to
the Father and the Holy Spirit, or also at the same time to the
Logos, _i.e._ to Himself. A Synod at Constantinople in A.D. 1156
sanctioned the latter notion.--Ten years later a controversy
arose over the question whether the words of Christ: “The Father
is greater than I,” refer to His divine or to His human nature
or to the union of the two natures. The discussion was carried on
by all ranks with a liveliness and passionateness which reminds
one of the similar controversies of the 4th century (§ 50, 2).
The emperor’s opinion that the words applied to the God-man
gained the victory at a Synod at Constantinople in A.D. 1166.
The dissentients were punished with the confiscation of their
goods and banishment.--Manuel excited a third controversy by
objecting to the anathema of “the God of Mohammed” in the formula
of abjuration for converts from Mohammedanism. In vain did the
bishops show the emperor that the God of Mohammed was not the
true God. The formula had to be altered.

§ 69.2. =The Hesychast Controversy, A.D. 1341-1351.=--In the
monasteries of Mount Athos in Thessaly the Areopagite mysticism
had its most zealous promoters. Following the example given three
centuries earlier by Simeon, an abbot of the monastery of Mesnes
in Constantinople, the monks by artificial means put themselves
into a condition that would afford them the ecstatic vision
of God which the Areopagite had extolled as the highest end
of all mystic endeavours. Kneeling in a corner of the solitary
closed cell, the chin pressed firmly on the breast, the eyes set
fixedly on the navel, and the breath held in as long as possible,
they sank at first into melancholy and their eyes became dim.
Continuing longer in this position the depression of spirit which
they at first experienced gave way to an inexpressible rapture,
and at last they found themselves surrounded by a bright halo of
light. They called themselves _Resting Ones_, ἡσυχάζοντες, and
maintained that the brilliancy surrounding them was the uncreated
divine light which shone around Christ on Mount Tabor. Barlaam
(§ 67, 5), just returned from his unfortunate union expedition,
accused the monks and their defender, Gregorius [Gregory] Palamas,
afterwards archbishop of Thessalonica, as Ditheistic heretics,
scornfully styling them _navel-souls_, ὀμφαλόψυχοι. But a Council
at Constantinople, in A.D. 1341, the members of which were
unfavourable to Barlaam because of his union efforts, approved
the doctrine of uncreated divine light which as divine ἐνεργεία
is to be distinguished from the divine οὐσία. Barlaam, in order
to avoid condemnation, recanted, but withdrew soon afterwards
to Italy, where he joined the communion of the Latin church
in A.D. 1348, and died as a bishop in Calabria. A disciple
of Barlaam, Gregorius [Gregory] Acindynos and the historian
Nicephorus Gregoras [Gregory] continued the controversy against
the Hesychasts. Down to A.D. 1351 as many as three Synods had
been held, which all decidedly favoured the monks.

§ 70. CONSTITUTION, WORSHIP AND LIFE.

The Byzantine emperors had been long accustomed to carry out in a very high-handed manner their own will even in regard to the internal affairs of the church. The anointing with sacred oil gave them a sacerdotal character and entitled them to be styled ἅγιος. Most of the emperors, too, from Leo the Philosopher (§ 68, 1), possessed some measure of theological culture. The patriarchate, however, if amid so many arbitrary appointments and removals it fell into the proper hands, was always a power which even emperors had to respect. What protected it against all encroachments of the temporal power was the influence of the monks and through them of the people. In consequence of the controversies about images, Theodorus Studita (§ 66, 4) founded a strong party which fought with all energy against every interference of the State in ecclesiastical matters and against the appointing of ecclesiastical officers by the temporal power, but only with temporary success. The monks, who had been threatened by the iconoclastic Isaurian with utter extermination, at the restoration grew and prospered more than ever in outward appearance, but gave way more and more to spiritual corruption and extravagance. The Eastern monks had not that genial many-sided culture which was needed for the cultivation of the fields and the minds of the barbarians. They were deficient in those powers of tempering, renovating and ennobling, whereby the monks of the West accomplished such wonderful results. But, nevertheless, if in those debased and degenerate days one looks for examples of fidelity to convictions, firmness of character, independence and moral earnestness, he will always find the noblest in the monasteries.--Public worship had already in the previous period attained to almost complete development, but theory and practice received enrichment in various particulars.

§ 70.1. =The Arsenian Schism, A.D. 1262-1312.=--Michael
Palæologus, after the death of the emperor Theodore Lascaris
in A.D. 1259, assumed the guardianship of his six years’ old
son John, had himself crowned joint ruler, and in A.D. 1261 had
the eyes of the young prince put out so as to make him unfit
for governing. The patriarch Arsenius then excommunicated him.
Michael besought absolution, and in order to obtain it submitted
to humiliating penances; but when the patriarch insisted that
he should resign the throne, the emperor deposed and exiled
him, A.D. 1267. The numerous adherents of Arsenius refused to
acknowledge the new patriarch Joseph (§ 67, 4), seceded from the
national church, and when their leader died in exile in A.D. 1273,
their veneration for him expressed itself in burning hatred
of his persecutors. When Joseph died in A.D. 1283, an attempt
was made to decide the controversy by a direct appeal to God’s
judgment. Each of the two parties cast a tract in defence of its
position into the fire, and both were consumed. The Arsenians,
who had expected a miracle, felt themselves for the moment
defeated and expressed a readiness to be reconciled. But on
the third day they recalled their admissions and the schism
continued, until the patriarch Niphon in A.D. 1312 had the bones
of Arsenius laid in the church of Sophia and pronounced a forty
days’ suspension on all the clergy who had taken part against him.

§ 70.2. =Public Worship.=--In the Greek church preaching retained
its early prominence; the homiletical productions, however, are
but of small value. The objection to hymns other than those found
in Scripture was more and more overcome. As in earlier times
(§ 59, 4) Troparies were added to the singing of psalms, so now
the New Testament hymns of praise and doxologies were formed
into a so-called Κανών, _i.e._ a collection of new odes arranged
for the several festivals and saints’ days. The 8th century was
the Augustan age of church song. To this period belonged the
celebrated ἅγιοι μελωδοί, Andrew of Crete, John of Damascus,
Cosmas of Jerusalem, and Theophanes of Nicæa. The singing after
this as well as before was without instrumental accompaniment and
also without harmonic arrangement.--There was a great diversity
of opinion in regard to the idea of the sacraments and their
number. Damascenus speaks only of two: Baptism and the Lord’s
Supper. Theodorus Studita, on the other hand, accepts the
six enumerated by the Pseudo-Areopagite (§ 58). Petrus [Peter]
Mogilas in his Anti-Protestant _Confessio orthodoxa_ of A.D. 1643
(§ 152, 3) is the first confidently to assert that even among
the Latins of the Middle Ages the Sacraments had been regarded
as seven in number. The Greeks differed from the Latins in
maintaining the necessity of immersion in baptism, in connecting
the chrism with the baptism, using leavened bread in the Supper
and giving both elements to all communicants. From the time of
Joh. Damascenus the teachers of the church decidedly subscribed
to the doctrine of Transubstantiation; but in regard to penance
and confession they stoutly maintained (§ 61, 1), that not the
priest but God alone can forgive sins. The _Unctio inferiorum_,
εὐχέλαιον, also made way in the Greek church, applied in the form
of the cross to forehead, breast, hands and feet; yet with this
difference that, expressly repudiating the designation “extreme”
unction, it was given not only in cases of mortal illness, but
also in less serious ailments, and had in view bodily cure as
well as spiritual benefit.--The emperor Leo VI. the Philosopher
made the benediction of the church (§ 61, 2) obligatory for a
legally valid marriage.

§ 70.3. =Monasticism.=--The most celebrated of all the monastic
associations were those of Mount Athos in Thessaly, which was
covered with monasteries and hermit cells, and as “the holy
mount” had become already a hallowed spot and the resort of
pilgrims for all Greek Christendom. The monastery of Studion,
too (§ 44, 3), was held in high repute. There was no want of
ascetic extravagances among the monks. There were numerous
stylites; many also spent their lives on high trees, δενδρίται,
or shut up in cages built on high platforms (κιονῖται), or
in subterranean caverns, etc. Others bound themselves to
perpetual silence. Many again wore constantly a shirt of iron
(σιδηρούμενοι), etc. A rare sort of pious monkish practice made
its appearance in the 12th century among the =Ecetæ=, Ἱκέται.
They were monks who danced and sang hymns with like-minded nuns
in their monasteries after the pattern of Exod. xv. 20, 21.
Although they continued orthodox in their doctrine and were
never charged with any act of immorality, Nicetas Acominatus
proceeded against them as heretics.

§ 70.4. =Endeavours at Reformation.=--In the beginning of
the 12th century a pious monk at Constantinople, Constantinus
Chrysomalus, protested against prevailing hypocrisy and formalism.
A decade later the monk Niphon took a similar stand. Around both
gathered groups of clergy and laymen who, putting themselves
under their pastoral direction and neglecting the outward
forms of the church, applied themselves to the deepening of
the spiritual life. Both brought down on themselves the anathema
of the church. The patriarch Cosmas, who was not convinced that
Niphon was a heretic and so received him into his house and at
his table, was deposed in A.D. 1150. Eustathius, archbishop of
Thessalonica (§ 68, 5), carried on his reformatory efforts quite
within the limits of the dominant institutions of the church,
and so kept himself safe from the machinations of his enemies.
Relentlessly and powerfully he struggled against the corruption
in the Christian life of the people, and especially against
the formalism and hypocrisy, the rudeness and vulgarity, the
spiritual blindness and pride, and the eccentric caricatures of
ascetism that were exhibited by the monks, though he was himself
in heart and soul a monk. Two hundred years later Nicolas
Cabasilas (§ 68, 5) yet more distinctly maintained that a
consistent life was the test and love the root of all virtue.

§ 71. DUALISTIC HERETICS.

Remnants of the Gnostic-Manichæan heresy lingered on into the 7th century in Armenia and Syria, where the surrounding Parseeism gave them a hold and support. Constantinus of Mananalis near Samosata gathered these together about the middle of the 7th century and reformed them somewhat in the spirit of Marcion (§ 27, 11). The Catholics, sneeringly called by them Ῥομαῖοι, gave the name of =Paulicians= to them because they regarded Paul alone as a true apostle. Even before the rise of the Paulicians, a sect existed in Armenia called =Children of the Sun= who had mixed up the Zoroastrian worship with Christian elements. They, too, during the 9th and 10th centuries, by reorganization reached a position of more importance, and represented, like the Paulicians, a reformatory opposition to the formal institutions of the Catholic church. A similar attitude was assumed by the =Euchites= in Thrace during the 11th century. Like the old Euchites (§ 44, 7), they got their name from the unceasing prayers which they regarded as the token of highest perfection. Their dualistic-gnostic system is met with again among the =Bogomili= in Bulgaria. These were still more decidedly hostile to the Catholic church, and had adopted the anthropological views of Saturninus and the Ophites as well as the trinitarian theory of Sabellius (§ 27, 6, 9; 33, 7). All these sects were accused by their Catholic opponents with entertaining antinomian doctrines and practising licentious orgies and unnatural abominations.

§ 71.1. =The Paulicians.=--They called themselves only Χριστιανοί,
but were in the habit of giving to their leaders and churches the
names of Paul’s companions and mission stations. They combined
dualism, demiurgism and docetism with a mysticism that insisted
upon inward piety, demanded a strict but not rigorous asceticism,
forbade fasting and allowed marriage. Their worship was very
simple, their church constitution moulded after the apostolic
pattern, with the rejection of the hierarchy and priesthood. They
were specially averse to the accumulation of ceremonies and the
veneration of images, relics and saints in the Catholic church.
They also urged the diligent study of Scripture, rejecting,
however, the Old Testament, and the Jewish-Christian gospels
and epistles of the New Testament. The Catholic polemists
of the 9th century traced their origin and even their name
(=Παυλοϊωάννοι) to a Manichæan family of the fourth century,
a widow Callinice and her two sons Paul and John. None of the
distinctive marks of Manichæism, however, are discoverable
in them, and their founding by Constantine of Mananalis is a
historic fact, as also that he, in A.D. 657, assumed the Pauline
name of Sylvanus. The first church, which he called _Macedonia_,
was founded by him at Cibossa in Armenia. From this point he made
successful missionary journeys in all directions. The emperor
Constantinus Pogonnatus, A.D. 668-685, began a bloody persecution
of the Paulicians. But the martyr enthusiasm of Sylvanus, who
was stoned in A.D. 685, made such an impression upon the imperial
officer Symeon, that he himself joined the sect, was made their
chief under the name of Titus, and on the renewal of persecution
in A.D. 690 joyfully died at the stake. His successor Gegnesius,
who took the name of Timothy, was obliged by Leo the Isaurian to
undergo an examination under the patriarch of Constantinople, had
his orthodoxy attested, and received from the iconoclast emperor
a letter of protection. Soon, however, divisions sprang up within
the sect itself. One of their chiefs Baanes, on account of his
antinomian practices, was nicknamed ὁ ῥυπαρός the smutty. But,
about A.D. 801, Sergius Tychicus, converted in earlier years
by a Paulician woman, who directed him to the Bible, made his
appearance as a reformer and second founder of the sect. He
died in A.D. 835. Leo the Armenian, A.D. 813-820, organized an
expedition for their conversion. The penitents were received back
into the church, the obstinate were executed. A mob of Paulicians
murdered the judges, fled to the Saracen regions of Armenia, and
founded at Argaum, the ancient Colosse, a military colony which
made incessant predatory and retaliating raids upon the Byzantine
provinces. They were most numerous in Asia Minor. The empress
Theodora (§ 66, 4) carried out against them about A.D. 842 a
new and fearfully bloody persecution. Many thousands were put to
death. This too was the fate of an officer of high rank. His son,
Carbeas, also an officer, incited by an ardent desire for revenge,
gathered about 5,000 armed Paulicians around him in A.D. 844,
fled with them to Argaum, and became military chief of the sect.
New crowds of Paulicians streamed daily in, and the Khalifs
assigned to them two other fortified frontier cities. With a
well organized army, thirsting for revenge, Carbeas wasted the
Byzantine provinces far and wide, and repeatedly defeated the
imperial forces. Basil the Macedonian after two campaigns, at
last in A.D. 871, hemmed in the Paulician army in a narrow pass
and annihilated it. Their political power was now broken. The
sect, however, still continued to gather members in Syria and
Asia Minor. In A.D. 970, the emperor John Tzimisces transported
the greater part of them as watchers of the frontier of Thrace,
where Philippopolis became their Zion. They soon had possession
of all Thrace. Alexius Comnenus, A.D. 1081-1118, was the first
earnestly again to attempt their conversion. He himself appeared
at Philippopolis in A.D. 1115, disputed a whole day with their
leaders, promised and threatened, rewarded and punished, but
all his efforts were fruitless. From that time we hear nothing
more of them. Their remnants probably joined the Euchites and
the Bogomili.

§ 71.2. =The Children of the Sun=, or Arevendi were a sect
gathered and organized in the 9th century in Armenia by a
Paulician Sembat in the country town of Thontrace into a separate
community of Thontracians. In A.D. 1002 the metropolitan Jacob
of Harkh gave a Christian tinge to their doctrine, went through
the country preaching repentance and the performances of ritual
observances, and obtained much support from clergy and laity. The
Catholicus of the Armenian church caused him to be branded and
imprisoned. He made his escape, but was afterwards slain by his
opponents.

§ 71.3. =The Euchites=, Messelians [Messalians], Enthusiasts,
attracted the attention of the government in the beginning of
the 11th century as a sect widely spread in Thrace. In common
with the earlier Euchites (§ 44, 7) they had great enthusiasm
in prayer, but they were distinguished from them by their dualism.
Their doctrine of the two sons of God, Satanaël and Christ, shows
a certain relation to the form of Persian dualism, which derives
the two opposing principles, Ormuzd and Ahriman, from one eternal
primary essence, Zeruane Acerene. The germs of this sect may
have come from the transplanting of Paulicians to Thrace by the
emperor Tzimisces. The Byzantine government sent a legate to
Thrace to suppress them. This may have been Michael Psellus
(§ 68, 5) whose Διάλογος περὶ ἐνεργείας δαιμόνων is the only
source of information we have regarding them.

§ 71.4. =The Bogomili=, θεόφιλοι, taught: that Satanaël, the
firstborn son of God, as chief and head over all angels, clothed
with full glory of the Godhead, sat at the right hand of the
Father; but, swelling with pride, he thought to found an empire
independent of his Father and seduced a portion of the angels to
take part with him. Driven with them out of heaven, he determined
after the pattern of the creation of the Father (Gen. i. 1) to
create a new world out of chaos (Gen. ii. 3 ff.). He formed the
first man of earth mixed with water. When he set up the figure,
some of the water ran out of the great toe of the right foot
and spread out over the ground; and after he had breathed his
breath into it, that also escaped owing to the looseness of the
figure by the toe, permeated the soil moistened with the water
and animated it as a serpent. At Satanaël’s earnest entreaty the
heavenly Father took pity on the miserable creature, and gave
it life by breathing into it His own breath. Afterwards with
the Father’s help Eve, too, was created. Satanaël in the form
of the serpent seduced, deceived and lay with Eve in order that
by his seed, Cain and his twin sister Calomina, Adam’s future
descendants, Abel, Seth, etc., might be oppressed and brought
into bondage. Jealous lest the latter should obtain that heavenly
dwelling place from which they had been driven, Satanaël’s angels
seduced their daughters (Gen. vi.). From this union sprang giants
who rebelled against Satanaël, but were destroyed by him in the
flood. Henceforth he reigned unopposed as κοσμοκράτωρ, seduced
the greater part of mankind, and endowed Moses with the power of
working miracles as the instrument of his tyranny. Only a few men
under the oppression of his law attained the end of their being;
the sixteen prophets and those named in Matt. i. and Luke iii.
Finally, in the year 5,500 after the creation of man, the supreme
God moved with pity caused a second son, the Logos, to go forth
from His bosom, who as chief of the good angels is called Michael,
and sent Him to earth for man’s redemption. He entered in an
ethereal body through the right ear into the virgin to be born
of her with the semblance of an earthly body. Mary noticed
nothing of all this. Without knowing how or whence, she found
the child in swaddling clothes before her in the cave. His
death on the cross was naturally in appearance only. After his
resurrection he showed himself to Satanaël in his true form,
bound him with chains, robbed him of his divine power, and
compelled him to abandon his divine designation, by taking the
El from his name, so that he is henceforth called Satan. Then He
returned to the Father, took the seat that formerly was Satanaël’s
at His right hand, and sinks again into the bosom of the Father
out of which He had come. This, however, did not take place
before a new Aëon [Æon], the Holy Spirit, emanated from the
Godhead, and was sent forth as continuator and completer of the
work of redemption. This Spirit, too, after he has finished his
task will sink back again into the Father’s bosom.--Of the Old
Testament the Bogomili acknowledged only the Psalter and the
Prophets; of the New Testament books they valued most the
Gospel of John. Veneration of relics and images, as well as
the sign of the cross they abhorred as demoniacal inventions.
Church buildings were regarded by them as the residences of
demons. Satanaël himself in earlier days resided in the temple
of Jerusalem, later in the church of Sophia at Constantinople.
Water baptism, which was introduced by John the Baptist a
servant of Satanaël, they rejected; but the baptism of Christ is
spiritual baptism (παράκλησις=_Consolamentum_). It was imparted
by laying the Gospel of John on the head of the subject of
baptism, with invocation of the Holy Spirit and chanting the
Lord’s Prayer. They declared the Catholic mass to be a sacrifice
presented to demons; the true eucharist consists in the spiritual
nourishment by the bread of life brought down in Christ from
heaven, to which also the fourth petition in the Lord’s Prayer
refers. They placed great value upon prayer, especially the use
of the Lord’s Prayer. So too they valued fasting. Their ascetism
was strict and required abstinence from marriage and from
the eating of flesh. But prevarication and dissimulation they
regarded as permissible.--The emperor Alexius Comnenus caused
their chief Basil to be brought to Constantinople, under the
delusive pretext of wishing himself to become a proselyte of
the sect, got him to open all his heart, and enticed him under
the semblance of a purely private conference to make reckless
statements, while behind the curtain a judge of heresies was
taking notes. This first act in the drama was followed by a
second. The sentence of death was passed upon all adherents of
Basil who could be laid hold upon. Two great funeral piles were
erected, one of which was furnished with the figure of the cross.
The emperor exhorted them, at least to die as true Christians,
and in token of this to choose the place of death provided with
a cross. Those who did so were pardoned, the rest for the most
part condemned to imprisonment for life. Basil himself, however,
was actually burnt, A.D. 1118. The sect was not by any means thus
rooted out. The Bogomili hid themselves mostly in monasteries,
and Bulgaria long remained the haunt of dualistic heresy, which
spread thence through the Latin church of the West.

§ 72. THE NESTORIAN AND MONOPHYSITE CHURCHES OF THE EAST.

The Nestorian and Monophysite churches of the East owed the protection and goodwill of their Moslem rulers to their hostile position in regard to the Byzantine national church. Among the Persian Nestorians as well as among the Syrian and Armenian Monophysites we find an earnest endeavour after scholarship and great scientific activity. They were the teachers of the Saracens in the classical, philosophical and medical sciences, and with no little zeal pursued the study of Christian theology. The Nestorians also long manifested great earnestness in missions. Only when the science-loving Khalifs gave place to Mongolian and Turkish barbarians did those churches lose their prestige, and that stagnation and torpidity passed over them in which they still lie. In order to crown the Florentine union attempts of A.D. 1439 (§ 67, 6), Rome solemnly proclaimed in the immediately following year the complete union with all the detached churches of the East. But this was a vain self-delusion or a bit of jugglery. Men pretending to be deputed by those churches treated about restoration to the bosom of the church, which was accorded them amid great applause.

§ 72.1. =The Persian Nestorians=, or Chaldean Christians
(§ 64, 2), stood in peculiarly friendly relations to the Khalifs,
who, in the Nestorian opposition to Theotokism, worship of saints,
images and relics, and priestly celibacy, saw an approach to a
rational Christianity more in accordance with the Moslem ideal.
The Nestorian seminaries at Edessa, Nisibis, Seleucia, etc., were
in high repute. The rich literature issued by them is, however,
mostly lost, and what of it remains is known only by Asseman’s
[Assemani’s] quotations (_Biblioth. Orientalia_). Among the later
Nestorian authors the best known is Ebed Jesus, Metropolitan
of Nisibis, who died in A.D. 1318. His writings treat of all
subjects in the domain of theology. The missionary zeal of the
Nestorians continued unabated down to the 13th century. Their
chief mission fields were China and India. At the beginning
of the 11th century they converted the prince of the Karaites,
a Tartar tribe to the south of Lake Baikal, who as vassals of
the great Chinese empire had the name Ung-Khan. A large number
of the people followed their prince. The Mongol conqueror
Genghis-Khan married the daughter of the Karaite prince, but
quarrelled with him, drove him from his throne, and took his life,
A.D. 1202.--With the overthrow of the Khalifs by Genghis-Khan
in A.D. 1219, the prosperity of the Nestorian church came to an
end. At first the Nestorians attempted missionary operations not
unsuccessfully among the Mongols. But the savage Tamerlane, the
Scourge of Asia, A.D. 1369-1405, drove them into the inaccessible
mountains and wild ravines of the province of Kurdistan.[195]

§ 72.2. Among the =Monophysite Churches= the most important was
the =Armenian= (§ 64, 3). It boasted, at least temporarily and
partially, of political independence under national rulers. The
Armenian patriarch from the 12th century had his residence in
the monastery of Etshmiadzin at the foot of Ararat. The literary
activity in the translation of classical and patristic writings,
as well as in the production of original works, reached a
particularly high point in the 8th and then again in the 12th
century. To the earlier period belong the patriarch Johannes
Ozniensis and the metropolitan Stephen of Sünik, to the later,
the still more famous name of the patriarch Nerses IV. Clajensis,
whose epic “Jesus the Son” is regarded as the crown of Armenian
poetry, and his nephew, the metropolitan Nerses of Lampron. The
two last named readily aided the efforts for reunion with the
Byzantine church, but owing to the troubles of the time these
came to nothing. The Western endeavours after union which were
actively carried on from the beginning of the 13th century, split
upon the dislike of the Armenian church to the Western ritual,
and found acceptance with only a relatively small fragment of
the people. These _United Armenians_ acknowledged the primacy of
the pope and the catholic system of doctrine, but retained their
own constitution and liturgy.--In =the Jacobite-Syrian Church=
(§ 52, 7), too, theological and classical studies were prosecuted
with great vigour. The most distinguished of its scholars during
our period was George, bishop of the Arabs, who died in A.D. 740.
He translated and annotated the Organon of Aristotle, and wrote
exegetical, dogmatic, historical and chronological works, also
poems on various themes, and a number of epistles important for
the history of culture during these times, in which he answered
questions put to him by his friends and admirers. The brilliant
Gregory Abulfarajus is the last of the distinguished scholars of
the Jacobite-Syrian church. He was the son of a converted Jewish
physician, and hence he is usually called Barhebræus. He was
made bishop of Guba, afterwards Maphrian of Mosul, and died
in A.D. 1286. His noble and truly benevolent disposition, his
extraordinary learning, the rich and attractive productions
of his pen, and his skill as a physician made him universally
revered by Christians, Mohammedans and Jews. Among his writings,
for the most part still in manuscript, the most important
and best known is the _Chronicon Syriacum_.--The Jacobite
church suffered most in =Egypt=. The perfidy of the Copts, who
surrendered the country to the Saracens, was terribly avenged.
From A.D. 1254 the Fatimide Khalifs held them down under the
most severe oppression, and this became yet more severe under
the Mamelukes. The Copts were completely driven out of the
cities, and even in the villages maintained only a miserable
existence. Their church was now in a condition of utter
stagnation. In =Abyssinia= (§ 64, 1) the national rulers
maintained their position, though pressed within narrower
limits from time to time by the Saracens. But here, too, church
life became fossilized. At the head of the church was an Abbuna
consecrated by the Coptic patriarch (§ 64, 1; 165, 3).

§ 72.3. =The Maronites= (§ 52, 8) attached themselves to the
Western church on the appearance of the crusades in A.D. 1182,
renouncing their Monothelite heresy and acknowledging the primacy
of the pope, but retaining their own ritual. In consequence of
the Florentine union measures they renewed their connection in
A.D. 1445, and subsequently adopted also the doctrinal conclusions
of the Council of Trent. Their numbers at the present day amount
to somewhere about 200,000.

§ 72.4. =The Legend of Prester John.=--In A.D. 1144 Bishop Otto
of Freisingen obtained from the bishop of Cabala in Palestine,
whom he met at Viterbo, information about a powerful Christian
empire in Central Asia, and published it in A.D. 1145 in his
widely-read Chronicle. According to this story the king of that
region, a Nestorian Christian, who was named Prester John, had
not long before driven to flight the Mohammedan kings of the
Persians and Medes, and thus delivered from great danger the
crusaders in the Holy Land. He had also wished to go to the
help of the church of Jerusalem, but was prevented by the Tigris
which overflowed its banks. Twenty years later appeared a writing
attributed to Prester John, first referred to by the Chronicler
Alberich. It was addressed to the European princes in a Latin
translation which contained the most fabulous stories, borrowed
from the Alexander legends, about the extent and glory of
his empire and the many wonders in nature, white lions, the
phœnix, giants and pigmies, dog-headed and horned men, fauns,
satyrs, cyclops, etc., which were to be seen in his country; and
notwithstanding all these absurdities it was received as genuine.
The pope, Alexander III., took occasion from its appearance to
send an answer to Prester John by his own physician Philip, of
whose fate nothing more is known. When in A.D. 1219 the first
news reached Palestine of the irrepressible advance of Mongolian
hordes under Genghis Khan, the crusaders felt justified in
assuming that he was the successor of the celebrated Prester John,
and was now to accomplish what his distinguished predecessor
had wished to undertake. But they were soon cruelly undeceived.
The missionaries sent to the Mongols about the middle of
the 13th century (§ 93, 15), reported that the last Prester
John had lost his kingdom and his life in battle with Genghis
Khan. Nevertheless the belief in the continued existence of an
exceedingly glorious and powerful empire ruled by a Christian
priest in further India was not by any means overthrown; but it
was no longer sought in an Asiatic but in an African “India,” and
the Portuguese actually believed that at last the famed Prester
John had been found in the Christian king of Abyssinia, so that
that country was known down to the 17th century as _Regnum presb.
Joannis_.--The Jacobite historian Barhebræus had identified the
first Presbyter-king with the prince of the Mongolian Karaites
converted by the Nestorians. His name Ung-Khan or Owang-Khan
corresponded both to the name Joannes and to the Chaldean
כַּהֲנָא=priest. This notion prevailed until recently the Orientalist
Oppert by careful examination and comparison of all Oriental
and Western reports reached the conclusion (§ 93, 16) that these
legends are to be referred to the kingdom established about
A.D. 1125 by Kur-Khan, prince of the tribe of the Caracitai in
the Mandshuria of to-day. This prince, who was probably himself
a Nestorian Christian, favoured the establishment of Christianity
in his country; but this was utterly destroyed by Genghis Khan so
early as A.D. 1208. The title Prester or Presbyter given to the
prince of this tribe is to be explained perhaps by the statement
of the missionary Ruysbroek that almost all male Nestorians in
Central Asia received priestly consecration.[196]

§ 73. THE SLAVONIC CHURCHES ADHERING TO THE ORTHODOX
GREEK CONFESSION.

Among the crowds of immigrants whom the wanderings of the people had set in motion, the Germans and the Slavs are those whose future is of most historic interest. The former went at once in a body over to the Roman Catholic church, and at first it appeared as if the Slavs were with similar unanimity to attach themselves to the Byzantine orthodox church. But only the Slavs of the Eastern countries remained true to that communion, though they were mostly with it brought under the yoke of the Turkish power. So was it with the specially promising Bulgarian church. All the more important was the incomparably more significant gain which the Greek church made in the conversion of the Russians.

§ 73.1. Soon after Justinian’s time the Slavic hordes began to
overflow the =Greek Provinces=--Macedonia, Thessaly, Hellas and
Peloponnesus. The old Hellenic population was mostly rooted out;
only in well fortified cities, especially coast towns, as well as
on the islands, did the Greek people and the Christian confession
remain undisturbed. The empress Irene made the first successful
attempt to restore Slavic Greece to the allegiance of the empire
and the church, and Basil the Macedonian, A.D. 867-886, completed
the work so thoroughly that at last even the old pagan Mainottes
(§ 42, 4) in the Peloponnesus bent their necks to the double yoke.
Regenerated Hellenism by its higher culture and national, as well
as ecclesiastical, tenacity, completely absorbed by assimilation
the numerically larger Slavic element of the population, and
Mount Athos with its hermits and monasteries (§ 70, 3) became
the Zion of the new church.

§ 73.2. The =Chazari= in the Crimea asked about A.D. 850 for
Christian missionaries from Constantinople. The court sent them
a celebrated monk Constantine, surnamed the Philosopher, better
known under his monkish name of =Cyril=. Born at Thessalonica,
and so probably of Slavic descent, at least acquainted with the
language of the Slavs, he converted in a few years a great part
of the people. In A.D. 1016, however, the kingdom of the Chazari
was destroyed by the Russians.

§ 73.3. =The Bulgarians= in Thrace and Mœsia had obtained a
knowledge of Christianity from Greek prisoners, but its first
sowing was watered with blood. A sister, however, of the Bulgarian
king Bogoris had been baptized when a prisoner in Constantinople.
After her liberation, she sought, with the help of the Byzantine
monk =Methodius=, a brother of Cyril, to win her brother to
the Christian faith. A famine came to their aid, and a picture
painted by Methodius, representing the last judgment, made a
deep impression on Bogoris. In A.D. 861 he was baptized and
compelled his subjects to follow his example. But soon thereafter,
Methodius, along with his brother Cyril, was called to labour in
another field, in Moravia (§ 79, 2), and political considerations
led the Bulgarian prince in A.D. 866 to join the Western church.
At his request pope Nicholas I. sent bishops and clergy into
Bulgaria to organize the church there after the Roman model.
Byzantine diplomacy, however, succeeded in winning back the
Bulgarians, and at the œcumenical Council at Constantinople in
A.D. 869, their ambassadors admitted that the Bulgarian church
according to divine and human laws belonged to the diocese of the
Byzantine patriarch (§ 67, 1). Meantime the two Apostles of the
Slavs, Cyril and Methodius, by the invention of a Slavic alphabet
and a Slavic translation of the Bible, laid the foundation of a
Slavic ecclesiastical literature, which was specially fostered
in Bulgaria under the noble-minded prince Symeon, A.D. 888-927.
Basil II., the Slayer of the Bulgarians, conquered Bulgaria in
A.D. 1018. It gained its freedom again, together with Walachia,
in A.D. 1186; but fell a prey to the Tartars in A.D. 1285, and
became a Turkish province in A.D. 1391.

§ 73.4. =The Russian Church.=--Photius speaks in A.D. 866 of the
=Conversion of the Russians= as an accomplished fact. In the days
of the Grand Duke Igor, about A.D. 900, there was a cathedral at
Kiev. Olga, Igor’s widow, made a journey to Constantinople and
was there baptized in A.D. 955 under the name Helena. But her son
Swätoslaw could not be persuaded to follow her example. The aged
princess is said according to the report of German chroniclers
to have at last besought the emperor Otto I. to send German
missionaries, and that in response Adalbert of Treves, afterwards
archbishop of Magdeburg, undertook a missionary tour, from which,
however, he returned without having achieved his purpose, after
his companions had been slain. Olga’s grandson, Vladimir, “Equal
of the Apostles,” was the first to put an end to paganism in
the country. According to a legend adorned with many romantic
episodes he sent ten Boyars in order to see how the different
religions appeared as conducted in their chief seats. They were
peculiarly impressed with the beautiful service in the church of
Sophia. In A.D. 988, in the old Christian commercial town Cherson,
shortly before conquered by him, Vladimir was baptized with the
name Basil, and at the same time he received the hand of the
princess Anna. The idols were now everywhere broken up and burnt;
the image of Perun was dragged through the streets tied to the
tail of a horse, beaten with clubs and thrown into the Dnieper.
The inhabitants of Kiev were soon afterwards ordered to gather
at the Dnieper and be baptized. Vladimir knelt in prayer on the
banks and thanked God on his knees, while the clergy, standing
in the stream, baptized the people. On the further organization
of the Russian church Anna exercised a powerful and salutary
influence. Vladimir died in A.D. 1015. His son Jaroslaw I., the
Justinian of the Russians, attended to the religious needs of his
people by the erection of many churches, monasteries and schools,
improved the worship, enriched the psalmody, awakened a taste for
art and patronized learning. The monastery of Petchersk at Kiev
was the birthplace of Russian literature and a seminary for the
training of the clergy. Here, at the end of the 11th century, the
monk Nestor wrote his annals in the language of the country. The
metropolitan of Kiev was the spiritual head of the whole Russian
church under the suzerainty of the patriarch of Constantinople.
After the great fire of A.D. 1170, which laid the glory of Kiev
in ashes, the residency of the Grand Duke was transferred to
Vladimir. In A.D. 1299 the metropolitan also took up his abode
there, but only for a short time; for in A.D. 1328 the Grand Duke
Ivan Danilowitsch settled at Moscow and the metropolitan went
there along with him. The patriarch of Constantinople on his own
authority consecrated in A.D. 1353 a second Russian metropolitan
for the forsaken Kiev, to whom he assigned the Southern and
Western Russian provinces which since A.D. 1320 had been under
the rule of the pagan Lithuanians. This schism was overcome
in A.D. 1380 on the next occasion of a vacancy in the Moscow
chair by the appointment to Moscow of the Kiev metropolitan. But
the Lithuanian government, which had meanwhile become Catholic
(§ 93, 15), compelled the South Russian bishops in A.D. 1414 to
choose a metropolitan of their own independent of Moscow, who in
A.D. 1594 with his whole diocese at the Synod of Brest (§ 151, 3)
attached himself to Rome. The primate of Moscow continued under
the jurisdiction of Constantinople until, in A.D. 1589, the
patriarch Jeremiah II. (§ 139, 26), on the occasion of his being
personally present at Moscow voluntarily declared the Russian
church independent of him, and himself consecrated Job, the
metropolitan of that time, its first patriarch.[197]

§ 73.5. =Russian Sects.=--About A.D. 1150, the monk Martin, an
Armenian by birth, insisted upon a liturgical reform that seemed
to him most necessary. Among other things he declared that it was
sinful to lead the subject of baptism to the baptismal font from
right to left or from south to north; the direction should be
reversed following the course of the sun. But it seemed to him
most important that a reform should be made in the hitherto
prevalent mode of making the sign of the cross. Instead of
symbolizing, as up to this time had been done, the two natures in
Christ and the three persons in the Trinity by bending the little
finger and the thumb, and making the sign of the cross with other
three, they made this sign with the fore and middle fingers.
For nearly ten years this monk was allowed to disseminate his
errors unchecked, till a Council obliged him to retract. Two
hundred years later a certain Carp Strigolnik at Novgorod in
A.D. 1375 publicly accused the clergy of sinning, because,
in accordance with an old custom, they took fees in assisting
in the consecration of bishops, and demanded of all orthodox
Christians that they should separate from them as unworthy of
their office. But he, along with many of his followers, was
mobbed by the adherents of the opposite party and drowned in
the Volga. More dangerous than all the earlier sectaries was
the so-called Jewish sect at the end of the 15th century,
which sought to reduce orthodox Christianity to a rationalistic
cabbalistic Ebionitism. About A.D. 1470 the Jew Zachariah arrived
at Novgorod. He won two distinguished priests Alexis and Denis to
his views, that Christ was nothing more than an ordinary Jewish
prophet, that the Mosaic law is a divine institution and is of
perpetual obligation. By the advice of the Jew the two priests
continued to profess the greatest zeal for the ceremonial laws
of the Church, and by strict observance of the fasts obtained
a great reputation for piety, but secretly they wrought all the
more successfully for the dissemination of their sect among all
classes of the people. When the czar, Ivan III., in A.D. 1480,
came to Novgorod, they made so favourable an impression on
him that he took them with him to Moscow, where they reaped a
rich harvest for their secret doctrine. They succeeded through
their influence with the czar in placing at the head of the
whole Russian church a zealous proselyte for their sect in the
archimandrite Zosima. Meanwhile at Novgorod iconoclast excesses
were committed by the sectaries, which the archbishop of that
place, Gennadius, set himself to suppress by imposing generally
mild penalties. His successor Joseph Ssanin proceeded much more
energetically. He did not rest till the czar in A.D. 1504 called
a Church Synod at Novgorod which condemned the chiefs of the sect
to be burnt, and their followers to be shut up in monasteries.
Even the metropolitan Zosima as a favourer of the sect was sent
to a monastery; but Alexis managed so cleverly that he retained
his office and dignity to the end of his life. Secret remnants
of this sect, as well as of the two previously referred to,
continued to exist for a long time, even down to the 17th
century, when sectarianism in the Russian Church made again
a new departure (§ 163, 10).

§ 73.6. =Romish Efforts at Union.=--From a very early time Rome
cast a covetous glance at the young Russian church, and she
spared neither delicate hints nor attempts to subdue by force
by the aid of Danes, Swedes, Livonians and at a later time,
the Poles. In order to avert this danger and to obtain from
the West assistance against the oppressive yoke of the Mongols,
A.D. 1234-1480, the Grand Duke Jaroslav [Jaroslaw] II. of
Novgorod was not averse to a union. His son Alexander succeeded
him in A.D. 1247. By a glorious victory over the Swedes in
A.D. 1240, on the Neva, he won for himself the surname Newsky,
and in A.D. 1242 he defeated the Livonians on the ice of Lake
Peipus. Pope Innocent IV. who had already in A.D. 1246 nominated
Arch bishop Albert Suerbeer (§ 93, 12) a legate to Russia with the
power to erect bishoprics there, addressed an earnest exhortation
to the young prince in A.D. 1248 with promises of help against
the Mongols, urging him to go in the footsteps of his father and
to secure his own and his subjects’ salvation by doing what his
father had promised. The Grand Duke referred to the wisest men
of the land and answered the Pope: From Adam to the flood, from
that to the Confusion of languages, etc., down to Constantine and
the seventh œcumenical Council, we know the true history of the
Church, but yours we do not wish to acknowledge. Alexander Newsky
died in A.D. 1263, and has been ever since venerated by his
country as a national hero and by his Church as a national saint.
The prospects of the Roman Curia were more favourable during
the 14th century owing to the Lithuanian and Polish supremacy in
South and West Russia, and by the schism of the Russian Church
into Kiev and Moscow primacies. In those Southern and Western
provinces there was originally less disinclination to Rome than
in Moscow. Still even here we meet during the 15th century in the
metropolitan Isidore, born in Thessalonica, a prelate who made
everything work toward a union with Rome. When the Union Synod
of A.D. 1438 was to meet at Ferrara (§ 67, 6), he represented to
the Grand Duke Vassili that it was his duty to appear there. He
gave a hesitating and unwilling consent. At the Council Isidore
along with Bessarion showed himself a zealous promoter of the
union. He returned in A.D. 1441 as cardinal and papal legate.
But when at the first public service in Moscow he read aloud the
union documents, the Grand Duke had him imprisoned and banished
to a monastery. He escaped from his prison and died in Rome in
A.D. 1643.--Continuation, § 151, 3.

SECOND DIVISION.

THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GERMAN AND ROMAN CHURCH
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.[198]

§ 74. CHARACTER AND DIVISIONS OF THIS PERIOD
OF THE DEVELOPMENT.

With the historically significant appearance of the Germanic peoples, from whose blending with the old Celtic and Latin races of the conquered countries the _Romance_ group of nationalities has its origin, there begins a new phase in the historical development of the world and the church. The so-called migration of the nations produced an upheaval and revolution among the very foundations and springs of history such as have never since been seen. For a similar significance cannot be ascribed to the appearance at a somewhat later period of a motley crowd of Slavic tribes and a detached contingent of the Turanian-Altaic race (Finns, Magyars, etc.), because the stream of their development ran in the same channel. Thus the appearance of the Germans forms the watershed between the old world and the new. This dividing boundary, however, is not a straight line; for the shoots of the old world run on for centuries alongside of and among the young growths of the new world. In so far as those remnants of the old have no relation to the new and work out uninfluenced by their surroundings their own material in their own way, the history of their developments has no place here; but even these demand consideration at this point in so far as they affect the development of the new world as a means of educating and moulding, arresting and perverting. Just as the history of the church and the world as a whole is distributed into ancient and modern, so the special history of the Germano-Roman world can and must be distributed into ancient and modern, the dividing boundary of which is the Reformation of the 16th century. The earlier of these two phases of history presents itself to us with a Janus-head, whose two faces are directed the one to the ancient, the other to the modern world. This follows from the fact that the groups of peoples referred to did not require any longer to pursue the weary way of their development on their own charges, but rather entered upon the spiritual heritage of the defunct ancient world, and were able by means thereof more quickly and surely to grow to the maturity of their own proper and independent rank and culture. The Roman and, for some branches of the Slavic races, also the Byzantine, church was the bearer and medium of this spiritual heritage, and as such became teacher and disciplinarian of the young world. The Reformation is the emancipation from the administrator of discipline, whose leading strings were cast off by the youth when he reached the maturity of man’s estate. It is the assertion of the German nation that it had reached its intellectual majority.

§ 74.1. =The Character of Mediæval History.=--As its name implies
the mediæval period of church history is one of transition from
the old to the new. The old is the now completed development
of Christianity under the moulding influences of the ancient
Greek and Roman world; the new is the complete incorporation of
the special forms of life and culture that characterize the new
peoples, who are placed by means of the migration of the nations
in the foreground of history. But since the peculiar culture
of these nations was first present only potentially and as a
capacity, and was to realize itself first through the influence
of the early Christian culture, between the old and the new a
middle and intermediate age intervened, the extent of which was
just that influence of the old completed culture upon the new
developing culture. This conflict during the whole course of the
Middle Ages was carried on by those powerful waves of action and
reaction (formation, deformation, reformation), which, however,
amid the ferment of the times displayed an ever varying mixing
of the one with the other. The Middle Ages have brought forth
the most magnificent phenomena, the papacy, the monastic system,
scholasticism, etc., but characteristic of them all is that
crude blending of the three kinds of movement named above, which
hindered its effectiveness and led to its own deterioration.
First in the beginning of the 16th century did the reformatory
endeavours become so mature and strong that it could assume a
purer form and carry out its efforts with success. With this too
we reach the end of the Middle Ages and witness the birth of the
modern world.