Chapter I: THE EAST. (a) The Orthodox Church.--Ancient and medieval times were

not separated by so deep a gulf in the East as in the West; for in the East the Empire continued to exist, although within narrow limits, until towards the end of the middle ages. Constantinople only fell in 1453. Ecclesiastical Byzantinism is therefore not a product of the middle ages: it is the outcome of the development of the eastern half of the empire from the time of Constantine the Great. Under Justinian I. all its essential features were already formed: imperial power extended equally over State and Church; indeed, care for the preservation of dogma and for the purity of the priesthood was the chief duty of the ruler. To fulfil this duty was to serve the interests of both State and people; for thus "a fine harmony is established, and whatever good exists becomes the portion of the whole human race." Since the emperor ruled the Church there was no longer any question of independence for the bishops, least of all for the patriarch in Constantinople; they were in every respect subordinate to the emperor.

The _orthodoxy_ of the Eastern Church was also a result of the Church's development after the time of Constantine. In the long strife over dogma the old belief of the Greeks in the value of knowledge had made itself felt, and this faith was not extinct in the Eastern Church. There is no doubt that in the beginning of the middle ages both general and theological education stood higher among the Greeks than in more western countries. In the West there were no learned men who could vie with Photius (ca. 820-891) in range of knowledge and variety of scientific attainment. But the strife over dogma came to an end with the 7th century. After the termination of the monothelite controversy (638-680), creed and doctrines were complete; it was only necessary to preserve them intact. Theology, therefore, now resolved itself into the collection and reproduction of the teaching of ancient authorities. The great dogmatist of the Eastern Church, John of Damascus (ca. 699-753), who stood on the threshold of the middle ages, formulated clearly and precisely his working principle: to put forward nothing of his own, but to present the truth according to the authority of the Bible and of the Fathers of the Church. Later teachers, Euthymius Zigadenus (d. circa 1120), Nicetas Choniates (d. circa 1200), and others, proceeded further on the same lines; Euthymius, in particular, often uses an excerpt instead of giving his own exposition.

This attitude towards dogma did not mean that it was less prized than during the period of strife. On the contrary, the sacred formulae were revered because they were believed to contain the determination of the highest truths: the knowledge of God and of the mystery of salvation. Yet it is intelligible that religious interest should have concerned itself more keenly with the mystic rites of divine worship than with dogma. Here was more than knowledge; here were representations of a mystic sensuousness, solemn rites, which brought the faithful into immediate contact with the Divine, and guaranteed to them the reception of heavenly powers. What could be of more importance than to be absorbed in this transcendental world? We may gauge the energy with which the Greek intellect turned in this direction if we call to mind that the controversy about dogma was replaced by the controversy about images. This raged in the Eastern Church for more than a century (726-843), and only sank to rest when the worship of images was unconditionally conceded. In this connexion the image was not looked upon merely as a symbol, but as the vehicle of the presence and power of that which it represented: in the image the invisible becomes operative in the visible world. Christ did not seem to be Christ unless he were visibly represented. What an ancient teacher had said with regard to the worship of Christ as the revelation of the Eternal Father--"Honours paid to the earthly representative are shared by the heavenly Archetype"--was now transferred to the painted image: it appeared as an analogy to the Incarnation. It was for this reason that the victory of image worship was celebrated by the introduction of the festival of the Orthodox Faith.

It is consistent with this circle of ideas that initiation into the profound mysteries of the liturgy was regarded, together with the preservation of dogma, as the most exalted function of theology. A beginning had been made, in the 5th century, by the neo-platonic Christian who addressed his contemporaries under the mask of Dionysius the Areopagite. He is the first of a series of theological mystics which continued through every century of the middle ages. Maximus Confessor, the heroic defender of Dyotheletism (d. 662), Symeon, the New Theologian (d. circa 1040), Nicolaus Cabasilas (d. 1371), and Symeon, like Nicholas, archbishop of Thessalonica (d. 1429), were the most conspicuous representatives of this Oriental mysticism. They left all the dogmas and institutions of the Church untouched; aspiring above and beyond these, their aim was religious experience.

It is this striving after religious experience that gives to the Oriental monachism of the middle ages its peculiar character. In the 5th and 6th centuries Egypt and Palestine had been the classic lands of monks and monasteries. But when, in consequence of the Arab invasion, the monasticism of those countries was cut off from intercourse with the rest of Christendom, it decayed. Constantinople and Mount Athos gained proportionately in importance during the middle ages. At Constantinople the monastery of Studium, founded about 460, attained to supreme influence during the controversy about images. On Mount Athos the first monastery was founded in the year 963, and in 1045 the number of monastic foundations had reached 180. In Greek monachism the old Hellenic ideal of the wise man who has no wants ([Greek: autarkeia]) was from the first fused with the Christian conception of unreserved self-surrender to God as the highest aim and the highest good. These ideas governed it in medieval times also, and in this way monastic life received a decided bent towards mysticism: the monks strove to realize the heavenly life even upon earth, their highest aim being the contemplation of God and of His ways. The teachings of Symeon "the New Theologian" on these matters lived on in the cloisters; it was taken up by the Hesychasts of the 14th century, and developed into a peculiar theory as to the perception of the Divine Light. In spite of all opposition their teaching was finally justified by the Eastern Church (sixth synod of Constantinople, 1351). And rightly so, for it was the old Greek piety minted afresh.

The Eastern Church, then, throughout the middle ages, remained true in every particular to her ancient character. It cannot be said that she developed as did the Western Church during this period, for she remained what she had been; but she freely developed her original characteristics, consistently, in every direction. This too is life, though of a different type from that of the West.

That there was life in the Eastern Church is also proved by the fact that the power of _expansion_ was not denied her. Through her agency an important bulwark for the Christian faith was created in the new nations which had sprung into existence since the beginning of the middle ages: the Bulgarians, the Servians, and the multifarious peoples grouped under the name of Russians. There is a vast difference in national character between these young peoples and the successors of the Hellenes; and it is therefore all the more significant to find that both the Church and religious sentiment should in their case have fully preserved the Byzantine character. This proves once more the ancient capacity of the Greeks for the assimilation of foreign elements.

There was yet another outcome of this stubborn persistency of a peculiar type--the impossibility of continuing to share the life of the Western Church. Neither in the East nor in the West was a _separation_ desired; but it was inevitable, since the lives of East and West were moving in different directions. It was the fall of Constantinople that first weakened the vital force of the Eastern Church. May we hope that the events of modern times are leading her towards a renaissance?

(b) _The Nestorian and the Monophysite Churches._--Since the time when the church of eastern Syria had decided, in opposition to the church of the Empire, to cling to the ancient views of Syrian theologians--therefore also to the teaching and person of Nestorius--her relations were broken off with the church in western Syria and in Greek and Latin countries; but the power of Nestorian, or, as it was termed, _Chaldaic_ Christianity, was not thereby diminished. Separated from the West, it directed its energies towards the East, and here its nearest neighbour was the Persian church. The latter followed, almost without opposition, the impulse received from Syria; from the rule of the patriarch Babacus (Syr. B[=a]b-h[=a]i, 498-503) she may be considered definitely Nestorian. A certain number, too, of Arabic Christians, believers living on the west coast of India, the so-called Christians of St Thomas, and finally those belonging to places nearer the middle of Asia (Merv, Herat, Samarkand), remained in communion with the Nestorian church. Thus there survived in mid-Asia a widely-scattered remnant, which, although out of touch with the ancient usages of Christian civilization, yet in no way lacked higher culture. Nestorian philosophers and medical practitioners became the teachers of the great Arabian natural philosophers of the middle ages, and the latter obtained their knowledge of Greek learning from Syriac translations of the works of Greek thinkers.

Political conditions at the beginning of the middle ages favoured the Nestorian church, and the fact that the Arabs had conquered Syria, Palestine and Egypt, made it possible for her to exert an influence on the Christians in these countries. Of still more importance was the brisk commercial intercourse between central Asia and the countries of the Far East; for this led the Nestorians into China. The inscription of Si-ngan-fu (before 781) proves a surprisingly widespread extension of the Christian faith in that country. That it also possessed adherents in southern Siberia we gather from the inscriptions of Semiryetchensk, and in the beginning of the 11th century it found its way even into Mongolia. Nowhere were the nations Christian, but the Christian faith was everywhere accepted by a not insignificant minority. The foundation of the Mongolian empire in the beginning of the 13th century did not disturb the position of the Nestorian church; but the revival of the Mahommedan power, which was coincident with the downfall of the Mongolian empire, was pregnant with disaster for her. The greater part of Nestorian Christendom was now swallowed up by Islam, so that only remnants of this once extensive church have survived until modern times.

The middle ages were far more disastrous for the Monophysites than for the Nestorians; in their case there was no alternation of rise and decline, and we have only a long period of gradual exhaustion to chronicle. Egypt was the home of Monophysitism, whence it extended also into Syria. It was due to the great Jacob of Edessa (Jacob Baradaeus, d. 578) that it did not succumb to the persecution by the power of the Orthodox Empire, and out of gratitude to him the Monophysite Christians of Syria called themselves _Jacobites_. The Arab conquest (after 635) freed the Jacobite church entirely from the oppression of the Orthodox, and thereby assured its continuance. The church, however, never attained any greater development, but on the contrary continued to lose adherents from century to century. While Jacob of Edessa is said to have ordained some 100,000 priests and deacons for his fellow-believers, in the 16th century the Jacobites of Syria were estimated at only 50,000 families.

The Monophysite church of Egypt had a like fate. At the time of the separation of the churches the Greeks here had remained faithful to Orthodoxy, the Copts to Monophysitism. Here too the Arab conquest (641) put an end to the oppression of the native Christians by the Greek minority; but this did not afford the Coptic church any possibility of vigorous development. It succumbed to the ceaseless alternation of tolerance and persecution which characterized the Arab rule in Egypt, and the mass of the Coptic people became unfaithful to the Church. At the time of the conquest of the country by the Turks (1517) the Coptic church seems already to have fallen to the low condition in which the 19th century found it. Though at the time of the Arab conquest the Copts were reckoned at six millions, in 1820 the Coptic Christians numbered only about one hundred thousand, and it is improbable that their number can have been much greater at the close of the middle ages. Only in Abyssinia the daughter church of the Coptic church succeeded in keeping the whole people in the Christian faith. This fact, however, is the sole outcome of the history of a thousand years; a poor result, if measured by the standard of the rich history of the Western world, yet large enough not to exclude the hope of a new development.