The Fall of Constantinople (1453)
Medieval Theological Landmarks in Eastern Europe
Byzantine theology takes its name from the Greek city of Byzantium, which Constantine chose as the site of his new capital city in 330. At this point, it was renamed Constantinople (“the city of Constantine”). However, the name of the older town remained in use and gave its name to the distinctive style of theology that flourished in this region until the fall of the city to invading Islamic armies in 1453. Constantinople was not the only center of Christian thought in the eastern Mediterranean in the early Christian period. Egypt and Syria had been centers of theological reflection for some time. However, as political power increasingly came to be concentrated on the imperial city, so its status as a theological center advanced correspondingly.
During the time of the emperor Justinian (527–556) Byzantine theology began to emerge as an intellectual force of some considerable importance. As the eastern and western churches became increasingly alienated from each other (a process that had begun long before the final schism of 1054), so Byzantine thinkers often emphasized the divergence from western theology (for example, in relation to the filioque clause: see p. 64), thus reinforcing the distinctiveness of their approach through polemical writings. For example, Byzantine writers tended to understand salvation primarily in terms of deification, rather than western legal or relational categories. In addition, they found themselves puzzled by the doctrines of purgatory that were gaining the ascendancy in western Catholic circles. Any attempt to achieve a degree of reunion between east and west during the Middle Ages was thus complicated by a complex network of political, historical, and theological factors. By the time of the fall of Constantinople, the differences between east and west remained as wide as ever.
The Emergence of Byzantine Theology
In order to understand the distinctive nature of Byzantine theology, it is necessary to appreciate the ethos that lies behind it. Byzantine theologians were not particularly concerned with systematic formulations of the Christian faith. For them, Christian theology was something “given,” and which therefore required to be defended against its opponents and explained to its adherents. The idea of “systematic theology” is somewhat foreign to the general Byzantine ethos. Even John of Damascus (c.675–c.749), whose work de fide orthodoxa (“on the orthodox faith”) is of considerable importance in the consolidation of a distinctively eastern Christian theology, is best seen as an expositor of a received faith, rather than as a speculative or original thinker.
Byzantine theology can be regarded as remaining faithful to a principle originally set out by Athanasius, in his writing de incarnatione (“on the incarnation”), which affirmed that theology was the expression of the mind of the saints. Byzantine theology (including its modern descendants in both Greek and Russian Orthodoxy) is thus strongly orientated toward the idea of paradosis (“tradition”), particularly the writings of the Greek fathers. Writers such as Gregory of Nyssa (c.335–c.395), Maximus the Confessor (c.580–662), and the writer who adopted the pseudonym “Dionysius the Areopagite,” who is thought to date from the late fifth to the early sixth century, are of particular importance in this respect.
The Iconoclastic and Hesychastic Controversies
Two controversies are of particular importance for Byzantine theology. The first, which broke out during the period 725–842, is usually referred to as the iconoclastic (“breaking of images”) controversy. It erupted over the decision of emperor Leo III (reigned 717–742) to destroy icons, on the grounds that they were barriers to the conversion of Jews and Moslems. The controversy was mainly political, although there were some serious theological issues at stake, most notably the extent to which the doctrine of the incarnation justified the depiction of God in the form of images. John of Damascus played a major role in this controversy. He defended the use of icons on the basis of his belief that the material world possesses a God-given capacity to signify and mediate the spiritual world.
The second controversy, which broke out in the fourteenth century, focused on the issue of hesychasm (Greek: hesychia, “silence”), a style of meditation through physical exercises that enabled believers to see the “divine light” with their own eyes. Hesychasm placed considerable emphasis upon the idea of “inner quietness” as a means of achieving a direct inner vision of God. It was particularly associated with writers such as Symeon the New Theologian and Gregory Palamas (c.1296–1359), who was elected as Archbishop of Thessalonika in 1347. Its opponents argued that its methods tended to minimize the difference between God and creatures, and were particularly alarmed by the suggestion that God could be “seen.”
In responding to this criticism, Palamas developed the doctrine now generally known as “Palamism,” which draws a distinction between the divine energies and the divine essence. The distinction allowed Palamas to defend the Hesychastic approach by affirming that it enabled believers to encounter the divine energies, but not the unseen and ineffable divine essence. Believers cannot participate directly in the divine essence; however, they are able to participate directly in the uncreated energies that are God’s mode of union with believers.
Palamas’ theology was espoused and developed particularly by the lay theologian Nicolas Cabasilis (c.1320–c.1390), whose Life in Christ remains a classic work of Byzantine spirituality. His work has been reappropriated in more recent years by neo-Palamite writers such as Vladimir Lossky and John Meyendorff.
The Fall of Constantinople (1453)
The golden era of Byzantine theology came to an end in 1453, when the great city of Constantinople finally fell to the Turks. It was the end of an age. With the fall of Byzantium, intellectual and political leadership within Orthodoxy largely passed to Russia. The Russians had been converted through Byzantine missions in the tenth century and took the side of the Greeks in the schism of 1054. By the end of the fifteenth century, Moscow and Kiev were firmly established as patriarchates, each with its own distinctive style of Orthodox theology. It was only when Greece, now part of the Ottoman Empire, finally broke free from Turkish rule in 1829 that the renewal of Orthodox theology in that region was able to begin.
It will be clear from the material presented in this chapter that both western and eastern Christian theology underwent significant development during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Subsequent generations of theologians have regarded the period as being of landmark significance in relation to a number of areas of theological reflection, with a number of its writers being regarded as possessing permanent importance. The rise and fall of Byzantium is of particular importance to a full understanding of the subsequent development of eastern Orthodoxy in Russia and Greece just as the rise of scholasticism and humanism were of considerable importance to the shaping of western theology.