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Alexander Schmemann
3. The Age Of The Ecumenical Councils (50 pages)
From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox ChurchPage 25
Reconciliation with Rome — Break with the East.
The fate of the Church itself under Justinian best illustrates the situation just described. From the very first years of his reign, the emperor demonstrated that he regarded the religious unity of the empire as just as self-evident and natural as state unity. Stern measures were taken against all possible heretical sects, the remnants of ancient schisms and disputes. Justinian resolved to settle still more firmly with paganism and with its citadel, the university at Athens, which had recently been basking in the glory of the last of its great pagan philosophers, Proclus. In 529 the university was closed and replaced by the first Christian university, in Constantinople. Campaigns of mass conversion began in the capital and Asia Minor. The few remaining pagans were obliged to go permanently underground.
When he was still only heir to the throne under Emperor Justin I, Justinian began his religious policy by a solemn reconciliation with Rome. Even then the plan of restoring the ancient empire in the West was maturing in his mind. In the chaos that reigned there the only link left with Byzantium and Roman tradition was the papacy. Its authority was unshakable, even among the German barbarians, although they belonged officially to Arianism, the heritage of Ulfila the Goth, who had baptized them in the fourth century at a time when Arianism was triumphant. In these years of decay and destruction the papacy remained true to the empire, regardless of strained relations between them. The price of reconciliation between the churches, however, was the signing by the patriarch and the bishops of a document composed by Pope Hormisdas which was more violently papistic in content than anything the Eastern Church had ever seen before. The late Orthodox patriarchs Euphemius and Macedonius, themselves victims of Monophysitism and already revered as saints in Constantinople, had to be condemned by their own Church, merely because they had ruled it in 484 when communion between Rome and Constantinople was sundered. Justinian needed peace with Rome at any price.
He had relied on the papacy to restore his power in the West, and the papacy was unwavering in its loyalty to Pope Leo and the Council of Chalcedon. But the situation in the East when he ascended the throne in 427 was diametrically opposite. In Egypt the Church belonged wholly to the Monophysites; in other provinces supporters of the Henoticon — semi-Monophysites — ruled. The Antiochene Church was headed by the intellectual leader of all Monophysite theology, Severus. Justin and Justinian first began by attempting to restore the imperial episcopate to the faith of Chalcedon by force, but the new bishops, appointed and consecrated in Constantinople, had to occupy their seats with the help of the police. The masses rioted, whole monasteries had to be dispersed, and curses against the “synodites” resounded everywhere. Only Palestine was wholly orthodox, except for an insignificant minority. In Syria, in Edessa (an ancient town near the Persian border), in the outlying regions of Asia Minor, the Chalcedonian hierarchy was seated by force. Egypt they did not dare to touch at all, and Severus of Antioch and the other Monophysite leaders went into hiding there.
Cf. Books for getting closer to Orthodox Christianity ||| Orthodox Images of the Christ ||| Byzantium : The Alternative History of Europe ||| Greek Orthodoxy - From Apostolic Times to the Present Day ||| A History of the Byzantine Empire ||| Videos about Byzantium and Orthodoxy ||| Aspects of Byzantium in Modern Popular Music ||| 3 Posts on the Fall of Byzantium ||| Greek Literature / The New Testament
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/schmemann-orthodoxy-3-councils.asp?pg=25
