Alexander Schmemann

5. The Dark Ages (16 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 6

Strangely, the Byzantines were relatively indifferent to the destruction of the empire, which had held such an immense and central position in Byzantine thought. The documents do not show that they felt it as a crisis or failure of their most treasured dream. Byzantine thought of the fifteenth century had already experienced the inward replacement of the imperial idea by that of Hellenism, and Hellenism was not only not eliminated under Turkish rule, but acquired an unprecedented authority in the person of the ecumenical patriarch. In the Turkish captivity the imperial power itself passed to the patriarch. The clear boundary between Church and state had disappeared long before in Byzantine thought, and now those who bore authority in the two spheres were also merged. This was possible because both Church and empire referred, as it were, to the same object: the Greek people, bearers of the eternal values of Hellenism, which were becoming increasingly independent values in themselves for the Greeks. The empire might narrow down to only the rayah; the task of its leader, the patriarch, then, was to preserve the faith and Hellenism (one was inconceivable without the other) until a future restoration. “The Patriarch sat down upon the throne . . . The bishops bowed down to him as their lord, as their emperor and patriarch.” After quoting these words of a Greek historian, Professor Lebedev continued:

Their first thought in this case was that they had elected a new emperor, and the idea that they had obtained a legitimate patriarch in his person took second place. For them he was not patriarch because he was emperor as well, but rather, he was also the emperor because he was the patriarch. The Patriarch of the New Rome was, as it were, the Byzantine Emperor languishing in captivity, deprived of his freedom but not of his authority. His head was ornamented by a mitre in the form of a crown, depicting the two-headed eagle of Byzantium, but in his hand was the patriarchal staff, which he did not carry in vain.[35]

 

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