Errors in West regarding Orthodox Church.
In the fourteenth century it never seems to have occurred either to popes or emperors that people cannot be compelled to change their religious opinions. The idea was that the great mass of people were ready to accept any opinion sanctioned by the ordinary civil authorities. The early negotiations leave the impression that the Churchmen of the West thought that the emperor and the patriarch could bring about a Union by their simple decree, could change the profession of belief and obtain the admission of papal supremacy without the voluntary consent of even the Greek ecclesiastics. It never appears to have dawned upon Roman Churchmen that the members of the Orthodox Church might refuse to accept Union and a change in belief when these had been accepted by the civil and religious chiefs. Such a view showed ignorance at once of the character, always intensely conservative, and of the history of the Orthodox Church. Without entering into a discussion of how far the population of the capital and the empire was Greek by race, it is sufficient to recall that Greek was the language of the people, that all that they knew of history and philosophy, all their methods of thought, their theology and literature, had come to them in Greek forms. They thought and spoke as Greeks. Most of them gloried in being Greek. In matters of philosophic and religious speculation the Greek mind was more acute, and more subtle, than the Western mind. In theological questions, probably all classes were more interested than the corresponding classes in the West. If in the course of centuries the common people had ceased to take that keen interest in matters of theological speculation which caused the artisan or tradesman to neglect his immediate occupation in order to ask his customer’s opinion on the merits of the latest heresy, it was largely because the great formulas of Christian belief had, as it was believed, received their final adjustment. If any questions were unsolved—as, for example, that of the Inner Light—the population was always ready to take an interest in them; but it deeply resented any attempt to dogmatise without full discussion. It especially resented the determination of such questions by a foreign authority. The Greek Churchmen considered themselves, and probably rightly, as better versed in theology than those of Rome. They had the tradition of being admittedly superior in learning to their brethren in the West, and, though ready at all times to discuss, would not consent to be dictated to by the bishop of Rome.
The Catholic Church not only made the mistake of disregarding the traditional susceptibilities of the Eastern people, who invariably, after 1204, associated the rule of Rome with the abominations of the Latin occupation; of disregarding also the universal interest felt in the Orthodox Church on theological questions, but it greatly underrated the authority and influence of the Orthodox clergy when such authority and influence were in conflict with the emperor or even with the emperor and patriarch combined. Much has been written of what is called Caesaropapism: that is, of the combination of the secular and ecclesiastical powers which were supposed to be vested in the emperors. At various times the autocrat undoubtedly assumed much of the power which in the Holy Roman Empire in the West was left to the popes. At other times, however, and in some matters at all times, the patriarch of Constantinople exercised a jurisdiction independent of the emperor. The religious sanctions possessed by the Church were not to be set aside even by or for him. We have seen, for example, that when the Emperor Michael the Eighth had usurped the crown and blinded the infant John so as to prevent him coming to the throne, though the ecclesiastics seemed to have considered it expedient that he should retain the office he had usurped, the patriarch Arsenius and the prelates associated with him could not be either coaxed or frightened into granting him absolution, and that it was not until Arsenius and his successor, Germanus, had ceased to occupy the patriarchal throne that the emperor could succeed in having the anathema removed.[103]
Many other examples could be given which show that it is an error to suppose that the patriarchs were merely or even usually the creatures of the emperors. When questions of dogma arose the head of the Orthodox Church supported by his clergy was jealous of the secular power. The history of Constantinople during the time between the Latin and the Moslem conquests of the city abounds in illustrations showing that the Church would not consent to dictation from the emperors, and that the clergy would not blindly follow the patriarch. But, when dictation was supposed to come from Rome, the great mass of clergy and people were, as they had been from the time of Photius, on the side of their Church and, if need be, against the emperor.
It must be remembered also that the Eastern Church had steadily refused to admit the supremacy of the Western. It had never regarded the phrase ‘under one fold and one shepherd’ as indicating that the whole Church of Christ should be under the government of one bishop. It had never admitted that the ‘One Shepherd’ should be other than Christ, and had therefore constantly denied the supremacy of the pope. One Empire, one Church, one Head of the Church was a Western theory which had never made much way in the later Roman empire. The movements in the West which placed the imperial power in commission, giving to the emperor the supreme secular, and to the bishop of Rome the supreme ecclesiastical, authority had no corresponding movement in the East. The emperors were only heads of the Church in the same sense as the king of England is in all matters ecclesiastical supreme. The emperors and ecclesiastics were usually agreed in not allowing the supremacy of the bishop of the elder Rome.
To the popes, however, the Union of the Churches was indissolubly associated with the admission of papal supremacy. It would be going too far to say that they desired Union exclusively to obtain recognition of such supremacy, but it may safely be said that they never lost sight in all their negotiations for Union of the necessity of obtaining its recognition, and that, in the opinion of many ecclesiastics both Western and Eastern, such supremacy was the most important object aimed at.
Murad’s unsuccessful attempt, in 1422, to capture Constantinople made it evident to the emperor that aid from Western nations was absolutely necessary if the empire or even the city was to be saved. The pope also recognised both the importance of saving the empire and its extreme danger, and held out hopes of aid if Union were accepted. The imminence of the danger was patent to all. When John became sole occupant of the throne, in 1425, the empire was surrounded by Turkish armies. Nearly the whole of Asia Minor was in their hands. Large armies had invaded Hungary; Bulgaria had ceased to exist; Serbia was a vassal of the sultan. In Macedonia and even in Thrace the Turks had made a desolation and held many cities. If the city of Paris were worth a Mass, the empire was worth a tenfold acknowledgment of the pope’s supremacy.
The emperor, the nobles, and a considerable part of the clergy came to believe that they must purchase aid on any conditions or see the city captured. Questions of dogma, the addition of the Filioque clause, the use of unleavened bread, the condition of souls in purgatory, were to them matters of secondary importance when the very existence of their country was at stake. Even papal supremacy appeared to John and many laymen worth accepting in return for the despatch of soldiers who would resist the Turkish invasion.
We have seen that many attempts at Union had been made by all the emperors since the recapture of the city, but that they had all failed, that the traditional conservatism of the Orthodox Church, its stubborn resistance to the slightest change of dogma or ritual, all intensified by the traditions of the Latin occupation, had been more powerful than the energy and influence of popes and emperors combined.[104]
The great attempt at Reunion.