[5] See F. C. Conybeare, The Key of Truth, p. 67.
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CHAPTER VII
THE CHURCH AND THE MONOTHELITE CONTROVERSY, 628-725
The years of peace that succeeded the death of Justinian ended with the triumph of the Empire over barbarian foes. Christian philosophy had seemed to be quiescent, but there were questions which thoughtful men must have seen would soon come up for solution as the inevitable result of the Monophysite controversy. Thought in the active Eastern minds could not stand still; and the West too, as the barbarians were conquered, assimilated, and converted by the Church, began to enter keenly into the theology of the East. In Gaul and Britain, as well as at Milan and at Rome, there arose critics and historians who could carry on the work of Leo the Great and of the line of chroniclers who had told in Greek the story of the Church's life. A word at first as to the general interest of the period.
[Sidenote: The East in the seventh century.]
With the victory of Heraclius over the Persians in 628, it might seem that heresy would be driven from its home in the distant East, that Nestorianism would die out, and that Sergius I., Patriarch of Constantinople (610-38), would be able to win back the Monophysites to the unity of the Church. But this happy result was {84} prevented by the spread of the Muhammadan conquest, beginning even before the death of the Prophet in 632, and by the rise of a new heresy—the Monothelitism which gave to the two Natures of our Lord but a single will. As the Mussulman arms spread the faith of Islam, the Jacobite Church of Syria seemed almost to welcome it as a refuge from the dominance of orthodoxy. In Egypt the Coptic (Monophysite) patriarch entered Alexandria in triumph with the Muslim force when the Orthodox patriarch fled with the imperial troops. The Melkite (Orthodox) body was, however, not wholly unprotected by the conquerors, and at Jerusalem it was allowed to remain in possession, though at Antioch there was for long no Orthodox patriarch at all. Of the Monothelite heresy—condemned at the Sixth General Council, 681—we may for the moment defer to speak, except to note that in the political disturbances that swept over the Lebanon the heresy took root there, under one John Maron, and founded the division, religious and political, of the Maronites, which still endures.
[Sidenote: Missionary work.]
But while the Church was thus suffering in various ways, the Byzantine missionary energy was far from exhausted. Heraclius sought to convert the barbarian tribes far and near, the Croats and Serbs, the Bulgarians and Slavs, and the Church of Constantinople appointed an official to inspect the districts on the frontiers and to examine candidates for baptism. Equally he sought to reunite the Armenians to the Orthodox Church; but after interviews and theological discussions the opponents of the Greeks triumphed, and the catholicos Nerses {85} III. in 645 anathematised the Council of Chalcedon—a declaration which, after a momentary reunion, was renewed early in the eighth century. The Armenian Church thus remained formally Monophysite. While the orthodox emperors were thus unsuccessful in reuniting the separated Churches, the patriarchate of Constantinople was winning a strength within which she had lost without; the area of her confined jurisdiction was straitly ruled, and 356 bishoprics towards the end of the seventh century acknowledged the patriarchal throne. The emperors and the Church alike recognised no supremacy of Rome—a fact which was emphasised by the decree of 666 which declared Ravenna free from papal jurisdiction, and in the condemnation of Honorius by the Sixth General Council. [Sidenote: The Trullian Council, 691.] So, again, the Council at Constantinople called in Trullo (691), directed canon after canon against the customs and claims of the Roman Church. This independence was emphasised by the compilation of a Syntagma, or collection of canons, parallel to the much later collection in the West. These canons, it may be remarked in passing, throw most interesting light on the customs of the Greek Church—on clerical marriage, for example, which was allowed to be dissolved only by the clergy of the recently converted barbarous tribes, among whom a return to celibate life might sometimes be advisable.
So much for the general characteristics of the period 628-725. We may now turn to the critical point of theology on which the ecclesiastical history of the time turned.