Under Anastasius, the convinced opponent of the Council of Chalcedon and himself to all intents a Monophysite in opinion, some slight negotiations were begun with Rome, while the streets of Constantinople ran with blood poured out by the hot advocates of theological dogma. In 515 legates from Pope Hormisdas visited Constantinople; in 516 the emperor sent envoys to Rome; in 517 Hormisdas replied, not only insisting on the condemnation of those who had opposed Chalcedon, but also claiming from the Caesar the obedience of a spiritual son; and in that same year Anastasius, "most sweet-tempered of emperors," died, rejecting the papal demands.
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The accession of Justin I. (518-27) was a triumph for the orthodox faith, to which the people of Constantinople had firmly held. The patriarch, John the Cappadocian, declared his adherence to the Fourth Council: the name of Pope Leo was put on the diptychs together with that of S. Cyril; and synod after synod acclaimed the orthodox faith. Negotiations for reunion with the West were immediately opened. The patriarch and the emperor wrote to Pope Hormisdas, and there wrote also a theologian more learned than the patriarch, the Emperor's nephew, Justinian. "As soon," he wrote, "as the Emperor had received by the will of God the princely fillet, he gave the bishops to understand that the peace of the Church must be restored. This had already in a great degree been accomplished." But the pope's opinion must be taken with regard to the condemnation of Acacius, who was responsible for the Henotikon, and was the real cause of the severance between the churches. [Sidenote: Reunion, 519.] The steps towards reunion may be traced in the correspondence between Hormisdas and Justinian. It was finally achieved on the 27th of March, 519. The patriarch of Constantinople declared that he held the Churches of the old and the new Rome to be one; and with that regard he accepted the four Councils and condemned the heretics, including Acacius.
The Church of Alexandria did not accept the reunion; and Severus, patriarch of Antioch, was deposed for his heresy. There was indeed a considerable party all over the East which remained Monophysite; and this party it was the first aim of Justinian (527-65), when he became emperor, to convince or to subdue. He was the {11} nephew of Justin, and he was already trained in the work of government; but he seemed to be even more zealous as a theologian than as a lawyer or administrator. The problem of Monophysitism fascinated him. [Sidenote: The Emperor Justinian.] From the first, he applied himself seriously to the study of the question in all its bearings. Night after night, says Procopius, he would study in his library the writings of the Fathers and the Holy Scriptures themselves, with some learned monks or prelates with whom he might discuss the problems which arose from their perusal. He had all a lawyer's passion for definition, and all a theologian's delight in truth. And as year by year he mastered the intricate arguments which had surged round the decisions of the Councils, he came to consider that a rapprochement was not impossible between the Orthodox Church and those many Eastern monks and prelates who still hesitated over a repudiation which might mean heresy or schism. And from the first it was his aim to unite not by arms but by arguments. The incessant and wearisome theological discussions which are among the most prominent features of his reign, are a clearly intended part of a policy which was to reunite Christendom and consolidate the definition of the Faith by a thorough investigation of controverted matters. Justinian first thought out vexed questions for himself, and then endeavoured to make others think them out.
From 527, in the East, Church history may be said to start on new lines. The Catholic definition was completed and the imperial power was definitely committed to it. We may now look at the Orthodox Church as one, united against outside error.
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A period of critical interest in the history of Europe is that to which belongs the difficult and complicated Church history of the East from the accession of the Emperor Justinian to the death of S. Methodius.
The period naturally divides itself into three parts—the first, from 527 to 628, dealing with the Church at the height of its authority, up to the overthrow of the Persian power; the second to 725, the period up to the beginning of the iconoclastic controversy; and the third up to its close and the death of S. Methodius in 847. With the first we will deal in the present chapter.
[Sidenote: Church and State in the East.]
But throughout the whole three centuries, from 527 to 847, the essential character of the Church's life in the east is the same. In the East the Church was regarded more decisively than in the West as the complement of the State. Constantine had taught men to look for the officials of the Church side by side with those of the civil power. At Constantinople was the centre of an official Christianity, which recognised the powers that be as ordained of God in a way which was never found at Rome. At Rome the bishops came to be political leaders, to plot against governments, to found a political power of their own. At Constantinople the patriarchs, recognised as such by the Emperor and Senate of the New Rome, sought not to intrude themselves into a sphere outside their religious calling, but developed their claims, in their own sphere, side by side with those of the State; and their example was followed in the Churches which began to look to Constantinople for guidance. There was a necessary consequence of this. {13} [Sidenote: Nationalism of the Churches.] It was that when the nationalities of the East,—in Egypt, Syria, Armenia, or even in Mesopotamia—began to resent the rule of the Empire, and struggled to express a patriotism of their own, they sought to express it also on the ecclesiastical side, in revolt from the Church which ruled as a complement to the civil power. Heresy came to be a sort of patriotism in religion. And while there was this of evil, it was not evil that each new barbarian nation, as it accepted the faith, sought to set up beside its own sovereign its patriarch also. "Imperium," they said, "sine patriarcha non staret," an adage which James I. of England inverted when he said, "No bishop, no king." Though the Bulgarians agreed with the Church of Constantinople in dogmas, they would not submit to its jurisdiction. The principle of national Churches, independent of any earthly supreme head, but united in the same faith and baptism, was established by the history of the East. Gradually the Church of Constantinople, by the growth of new Christian states, and by the defections of nations that had become heretical, became practically isolated, long before the infidels hedged in the boundaries of the Empire and hounded the imperial power to its death. Within the boundaries the Church continued to walk hand-in-hand with the State. Together they acted within and without. Within, they upheld the Orthodox Faith; without, they gave Cyprus its religious independence, Illyricum a new ecclesiastical organisation, the Sinaitic peninsula an autonomous hierarchy. More and more the history of these centuries shows us the Greek Church as the Eastern Empire in its religious aspect. And it shows that the division between East {14} and West, beginning in politics, was bound to spread to religion. As Rome had won her ecclesiastical primacy through her political position, so with Constantinople; and when the politics became divergent so did the definition of faith. Rome, as a church, clung to the obsolete claims which the State could no longer enforce: Constantinople witnessed to the independence which was the heritage of liberty given by the endowment of Jesus Christ.