Christianity as the Roman state religion
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In the year before the Council of Constantinople in 381, the Trinitarian version of Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire when Emperor
Earlier in the 4th century, following the
In Justinian's day, the Christian church was not entirely under the emperor's control even in the East: the Oriental Orthodox Churches had seceded, having rejected the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and called the adherents of the imperially-recognized church "Melkites", from Syriac malkâniya ("imperial").[10][11] In Western Europe, Christianity was mostly subject to the laws and customs of nations that owed no allegiance to the emperor in Constantinople.[12] While Eastern-born popes appointed or at least confirmed by the emperor continued to be loyal to him as their political lord, they refused to accept his authority in religious matters,[13] or the authority of such a council as the imperially convoked Council of Hieria of 754. Pope Gregory III (731–741) was the last Bishop of Rome to ask the Byzantine ruler to ratify his election.[14][15] With the crowning of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800 as Imperator Romanorum, the political split between East and West became irrevocable. Spiritually, Chalcedonian Christianity persisted, at least in theory, as a unified entity until the Great Schism and its formal division with the mutual excommunication in 1054 of Rome and Constantinople. The empire finally collapsed with the Fall of Constantinople to the Islamic Ottoman Turks in 1453.[16]
The obliteration of the empire's boundaries by
The legacy of the idea of a universal church carries on in today's Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Church of the East. Many other churches, such as the Anglican Communion, claim succession to this universal church.
History
Early Christianity in relation to the state
Before the end of the 1st century, the Roman authorities recognized Christianity as a
Since paying taxes had been one of the ways that Jews demonstrated their goodwill and loyalty toward the empire, Christians had to negotiate their own alternatives to participating in the
In 301, the Kingdom of Armenia, nominally a Roman client kingdom but ruled by a Parthian dynasty,[29] became the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion, with the possible exception of Osroene in 201.[30]
Establishment and early controversies
Communion | Major churches | Primary centers |
---|---|---|
Chalcedonian Christianity (after 451) |
Catholic/Orthodox Church Georgian Church Church of Carthage Church of Cyprus Maronite Church[c] |
Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, |
Nestorianism (after 431) |
Persian church | Sassanid Empire (Persia)[36]
|
Miaphysitism (after 451) |
Egypt[37]
| |
Donatism (largely ended after 411) |
North Africa[38]
| |
Arianism | parts of Eastern Roman Empire until 380 Gothic tribes[39] |
In 311, with the
Constantine began to utilize Christian symbols such as the
Over the course of the
A
Debates within Christianity
Christian scholars and populace within the empire were increasingly embroiled in debates regarding
Constantine backed the Nicene Creed of Nicaea, but was baptized on his deathbed by the
It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our Clemency and Moderation, should continue to profess that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since, in our judgment they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give to their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation and in the second the punishment of our authority which in accordance with the will of Heaven we shall decide to inflict.
— Edict of Thessalonica
In 391, Theodosius closed all the "pagan" (non-Christian and non-Jewish) temples and formally forbade pagan worship.[47]
Late antiquity
At the end of the 4th century the Roman Empire had effectively split into two parts although their economies and the imperial-recognized church were still strongly tied. The two halves of the empire had always had cultural differences, exemplified in particular by the widespread use of the Greek language in the Eastern Empire and its more limited use in the West (Greek, as well as Latin, was used in the West, but Latin was the spoken vernacular).
By the time Christianity became the state religion of the empire at the end of the 4th century, scholars in the West had largely abandoned Greek in favor of Latin. Even the Church in Rome, where Greek continued to be used in the liturgy longer than in the provinces, abandoned Greek.[d] Jerome's Vulgate had begun to replace the older Latin translations of the Bible.
The
Nestorius taught that Christ's divine and human nature were distinct persons, and hence
Persecuted within the Roman Empire, many Nestorians fled to
Thus, within a century of the link established by Theodosius between the emperor and the church in his empire, it suffered a significant diminishment. Those who upheld the Council of Chalcedon became known in
End of the Western Roman Empire
In the 5th century, the Western Empire rapidly
By 476, the Germanic chieftain
In 533, Roman Emperor Justinian in Constantinople launched a military campaign to reclaim the western provinces from the Arian Germans, starting with North Africa and proceeding to Italy. His success in recapturing much of the western Mediterranean was temporary. The empire soon lost most of these gains, but held Rome, as part of the Exarchate of Ravenna, until 751.
Justinian definitively established
By the end of the 6th century the church within the Empire had become firmly tied with the imperial government,[55] while in the west Christianity was mostly subject to the laws and customs of nations that owed no allegiance to the emperor.[12]
Patriarchates in the Empire
Emperor
Constantinople was added at the First Council of Constantinople (381)[61] and given authority initially only over Thrace. By a canon of contested validity,[62] the Council of Chalcedon (451) placed Asia and Pontus,[63] which together made up Anatolia, under Constantinople, although their autonomy had been recognized at the council of 381.[64][65]
Rome never recognized this pentarchy of five sees as constituting the leadership of the church. It maintained that, in accordance with the First Council of Nicaea, only the three "Petrine" sees of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch had a real patriarchal function.[66] The canons of the Quinisext Council of 692, which gave ecclesiastical sanction to Justinian's decree, were also never fully accepted by the Western Church.[67]
The Patriarch of Constantinople had already adopted the title of "ecumenical patriarch", indicating what he saw as his position in the oikoumene, the Christian world ideally headed by the emperor and the patriarch of the emperor's capital.[70][71] Also under the influence of the imperial model of governance of the state church, in which "the emperor becomes the actual executive organ of the universal Church",[72] the pentarchy model of governance of the state church regressed to a monarchy of the Patriarch of Constantinople.[72][73]
Rise of Islam
The
Suddenly, much of the Christian world was under Muslim rule. Over the coming centuries the successive Muslim states became some of the most powerful in the Mediterranean world.
Though the Byzantine church claimed religious authority over Christians in Egypt and the
Expansion of Christianity in Europe
During the
Of these, the Church in Great Moravia chose immediately to link with Rome, not Constantinople: the missionaries sent there sided with the Pope during the
In Serbia, which became an independent kingdom in the early 13th century,
Expansion of the church in western and northern Europe began much earlier, with the conversion of the Irish in the 5th century, the Franks at the end of the same century, the Arian Visigoths in Spain soon afterwards, and the English at the end of the 6th century. By the time the Byzantine missions to central and eastern Europe began, Christian western Europe, in spite of losing most of Spain to Islam, encompassed Germany and part of Scandinavia, and, apart from the south of Italy, was independent of the Byzantine Empire and had been almost entirely so for centuries.
This situation fostered the idea of a universal church linked to no one particular state.
East–West Schism (1054)
With the defeat and death in 751 of the last Exarch of Ravenna and the end of the Exarchate, Rome ceased to be part of the Byzantine Empire. Forced to seek protection elsewhere,[79] the popes turned to the Franks and, with the coronation of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800, transferred their political allegiance to a rival Roman emperor. Disputes between the see of Rome, which claimed authority over all other sees, and that of Constantinople, which was now without rival in the empire, culminated perhaps inevitably[80] in mutual excommunications in 1054.
Communion with Constantinople was broken off by European Christians with the exception of those ruled by the empire (including the Bulgarians and Serbs) and of the fledgling Kievan or Russian Church, then a metropolitanate of the patriarchate of Constantinople. This church became independent only in 1448, just five years before the extinction of the empire,[81] after which the Turkish authorities included all their Orthodox Christian subjects of whatever ethnicity in a single millet headed by the Patriarch of Constantinople.
The Westerners who set up Crusader states in Greece and the Middle East appointed Latin (Western) patriarchs and other hierarchs, thus giving concrete reality and permanence to the schism.[82][83][84] Efforts were made in 1274 (Second Council of Lyon) and 1439 (Council of Florence) to restore communion between East and West, but the agreements reached by the participating eastern delegations and by the emperor were rejected by the vast majority of Byzantine Christians.
In the East, the idea that the Byzantine emperor was the head of Christians everywhere persisted among churchmen as long as the empire existed, even when its actual territory was reduced to very little. In 1393, only 60 years before the fall of the capital,
Legacy
Following the schism between the Eastern and Western churches, various emperors sought at times but without success to reunite Christendom, invoking the notion of Christian unity between East and West in an attempt to obtain assistance from the pope and Western Europe against the Muslims who were gradually conquering the empire's territory. But the period of the Western Crusades against the Muslims had passed before even the first of the two reunion councils was held.
Even when persecuted by the emperor, the Eastern Church, George Pachymeres said, "counted the days until they should be rid not of their emperor (for they could no more live without an emperor than a body without a heart), but of their current misfortunes".[88] The church had come to merge psychologically in the minds of the Eastern bishops with the empire to such an extent that they had difficulty in thinking of Christianity without an emperor.[21]
In Western Europe, on the other hand, the idea of a universal church linked to the Emperor of Constantinople was replaced by that in which the Roman see was supreme.[e] "Membership in a universal church replaced citizenship in a universal empire. Across Europe, from Italy to Ireland, a new society centered on Christianity was forming."[90]
The
See also
- Arian controversy
- Caesaropapism
- Chalcedonian Christianity
- Christian state
- Early Christianity
- History of the Eastern Orthodox Church
- History of Oriental Orthodoxy
- History of Roman Catholicism
Notes
- ^ The Edict is the first which definitely introduces catholic orthodoxy as the established religion of the Roman world. It marks the end of the fourth-century religious controversy on the Trinity, occasioned by the Arian heresy and calling forth definitions of orthodox dogma by the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381). Acknowledgment of the true doctrine of the Trinity is made the test of State recognition. The citation of the Roman See as the yardstick of correct belief is significant; bracketing of the name of the Patriarch of Alexandria with that of the Pope was due to the Egyptian See's stalwart defence of the Trinitarian position, particularly under St. Athanasius. The last sentence of the Edict indicates that the Emperors contemplate the use of physical force in the service of orthodoxy; this is the first recorded instance of such a departure.[2]
- Patriarch Antony IV of Constantinople declared the Byzantine emperor to be "emperor (βασιλεύς) and autokrator of the Romans, that is of all Christians,[19] and "it is not possible among Christians to have a Church and not to have an emperor. For the empire and the Church have great unity and commonality, and it is not possible to separate them".[20]
- ^ "The first Christians in Rome were chiefly people who came from the East and spoke Greek. The founding of Constantinople naturally drew such people thither rather than to Rome, and then Christianity at Rome began to spread among the Roman population, so that at last the bulk of the Christian population in Rome spoke Latin. Hence the change in the language of the liturgy. … The liturgy was said (in Latin) first in one church and then in more, until the Greek liturgy was driven out, and the clergy ceased to know Greek. About 415 or 420 we find a Pope saying that he is unable to answer a letter from some Eastern bishops, because he has no one who could write Greek".[48]
- ^ "It was the papacy also which kept alive in western Europe the ideal of a universal imperial Church, for the whole of western Christendom came to acknowledge the supremacy of the Roman see".[89]
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