My American Lectures/Greek and Latin Christianity and the Peasant Church of Roumania
GREEK AND LATIN CHRISTIANITY AND THE PEASANT CHURCH OF ROUMANIA
The Eastern and Western Churches are separated, probably for all time, by differences of dogma and above all by material interests and passions. Each member of the Christian world belonged, before the Reform, to one or other of the sects favouring these dogmas. He was supposed, as concerned the West, to be a « Greek» adherent; no particularity of country or race was recognised. The adherents of the Oekoumenikos of Constantinople were opposed to those of the Roman pontificate.
To explain the separation two periods have to be considered: that of the Byzantine Patriarch Photius in the ioth century and that of his successor Michael Kerullarios in the nth. Ruled by personal ambitions, both these leaders of the Eastern church had consciously employed all efficacious means to bring about unpardonable and criminal schisms.
A critical examination of the facts can usefully be made by means of such works as those of Cardinal Hergenroether on Photius, or the critical studies contained in Walter Norden's well-known treatise on the subject.
The presumed initiator of the first schism was neither a theologian by training nor a lover of theological disputes; nevertheless, as Patriarch, he was constrained to write, or at least to sign, treatises on this subject; he showed no instinct for schismatic struggle, nor predisposition to revolution of any kind. Nothing of the enthusiast or of the fanatic was to be found in him. He became head of his church, by means which Thomas a Becket might have used, while not possessing the ruthless and unsparing energy of the Englishman; a courtier of his emperor, he was the first of the Patriarchs to be rewarded with the mitre. His sympathies lay in the direction of old books and obsolete phraseology; his greatest pleasure was in preparing excerpts which would spare the future readers of those books which had claimed his highest interests, though his notes are confined to the historical and to faults of style. His « Bibliotheca » is a handbook on good writing. His physiognomy was that of an active French abbe of the 18th century, capable of being a theologian when his official position so demanded.
On the other hand, Michael Kerullarios as Patriarch differed little from many others. He has no biography, nor needs one. He was a mediocre figure as were many others like him who, by chance, occupied the See of Constantinople. His origins are obscure; the sole fact of interest is his Patriarchate. This only is known, that, just when Pope Gregory VII would have raised the dignity of the Roman Papacy higher than that of an emperor of pontifical choice and consecration, he proclaimed that ecclesiastical and laical powers were of the same essence; merely according the first priority over the second. How could this man, at a time when Eastern Europe, before the accession of the varrior Comnenes, needed the help of the West against the Turk in Asia Minor, provoke the occidental world by a forced separation of the churches? Photius had at least the strong oppositional feelings of Constantinople against the Ottomans, as the account of Liutprand shows.
Admitting that the two Patriarchs had the schism as the primary object of their reigns, one fact stands forth: that in the time of Photius the emperors renewed their good relations to the pontifical seat of Rome whenever good policy demanded it. But a few decades after the « schism » of Kerullarios, after the exchange of excommunications — a common thing in the period (a little earlier or later and the most excommunicated of all rulers of his time, the emperor Henry IV, could have been buried in consecrated ground) — Alexios the Comnene agreed with the best of good will to help the crusaders of the western cross, who were led first by a monk and then by a legate of the western church. And in the Eastern world the Patriarch, despite his attempts to take precedence of the emperor who had elected him and could equally well expel, condemn or kill him, was not the arbiter of his own policy which, as in all other branches of public life, was dictated by the emperor alone. Thus the churches were divided only for the emperor’s sake, whereas under the Palaeologues, to the end of their domination (from the Council of Lyons to the Council of Florence), to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, all manner of offers were made by the chiefs of the Empire for the union of the churches, that is, for subjection to the Pope, who alone was presumed to hold powers of succour and salvation.
Separation in the true sense however did not occur in the loth and nth centuries. It could not occur notwithstanding the quarrels which continually arose between the two closely related religious organisations. First and foremost this was because the churches were never definitely united.
East and West, Byzantium and Rome, were almost two religions, so numerous, despite the apparent unity of tenet due to a commun fidelity to the creed of Nicaea, were the original differences.
Each of them held closely to a different heritage. The religious Byzantium of Christ continued the old oriental religion. The same authority of the clergy, actual high priests of the Asiatic Orient, the same nullity of the Worshippers during celebrations of the holy office, the same mystery surrounding the liturgy, which was concealed behind the closed doors of the iconostasis. And at the same time, as an open contradiction to theocracy founded on inscrutable mysteries, the marriage of priests, their intercourse with the people, the use of the vernacular in the church.
This was not peculiar to the Orthodox Greek Church and its Slavonic variants which were formed in the 9th century. Other churches using other languages, representing other countries, other races and other ancient states have these features. And, speaking of schisms, was it not a schism rather than a heresy — and all schism is for each of the parts separated a heresy — the existence of an Armenian, a Syrian or a Coptic Church, each of them presenting differences at least as great as the filioque in the creed, the use of baked bread in the Communion, acceptance of Purgatory and adherence to the Pope?
The occidental church remained Roman in the ancient and popular sense, both in the civil and political sense of the word. Organised on the same lines as the Roman Empire, with bishops and archbishops instead of chiefs of provinces and of legions, subjected to a discipline demanding blind obedience, inflamed by a spirit of conquest comparable only with that of the old centurions and legionaries, retaining in the open basilica-tribunal all forms of a laical place of judgment. No iconostasis, no mystery concealed from the worshippers, no priest appearing in heavy eastern garments, no crown on the head of the gold-bedecked bishop, nor any obligation upon the congregation to maintain dead silence (in Poland men and women join their prayers with those of the priest with such fervour as to endanger the flickering lights of the tapers). But, above all, the inflexible dogma of the old language, an unintelligible Latin, the sonorous syllables of which resound like the ancient words of command of the armies of once glorious Rome. Here no particularism can be allowed, whereas individuality is always permissible in the East.
A province gained for Christianity in the West was a new conquest for the Pope and it was administered after the same principles as the older ones. Germany did not remain under the rule of missionaries like St. Boniface or St. Columba; Rome decided all its future. In the region of the Danube, after Latin missionaries appeared to preach to a Latin-speaking population which had possessed, even from the time of Trajan, the seeds of Christianity, the new members of the Church had an extended latitude to organise and administer their religion for themselves. As the emperor no longer held sway, as no barbarian king could be employed for the ends of the Church, what happened in the political field was bound also to occur in the domain of the church.
Danubian Roumania was a country of autonomous villages ruled in the popular manner. Religiously it was a country of priests, a presbyterocracy instead of a State governed by a hierarchy of bishops and archbishops as in the West.
The priest, hereditary of office, consacrated by the superior of the monastery or by a neighbouring bishop, led his spiritual flock unsupervised by any. The State, as in Wallachia, could call a foreign bishop and bring him to its capital or, as in Moldavia, ask Byzantium for the recognition of his elected ones. Bishoprics were to be found in Argeș, later in Târgoviște and Bucharest, in Râmnic, in Buzău for the southern principality, in Cetatea-Albă, then in Suceava, in Rădăuți, in Roman, and lastly in Huși also, as regards the north. The priest always remained a free member of the religious organisation. He hardly ever received — I know of no case to the contrary, at any rate—instructions from his bishop, who had the power (not commonly exercised) of deposing or of judging him for breaches of the laws of the country which, until it came under the influences of French philosophy in the 18th century, had no written constitution. Between the bishops no close cooperation was maintained, the archbishop (or Metropolitan as he was called), although, as in Moldavia at the close of the 16th century, having nearly the attributes of a Patriarch, akin to that of Moscow, not being able to interfere in the administration of dioceses other than his own. The bishop was called to the Synod, which united all holders of episcopal seats; he took part in the consecration of his colleagues, three being required by canonical law (though foreign bishops could be invited to complete the number); he represented, before the ruling prince, the national church as a whole, being admitted to the councils at his side. But this was all. As necessity arose for reforming the life of the clergy, the initiative was taken, as in Moldavia, under Prince Miron Bamovski, in the first decades of the 17th century, by the Crown.
This before the philosophical ideas of the 18th century made the sovereign also master of the Church. Thus, Nicholas Constantine Mavrocordato introduced the spoken language in the liturgy and, half a century later, Alexander Ipsilanti, also a Phanariote, changed the conditions of life in the Wallachian monasteries by decree. So great and so exclusive were the rights of the ruling prince in matters of the church — without need to seek the advice of the Metropolitan—that Mihnea Radu, in the middle of the 17th century, arrogated to himself the hitherto purely Constantinian privilege of introducing new rules into the statutes for the organisation of Orthodox churches. This was the natural result of his being the helper, benefactor and adviser of all Patriarchs in the Orthodoxy as well as of their subordinate bishops. For the monks of the Holy Mountain, enriched by Roumanian gifts (for which the existing relics and monuments stand eloquent testimony), for those of the Thessalian monasteries, for the Hierosolymitans and many other oriental Christians, the Moldavian or Wallachian ruler of the moment was the successor of the emperor of Constantinople and not only in their local foundations, but also in the most celebrated churches of Christendom. In portraits they are often represented wearing ecclesiastical garments and crowned in the manner of the Caesars.
A prince ruling the church; priests leading their village congregations; monks (except in the great houses of calligraphers, translators and artists, Bistrița in Wallachia, and Neamț in Moldavia — the reform by the Russian Paisij, to create new abodes of learning, not occuring until the 18th century) who were formerly peasants, modest tillers of the soil; bishops for canonical occasions only, permitting this church to be included in the great organism of the eastern Patriarchates; this was the Roumanian religious life in both principalities.
For all this there would appear to have been no authority emanating from Constantinople, nor would this seem to have been possible. In the beginnings of the Wallachian hierarchy, the Bishop of Vicina at the mouth of the Danube was entrusted with the care of the new .png)
Moldavian Church (15th century)
church, in northern Transylvania a patriarchal decree was required for the superior of a free monastery (stauropigy) to exercise episcopal power. As one of the first Wallachian exarchs to become a true Metropolitan was the overlord of the houses on Mount Athos. The Constantinople Patriarch, heir of Byzantine imperialism, alone could hope to rule the new establishment, which had sprung up under its guidance.
The hope however was vain: there is no trace of the intervention of the religious chief of all the Greeks. When another Patriarch wished to make the non-canonical Metropolitan seat of Moldavia a simple province within his jurisdiction, sending his own nominee to take over control, he was met with stubborn resistance from such bishops as were consecrated in the monasteries of the Slavonic tongue. founded by a Serbian monk of Macedonian origin and athonic forming, Nicodeme. He was eventually forced to resign his claims and the first Metropolitan was a Moldavian, one of the victorious opponents.
The powers of the Patriarch were materially curtailed by the Turkish conquest, which made him a creature of the Sultan and the political head of a single nation in the orthodoxy; impoverished, he was constrained to seek the help of the Roumanian princes, to dwell and celebrate in such buildings as were the property of the Roumanian principalities; always menaced, he asked the protection, and oft-times the shelter, of the Danubian rulers to whom visits were paid from the 16th century onwards. In the 17th century the rich Prince of Moldavia, Basil, took over the financial administration of the «great Church » in Constantinople and the life of this church was thereafter controlled by him. The other patriarchs followed the example of Constantinople: they were, up to the beginning of the Russian era, and often afterwards too, at the service of the Roumanians. In the fight against Calvinism the capital of Moldavia, Jassy, had the honour of being the meeting-place of the council which purified the eastern creed attacked by Cyril Lukaris, the «kalvinophrone» Patriarch, and, when in the second half of the 17th century, the Jesuits began their great campaign for the conquest of orthodoxy, it was in the same Jassy (though he first resided at Bucharest, Constantin Brâncoveanu’s capital) that the defender of the faith, the Patriarch of Jerusalem Dositheus, and his cultured nephew, Chrysanthos Notaras, established their head quarters, attentively watching the conduct of all Roumanian bishops, including the recalcitrant bishop of Transylvania, and publishing ponderous works of counter-propaganda, culminating in the splendid history of his predecessors in the Holy City. Brâncoveanu, a generous benefactor of all eastern churches, was surrounded at the great feasts of the Orthodoxy by nearly all the Patriarchs and by many of their bishops. Living side by side with such princes, it was only natural that the chiefs of the two Roumanian churches owed the Oecumenical See no duty beyond that of announcing their election, their confirmation by the sovereign and of asking for the «grammata » recognising them as such, without the least likelihood of its being opposed. (A single case occurs at the beginning of the 17th century, and it is plain that the destitution was asked for by the prince himself).
Being thus a purely national organisation, an integrant part of the political life of the country and of the popular life of the nation, the Roumanian orthodoxy was instrumental in assisting the progress of society itself, without vain aspirations of leading or controlling it. Against the rules of the western churches and without asking permission from Constantinople, it accepted the great reform introducing the use of the Roumanian tongue in the holy office: what was at first the mere and casual imitation of a heretic novelty (of the Hussites, and later of the Lutherans in Transylvania and of the Calvinists sustained by the Hungarian princes of the province) later became the rule for all churches in both principalities, from the humblest village church to the cathedrals of the two capitals. Understanding the Gospel, the Apostles, the hymns of the Liturgy, the peasants loved more than ever before the church which did not disdain to bring to their level the truths of the faith and the consolations of the Holy Gospel. In effect, the Roumanian orthodoxy, free from internal dissensions and unfettered by a foreign language or, as with the Slavs, by an archaic form of a forgotten dialect, was a popular protestantism bound to the conservatism of the eastern creed and bearing some resemblances to the Greek and Slav orthodoxies.
Not the creator of the Roumanian soul, but merely its everyday sustainer and helper, the church was closely connected to the national life, identifying itself with the very development of the society it served. Church and nation formed a single body as long as neither sought aspirations beyond the national borders.
The Roumanian orthodoxy could not enslave the Roumanian nation to the Greeks, who were indebted to the former. All later attempts to bring Greek bishops to the Sees of Moldavia and Wallachia have utterly failed. In the former of the principalities, after just such an attempt, a general decision was woted forbidding the election of foreigners. In Wallachia certain Greek bishops ruled, such as Lukas, previously Bishop of Buzău, the Cretan Neophytos, later Galaction of Râmnic, the Metropolitan Nectarius, the brothers Philites, without taking account of a bishop of Arta introduced under the Russian occupation of 1812, but they were all subject to the traditions of the country. Nothwitstanding this, as the Russians, victorious against the « heathen » Turk, appeared on the Moldavian frontier of the Dniester calling the Roumanians to alliance, to subjection actually, under the rule of the Czarinas Ann and Catherine, the clergy of both Principalities, the bishops and priests of Transylvania as well, persecuted by the Jesuits, gave heed to persuasion and accepted the gifts by which their servitude was to be ensured. From this moment onwards the party of national liberty fought under a lay flag, and only interested boyars followed the Greek cross, calling for reunion with the Orthodox Empire of the East.
The natural benefits of the church did not, however, cease with the 18th century, in which a copious theological literature as well as a new and florid style were introduced thanks to the bishops, translators and publishers, and to the monastical orders. But the schism between laity and clergy continued. This schism was much wider in the 19th century, when the laity gained such close relations with the western world, and the spheres of Catholicism and philosophy. The spirit of the French Revolution now dominated the writers and the diplomatists, a spirit of incredulity and of jeering criticism against all forms of religion, in fine, a spirit of complete anti-clericalism. The State desired the subjection of the Church and, indeed, attained its end: to the State, that is to the leading politicians of the time, to such bishops as were elected by the parliament, and to the priests who were members of the political clubs, the Church owed its politicization. Between the political state and the church intercourse was thus resumed, but identity of interests between the Church and society were no longer capable of realisation.
In spite of all this, to abandon the Orthodoxy is an impossibility for Roumanians. Not because they have strong convictions as to its dogma; not for what the orthodoxy could give them; but, for all that they have afforded to this orthodoxy, a gift which is comparable with no other: for this religious democracy, corresponding to the thousand year-old elements of democracy in Roumanian society; for this historical tie between the style of literature and the prayers of the church, for this sense, in the church, of no other dependency than that of the development of the Roumanian nation itself, no abandonment is possible.