The Greek and Eastern Churches/Part 1/Division 1/Chapter 9

by Walter Frederic Adeney

 

CHAPTER IX

ORGANISATION AND WORSHIP

 

(a) Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers; John Fulton, Index Canonum; The Apostolical Constitutions; The Canons of Athanasius; The Codes of Theodosius and Justinian.

(b) Bingham, Antiquities; Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities; Allen, Christian Institutions (I.T.L.); Stanley, Christian Institutions, 1881.

 

The Church which had commenced as a simple brotherhood of Christians had now developed into a highly elaborated hierarchical organisation. Genuine Christianity with hope of future salvation was taken to be conterminous with membership in the Catholic Church. This membership was secured by baptism, and continued subject to discipline. Orthodoxy in belief and tolerable correctness of conduct were recognised conditions, failure in regard to either of which could be punished with excommunication—specifically exclusion from attendance at the Eucharist. But in point of fact discipline was almost confined to the question of orthodoxy, and there almost exclusively among the clergy; so that much laxity of conduct prevailed among the laity, who, though subject to pastoral oversight, rarely suffered the extreme penalty of expulsion from the Church. In other words, from being a select community dedicated to a holy life, the Church tended to become co-extensive with Christendom, especially with the empire regarded as Christian, though of course only consisting of the baptised. Then those men and women who aimed at a higher life began to separate themselves from the secularised Church. Yet they did not form a church within the Church. They lived the life of ascetics, either separately or in communities. These people—as we shall see in the next chapter—largely escaped from ecclesiastical discipline. The monks to a great extent shook off the yoke of the bishops.

The centre of this hierarchical system was the bishop; the lower clergy were his ministers; the higher clergy were but bishops of important cities with extended authority over their brother bishops. Episcopacy was the essential characteristic of the Church organisation.

The clergy were drawn from all ranks of life. No special training was considered necessary to fit them for their duties, and some came direct from secular work to administer the affairs of the Church. In the smaller cities bishops carried on businesses for their livelihood—as farmers, shepherds, shopkeepers, etc. It was expressly ordered that a bishop should not neglect his flock by travelling out of his parish for business purposes, take interest for loans, or lower the wages of his workpeople. But where the funds of a Church were sufficient to support its bishop hia engagement in secular affairs was discouraged. Thus we read in the Canons of Athanasius: "thou levitical priest, wherefore dost thou sell or buy? Unto thee are given the first-fruits of all," etc.^[1] So lucrative did the post become that in some cases it was sought for the sake of its emoluments;^[2] and the bishops had to be warned that the money at their disposal should be used for the assistance of widows and orphans or as loans to other persons in need.^[3] The council of Chalcedon expressly forbade bishops, priests, and monks to engage in commerce.^[4] During the fourth century it was taken for granted that the bishop was a married man. Thus in the Canons of Athanasius, the Pauline precept is repeated that "the bishop must be in all things blameless, married to one wife," etc.;^[5] and again, "The priests must behave themselves according as the apostles have ordained; wherefore the bishop must be in nothing blameworthy, married to one wife," etc.^[6] Gregory of Nazianzus's father was the bishop of that town. Of course the case of monks who became bishops was different.

While a college training was not considered to be essential as a preparation for the ministry, the more famous bishops were highly educated men. Literary culture was acquired at Cæsarea, Alexandria, Constantinople, and above all at Athens; theological training was taken after this in one of the great schools of theology, at Alexandria, Antioch, or Edessa. The canonical age for the priesthood or a bishopric was thirty. One of the Sardican canons (a.d. 346, 347) ordered that if a rich man or a lawyer were proposed as bishop he should not be appointed till he had ascended by degrees through the offices of reader, deacon, and priest, and that he should spend a considerable time in each grade of the ministry. But this rule of caution was frequently set aside, and candidates were hurried through the inferior orders when their appointment was urgent. The bishops were supposed to be elected by their congregations; but more often they were designated by the metropolitans of their provinces, with the co-operation of the neighbouring bishops. While the priesthood of the clergy was now universally recognised, their social separation from the laity was a slow and gradual process. At first they wore no distinctive vestments. By the beginning of the fifth century some among them began to don clothing of a more sober hue than was fashionable at the time. So they appeared as the Puritans or Quakers among the gay society people of their day. Jerome condemned this distinction of dress. The sixth century saw the invention of the tonsure. The clergy were now forbidden to wear the long hair of the dandies of their day. The unmarried clergy lived together under the eye of their bishop and slept in a common dormitory.

The bishop presides over his own church and also the surrounding district, which is known in the East as a "parish," not a "diocese"—that word being applied politically to a large division of the empire. It is his function to appoint and ordain the lower clergy. He is treasurer of the Church funds and custodian of her doctrine and discipline. It is the voice of the bishops that settles both the creed and the canons of discipline in the synods. Bishops have certain privileges and immunities. They are not to be sworn in courts of justice; they can act as intercessors; they preside at Church courts. Each bishop is strictly confined to his own parish. We meet with neither a plurality of bishops in one such district, nor with the pluralism which disgraced the Western Church in later times when one prelate enjoyed a host of Church dignities. That was expressly forbidden at Chalcedon.^[7]

The unity of the Church is mainly preserved by the intercommunication between the bishops and their meeting together in local synods or larger councils. These synods and councils are not held in our modern Presbyterian style at regular intervals for the transaction of normal business, at all events at first. They are special expedients resorted to on occasion for the settlement of difficulties. But the council of Chalcedon ordered that synods should meet twice a year.^[8] While the œcumenical councils were always summoned by the emperor, local synods were called together by the bishops of the chief churches in the districts concerned.

The bishop of the principal city in a province is known as the "metropolitan," and he corresponds to the archbishop of a province in the West. The specific functions of the metropolitan are to act with the other bishops of his province in ordaining bishops—his consent being deemed essential to a valid election; to exercise supervision over the bishops and take action where discipline was needed; to summon and preside at synods; to communicate the decisions of synods to the other metropolitans.

Lastly, we have the patriarchs, higher even than the metropolitans, with corresponding duties, namely, to ordain one another and the metropolitans; to exercise supreme supervision and discipline over their section of the Church; to preside at the larger synods and œcumenical councils; to communicate with one another and co-operate for the unity and harmony of the Church, not however as a joint committee of government, since in the last resort each is independent in his own sphere; to serve as the link of connection with the State, communicating with the emperor and the civil government.

In this way we see all the parts of the Catholic Church linked together, while a considerable amount of home rule is permitted for the individual bishops. The lower clergy are directly responsible to their own bishops. While free and independent under normal conditions, these bishops are bound by the canons of the councils, and it is for them especially that the creed is authorised; since they are the custodians of orthodoxy their own orthodoxy is a matter of supreme concern. Thus in the main theological controversy is a battle of bishops. At critical times, in special emergencies, the metropolitans may have to interfere with the bishops of their provinces; and in great affairs affecting the whole Church or branches of it the patriarchs take action.

Most of this system was developed during ante-Nicene times. The one feature which becomes specially prominent in the later period is the patriarchate. There were five patriarchs. Of these only one was in the West—the patriarch of Rome. The others were at Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople. The bishop of Rome presided over the Italian and Gallican præfectures; but Milan and Ravenna—being in turn imperial capitals—as well as North Africa, long clung to their independence. The patriarch of Jerusalem was exceptional. He only presided over a very small area, holding his post of dignity in deference to the sanctity of his city. The patriarch of Antioch had charge of the fifteen provinces contained in Syria, Cilicia, Arabia, and Mesopotamia; the patriarch of Alexandria was set over the nine provinces of Egypt; the patriarch of Constantinople had as many as twenty-eight provinces under his control, contained in the three imperial dioceses of Pontus, Thrace, and Asia Minor.

At the time of the council of Nicæa there were only three patriarchs—those at Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria. Though the first place was allowed to Rome, they were regarded as essentially equals, in recognition of an established custom. Canon vi. begins as follows: "Let the ancient custom prevail in Egypt, Lybia, and Pentapolis; so that the bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these provinces, since this is customary^[9] for the bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the churches retain their prerogatives." Constantinople was not then existing; the building of that city was only commenced five years after the council (a.d. 330). Half a century later the patriarchate of the new imperial capital is not only recognised in the second œcumenical council—the council of Constantinople (a.d. 381); but it is set higher than its seniors in the East and associated in a sort of double primacy with that of Rome. The third canon of this council runs as follows: "The bishop of Constantinople shall have the prerogative of rank next after the bishop of Rome; because Constantinople is new Rome."^[10]

The Greeks commonly interpret this canon as implying no inferiority for their own city by giving a temporal sense to the preposition μετά. In itself that interpretation might seem strained; but it appears to be confirmed by the less ambiguous language of a later council. The council of Chalcedon (a.d. 451), in Canon xxviii., when referring to "the prerogatives of the most holy church of Constantinople, new Rome," decrees as follows: "For the Fathers rightly granted prerogatives to the throne of the elder Rome, because that city was the capital.^[11] And the 150 most religious bishops, actuated by the same design, assigned equal prerogatives^[12] to the most holy throne of new Rome, justly judging that the city which is honoured with the sovereignty of the Senate, and enjoys equal privileges with the elder imperial Rome, should in ecclesiastical matters also be magnified as she is, and rank next after her."^[13] Here we have the same ambiguity in the use of the preposition μετά; but in this case following unambiguous terms of equality. Surely the not very difficult reconciliation of the two forms of expression is that Rome is simply regarded as primus inter pares. The two patriarchs are really equal in rank; but a certain precedence is given to the bishop of Rome, for in this case the temporal sense of μετά is scarcely allowable.

Two facts of importance should be noted here. First, the essential equality of the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople; second, the purely political grounds of this equality. It is the imperial rank of the new city that gives dignity to its bishop. New Rome has no St. Peter, no power of the keys; she is supported in case of necessity by something very different from that mystical privilege—by the power of the sword. Thus from the beginning we see the Erastianism of the church at Constantinople.

At first the rivalry with distant Rome was not felt. It was Alexandria that resented the honours accorded to the upstart patriarchate. We have seen how the theological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries were entangled with personal jealousies of the patriarchs of Alexandria and Constantinople, and when very pronounced, with the more widespread rivalry of the cities they presided over. Subsequently they developed into national and racial divisions, the Copts of Egypt standing opposed to the Greeks of Constantinople. Antioch was not so directly concerned with this deadly feud between the two rival Western patriarchates. While they were in constant communication by that highway of commercial traffic, the Ægean Sea, the Syrian capital lay back in the East. Still, she had her old differences with Alexandria, and she was more directly associated with Constantinople, so that she more often sided with the imperial patriarchate.

In the year 550 Justinian conferred on the patriarch of Constantinople the privilege of receiving appeals from the other patriarchs. By this time, backed up by the power of the autocrat, the bishop of the chief city of the empire was threatening to become a veritable pope, in our later sense of the title. It would have needed rare prescience then to have discerned that not Constantinople, but Rome, was destined to develop the monstrous assumption of universal supremacy over the Church. It looked as though that city of ruins, neglected by the emperor, subject to the ravages of successive invaders, pillaged and impoverished, were doomed to decay, if not to extinction, with her episcopal See and all its Petrine claims. Meanwhile the brilliant metropolis on the Bosphorus, with its basilicas and palaces, its wealth, its splendour, its luxury, promised not only to take the first place politically and socially—which indeed it had already done most effectually—but also to secure ecclesiastical primacy. Nobody could then have dreamed of the proud triumphs of a Hildebrand. But the Latin Church never did dominate Constantinople except at a much later period, and then only for a brief interval and by brute force.

The rivalry between the two patriarchs came to an acute crisis before the end of the sixth century. Fortunately for the Western Church one of the greatest of all the popes was then seated in the chair of Peter. This was Gregory the Great—the missionary pope to whose zeal South England owes the light of the gospel. He was also the Italian patriot who saved Rome from the Lombards when the miserable Exarch at Ravenna had hopelessly failed to repel the rude invaders. Thus he followed in the brilliant tradition of his greatest predecessor, Leo I., the almost miraculous saviour of Rome from the Huns. Further, Gregory is reckoned the last of the Latin Fathers. If not an original theologian, still he struck the keynote of mediæval theology, and left in his works almost all the doctrinal notions that prevailed during the Middle Ages. This remarkable, many-sided man now came forward as the champion of the Church's liberty, rebuking the lofty claims of his brother at Constantinople.

Gregory had been to the imperial city at an earlier time on the bootless errand of seeking the aid of the emperor's troops to defend Rome from the Northern invaders. When there he had witnessed the elevation of a famous ascetic, "John the Faster," to the patriarchal dignity. No accusation has been made against the character of this patriarch, who was said to be personally humble and unambitious. But he put forth the highest claims for his office, claims which were all the more dangerous because they were detached from his own individuality and urged with a sense of loyalty to his Church. In summoning a synod at Constantinople in the year 588 to settle the affairs of the Church at Antioch, John assumed the title of "Universal Archbishop."^[14] Gregory was indignant at what he regarded as the pretensiousness of the title. "I hope in Almighty God," he cried, "that the Supreme Majesty will confound his hypocrisy."^[15] He sent to the offending patriarch what in writing to the emperor he called "a sweet and humble admonition," in which, as he said, "honesty and kindness were combined,"^[16] but promising an appeal to the Church if this failed. Gregory also wrote to the Emperor Maurice urging that the title of "Universal Bishop" was novel and unheard of, and a contravention of the precepts of the gospel which enjoin humility, and further, that it deprived the other patriarchs and bishops of the honour due to them.^[17] In both these letters he claimed that the title had been offered by the council of Chalcedon to the bishop of Rome, but never used by him. That, as Gieseler points out, was a mistake—in the way Gregory understood it—for the title had only been used generally for all patriarchs.^[18]

This incident has been pointed to as an instance of papal aggressiveness, and Gregory has been accused of priestly pride and ambition. But such a view is neither charitable nor just. It is true that he uses strong language in his expostulation; but patriarchs were accustomed to write to one another with moral fervour and in a tone of authoritativeness when they believed that they had the judgment of the Church at their back. Gregory made no direct claim for himself or his office. The curious fact is that when the title "Universal Bishop" was first appropriated, this was not by the pope of Rome, but by the pope of Constantinople, and that the Roman patriarch rebuked his brother, not for seizing a title that he used himself—though he hinted that it had been offered to a predecessor—but for adopting one that no bishop had a right to hold, since it was derogatory to his fellow-bishops. Gregory here furnishes the opponents of the papacy with admirable arguments to be used against the monstrous claims of later occupants of his own See.

Side by side with the development of the organisation of the Church there went on the increasing elaboration of its rites and Ceremonies. In the conduct of worship various functions were assigned to the different orders of the clergy, according to their places in the ascending scale of the hierarchy. In the town churches the bishops were at the head of their own congregations taking the leading part of the solemn functions, and, as a rule, preaching to their people. The whole ceremony of the worship centred in the Eucharist. This was known as "the mystery"^[19] par excellence. It is a highly significant fact that, while the Roman Christian, with his respect for law and authority, called the chief office of his religion a Sacrament,^[20] or oath of allegiance, his Greek brother used a word that was already familiar to the people as the title of a secret ritual witnessed only by the initiated and carefully guarded from the intrusion of the vulgar. Thus the word, which in the New Testament always means a truth formerly hidden, but now through Christ publicly revealed,^[21] came to be torn entirely away from its primitive Christian signification and used altogether in its conventional pagan sense. Meanwhile there was a growing approximation to pagan ritual in the ceremonials of the Church and the feelings of awe with which they were approached. The homely love feast, at which rich and poor sit down to a common meal side by side, while they commemorate their Lord's death by eating and drinking some of the bread and wine or milk provided for it, has given place to a solemn function of miraculous potency. Baptism precedes the right to share in this tremendous mystery, as an ablution is necessary for those about to be initiated in the secret rites of Demeter at Eleusis. The priest at the altar is regarded as performing a really efficacious act. Although as yet the doctrine of the real presence is not formally and officially pronounced and authorised by the Church, it is now very generally held and very distinctly taught.

It is in the fourth century that we see the mystical character of the body of Christ so treated as plainly to involve the doctrine of transubstantiation, although the notion has to wait long for official definition and confirmation as a dogma of the Church. It had been adumbrated in still more ancient times. Even as early as the first half of the second century we have Ignatius using ecstatic language about the body and blood of Christ that faintly foreshadows the idea which is destined to become the central factor of the Catholic faith.^[22] The Alexandrian teachers Clement and Origen are satisfied with the symbolical meaning of the communion; and so is Eusebius in the fourth century, as when he refers to "the memory"^[23] of Christ's sacrifice, "by symbols^[24] both of His body and of His saving blood."^[25] On the other hand, Athanasius shows signs of mystical ideas attached to the elements, especially as the sources of immortality by their effects on our bodies when we participate. Thus he speaks of "the holy altar, and on it bread of heaven, and immortal, and that giveth life to all that partake of it. His holy and all-holy body";^[26] and yet in another place he says that the very object of the ascension was to draw men away from the thought of eating the body.^[27] Evidently we are here at a transition stage. Some minds go further than others, and the same mind oscillates between the symbolical and the mystical conceptions.

Basil dwells on the peculiar sanctity of the communion and the benefit of daily participation in it; but he is far from ascribing to it a merely magical efficacy irrespective of intelligent ideas. Thus he says, "In no respect does he benefit who comes to the communion without understanding the word according to which the participation of the body and the blood of the Lord is given. But he that partakes unworthily is condemned";^[28] and again, more definitely, "What is the peculiar benefit of those that eat the bread and drink the cup of God? To keep the continual memory^[29] of Him that died for us and rose again."^[30]

But now when we turn to Basil's brother, Gregory of Nyssa, we find a very different tone. Gregory was an enthusiastic Platonist and Origenist. Here however he entirely departs from the simple symbolism of the Alexandrian school. We are sometimes told that the dogma of transubstantiation dates from the Fourth Lateran Council, as late as the thirteenth century. That is true as regards the authoritative enforcement of acceptance of it on the papal Church, although Berengar had been condemned more than a century earlier (a.d. 1059) for denying it. The mediæval schoolmen were the first to attempt metaphysical explanations of the doctrine. But the essential idea appears full blown as early as the fourth century, and to nobody is the formulation of it more distinctly attributable than to Gregory of Nyssa. This daring and original Church Father writes, "The body of Christ was transmuted^[31] to the flesh of God by the indwelling of God the Word. I do well then in believing that now also the bread of God the Word, when consecrated, is being transmuted^[32] into the body of God the Word."^[33] Together with this notion of transubstantiation Gregory also has the idea of miraculous effects produced by the Divine food on the persons of the recipients of the communion. Thus he says, "For as a little leaven, as the apostle says, changes and assimilates the whole lump to itself; so the body of Christ which was by God put to death, having come to be in our body, transmutes and transfers it all into its own character. For as when the destructive agent^[34] was mingled with the sound (body), all that it was mingled with was made worthless with it, so the immortal body also, having come to be in him that has received it, transmuted the whole also into its own nature. But indeed it is not possible for anything to come to be in the body except it be well mixed with the bowels by being eaten and drunk. Surely then it is requisite to receive, in the way possible to our nature, the power of the Spirit that is to quicken us."^[35] We can scarcely conceive of a more grossly materialistic notion of the use of the Sacrament. But we must observe all along that it is a materialistic end the theologian has in view. The body of Christ is so to transmute the body of the communicant that it shall survive the shock of death and be capable of resurrection. Thus the eating and drinking of the Eucharistic elements by the Christian is supposed to secure for his body what the Egyptian aimed at by the art of embalming, what the Pharaohs would make doubly sure with granite sarcophagus and massive pyramid.

What Gregory of Nyssa laboured to expound and enforce was accepted and popularly preached by Chrysostom, and it became henceforth the normal doctrine of the Church. The West was not slow to adopt the same ideas. We have movements towards them in the writings of Hilary; and Ambrose tells strange things of the magical efficacy of the sacred elements. Still, with this doctrine which meant so much for the Latin Church in all subsequent ages, as with so many other doctrines, it was the Greek theologians who first gave definite expression to it. Nevertheless, belief in transubstantiation did not make way without difficulties and objections in some quarters. For instance, Palladius tells of an old monk near Scetis who much distressed two of his comrades by being unable to accept it. They agreed to pray for a week that the doubter might be enlightened. "And the Lord hearkened to both," says Palladius. "And when the week was fulfilled they came on the Lord's Day to the church, and the three stood together alone on one seat, and the old man was in the middle. And their eyes were opened, and when the bread was placed on the holy table, it appeared to the three only as a child, and when the presbyter stretched out his hand to break the bread, lo! an angel of the Lord came down from heaven with a sword and slew the child as a sacrifice,^[36] and emptied its blood into the cup. But when the presbyter brake the bread into small portions, the angel also began to cut out of the child small portions; and as they drew near to partake of the holy things there was given, to the old man alone, bleeding flesh; and he cried out, saying, 'I believe. Lord, that the bread is Thy body and the cup Thy blood.' And straightway the flesh in his hand became bread according to the mystery, and he partook, giving thanks to God. And the old men say to him, 'God knew man's nature, that it cannot eat raw flesh, and on this account transmuted^[37] the body into bread and His blood into wine for them that receive in faith.' And they gave thanks to God concerning the old man that he did not lose his labours; and the three went with joy into their cells."^[38] Here it is plain enough that Berengarius, Wycliffe, and the Reformers had been anticipated by the old sceptical monk. The interesting point in the story is that his doubts were dispelled by a vision in answer to prayer. This must be taken in conjunction with the many other monkish marvels with which Palladius fills his pages. No unprejudiced person can read the story without being convinced of the sincerity and genuine devoutness of these three simple-minded monks. It carries us beyond the plain paths of history to obscure regions of psychology, and there we must be content to leave it.

 

1. Canons of Athanasius, iii. The probable genuineness of these Canons has been vindicated by Mr. Crumm, who has clearly demonstrated their antiquity.
2. Ibid. v.
3. Ibid. vi.
4. Canons of Chalcedon, iii.
5. Canons of Athanasius, v.
6. Canons of Athanasius, vi.
7. Canon x.
8. Canon xix.
9. τοῦτο συνηθὲς ἔστιν, i.e. this sort of thing, a similar arrangement is customary.
10. τὸν μέν τοι Κωνσταντινουπόλεως ἐπίσκοπον ἔχειν τὰ πρεσβεῖα τῆς τιμῆς μετὰ τὸν τῆς Ῥώμης ἐπίσκοπον, διὰ τὸ εἶναι αὐτὴν νέαν Ῥώμην. This is confirmed by Socrates, Hist. Eccl. v. 8; and Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. vii. 9.
11. διὰ τὸ βασιλεύειν τὴν πόλιν ἐκείνην.
12. τὰ ἶσα πρεσβεῖα.
13. καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἐκκλησιαστικοις ὡς ἐκείνην μεγαλύνεσθαι πράγμασι δευτέραν μετ' ἐκείνην ὑπάρχουσαν.
14. οἰκουμενικὸς ἀρχιεπίσκοπος.
15. Gregory the Great, Epp. v. 45.
16. Epp. v. 18.
17. Epp. v. 20.
18. Gieseler, Eccl. Hist., 2nd Period, 1st Div. ch. iii. § 94, note 72.
19. τὸ μυστήριον.
20. Sacramentum.
21. e.g. 1 Cor. xv. 51; Col. i. 26.
22. e.g. Ignatius, Epist. to Rom. vii.
23. τὴν μνήμην.
24. διὰ συμβόλων.
25. Demonst. Evang. i.
26. De Nicæno Con. c. Arium, p. 125, in Hebert, The Lord's Supper, vol. i. p. 154.
27. Ibid. p. 156.
28. Ibid. p. 194.
29. τὴν μνήμην φυλάσσειν φιηνεκῆ.
30. Hebert, Lord's Supper, vol. i. p. 193.
31. μεταποιήθη.
32. μεταποιεῖσθαι.
33. Hebert, p. 266.
34. i.e. Sin, as the context shows.
35. Hebert, pp. 204, 205.
36. ἔθυσε.
37. μετεποίησε.
38. Hebert, vol. i. pp. 329, 330.