Imperium in imperio
"It doth go hugely against the grain to see the
crescent exalted everywhere, where the Cross stood so long triumphant": so
wrote Edward Browne in 1677, soon after arriving as Chaplain to the English
Embassy at Constantinople. To the Greeks, in 1453 it must also have gone hugely
against the grain. For more than a thousand years men had taken the Christian
Empire of Byzantium for granted as a permanent element in God’s providential
dispensation to the world. Now the "God-protected city" had fallen,
and the Greeks were under the rule of the infidel.
It was not an easy transition: but it was made less hard
by the Turks themselves, who treated their Christian subjects with remarkable
generosity. The Mohammedans in the fifteenth century were far more tolerant
towards Christianity than western Christians were towards one another during the
Reformation and the seventeenth century. Islam regards the Bible as a holy book
and Jesus Christ as a prophet; in Moslem eyes, therefore, the Christian religion
is incomplete but not entirely false, and Christians, being "People of the
Book," should not be treated as if on a level with mere pagans. According
to Mohammedan teaching, Christians are to undergo no persecution, but may
continue without interference in the observance of their faith, so long as they
submit quietly to the power of Islam.
Such were the principles that guided the conqueror of
Constantinople, Sultan Mohammed II. Before the fall of the city, Greeks called
him "the precursor of Antichrist and the second Sennacherib," but they
found that in practice his rule was very different in character. Learning that
the office of Patriarch was vacant, Mohammed summoned the monk Gennadius and
installed him on the Patriarchal throne. Gennadius (1450-1472), known as George
Scholarios before he became a monk, was a voluminous writer and the leading
Greek theologian of his time. He was a determined opponent of the Church of
Rome, and his appointment as Patriarch meant the final abandonment of the Union
of Florence. Doubtless for political reasons, the Sultan deliberately chose a
man of anti-Latin convictions: with Gennadius as Patriarch, there would be less
likelihood of the Greeks seeking secret aid from Roman Catholic powers.
The Sultan himself instituted the Patriarch, ceremonially
investing him with his pastoral staff, exactly as the autocrats of Byzantium had
formerly done. The action was symbolic: Mohammed the Conqueror, champion of
Islam, became also the protector of Orthodoxy, taking over the role once
exercised by the Christian Emperor. Thus Christians were assured a definite
place in the Turkish order of society; but, as they were soon to discover, it
was a place of guaranteed inferiority. Christianity under Islam was a
second-class religion, and its adherents second-class citizens. They paid heavy
taxes, wore a distinctive dress, were not allowed to serve in the army, and were
forbidden to marry Moslem women. The Church was allowed to undertake no
missionary work, and it was a crime to convert a Moslem to the Christian faith.
From the material point of view there was every inducement for a Christian to
apostatize to Islam. Direct persecution often serves to strengthen a Church; but
the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire were denied the more heroic ways of witnessing
to their faith, and were subjected instead to the demoralizing effects of an
unrelenting social pressure.
Nor was this all. After the fall of Constantinople the
Church was not allowed to revert to the situation before the conversion of
Constantine; paradoxically enough, the things of Caesar now became more closely
associated with the things of God than they had ever been before. For the
Mohammedans drew no distinction between religion and politics: from their point
of view, if Christianity was to be recognized as an independent religious faith,
it was necessary for Christians to be organized as an independent political
unit, an Empire within the Empire. The Orthodox Church therefore became a civil
as well as a religious institution: it was turned into the Rum Millet,
the "Roman nation." The ecclesiastical structure was taken over in
toto as an instrument of secular administration. The bishops became
government officials, the Patriarch was not only the spiritual head of the Greek
Orthodox Church, but the civil head of the Greek nation — the ethnarch or
millet-bashi. This situation continued in Turkey until 1923, and in Cyprus
until the death of Archbishop Makarios III (1977).
The millet system performed one invaluable
service: it made possible the survival of the Greek nation as a distinctive unit
through four centuries of alien rule. But on the life of the Church it had two
melancholy effects. It led first to a sad confusion between Orthodoxy and
nationalism. With their civil and political life organized completely around the
Church, it became all but impossible for the Greeks to distinguish between
Church and nation. The Orthodox faith, being universal, is limited to no single
people, culture, or language; but to the Greeks of the Turkish Empire
"Hellenism" and Orthodoxy became inextricably intertwined, far more so
than they had ever been in the Byzantine Empire. The effects of this confusion
continue to the present day.
In the second place, the Church’s higher administration
became caught up in a degrading system of corruption and simony. Involved as
they were in worldly affairs and matters political, the bishops fell a prey to
ambition and financial greed. Each new Patriarch required a berat from
the Sultan before he could assume office, and for this document he was obliged
to pay heavily. The Patriarch recovered his expenses from the episcopate, by
exacting a fee from each bishop before instituting him in his diocese; the
bishops in turn taxed the parish clergy, and the clergy taxed their flocks. What
was once said of the Papacy was certainly true of the Ecumenical Patriarchate
under the Turks: everything was for sale.
When there were several candidates for the Patriarchal
throne, the Turks virtually sold it to the highest bidder; and they were quick
to see that it was in their financial interests to change the Patriarch as
frequently as possible, so as to multiply occasions for selling the berat.
Patriarchs were removed and reinstated with kaleidoscopic rapidity. "Out of
159 Patriarchs who have held office between the fifteenth and the twentieth
century, the Turks have on 105 occasions driven Patriarchs from their throne;
there have been 27 abdications, often involuntary; 6 Patriarchs have suffered
violent deaths by hanging, poisoning, or drowning; and only 21 have died natural
deaths while in office" (B. J. Kidd, The Churches of Eastern Christendom,
London, 1927, p. 304). The same man sometimes held office on four or five
different occasions, and there were usually several ex-Patriarchs watching
restively in exile for a chance to return to the throne. The extreme insecurity
of the Patriarch naturally gave rise to continual intrigues among the
Metropolitans of the Holy Synod who hoped to succeed him, and the leaders of the
Church were usually separated into bitterly hostile parties. "Every good
Christian," wrote an English resident in the seventeenth-century Levant,
"ought with sadness to consider, and with compassion to behold this once
glorious Church tear and rend out her own bowels, and give them for food
vultures and ravens, and to the wild and fierce Creatures of the World"
(Sir Paul Rycaut, The Present State of the Greek and Armenian Churches,
London, 1679, p. 107).
But if the Patriarchate of Constantinople suffered an
inward decay, outwardly its power expanded as never before. The Turks looked on
the Patriarch of Constantinople as the head of all Orthodox Christians in
their dominions. The other Patriarchates also within the Ottoman Empire —
Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem — remained theoretically independent but were
in practice subordinate. The Churches of Bulgaria and Serbia — likewise within
Turkish dominions — gradually lost all independence, and by the mid-eighteenth
century had passed directly under the Ecumenical Patriarch’s control. But in
the nineteenth century, as Turkish power declined, the frontiers of the
Patriarchate contracted. The nations which gained freedom from the Turks found
it impracticable to remain subject ecclesiastically to a Patriarch resident in
the Turkish capital and closely involved in the Turkish political system. The
Patriarch resisted as long as he could, but in each case he bowed eventually to
the inevitable. A series of national Churches were carved out of the
Patriarchate: the Church of Greece (organized in 1833, recognized by the
Patriarch of Constantinople in 1850); the Church of Romania (organized in 1864,
recognized in 1885); the Church of Bulgaria (reestablished in 1871, not
recognized by Constantinople until 1945); the Church of Serbia (restored and
recognized in 1879). The diminution of the Patriarchate has continued in the
present century, chiefly as a result of war, and its membership is now but a
tiny fraction of what it once was in the palmy days of Ottoman suzerainty.
The Turkish occupation had two opposite effects upon the
intellectual life of the Church: it was the cause on the one hand of an immense
conservatism and on the other of a certain westernization. Orthodoxy under the
Turks felt itself on the defensive. The great aim was survival — to
keep things going in hope of better days to come. The Greeks clung with
miraculous tenacity to the Christian civilization which they had taken over from
Byzantium, but they had little opportunity to develop this civilization
creatively. Intelligibly enough, they were usually content to repeat accepted
formulae, to entrench themselves in the positions which they had inherited from
the past. Greek thought underwent an ossification and a hardening which one
cannot but regret; yet conservatism had its advantages. In a dark and difficult
period the Greeks did in fact maintain the Orthodox tradition substantially
unimpaired. The Orthodox under Islam took as their guide Paul’s words to
Timothy: "Guard the deposit: keep safe what has been entrusted to you"
(I Timothy 6:20). Could they in the end have chosen a better motto?
Yet alongside this traditionalism there is another and
contrary current in Orthodox theology of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries: the current of western infiltration. It was difficult for the
Orthodox under Ottoman rule to maintain a good standard of scholarship. Greeks
who wished for a higher education were obliged to travel to the non-Orthodox
world, to Italy and Germany, to Paris, and even as far as Oxford. Among the
distinguished Greek theologians of the Turkish period, a few were self-taught,
but the overwhelming majority had been trained in the west under Roman Catholic
or Protestant masters.
Inevitably this had an effect upon the way in which they
interpreted Orthodox theology. Certainly Greek students in the west read the
Fathers, but they only became acquainted with such of the Fathers as were held
in esteem by their non-Orthodox professors. Thus Gregory Palamas was still read,
for his spiritual teaching, by the monks of Athos; but to most learned Greek
theologians of the Turkish period he was utterly unknown. In the works of
Eustratius Argenti (died 1758?), the ablest Greek theologian of his time, there
is not a single citation from Palamas; and his case is typical. It is symbolic
of the state of Greek Orthodox learning in the last four centuries that one of
the chief works of Palamas, The Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts,
should have remained in great part unpublished until 1959.
There was a real danger that Greeks who studied in the
West, even though they remained fully loyal in intention to their own Church,
would lose their Orthodox mentality and become cut off from Orthodoxy as a
living tradition. It was difficult for them not to look at theology through
western spectacles; whether consciously or not, they used terminology and forms
of argument foreign to their own Church. Orthodox theology underwent what the
Russian theologian Father Georges Florovsky (1893-1979) has appropriately termed
a pseudo-morphosis. Religious thinkers of the Turkish period can be
divided for the most part into two broad groups, the "Latinizers" and
the "Protestantizers." Yet the extent of this westernization must not
be exaggerated. Greeks used the outward forms which they had learnt in the west,
but in the substance of their thought the great majority remained fundamentally
Orthodox. The tradition was at times distorted by being forced into alien moulds
— distorted, but not wholly destroyed.
Keeping in mind this twofold background of conservatism
and westernization, let us consider the challenge presented to the Orthodox
world by Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
Reformation and Counter-Reformation: their double
impact
The forces of Reform stopped short when they reached the
borders of Russia and the Turkish Empire, so that the Orthodox Church has not
undergone either a Reformation or a Counter-Reformation. Yet it would be a
mistake to conclude that these two movements have had no influence whatever upon
Orthodoxy. There were many means of contact: Orthodox, as we have seen, went to
study in the west; Jesuits and Franciscans, sent out to the eastern
Mediterranean, undertook missionary work among Orthodox; the Jesuits were also
at work in the Ukraine; the foreign embassies at Constantinople, both of Roman
Catholic and of Protestant powers, played a religious as well as a political
role. During the seventeenth century these contacts led to significant
developments in Orthodox theology.
The first important exchange of views between Orthodox
and Protestants began in 1573, when a delegation of Lutheran scholars from Tübingen,
led by Jakob Andreae and Martin Crusius, visited Constantinople and gave the
Patriarch, Jeremias II, a copy of the Augsburg Confession translated into Greek.
Doubtless they hoped to initiate some sort of Reformation among the Greeks; as
Crusius somewhat naively wrote: "If they wish to take thought for the
eternal salvation of their souls, they must join us and embrace our teaching, or
else perish eternally!" Jeremias, however, in his three Answers to the Tübingen
theologians (dated 1576, 1579, 1581), adhered strictly to the traditional
Orthodox position and showed no inclination to Protestantism. To his first two
letters the Lutherans sent replies, but in his third letter the Patriarch
brought the correspondence to a close, feeling that matters had reached a
deadlock: "Go your own way, and do not write any more on doctrinal matters;
and if you do write, then write only for friendship’s sake." The whole
incident shows the interest felt by the Reformers in the Orthodox Church. The
Patriarch’s Answers are important as the first clear and authoritative
critique of the doctrines of the Reformation from an Orthodox point of view. The
chief matters discussed by Jeremias were free will and grace, Scripture and
Tradition, the sacraments, prayers for the dead, and prayers to the saints.
During the Tübingen interlude, Lutherans and Orthodox
both showed great courtesy to one another. A very different spirit marked the
first major contact between Orthodoxy and the Counter-Reformation. This occurred
outside the limits of the Turkish Empire, in the Ukraine. After the destruction
of Kievan power by the Tartars, a large area in the southwest of Russia,
including the city of Kiev itself, became absorbed by Lithuania and Poland; this
south-western part of Russia is commonly known as Little Russia or the Ukraine.
The crowns of Poland and Lithuania were united under a single ruler from 1386;
thus while the monarch of the joint realm, together with the majority of the
population, was Roman Catholic, an appreciable minority of his subjects was
Russian and Orthodox. These Orthodox in Little Russia were in an uncomfortable
predicament. The Patriarch of Constantinople, to whose jurisdiction they
belonged, could exercise no very effective control in Poland; their bishops were
appointed not by the Church but by the Roman Catholic king of Poland, and were
sometimes courtiers wholly lacking in spiritual qualities and incapable of
providing any inspiring leadership. There was, however, a vigorous laity, led by
several energetic Orthodox nobles, and in many towns there were powerful lay
associations, known as the Brotherhoods (Bratstva).
More than once the Roman Catholic authorities in Poland
had tried to make the Orthodox submit to the Pope. With the arrival of the
Society of Jesus in the land in 1564, pressure on the Orthodox increased. The
Jesuits began by negotiating secretly with the Orthodox bishops, who were for
the most part willing to cooperate (they were, we must remember, the nominees of
a Roman Catholic monarch). In due course, so the Jesuits hoped, the whole
Orthodox hierarchy in Poland would agree to submit en bloc to the Pope,
and the "union" could then be proclaimed publicly as a fait
accompli before anyone else could raise objections: hence the need for
concealment in the earlier stages of the operation. But matters did not in fact
go entirely according to plan. In 1596 a council was summoned at Brest-Litovsk
to proclaim the union with Rome, but the hierarchy was divided. Six out of eight
Orthodox bishops, including the Metropolitan of Kiev, Michael Ragoza, supported
the union, but the remaining two bishops, together with a large number of the
delegates from the monasteries and from the parish clergy, desired to remain
members of the Orthodox Church. The two sides concluded by excommunicating and
anathematizing one another.
Thus there came into existence in Poland a "Uniate"
Church, whose members were known as "Catholics of the Eastern Rite."
The decrees of the Council of Florence formed the basis of the union. The
Uniates recognized the supremacy of the Pope, but were allowed to keep their
traditional practices (such as married clergy), and they continued as before to
use the Slavonic Liturgy, although in course of time western elements crept into
it. Outwardly, therefore, there was very little to distinguish Uniates from
Orthodox, and one wonders how far uneducated peasants in Little Russia
understood what the quarrel was really about. Many of them, at any rate,
explained the matter by saying that the Pope had now joined the Orthodox Church.
The government authorities recognized only the decisions
of the Roman party at the Council of Brest, so that from their point of view the
Orthodox Church in Poland had now ceased legally to exist. Those who desired to
continue Orthodox were severely persecuted. Monasteries and churches were seized
and given to the Uniates, against the wishes of the monks and congregations.
"Roman Catholic Polish gentry sometimes handed over the Orthodox Church of
their peasants to a Jewish usurer, who could then demand a fee for allowing an
Orthodox baptism or funeral" (Bernard Pares, A History of Russia,
third edition, London, p. 167). The tale of the Uniate movement in Poland makes
sorrowful reading: the Jesuits began by using deceit, and ended by resorting to
violence. Doubtless they were sincere men who genuinely desired the unity of
Christendom, but the tactics which they employed were better calculated to widen
the breach than to close it. The Union of Brest has embittered relations between
Orthodoxy and Rome from 1596 until the present day.
It is small wonder that Orthodox, when they saw what was
happening in Poland, should prefer Mohammedan to Roman Catholic rulers, just as
Alexander Nevsky had preferred the Tartars to the Teutonic Knights. Traveling
through the Ukraine in the 1650s, Paul of Aleppo, nephew and Archdeacon to the
Patriarch of Antioch, reflected the typical Orthodox attitude when he wrote in
his diary: "God perpetuate the Empire of the Turks! For they take their
impost and enter into no account of religion, be their subjects Christians or
Nazarenes, Jews or Samaritans; whereas these accursed Poles, not content with
taking taxes and tithes from their Christian subjects, subjected them to the
enemies of Christ, the Jews, who did not allow them to build churches or leave
them any educated priests." The Poles he terms "more vile and wicked
than even the worshippers of idols, by their cruelty to Christians" (The
Travels of Macarius, ed. L. Ridding, London, 1936, p. 15).
Persecution invigorated the Orthodox Church in the
Ukraine. Although many Orthodox nobles joined the Uniates, the Brotherhoods
stood firm and expanded their activities. To answer Jesuit propaganda they
maintained printing presses and issued books in defense of Orthodoxy; to
counteract the influence of the Jesuit schools they organized Orthodox schools
of their own. By 1650 the level of learning in Little Russia was higher than
anywhere else in the Orthodox world; scholars from Kiev, traveling to Moscow at
this time, did much to raise intellectual standards in Great Russia. In this
revival of learning a particularly brilliant part was played by Peter of Moghila,
Metropolitan of Kiev from 1633 to 1647. To him we must shortly return.
One of the representatives of the Patriarchate of
Constantinople at Brest in 1596 was a young Greek priest called Cyril Lukaris
(1572-1638). His experiences in Little Russia inspired him with a lifelong
hatred of the Church of Rome, and when he became Patriarch of Constantinople he
devoted his full energies to combating all Roman Catholic influence in the
Turkish Empire. It was unfortunate, though perhaps inevitable, that in his
struggle against "the Papic Church" (as the Greeks termed it) he
should have become deeply involved in politics. He turned naturally for help to
the Protestant embassies at Constantinople, while his Jesuit opponents for their
part used the diplomatic representatives of the Roman Catholic powers. Besides
invoking the political assistance of Protestant diplomats, Cyril also fell under
Protestant influence in matters of theology, and his Confession (By
"Confession" in this context is meant a statement of faith, a solemn
declaration of religious belief), first published at Geneva in 1629, is
distinctively Calvinist in much of its teaching.
Cyril’s reign as Patriarch is one long series of stormy
and unedifying intrigues, and forms a lurid example of the troubled state of the
Ecumenical Patriarchate under the Ottomans. Six times deposed from office and
six times reinstated, he was finally strangled by Turkish janissaries and his
body cast into the Bosphorus. In the last resort there is something deeply
tragic about his career, since he was possibly the most brilliant man to have
held office as Patriarch since the days of Saint Photius. Had he but lived under
happier conditions, freed from political intrigue, his exceptional gifts might
have been put to better use.
Cyril’s Calvinism was sharply and speedily repudiated
by his fellow Orthodox, his Confession being condemned by no less than
six local Councils between 1638 and 1691. In direct reaction to Cyril two other
Orthodox hierarchs, Peter of Moghila and Dositheus of Jerusalem, produced
Confessions of their own. Peter’s Orthodox Confession, written in 1640,
was based directly on Roman Catholic manuals. It was approved by the Council of
Jassy in Romania (1642), but only after it had been revised by a Greek, Meletius
Syrigos, who in particular altered the passages about the consecration in the
Eucharist (which Peter attributed solely to the Words of Institution) and about
Purgatory. Even in its revised form the Confession of Moghila is still the most
Latin document ever to be adopted by an official Council of the Orthodox Church.
Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem from 1669 to 1707, also drew heavily upon
Latin sources. His Confession, ratified in 1672 by the Council of
Jerusalem (also known as the Council of Bethlehem), answers Cyril’s Confession
point by point with concision and clarity. The chief matters over which Cyril
and Dositheus diverge are four: the question of free will, grace, and
predestination; the doctrine of the Church; the number and nature of the
sacraments; and the veneration of icons. In his statement upon the Eucharist,
Dositheus adopted not only the Latin term transubstantiation but the
Scholastic distinction between substance and accidents (See p.
291, note 1); and in defending prayers for the dead he came very close to the
Roman doctrine of Purgatory, without actually using the word Purgatory itself.
On the whole, however, the Confession of Dositheus is less Latin than
that of Moghila, and must certainly be regarded as a document of primary
importance in the history of modern Orthodox theology. Faced by the Calvinism of
Lukaris, Dositheus used the weapons which lay nearest to hand — Latin weapons
(under the circumstances it was perhaps the only thing that he could do); but
the faith which he defended with these Latin weapons was not Roman, but
Orthodox.
Outside the Ukraine, relations between Orthodox and Roman
Catholics were often friendly in the seventeenth century. In many places in the
eastern Mediterranean, particularly in the Greek islands under Venetian rule,
Greeks and Latins shared in one another’s worship: we even read of Roman
Catholic processions of the Blessed Sacrament, which the Orthodox clergy
attended in force, wearing full vestments, with candles and banners. Greek
bishops invited the Latin missionaries to preach to their flocks or to hear
confessions. But after 1700 these friendly contacts grew less frequent, and by
1750 they had largely ceased. In 1724 a large part of the Orthodox Patriarchate
of Antioch submitted to Rome; after this the Orthodox authorities, fearing that
the same thing might happen elsewhere in the Turkish Empire, were far stricter
in their dealings with Roman Catholics. The climax in anti-Roman feeling came in
1755, when the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Jerusalem declared
Latin baptism to be entirely invalid and demanded that all converts to Orthodoxy
be baptized anew. "The baptisms of heretics are to be rejected and
abhorred," the decree stated; they are "waters which cannot profit…
nor give any sanctification to such as receive them, nor avail at all to the
washing away of sins." This measure remained in force in the Greek world
until the end of the nineteenth century, but it did not extend to the Church of
Russia; the Russians generally baptized Roman Catholic converts between 1441 and
1667, but since 1667 they have not normally done so.
The Orthodox of the seventeenth century came into contact
not only with Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists but also with the
Church of England. Cyril Lukaris corresponded with Archbishop Abbot of
Canterbury, and a future Patriarch of Alexandria, Metrophanes Kritopoulos,
studied at Oxford from 1617 to 1624: Kritopoulos is the author of a Confession,
slightly Protestant in tone, but widely used in the Orthodox Church. Around 1694
there was even a plan to establish a "Greek College" at Gloucester
Hall, Oxford (now Worcester College), and about ten Greek students were actually
sent to Oxford; but the plan failed for lack of money, and the Greeks found the
food and lodging so poor that many of them ran away. From 1716 to 1725 a most
interesting correspondence was maintained between the Orthodox and the
Non-Jurors (a group of Anglicans who separated from the main body of the Church
of England in 1688, rather than swear allegiance to the usurper William of
Orange). The Non-Jurors approached both the four Eastern Patriarchs and the
Church of Russia, in the hope of establishing communion with the Orthodox. But
the Non-Jurors could not accept the Orthodox teaching concerning the presence of
Christ in the Eucharist; they were also troubled by the veneration shown by
Orthodoxy to the Mother of God, the saints, and the Holy Icons. Eventually the
correspondence was suspended without any agreement being reached.
Looking back on the work of Moghila and Dositheus, on the
Councils of Jassy and Jerusalem, and on the correspondence with the Non-Jurors,
one is struck by the limitations of Greek theology in this period: one does not
find the Orthodox tradition in its fullness. Nevertheless the Councils of
the seventeenth century made a permanent and constructive contribution to
Orthodoxy. The Reformation controversies raised problems which neither the
Ecumenical Councils nor the Church of the later Byzantine Empire was called to
face: in the seventeenth century the Orthodox were forced to think more
carefully about the sacraments, and about the nature and authority of the
Church. It was important for Orthodoxy to express its mind on these topics, and
to define its position in relation to new teachings which had arisen in the
west; this was the task which the seventeenth-century Councils achieved. These
Councils were local, but the substance of their decisions has been accepted by
the Orthodox Church as a whole. The seventeenth-century Councils, like the
Hesychast Councils three hundred years before, show that creative theological
work did not come to an end in the Orthodox Church after the period of the
Ecumenical Councils. There are important doctrines not defined by the General
Councils, which every Orthodox is bound to accept as an integral part of his
faith.
Many western people learn about Orthodoxy either from
studying the Byzantine period, or through the medium of Russian religious
thought in the last hundred years. In both cases they tend to by-pass the
seventeenth century, and to underestimate its influence upon Orthodox history.
Throughout the Turkish period the traditions of Hesychasm
remained alive, particularly on Mount Athos; and at the end of the eighteenth
century there was an important spiritual revival, whose effects can still be
felt today. At the center of this revival was a monk of Athos, Saint Nicodemus
of the Holy Mountain ("the Hagiorite," 1748-1809), justly called
"an encyclopedia of the Athonite learning of his time." With the help
of Saint Macarius (Notaras), Metropolitan of Corinth, Nicodemus compiled an
anthology of spiritual writings called the Philokalia. Published at
Venice in 1782, it is a gigantic work of 1,207 folio pages, containing authors
from the fourth century to the fifteenth, and dealing chiefly with the theory
and practice of prayer, especially the Jesus Prayer. It has proved one of the
most influential publications in Orthodox history, and has been widely read not
only by monks but by many living in the world. Translated into Slavonic and
Russian, it was instrumental in producing a spiritual reawakening in
nineteenth-century Russia.
Nicodemus was conservative, but not narrow or
obscurantist. He drew on Roman Catholic works of devotion, adapting for Orthodox
use books by Lorenzo Scupoli and Ignatius Loyola. He and his circle were strong
advocates of frequent communion, although in his day most Orthodox communicated
only a few times a year. Nicodemus was in fact vigorously attacked on this
issue, but a Council at Constantinople in 1819 confirmed his teaching. Movements
which are trying to introduce weekly communion in Greece today appeal to the
great authority of Nicodemus.
It has been rightly said that if there is much to pity in
the state of Orthodoxy during the Turkish period, there is also much to admire.
Despite innumerable discouragements, the Orthodox Church under Ottoman rule
never lost heart. There were of course many cases of apostasy to Islam, but in
Europe at any rate they were not as frequent as might have been expected.
Orthodoxy in these centuries was not lacking in martyrs, who are honored in the
Church’s calendar with the special title of New Martyrs: many of them
were Greeks who became Mohammedan and then repented, returning to Christianity
once more — for which the penalty was death. The corruption in the higher
administration of the Church, shocking though it was, had very little effect on
the daily life of the ordinary Christian, who was still able to worship Sunday
by Sunday in his parish church. More than anything else it was the Holy Liturgy
that kept Orthodoxy alive in those dark days.
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