The End of the Icon Debate
Following the council of 787 at which the veneration of the holy icons was
formally defended in the Church, new imperial rulers emerged who once again
attacked both the veneration and the venerators of the holy images. When the
Empress Irene died in 802, Leo the Armenian became the emperor. In 815 he
ordered the icons in the churches to be placed beyond the reach of the
faithful so that they could not be honored and kissed. On Palm Sunday in
815, Saint Theodore, the abbot of the great Studion Monastery in
Constantinople, led a public procession with the holy icons. This procession
was met by imperial attacks, tortures, and murders. Only in 842, with the
ascendancy of the Empress Theodora, under the leadership of the Patriarch
Methodius, were the holy icons returned once and for all to the Church. This
formal return of the icons on the First Sunday of Lent in that year marked
the beginning of the annual celebration of the Feast of the Triumph of
Orthodoxy still observed today.
Cyril and Methodius - The Mission to the Slavs
In the middle of the ninth century the patriarch of Constantinople, Saint
Photius, sent missionaries into Moravia to bring the Christian faith to the
Slavic people. The Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius, arrived in Moravia
in 863. Cyril had already created the Slavic alphabet - now called the Old
Slavonic or Old Bulgarian - which the brothers used to translate church
books into the Slavic language. Their work consisted of teaching the
alphabet, introducing the liturgical books and ritual, and training men for
the priesthood.
The mission of Cyril and Methodius
created hostilities with the Frankish missionaries from the Latin Church who
had come to Moravia earlier. They believed that the official languages of
the Church should be Hebrew, Latin, and Greek only. They did not believe
that the Slavic language should be used in the Church services. Thus Cyril
and Methodius went to Rome in 869 to justify their work, particularly the
use of the native language in the liturgy. Pope Hadrian II blessed the Greek
missionaries for their work. Cyril died in 869. Just before his death he
became a monk, taking the name of Cyril by which he is known as a saint of
the Church, and from which his alphabet received the name Cyrillic.
Methodius was consecrated as the
archbishop of Pannonia. When he returned to his missionary work, he was
arrested by the Frankish-Germanic clergy with the help of Louis the German.
In 873 when Pope John discovered what had happened to Methodius, he demanded
his release. But, the Roman Church was unwilling to press too hard on this
issue for fear of offending the rapidly growing Frankish and Germanic
powers. Methodius died in 885 with his work all but totally ruined, as a
result. Most of his disciples were arrested, exiled, or sold into slavery.
Some escaped into Bulgaria where Saints Clement and Naum did great
missionary work among the people there. The Bulgarians by this time were
receiving the Christian faith. They had been attached to the Church of
Constantinople in 870. The work of Saints Cyril and Methodius, the
"evangelizers of the Slavs," continued on from Bulgaria through the
Serbian lands, and ultimately into Kiev and Northern Russia in subsequent
centuries.
The
Filioque Issue
The clash between the East and the West was not only over the mission to the
Slavs. It had deeper roots in the role which the new Frankish and Germanic
rulers were to play in Western Europe and in the Western Church. In the year
800, on Christmas Day, Charlemagne was crowned emperor by the
Pope of Rome. In 792 this new ruler had already sent his Carolingian Books
(Libri Carolini) to Pope Hadrian I. The reason for Charlemagne's attack
against the Eastern Church was that this was the only way in which he could
discredit the Eastern emperor so that he himself could be recognized as the
sole ruler in Christendom. In his vision of the new Holy Roman Empire
Charlemagne wanted to include all of the East together with all of the West.
In 808 Pope Leo III of Rome reacted against the charges of Charlemagne
against the East. He had the creed without the filioque enshrined in golden
tablets on the doors of St. Peter's.
The Papacy
Although Charlemagne's attempts to establish rule over all Christendom did
not succeed, the Roman popes began to extend their churchly governance over
the, whole of the West. By the middle of the ninth century, Pope Nicholas 1
(858-867) succeeded in gaining direct control over the entire Western Church
by suppressing the local metropolitans and making all bishops in the West
directly subject to the Roman see. He also referred to the False Decretals,
documents later proved to be forgeries, which claimed that the Emperor
Constantine in the fourth century had given certain powers and privileges to
the Roman bishops. It was claimed that the powers included secular control
over territories around Rome which later came to be called the papal states.
This was the so-called Donation of Constantine.
Photius,
Patriarch of Constantinople
From 861-886 the first open clash took place between the Eastern and Western
Churches. In Constantinople there were two political parties struggling for
power. To settle a dispute between these two parties and to provide a church
leader which both groups could respect and would accept, a layman named
Photius was elevated to the partriarchal office. Although Photius was the
one candidate upon whom both parties could agree, the extremists of the
so-called conservative party were not satisfied. They appealed to Rome,
using the good name of the former patriarch Ignatius - who had peaceably
retired for the good of the Church - against Photius and the imperial
government which confirmed his election. Pope Nicholas seized the
opportunity of this extremist appeal to interfere in the affairs of the
Constantinopolitan Church, calling a council in that city in 861 to settle
the dispute. When the papal legates came to the council they saw that
Photius was the rightful patriarch, and all was happily settled. However,
when the legates returned to Rome, Pope Nicholas rejected their decision,
and held another council, this time in Rome in 863, at which he proclaimed
Ignatius as the bishop of Constantinople, thus deposing Photius. His actions
were ignored.
In 866 and 867 the Bulgarian Church
was fluctuating between Constantinople and Rome. In 867 Photius and a
council of five hundred bishops in Constantinople condemned Pope Nicholas
for interfering in the affairs of the Bulgarian Church. In this same year
there was another internal political conflict in Constantinople. When Basil
I became emperor, Photius resigned as bishop for the sake of unity. For
political reasons Ignatius was reinstated. In 869 Pope Hadrian II, the
successor of Nicholas, excommunicated Photius again for his role in the
Bulgarian affair. In 877 Photius, who was not in disfavor with the new
emperor, again became patriarch when the venerable Ignatius died.
In 879 a huge council took place in
Constantinople, once again with papal legates in attendance. At this
council, presided over by Photius, the traditional privileges of the Pope of
Rome in the East were clarified by Photius and accepted by John VIII who was
the new pope. The councils of 863 and 869 which condemned Photius were
declared null and void. The council of 787 was accepted as the seventh
ecumenical council. The creed was affirmed without the filioque.
Photius was officially canonized a
saint by the Orthodox Church in the tenth century. He was a man of many
talents. He was a great theologian who wrote extensively, particularly on
the question of the filioque by defending the procession of the Holy Spirit
from the Father alone. He was a compiler of classical and patristic
writings. He sponsored the mission to the Slavs. He defended the authentic
Church Tradition in confrontation with the Roman claims invented by
Nicholas, while ultimately preserving unity with the Roman Church and Pope
John VIII. He was an excellent diplomat in political affairs, with personal
humility and wisdom which earned him the respect of good-willed persons of
all parties in East and West. Saint Photius was one of the truly great
bishops in Christian Church history.
Liturgical Developments
In the ninth century another great saint, Saint Theodore of Studion was
responsible for liturgical development. Saint Theodore was the abbot of the
Studion monastery in Constantinople who had, during his lifetime, about a
hundred thousand monks in his charge. He is known for his defense of the
holy icons, and for his role in the development of Orthodox liturgical
worship. The liturgical typikon, the order public worship in the Studion
monastery, has become the normative order of worship for the entire Orthodox
Church since the ninth century. The service books for Great Lent and Easter,
the Lenten Triodion and the Flower Triodion (also called the Pentecostarion)
are almost totally the work of the Studite monks, among the most famous of
whom is Saint Joseph the Hymnographer.
