new synod of bishops into existence to reaffirm the Second Council of Nicaea and threw the full weight of the government behind the Council’s decision (see Voices of World Christianity 1.2).
The Orthodox tradition faced another challenge during this period that deepened and solidified its identity: the rise of Islam. Heretofore, Orthodox Christianity had defined itself by explaining how it superseded earlier forms of religion, how it corrected and improved both Roman paganism and Judaism. But Islam was a new religion that saw itself as the successor of Judaism and Christianity. The initial reaction of Orthodoxy was to treat Islam as if it was a Christian heresy, hoping it would soon disappear. Rather than disappearing, however, Islam became stronger, and it soon took control of much of the territory where Orthodoxy had previously flourished. This Muslim conquest of the Middle East changed the church’s organizational structure. Before the conquest, the four Patriarchs of the great cities of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem had shared leadership of the tradition. After the conquest, the Patriarch of Constantinople began to exercise greater authority because he was the only Patriarch not living under Muslim rule.
The late Byzantine period: 1000 to 1500
The late Byzantine period began on an upswing. The world of Orthodoxy was expanding northward as a result of the conversion of Russia, and the Orthodox Byzantine Empire seemed poised to reconquer much of the territory that had been lost to Islam. Under Basil II, who ruled from 976 to 1025, the Byzantine Empire made impressive gains in the East, in what is now Syria and northern Iraq, but then the tide changed. The Byzantine army suffered a huge defeat at the hands of the Seljuk Turks in the famous Battle of Manzikert (1071) in what is now eastern Turkey. That defeat marked the beginning of a long, slow decline in both the Byzantine Empire and its Orthodox Church.
Voices of World Christianity 1.2 Empress Theodora I and the Triumph of Orthodoxy
Excerpt from the “Synodikon of Orthodoxy” (843):
We have received from the Church of God, that upon this day we owe yearly thanksgiving to God along with an exposition of the dogmas of piety and the overturning of the impieties of evil … For indeed, there came upon us a winter, not an ordinary one, but one of truly great evil, brimming over with harshness; but there blossomed forth the first season, the spring of God’s grace, in which we have come together to give thanks for the harvest of good things … For verily, those enemies [iconoclasts] who reproached the Lord and utterly dishonored His holy worship in the holy icons, were both arrogant and high‐minded in impieties, and were cast down by the God of marvels, and He leveled to the ground their insolent apostasy … [God] has delivered us unworthy ones [iconophiles] from adversity, redeeming us from those who afflicted us, and establishing the free proclamation of piety, the steadfastness of the worship of icons … To them who persist in the heresy of denying icons … Anathema.
John Sanidopoulos, “The Synodikon of Orthodoxy,” February 21, 2010, https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/02/synodicon‐of‐orthodoxy.html.
The weakening Byzantine Empire eventually felt compelled to ask the Catholic West for military assistance. That assistance came in the form of the Crusades which, at first, seemed to help. However, the armies of the Fourth Crusade (1204), rather than fighting against the Islamic forces in the region, attacked the Byzantine Empire itself, ransacking the city of Constantinople, raping Orthodox women, and stripping the churches of their treasures. Later, a Latin‐dominated puppet government was set up in the region with the intention of forcing the Orthodox Church to accept the supreme religious authority of the Pope. The Orthodox leadership never fully complied, and the Orthodox Church developed a deep and abiding suspicion of the Catholic Church that still impacts Catholic–Orthodox relations today. Pope John Paul II expressed “pain and disgust” regarding the 1204 attack and formally apologized to the Ecumenical Patriarch in 2004, asking for forgiveness.
Greek rule and Orthodox faith were restored in the region in the mid‐1200s, but there was a constant threat of attack from the Islamic Ottoman Turks. By the early 1400s, the situation was once again desperate and once again Byzantium turned to the West for help. In a repetition of the past, the Catholic West said that submission to the Pope was the cost of assistance. With no other option at hand, the Byzantine religious leaders duly submitted to union with Rome at the Council of Florence in 1439. Despite that submission, no real aid was forthcoming, and Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, effectively ending the Byzantine Empire. Most Orthodox believers denounced the Council of Florence and repudiated any union with the Roman Catholic Church. The authority and prestige of the Patriarch of Constantinople sustained serious damage because of its complicity (even if it was essentially forced) in negotiating the union with Rome. Orthodoxy was clearly at a low ebb.
If there was a bright spot in the Orthodox history of this period, it was in the area of theology and spirituality, where the writings of Symeon the New Theologian (942–1022) and Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) helped to shape a new “interior” expression of Orthodox faith and piety. Turning away from the abstract, philosophical, and scholastic theology of his contemporaries, Symeon stressed the inner experience of God, how humans search for and find the presence of God through the power of the Holy Spirit. Palamas similarly stressed the importance of the interior life, focusing especially on contemplation (including use of the Jesus Prayer) as a means of stilling the mind so that the light of God’s presence could be experienced by Orthodox believers.
The national church period: 1500 to the present
After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox tradition became increasingly fragmented, and individual Orthodox churches began to identify with the individual nations within which they existed. The Orthodox Church of Russia paved the way. In the early 1500s, Russia (and its Russian Orthodox Church) tried to position itself as the new successor to the old Orthodox Byzantine Empire, even going so far as to call Moscow the “third Rome.” (The city of Constantinople had been called the “second Rome” following the fall of the western Roman Empire in the mid‐400s.) But tensions and disputes within the Russian Orthodox Church weakened its claim of preeminence within the Orthodox world. In the year 1700, the Russian Empire eliminated the Orthodox Patriarchate and declared the Orthodox Church to be a branch of the national government under the control of a lay (nonordained) administrator called an oberprokuror. The Russian Orthodox Church effectively became the Russian Orthodox Church, belonging to the Russian people and no one else. The interests of the broader transnational Orthodox community became secondary.
Other
