Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, the Nation-State, and the Specter of Byzantium
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ANNALS OF HISTORY Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, the Nation-State, and the Specter of Byzantium George E. Demacopoulos While it is customary for Orthodox a Christian presence. The bishop was Christians to look to canonical legis- the overseer (episcopos) for a local as- lation when they seek to evaluate the sembly (ekklesia) of Christians in that challenges of the contemporary world, location, regardless of the size of com- it is rarely the case that inquirers prop- munity, and each distinct community erly account for the full context or Sitz constituted “the Church” as a sacra- im Leben of the canons. And while one mental whole. When the number of might make a case for the timeless in- Christians increased, especially after sight of canonical prescriptions when the legalization of Christianity in the dealing with dogmatic teaching or fourth century, church leaders turned moral prohibitions, it is less appropri- to Roman imperial structures to ac- ate to do so when trying to apply the commodate and regulate this growth. canons to issues of ecclesiastical juris- Individual dioceses were grouped diction, such as the question of auto- into larger metropolitanates, each cephaly. This is because ecclesiastical administratively guided by a metro- borders in the Orthodox Church have politan bishop. The Church not only always reflected broader geopolitical appropriated this concept from the realities, if somewhat belatedly, and Roman political structure, but also this is precisely the context in which adopted the map of the imperial pro- the few canons that speak to these vincial network, recognizing the same issues emerged. In other words, the metropolitan cities that the Romans canons on questions of jurisdiction do had designated to govern each prov- not offer theological verdicts but sim- ince. Whenever the Romans altered ply confirm that the ecclesiastical map the boundaries between or within of the Byzantine church should mirror provinces—as they did frequently— the jurisdictional framework of the the Church followed suit by modify- imperial provincial network. Perhaps ing its own ecclesiastical map to mir- even more problematic for the mod- ror the secular one. ern appropriation of these canons is the fact that they presume an imperial Thus, the earliest articulations of au- superstructure that no longer exists. tocephaly that survive in canonical legislation are little more than the In the early Church, the emergence of Church’s adaptation of the internal diocesan boundaries was little more structure of the Roman government, than the recognition of a sociological which afforded administrative in- reality: that there was a geographic dependence to a handful of Roman gap between towns or villages with provincial governors with super-juris- 12 dictional authority. Each of these su- Christian communities that existed © 2019 The Wheel. per-jurisdictions consisted of multiple within the empire. It was only tangen- May be distributed for noncommercial use. provincial metropolitanates under a tially concerned with the administra- www.wheeljournal.com single political leader, who reported tion of the Church beyond imperial directly to the Roman emperor. Even borders. In fact, even though a signifi- the rights assigned in canon law to the cant proportion of Christians from the Church’s autocephalous leaders mim- fourth through the seventh centuries ic the rights of provincial governors lived beyond the imperial borders, within the imperial structure. So while Byzantine canon law made no effort it is true that a handful of Church can- to establish specific diocesan bound- ons from the fifth through the seventh aries or relate external jurisdiction and centuries describe the conditions of bishops to those of the empire. For autocephaly and emphasize the inde- example, even though the Council of pendence of an ecclesiastical primate, Nicaea (325) granted—in rather vague these same canons simply presume the terms—jurisdictional authority “over existence of an overarching imperial the East” to the bishop of Antioch, structure and make very little (histori- there is no surviving evidence to sug- cal) sense without one. This is because gest that anyone took that to mean an the same canons take for granted that East beyond the Roman frontier. The each autocephalous leader is a citizen very large population of Christians on of a common political structure—the the other side of the Roman-Persian Roman or Byzantine Empire—and, as border operated independently; theirs such, is beholden to the empire (and was an ecclesiological domain beyond to the emperor) in multiple ways. To the scope of Byzantine canonical interest. put it in contemporary political terms, the super-jurisdictions were self-gov- To be sure, Canon 28 of Chalcedon erning but they were not sovereign. (451) grants the Archbishop of Con- stantinople the right to ordain and There are several reasons for caution as appoint bishops in the “barbarian we seek to understand the application lands.” This remains a point of inter- of these historical realities today. First, est because of its implications for the there is no evidence that the bishops jurisdictional authority of the Ecu- who drafted this legislation thought menical Patriarchate. But with respect through the ecclesiological implica- to what it meant in the Byzantine pe- tions of—or made theological argu- riod, I would note that this canon does ments for—this precise model. From a not establish specific jurisdictional historical point of view, it seems much boundaries within the “barbarian more likely that they simply appropri- lands” and it presumes that there are ated the imperial model because that no bishops currently serving the pop- was the model with which they were ulations under consideration. Thus, familiar and because church and state the canon does not refer to those com- were so completely integrated by the munities long since established but sixth century that it would not have existing outside of the empire (such occurred to anyone that the Church as the Christians of Persia or Ethio- should develop a distinct administra- pia), but rather to those communities tive superstructure. that do not presently have episcopal oversight (such as the Germanic tribes Second, the scope of Byzantine canon north of Thrace). In other words, Can- law regarding issues of jurisdiction on 28 of Chalcedon is almost surely was primarily concerned with the concerned with the rights and regu- The Wheel 17/18 | Spring/Summer 2019 13 lations of bishops within the Byzan- horizon in its articulation of imperial tine empire (Constantinople vis-à- legislation. But scholars of Byzantium vis Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch) are increasingly challenging the no- regarding expansion into new areas tion that Justinian’s contemporaries and under whose jurisdiction those shared this universalist political vi- Christians would fall. It does not at- sion and they are especially doubtful tempt to regulate the jurisdiction of that subsequent Byzantine thinkers existing bishops who reside beyond viewed their empire in such terms.1 the empire, nor jurisdictional disputes As we will see, the apparent incongru- between bishops within the empire ence of individual state interests and and those outside it. the universalist claims of Christian theology as reflected in Byzantine ca- The longstanding misapplication of nonical efforts to establish ecclesiasti- the Byzantine canonical tradition no cal jurisdictions was compounded by 1 See especially doubt stems partly from the fact that the rise of the nation-state. Anthony Kaldellis, some Byzantines had a habit of em- Hellenism in Byzantium: The ploying universalist language even The Challenge of the Nation-State Transformations of though they were seeking to regulate Greek Identity and issues inside the empire. Indeed, in In his groundbreaking work Imag- the Reception of the the modern world we often invoke the ined Communities, Benedict Ander- Classical Tradition universalist term oikoumenie when we son makes a compelling case for the (Cambridge: Cambridge discuss the early Church. The word nation-state as a uniquely modern University Press, literally means “the inhabited earth.” phenomenon. For Anderson, the na- 2007). It is precisely for this reason that we tion-state unites otherwise diverse refer to the “Ecumenical” Councils, 2 peoples through a complex matrix of Benedict Anderson, because we hold their dogmatic claims such deep imagined associations and Imagined Communi- ties: Reflections on the to be universally binding. But in the dependencies that individuals are Origin and Spread of legislation of the Roman emperor Jus- willing to wage war in order to defend Nationalism (New tinian, which provides the foundation people whom they have never met.2 York: Verso, 1983). for so much of our thinking about mat- For Anderson, this sociopolitical fidel- ters of autocephaly and pentarchy, the ity exists only in modernity because Nicolaus Germanus, Map of the world word oikoumenie functions as a stand- it is only after the Enlightenment that after Ptolemy, 1467. in for “the empire.” One might make individuals began to conceive of cit- National Library of the case that Justinian’s language, at izenship as commitment to an idea. Poland. Detail. least rhetorically, envisioned a global This notion of belonging is different from a premodern clan, kingdom, or empire, he argues, because in those arrangements, an individual’s fidelity to the group was predicated upon hi- erarchical associations involving spe- cific individuals—the clan leader, the king, the king’s representative, and so forth. In the nation-state, however, the citizen’s allegiance and identity are to the nation, the idea of the nation, and the equality that one believes him or herself to share with other citizens of the nation. For example, in premod- ern France, one’s loyalty was to the French king, and one’s standing vis- 14 à-vis the state was determined by his ethnicity, and shared history—reflect © 2019 The Wheel. relationship to the king or the king’s social, cultural, and political reali- May be distributed for noncommercial use.