INTRODUCTION: CHRISTIANITY EAST AND WEST Nickolas Lupinin and Donald Ostrowski During the first century A.D., when Christianity began to spread, the Roman Empire was splitting into two administrative units— Greek in the East and Latin in the West. The line dividing these administrative units paralleled already existing cultural divisions and ran east of the boot of Italy from North Africa into the Balkans, specifically what used to be Yugoslavia, along the border of present-day Croatia and Serbia. To the East of that line the admini­ stration was Greek, including Greek language and the Greek alphabet. The differences between the present-day Serbs and Croats are indicative of that difference to a degree since the Serbs use a Greek-based Cyrillic alphabet, and the Croats use a Latin alphabet for what was essentially the same language. The Serbs are associated for the most part with the Eastern Church, and the Croats with the Western Church. When Constantine (306-337) became Roman emperor, he decreed tolerance for Christians, who until then had undergone periodic persecutions by the authorities. He founded his capital, a new city named Constantinople, on the spot where the fishing village of Byzantium was located, and he declared the bishop of Constantinople to be second among prelates only to the bishop Tapestry o f Russian Christianity: Studies in History and Culture. Nickolas Lupinin, Donald Ostrowski and Jennifer B. Spock, eds. Columbus, Ohio: Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures and the Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies, The Ohio State University, 2016, vii-xxvii. Introduction of Rome. In 451, the Council of Chalcedon established the patriar­ chate of Constantinople. At the time, there were four chief prelates in the Christian Church: in Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Rome. The patriarch of Constantinople took the lead among the other patriarchies in countering any unilateral decisions of the Roman pontiff. The non-Roman patriarchies saw the Roman pon­ tiff as primus inter pares for such things as presiding at church councils, but not for making determinations about doctrine. As a result, major points of disagreement arose between the pope (bishop of Rome) and the Eastern patriarchs. Major Points of Disagreement Open to question is the time exactly when the Eastern Church and the Western Church split from each other. Some scholars place it at 1204 when the western warriors o f the Fourth Cru­ sade captured Constantinople. Other scholars place it at 1054 when the pope and the patriarch of Constantinople excommuni­ cated each other. Yet other scholars see the split as effectively having occurred earlier. In any case the major points of disagree­ ment had crystallized by the 11th century at the latest. What fol­ lows is a brief survey of the most significant of these disagree­ ments. 1. Language o f the Liturgy. This disagreement was not just a question ofwhetherthe language ofthe liturgy should be Greek or Latin but also a question of whether the local churches could use their own language for the church service. The Western Church used Latin and declared it to be the liturgical language throughout the Christian world. The Eastern Church used Greek in Constantinople, but allowed the local churches to use the local sacred language. Arguments subsequently arose in the his­ toriography about ultimately what this difference meant. Some have seen it as an advantage to the people in the Western Church, especially when they were eager to begin acquiring learning. If one knew Latin, one was already connected with the lingua franca that united Western Christendom, whereas if one were in Rus' and knew Russian and Church Slavonic, but not Greek, then one could not tap into the corpus of Greek literature. The argument is that the local liturgical language was a disadvantage. On the other hand, putting the church service and accompa- ning sacred writings into the local language (although an elevated form of it, to be sure) allowed the message ofthe liturgy and those writings to be more comprehensible to the congregants. VIII Introduction 2. Ritual. Two different forms of ritual developed in the Eastern and Western Christian traditions. The differences in ritual reflected issues considered significant by communities that were slowly dividing into two churches, and that one frequently encounters mentioned in the sources. For example, these issues included the questions of how many “hallelujahs” to say at the end ofthe church service, whether the Host was on the altar or in a chalice on the altar, what components should be included as parts ofthe wedding ritual, and so forth. 3. Two Swords Theory vs. Harmony of Church and State. Gelasius I (492-496) was the first pope to articulate a “two powers” doc­ trine. Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) developed the idea of spiritual superiority over the temporal in his Papal Register o f1075 in which he posited that the pope may depose the emperor. Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) expanded upon the two powers idea as well as the superiority ofthe Church into “two swords” theory in his Bull Unam sanctum of 18 November 1302. The idea was that there existed a secular sword and an ecclesiastical sword, and that the ecclesi­ astical sword was superior to the secular sword. The implication was that the church was superior to the state. In the Byzantine Empire, one finds, instead, a notion of harmony, or symphony, between the two powers—that the church and state should be working together to guide the body and the soul of each person. Patriarch Photios of Constantinople (858-867,877-886) wrote in his Epanagoge that “the polity, like man, consists of parts and members (among these the most important and the necessary parts are the Emperor and the Patriarch). Wherefore the peace and happiness of subjects, in body and soul, consist in the full agreement and concord ofthe kingship and the priesthood.”1 In the 17th century, however, Patriarch Nikon applied the Western Church’s “two swords” theory to the relationship between tsar and patriarch in Russia.2 The Church Council o f1666-67 rejected Nikon’s formulation and restored the principle of harmony be­ tween kingship and priesthood. 4. Clerical Celibacy vs. Married Priests. In order to become a priest, a man in the Eastern Church is supposed to be married. In the Western Church, a priest is notallowed to be married. We have 1 Jus graecoromanum, 6: 59-60. 2 “Vozrazhenie Nikona,” 314. Palmer, Patriarch and Tsar, 1:252-253. IX Introduction evidence from as early as the third century, that, although bishops, priests, and deacons could be married, they were not to have sex­ ual relations with their wives after ordination. The eventual differ­ ence in whether clergy could or should be married represented different interpretations of Canon VI ofthe Sixth Ecumenical Council (Third Council of Constantinople) 680-681: “And if any of those who enter the clergy wishes to be joined to a wife in lawful marriage before he is ordained a subdeacon, deacon, or pres­ byter, let it be done.”3 The Eastern Church interpreted this canon to say that in order to become a priest, a man had to be married. Beginning with the late 11th-century Gregorian reforms, the Wes­ tern Church began to frown upon married clergy entirely. The Second Lateran Council of1139 declared clerical marriage illegal, which took hold fully in the 13th century. According to the Union of Brest in 1596, the so-called Ukrainian Catholics (Uniates or Greek Catholics) were allowed to maintain such Eastern Church practices as a married clergy, the Julian calendar, and exclusion o fth e filioque in the Nicene Creed, while acknowledging the Western Church primacy ofthe Pope. 5. Unleavened Bread vs. Leavened Bread. Unleavened bread is on the altar during the church service and served in communion in the Western Church, whereas leavened bread is served in com­ munion in the Eastern Church. The Eastern Church favors leavened bread in communion because it represents the risen Christ. The Western Church considers leavening to be unholy and claims one is eating a living thing because the leavening is usually yeast (although it can be some other microorganism such as a bac­ terium called Clostridium perfringens). 6. Statues vs. Icons. Before the eighth century, statues, paint­ ings, and mosaics of holy figures appeared in Christian churches. Iconoclasts in the Eastern Roman Empire, basing their stance on the commandment against graven images, objected to such representational art. Iconodules (those who supported represen­ tational depiction of religious persons) argued the biblical prohibi­ tion was against worshipping images, not the images themselves. Conflicts, at times with a significant number of fatalities, occurred between iconoclasts and iconodules in the Byzantine Empire for about 100 years from the early eighth to the early ninth centuries. 3 Select Library, 14:364. x Introduction Finally, a compromise was reached in the Eastern Church where­ by statuary was excluded, but two-dimensional representations were allowed as long as the artists followed strict stylistic guide­ lines so as to depict the spirituality ofthe figure rather than its cor- porality. The final re-establishment of icons came under Empress Irene in 843, an act now commemorated in Eastern Orthodoxy as “the Triumph of Orthodoxy.” The Western Church has main­ tained statuary and realistic representational art. Since the Refor­ mation, Calvinist groups have looked askance at such represen­ tational depictions. 7. Role ofthe Pope (i.e., Bishop o f Rome). A crucial difference of views developed on the role ofthe pope. Western Churchmen argued that the pope decided judicial, administrative, and dogma­ tic issues because, according to Matt. 16:18, Jesus said, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” Peter, so the argu­ ment goes, was the first pope, the first bishop of Rome.