THE RISE AND FALL OF CHRISTIAN ROME
Vladimir Moss
© Copyright. All Rights Reserved. Vladimir Moss, 2018.
INTRODUCTION 5
I. THE BIRTH OF NEW ROME 6
1. THE TRIUMPH OF THE CROSS 7
2. THE CONSTANTINIAN REVOLUTION: (1) THE HIERARCHICAL PRINCIPLE 12
3. THE CONSTANTINIAN REVOLUTION: (2) AUTOCRACY AND TYRANNY 16
4. THE CONSTANTINIAN REVOLUTION: (3) EMPIRE AND PRIESTHOOD 25
5. THE CONSTANTINIAN REVOLUTION: (4) RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 36
6. THE CONSTANTINIAN REVOLUTION: (5) MONASTICISM AND CULTURE 48
7. THE CONSTANTINIAN REVOLUTION: (6) ROME AND THE NON-ROMAN WORLD 56
II. THE CHALLENGERS TO NEW ROME 61
8. THE FALL OF OLD ROME 62
9. THE SYMPHONY OF POWERS 72
10. THE POSITION OF THE ROMAN PAPACY 78
11. THE SYMPHONY OF NATIONS 85
12. NEW ROME, THE JEWS, THE PERSIANS AND ISLAM 90
13. THE DISSONANCE OF POWERS: (1) MONOTHELITISM 105
14. THE DISSONANCE OF POWERS: (2) ICONOCLASM 109
15. NEW ROME, OLD ROME AND THE FRANKS 113
III. THE ZENITH OF NEW ROME 125
16. ST. PHOTIUS THE GREAT AND CHURCH-STATE RELATIONS 126
17. MIGHT AND RIGHT IN NEW ROME 134
18. NEW ROME AND THE BULGARIANS 141
19. NEW ROME, OLD ROME AND THE GERMANS 146
20. NEW ROME AND THE RUSSIANS 154
21. THE TRIUMPH OF BYZANTINISM 164
22. THE RIGHTS OF THE ORTHODOX AUTOCRAT 170
IV. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF NEW ROME 174
23. THE SLIDE TOWARDS ABSOLUTISM 175 24. 1204. THE FIRST FALL OF THE CITY 184
25. THE NICAEAN EMPIRE AND ROYAL ANOINTING 187
26. NEW ROME AND THE GEORGIANS 197
27. NEW ROME AND THE SERBS 202
28. NEW ROME AND THE COUNCIL OF LYONS 205
29. THE CRISIS OF BYZANTINE STATEHOOD 214
30. THE REBELLION OF THE SERBS 223
31. ST. MARK OF EPHESUS AND THE COUNCIL OF FLORENCE 229
32. 1453. THE SECOND FALL OF THE CITY 242
APPENDIX. THE GREAT IDEA 253
INTRODUCTION
The foundational culture and civilization of Europe is Christian Rome, otherwise known as New Rome or Byzantium. All the nations of Europe that received the faith in the first millennium received it either directly from Christian Rome or from one of its offshoots. They inherited from Christian Rome their faith – Orthodox Christianity, their statehood – the Byzantine “symphony of powers”, and their earliest music, art and architecture. This is as true of Western Europe as of Eastern Europe, although the Christian nations of Western Europe underwent a certain corruption of their Byzantine inheritance towards the end of the first Christian millennium. Although the West today constitutes a different civilization from that of the East, it is impossible to understand it without examining its Orthodox Christian roots.
This book is a study of the origins of Christian Rome in the life of St. Constantine the Great, its zenith and final decline and fall in the Muslim conquest of Constantinople in 1453. In an appendix the “great idea” of the revival of Christian Rome during the nineteenth-century Greek revolution is examined.
I. THE BIRTH OF NEW ROME 1. THE TRIUMPH OF THE CROSS
“It would be no exaggeration,” writes Protopresbyter James Thornton, “to call the reign of Saint Constantine a genuine revolution, particularly from the standpoint of religion. The Synaxarion