THE RISE AND FALL OF CHRISTIAN

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) 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 90

13. THE DISSONANCE OF POWERS: (1) MONOTHELITISM 105

14. THE DISSONANCE OF POWERS: (2) 109

15. NEW ROME, OLD ROME AND THE 113

III. THE ZENITH OF NEW ROME 125

16. ST. PHOTIUS THE GREAT AND -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 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 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 AND THE COUNCIL OF 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 . 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 , 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. , its zenith and final decline and fall in the Muslim conquest of 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 Constantine a genuine revolution, particularly from the standpoint of . The Synaxarion