The Church and the Barbarians | Page 9

by a new heresy, that of those who taught that the Body of the Lord was incorruptible, and it was asserted that the emperor himself fell into this error. The evidence is slight and contradictory, and the matter is of no importance in the general history of the Church.[8] But it is worth remembering that little more than a century after his death his name was singled out by the Sixth General Council for special honour as of "holy memory." His work, indeed, had been great, as theologian and as Christian emperor; there was no more important or more accurate writer {22} on theology in the East during the sixth century; and he must ever be remembered side by side with the Fifth General Council which he summoned. There were many defects in the Eastern theory of the relations between Church and State; but undoubtedly under such an emperor it had its best chances of success.
[Sidenote: The work of Justinian.]
Justinian has been declared to have forced upon the Empire which he had reunited the orthodoxy of S. Cyril and the Council of Chalcedon, and the attempt has been made to prove that Cyril himself was a Monophysite.[9] The best refutation of this view is the perfect harmony of the decisions of the Fifth General Council with those of the previous Oecumenical assemblies, and the fact that no novelty could be discovered to have been added to "the Faith" when the "Three Chapters" were condemned.
With the close of the Council the definition of Christian doctrine passes into the background till the rise of the Monothelite controversy. When its decisions were accepted, the labours of Justinian had given peace to the churches.
[Sidenote: and his successors.]
From 565, when Justinian died, to 628, when Heraclius freed the Empire from the danger of Persian conquest, were years of comparative rest in the Church. It was a period of missionary extension, of quiet assertion of spiritual authority, in the midst of political trouble and disaster. Gibbon, who asserts that Justinian died a heretic, adds, "The reigns of his four successors, Justin, Tiberius, Maurice, and Phocas, are distinguished by a rare, though fortunate, vacancy in the ecclesiastical history {23} of the East"; and the sarcasm, though not wholly accurate, may serve to express the gradual progress of unity which marked the years up to the accession of Heraclius. The history of religion is concerned rather with those outside than those within the Church. That history we need not follow, and we may pass over this period with only a brief allusion to the development of independence outside the immediate range of the ecclesiastical power of New Rome. [Sidenote: Rise of separated bodies.] Heresies grew as an expression of national independence. The Chaldaean Church, which stretched to Persia and India, was Nestorian. The Monophysites won the Coptic Church of Egypt, the Abyssinian Church, the Jacobites in Syria, the Armenians in the heart of Asia Minor. In the mountains of Lebanon the Monothelites--of whom we have to speak shortly--organised the Maronite Church; and in Georgia the Church was aided by geographical conditions as well as historical development to ignore the overlordship of the Church of Antioch. So in Europe grew up with the new States, the Bulgarian, the Serbian, and the Wallachian Churches.
[Sidenote: Missions and failures.]
It was thus that, alike as statesmen and Christians, the emperors were devoted advocates of missions. Their wars of conquest often--as notably with the great Emperor Heraclius--assumed the character of holy wars. Where the barbarians of the East made havoc there too often the Church fell without leaving a trace of its work. Without priest and sacrament, the people came to retain only among their superstitions, as sometimes in North Africa to-day, usages which showed that once their ancestors belonged to the kingdom of Christ. Much {24} of the missionary work of the period was done by Monophysites; the record of John of Ephesus preserves what he himself did to spread Christianity in Asia. And it would seem that even the most orthodox of emperors was willing to aid in the work of those who did not accept the Council of Chalcedon so long as they earnestly endeavoured to teach the heathen the rudiments of the faith and to love the Lord in incorruptness.
[Sidenote: Organisation of the Church.]
The Church of the period was divided into five patriarchates, the Church of Cyprus being understood to stand apart and autocephalous. Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch still retained their old power, while Jerusalem was regarded as somewhat inferior. The patriarchates were divided into provinces, the capital of each province having its metropolitan bishop. Under him were other bishops, and gradually the title of archbishop was being understood,--as by Justinian in the decree (Novel, xi.) in which he created his birthplace a metropolitan see,--to imply jurisdiction over a number