Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T14:39:04.809Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Byzantine view of Papal Sovereignty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

Donald M. Nicol
Donald M. Nicol*
Affiliation:
The Gennadius Library, Athens
Get access

Extract

THE idea of papal sovereignty was foreign to the Byzantines. They had trouble enough trying to understand the Western interpretation of papal primacy. Papal ‘sovereignty’ was beyond them, unintelligible, unreasonable, and unhistorical. It is true that the East Roman Christians, whom for convenience we call Byzantines, did not all live in one generation. Their cultural and political roots were in Constantinople, the ancient Byzantium; and their empire endured in one form or another for 1,100 years, from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries. In so long a span their ideas naturally evolved and changed, as did their society. But their concept of the order of the Christian world remained stable. It was based upon the formula devised by the first Christian historian, Eusebius of Caesarea, in the fourth century. The formula was an amalgam of pre-Christian, Hellenistic notions of monarchy, with Old and New Testament elements. The Christian Roman Emperor was the elect of God and, as God’s vice-gerent on earth, he ruled over what was the terrestrial reflection, albeit a poor copy, of the Kingdom of Heaven. His patriarchs or supreme bishops of the Christian Empire, especially the Patriarch of Constantinople, his capital city, were the spiritual heads of the Christian world, acting in harmony with him. Church and State were therefore one, indissoluble and interdependent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 9: The Church and Sovereignty c.590-1918 , 1991 , pp. 173 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1991 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 On the theory of the pentarchy see, for example, Dvornik, F., Byzantium and the Roman Primacy (New York, 1966), pp. 101–23.Google Scholar

2 See Gardner, Alice, Theodore of Studium. His Life and Times (London, 1905), pp. 124–9Google Scholar; Dvornil, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, pp. 95,125Google Scholar; Bernardakis, P., ‘Les appels au Pape dans l’Eglis grecque jusqu’à Photius’, Echos d’Orient, 6 (1903), pp. 30-42, 118-25, 249–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the ‘tetragamy’ of Leo VI, see Jenkins, R., Byzantium. The Imperial Centuries AD 610—1071 (London 1966), pp. 212–36.Google Scholar

3 Dvornik, F., The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium and the Legend of the Apostle Andrew = Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 4 (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 82-3, 50–6, 297.Google Scholar

4 Rhalles, G. A. and Potles, M., Syntagma tōn theiōn kai hierōn kanonōn, 6 vols (Athiens, 1852-9)Google Scholar.

5 Espanagogē, Tit. 3, 8, ed. J., and Zepos, P., Jus Graecoromanum, 2 (Athens, 1931), p. 242Google Scholar, Barker, tr.E., Social and Political Thought in Byzantium (Oxford, 1957), p. 92.Google Scholar

6 Balsamon, PG 138, col. 1017; Barker, tr., Social and Political Thought, p.106Google Scholar. See, in general, Nicol, D. M, ‘Byzantine political thought’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, ed. Burns, J. H. (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 51–79.Google Scholar

7 Demetrios Chomarianos, ed. Pitra, J. B., Analecta Sacra et Classica Spicilegio Solesmensi Parata, 6 (Rome, 1981), cols 831–2.Google Scholar

8 Dvornik, , Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, pp. 94–5.Google Scholar

9 Laurent, V., ‘Les droits de l’em pereur en matière ecclésiastique. L’accord de 1380-1382’, Revue des éludes byzantines, 13 (1955), pp. 5–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Nicol, D. M., ‘The papal scandai’, SCH, 13, pp. 165–7Google Scholar: reprinted in Nicol, , Studies in Late Byzantine History and Prosopography (London, 1986), no. IIGoogle Scholar.

11 Nicol, D. M., Church and Society in the Last Centuries of Byzantium (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 4–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Nicol, D. M., ‘Greece and Byzantium’, in Nicol, , Studies in Late Byzantine History, no. XVI, p. 2.Google Scholar

13 See Oikonomides, N., ‘Leo VI and the Narthex of Saint Sophia’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 30 (1976), pp. 151–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 See, in general, Michel, A., DieKaisermachtin der Ostkirche(843-1204) (Darmstadt, 1959)Google Scholar; Geanakoplos, D.J., ‘Church and State in the Byzantine Empire: a reconsideration of the problem of Ceasaropapism’, in Byzantine East and Latin West: Two Worlds of Christendom in Middle Ages and Renaissance (Oxford, 1966), pp. 55–83.Google Scholar

15 Dvornik, , Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, p. 125Google Scholar; Jenkins, , Byzantium. The Imperial Centuries, p. 224.Google Scholar

16 Symeon of Thessalonica, PG 155, col. 353. Brightman, F. E., ‘Byzantine Imperial Coronations’, JThS, 2 (1901), p. 385Google Scholar; Christophilopoulou, Aikaterinē, Eklogē, anagoreusis kai stepsis tou byzanlinou autokraloros (Athens, 1957)Google Scholar; Michel, , Die Kaisermacht, pp. 166–77;Nicol, D. M., ‘The unction of emperors in late Byzantine coronation ritual’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2 (1976), pp. 37–52Google Scholar: reprinted in Nicol, , Studies in Lale Byzantine History, no. 1.Google Scholar

17 Cf. Gill, J., Byzantium and the Papacy, 1198-1400 (New Brunswick, NJ., 1979), pp. 27–9Google Scholar.

18 Robert of Clari, La Conquête de Constantinople, ed. Lauer, P. (Paris, 1934), pp. 94–5Google Scholar; Carile, A., Per una storia dell’ Impero Latino di Costantinopoli (1204-1261) (Bologna, 1972), pp. 184–5.Google Scholar

19 Gill, , Byzantium and the Papacy, p.30.Google Scholar

20 Nicol, D. M., Byzantium and Venice. A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 146–7.Google Scholar

21 Nicol, The papal scandal’, pp. 148-9; Runciman, S., The Eastern Schism (Oxford, 1988), PP. 154–5.Google Scholar

22 Gill, J., ‘Innocent III and the Greeks: Aggressor or Apostle?’ in Relations between East and West in the Middle Ages, ed. Baker, D. (Edinburgh, 1973), pp. 95–108Google Scholar: reprinted in Gill, , Church Union, Rome and Byzantium (1204-1453) (London, 1979), no. II.Google Scholar

23 Nicol, , Church and Society, pp. 78–82.Google Scholar

24 The Greek text of the Apology of Kydones is printed in Mercati, G., Notizie di Procoro e Demetrio Cidone, Manuele Culeca e Teodoro Meliteniota, etc. = Sludi e Tati, 56 (Vatican City, 1931), pp. 359–403Google Scholar, esp. pp. 372-3, 375. See Kianka, F., ‘The Apology of Demetrius Cydones: a fourteenth-century autobiographical source’, Byzantine Studies/Etudes Byzantines, 7 (1980), pp. 57–71Google Scholar and ‘Demetrius Cydones (c.1324-c.1397): Intellectual and Diplomatic Relations between Byzantium and the West in the Fourteenth Century’ (Fordham PKD. thesis, 1981), pp. 152-3.

25 Letter of Clement IV dated 4 March 1267, in Acta Urbani IV, Clementis IV, Gregorii X (1261-1276), ed. Tăutu, A. L, Pontificia Commissio ad redigendum CIC orientalis, Fontes, ser. 3, V, I (Vatican City, 1953), no. 23, pp. 61–9.Google Scholar

26 Theiner, A. and Miklosich, F., Monumenta spectantia ad Unionem Ecclesiarum Graeme et Romanae (Vienna, 1872), p. 18Google Scholar; Karmiris, I., ‘The Larin Profession of Faith given to Michael VIII Palaiologos in 1274 [in Greek]’, Archeion Ekklesiastikou kai Kanonikou Dikaiou, 2 (1947), pp. 127–47.Google Scholar

27 Pachymérès, Georges, Relations Historiques, ed. Failler, A., Laurent, tr. V., 2 (Paris, 1984), V. 18, pp. 494–5.Google Scholar

28 Latin text of the Decree in Gill, J., The Council of Florence (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 414–15Google Scholar; Greek text in Gill, J., Concilium Florenlinum: Documenta et Scriptores: Acta quae supersunt actorum Graecorum Concila Fiorentini (Rome, 1953), p. 464.Google Scholar

29 See the speech of Kydones, Demetrios, ‘De admirando Latinorum subsidio’, PG 154, cols 961–1008.Google Scholar

30 Nicol, D. M., ‘Byzantine requests for an Oecumenical Council in the fourteenth century’, Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, 1 (1969), pp. 69—95Google Scholar, esp. pp. 80—1: reprinted in Nicol, , Byzantium: Its Ecclesiastical History and Relations with the Western World (London, 1972), no. VIIIGoogle Scholar. The last titular Latin patriarch of Constantinople died in 1506. The last Latin emperor died in 1387. Grumel, V., La Chronologie, Traité d’études byzantines, ed. Lemerle, P., 1 (Paris, 1958), pp. 403,441.Google Scholar

31 Meyendorff, J., ‘Projets de concile oecuménique en 1367: Un dialogue inédit entre Jean Cantacuzène et le légat Paul’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 14 (1960), p. 172CrossRefGoogle Scholar, lines 102-14.

32 Kabasilas, Neilos, ‘De causis dissensionum in Ecclesia, et de Papae primatu’, PG 149, cols 683–730.Google Scholar