Christians in North America are often unaware of one of the largest and most devoted segments of the Christian church, the Orthodox churches. During the first few centuries A.D., the church remained largely unified. But eventually, a variety of doctrinal and political disputes led to the separation of the church into roughly two main divisions, East and West.
It is impossible not to be profoundly moved by the liturgy of our own Orthodox church. I also love vespers. To stand on a Saturday evening in the twilight in some little country church, filled with the smoke of incense; to lose oneself in the eternal questions, whence, why and whither; to be startled from one’s trance by a burst from the choir; to be carried away by the poetry of this music; to be thrilled with quiet rapture when the Royal Gates of the Iconostasis is flung open and words ring out, “Praise the Name of the Lord!”—all this is infinitely precious to me! One of my deepest joys! (Peter Tchaikovsky, letter to Nadejda von Meck, quoted in V. Volkoff, Tchaikovsky [London, 1975], 169-170.)
So wrote the composer Tchaikovsky in 1877. To enter an Orthodox church, to experience its music, is to enter another world. The Orthodox have a long and sometimes turbulent history, full of divisions and schisms, yet their music has a timeless quality and a changeless beauty.
Constantine and Christianity
It was the new status of Christianity as a state religion in the fourth century that first caused serious problems. The conversion of Emperor Constantine and the spread of Christianity as a “state religion” throughout the Roman Empire brought into focus issues of doctrine and uniformity. This led to the setting up of the Council of Nicaea (325), and further councils in the fourth and fifth centuries, eventually leading to the division of the Roman church from the Orthodox.
Following Emperor Constantine’s adoption of Byzantium as the center of his new Christian empire (he renamed the city Constantinople), the city quickly became the center of Orthodox Christianity. Relations with neighboring Armenia (whose king Tiridates III was converted to Christianity even earlier than Constantine, in 301) were good until the Chalcedon Council of 451, to which the Armenians were unable to send representatives. The Armenians disagreed with the decisions made in their absence and were thereafter branded as a heretic by the Orthodox bishops. The same council failed to reconcile the Coptic and Ethiopian churches to orthodoxy, and they also broke away.
The Five Patriarchs
By the fifth century authority in the Christian world was in the hands of five patriarchs whose centers were Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Their jurisdiction extended to numerous districts presided over by metropolitans. The intention was for the patriarchs’ authority to be equal, but the constant rivalry between them strengthened their frontiers, particularly between East and West. Through the turbulence in the East—the many divisions and sects, the adherence to heresy—Rome, by contrast, proved to be a center of some stability, to whom other patriarchs could appeal for dispassionate advice over local disagreements.
The patriarchs of Rome grew ever more aware of the importance of their apostolic succession through St. Peter and believed more and more in the additional authority that this gave them over the other patriarchies. This supremacy was eventually claimed to be absolute, but this claim has never been recognized by the East.
The saddest aspect of this most serious division is the issue that lay at its heart. As before at the earlier councils, it was a question of creed. John’s Gospel states that the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Trinity, “comes from the Father.” Western Christians were required to accept a creed that stated that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son” (filioque). On this difference and the question of authority was built a controversy which finally (in 1054) became the chief justification of a permanent schism between the church of Rome and the churches of the East.
The Crusades
The incessant arguments over doctrinal matters may seem trivial, but they had very real consequences in the appalling suffering of the common people caught up with one faction or another.
The Crusades proved to be a further disaster both to the credibility and unity of the Christian faith. They began both as pilgrimages and holy wars, bent on rescuing the most precious Christian sites from the Muslims. In the First Crusade of 1095, a Christian army from the West wrested control of Jerusalem from the Muslims after great bloodshed in 1099. But the Fourth Crusade (1202-04) was disastrously directed against Constantinople—Western Christian fighting Eastern Christian. During Holy Week of 1204, Constantinople was sacked and looted by a Christian European army. Many of the spoils found their way back to Europe, where they contributed to the fabulous wealth of such cities as Venice.
Although the reunion of East and West was discussed again, the Eastern Church was too exasperated by the forcible occupation of Constantinople to be able to negotiate. Such carnage, based ultimately on greed, turned the gospel on its head.
The Strength of Orthodoxy
Constantinople was restored as the center of Eastern Christendom and the Byzantine Empire in 1261, but it was much weakened and gradually gave way to the Turks over the next two centuries. During the fourteenth century, the emperor unsuccessfully implored the assistance of the West, hoping that the offer of reunion with Rome could be exchanged for the Western church’s help. Nothing was forthcoming. The gradual decline of the Byzantine Empire led eventually to the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453.
Curiously enough, the downfall of Constantinople temporarily increased the authority of the Orthodox Church under its patriarch, for the Turks who now ruled allowed them the freedom to worship, if not to make converts or to display Christian symbols (like the cross) on their churches. And the Turks naturally identified religious leadership with national identity.
Under these conditions, the patriarchs of Constantinople retained—and even gained—power and respect. But on the other hand, they lived through five centuries of Turkish rule which proved to be perilous. Many patriarchs were driven from their thrones by the Turks, some abdicated, some were murdered. But the Christians clung to the faith with remarkable tenacity through their example and through the pastoral care of the country priests.
The people of the Orthodox church have also had the advantage of a liturgy that has remained in a language well understood by them and of a church in which they feel truly at home.
Orthodoxy Today
Of the four ancient Orthodox patriarchies, only that of Constantinople has been discussed so far. But the other three, established at the very beginnings of the Christian faith, are still in existence, though their sphere of influence is not what it once was. The Orthodox patriarchy of Alexandria (established by St. Mark) is now small (perhaps 250,000) as most Christians in Egypt are members of the independent Coptic church. The region of this patriarchy also covers countries like Saudi Arabia and Libya, which are nowadays almost wholly Muslim.
Antioch at the time of its conversion was an immensely important center, politically and economically. Its patriarchy was established at a very early stage in Christian history (earlier than A.D. 45) but down the ages Christians in the region have become independent (such as the church of Cyprus) or heretical (such as the Jacobites and Nestorians). Many Christians in the region are now Uniate (that is, they owe their allegiance to Rome). All this has eroded the influence of Antioch as a center of Orthodoxy.
Jerusalem is such a vital and emotive center for Jews, Christians, and Muslims that its Orthodox patriarchy has inevitably seen great turbulence. This is the church whose traditions Egeria described at the start of the fifth century. Even then the city was a center of pilgrimage for many faiths. The church in Jerusalem has striven to keep the peace under these most difficult circumstances.
The Orthodox Church also consists of a number of other branches, all of whom are now independent, though they use a very similar liturgy in their appropriate languages. The church of Cyprus became independent in 431, the church of Russia in 1589. Greece remained under Turkish rule with only interruption (1684–1718) from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth. Modern Greece came into being in 1829, following the defeat of the Turks by Britain, France, and Russia in the naval battle of Navarino. Shortly after, in 1833, the independent Orthodox Church of Greece was created, with its metropolitan in Athens. Later in the nineteenth century, the Orthodox churches of Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Romania also became independent.