The First Christian Empire

For in contrast to other medieval societies both in the West and among the Muslims, Byzantium was old, many centuries old by the time of Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid in AD 800….

Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, by Judith Herrin

I have been wanting for some time to learn something more about Byzantium, its history, the Church that developed in and through and around this empire, and, ultimately, its demise.  This book has been sitting on my shelf long enough, and as I am coming to a close on other topics, it seemed time to pick it up.

Byzantium conjures many images – in some cases exaggerations and caricatures, in some cases deserved (but not unique to it).  Despite modern views, the Byzantines had no monopoly on complexity or treachery or hypocrisy.  They were not unique in pursuing riches and wealth.  They generally avoided burning people at the stake and never developed what could be described as an Inquisition. 

Further, per Herrin:

…I want you to understand that the modern western world, which developed from Europe, could not have existed had it not been shielded and inspired by what transpired further to the east in Byzantium.

A mix of pagan, Christian, Greek and Roman influences, the empire would wax and wane, but is generally recognized as encompassing the eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans, and Anatolia.  Constantinople was the grandest of cities, its roots going back to the beginning of the decline of Rome. 

It nurtured the earliest Christian monastic traditions on mountains such as Sinai and Athos.  It converted the Bulgarians, Serbs, and Russians.  It maintained contact with many of the Christian centers that fell under Muslim rule during the seventh century – including Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria, and, in varying degrees (and at some times better than other times) Ethiopia, Persia and Armenia.

Hagia Sophia held the title of the largest dome for a thousand years, from the sixth century until the completion of St. Peter’s in Rome.  Constantinople considered itself the center of the world, and the replacement for fallen Rome. 

Until the Muslim invasions, it encompassed regions stretching from western North Africa to Mt. Ararat, southern Italy, Greece and the Balkans.  In the early years of the Church, it was the Church – protecting the Christian West in the early Middle Ages. 

Had Byzantium not halted their expansion in 678, Muslim forces charged by the additional resources of the capitol city would have spread Islam throughout the Balkans, into Italy and the West during the seventh century, at a time when political fragmentation reduced the possibility of organized defence. 

Thus, a Christian Europe was made possible.  Just over half-a-century later, Charles Martel would win the decisive battle over the Muslims near Poitiers in central France. 

Heading Toward the Grave

When Christian communities are destroyed, they rarely vanish entirely or immediately, and survivors often maintain a clandestine existence for many years afterward.

The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died, by Philip Jenkins

The last Christian priests were expelled from Japan in 1650.  Tens of thousands of lay Christians perished; Christian loyalty could lead to death (as a personal note, if you haven’t done so, watch the movie “Silence”).  Japan remained a closed society for the next 200 years.  When Christian missionaries arrived, they were met with a surprise:

…in 1865, a Catholic priest received some surprising visitors.  Nervously, in constant fear of detection, fifteen elderly Japanese peasants wanted to ask him what he knew about the faith they had maintained secretly for so long.

They asked about God, Jesus, and the Blessed Virgin; upon seeing the Madonna and Child, they thought of Christmas.  This story is not unique, as such communities have been found – at times even centuries after the passing of Christian dominance – in China, Turkey, the Balkans, and elsewhere.  Further, remnants from these communities established churches in diaspora lands – this as early as the Syrians in the eighth century and the Greeks in the twelfth. 

Further, in a beloved center of the Shinto religion – the Suwa shrine in Nagasaki – one will find three sacred images, one of which was almost certainly inherited from a destroyed Catholic church that once stood nearby.  The figure is almost certainly a Spanish or Portuguese statue of the Madonna and Child.

Of course, the far more common story is that of takeover – mosques built over churches; churches built over pagan temples.  Back and forth, depending on which side won the last war.  You get the idea. 

Hagia Sophia is the most well-known example, but it is not alone.  The cathedral in Ani was converted to a mosque before it was retaken in 1214; the church of St. Athanasius in Alexandria became a mosque after the Arab conquest.  Cordoba offers many such stories and examples.  Budapest, Cyprus, the Balkans.  The Armenian Cathedral in Edessa remained a fire station until the 1990s, when it was then converted to a mosque.

Jenkins proceeds with an extensive examination of the relationship of Christianity – especially Eastern Christianity – and Islam.  The details of this are outside of the scope of my interest, but fit within his view that despite the overtaking of much of the Christian East by Muslims, the Christian faith influenced Muslim practices and perhaps even the Quran itself – more than commonly understood.

Yet, the momentum and pressure was the other way, of course.  Under Muslim rule, the Christians remained at best, second class citizens; at worst, persecuted until conversion or death.  In the eighteenth century, one Egyptian sheikh would write of the burdens that should be enforced on non-Muslims:

·       they should not be allowed to clothe themselves in costly fabric;

·       they should not be permitted to employ mounts like the Muslims, nor use saddles or stirrups;

·       while in public, they should not be allowed to portray themselves as if they are Muslim;

·       their dwellings should be less than ours, and their building lower;

·       they should walk single file, and step aside in narrow lanes…

Non-Muslims could not testify against Muslims; they could not retaliate or respond against insult.  In nineteenth-century Persia, the Nestorian was not allowed a place at the bazaar; he could not aspire to a trade higher than mason or carpenter.

“The absence of every mark of consideration toward them is obligatory for us…”

The Cleansing

The bloodstained annals of the East contain no record of massacres more unprovoked, more widespread or more terrible than those perpetrated by the Turkish government upon the Christians of Anatolia and Armenia in 1915.

-          James Bryce, the 1^st Viscount Bryce

The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died, by Philip Jenkins

This genocide certainly wasn’t the first salvo in the drastic reduction of Christianity in the Middle East and Central Asia, and it hasn’t been the last.  But it is here where Jenkins introduces his chapter: The Last Christians.

Especially in the West, we consider Christianity as revolving around Rome – either for (Catholic), or against (Protestant). The farthest east we go is Constantinople, but these so-called schismatics were swept away by the Ottomans in 1453 – ancient history.  But it is not only here where the persecutions occurred.  Further to the east (and south), all remnants of Christianity were at risk.

Christianity declined in these regions in two major phases.  First, in the Middle Ages, when Christians were reduced to minority status under Muslim rule.  The second, more recent – barely a century old, when Christian communities in these regions almost ceased to exist.  In both phases, the causes were the same and could be summarized: massacre, expulsion, and forced migration. 

At the same time, it cannot be said that the reductions and the actions all ran in a straight line – there were times of relative calm punctuated by events of significant disaster.

The most important force during this time was that of the Ottoman Empire.  After the Mongols destroyed the Seljuk Turk state, the Ottoman Turks began to build and consolidate an empire.  The Balkans, the Black Sea region, and from Persia to Algiers; all under Ottoman rule.  The advances would continue into Hungary, ending only with the Christian victory at Vienna in 1683.

The Ottomans were more aggressively anti-Christian than were the original Arab conquerors of the same lands.  Churches confiscated or razed; countless thousands forcibly converted.  Christian families required to give some number of children to be raised by the state as slaves or elite soldiers.

Then, as the West advanced and trade routes opened up to the East by sea, Western Christians would come into contact with these remnant Christian communities – even as far to the east as China.  But these were hardly seen as “Christian” by the westerners.  For example, in 1723, a French Jesuit would report on the Copts in Egypt:

“…the Copts in Egypt are a strange people far removed from the kingdom of God… scarcely anything human can be detected in them.”

Another Jesuit observer would note of the arrogance of the Ethiopian king, who believed that they were the only true Christians in the world – shunning the Jesuits as heretics for their views on the Virgin Mary.

In the mid-sixteenth century, a Portuguese traveler in India was surprised to learn from Christians there that they owed their allegiance to a head in Babylon – having never heard of a Pope in Rome.  Indian Nestorians referred to the Patriarch in Babylon as the universal head of the Catholic Church.

There were also examples of agreement – for example, where Chaldeans accepted Roman rule under a new patriarch in exchange for Roman support, all-the-while retaining their separate and unique customs.  Further, many European churches would come under Rome – known as Uniate churches, or Eastern-rite Catholics.

Yet, while pressured by both Muslims and Western Christians, many of these remnant communities survived.  Within the Ottoman Empire, nearly half the population was Christian, although the proportion was significantly lower in the lands east of Constantinople.

Sultans would often use Christians as administrators as, among other reasons, the Christian’s total dependence on the Sultan’s favor would make such administrators more likely to be trustworthy.  Greeks were the sailors; Armenians the merchants and traders.

Obliteration and Destruction

Because the churches of their provinces have been obliterated completely and Christ’s people, that is the Christians, have been utterly destroyed.

-          Anonymous Greek churchman, c. 1480

The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died, by Philip Jenkins

Fifty-one metropolitanates, eighteen archbishoprics, and 478 bishoprics – all desolate; barely a few priests, monks and layman remain.  Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

As I have noted before, Jenkins moves freely between the church of the farther east (call these Nestorian or Syriac), and the Church of the East (what we today know as Eastern and Oriental Orthodox).  But the message is the same: where there once was a vast stretch of Christianity (albeit the Nestorians not recognized as such by the Orthodox), there remained almost nothing.  This will be examined in Jenkins’ chapter, The Great Tribulation.

It's 1354.  Mobs demand the Christians recite the Muslim profession of faith or face being burned alive.  Monastic estates were confiscated, striking at the financial basis of the Coptic Church.  Churches were razed or converted to Mosques.  Many Christians would accept Islam.

Not just Egypt.  The fourteenth century would mark the decisive collapse of Christianity in the Middle East, Asia, and much of Africa.  This raises an interesting question: Why then?  Why not with the rise of Islam and its rapid military conquests?  Was it the relative strength of the Christian culture at the time, or was it the change in the approach by Muslim leaders against Christians? 

As Jenkins notes, the idea that early Islam was uniformly and consistently tolerant toward Christians really is a false narrative.  It must be kept in mind that early Islam spread by the sword, via conquest.  Yet, changes were not systemic and permanent.  Suffice it to say, Muslims were no more nor no less tolerant of other religions than were Christians (or others).  Persecutions would come and go (and examples are offered by Jenkins), but rarely a total change…until the fourteenth century.

In any case, early on, the Christians in the east favored, in many ways, the Muslim rulers over the Byzantine.  Having been persecuted over the decades due to their “heresies,” this was not an issue under Muslim rule.  In the 650s, the Nestorian patriarch would write:

“The Arabs to whom God has granted at this time the government of the world…do not persecute the Christian religion; on the contrary they favor it, honor our priests and the saints of the Lord and confer benefits on churches and monasteries.”

Others would write similarly.  Whatever the faults of the Muslim rulers, at least they weren’t Byzantine Christians. 

In 869, the Melkite (Orthodox) patriarch of Jerusalem would write of the Muslims, “They are just, and do us no wrong or violence of any kind.”

Often, a regime of personal law was allowed: Christians would by judged based on Christian, not Muslim, law (at least when the conflicts were between Christians).  In remote areas, local Christian leaders would retain significant control.  New bishoprics would be established – even in Arabia! 

But the changes in political rule and authority were, in any case, real: many Christians under Muslim rule would see these changes as God’s punishment for the heresies of the Byzantines.  A later Coptic history would offer:

“And the Lord abandoned the army of the Romans before him, as punishment for their corrupt faith, and because of the anathemas uttered against them, on account of the council of Chalcedon, by the ancient fathers.”

Of course, Byzantine Christian rule last much longer than Christian rule in Egypt, so using the logic offered in this Coptic historical interpretation, one might come to an even less flattering interpretation for these opponents of Chalcedon.

Instead, a more reasonable interpretation, if one wants to see God’s hand in this loss of Byzantium, is offered by Michael the Syrian (a Jacobite):

He Gets Us

But do we get Him?

He Gets Us is a movement to reintroduce people to the Jesus of the Bible and his confounding love and forgiveness.

Jesus is described by the folks at He Gets Us as…

…a man who taught and practiced unconditional love, peace, and kindness; who spent his life defending the poor and the marginalized; a man who even forgave his killers while they executed him unjustly…

They are not looking at the same Jesus I see, the one found in Scripture.  More precisely, they are looking at only one aspect of Jesus, dividing Him from the whole and therefore turning Him into a weapon against Christ and Christianity.

Let’s take a look:

Matthew 11: 21 Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.  22 But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.  

These cities did not repent; the day of judgement for them will be troubling, but at least not as troubling as it will be for Chorazin and Bethsaida.  In any case, His love cannot be separated from His judgement. And He will judge righteously.

23 And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.  24 But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.

Brought down to hell.  This sure fits the “confounding love” part, but not in the way modern society understands the term.  Jesus’s love is confounding, because it requires righteous judgement.

Matthew 12: 34 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

Vipers!  This doesn’t sound kind.

Matthew 15: 4 For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.

Cursed to death?

John 3: 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.  20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

So much talk of condemnation, fire, and judgement.  Condemned for loving darkness, because of their evil deeds.

John 8: 44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. 

To describe someone as a son of the devil doesn’t fit the “He Gets Us” caricature.

John 15: 6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

Burned…in fire.

Neither Rome nor Constantinople

The deep conservatism of these churches, so far removed from papal or imperial control, makes nonsense of claims that church bureaucracy allied with empire to suppress unpleasant truths about Christian origins.

The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died, by Philip Jenkins

It is a curious claim, but one heard often.  Why curious?  Well, what has come to us as canon is already problematic enough: not quite aligned accounts in the different Gospels or in the history of the kings of Israel and Judah, to start.  The disciples often shown as clueless, Jesus seemingly praising the servant who cheated his master.  Stuff like that.

But the real troubles come with some of the heterodox accounts of Jesus’s life – heterodox only because of the emperor, according to many.  But Jenkins suggests that such criticisms aren’t valid.

The problem with this is that the Eastern churches had a long familiarity with the rival scriptures, but rejected them because they knew they were late and tendentious. 

With no pope or emperor to pressure them.  Through the Middle Ages, no Nestorian or Jacobite was under coercion from either pope or emperor.  They were free to include whatever gospels they liked.  Instead of adding, actually they pruned: some from Peter, some from John, Jude, and Revelation.

Even as early as the second century, the Diatessaron assumes four, and only four, authentic Gospels.

 Yes, the same four.  Some background on this work:

The Diatessaron (c. 160–175 AD) is the most prominent early gospel harmony, and was created by Tatian, an Assyrian early Christian apologist and ascetic.

Tatian harmonized the four Gospels, ending with a work that was about 75% as long as the four Gospels in total – having removed duplications, but also not including the two different genealogies of Matthew and Luke, and also not including Jesus’s encounter with the adulteress.  Also, where there were conflicting accounts he chose one or the other in his narrative.  Most scholars agree that he did, from the beginning, include the longer ending of Mark – chapter 16 beginning with verse 9.

The work does not survive, but was reconstructed in 1881 by Theodor Zahn from translations and commentaries. It was used extensively in Eastern churches, until abandoned due to Tatian’s heretical leanings.

Then there is the task of interpretation.  The Syriac churches inherited the approach associated with Antioch: the text must be put in proper historical and cultural context.  The Syriac church was well placed to do just this, given the cultural and language similarities to Jerusalem and Aramaic.

This isn’t to say that it all aligns with what we in the West might understand, nor will I make any theological claim.  My intent is to examine the history, so here goes: the gates of hell, the fires of hell, souls being weighed in the balance.  Per Solomon of Basra, “only stupid men invent” the idea that this means there are actual gates and fires and scales. 

Claiming Tradition

While the potent Christian presence in Asia is remarkable enough in its own right, these churches also had a claim to a direct tradition from the apostolic age at least as strong as those boasted by Rome and Constantinople.

The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died, by Philip Jenkins

…Eusebius claims that missionaries speaking Aramaic or Hebrew had already reached [India] before the second century and had left an original manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew.

I start with this opening, as it speaks directly to one of my…let’s call it…pet peeves.  The more I have gone into Church history, the more I have concluded that anyone claiming to be following the (as in “the only”) apostolic tradition, and to be following it consistently for 2000 years, is talking nonsense.

Every tradition, a thousand miles west, east, and south of Jerusalem, lays claim to an apostle and lays claim to following the teaching of the apostle.  Yet, there are differences – meaningful enough that the Church divided – as early as 431 at Ephesus, at 451 at Chalcedon, and, as almost an afterthought, 1054 in Constantinople. 

So, stop with this nonsense. 

And now that is off my chest…at least for today.

Some statements apply across the various theological traditions, from the Orthodox to the Nestorians and Jacobites, and the Copts.

Strongly liturgical churches that displayed foretastes of heaven; hierarchical in organization; appeals to all the senses – sound, sight, smell, taste, touch.  And genuine antiquity:

…the Syriac Anaphora of the Apostles Addai and Mari is the oldest Christian liturgy still in use.

OK, who…and what? Per Wikipedia, Addai was a disciple of Thomas, and Mari was a disciple of Addai. From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

This is an Oriental liturgy, sometimes assigned to the Syrian group because it is written in the Syriac tongue; sometimes to the Persian group because it was used in Mesopotamia and Persia. It is known as the normal liturgy of the Nestorians, but probably it had been in use before the rise of the Nestorian heresy.

It is still used today, and not just by “heretics”:

At the present time this liturgy is used chiefly by the Nestorians, who reside for the most part in Kurdistan. It is also used by the Chaldean Uniats of the same region, but their liturgy has, of course, been purged of all traces of Nestorian tenets. Finally, it is in use among the Chaldean Uniats of Malabar, but it was very much altered by the Synod of Diamper held in 1599.

Returning to Jenkins, he notes that all of these eastern churches saw monasticism as the highest form of Christian life, just as did the churches to the west of them. 

…the ascetic fathers went forth into the wilderness…to battle against principalities and powers and with the evil spirits which are under heaven.

We could use a few of these right now.