Claude
Delaval Cobham, “The Patriarchs of Constantinople,” pp. 21 – 33
The rise of the see of Constantinople, the ' Great Church of
Christ,' is the most curious development in the history of Eastern Christendom.
For many centuries the patriarchs of New Rome have been the first bishops in
the East. Though they never succeeded in the claim to universal jurisdiction
over the whole Ortho dox Church that they have at various times advanced,
though, during the last century especially, the limits of their once enormous
patriarchate have been ruthlessly driven back, nevertheless since the fifth
century and still at the present time the Patriarch of New Rome fills a place
in the great Christian body whose importance makes it second only to that of
the Pope of Old Rome. To be an orthodox Christian one must accept the orthodox
faith. That is the first criterion. And then as a second and visible bond of
union all Greeks at any rate, and probably most Arabs and Slavs, would add that
one must be in communion with the ecumenical patriarch. The Bulgars are
entirely orthodox in faith, but are excommunicate from the see of
Constantinople; a rather less acute form of the same state was until lately the
misfortune of the Church of Antioch. And the great number of orthodox
Christians would deny a share in their name to Bulgars and Antiochenes for this
reason only. Since, then, these patriarchs are now and have so long been the
centre of unity to the hundred millions of Christians who make up the great
Orthodox Church, one might be tempted to think that their position is an
essential element of its constitution, and to imagine that, since the days of
the first general councils New Rome has been as much the leading Church of the
East as Old Rome of the West. One might be tempted to conceive the Orthodox as
the subjects of the ecumenical patriarch, just as Roman Catholics are the
subjects of the pope. This would be a mistake. The advance of the see of
Constantinople is the latest development in the history of the hierarchy. The
Byzantine patriarch is the youngest of the five. His see evolved from the
smallest of local dioceses at the end of the fourth and during the fifth
centuries. And now his jurisdiction, that at one time grew into something like
that of his old rival the pope, has steadily retreated till he finds himself
back not very far from the point at which his predecessors began their career
of gradual advance. And the overwhelming majority of the Orthodox, although
they still insist on communion with him, indignantly deny that he has any rights
over them. Though they still give him a place of honor as the first bishop of
their Church, the other orthodox patriarchs and still more the synods of
national churches show a steadily growing jealousy of his assumption and a
defiant insistence on their equality with him. An outline of the story of what
may perhaps be called the rise and fall of the see of Constantinople will form
the natural introduction to the list of its bishops.
We first hear of a bishop of Byzantium at the time of the
first General Council (Nicaea, 325). At that time Metrophanes (315-325) ruled
what was only a small local see under the metropolitan of Thrace at Herakleia.
Long afterwards his successors claimed St. Andrew the Apostle as the founder of
their see. This legend does not begin till about the ninth century, after
Constantinople had become a mighty patriarchate. There was always a feeling
that the chief sees should be those founded by apostles; the other
patriarchates -- Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem -- were apostolic sees
(Alexandria claimed St. Peter as her founder too), and now that Constantinople
was to be equal of the others, indeed the second see of all, an apostolic
founder had to be found for her too. The legend of St. Andrew at Constantinople
first occurs in a ninth century forgery attributed to one Dorotheos, bishop of
Ture and a martyr under Diocletian. St. Andrew's successor is said to be the
Stachys mentioned in Rom. xvi. 9; and then follow Onesimos and twenty-two other
mythical bishops, till we come to a real person, Metrophanes I. The reason why
St. Andrew was chosen is the tradition that he went to the North and preached
in Scythia, Epirus and Thrace. No one now takes this first line of Byzantine
bishops seriously. Their names are interesting as one more example of an
attempt to connect what afterwards became a great see with an apostle. Before
the ninth century one of the commonest charges brought against the growing
patriarchate was that it is not an apostolic see (e.g. Leo I. Ep. 104, ad
Marcianum), and its defenders never thing of denying the charge; they rather
bring the questions quite candidly to its real issue by answering that it is at
any rate an imperial one. So the first historical predecessor of the ecumenical
patriarch was Metrophanes I. And he was by no means an ecumenical patriarch. He
was not even a metropolitan. His city at the time of the first Nicene synod was
a place of no sort of importance, and he was the smallest of local bishops who
obey the metropolitan of Herakleia. The council recognized as an 'ancient use'
the rights of three chief sees only -- Rome, Alexandria and Antioch (Can. 6).
The title 'patriarch' (taken, of course, from the Old Testament as 'Levite' for
deacon) only gradually became a technical one. It is the case of nearly all
ecclesiastical titles. As late as the sixth century we still find and specially
venerable bishop called a patriarch (Greg. Naz. Orat. 42, 43, Acta SS. Febr.
III. 742, where Celidoius of Besancon is called 'the venerable patriarch'). But
the thing itself was there, if not the special name. At the time of Nicaea I
there were three and only three bishops who stood above other metropolitans and
ruled over vast provinces, the bishops first of Rome, then of Alexandria and
thirdly of Antioch. It should be noticed that conservative people, and
especially the Western Church, for centuries represented the addition of the
two new patriarchates -- Jerusalem and Constantinople -- to these three, and
still clung to the ideal of three chief Churches only. Constantinople
eventually displaced Alexandria and Antioch to the third and fourth places:
they both refused to accept that position for a long time. Alexandria
constantly in the fifth and sixth centuries asserts her right as the 'second
throne,' and Antioch demands to be recognized as third. The Roman Church
especially maintained the older theory; she did not formally recognize
Constantinople as a patriarchate at all till the ninth century, when she
accepted the 21st Canon of Constantinople IV (869) that established the order
of five patriarchates, with Constantinople as the second and Jerusalem as the
last. Disocur of Alexandria (44-451) bitterly resented the lowered place given
to his see. St. Leo I of Rome (440-461) writes: 'Let the great Churches keep
their dignity according to the Canons, that is Alexandria and Antioch' (Ep. ad
Rufin. Thess., Le Quien, Or. Christ. I. 18), and he constantly appeals to the
sixth Canon of Nicaea against later innovations (Ep. 104, ad Marc.). He says:
'The dignity of the Alexandrine see must not perish' and 'the Antiochene Church
should remain in the order arranged by the Fathers, so that having been put in
the their place it should never be reduced to a lover one' (Ep. 106, ad
Anatolium). St. Gregory I (590-604) still cherished the older ideal of the
three patriarchates, and as late as the eleventh century St. Leo IX (1045-1054)
writes to Peter III of Antioch that 'Anticoh must keep the third place' (Will,
Acta et scripta de constrovesiis eccl. graecae et latinae, Leipzig, 1861, p.
168). However, in spite of all opposition the bishops of Constantinople
succeeded, first in being recognized as patriarchs and eventually as taking the
second place, after Rome but before Alexandria. It was purely an accident of
secular politics that made this possible.
The first general council had not even mentioned the insignificant
little diocese of Byzantium. But by the time the second council met
(Constantinople I, 381) a great change had happened. Constantine in 330
dedicated his new capital 'amid the nakedness of almost all other cities' (St
Jerome, Ckron. a.d. 332). He moved the seat of his government thither, stripped
Old Rome and ransacked the Empire to adorn it, and built up what became the
most gorgeous city of the world. So the bishop of Byzantium found himself in a
sense the special bishop of Caesar. He at once obtained an honored place at
court, he had the ear of the emperor, he was always at hand to transact any
business between other bishops and the government. Politically and civilly New Rome
was to be in every way equal to Old Rome, and since the fourth century there
was a strong tendency to imitate civil arrangements in ecclesiastical affairs.
Could the prelate whose place had suddenly become so supremely important remain
a small local ordinary under a metropolitan? And always the emperors favored
the ambition of their court bishops; the greater the importance of their
capital in the Church, as well as in the State, the more would the loyalty of
their subjects be riveted to the central government. So we find that the
advance of the Byzantine see is always as desirable an object to the emperor as
to his bishop. The advance came quickly now. But we may notice that at every
step there is no sort of concealment as to its motive. No one in those days
thought of claiming any other reason for the high place given to the bishop
except the fact that the imperial court sat in his city. There was no pretense
of an apostolic foundation, no question of St Andrew, no claim to a glorious
past, no record of martyrs, doctors nor saints who had adorned the see of this
new city; she had taken no part in spreading the faith, had been of no
importance to anyone till Constantine noticed what a splendid site the
Bosphorus and Golden Horn offer. This little bishop was parvenu of the
parvenus; he knew it and everyone knew it. His one argument — and for four
centuries he was never tired of repeating it — was that he was the emperor's
bishop, his see was New Rome. New Rome was civilly equal to Old Rome, so why
should he not be as great, or nearly as great, as that distant patriarch now
left alone where the weeds choked ruined gates by the Tiber? Now that the
splendor of Caesar and his court have gone to that dim world where linger the
ghosts of Pharaoh and Cyrus we realize how weak was the foundation of this
claim from the beginning. The Turk has answered the new patriarch's arguments
very effectively. And to-day he affects an attitude of conservatism, and in his
endless quarrels with the independent Orthodox Churches he talks about ancient
rights. He has no ancient rights. The ancient rights are those of his betters
at Rome, Alexandria and Antioch. His high place is founded on an accident of
politics, and if his argument were carried out consistently he would have had to
step down in 1453 and the chief bishops of Christendom would now be those of
Paris, London and New York. We must go back to 381 and trace the steps of his
progress. The first Council of Constantinople was a small assembly of only 150
eastern bishops. No Latins were present, the Roman Church was not represented.
Its third canon ordains that: 'The bishop of Constantinople shall have the
primacy of honor (to irpeafiela t?}? Tt/wj?) after the bishop of Rome, because
that city is New Rome.' This does not yet mean a patriarchate. There is no
question of extra-diocesan jurisdiction. He is to have an honorary place after
the pope because his city has become politically New Rome. The Churches of Rome
and Alexandria definitely refused to accept this canon. The popes in accepting
the Creed of Constantinople I. always rejected its canons and specially
rejected this third canon. Two hundred years later Gregory I. says, 'The Roman
Church neither acknowledges nor receives the canons of that synod, she accepts
the said synod in what it defined against Macedonius' (the additions to the
Nicene Creed, Ep. VII. 34); and when Gratian put the canon into the Roman canon
law in the twelfth century the papal correctors added to it a note to the
effect that the Roman Church did not acknowledge it. The canon and the note
still stand in the Corpus juris (dist. XXII. c. 3), a memory of the opposition
with which Old Rome met the first beginning of the advance of New Rome. The
third general council did not affect this advance, although during the whole
fourth century there are endless cases of bishops of Constantinople, defended
by the emperor, usurping rights in other provinces — usurpations that are
always indignantly opposed by the lawful primates. Such usurpations, and the
indignant oppositions, fill up the history of the Eastern Church down to our
own time. It was the fourth general council (Chalcedon in 451) that finally
assured the position of the imperial bishops. Its 28th canon is the vital point
in all this story. The canon — very long and confused in its form — defines
that ' the most holy Church of Constantinople the New Rome ' shall have a
primacy next after Old Rome. Of course the invariable reason is given: 'the
city honored because of her rule and her Senate shall enjoy a like primacy to
that of the elder Imperial Rome and shall be mighty in Church affairs just as
she is and shall be second after her." The canon gives authority over Asia
(the Roman province, of course — Asia Minor) and Thrace to Constantinople and
so builds up a new patriarchate. Older and infinitely more venerable sees,
Herakleia, the ancient metropolis, Caesarea in Cappadocia, that had converted
all Armenia, Ephesus where the apostle whom our Lord loved had sat — they must
all step down, because Constantinople is honored for her rule and her senate.
The Roman legates (Lucentius, Paschasius and Boniface) were away at the
fifteenth session when this canon was drawn up. When they arrive later and hear
what has been done in their absence they are very angry, and a heated
discussion takes place in which they appeal to the sixth canon of Nicaea. The
council sent an exceptionally respectful letter to Pope Leo I. (440 — 461)
asking him to confirm their acts (E/>. Cone. dial, ad Leonem, among St
Leo's letters, No. 98). He confirms the others, but rejects the twenty-eighth
categorically. ' He who seeks undue honors,' he says, ' loses his real ones.
Let it be enough for the said Bishop ' (Anatolios of Constantinople) ' that by
the help of your ' (Marcian's) ' piety and by the consent of my favor he has
got the bishopric of so great a city. Let him not despise a royal see because
he can never make it an apostolic one ' (no one had dreamed of the St Andrew
legend then); ' nor should he by any means hope to become greater by offending
others.' He also appeals to canon 6 of Nicaea against the proposed arrangement
(Ep. 104). So the 28th canon of Chalcedon, too, was never admitted at Rome. The
Illyrian and various other bishops had already refused to sign it.
Notwithstanding this opposition the new patriarch continued to prosper. The
Council of Chalcedon had made the see of Jerusalem into a patriarchate as well,
giving it the fifth place. But all the eastern rivals go down in importance at
this time. Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem were overrun with Monophysites;
nearly all Syria and Egypt fell away into that heresy, so that the orthodox
patriarchs had scarcely any flocks. Then came Islam and swept away whatever
power they still had. Meanwhile Caesar was always the friend of his own bishop.
Leo III., the Isaurian (717 — 741), filched his own fatherland, Isauria, from
Antioch and gave it to Constantinople; from the seventh to the ninth centuries
the emperors continually affect to separate Illyricum from the Roman
patriarchate and to add it to that of their own bishop. Since Justinian
conquered back Italy (554) they claim Greater Greece (Southern Italy, Calabria,
Apulia, Sicily) for their patriarch too, till the Norman Conquest (1060 — 1091)
puts an end to any hope of asserting such a claim. It is the patriarch of
Constantinople who has the right of crowning the emperor; and the patriarch
John IV., the Faster (Ni7<rTeuTJ?<?, 582 — 595), assumes the
vaguely splendid title of 'Ecumenical Patriarch.' The new kingdom of the
Bulgars forms a source of angry dispute between Rome and Constantinople, till just
after the great schism the ecumenical patriarch wins them all to his side,
little thinking how much trouble the children of these same Bulgars will some
day give to his successors. Photios (857—867, 878 — 886) and Michael Kerularios
(Michael I., 1043 — 1058) saw the great schism between East and West. Meanwhile
the conversion of the Russians (988) added an enormous territory to what was
already the greatest of the Eastern patriarchates.
The Turkish conquest of Constantinople (1453), strangely
enough, added still more to the power of its patriarchs. True to their
unchanging attitude the Mohammedans accepted each religious communion as a
civil body. The Rayahs were grouped according to their Churches. The greatest
of these bodies was, and is, the Orthodox Church, with the name ' Roman nation'
(rum millet), strange survival of the dead empire. And the recognized civil
head of this Roman nation is the ecumenical patriarch. So he now has civil
jurisdiction over all orthodox Rayahs in the Turkisk empire, over the other
patriarchs and their subjects and over the autocephalous Cypriotes as well as
over the faithful of his own patriarchate. No orthodox Christian can approach
the Porte except through his court at the Phanar. And the Phanar continually
tries to use this civil jurisdiction for ecclesiastical purposes.
We have now come to the height of our patriarch's power. He
rules over a vast territory second only to that of the Roman patriarchate. All
Turkey in Europe, all Asia Minor, and Russia to the Polish frontier and the
White Sea, obey the great lord who rules by the old lighthouse on the Golden
Horn. And he is politically and civilly the overlord of Orthodox Egypt, Syria,
Palestine and Cyprus as well. So for one short period, from 1453 to 1589, he
was not a bad imitation of the real pope. But his glory did not last, and from
this point to the present time his power has gone down almost as fast as it
went up in the fourth and fifth centuries. The first blow was the independence
of Russia. In 1589 the czar, Feodor Ivanovich, made his Church into an
autocephalous patriarchate (under Moscow), and in 172 1 Peter the Great changed
its government into that of a ' Holy directing Synod.' Both the independence
and the synod have been imitated by most Orthodox Churches since. Jeremias II.
of Constantinople (1572 — 1579, 1580 — 1584, 1586 — 1595) took money as the
price of acknowledging the Russian Holy Synod as his ' sister in Christ' It was
all he could do. His protector the Sultan had no power in Russia, and if he had
made difficulties he would not have prevented what happened and he would have
lost the bribe. Since then the ecumenical patriarch has no kind of jurisdiction
in Russia; even the holy chrism is prepared at Petersburg. In two small cases
the Phanar gained a point since it lost Russia. Through the unholy alliance
with the Turkish government that had become its fixed policy, it succeeded in
crushing the independent Servian Church of Ipek in 1765 and the Bulgarian
Church of Achrida (Ochrida in Macedonia) in 1767. The little Roumanian Church
of Tirnovo had been forced to submit to Constantinople as soon as the Turks
conquered that city (1393). In these three cases, then, the Phanar again spread
the boundaries of its jurisdiction. Otherwise it steadily retreats. In every
case in which a Balkan State has thrown off the authority of the Porte, its
Church has at once thrown off the authority of the Phanar. These two powers had
been too closely allied for the new independent government to allow its
subjects to obey either of them. The process is always the same. One of the
first laws of the new constitution is to declare that the national Church is
entirely orthodox, that it accepts all canons, decrees and declarations of the
Seven Holy Synods, that it remains in communion with the oecumenical throne and
with all other Orthodox Churches of Christ; but that it is an entirely
autocephalous Church, acknow ledging no head but Christ. A Holy Synod is then
set up on the Russian model, by which the theory ' no head but Christ' always
works out as unmitigated Erastianism. The patriarch on the other hand is always
filled with indignation; he always protests vehemently, generally begins by
excommunicating the whole of the new Church, and (except in the Bulgarian case)
Russia always makes him eventually withdraw his decree and recognize yet
another sister in Christ.
