Patriarch of
Constantinople (858-867 and 877-886, feast day February 6), is considered the greatest
of all Byzantine patriarchs. Extremely learned in
ancient Greek literature and philosophy as well as Christian theology, he
was originally professor of philosophy at the famous University of Constantinople
-- the first university (or "higher school") to be established
in medieval Europe, at a time when the West was still stuck in the mire
of the barbaric Dark Ages.
Photios was perhaps responsible for a new codification
of canon (church) law, the Collection of 14 Titles, and probably
for a new legal code, the Epanagoge, which spelled out a new importance
for the patriarch with respect to the Emperor. But he is perhaps best known
for his leading role in the conversion of the Slavic peoples. It was Photios
who, correctly understanding the inner psychology of the semi-barbaric Moravian
Slavs (in today's Czechoslovakia), dispatched to convert them in 862, at
their request, the Apostles to the Slavs, Cyril (or Konstantinos) and his brother Methodios,
two Greeks from Thessalonike learned in the Slavonic language and, most
important, to translate the Greek liturgy into Slavonic. In this way he
bound them to Constantinople instead of to Rome which was also seeking to
convert them but would not permit the liturgy to be translated into Slavonic.
Photios was also primarily responsible for converting the Bulgars, then
wavering between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. It was Photios' conversion
of the Moravians and Bulgars through the work of Cyril and Methodios that
later led to the Byzantine conversion of the Russian Slavs.
In addition,
Photios established, or reorganized, the patriarchal school in Constantinople
for the education of priests in literature and philosophy as well as in
theology. (It is the direct ancestor of the modern
patriarchal school at Halki).
Until publication of Father Dvornik's recent work on Patriarch Photios,
he was considered by the Roman Church (not of course by the Orthodox for
whom he has always been a great ecclesiastical hero) as the arch-heretic,
the one most responsible for originating the schism or split between the
Churches of Rome and Constantinople, the first to formulate Orthodox Greek
charges against innovations (kenotomies) in doctrine and practices
of the Roman Church. But these were usually teachings propounded not so
much by the Latins of Rome as by the recently converted Germans, who had
sent missionaries into Bulgaria. In particular they taught the doctrine
of the flioque (that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the
Father and Son), contrary to explicit pronouncements of the early Ecumenical
Councils that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (alone). (Ekporevetai
ek tou Patros). The latter is the view of the Orthodox, a belief considered
necessary in order to preserve the unitary nature of God -- since there
can be only one fundamental archic source for the Godhead, not two. If
there are two sources, there would in effect be two Gods.
It was the precedents and the increase in patriarchal authority that developed
under Photios which enabled the Church and subsequent patriarchs to surmount
the difficult times which followed for both the state and Church. Indeed,
by the time of the apogee of the Byzantine Empire in the late tenth and
early eleventh century when it had become without question the most powerful,
richest, cultured, and sophisticated state in the world, the patriarchal
court of Constantinople had become second to none in splendor and in the
respect accorded it. Within his cathedral church, the incomparable Hagia
Sophia, whose dome seemed to "hang suspended as if from heaven itself,"
to quote the Byzantine poet George of Pisidia, and whose mosaics glittered
from their places on the walls, the patriarch officiated in the most impressive
ecclesiastical edifice in all Christendom. To take care of the liturgical
needs of the "Great Church" (as the Greeks always called it),
Emperor Justinian decreed in 537 that there be constantly in attendance
a huge staff consisting of sixty priests, ten deacons, forty deaconesses,
ninety subdeacons, one hundred readers, twenty five chanters, and one hundred
custodians.
No wonder the Russian envoys, sent to Constantinople in 988 to compare its
religious services with those of other religions they were considering adopting,
were so awed by the splendor and the sublimity of the Liturgy that, on their
return to their capital city of Kiev, they declared to their master Prince
Vladimir the Great, that in Hagia Sophia they thought they were "in
Heaven itself." So far-reaching was the fame of Hagia Sophia that it
became almost mythical -- being known to the far-off Anglo-Saxons of England
who borrowed not only aspects of Byzantine art but even the title of Basileus
for their king and whose own first Archbishop of Canterbury was in fact
a Greek, the missionary Theodore from Tarsus in Asia Minor. Even the Vikings
in distant Scandinavia and in Russland referred to Constantinople as Miklegard
or Tsargrad (the Emperor's city), of which the chief jewel was Hagia Sophia.
Hagia Sophia and the Patriarchate were noted in the
medieval world of both
East and West for the enormous number of relics preserved there and in the
church of the Holy Apostles, dating from the time of Christ or shortly thereafter:
the true cross, the crown of thorns, the Virgin's girdle and robe -- the
latter two in particular looked upon by the Byzantine populace as the palladia
(protectors) of Constantinople. Numerous stories remain from the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries recounting dangerous journeys made by Russian pilgrims
to Constantinople, not to speak of Western clerics who earlier, before the
time of the schism in 1054, had come to Constantinople to see the Church
of the Holy Apostles (where the Byzantine Emperors were all buried), to
participate in the liturgy in Hagia Sophia with the remarkably moving chant
of the patriarchal antiphonal choirs, and above all, to worship the sacred
relics dating from the time of Christ. Some modern scholars believe that
Pope Gregory the Great, after he was papal envoy in Constantinople (before
590), in imitation of the chanting in Hagia Sophia, which he had often heard,
introduced into St. Peter's at Rome the so-called Gregorian chant.
