| We kiss their bonds from afar, we grieve over those who faltered. We know that sometimes the ancient confessors of the truth also faltered. But we have epitomes of staunchness: Theodore the Studite, who denounced apostasy from the truth of the Church, the example of Maxim the Confessor, that of Patriarch Ermogen. Let us fear straying from the paths they took, for if those suffering under the present yoke are justified by human weakness, what shall we say if we fear only threats? Living in relative safety, we must be strong in spirit in order to rebuild what was destroyed, if the Lord deems fit “to deliver Zion from bondage,” in order to follow in the footsteps of those who suffered for truth, if the need arises. For this first and foremost must we preserve unity in mind and spirit, representing the one Russian Church, and at the same time carry out the great mission among other nations. From the very first centuries of Christianity in Russia, preachers have gone out to remote lands. Glorified at the beginning were SS Kuksha, Leonty of Rostov, later Stefan of Perm, Innokenty or Irkutsk, and closer to our times, Makary, Apostle of Altai, and Nicholas of Japan. Now the scattered Russian people have become the missionaries of faith to all the ends of the earth. The challenge of the Russian Church Abroad is to illuminate as many people as possible from all the nations. For the sake of this goal, the Synod of the Russian Church Abroad is sending me to a country whence the physical Sun rises, but which is need of illumination by the spiritual Sun of Truth. I admit my feeble powers; from obedience to my church hierarchy and my spiritual leader, I submit to this election not for honor and power, but giving myself over to serving the Church. I pray the Lord God that He helps me and strengthens me unto death to labor for the truth. On this great day, I pray for those who educated me and guided me with their words and example, I pray for those among whom my ecclesial service has thus far been performed, for the youth whom I educated, for my future flock, for the Ecumenical Church, for the suffering Russian Land! I rely on the prayers and intercession of the great host of heavenly defenders of the Christian peoples. |
| “Such was his end! What ours will be we do not know — neither do we know by what death we will die: whether it will come suddenly or with some sort of forewarning” (Saint Theodore Studite, “Lesson on the occasion of a monk’s sudden death”). Will we then be capable of a moral transformation and rise up spiritually like Christ’s “fellow traveler/’ “who let out a small voice and gained great faith? Will a sudden death not carry us away, deceiving our hope of repentance at the last minute?” (Saint Cyril of Alexandria, “On the Dread Judgment,” printed in The Great Horologion). For this reason, “sinner, do not postpone repentance, that your sins not accompany you into the other life and weigh you down with an intolerable burden” (Blessed Augustine, in The Sunflower of Saint John of Tobolsk, Book 4, chap. 5). May the example of the wise thief prompt us not to postpone repentance but to crucify ourselves with Christ (Gal. 2:19) and more earnestly repent, that we too might experience upon ourselves the mercy of co-suffering. (Prayer of Saint Symeon the New Theologian) They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts (Gal. 5:24). Let us be zealous for our speedy and complete inner amendment, wholly giving ourselves over to the will of God and asking of Christ mercy and grace. “Do Thou, Who alone lovest mankind, grant us the repentance of the thief as we serve Thee with faith, O Christ our God, and cry to Thee: Remember us also in Thy kingdom” (verse on the Beatitudes, Tone 4). “O Lord, this very day hast Thou vouchsafed the Good Thief Paradise. By the Wood of the Cross do Thou enlighten me also and save me” (Exapostilarion, Matins of Holy Friday). Code for blog Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable. |
| The Theotokos is the greatest advocate of men before God. It is to her that we flee after God Himself and her petitions fill our services and prayers. She is truly the mother of the Church and her abundant love overflows on us all. At the wedding at Cana she interceded before her Son, her last act on earth was to pray for peace, and she continues in this role in an inestimably greater capacity now that she is body and soul in Heaven with Christ. This is a continual theme in Patristic Dormition homilies. It is treated by St. John of Thessalonica, who teaches that Christ has mercy on those who praise His mother, Theoteknos of Livias, St. Theodore the Studite, St. John Maximovitch, etc. She is especially praised in this capacity by St. Germanus of Constantinople: “In times of tribulation you are near, and we find safety in seeking your help; and when it is time to rejoice, you are joy’s sponsor. Whenever we find ourselves completely under your maternal care, we cannot help believing that you live among us … every faith-filled heart runs towards you … every right-believing Christian bears you on his lips.” He even conceives of her as the central channel of grace: “[N]o one is saved but through you, Mother of God; no one is free of danger but through you, Mother of God; no one is redeemed but through you, Mother of God …” St. John of Damascus writes that through her entry into Heaven she has won for us all good things, and St. Gregory Palamas writes that she forevermore bestows her blessings upon all of creation, as she promised just before her repose. Because she is closest to God she is able to intercede more powerfully than all, including the angels. It is because her prayers benefit much before the Lord that we call on her constantly in life and it is even to her that we turn for protection at the moment of, and after our death. St. Ephraim of Syria supplicates: “O my Lady, do not leave me in the terrible hour of death, but hasten to my aid and deliver me from the bitter torments of the demons. |
| In spite of its very great terminological accuracy in describing the veneration of icons, Nicaea II did not elaborate on the technical points of Christology raised by the iconoclastic Council of Hieria. The task of refuting this council and of developing the rather general Christological affirmations of Germanus and John of Damascus belongs to the two major theological figures of the second iconoclastic periodthe reigns of Leo V (813–820), Michael II (820–829), and Theophilus (829–842)Theodore the Studite and Patriarch Nicephorus. 4. Orthodox Theology of Images: Theodore the Studite and Nicephorus Theodore the Studite (759–826) was one of the major reformers of the Eastern Christian monastic movement. In 798 he found himself at the head of the Constantinopolitan monastery of Studios (the name of the founder), which by then had fallen into decay. Under Theodoré " s leadership the community there rapidly grew to several hundred monks and became the main monastic center of the capital. The Studite Rule (Hypotyposis) in its final form is the work of Theodoré " s disciples, but it applied his principles of monastic life and became the pattern for large cenobitic communities in the Byzantine and Slavic worlds. Theodore himself is the author of two collections of instructions addressed to his monks (the «small» and the «large» Catecheses) in which he develops his concept of monasticism based upon obedience to the abbot, liturgical life, constant work, and personal poverty. These principles were quite different from the eremitical, or «hesychast,» tradition and were derived from the rules of Pachomius and Basil. The influence of Theodore upon later developments of Byzantine Christianity is also expressed in his contribution to hymnography; many of the ascetical parts of the Triodion (proper for Great Lent) and of the Parakletike, or Oktoechos (the book of the «eight tones»), are his work or the work of his immediate disciples. His role in conflicts between Church and state will be mentioned in the next chapter. |
| Savas, " popularly known as " The Typikon of St. Savas. " [ 27 ] As the title indicates, this Typikon originated at the Lavra founded by St. Savas (+532) at Jerusalem in the year 484.[ 28 ] In the initial stages of its development, the Typikon was influenced by practices and customs of the early monastic communities in Egypt, Palestine and Asia Minor, as well as the Cathedral Office of Jerusalem, which had become a center of pilgrimage. During the seventh and eighth centuries the Typikon of St. Savas was revised and greatly enriched by the massive infusion of ecclesiastical poetry. In the course of the eighth century as a result of the iconoclastic controversy, the Palestinian monastic Typikon came to the monasteries of Constantinople, and especially to the Monastery of Studios. Due to the work of its hegoumenos St. Theodore (+826), this monastery had become the center of monastic revival and reform in the Imperial City. At Studios the Palestinian Typikon underwent a new synthesis. It was embellished further with new poetry and with elements of the Cathedral Office of Constantinople. The Studite rite spread to other monastic communities as well.[ 29 ] In a subsequent development, the Studite synthesis was reworked and further modified by Palestinian monks during the course of the eleventh century. In the process a new, revised Typikon of St. Savas was produced and established. This new revised monastic Typikon soon gained in popularity and use. At the beginning of the thirteenth century it began to replace both the Cathedral Office as well as the Studite synthesis at Constantinople. By the fifteenth century these usages had become defunct. The new, revised Typikon of St. Savas prevailed throughout the Orthodox world, until the nineteenth century.[ 30 ] The position of the new Sabaite Typikon was especially solidified in the sixteenth century by virtue of its publication in 1545, thus becoming the earliest of the printed typika. These revisions together with the infusion of new poetry composed by Sabaite and Studite monks and others, resulted in the formation of the Horologion and the liturgical books we know as the Octoechos, Triodion, Pentecostarion, and Menaia. |
| Theodore the Studite Theodore was, in the ninth century, both the model and the ideologist of the rigorist monastic party which played a decisive role in the entire life of Byzantine Christendom. In the preceding chapter Theodoré " s contribution to the theology of images as an aspect of Chalcedonian Christological orthodoxy was discussed. His impact on the history of monasticism is equally important. Severely challenged by iconoclastic persecutions, Byzantine monasticism had acquired the prestige of martyrdom, and its authority in Orthodox circles was often greater than that of the compromise-minded hierarchy. Under Theodoré " s leadership it became an organized and articulate bulwark of canonical and moral rigorism. For Theodore, monastic life was, in fact, synonymous with authentic Christianity: Certain people ask, whence arose the tradition of renouncing the world and of becoming monks? But their question is the same as asking, whence the tradition of becoming Christians? For the One who first laid down the apostolic tradition also ordained six mysteries: first, illumination; second, the assembly or communion; third, the perfection of the chrism; fourth, the perfections of priesthood; fifth, the monastic perfection; sixth, the service for those who fall asleep in holiness. 65 This passage is important not only because monasticism is counted among the sacraments of the Churchin a list strikingly different from the post-Tridentine «seven sacraments " but also, and chiefly, because the monastic state is considered one of the essential forms of Christian perfection and witness. Through detachment, through the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, through a life projected into the already-given reality of the kingdom of God, monasticism becomes an «angelic life.» The monks, according to Theodore, formed an eschatological community which realizes more fully and more perfectly what the entire Church is supposed to be. The Studite monks brought this eschatological witness into the very midst of the imperial capital, the center of the «world,» and considered it normal to be in almost constant conflict with the «world» and with whatever it represented. |
| In the ninth century another great saint, Saint Theodore of Studion, was involved with a number of liturgical developments. The service books for Great Lent and Easter, the Lenten Triodion and the Flower Triodion (also called the Pentecostarion), are almost totally the work of the Studite monks, among the most famous of whom was Saint Joseph the Hymnographer. The liturgical typikon, the order of worship in the Studion Monastery, has been the normative order of worship for the entire Orthodox Church since the ninth century. As abbot of the Studion Monastery in Constantinople, the leading monastery in the Empire of his day, he had ultimate authority over about a hundred thousand monks throughout the Empire. Also dating from the ninth century is a copy of the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom which has the Liturgy of the Faithful in virtually the exact form in which it is celebrated in the Orthodox Church today. New Law Code Near the end of the ninth century, a famous new law code was published by Emperor Basil I. In its introduction, called the Epanagoge, the system known as “symphonia” – the harmonious cooperation between the Church and State – is eloquently reaffirmed, with extremely high standards of moral probity, personal sanctity, and theological wisdom placed upon both the patriarch of Constantinople and the emperor. For example, the patriarch is to “lead unbelievers into adopting the Faith, astounding them with the splendor and glory and wondrousness of his own devotion”; and the emperor “must be of the highest perfection in Orthodoxy and piety.” The West Generally speaking, the 9th century was one of the most significant centuries in Church history. It was a period of renaissance in the East after 843, while in the West it was one of increasing centralization around the Roman Papacy, especially through the efforts of Pope Nicholas I. The most important theologian in the West in this century was John Scot Erigena (d. 877), who brought the strong influence of the Eastern theology of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite and Saint Maximus the Confessor into the Western Church. However, he interpreted the mystical writings attributed to Saint Dionysius along Neo-Platonic lines. Cultural Renaissance |
| B. Whatever role was played in the Orthodox victory over the iconoclasts by high ecclesiastical dignitaries and such theologians as Patriarch Nicephorus, the real credit belonged to the Byzantine monks who resisted the emperors in overwhelming numbers. The emperors, especially Leo m and Constantine v, expressed more clearly than any of their predecessors a claim to caesaropapism. Thus the iconoclastic controversy was largely a confrontation between the state and a non-conformist, staunchly independent monasticism, which assumed the prophetic role of standing for the independence of the Gospel from the «world.» The fact that this role was assumed by the monks, and not by the highest canonical authority of the Church, underlines the fact that the issue was the defense, not of the Church as an institution, but of the Christian faith as the way to eternal salvation. The monks, of course, took their role very seriously and preserved, even after their victory, a peculiar sense of responsibility for the faith, as we saw in the case of Theodore the Studite. Theologically they maintained a tradition of faithfulness to the past, as well as a sense of the existential relevance of theology as such. Their role in later-Byzantine theological development remained decisive for centuries. C. The theological issue between the Orthodox and the iconoclasts was fundamentally concerned with the icon of Christ, for belief in the divinity of Christ implied a stand on the crucial point of God« " s essential indescribability and on the Incarnation, which made Him visible. Thus the icon of Christ is the icon par excellence and implies a confession of faith in the Incarnation. The iconoclasts, however, objected on theological grounds, not only to this icon, but also to the use of any religious pictures, except the cross, because, as their Council of 754 proclaims, they opposed «all paganism.» Any veneration of images was equated with idolatry. If the goal pursued by Constantine v to «purify» Byzantine Christianity, not only of the image cult, but also of monasticism, had been achieved, the entire character of Eastern Christian piety and its ethos would have evolved differently. The victory of Orthodoxy meant, for example, that religious faith could be expressed, not only in propositions, in books, or in personal experience, but also through man» " s power over matter, through aesthetic experience, and through gestures and bodily attitudes before holy images. All this implied a philosophy of religion and an anthropology; worship, the liturgy, religious consciousness involved the whole man, without despising any functions of the soul or of the body, and without leaving any of them to the realm of the secular. |
| Byzantine theology ignores the Western distinction between «sacraments» and «sacramentals,» and never formally committed itself to any strict limitation of the number of sacraments. In the patristic period there was no technical term to designate «sacraments» as a specific category of church acts: the term mysterion was used primarily in the wider and general sense of «mystery of salvation,» 369 and only in a subsidiary manner to designate the particular actions which bestow salvation. In this second sense, it was used concurrently with such terms as «rites» or «sanctifications.» 370 Theodore the Studite in the ninth century gives a list of six sacraments: the holy «illumination» (baptism), the «synaxis» (Eucharist), the holy chrism, ordination, monastic tonsure, and the service of burial. 371 The doctrine of the «seven sacraments» appears for the first timevery char- acteristicallyin the Profession of Faith required from Emperor Michael Paleologus by Pope Clement IV in 1267. 372 The Profession had been prepared, of course, by Latin theologians. The obviously Western origin of this strict numbering of the sacraments did not prevent it from being widely accepted among Eastern Christians after the thirteenth century, even among those who fiercely rejected union with Rome. It seems that this acceptance resulted not so much from the influence of Latin theology as from the peculiarly medieval and Byzantine fascination with symbolic numbers: the number seven, in particular, evoked an association with the seven gifts of the Spirit in Isaiah 11:2–4. But among Byzantine authors who accept the «seven sacraments,» we find different competing lists. The monk Job (thirteenth century), author of a dissertation on the sacraments, includes monastic tonsure in the list, as did Theodore the Studite, but combines as one sacrament penance and the anointing of the sick. 373 Symeon of Thessalonica (fifteenth century) also admits the sacramental character of the monastic tonsure, but classifies it together with penance, 374 considering the anointing as a separate sacrament. Meanwhile, Joasaph, Metropolitan of Ephesus, a contemporary of Symeon " " s, declares: «I believe that the sacraments of the Church are not seven, but more,» and he gives a list of ten, which includes the consecration of a church, the funeral service, and the monastic tonsure. 375 |
| C. Monasticism: From the beginning of the Constantinian era, a monastic type of worship existed concurrently with the emerging «cathedral» type and soon entered into competition with it. It was characterized by a number of autonomous units of common worship (vespers, compline, midnight prayer, matins, and the four canonical hours, completed in Jerusalem with «mid-hours»), by its almost exclusive use of psalmody, and by its original opposition to hymnography. 193 A monastic office could be practically continuous through day and night as it was, for example, in the monastery of the «Non-sleepers» in Constantinople. The monastic communities also developed the penitential aspects of the later Byzantine synthesis: Lenten cycle, prostrations, fasting. The earliest available descriptions of the Typikon of the monastery of Studion in Constantinople and of the Palestinian Typikon of St. Sabbas preserve the liturgical orders of these two major monastic centers around the tenth century. At that time both had already lost the original sobriety of monastic worship: not only had they dropped opposition to hymnography; both had become major centers of hymn-writing (Theodore at the Studion, John of Damascus at St. Sabbas). On the other hand, the symbolic Gnosticism of pseudo-Dionysius had by then widely influenced monastic circles: if the goal of the earthly Church was to imitate the «celestial hierarchies,» the monks considered themselves as fulfilling a fortiori the purpose of the «angelic life.» Actually, a common acceptance of the Dionysian understanding of the liturgy must have brought the «monastic» and the " " cathedral» type closer together. But their initial integration did not occur in Constantinople. There the Typikon of the «Great Church» and that of the Studion were still clearly distinct in the tenth century (when the Studite rule, as modified by Patriarch Alexis, was brought to Kiev and adopted by Theodosius of the Caves). Integration occurred in Jerusalem, where monastic practices were accepted within the original «cathedral» rite around the eleventh century. The Latin occupation of Constantinople (1204–1261) and the subsequent decadence of the Studion may have contributed to the adoption of the integrated Typikon of Jerusalem by the «Great Church» of Constantinople and its generalization in the Byzantine world. 194 The great Hesychast patriarchs of the fourteenth century, especially Philotheos Kokkinos, were the main agents of this liturgical unification. |
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