From the world of antiquity, more than one new world emerged. In the west, it was the Latin and Germanic states, assembled in the Catholic Church under the leadership of Rome; next, it was the Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Asia Minor, which through the Orthodox Church brought various peoples in eastern Europe under its influence; and finally, Christians in Africa and Asia. The last-mentioned were, from the 7th century, under Islamic domination, gradually became a minority, and in the course of the Middle Ages at various places would disappear altogether. Islam itself to a degree took over the role of heir to the ancient world—to a degree, because Islam consciously positioned itself as the antithesis of Greco-Roman culture, creating completely new structures in many fields, while deliberately destroying the old.
Perhaps the most obvious heir to the Roman Empire was the Roman Catholic Church, led by the pope in Rome as in earlier days the empire had been by the emperor. In her organization in bishoprics and archbishoprics, the Catholic Church preserved the political organization in civitates and provinciae of the Roman Empire. The bishop of Rome acquired his position as head of the church thanks to the prestige that automatically accrued to the Christian community of Rome as the largest and richest of all communities, which was both the “imperial” city and refounded as a Christian city by the apostles Peter and Paul, whose funerary monuments outside the city were venerated by the faithful. Unlike the Greek east, the Latin west of the empire did not have large and prestigious episcopal sees that could compete with Rome. The authority of the bishop of Rome was in the 4th century formally accepted in the church at large, but as a result of the growing rift between the two halves of the empire it was in practice mostly limited to the west. The absence of an emperor in the west after 476 contributed to the establishment of papal authority over western Christendom—again in contrast to the Greek east. Gradually, the popes developed their authority in liturgical and doctrinal matters. Here, popes Leo I (middle of the 5th century) and Gregory I (around 600) may be mentioned. Just like many bishops in the
Map 26 (Continued)
Figure 48 Mosaic from Ravenna with the Emperor Justinian (6th c. AD). In 525 the building of the cathedral of Ravenna, dedicated to St Vitalis, started. Twenty-three years later, it was finished. In the meantime, Ravenna had been conquered by Justinian. Now, the choir of the church was embellished with mosaics that showed, on the one side, the emperor Justinian and his courtiers, and on the other side the empress Theodora with her companions. These mosaics are among the very best that early Byzantine art has to offer. Justinian is in the center, dressed in a purple robe (purple was a color that only the emperor was allowed to wear), with bejeweled slippers and crowned with a heavy diadem decorated with gems and pearls. From this late antique diadem, the medieval imperial crown would develop. The face of the emperor is thought, as also that of Theodora, to be a true likeness: Justinian had his portrait sent to all provinces; and this mosaic is supposed to have been made by artists from Constantinople, not by local ones, unlike other mosaics in the church. The emperor holds a golden bowl, his present to the new church. On his right we have the emperor’s court represented by two courtiers dressed in white. The purple squares on their dress are meant to cover their hands whenever they take something from the emperor, or give him something. The bearded courtier has been tentatively identified as Belisarius, the general who initiated the conquest of Italy. Next to the courtiers, we see the palace guard, their shields decorated with the christogram, the Chi Rho, which goes back to Constantine. On Justinian’s left-hand side stand one other courtier, toward the back, and the ecclesiastical powers: first Maximianus, archbishop of Ravenna, holding a cross; and next, two priests, one with a costly codex, the other with an incense burner. The background of the mosaic is all heavenly gold, from which the emperor’s head is set off by a nimbus that distinguishes him from mere mortals. Photo: The Art Archive/Alamy
West, the popes also functioned as de facto rulers of their city, a dominion they in the 8th century managed with the help of the Frankish kings to enlarge to much of Central Italy (the so-called Papal States).
The church in the west was on the whole remarkably uniform. This was not only the result of a single leadership, but also because of the use of Latin as the language of the liturgy. While spoken Latin in the early Middle Ages more and more distanced itself from the written language—to give rise, in the 7th to 9th centuries, to the various Romance languages—the continued use of Latin in the church guaranteed the survival of the written language and consequently of the link with ancient Latin literature. In this way, the church maintained a considerable measure of continuity with the past, notwithstanding the loss of much of ancient literature. On her part, the church inspired a new Latin literature, both in prose and in poetry.
Toward the end of the 4th century, the new phenomenon of hermits and monks also reached the west. The first monasteries in Gaul were modeled after those in the Greek east. In the 6th century, the Italian Benedict founded on the Monte Cassino in southern Italy the first monastery of a new type, for which he had written the rules. Apart from prayer and contemplation, in the new rules much time was reserved for work. That work could take different forms, but intellectual work, such as the copying of manuscripts, was seen as important. Thus, the so-called Benedictine order would be of great significance for the intellectual history of Europe. Monasteries became centers where to some extent books and an ideal of learning would always be preserved, even when, in the 6th to 10th centuries, illiteracy would be prevalent throughout most of western Europe.
The Latin Church had no tradition of missionary work among the heathen until around 600, when Pope Gregory the Great (Gregory I) sent his missionaries to England with the express purpose of converting the Anglo-Saxons. Since then, missionary endeavors, stimulated by the popes, became more normal, although the missionaries often required the support and protection of secular potentates. Here, the Franks offered their help, especially the Carolingian kings, with the result that an intimate cooperation arose between the papacy and Frankish monarchy. The successes of the missions in Germany, Poland, and Scandinavia considerably enlarged the domain of the Catholic Church up to the beginning of the 11th century, while at the same time enhancing the prestige of the papacy.
Compared to the rather independent Latin Church, the Greek Church in the eastern Roman Empire since the 4th and 5th centuries was in a clearly weaker position. Various patriarchs competed for second place after Constantinople—or, as in the case of Alexandria, for a virtually equal place. The patriarch of Constantinople was recognized as the highest in rank, but his independence was regularly infringed upon by the emperor, whose wishes in ecclesiastical matters too had the force of law. It would be wrong, though, to speak of “Caesaropapism” (that is: the emperor as head of the church), since by far most of the emperors in the eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire followed their bishops and synods in theological matters. Still, conflicts between the emperor and the patriarch were not rare, and this must have helped to prevent the emergence of a single and fully independent ecclesiastical authority in the eastern church that could be compared with the papacy in the west. Moreover, the split between Orthodox and Monophysites in the 5th century had no parallel in the western church. Also, in the east the liturgy was often rendered in
The vernacular. This led to Coptic, Syriac, and Armenian liturgies and separate churches (mostly Monophysite), and a little later in the 8th through 10th centuries to Bulgar, Serbian, and Russian liturgies and churches (all Orthodox) under the umbrella of Constantinople.
Monasticism had originated in the eastern Roman Empire, and monks and monasteries would always play an important social and sometimes political role there. On the whole, monastic life in the east had a different character from that in the west. Since the introduction of a monastic rule by the bishop and theologian Basil of Caesarea in Cappadocia toward the end of the 4th century, all monasteries in the eastern empire followed his regulations. These provided ample time for contemplation and for the liturgy and relatively little for work (and no time, or very little, for intellectual work). As a consequence, the Greek Orthodox monasteries became centers of prayer and mysticism, not places of intellectual life. Copying of manuscripts happened in the east too, but not as regularly and on such a scale as in the west. All the monasteries in the east were under the authority of the local bishops, and all of them belonged to the order of Basil, whereas the monasteries in the west were mostly independent of the bishops—thus constituting a rival authority—and would since the 11th century belong to various often competing monastic orders, further splitting ecclesiastical authority.
In their missionary work also, the Greek and Latin churches differed from each other. After the missions in Nubia and among the Slavonic peoples, Constantinople made little effort to bring “barbarian” peoples into the church. Thus, the Orthodox Church, by continuing the classical Greco-Roman attitude that saw the “barbarians” beyond the borders as essentially uninteresting, unimportant, if not contemptible, identified herself more or less with the empire and with “the civilized world.”
The Monophysites of Syria and Egypt, meanwhile, organized themselves in the 6th and 7th centuries in separate churches that became practically independent of Constantinople. After the Arab conquests, that separation became permanent. In the following centuries, the Monophysite churches steadily shrank, although the Coptic Church still represents about 10% of the population of modern-day Egypt. In Syria, they have become a very tiny minority. The older Nestorian Church, on the other hand, flourished, especially in Central Asia, and won adherents as far as China. But in western Asia they were harassed by the Muslim conquerors, and in Central Asia after about 1300 they were persecuted by the Islamic Mongol rulers, which led to their rapid decline.
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