Between the 650s and the middle of the eighth century the territory of the see of Constantinople was subject to the same threats and to the same losses as the secular state. The provincial infrastructure of the church in particular was jeopardised in many of these areas, for the constant raids and invasions, and the economic damage which was caused, brought about in many outlying areas the flight of the local clergy to safer regions. This was an issue addressed in the so-called Quinisext Council (or Council in Trullo, because it convened in the domed hall of the imperial palace) held in 692, when a number of matters relating to church discipline and the fate of the exposed provincial dioceses were debated. At the Council of Constantinople held in 680 the total of bishops who attended numbered 174; at the Quinisext in 692 the total was 211, although not all were present at both, so that the total is somewhat larger. By the council held at Nikaia in 787, the number of attending bishops rises to 319, a result partly of the stabilisation of the internal political situation and a more secure travelling environment, partly of the creation of new bishoprics to compensate for lost sees now under enemy authority, especially in the east. The archbishops of Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch continued to send representatives, of course, and they continued to manage their own ecclesiastical administration, following the original pattern of dioceses. Continued internal stability, and the beginnings of political and territorial expansion in the later ninth century, brought a new phase of expansion to the Constantinopolitan church. At councils held at Constantinople in 869 and 879 the number of sees has increased again, especially in the Balkans, and by the time of the patriarchate of Nicholas I in the years 901-907, an episcopal list enumerates some 442 sees in Asia Minor, 139 in the Balkans, as well as 34 in southern Italy and Sicily and 22 in the Aegean region. This situation of expansion continued apace with the reconquest of territory in northern Syria and Iraq under the emperors of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, and was only reversed after the loss of central Anatolia to the Turks in the 1070s.
Unlike the state, the church did not evolve new administrative units. The older diocesan names were retained, although the site of some bishoprics changed with the fortunes of the various towns and cities in which they were originally located, or as new towns and new bishoprics were established or revived. And bishops were important not just to the administration of the church and the pastoral care of the Christian community. They were the spiritual leaders of their communities and representatives of the church, but as managers of sometimes substantial resources in land, their views were important. In times of political turmoil, the role of bishops was crucial, since it was they who might give a lead to a particular faction, and they were in any case expected to judge the rights and wrongs of such matters. But since they were invariably drawn into political events, they could also suffer the consequences if they sided with the wrong faction. The political relevance of senior clergy was well understood by the emperors, who had a vested interest in the selection and appointment to such posts. Thus, during the iconoclastic period, the support of the vast majority of the bishops for the imperial cause was probably a major factor in the stability of the rule of the emperors from Leo III to Leo IV. Senior clergy often acted effectively as imperial officials, also, representing the government or an emperor on foreign missions and embassies.
There was one important change in the political influence of the clergy during this middle period. Since the fourth century there had been a resident synod at Constantinople, chaired by the patriarch, to deal with affairs of ecclesiastical discipline, dogma and liturgical matters. It consisted of the bishops in the metropolitan region and those visiting from more distant sees. But from the ninth century its membership was limited to senior bishops and patriarchal officials and it begins to play a more important role in Constantinopolitan church politics.
Beginning in the tenth century also canon law takes on a more significant position in relation to the (Roman) civil law of the empire, and from the middle and later eleventh century church courts begin to play a greater role in the administration ofjustice and in the everyday affairs of the ordinary population. Eventually this meant that the influence and the moral and political status and authority of the church in the provinces was thereby considerably enhanced, encouraging greater feelings of local pride and autonomy, as well as the readiness of provincial elites to question the actions and motives of the court or the elements which dominated it.
World History
