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ORTHODOXY AND THE REFORMATION It is tempting to begin a talk entitled "Orthodoxy and the Reformation" by declaring that there is no connection between the two -- we never had one, and that's it. But it is far from true to say that there is no connection between the two as the link is there, plainly for all to see, albeit five hundred years earlier. Many of our history books give the impression that what they call "The Reformation" was a sudden, grass-roots revolt against the Western Church, pioneered by the monk, Martin Luther, in Germany in 1517. This is misleading because the seeds of the revolt were sown first, in the turbulent run-up to the historic break between the Eastern and Western churches in 1054 and then in the five hundred years which followed These seeds briefly were, the growing imperialistic designs of the Western Papacy, coupled with the increasing power of "the priesthood", both in the running of the Church and also inside the monasteries; and in cultivating, amongst other novel developments, daily and votive masses and clerical celibacy. It can now be seen that just because the Eastern church rejected these changes, it hardened the attitudes of their Western brothers, with the inevitable result -- the explosion which happened in 1517. But in between, three other events disturbed the status quo. First of these was the sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and the setting up there of a Latin patriarch. True, that arrangement only lasted fifty years, but many Greek-minded historians would claim that we are still reaping the results of that violent conquest -- in Kosovo, for example. Relations between the Eastern and Western churches became so poor that something had to be done and there followed two quasi-Councils, both arranged to patch up the various quarrels. One was called the Council of Lyons and the second and more important the Council of Florence in 1438-9. At both of these agreement was achieved but when the Eastern representatives reached home, the treaties were rejected. This proved to be a last chance for peace, as just fourteen years later, in 1463, Constantinople was conquered by the Turks and life was never the same again in the East. It was against this background that the so-called Reformation errupted in Europe at the beginning of the sixthteenth century, only sixty-four years afterwards. The Turkish overlords were in many ways tolerant of Christianity. The Sultan appointed a new patriarch who had to pay a heavy fee for the privilege of being enthroned, but in return the Church received some protection, even as a second-class religion. The Church became what the Turks called a millet which meant in effect that the patriarch now became, not only the head of the Orthodox church, but also the head of the (nominally Greek) nation as well. In time, the Turkish occupation had two great effects on the Church for which survival became the all-important aspect. First, as could be expected, it caused an upsurge of conservatism -- nothing could or indeed, should be changed. And secondly, it led eventually to almost the opposite of that attitude, some degree of westernisation. This came about because of contacts which the Church made in non-Muslim countries with members of other Churches, e.g. the Jesuits and the Lutherans, and in Constatinople itself, with the chaplains of foreign embassies, who often played a religious as well as a political role. By comparison, the Orthodox recognised that their standards of education were lacking and the tendency arose for forward-looking Orthodox to go to Europe for their schooling. The first important meeting of Orthodox and Protestants began in 1573 when a delegation of Lutheran scholars from Tubingen, visited Constantinople and gave the Patriarch a copy of the Augsburg Confession translated into Greek. Obviously they hoped to start some sort of reformation among the Greeks. As one of their leaders said "If they wish to take thought for the eternal salvation of their souls, they must join us and embrace our teaching, or else perish eternally". The patriarch wrote three letters to them and eventually declared the correspondence closed, but the exchange shows the interest felt by the reformers for the Orthodox. More important, the Patriarch's replies are the first clear response of Orthodoxy to the new doctrines of the Reformation. The chief matters discussed were free will and grace; Scripture and Tradition, the sacraments, prayers for the dead and to the saints. That exchange ended amicably but not so the first major contact with Rome. This happened in the Ukraine which at the time was part of Lithuania and Poland because of the union of their rulers, and the Jesuits were keen to make the people of "Little Russia" as the Ukraine was called, into Roman Catholics. Eventually in 1596, a council was called at Brest-Litovsk to proclaim union with Rome but two bishops and a large delegation from the monasteries and the parishes voted to remain Orthodox and in the end both sides just excommunicated each other. This council in 1596 has tended to embitter Roman-Orthodox relations to modern times. One of the representatives of the Patriarch at Brest-Litovsk was a young Greek priest called Cyril Lukaris. He was appalled by the treatment of the people of Little Russia by the Poles and when he became Patriarch, he devoted much of his great energy to combating all Roman Catholic influence in the Turkish Empire. This meant that he became deeply immersed in both politics and also in the natural opposition, Lutheranism. Its a long and involved story which we can't go into now. Five times was Cyril displaced from the Patriarchial throne and five times restored. Eventually he was strangled by Turkish soldiers and his body thrown into the Bosphorus -- a tragic end, for he was an able man. But he is sometimes dubbed as "the Calvinist Patriarch" for a book he wrote called his "Confessions" which was condemmed by no less than six local councils between 1638 and 1691. This was written after his contact with a Dutch Calvinist, Cornelius van Haag who significantly influenced him in a reformed direction but he was really alone in taking this road. In other places, away from the Ukraine, relations with the Roman Catholics were more cordial in the seventeenth century, especially in the Greek islands under Venetian rule, but after 1700 these contacts became less frequent. In 1724, a large part of the Antiochian Patriarchate submitted to Rome and this made the rest of the orthodox world more cautious. The climax of anti-Roman feeling came in 1755 when the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch and Jerusalem declared Latin baptism invalid and demanded that all converts to Orthodoxy be baptised again. But these things ebbed and flowed. The great Orthodox compendium of spirituality called the Philokalia was first published in Venice in 1782. It was a huge volume of 1,207 folio pages and the Monk Nicodemus of Mount Athos who put it all together included Roman Catholic works of devotion by Lorenzo Scupoli and Ignatius Loyola. He was also a strong advocate of weekly communion for the faithful at a time when most Orthodox received communion just three times a year. Looking back, it appears to us now that there was much talking without any tangible results. The reasons for this are plain to see. In trying to come to terms, as for example, at the Council of Florence, both East and West were really hoping for military aid against their foes and God hardly got a look in to the agreements which were made and then discarded. With the Lutherans the Orthodox had little common ground except their mutual fear and dislike of Rome. This, Steven Runciman says in his book "The Great Church in Captivity", was not enough. He goes on: "The Orthodox, with their mysticism, their taste for the apophatic approach and their loyalty to their old traditions, belonged to a different world, a world which the West could not understand" (page 319). This, as we shall see in future talks, is still a fair comment. Fr John-Mark Titterington |
