THEODORE OF STUDIUM

HIS LIFE AND TIMES

(759-826)

 

BY

ALICE GARDNER

 

 

 

PREFACE

 

THE object of this book is to present a sketch of a notable man who lived in notable times. The author was attracted to the task not by the consciousness of possessing all the requisite qualifications, but rather by the belief that some work of the kind was wanted; in that Theodore of Studium is well worth knowing, and that very few English people have, as yet, had much opportunity of knowing him. It is earnestly hoped that those who read through this book will realise how, in this one life, were focussed many great historical tendencies which gave their character to the churches and the civil societies of the Middle Ages. But beyond this they will, it is hoped, profit by being brought nearer to one who, with all the faults over which no veil is here thrown, had in him the elements of real greatness. The fascination of Theodore’s character has been felt by most of the historians of that period, even by some who have had the minimum of sympathy with his religious principles.

With regard to the general history of the period, it is pleasant to be able to name three Englishmen whose works are of the highest value : Finlay, whose “History of Greece” has been re-edited by Mr. Tozer; Dr. Hodgkin, whose researches into this period chiefly relate to Western affairs, but who illuminates any branch of history which he has occasion to touch upon; and Professor J. B. Bury, who, in his “History of the Later Roman Empire”, and still more in his invaluable notes to Gibbon, has done very much for those who desire to study both the times of Theodore and Theodore himself.

Of smaller monographs, those on Theodore by Dr. Carl Thomas and Dr. G. A. Schneider have been found very useful. Dr. E. Schwarzlose’s Bilderstreit is a most luminous study of the whole iconoclastic controversy. Schlossers Bildersturmende Kaiser is still useful, but more valuable for the purposes of the present work has been the little treatise, De of Abbé Marin.

The writer has to thank Dr. Edwin Freshfield, of the Mint, Chipstead, for the beautiful photographs of portions of Studium as it now is, and of the Golden Gate, and also for the loan of some very helpful books; and Dr. Kenyon, of the British Museum, for permission to reproduce a part of a page of a Studite Psalter (facing p. 146). She has also to thank her brothers, Professor Percy Gardner of Oxford, and Professor Ernest Gardner of London, for help in revising the proofs.

CAMBRIDGE, 1905.

 

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION—GENERAL OUTLOOK FROM CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY

 

 

IN the south-west corner of the city of Constantinople, near to the Seven Towers and the Golden Gate, stands the Mosque called Mir Achor Djami, formerly the basilica of St. John of the Studium. Few passing travellers know of its existence, and even archaeological explorers, seeking, as a rule, either the purely classical or the purely oriental, have given it but little attention. The hour will soon be too late, as both the Church and the remains of the monastic buildings adjoining are speedily disappearing, and in the words of a recent traveller, “it seems certain to perish in a few years if nothing is done”. Yet those who have studied the beautiful early capitals, with the rich and delicate acanthus foliage and the crossing cornucopias, and have admired the proportions of the Church whence the marble pavement and the tasteful decorations have long since been removed, cannot acquiesce readily in this loss to all lovers of early Christian art. To those who know even a little of the history of the Monastery and of those who dwelt in it, the desecration and neglect may seem matter for regret but hardly for surprise. For it only reflects the comparative indifference with which, at least till recent times, not only the reading public in general but the whole academic world has regarded the post-classical period of Greek history. Yet that period comprises the early developments of Christian doctrine and monastic discipline in regions which, after all, were near to their original home. And both from the point of view of the ecclesiastical investigator and of the more general historian, the part played by Studium is by no means contemptible. It has well been called “the Clugny of the East”. Yet in some ways, Studium has rendered even greater services to the Church and the world than were accomplished by Clugny. Like Clugny it became the parent of many centres of religious life and arduous labour; like Clugny it maintained the cause of spiritual authority against material force; but it had a task greater from an intellectual stand­point than any which fell singly to any particular monastery of the West, in keeping alive the torch of ancient learning. If neither Clugny nor Studium escaped from exaggerations in the pursuit of their ideals, it is surely now time to estimate aright the services rendered by both and the constancy shown in both to the causes which claimed their devotion.

It is not, however, with the general history of Studium that we are at present concerned. That history had begun very long before the times during which the subject of this biography lived, nor did his connection with it begin early in his life—even in his active life. In fact, to his biographers it may seem an additional proof of his strongly-marked character that a place in which he spent comparatively little of his laborious life became afterwards so closely associated with his memory that the Studium of earlier days, great and rich as it must have been, has merged its historical interest in that of a community of which it was in no sense the parent. The origin and character of the Monastery will concern us when we come to the beginning of Theodore s rule and the influence of which it became the centre. At present we will attempt to discriminate the leading features of the period when Theodore first saw the light, and which made up the physical and social environment of his earlier days.

Theodore, commonly called the Studite, was born in Constantinople in 759 A.D. It may be allowed that the general indifference to the study of the early Middle Ages, especially to that of Eastern Europe, before the ninth century, if not justifiable, is more or less explicable. The reader is confused by wearisome spectacles of palace intrigues, monotonous wars, hair-splitting theological controversies seasoned by bitter personal venom, and he finds in the East few if any men of power to give interest and significance to the current of events. But, on the other hand, he finds after every time of unusual depression, a lift­ing of the clouds, the advent of a stronger dynasty or a new policy which wards off immediate dangers, and gives the Empire a new lease of life. For if in other things Byzantium was the daughter of Rome, she was pre-eminently so in that peculiar recuperative power which won for the City the title of Eternal. Readers of Roman history are puzzled to account for the fact that so cumbersome a vessel, with so many defects in construction, should have weathered so many storms. But from early times onward, ever and anon, when foes without and dissensions within had seemed likely to bring about a tonal destruction, some able man or some fortunate conjunction of men and circumstances had effected, if not a regeneration of the state, a re­adaptation to altered conditions. So had it been more than once before the days of Augustus; so again in his time; in that of Diocletian and Constantine; in that of Justinian; later on, in the days of Heraclius and in those of Leo the Isaurian. Permanent success was granted to none of these reorganizing emperors. Yet the work accomplished in each case was a service to human civilization. For the Empire was through many ages the only guardian of Helleno-Roman culture against the untamed barbarism of the North and the organized fanaticism of the East.

The leading questions to be thought out, worked out, or fought out during the latter part of the eighth century and the succeeding period, and also the champions of rival causes, were on a larger scale and of more general interest than those of the two centuries preceding. This becomes manifest if we take a most cursory glance at the chief events happening about the time of Theodore’s birth. England will not concern us in our present studies, but we may notice that England was coming more into the stream of European progress, since just then Offa of Mercia seemed to be attaining that superiority over the other kings in Britain which afterwards passed over to the West Saxons, and the same Offa, while doing something towards the creation of a united English nation, was also tightening the bonds between England and Rome. Again, it was about four years before Theodore’s birth that the Englishman Boniface was slain in the midst of his missionary labours on the continent—labours that indicated an aspiration after a united Christendom, and helped to bring about a lasting result through temporary failure. In Western Europe, Pippin the Frank was at that moment fighting against the Saracens in Spain, and by his victories, in conjunction with the remains of the Visigothic people, wresting Narbonne from the Mohammedans, and thereby restricting their power to the regions south of the Pyrenees. Five years previously, in 754, Pippin, on receiving the rite of coronation at the hands of Pope Stephen II, had exchanged the title of Mayor of the Palace for that of King of the Franks, and two years later he had made that arrangement in Italy which was the beginning of the temporal power of the Papacy. For in the year, which, as Dr. Hodgkin has pointed out, almost exactly corresponds with the date—on the other side of our era—of the foundation of Rome, the Power which, in spite of changes in situation and in constitution, still claimed to hold the undying authority of the “Respublica”, had lost all hold on Italy by the fall of the exarchate of Ravenna into the hands of the Lombards (751 A.D.). The Lombards were speedily to be ousted by the Frank, who at first conquered not for himself but for the successor of St. Peter. But the emperors, especially those of the strong Isaurian dynasty that began with Leo III, were not likely to view so serious a loss with equanimity. Whether Italy and the Empire would be permanently loosened from the ties, both secular and spiritual, which had bound them together was still an open question in the early days of Theodore.

For these events in the West were closely connected with movements which began in Theodore’s native city of Constantinople, and which largely determined the character both of his mind and of his fortunes. At this time, as we have already seen, the Empire was making successful resistance to external foes and to internal disorders. Constantine V (Copronymus or Caballinus), who had been reigning for nineteen years when Theodore was born, was pursuing the general lines struck out by his father, Leo III, first of the Isaurian house. It was Leo who effected a brilliant repulse of the Saracens from the walls of Constantinople in 718 A.D. (“really an ecumenical date”, as Professor Bury remarks) since from this time forth the great Omeyyad dynasty declined in power, and Christendom was saved from immediate danger. Leo and Constantine were constantly carrying on war with the Saracens in Asia, and, speaking generally, they were successful. At the same time the Bulgarians were constantly invading Thrace; and in the year of Theodore’s birth, Constantine suffered a defeat at their hands, which was adequately avenged a few years later.

We have again to reckon Leo and Constantine among the later Roman legislators or codifiers. The Ecloga, a compendium of the laws to be acknowledged in public and private life, was published in 740, and was accompanied by codes relating particularly to military, agricultural, and naval matters respectively. The Isaurians were careful administrators, and looked themselves into the financial details of the Empire with a view to accuracy and economy.

Strange indeed must it seem that men of such clear heads, with great organizing faculties, patient in carrying out their designs, apparently conscientious in the discharge of their duties, free to all appearance from either petty scruple or misleading sentimentalism, should have superfluously embarked on an enterprise which well-nigh cost them their power in the ancient home of their empire, and which aroused an opposition to their policy among the ablest thinkers and most capable workers of those who owned their sway.

The bearings of the Iconoclastic Controversy on the whole life of the time, the conflicts which it involved among theological conceptions and practical principles, will concern us much in the course of our inquiries. The origin must remain obscure. Here we will merely point out a few of the most notable events in connection with it which occurred before the beginning of our narrative. It was most likely in the year 726 that the first edict against images was issued by Leo III. Whether or not the great volcanic disturbances which took place in 725, near to the island of Thera, had seemed a demonstration of Divine wrath against idolatry in the eyes of an Emperor whom his direst foes would not accuse of superstition; whether he was following the policy of the Caliph Yezid, who had begun operations against images a few years before; whether he was influenced by the injunctions of Jews, heretics, or renegade Catholics—are questions we must postpone for the present. The order was issued on the authority of the Emperor only. His attempt to obtain the assent and support of the Patriarch Germanus signally failed, as did apparently his efforts to win the approval of the heads of the Academy which represented and fostered higher education in Constantinople. The lower classes of the people were, as might naturally be supposed, violently averse to the proposed changes, and apparently the first actual sufferers in the con­flict were the workmen employed in hewing to pieces a mosaic representing Christ which stood above the gate called Chalce. Probably the measures which followed a State Council—oddly called a Silentium— in 739 were, no less than the previous ones, due to Leo's personal initiation and authority. The Patriarch Germanus was formally deposed, and a more pliant ecclesiastic, Anastasius by name, was set on his throne.

Meantime, a strong opposition had arisen in the West. Pope Gregory II, on receiving notice of the iconoclastic decrees, had at once protested in writing : “That the Emperor ought not to concern himself with matters of faith nor to change the ancient doctrines of the Church as taught by the Holy Fathers”. The subsequent action of the Pope is not easy to trace. Italy was in a seething state, and the iconoclastic decrees seem rather to have precipitated than originated a widespread revolt against the Emperor, to which heavy taxes had already given provocation. According to the principal Greek authority, Gregory stimulated this resistance; according to the more probable accounts of the Latin writers, he tried to restrain it. Policy at that juncture might have prompted the same course of action as that which was prescribed by loyalty and desire for peace. In 731 Gregory III, having succeeded to the Papacy, called a synod of Italian bishops, which denounced the penalty of excommunication against all despisers of the holy images. The religious difference was now added to the earlier Italian complications. The Emperor withdrew both Illyricum and Southern Italy from obedience to the Roman See. When the Pope required outside help against the Lombards, Constantinople was the last quarter whence it might be hoped for. The result, most momentous for the whole course of European history, was, as we have seen, the armed interven­tion of the Franks, and the abeyance of imperial authority in the West, till it should be restored under very different auspices, with new duties and new supports.

The iconoclastic policy of Constantine V, who succeeded his father in 741, seems to have been more thorough-going and systematic than that of Leo. He attempted to gain support for his measures by means of a Church Council; but as none of the great patriarchs were present it is not counted ex­cept as the pseudo-council of Constantinople of 753. It had been preceded by “Silentia”, or councils, in various cities, was attended by three hundred and thirty-eight bishops, and was presided over by Theodosius, Bishop of Ephesus. In the iconoclastic decree which it passed, the favourers of images were placed in the dilemma of choosing between Monophysitism or Nestorianism; either they must be endeavoring to represent the Divine Nature to the human senses, which would be blasphemous, or they must be dividing the nature of Christ, which would be heretical. As we shall see hereafter, this argument had as much force as most dilemmas on the minds of those who had learned to parry intellectual blows, and not much more on those who, if they could not lodge themselves between the horns of a dilemma, would have little standing-room for their religious opinions. What is of more immediate interest to us is the ceaseless warfare waged from this time forward between the iconoclastic emperors and the monks.

It is by no means easy to decide whether Constantine V persecuted the monks because they upheld the icons, or whether icons and monks together provoked his detestation as maintaining a particular type of piety which he personally disliked, and which seemed to him undesirable for the public cause. He and his father, whether attracted or not by the simplicity of Mohammedan doctrine, had seen Mohammedanism at work, and they knew that a religion without asceticism, without external symbols, without saint-worship or religious orders, possessed a power in the Reid and on the march which enabled ordinary men to forego private inclinations and face imminent death.

For centuries there had been a recognized inconsistency in Christian lands between the ideal reverenced by the pious and the claims of the state on the ser­vices of the citizen. To practise celibacy when many countries were perishing for lack of men, to gather into separate communities at a time when the public service demanded a patriotic zeal of the most active kind—to love to dwell on hidden mysteries and to make much of fine points of metaphysical subtlety, when sound practical sense was the one thing needed to save the state—all this might move an irritable patriot to secularism and dispose an autocratic ruler to persecution. It was not only the monks, but also laymen whose religious practices and feelings resembled those of the monks who moved the ire of Constantine. The tendency to call on a sacred name—of Christ or of the Virgin—in a moment of unexpected peril, the habit of frequent church-going, the observance of vigils and fasts—became a crime in the eyes of one who had practically the power to decide what should constitute crime in a despotically ruled empire. To compel monks to give up their wealth might seem necessary for the threatened security of the state. To enforce the breach of monastic vows was undeniably intolerant, but not beyond the reach of justification under stress of circumstances. But to expose to public ridicule and to visit with severe penalties those practices which popular piety approved and clerical learning justified, was to throw down the glove to the religion of the people. Constantine was not an argumentative theologian, like some of his predecessors and followers. Yet he could form a telling argument, sharpened with a point of ridicule, as when, à propos of the worship of the Virgin, he asked an ecclesiastic what was the worth of a wooden box that had once held gold? But if the theological emperors had sometimes made themselves undignified, the persecuting emperors soon made themselves hated. It is difficult to give them credit, as some of their Protestant apologists would do, for a desire to reform religion and to make the people more rational in their piety. How much of a real reforming spirit is to be found among those who carried out the iconoclastic policy we shall have to inquire hereafter. Our present object is only to obtain a general view of the conflicting tendencies in Church and State at the time when our narrative begins.

One word more before we pass from this preliminary survey to the main subject of our study; we are apt, when we read of anarchy and of barbarian invasions, both in East and West; when we see the same kind of ecclesiastical discussions going on all over Europe; when we realize the deterioration of art and literature in the lands where, a few centuries before, they had reached so high a point of development—to fancy that by this time Graeco-Roman civilization was all played out, that the name “Roman Empire” was as inapplicable to the dominion of Constantine as to that which was founded half a century later by Charles. Yet such a view would be erroneous. In spite of decadence in many realms of culture, in spite of dangers which had robbed the Eastern Empire of its ancient security, and of disorders that hindered the ordinary course of civilized life, in spite of the loss of many treasures and traditions of ancient times, and the gradual drifting away of Constantinople from the yet more venerated home of culture and of order, yet after all the city where Theodore was born and bred was at that moment the focus of the best civilization that existed, and contained within itself enough of the ancient world to vindicate it from any suspicion of encroaching barbarism. Remote indeed seems the Constantinople of the eighth century from all our modern ideas and ways, yet the London or the Paris of those days might perhaps seem still farther removed from us than that “queenly” city. For there men could still enjoy the delights and refinements of Greek life, and admire the masterpieces of Hellenic art, as they strolled from hippodrome and theatre to church and monastery, from the busy harbours of the Golden Horn to the secluded garden of the old foundation of Studium.

 

 

CHAPTER II

BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF THEODORE—FORMATIVE INFLUEXCES OF HIS EARLY LIFE