Rev. Études Sud-Est Europ., XLV, 1–4, p. 73–85, Bucarest, 2007

ESCHATOLOGY AND POLITICAL THEOLOGY IN THE LAST CENTURIES OF BYZANTIUM

PETRE GURAN

An important change of eschatological beliefs in the last centuries of Byzantium mirrored a transformation of the Byzantine society and power structure. The political decline of the empire asked for a new cosmological paradigm. Thus what we call in this paper ecclesiastical eschatology represents the effort done by Byzantine scholars to respond to the new political reality. In order to evaluate the transformation we will draw an outline of early imperial eschatology and compare it with the later eschatological literature.

In a brief reflection on the end of History, Gennadios Scholarios, the first ecumenical patriarch after the fall of New Rome, evokes with astonishment the constant irony that history offers to those who try to understand its mysteries: the first bishop of the imperial city was Metrophanes and the last one who died in the city before the conquest was also Metrophanes; the first Christian emperor was a Constantine whose mother was Helen, and the last Christian emperor of Constantinople was also a Constantine whose mother was Helen1. Scholarios then continues with several more or less obvious prophecies of the Last Days, but because of these two coincidences the impression of the end of a historical cycle was striking.

For Scholarios, who retired from the patriarchate twice on account of the incessant intrigues of his compatriots, chronology supported his view that the world was coming to an end. He proposed two possibilities for the last year of the creation: 1492 or 1513. In both cases it was close enough to abandon history to the last manifestations of evil. Nevertheless he was the one who inaugurated a new epoch in the life of the Christian community of the former Byzantine state as first ecumenical patriarch in the Ottoman Empire. He even tried to convert the Turkish conqueror Mahomet II to Christianity, but failed. Scholarios’ feeling was that the restoration of the empire was a mere illusion, but that the Church still remained to defend and guide its flock in these last years2.

1 M-H. Congourdeau, Courants de pensée apocalyptiques à Byzance sous les Paléologues, et Scholarios, Chronographie. Édition corrigée, traduction, annotation, dans B. Lellouch et S. Yerasimos ed., Les traditions apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople (Actes du colloque d’Istanbul, avril 1996), Varia Turcica XXXIII, Paris 1999.

2 F. Tinnefeld, Gennadios Scholarios, La théologie byzantine, Paris, 2001.

Petre Guran 2

74

Since the furthest Antiquity human societies have needed, even at the climax of their growth, a story, or even an explanation, of their end. This need might possibly be linked to the influence of the biological reality of death, religious patterns, or the unbearable terror of History. My purpose is not to search for an explanation of this need, but to analyze the content and particularity of this general pattern in the case of a dying empire. Furthermore I will attempt to find elements for understanding how Byzantine society prepared itself for its “end”.

Byzantium, one of the most successful empires in world history, with more then 1100 years of history from 330 (Constantine’s inauguration of the new capital) to 1453 (the death of the last Greek emperor), also offers a good example of a political structure and ideology that survived 250 years after the first conquest of its capital in 1204. What was the political thought produced during this period (1204-1453), when Byzantium was reduced to a second rank state in the eastern Mediterranean without officially abandoning its claims to universal power? Common historiography taught that Byzantine society was never capable in those last centuries of adapting its ideological discourse to the political and military realities until the final day of its history. I would like to put forth a different interpretation of Byzantine intellectual movements in the 14th century. I believe that a view discordant with official political thought was produced in this age, and that this was not a unique occurrence at the periphery of society.

Imperial eschatology

The main Christian eschatological scheme (eschatology as representation and theories about the end of the world) in Byzantium had already been elaborated in the first Christian centuries. This initial eschatology attempted to establish a chronology in keeping with the expectations of an immediate end of history, or to explain the delay of the end, for which Saint Paul had offered a mysterious key in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. The apostle said that someone or something would oppose evil until the end of the world, which would occur when God decided. The identity of this opponent of evil (ho katechon or to katechon) was left open for further interpretation. Whether one was awaiting the millennium (the belief in a thousand years reign of Christ on earth, as it is stated in the Apocalypse) in the same generation, or allowing a future for history by explaining the reasons of the delay, the universal Roman Empire was a reality to be taken into account: either it was the supreme evil to which the Epistle of John gave the name of Antichrist, or, on the contrary, its worldly opponent. It was the second tendency – formulated by Christian thinkers since the second century – that opened the way to a positive integration of the empire in Christian eschatology. Progressively, beginning with the fourth century eschatology concentrated on the person of the

3 Eschatology and Political Theology in the Last Centuries of Byzantium

75

emperor3. His basic role, before the end of the world, was to oppose evil. I fancy calling this development “imperial eschatology”.

Nevertheless, the two eschatological trends, millenarian and katechontic, both believe that in the last act of history the imperial power will eventually become the manifestation of evil, the Antichrist. The Antichrist was best personified by an emperor. Thus successive eschatological crises in Byzantine history identified a bad emperor with the Antichrist. The most striking example is the portrait of the emperor Justinian drawn by the sixth century historian Procopius of Caesarea4. Latter examples are the iconoclastic emperors such as described by the worshipers of icons. This eschatology marked the function of political power until the very end of the empire.

Coming back to the positive trend of imperial eschatology, another legendary character arose between the fourth and the seventh century: the last good emperor. The clearest description of the last good emperor appears in the Vision of Pseudo-Methodius of Patara, written in the context of the Arabic conquest of the eastern part of the Byzantine Empire around 690 AD, to support the hope of the Byzantines that their lost territories would be recovered. Eschatology presented this comeback of the empire as a necessity because Jerusalem was the chosen place for the last action of the good emperor: he would depose his crown on the holy cross on Golgotha whence the cross and the crown would ascend to Heaven in anticipation of the Second Coming of Christ. The legend of Alexander the Great was integrated into the scenario of the last good emperor. Thus the impure people, locked out by Alexander behind the iron gates, were identified with the biblical people of Gog and Magog. The final victory of the Roman emperor was certain, at the price of a subsequent quick end to history.

After the seventh century, the firm installation of the Arabs in the new territories produced another shift in eschatological discourse. Constantinople, already acknowledged as New Rome, began to acquire the features of Jerusalem, so as to concentrate in one central place the whole scenario of the end. The emperors themselves, in search of a renewed sacred status after the iconoclastic crisis, entered into an eschatological mentality. The development of the imperial palace in Constantinople, and the display there of sacred relics as a reminder of Christ and his followers were intended to place Jerusalem symbolically at the center of political power. Some of these attempts to anticipate a final scenario were criticized by members of the clergy, but the political role of eschatology was already firmly established. The “visions of Daniel” and the latter prophecies

3 B. McGinn, Visions of the End, Apocalyptic traditions in the Middle Ages, Columbia University Press, New York, 1998.

4 P. Magdalino, The history of the future and its uses: prophecy, policy and propaganda, The Making of Byzantine History. Studies Dedicated to Donald M. Nicol on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. R. Beaton and C. Roueché (Aldershot, 1993), 3–34.

Petre Guran 4

76

ascribed to the emperor Leo the Wise continued to build on the same imperial eschatology5.

What is striking in this type of eschatology is the absence of any role of the Church in the Last Days. Even in the final confrontation with the Antichrist, in order to encourage the last groups of believers, the main role was given to two prophets of the past, Enoch and Elijah, whom God received directly in paradise. A variation occurs in the Apocalypse of Andrew the Fool, who adds Saint John the Theologian to their company, but there is no attempt to involve any contemporary clerical figure in the scenario. The Church as an institution was never seen as a civitas opposed to the earthly empire, as in the West on the Augustinian model.

Another main preoccupation of eschatology was to deconstruct the oppression of the immediate end. It thus built up a complex chronology to keep the end at a reasonable distance from the current generation. Already at the beginning of the third century, Hippolytus proposed a chronology based on the six days of creation interpreted as six millennia of world history. His calculation proposed a possible end of history in the first half of the sixth century6. Nevertheless the question of the millennium arose anew with the Christianization of the empire. Eusebius of Caesarea, founder of the political theology of the Christian empire, suggested the idea that the Roman empire could be the millennium, as an epoch of diffusion of the Christian faith and organization of the Church. But this point of view never prevailed and apocalyptic expectations and new eschatological literature systematically tormented society. The last Byzantine chronology developed on the seven days scheme, delaying the end of world history until around 1500.

Nevertheless, already in the fourth century, another concept appeared in connection with the days of creation: that of the eighth day, the symbol of the transfigured world after the Second Coming of Christ (Basil the Great mentions it; the octagonal basilicas of the 4th century could also be linked to this conception). Completely unhistorical and rather millenarian, this concept emerged together with the development of the holy liturgy and signifies a vision of the other world during earthly existence. The liturgy was later interpreted as the 8th day by Maximus Confessor, the patriarch Germanos and Symeon the New Theologian (+1028).

Ecclesiastical eschatology

The military events of the last decades of the 12th century and the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 by the Crusaders and the Venetian fleet caused the break-up of the Byzantine empire into several political entities competing for its

5 G. Podskalsky, Représentation du temps dans l’eschatologie impériale byzantine, dans Le Temps chrétien de la fin de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge, II–XIII siècles, Paris, 1984, p. 439–450.

6 Richard Landes, Lest the Millenium be Fulfilled: Apocalyptic Expectations and the Pattern of Western Chronography 100–800 CE, in W. Verbeke, D. Verhelst, A. Welkenhuysen eds., The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, Leuven University Press, 1988, p. 137–156.

5 Eschatology and Political Theology in the Last Centuries of Byzantium

77

succession. But the harshest issue was the continuation of the Byzantine Church. In 1208, the metropolitans came to the conclusion that an ecumenical patriarch could be elected and installed in Niceea. Thus the function of patriarch of Constantinople gained the same universality as the emperor. The image of Moses and Aaron leading Israel through the desert, used in a eulogy of patriarch Michael Autoreianos, brought the patriarch to the same level as the emperor. Three other major crises of the thirteenth century contributed to the development of a separation of Church and empire: the conflict between the emperor Michael VIII Paleologus and the patriarch Arsenios over the deposition of John IV Lascaris, the Union with the Roman Church in Lyons (1274), and the reforms of patriarch Athanasius (1303–1310).

As a consequence new monastic movements arose in the fourteenth century in connexion with political issues of central importance for the empire. After the more political Arsenite movement, which contested the legitimacy of all the patriarchs almost half a century after the deposition and banishment of Arsenios (1262), arose what is generally called the Hesychast movement. At its origins it was a purely mystical doctrine, based on a particular form of prayer whose conceptual starting point lies in the great mystics of the fourth century (Evagrius, Macarius, and some writings of Origen under the name of Nil), but which took a particular shape with the writings of Symeon the New Theologian (11th c.), Nikephoros the Solitary (13th c.), the metropolitan Theoleptos of Philadelphia (13/14th c.), and particularly Gregory Sinaites and Gregory Palamas in the 14th century. Hesychia (silence standing here for the ascetical practice linked to the Jesus-prayer) seems to have already been generally practiced on Mount Athos when the polemic broke out between Barlaam of Calabria, who accused these monks of heresy, and Gregory Palamas, who took their defense as bearers of particular sainthood. This was the occasion to give a theological foundation to the mystical aspect of Hesychasm7. The practice of the prayer of the name of God, accompanied by physical exercise (askesis: similar to Yoga practices) was said to produce the vision of a heavenly light identified with God himself, called the uncreated light or uncreated grace of God. Palamas attempted to explain how it was possible to see, to know or to experience God while He remained essentially unknowable to His creation. He distinguished between the essence of God, who is beyond any knowledge, and the manifestations or energies of God, through which God communicates with His creation. This theology was first banished as a new heresy by leading Byzantine intellectuals and several bishops until it was recognized as orthodox after several local church councils held in Constantinople (1341, 1347, 1351, and 1368).

This theological dispute provoked a series of monks to leave their “deserts” (monasteries and hermitages mostly on Mount Athos) and to follow Gregory Palamas to the open political stage, in order to defend his theological opinions. After the first victory of Palamas’ theology in 1347, these Palamite monks were promoted by the emperor John VI Kantakouzenos to the most important metropolitan

7 J. Meyendorff, Introduction à l'étude de Grégoire Palamas, Paris, 1959.

Petre Guran 6

78

dioceses of the patriarchate of Constantinople. Their role was decisive in the Council of 1351 and significant in the intellectual debate that followed during the next three decades. Members of this group occupied the patriarchal throne until the end of the 14th century (Kallistos, Philotheos Kokkinos, Anthony IV). Philotheos Kokkinos played the most important role among them in assuring the final victory of Palamism (1368) and in creating a new conception of the patriarchal function. Another concern of this group was to spread information about Hesychast spirituality in other Orthodox territories which no longer belonged to the Byzantine empire, the eastern patriarchates and the Slavic countries. On the ecclesiastical level, their strategy was to choose new metropolitans from among their disciples for the new dioceses in eastern and southeastern Europe (Cyprian and Photius for Kiev, Anthimus and Chariton for Walachia). The activity of these agents of the Hesychasts is visible at every level. They were involved in politics, reformed liturgical practices, influenced the iconography of their age, which is an aspect of the so-called Paleologan renaissance in art, and spread a particular spiritual literature in the Slavic commonwealth of Byzantium.

Above all, their political activism is linked with a new perspective on eschatology, which finds its most powerful expression in Gregory Palamas’ writings. This particular accent on eschatology is linked with a new definition of time. Palamas had to explain how it was possible for the apostles on Mount Tabor, for instance, as for his friends, the Hesychasts, to have a mystical experience of the transfigured world of the Second Coming of Christ during their lifetime. His solution was to consider this “event” outside any historical context, including even the apocalyptic scenario of the Last Days. The Second Coming is thus already a fulfilled reality, which was opened to mankind precisely with the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. From that moment Palamas speaks of the “consummation of time” and the “presence of the kingdom of God” among men. When a Christian in the 14th century received the vision of divine light, he automatically became a contemporary of the apostles on mount Tabor, of Saint Stephen during his martyrdom, and of the end of History. In order to give a general theological dimension to the mystical experiences he was describing, which were rather specific for monks, Palamas showed other ways of obtaining the vision of the Second Coming: martyrdom, now once again an actuality with the conquest of Byzantium by a Muslim power, the celebration of the divine liturgy culminating in the communion, and philanthropic actions.

Nevertheless the understanding of time is radically different for the pious believer and for the sinner. The former has direct access to the end of history by using one of the paths of piety Palamas described. The sinner on the contrary is condemned to fully experience the terror of time. He never meets God during his lifetime, because he has already suffered the first death, that of the soul. The death of the body is for him the natural consequence of the first death, after which follows a long wait for the final resurrection. But even the resurrection is only a

7 Eschatology and Political Theology in the Last Centuries of Byzantium

79

third death, because he cannot experience any more the vision of God. For him the resurrection is only a condemnation.

Palamas avoids discussion of the first individual judgment after death and the Last final Judgment, because for him there is no judgment at all for the pious believer, and only one condemnation for the sinner, at the moment when he rejects repentance and provokes his first death, that of the soul. Meanwhile in repentance and prayer, liturgy and Eucharist, the Christian already lives in the Kingdom of Christ, and the difference between his earthly life and the final transfiguration is only a matter of intensity of this initial experience. Even if Palamas’ writings are basically mystical and built upon the particular experience of the uncreated light in the Jesus-prayer, in his Homilies he develops several aspects of a liturgical mysticism.

But these experiences of transfiguration, which are of course purely spiritual, also produce a visible or material manifestation, and he gives the example of miracle-working relics. The particular power of these earthly remains of saints to generate spiritual effects is a kind of hint from God regarding the transfigured reality of this body in the heavenly Kingdom.

The heavenly Kingdom thus runs parallel to earthly history, and at any time each individual as well as large Eucharistic communities can shift from the torment of history to the eighth day, the transfigured creation.

The liturgical aspects of this reinterpretation of mystical experience of holy men were further developed by Nicolas Kabasilas8 and Symeon of Thessalonica9. Both were disciples of the Hesychasts, with the particularity that the first was a layman who never took the monastic garment, the second the metropolitan of Byzantium’s second largest city in the most tragic moment of its history (1417–1429), when the last Byzantine governor rendered the city to the Venetians during the Turkish siege. He nevertheless encouraged his compatriots to defend the city and to be ready to die rather than surrender.

Nicolas Kabasilas (who probably died in the last years of the 14th c.) wrote the most famous mystical interpretation of the Byzantine liturgy as a direct and unique experience of the Kingdom of God. He compares, for instance, the communion with the eschatological experience of God, saying that now and then the Christian discovers the same reality and the same taste, distinguished only by a difference of intensity.

Symeon’s interpretation is more symbolic, but he is equally concerned with showing the real presence of Christ, not only as Eucharist, but also as high priest personified by the bishop. In this aspect he follows the classical interpretations of the liturgy. Nevertheless, his insistence on this aspect shows a more precise interest

8 Nicolas Cabasilas, Explication de la divine liturgie, traduction et notes S. Salaville, S.C. 4bis, 2e édition par R. Bornert, J. Gouillard, P. Périchon, Paris, 1967.

9 Symeonis Thessalonicensis Archiepiscopus, De sacra liturgia, PG 155, col. 253–304; idem, De sacra precatione, PG, 155, coll. 536–669, traduction anglaise, Saint Symeon of Thessalonike, Treatise on prayer, translated by H.L.N. Simmons, Hellenic College Press, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1984; idem, De sacris ordinationibus, PG 155, col. 361–469; idem, Expositio de divino templo, PG, 155, col. 697–749, idem, Responsa ad Gabrielem Pentapolitanum, P.G. 155, col. 829–952.

Petre Guran 8

80

in describing the liturgy as a real manifestation of the Kingdom of God. He uses the Palamite concept of uncreated energies to explain the action and the presence of God in liturgy. This special application of Palamas’ theology opened a new perspective to what was initially only a particular mystical vision of a few hermits on Mount Athos and eventually became the core of Orthodox spirituality.

Another old preoccupation of the Byzantines was their relation with the Muslims and, as a corollary, the Jews. In the fourteenth century the Byzantine empire and the Church were confronted with a new reality: the Muslim Turks had conquered almost all of Anatolia (only a few districts and towns survived, but without a strong link to the empire, such as Philadelphia), and began from the middle of the 14th c. to establish their control over the Balkans. The recovery of all these territories was nothing more than a dream; meanwhile large Christian communities continued to live under the new conqueror. Even a successful war could not bring about the conversion of the Muslims. Thus the disciples of Palamas imagined that the Christian communities in infidel territories and their pastors were charged with a new mission: to convert the Muslims from the inside. In the sermon in honor of Gregory Palamas (enkomion) Philotheos Kokkinos clearly states that Palamas’ captivity to the Turks in 1354, as he was sailing from Thessalonica to Constantinople to mediate between Kantakouzenos and Palaiologos, was a decision of God to send him to the Turks as an apostle. Palamas himself, in a letter written from captivity, exposes his theological debates with representatives of the Muslims and with a Judeo-Christian sect, explaining that this mission was necessary in order to accomplish God’s will that before the end of the world the whole mankind should have been instructed about Christ10.

John Kantakouzenos, in a collection of his works (Parisinus gr. 1242), copied and illuminated under his control, draws an ideal portrait of the new carrier of the Christian mission. The manuscript contains four polemical works: against those who oppose Palamas’ theology, against the Latins, against the Muslims and against the Jews. In front of the eight discourses against the Muslims the manuscript displays a double portrait of the John VI, one as emperor, the other as monk11. While the emperor is in a hieratically inexpressive position, the monk points dynamically his hand to an image of the Trinity above the double portrait and holds in his other hand a scroll with the incipit of his writing, “Great is the God of Christians”. The image of the Trinity stresses the presence of Christ in the scene of the visitation of Abraham at Mambree, because the central angel has a cruciform nimbus12. The image is clearly a condensed explanation about the author of this writing. Thus for Kantakouzenos, it is the monk who glorifies God and assumes the universal mission through the demonstration of the true faith. But there is another

10 A. Philippidis-Braat, La captivité de Palamas chez les Turcs: Dossier et Commentaire, Travaux et Mémoires, 7, 1979, p. 136–137, p. 160–161, § 29.

11 P. Guran, Jean VI Cantacuzène, l’hésychasme et l’empire. Les miniatures du codex Parisinus graecus 1242, in L’empereur hagiographe. Culte des saints et monarchie byzantine et post-byzantine, eds P. Guran, B. Flusin, Bucharest, 2001, 73–122.

12 H. Belting, Das illuminierte Buch in der spätbyzantinischen Gesellschaft, Heidelberg, 1970, p. 85.

9 Eschatology and Political Theology in the Last Centuries of Byzantium

81

detail in Kantakouzenos’ dialogue with the Jew Xenos, which confirms the shift in the eschatological view of the epoch. When they come to discuss the promise of God to send a Messiah, Kantakouzenos mentions the role of Enoch and Elijah, as forerunners of His Coming and explains to Xenos, that this prophecy regards their role in the Second Coming of Christ, when they are to assume the mission to convert the Jews before the end of the world13. He thus reaffirms the primacy of the spiritual signs of the last days over any fixed chronology and restores the initial meaning of this prophecy, to preach the coming of Christ to the Jews and not to the New Israel, the Christians, as it was interpreted in classical Byzantine eschatology. He also eliminates another previous interpretation, which identified Elijah with Saint John the Baptist. Simultaneously, he denies any imperial role in the conversion of the Jews, as several emperors of the past had tried to impose it. This change operated by Kantakouzenos could also be understood as proof that his dialogue was real, or at least responding to real questions of his Jewish contemporaries. As far as I know the only Church father of the past who proposed this interpretation on Enoch and Elijah was Augustine, whose De civitate Dei could hardly have been known by Kantakouzenos14.

These commentaries of Kantakouzenos recall a text, written most probably by Gregory Palamas himself and signed by a great number of abbots and highly venerated monks of Mount Athos in defense of the vision of the uncreated light of God, known as the Tomos of the Holy Mountain. There the monks are presented as the new prophets. As in the Old Testament the prophets announced to Israel the first Coming of Christ, the monks now announce through their visions of the Kingdom of God the Second Coming of Christ. In a way they are playing the role of Elijah and Enoch for the whole of mankind.

Taking monastic vows under the name of Josaphat was for Kantakouzenos a statement of political theology. During his thirty years of monastic life he continued to remember that he was once emperor, but chose the angelic way of life under the name of Josaphat. Josaphat was the main character of the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, which attained to hagiographic status only late in the thirteenth century. This legend exalted a prince who not only converted his kingdom to the Christian faith but also abandoned political power and took to the desert to lead a hermit’s life. Kantakouzenos was in a way this Josaphat: he converted Byzantium to Palamas’ theology, established the reign of the monks in the Church and abandoned power for a new mission as a Hesychast monk, in order to spread the knowledge of Palamas’ theology and convert heretics, schismatics, Muslims and Jews to Orthodoxy. Like his fellow Hesychasts he was a prophet of the Second Coming, which was no longer at the end of an awesome future, but within the past, present and future mystical experience of the Transfiguration on

13 Ch. G. Soteropulos, Ioannou VI Cantacuzinou kata Ioudaion Logoi ennea (to proton nun ekdidomenoi). Eisagoge, keimenon, scholia, Athens, 1983, p. 213.

14 Saint Augustin, De civitate Dei, XX, 29 et 30.

Petre Guran 10

82

Mount Tabor. One of the four images chosen by Kantakouzenos to adorn his manuscript was precisely the Transfiguration.

It is striking to discover in this particular conception of the monk put forth by the Hesychasts a resemblance with the eschatological aspects of Western spirituality, in the works of Joachim da Fiore, Peter Olivi, and Master Eckhart. It would be wrong to ascribe solely to Western influence the importance of the Hesychast movement in the last centuries of Byzantium. Hesychasm is deeply rooted in Byzantine spirituality, and it would thus be more appropriate to see in this parallel phenomenon an internal logic of Christian spirituality which developed a systematic tendency to take refuge in eschatology in the face of the challenging realities of history. It is nevertheless remarkable that our Byzantine mystics preferred to avoid any prophecy of an immediate end and even to refute any possibility of calculating the end of the world. They thus repeated the old strategy of postponing the end for several generations.

As the fatal date, 1492, the year 7000 in Byzantine chronology, drew nearer at the turn of the 15th century, the apocalyptic fears grew more intense. The emperor Manuel Paleologus questioned an Athonite monk about “the end of the world, the conquest of Constantinople and the holy emperor to come” and desired to know about “the seventh millennium, if the time would be prolonged, or if the end would come”15. Was 1492 an unavoidable deadline? Joseph Bryennios, Palamite monk and imperial chaplain in the 1420s, and Symeon of Thessalonica, decidedly answered in the negative16. Not only could no one foretell the end, but also God had the freedom to continue the material existence of the world until the number of elected would be fulfilled. In any case, each individual’s end is an eschatological term certain enough to make any discussion about the general end of the world superfluous, as Joseph Bryennios proclaimed in front of the emperor and the court. But if God’s Kingdom is the divine light experienced by the monks, what greater joy could a Christian expect than the coming of this kingdom? Far ahead or during this generation, the fear of a dreaded end of the world did not exist for these mystics.

In the series of Palamite personalities who spoke against a world end chronology Gennadios Scholarios represents the only exception. In his late days, upset by the intrigues of his compatriots against his leadership in the Church, he wrote, around 1471, a chronological calculation, which confirmed a possible date of the end in 1492 or in 1513 and announced the beginning of the eighth eternal millennium. He also exchanged the more classical scheme of the four successive universal empires, derived from the dream of the prophet Daniel, with seven empires,

15 M-H. Congourdeau, Courants de pensée apocalyptiques à Byzance sous les Paléologues, B. Lellouch et S. Yerasimos ed., Les traditions apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople (Actes du colloque d’Istanbul, avril 1996), Varia Turcica XXXIII, Paris 1999.

16 A Rigo, L’anno 7000, la fine del mondo et l’Impero cristiano. Nota su alcuni passi di Giuseppe Briennio, Simeone di Tessalonica et Gennadio Scholario, La cattura de la fine. Variazzione dell’escatologia in regime di cristianità, Marietti, 1992.

11 Eschatology and Political Theology in the Last Centuries of Byzantium

83

of which the last was the Roman empire, which had already come to its end. The eighth empire is the eternal Kingdom of Christ. The text of Gennadios is more a brief sketch than a developed eschatological theory and it is difficult to explore it further, especially because he contradicts his former opinion, written in 1464, in a Refutation of the Jewish Religion17. In this earlier work he expresses the view that even if astrological calculations and the prophecies of the Scriptures coincide to announce the end in the seventh millennium, this end may occur earlier, or at the precise moment of the year 7000, or afterwards; no one could foretell it. One thing is nevertheless certain: the Christian empire has come to an end, and no other empire or continuation of the Roman empire was to be expected. From Gennadios’ point of view a Third Rome was no longer possible.

Gennadios is one of those who changed their minds about the union with the Roman Church, on the way back from Ferrara-Florence18. Having taken the monastic vows, he became in the 1440s the successor of Markus of Ephesos, the Palamite theologian who had refused to sign the Union of Florence, as leader of the anti-unionists of Constantinople, denouncing the union as a betrayal of the Church. In his eschatological considerations he explains the fall of the empire as a consequence of the fall into heresy of the Church. Two leaders whose names began with Iô, the Greek interjection ‘woe’, Iôannès and Iôsèph, accomplished the ruin of the Church and of the empire. When he wrote these lines, around 1471, Gennadios was apparently minded to reject the legitimacy of his successors on the patriarchal throne. He knew of course that the Church continued to exist after the fall of Constantinople, that it had rejected the union of Ferrara-Florence and was thus orthodox again. It is important to note that the idea of a possible betrayal of the Church by an emperor had already circulated in Byzantium. Almost two centuries before Gennadios, the monk Kosmas Andritzopoulos prophesized the end of the empire because of the Union of Lyons (1274), linking to this historical event a numerological argument (the addition of the letters of the cross giving 1271), which reckoned the number of years after Christ, allocated by God to the Christian empire19.

The last centuries of Byzantium did not produce any new text in the genre of imperial eschatology. Instead, the oracular literature, like the Oracula Leonis (12th

17 M-H. Congourdeau, Courants de pensée apocalyptiques à Byzance sous les Paléologues, B. Lellouch et S. Yerasimos ed., Les traditions apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople (Actes du colloque d’Istanbul, avril 1996), Varia Turcica XXXIII, Paris 1999

18 Marie-Hélène Blanchet, Georges Gennadios Scholarios a-t-il été trois fois patriarche de Constantinople?, « Byzantion » 71, 2001, p. 60–72 ; eadem La question de l'Union des Eglises (XIIIe–XVe siècle): historiographie et perspectives, « Revue des Etudes Byzantines » 61, 2003, p. 5–48 ; eadem, Les divisions de l'Eglise byzantine après le concile de Florence (1439) d'après un passage des Antirrhétiques de Jean Eugénikos, dans Hommage à Alain Ducellier. Byzance et ses périphéries, éd. B. Doumerc et Ch. Picard, Toulouse 2004, p. 17–39.

19 M-H. Congourdeau, Courants de pensée apocalyptiques à Byzance sous les Paléologues, in B. Lellouch et S. Yerasimos ed., Les traditions apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople (Actes du colloque d’Istanbul, avril 1996), Varia Turcica XXXIII, Paris, 1999.

Petre Guran 12

84

and 13th century20), replaced the more ancient apocalyptic models of the Visio Danielis. Nevertheless the only new piece of oracular literature in the 14th century is the Centon on the poor emperor21, a puzzle of eschatological themes turned to historical oracula and conceived to nourish the Byzantines’ hope of a miraculous restoration of the empire. But the Hesychasts rejected precisely any necessity of the empire for the salvation of mankind. For Palamas, Joseph Bryennios, Symeon of Thessalonica and Scholarios, the end of the world could occur without a last good emperor. This important eschatological theme (built upon the verses of the Psalm 68, 31)22 was reconfigured into the legend of the poor or sleeping emperor, whose task was, after 1453, solely to deliver Constantinople.

The diminishing of the production of imperial eschatological literature in the last centuries of Byzantium finds its counterpart in the mystical eschatology of Gregory Palamas and his followers. The consciousness of a universal role of the Church in an oikoumene that was largely outside the borders of the empire arose already in the thirteenth century, but it was strengthened by the mystical eschatology of Palamas. As we have said, eschatology was a central point in the political theology of Eusebius of Caesarea. Once the empire and the emperor lost their role in eschatological perspective, the ground for political theology vanished. Meanwhile, the more significant definition of the Church as an eschatological community placed its leaders at the summit of Christian society.

As the question of the Union with Rome deeply divided the Byzantine elite, their interpretation of the events that followed Ferrara-Florence was divergent. The Unionists mostly choose exile and continued to long after the fallen empire, even if they saw its fall as a punishment for the betrayal of the Union. Those who opposed the Union accepted the end of the empire as legitimate punishment for their sins (Scholarios cites several examples of such sins), and took the responsibility of organizing the Christian community in the Ottoman empire. Thus the former, continuing the classical political eschatology of the Byzantine empire, recognized in Mahomet II the Antichrist (Isidore of Kiev and Doukas), while some of the anti-Unionists who stayed in Constantinople saw in him a possible successor to the empire (in return for conversion to the catholic Church even pope Pius II might have acknowledged him as Roman emperor).

The fall of Constantinople accomplished the separation of Church and empire, but the conceptual construction of this separation has been already prepared by the Hesychasts in the 14th century. A spiritual elite took over the leadership

20 E. Legrand, Les oracles de Léon le Sage, Paris, 1875; C. Mango, The Legend of Leo the Wise, Zbornik Radova Vizant. Inst., VI (Belgrade, 1960) p. 59–93.

21 C. Mango, The Legend of Leo the Wise, art. cit. 22 Psalm 68, 31 (“let Ethiopia stretch out her hands to God”) and Saint Paul’s Epistle to the

Corinthians 15, 24 (Christ “delivers up the kingdom to God the Father, after deposing every sovereignty, authority and power”) include the image of handing over the power to God. In the Psalm this gesture is ascribed to Cusheth, Ethiopia, and in Paul’s verse it is the Son of God who renders universal kingship to the Father.

13 Eschatology and Political Theology in the Last Centuries of Byzantium

85

of the Church: the bishop-monks. Their teachings on the real presence of Christ with his flock replaced the earthly emperor, once considered an icon of Christ, with the heavenly emperor, whom the bishops now represented in liturgy. The Hesychasts’ theology about the real presence of Christ found an application in iconography. A new icon was created in the last decades of the 14th century: representing Christ clad with the imperial and the episcopal garments. This image took a central space in the naos of orthodox churches23.

After this long development of the theological content of Hesychasm, I would like to insist on the political influence of this doctrine. As we have seen, this doctrine no longer relied on the necessity of a political katechon, personified by the emperor. The end of the world was not, in the hesychast doctrine, primarily a material and collective end, but an individual spiritual event24. Thus in the beliefs about the historical end of the world we note a shift from the theologico-political role of the empire to the spiritual guidance of the Church.

Thus the importance of the empire is dramatically reduced with respect to the end of history. This latter became a matter of spirituality and the Church took the leading role in eschatological thought. This new representation of the end of the world was the only conceivable one given that the empire was undoubtedly coming to its end, while the material world was likely to go on. A new pattern explaining a radically different scenario of the end was a necessity for the Christian society of that time. For the Byzantine Christian it was of fundamental importance to understand the world in which he existed. This implied understanding where the world was headed, that is, the end of the world. Christians needed an explanation, a representation to make the political events they were witnessing comprehensible and acceptable. This is why the issue of the end of the world was so important and was part of political ideology.

Hesychast spirituality recreated in the context of Byzantium’s decline and fall the Augustinian theory of the two cities; and as in Western ecclesiology, the Church identified itself with the city of God. Christian society was thus depicted as a community of saints crossing through history from an impossible Third Rome to the Heavenly Jerusalem25. Byzantium left to its post-Byzantine successors a political theology which inhibited any revival project of Byzantium.

23 This iconographical theme, also called the royal déèsis, represents generally the Christ on a throne between the Holy Virgin and Saint John the Baptist, the first example is an icon, of Byzantine or Serbian origin, now in the Dormition cathedral in the Kremlin of Moscow, Vizantija, Balkany, Rus’, Ikony XIII–XIV vekov, catalogue de l’exposition à l’occasion du Congrès international des études byzantines, Moscou, 1991, no 49 et p. 229 ; E. Ja. Ostašenko, Ob ikonografičeskom tipe icony ‘‘Predsta Carica’’ Uspenskogo sobora moskovskogo kremlja, Drevne-russkoe iskusstvo, Akademia Nauk SSSR, Moscow, 1977, p. 175–186, see also P. Guran, Le Christ empereur et prêtre, «Revue Roumaine d’Histoire», 2007.

24 P. Guran, L’eschatologie de Palamas entre théologie et politique, « Etudes byzantines et post-byzantines », Bucharest, 5, 2006, p. 291–320.

25 Such might be the sense of a large icon called “Cerkov’ vojnstvujuščaja” (the militant Church), supposedly displayed above the throne of Ivan the Terrible in the Kremlin of Moscow.