Of all the millions of trends that have seized Tik-Tok over the years, surely the Roman Empire is the most wholesome.
I have to admit, that’s one chapter of history that doesn’t interest me in the slightest. I’ve never understood the hype over Augustus, aqaducts… Caesar, Cicero, centurions… whatever it is that makes Rome buffs tick (no pun intended).
“Men did not love Rome because she was great,” said Chesterton. “She was great because they had loved her.” I’ll have to take his word for it.
Then I read Norwich’s Short History of Byzantium, and everything changed. I felt like I was back in middle school, learning about the Civil War for the first time. I wanted to know all the names, the dates, the places. I was obsessed.
So, why the East and not the West? I think it’s because, from the very beginning, the East was Christian.
In fact, Byzantium was the first Christian Empire, and the Byzantines were a Christian people. Walking through the markets, you could hear ordinary citizens arguing about Christology. How many natures does Christ have? Just one? If so, it that nature human or divine? Or is it both human and divine at once? Or does He have two natures united within His person? This is what the Byzantines talked about around the water cooler.
Norwich was right:
The vast majority [of its rulers] were brave, upright, God-fearing men who did their best, with greater or lesser degrees of success. Byzantium may not have lived up to its highest ideals, but it certainly did not deserve the reputation which, thanks largely to Edward Gibbon, it acquired later in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Byzantines were, on the conrary, a deeply religious society in which illiteracy—at least among the middle and upper classes—was virtually unknown, and in which one Emperor after another was renowned for his scholarship. . . .
This was a great race of men, and they built a great civilization. And Norwich is right about this, too: the fact that they aren’t remembered more often is a crime.
In the Western Church, the first Sunday of Advent marks the beginning of the liturgical year. In the Eastern Church, it’s September 1. Why? Because that was “new year’s day” on the Byzantines’ civil calendar.
The date was chosen to honor Constantine’s triumph over the usurper Maxentius. The Battle of the Milvian Bridge marked a new beginning for Rome; so, to this day, the Greek churches—both Orthodox and Catholic—effectively celebrate the founding of Byzantine Empire every year on the first of September. There’s a special Liturgy, followed by plenty of lamb and ouzo. (There are lots of other, more wholesome traditions associated with the day, if you’re curious.)
This past Sunday, on October 1, we celebrated the Feast of the Divine Protection of the Theotokos. You might call it the patronal feast of Constantinople.
In the 10th century, in the neighborhood of Blachernae, Mary appeared to St. Andrew the Fool-for-Christ. The apparition was quickly associated with the Blachernitissa, an icon of the Virgin, the most sacred in all of Byzantium. Whenever the city was under attack—whether by Arabs or Slavs, famine or plague—the Emperor and the Patriarch would lead the whole city in a procession aroud the city’s legendary walls. She came through every time… except for once, in 1453.
On May 22 of that year, as the forces of Mehmet II lay seige to the city, a group of priests and laymen carried the Blachernitissa through the streets one final time, a last desperate apppeal for Mary’s help. Suddenly, inexplicably, the icon fell from its podium. Then, from a clear blue sky, a thunderstorm broke out, scattering the procession. No help would come.
Exactly one week later, Constantinople fell. The Blachernitissa was hacked to pieces by Turkish soldiers. After nearly fifteen centuries, the Roman Empire had fallen. Byzantium was no more.
It’s striking to me that Greek Christians still celebrate the feast of the Protection of the Theotokos. Then again, maybe it isn’t.
Most of you probably know that my next book, After Christendom, is devoted to… well, the fall of Christendom. What’s interesting is how many Christians don’t believe that such an event is possible—or, if it’s possible, that we have to resist it at any cost.
But, as I explain in the book, that’s not true. Not at all. Scripture and the Fathers are clear on this point. All power, both in this world and the next, comes from God. He can grant that power to whomever He chooses. But whether He grants that power to good rulers or bad rulers, He always do so for our good.
Now, I’m not saying that we should embrace quietism and withdraw politics altogether. Of course not. What I am saying is this: if God is allowing it to fall—and it’s clear by now that He is—what right have we to complain?
I think this is why the Eastern Church continues to celebrate the Protection of the Theotokos as a major feast, even though it only became a major feast thanks to the Eastern Roman Empire. We have to be grateful for His trials as well as His consolations, for the fasts as well as the feasts. We have to thank Him when He protects us, and when He doesn’t, because it’s always for our good.
“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Thinking about it now, this reminds me of a brilliant essay that Graham Pardun recently published on his Substack, Sabbath Empire. It’s called “Waiving Farewell to Byzantium”. Graham’s not as hot on Byzantium as I am. After quoting from the Edict of Thessalonica, issued by St. Theodosius the Great in 380, he (Pardun) says this:
The kingdom of Caesar and the kingdom of God as one and the same kingdom; divine condemnation for dissenters from the Nicene Creed, and imperial punishment, too—banishment to the outer darkness of barbarian lands, and then possibly hell, if it came to that—that's where this was headed in the glory days of Byzantium, and it was a coherent worldview.
Too coherent—totalitarian, basically.
To support his thesis, he quotes Philip Sherrard’s equally brilliant final book Christianity: Linaments of a Sacred Tradition. According to Sherrard,
As the Christian society is founded upon and held together by subscription to the tenets of the Christian faith, the maintenance of this faith in an increasingly inflexible and, one might say, in an increasingly simplified or literal form, becomes an overriding preoccupation, and any expression of the Truth which appears to deviate from this form is regarded as a threat to the stability and security of the universal order which the Church is required to implement. This is why the development of an attitude of idolatry towards dogmatic and ethical formulations, and the idea of the Church as above all a social institution go hand in hand...It was the Church's function, it came to be thought, to mold the secular world in accordance with the principles of right order as embodied in the Christian faith; and this was to be achieved by a more or less totalitarian ecclesiastical state.
If you keep reading, you’ll see that Graham isn’t talking about Byzantium principally as an historical, political fact. For him, “Byzantium” lives on in “the relatively safe, but still histrionic and pathologically online world of apocalyptic tribalism inhabited by OrthoBros” (and also, perhaps, a few Russian hierarchs). I can’t speak to any of that.
But I am very interested in this idea of Byzantium as something safe, something coherent. And I just want to point out, for whatever it’s worth, that there’s nothing wrong with safety. Nothing can ever be “too coherent.” Sure, it’s possible to have a false coherence—a fearful, ignorant refusal to acknowledge complexity of the human condition, the mysterious nature of faith, the ineffability of God. Still, coherence is better than incoherence.
This my perennial fear is that those who embrace “Wild Christianity”. I’m worried they’ll end up saying “I want a mess” just for the sake of having mess.
After all, the wilderness is in some ways safer than Byzantium. John Henry Newman wrote very movingly about the perils of living in a “religious society.” It’s difficult for one to be sure if one really believes in Christianity, he said. After all, what if you’re merely conforming to the majority? How can you be sure of your faith if it’s never put to the test?
It’s also safer because… well, no one will ever accuse me or Graham or Paul of being “totalitarian,” simply because we’ll never have the option. It’s easy to resist the temptations you never encounter.
To be clear, I’m all for “Wild Christianity.” I believe that God is withdrawing temporal power from us Christians because we’ve become too worldly—because we’re too focused on the Culture War and not enough on the Great Commission. He’s drawing our gaze away from the City of Man and towards the City of God.
Still, that doesn’t mean Byzantium is a bad thing. After all, Byzantium (or Christendom) existed for just one reason: to orient all human activity (politcial, economic, cultural, etc.) towards the Christian faith. And it’s better to have the temporaily as an ally than an enemy—God willing.
We shouldn’t fetishize our status as a small, despised minority. The fact that our political/economic/cultural order once again points men away from the Gospel is a bad thing. We should accept the death of the old Christendom while trying to build a new Christendom.
God took our Byzantium away because we were unworthy of it. We should strive to be worthy once again. Pray as our fathers prayed: “In the morning, fill us with Your love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Repay us in joy the times You did afflict us, the many years when disgrace was our lot.” Amen.