Governance and Canons

Photius’s canonical and administrative legacy: the seventeen disciplinary canons of the council of 861, received into the Orthodox canonical corpus; the Eisagoge, the law-book of the 880s in which he set out the influential theory of the two powers — emperor and patriarch — as the two heads of the Christian polity; and the Nomocanon revision traditionally associated with his name. Here Photius appears as a churchman of government, shaping the legal and constitutional framework of the Byzantine Church.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox / Byzantine

The Canons of 861

Photius’s first contribution to the canonical tradition came at the council of 861, the Prōtodeutera or “First-and-Second” Council, which — whatever the disputes over its handling of the Ignatian question (see Ignatius, Rome, and the Rival Claims) — issued seventeen disciplinary canons that entered and remain in the received canonical corpus of the Orthodox Church (the Prōtodeutera canons, in The Rudder [Pedalion], trans. Cummings; Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire [1986], ch. 4). The council met in the church of the Holy Apostles, and its very name, the “First-and-Second,” reflects the convoluted circumstances of its sessions; but the disciplinary fruit of its deliberations long outlived the political quarrel that occasioned it (Hussey 1986, ch. 4). Many of these canons regulate monastic life — the founding of monasteries, the conduct and stability of monks, the prohibition of building monasteries without the bishop’s leave, and measures against the abuses that could attend the rapid multiplication of monastic houses — and so address, with practical concern, the good order of the ascetic life that was central to Byzantine Christianity (the Prōtodeutera canons, in The Rudder, trans. Cummings).

The most far-reaching of the seventeen is the celebrated fifteenth canon, which treats the limits of lawful separation from a bishop and distinguishes schism from the legitimate refusal of communion. The canon condemns those who separate themselves from their bishop on a mere pretext before any conciliar judgment, branding such separation as the sin of schism; but it makes a decisive exception for the case of a bishop who openly and publicly preaches heresy condemned by the councils and the Fathers, holding that those who break communion with such a bishop before any synodal sentence are not schismatics but have, on the contrary, protected the Church from division (the fifteenth Prōtodeutera canon, in The Rudder, trans. Cummings). This canon has had an importance in Orthodox canonical thought far beyond the monastic disputes of the ninth century, for it furnishes the classic statement of when separation from a superior is not only permitted but praiseworthy — a principle invoked in later controversies over communion with hierarchs accused of heresy. That a council so entangled in the contested politics of Photius’s elevation should nonetheless have produced canons received across the whole Orthodox world, the fifteenth among them, is itself a measure of the seriousness of its disciplinary work.

The Eisagoge and the Two Powers

Photius’s most important and most original contribution to Byzantine public thought is the Eisagoge (the “Introduction”; an older but inaccurate name is Epanagoge), a legal manual or introduction to the law produced under the emperor Basil I as part of the great Macedonian project of restating and reforming Byzantine law in the 880s (Kazhdan, ed., Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium [1991], s.v. “Eisagoge”; on its date, c. 880–886). Photius is generally credited with drafting the work’s preface and, above all, the two titles that set out the powers of the emperor (basileus) and the patriarch — conventionally Title II on the emperor and Title III on the patriarch (the Eisagoge, Titles II–III; Dvornik, Early Christian and Byzantine Political Philosophy [1966], on the authorship and content; ODB, s.v. “Eisagoge”). The attribution rests on long scholarly consensus rather than on an explicit ascription in the text, and is best stated as such. The grounds for it are partly internal — the doctrine of the two titles answers so closely to Photius’s own exalted understanding of the patriarchate that scholars have read his hand in them — and partly circumstantial, for as patriarch during the reign of Basil I he was the natural author of the ecclesiastical portions of an official law-book undertaken in those years (Dvornik 1966; ODB, s.v. “Eisagoge”). The cautious form of the claim, then, credits Photius with the conception and drafting of these titles while acknowledging that the text does not name him.

The doctrine these titles set out is the famous Byzantine theory of the two powers in symphonia. The Eisagoge presents the emperor and the patriarch as the two greatest parts of the Christian commonwealth, paired heads of one body: the emperor charged with the bodily welfare of the subjects, the patriarch with their souls, the two cooperating in harmony for the good of the whole (the Eisagoge, Titles II–III; Dvornik, Early Christian and Byzantine Political Philosophy [1966]). The image is anatomical and organic — the polity as a single body with two governing heads — and it expresses the deep Byzantine conviction that the spiritual and the temporal orders are not rivals but partners, ordained to act in concert for the salvation and welfare of the same Christian people (Dvornik 1966; Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology [1974], on church and state). This is the doctrine that later ages would call symphonia: not a separation of church and state in the modern sense, nor a subordination of the one to the other, but a harmony of two distinct powers within one God-guarded commonwealth.

What is striking — and what reflects Photius’s own conception of his office — is the elevated standing the text accords the patriarch, raising him toward a parity with the emperor that earlier Byzantine theory had not so plainly granted (Dvornik 1966). The patriarch is defined as the living image of Christ, charged with the teaching of true doctrine and the care of all the faithful, including the duty of fearless speech before the emperor himself in defense of the truth (the Eisagoge, Title III; Dvornik, Early Christian and Byzantine Political Philosophy [1966]; Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology [1974], on church and state). Where much earlier Byzantine thought had tended to make the emperor the dominant partner, with the priesthood ranged under his protection, the Eisagoge sets the patriarch beside him as the guardian of orthodoxy and the conscience of the realm — a man who must, when truth requires it, contradict the emperor to his face. The Eisagoge‘s theory had limited force as positive law — it was never fully promulgated and was superseded under Basil’s successors, who replaced it with the Procheiros Nomos and the great compilation of the Basilika (Dvornik 1966; Kazhdan, ed., Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium [1991], s.v. “Eisagoge”) — but as a theoretical statement of the ideal relation of the spiritual and temporal powers it was enormously influential, copied and quoted in later Byzantine and Slavic legal collections, and it embodies the high view of the patriarchal office that Photius, twice patriarch, held and acted upon.

The Nomocanon

Photius’s name is also attached, by tradition, to the Nomocanon in Fourteen Titles — the great Byzantine collection that interweaves the civil laws (nomoi) bearing on the Church with the ecclesiastical canons (kanones). The genre itself answered a permanent need of the Christian empire: because the Church lived within and was sustained by the imperial legal order, the canonist required at hand both the sacred canons of the councils and Fathers and the relevant secular legislation, and the nomocanon arranged the two together under a common scheme of titles for ready reference (ODB, s.v. “Nomocanon”). A revision of this Nomocanon is dated to 883 and traditionally ascribed to Photius, and in this form the collection brought the standard apparatus up to date, incorporating the canons of the Quinisext Council, the seventeen canons of the council of 861, and the other received canonical material, so that it became the definitive recension that governed Byzantine canon law for centuries afterward and passed, through translation, into the Slavic Orthodox world as well (ODB, s.v. “Nomocanon”; the Library of Congress and standard canonical authorities on the 883 revision).

[Disputed: the attribution of the 883 Nomocanon revision to Photius. The traditional ascription names Photius as the author or sponsor of the 883 revision, and the collection has long been known as the “Nomocanon of Photius” (the traditional view, in the standard canonical handbooks). Modern scholarship, however, treats the attribution as uncertain and in part incorrect, holding that Photius’s personal role in the 883 redaction is not securely established and may have been overstated by later tradition (Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, s.v. “Nomocanon,” noting the disputed attribution). The safe statement is that the 883 revision is associated with Photius’s name and era, with his exact authorship debated.]

The Churchman of Government

These three strands — the canons of 861, the Eisagoge’s theory of the two powers, and the Nomocanon — show a side of Photius distinct from both the scholar of the Bibliotheca and the controversialist of the Mystagogy: the churchman of government, concerned with the order, the law, and the constitutional standing of the Church within the Christian empire. Each of the three answers a different need of that office — the canons the discipline of the clergy and monks, the Eisagoge the relation of Church and state at the summit, the Nomocanon the practical apparatus by which canon and civil law could be applied together — and together they constitute one of the most considerable legislative legacies left by any Byzantine patriarch (Hussey 1986, ch. 4; Dvornik 1966; ODB, s.v. “Nomocanon”). His high conception of the patriarchal office — the patriarch as the image of Christ, bound to speak the truth even to the emperor — was not merely theory; it was the conviction on which he had acted in anathematizing a pope and refusing to let the Creed be altered, and on which he would act again in the council of 879–880. The administrator and the dogmatician were one man, and the Eisagoge’s patriarch who must fearlessly defend the truth is recognizably the author of the Encyclical and the Mystagogy (see The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit). The high view of the patriarchate that he set down in the law-book was, in the end, an idealized portrait of the office as he himself had exercised it.

See Also

References

  • The Rudder (Pedalion), trans. D. Cummings. Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957. For the seventeen canons of the Prōtodeutera (861), including the fifteenth canon on separation from a bishop.
  • Dvornik, Francis. Early Christian and Byzantine Political Philosophy: Origins and Background. 2 vols. Dumbarton Oaks Studies 9. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1966. On the Eisagoge, its authorship by Photius, and the theory of the two powers.
  • Kazhdan, Alexander P., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, s.v. “Eisagoge,” “Nomocanon,” “Photios.” On the date, authorship, and the disputed Nomocanon attribution.
  • Meyendorff, John. Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes. New York: Fordham University Press, 1974. On church and state and the patriarchal office.
  • Hussey, J. M. The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986, ch. 4. On the council of 861 and its canons.