Rome and the Pentarchy

Theodore’s ecclesiology of the universal Church: the doctrine of the “five-headed body” — the pentarchy of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem — as the structure through which the faith is guarded and disputes are settled; the appeals to Pope Paschal I (817) and the other patriarchates against the iconoclast synod of the capital; the strong language of Roman primacy in his letters, and how Orthodox and Catholic readers weigh it; and the binding of this ecclesiology to his conviction of the Church’s freedom from the emperor.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father / Byzantine)

Why Theodore Appealed Outward

When the emperor Leo V and a captive synod in Constantinople declared the icons abolished in 815, the iconodules faced a structural problem: the ordinary authorities of their own Church — the emperor, the patriarch, a local council — had all been turned against the faith of Nicaea II. Theodore’s answer was to appeal outward and upward, beyond the captured Church of the capital, to the wider Church and to the other patriarchal sees, which were beyond the emperor’s reach (Cholij, Theodore the Stoudite, 2002, pp. 152–185; Pratsch, Theodoros Studites, 1998, pp. 245–290). This is the practical root of his ecclesiology of the pentarchy: when one see falls, the faith is still held and can still be vindicated by the consensus of the others. The doctrine of the five sees is not, in Theodore, an abstract scheme but the lifeline of a persecuted confession.

The Five-Headed Body of the Church

Theodore articulates the structure in a striking image: the universal Church is a single body governed by five heads — a pentakoryphon, a “five-headed body” — namely the five patriarchates of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, which together are competent to settle a question of faith (Theodore, Letters, ed. Fatouros, CFHB 31; Cholij, pp. 152–185). On this view, a doctrinal determination that lacks the concord of the five sees — such as the iconoclast synod of 815, made by Constantinople alone under imperial pressure — is no true judgment of the Church at all; a genuine settlement of the faith requires the conciliar consensus of the whole pentarchy. The pentarchy is thus, for Theodore, both a safeguard against any single see (or any emperor controlling a single see) imposing heresy, and the proper organ of the Church’s universal voice. It is the ecclesiological counterpart of his teaching on the Church’s freedom: the faith has organs of its own that do not run through the imperial palace (see Church and Emperor).

The Appeal to Rome

Among the five, Theodore turned most pointedly to Rome. In 817, from exile, he wrote to Pope Paschal I — in letters co-signed by other iconodule abbots — laying the iconoclast persecution before the apostolic see and calling on Rome to intervene against the heresy, to receive the persecuted, and to support a true council that would reaffirm the icons (Cholij, pp. 160–185; Pratsch, pp. 245–270; on the place of this appeal in the exile correspondence see The Letters from Exile). Rome, alone of the great sees, was both Orthodox and wholly beyond the Byzantine emperor’s power; and Rome did take up the cause, Paschal I receiving the iconodule refugees and protesting the persecution. Theodore’s appeals were among the reasons the papacy engaged itself on the iconodule side.

In these letters Theodore uses language of high regard for Rome — addressing the apostolic see as a chief support of the Orthodox cause, invoking the Roman Church as holding the place of Peter, and looking to it as a court of appeal in the crisis (Cholij, pp. 160–185). The exact letters and phrases are the subject of a long interconfessional debate.

How Orthodox and Catholic Readers Weigh It

Theodore’s strong language about Rome has been read in opposite directions, and a serious account must give both, per this collection’s discipline on contested questions (METHODOLOGY §4):

Catholic readers have long cited Theodore’s appeals to Paschal I, and his honorific language about the see of Peter, as a witness to a ninth-century Eastern recognition of a real Roman primacy — an authority in the universal Church to which even Constantinople might appeal (so the older Catholic tradition; cf. the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, s.v. “Theodore of Studium”).
Orthodox readers answer that Theodore’s ecclesiology is precisely pentarchic and conciliar, not papal: Rome is the first and most honored of the five sees and a vital ally because it was uncorrupted and beyond the emperor, but its authority for Theodore is that of one (preeminent) member of the conciliar body, not a supreme jurisdiction over the others; he appeals to Rome as one of the five heads, within a structure whose final organ is the council, not as to a monarch above the Church (Cholij, pp. 152–185, who reads Theodore’s primacy-language within his pentarchic framework). On this reading Theodore’s deference to Rome is real but is honor and appeal within conciliarity, not submission to a papal supremacy in the later sense.

The scholarship (Cholij above all) tends to locate Theodore’s ecclesiology firmly in the conciliar-pentarchic frame while acknowledging the genuine warmth and weight of his appeals to Rome; the honest statement is that Theodore held Rome in the highest honor as the senior see and a court of appeal in a crisis, within an ecclesiology whose governing principle is the conciliar consensus of the five patriarchates. The interconfessional reading of his exact words remains contested.

The Background of the Pentarchic Idea

Theodore did not invent the pentarchy; he inherited a settled idea and deployed it under pressure. The notion that the universal Church is ordered under five patriarchal sees — Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, in that order of honor — had taken shape across the preceding centuries through both conciliar canon and imperial law. The conciliar root lies in the canons that ranked the great sees: canon 6 of Nicaea I (325) confirmed the ancient prerogatives of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch; canon 3 of Constantinople I (381) gave Constantinople the honor next after Rome “because it is New Rome”; and canon 28 of Chalcedon (451) ranked Constantinople and regularized the standing of Jerusalem, completing the list of five (Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 1991, s.v. “Pentarchy”; the canons trans. NPNF II/14). The legal articulation came under Justinian, whose legislation repeatedly names the five sees together as the patriarchai of the oikoumene and treats their order as a fixed feature of the Christian polity — the imperial counterpart to the conciliar ranking, embedding the five-see structure in the law of the empire (ODB, s.v. “Pentarchy”). By the seventh and eighth centuries the theory of the pentarchy proper — the five sees as the divinely-given organs of the Church’s universal governance, no one of which may be dispensed with — was a current of Byzantine ecclesiology, articulated in the period around the Quinisext and given fuller statement by later writers; it is the framework already in the air when Theodore reaches for it.

What is distinctive in Theodore is not the scheme but its use. Where the pentarchy in the lawbooks is a static order of precedence, in Theodore it becomes a live ecclesiological argument: the five sees are not merely ranked but jointly competent, so that a determination of faith made by one of them alone — Constantinople, under the emperor, in 815 — is for that very reason no judgment of the Church (Cholij, Theodore the Stoudite, 2002, pp. 152–185). He turns an order of honor into a test of validity: the faith is settled by the concord of the five heads, and a synod that lacks that concord, however imperial its backing, has settled nothing. The inherited idea, in Theodore’s hands, does work it had not been made to do — which is why his deployment of it became a reference point in its own right.

The Honorific Language and Its Two Readings

The contested matter is the precise weight of the phrases Theodore directs to Rome, and honesty requires both that they be reported and that the two readings of them be set side by side (per METHODOLOGY §4). In the letters of the exile years Theodore addresses the apostolic see in language of striking elevation: he calls upon Rome as the see that holds the keys and the place of Peter, “the rock of faith upon which the Catholic Church is built”; he speaks of the Roman Church as a chief and unshaken support of Orthodoxy; and he treats it as a forum to which the persecuted Eastern iconodules may appeal against the synod of the capital (the substance of the appeals to Paschal I, Epistulae, ed. Fatouros, CFHB 31, 1992; Cholij, pp. 160–185; Pratsch, Theodoros Studites, 1998, pp. 245–270). Comparable phrases — Rome as the highest of the churches, as the see whose communion is the touchstone of orthodoxy, as the “first of the five patriarchates” — recur across the iconodule correspondence of these years.

These words sustain two interpretations, and a serious account gives both:

The Catholic reading. Catholic writers have long taken such language at its full weight as a ninth-century Eastern witness to a real Roman primacy of jurisdiction — the Petrine see as the divinely-given head of the universal Church, the rock on which it is built, the court to which even Constantinople must appeal when it falls into error. On this reading Theodore’s recourse to Rome is not mere recourse to an uncorrupted ally but recognition of an office: Rome judges because Rome is, by Christ’s institution, the supreme tribunal of the faith (so the older Catholic tradition; cf. The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, s.v. “Theodore of Studium,” which adduces Theodore among the Eastern testimonies to the papal primacy).
The Orthodox conciliar reading. Orthodox writers answer that the Petrine and “rock” language is honorific and confessional, not jurisdictional: Rome is addressed as the senior and most honored of the five sees, the guardian of the Petrine confession of faith (which every orthodox see shares), and a vital ally precisely because in 815 it was uncorrupted and beyond the emperor’s reach — but its authority for Theodore remains that of one preeminent member of the conciliar body, not a monarchy over it. He appeals to Rome as one of the five heads, within a structure whose final organ is the council of the whole pentarchy; his deference is real honor and real appeal within conciliarity, not submission to a later papal supremacy (Cholij, pp. 152–185, reading the primacy-language within Theodore’s pentarchic frame).

The scholarship, Cholij foremost, locates Theodore’s ecclesiology firmly in the conciliar-pentarchic frame while declining to flatten the genuine warmth and elevation of his Roman language; the honest statement is that Theodore held Rome in the highest honor as the senior see and a court of appeal in the crisis, within an ecclesiology whose governing principle is the conciliar consensus of the five patriarchates. The interconfessional reading of his exact words — whether they confess an office of supreme jurisdiction or a preeminence of honor and confession within the conciliar body — remains genuinely contested, and this collection records the dispute rather than resolving it [Disputed: Catholic reading — Theodore as witness to a Roman primacy of jurisdiction (Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, s.v. “Theodore of Studium”); Orthodox-conciliar reading — Theodore’s Roman language as honor and appeal within a pentarchic-conciliar ecclesiology (Cholij, 2002, pp. 152–185)].

Conciliarity and the Church’s Freedom

Whatever its precise weighting of Rome, Theodore’s ecclesiology is of a piece with the conviction that runs through his whole life: the faith is not the emperor’s, and the Church has within herself — in her councils and the concord of her sees — the organs to define and defend it without and even against the throne (see Church and Emperor). The pentarchy is the institutional form of that freedom: a structure of mutual accountability among the great sees that no single emperor, controlling a single capital, can capture. When the throne and the patriarchate of Constantinople fell into iconoclasm, Theodore did not conclude that the Church had failed; he appealed to the rest of her body, confident that the faith was held there still. That confidence was vindicated in 843, when the icons were restored and the synod of 815 condemned — the conciliar Church reasserting the faith the captive synod had betrayed (see Repose and the Triumph of Orthodoxy). Theodore’s pentarchic ecclesiology is, in the end, a theology of how the Church keeps the faith when her local authorities fail — and that is why it has remained a reference point in Orthodox ecclesiology ever since.

References

Cholij, Roman. Theodore the Stoudite: The Ordering of Holiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. (On Theodore’s pentarchic ecclesiology, the appeals to Rome, and the conciliar reading of his primacy-language.)
Pratsch, Thomas. Theodoros Studites (759–826) — zwischen Dogma und Pragma. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1998. (On the appeals to Pope Paschal I and the other patriarchates.)
Theodore the Studite. Epistulae, ed. Georgios Fatouros, CFHB 31, 2 vols. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992. (The letters to Paschal I and on the pentarchy.)
“Theodore of Studium.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton, 1912 (newadvent.org) — for the Catholic reading of the appeals to Rome.
The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. Alexander Kazhdan et al. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. (s.vv. “Pentarchy,” “Paschal I,” “Theodore of Stoudios.”)
The Canons of the Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea I, c. 6; Constantinople I, c. 3; Chalcedon, c. 28). Trans. in The Seven Ecumenical Councils, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 14. (The conciliar ranking of the five sees behind the pentarchic idea.)