2. Changes in theological method: the West
Unlike the new manner of conceiving the government of the Church, the rise of scholasticism has seldom been viewed as a cause of schism. Besides, Byzantine intellectuals during this period were by no means immune to the attractions of critical theological analysis. The Byzantine philosophers, John Italus and Mich.ad Psellus, and the early scholastics, Peter Abelard and St Anselm, were actually near-contemporaries. Still, the fact remains that the emerging scholasticism of the West was another alarming symptom of the disintegration of the common Christian tradition-the intellectual counterpart to the ecclesiological evolution that has just been described; as with the issue of ecclesial authority, the Latins were before long to alter the rules of the game for the doing of theology as well. 42
Suffice it to say, the rapid rise of higher education in the West of which scholasticism is an expression should not be divorced from its larger historical context. In all essential respect the new interest in learning was part of the general social and political reawakening that characterized Europe after the anarchy and violence of the first feudal age. By the late eleventh century this new vitality was to lead to the rise of towns, the growth of population and a new merchant class, to say nothing of the new monasticism, the renewal in ecclesiastical discipline, and papal authority.43 In general terms, higher education in the central Middle Ages is best explained by the instructional tradition that developed first in the flourishing cathedral schools of the late eleventh century. Though many of these institutions could trace their origin back co the Carolingian period, it was not until the early twelfth century that they were to develop and mature into independent centers of higher learning. This intellectual vitality was due in part to the increasing number of wandering scholars who were all the while attaching themselves to the old schools. Before long, given the increasing mobility and prosperity of the age, the number of students also swelled in proportion. By the end of the century with an expanding enrollment and a more diversified teaching faculty, many of the cathedral schools had crystallized into universities. One of the most influential bequests of the Middle Ages to the modern world had become reality by 1200.
That this spectacular expansion in education affected theological study in various ways has already been implied. In the first place, henceforth all new ideas in theology were to come from these new institutions. Before long, the university of Paris, in point of fact, became the leading theological center in Europe. The setting of theology by 1200 had shifted permanently from the cloister to the classroom. The organized teaching and writing of theology, which had until then been confined primarily to the monk and the monastery, was to be done in the new city schools by secular urban teachers or masters. The prominent part played by the monastery in the preservation, creation, and diffusion of culture in the West since the sixth century was lost. By the end of the twelfth century, quite simply, its leadership of learning had passed over to the new universities situated in the areas of greatest urban development. Granted a number of abbeys continued to hold on to their intellectual primacy for some time, including Bee in the north of France under St Anselrn, and of course Cluny itself. But these were to prove the exception and did not survive the century as centers of learning and theological creativity.44 By 1200, theology was simply no longer the preserve of the rural and remote monastery.
More fundamentally, by then theology was also no longer liturgical, contemplative, or traditional. Henceforth it was to be shaped almost exclusively by deductive rational thought, or by the techniques learned from the study of dialectic. In its simplest etymological sense scholasticism has often been defined as the instructional methodology developed by the schools of medieval Europe. And yet scholasticism can also be characterized as a system of philosophical speculation in which theology is provided with a logical substructure or content; its essence could be said to lie in the urgent need felt by medieval thinkers to understand Christian doctrine rationally. Exploring the relationship between reason and revelation was always at the heart of the scholastic method. "Once the process had started, there was nothing to stop it, and by the end of the eleventh century the practice of scholastic debate was emerging as a central feature of the educational system."45 The pioneer of the movement was to be the well-known St Anselm (1033-1109), the famous abbot of Bec and later archbishop of Canterbury. Of course long before Anselm medieval thinkers were aware of the Augustinian argument chat theological disputation could be enhanced by the skillful use of philosophy and, indeed, dialectics, the method of rigorous logical analysis and deduction. As a matter of fact a limited knowledge of the latter was available during the early Middle Ages, thanks to Boechius' translations of some of Aristotle's logical treatises. Still, the attempt to organize the data of faith into a rational body of knowledge, to better fathom the mysteries contained in the Scriptures by means of disciplined rational argument is rooted in Anselm and his immediate disciples.46 Specifically, the movement has its beginning in the purely Anselmian conviction (shared by every subsequent scholastic) that rational reasoning could effectively illumine and deepen one's understanding of what is accepted by faith. True, Anselm's famous formula fides quarms intellectum - implied that revealed truth was to be the starting point. "I do no seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand: for this I also believe that unless I believe I shall not understand."47 For Anselm, nevertheless, the obvious priority possessed by faith or revelation did not in any way invalidate the use of human reason as a path to truth. Man's striving to understand his faith, to find logical consistency in what he believed, was, on the contrary, a wholly laudable, even essential, exercise. That Anselm was able to put his speculation to the test is well known. His tight logical investigation of such doctrines as the incarnation and atonement (in Cur Deus Homo?) were to earn him the title "founder of scholasticism." The high-medieval rationalism of the thirteenth century does indeed lead back in a straight line to St Anselm.
During the early stages of the movement an equally decisive contribution was to be made by the intellectually independent Peter Abelard (1079-1142). As his Sic et Non illustrates, Abelard was in part responsible for perfecting the scientific method and technique of scholasticism. His ruthless pursuit of theology as a rationalistic activity, in which he insisted that all inconsistencies and discrepancies found in the fathers and Scriptures were to be laid bare for the reader (his aim was to invite question bur not skepticism) was to influence theologians and canonists alike. Peter Lombard's Sententiae and Gratian's Decretum both demonstrate what could be achieved with the help of such techniques. Both authors were also to go beyond the restless Abelard by seeking to reconcile the apparent contradictions in the traditional authorities deliberately left unexplained in Sic et Non. Arguably, by mid-century, early western scholastics were well on the way to reducing the study of doctrine (to say nothing of canon law) to a rigorous and exact science. Granted opposition to this shift in theological method was not unknown. Both Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Damian were convinced that the new rationalism was unnecessary and perhaps even harmful to salvation. "One knows God, insofar one loves him" was to be St Bernard's argument. And yet in the end such hostility (including the double condemnation of Abelard in 1121 and 1140 engineered by Bernard) was unable to arrest the growth of the new methodology. The desire to penetrate the content of Christian belief by means of logic enlightened by faith was off and running.
Although the creative contributions of the twelfth century scholars were obviously crucial, the full potential of scholasticism was not realized until the following century. For this maturation-the so-called "high scholasticism" of the thirteenth century-the recovery of the full corpus of Aristotle and the growth of the universities, as international degree-granting institutions, was essential. As it happened, the impact of the full translation into Latin of Aristotle on the new intellectual discipline of dialectics was revolutionary. For scholasticism, in particular, the age was one of synthesis and consolidation. The great systematic treatises, commentaries, and summas that were produced, make the century one of the most seminal and significant in the history of systematic theology. Of the great system-builders of the century no one was perhaps as important or gifted as the Dominican, Thomas Aquinas. That his elaborate all-embracing synthesis harked back to Anselm's initial position of faith seeking understanding is not surprising. He, too, was to insist on the autonomy and importance of reason.
Although the natural light of the human mind does not suffice for the manifestation of the things that are made manifest by faith, yet it is impossible that what is divinely taught to us by faith be contrary to the things with which we are endowed by nature. For the one or the other would then have to be false, and, since both come to us from God, God would be to us an author of falsehood, which is impossible. Rather, the situation is this. Since within the imperfect there is a certain imitation of what is perfect, though an incomplete one, in what is known through natural knowledge there is a certain likeness of what is taught to us by faith.
In sum, Thomism also begins from the conviction that an essential harmony exists between revelation and reason; both are compatible, even complementary. Ultimately the gift of grace does not destroy or remove nature but perfects it. After Albertus Magnus and his talented student, St Thomas, one could justifiably argue that the "christianization of Aristotle" had indeed been completed.
On the other hand, the period also produced other system-builders who were by no means always eager to concur with St Thomas. Scholastic theological speculation at any rate should not be equated with Thomism. There were other ways to approach the problems and issues raised in the schools, as the work of Albertus Magnus, Alexander of Halles and others, illustrate. Besides, in addition to the Aristotelian tradition, the Platonic tradition prospered equally at the same time. The latter system had its roots in Augustine, who had of course sought to christianize Plato and the Neoplatonists in the fourth century; one of its more eloquent representatives was the minister-general of the Franciscan order, St Bonaventure, a contemporary of St Thomas. These schools of thought were also at the center of a major medieval philosophical debate regarding the nature of "universals" or Platonic archetypes. But Thomism was frequently questioned in the fourteenth century as well. Time and again it was overtaken, although never altogether overturned, by the teaching of Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. In the western theological landscape Thomism evidently was not sovereign. Diversity instead tended to prevail. And yet, among the different western approaches to theology, Thomism possibly was more faithful to the eastern tradition than some of its opponents. The nominalist approach of the Franciscan Ockham, with its tacit denial of any real possibility of sanctification, for instance, has little in common with patristic teaching. The well-known admiration for St Thomas expressed by the fifteenth century Byzantine, Gennadius Scholarius, was, in the final analysis, not without basis.
Apart from its emphasis on logic, one of the more salient features of the scholastic method concerned its approach to the proof from authority, the so-called argument from biblical and patristic sources. The rejection, or at best deemphasis, of such proof was often at the heart of the transformation of theology into a rationalist activity. Granted, revelation always had precedence over reason. All scholastics, as we have seen, invariably used revealed truth as their point of departure; the authority of the Bible and the fathers governed all their activity. Logic, on the other hand, was supposed to be exploited much like a tool for understanding the content of revealed doctrine. (In the Divine Comedy, significantly, it was Beatrice, symbol of theology, who was destined to guide Dante to eternal beatitude rather than the poet Virgil, symbol of classical rationalism.) And yet, since the whole object was to grasp official theology philosophically, traditional authorities in the last analysis had to be dismissed or ignored in the process. All appeal to tradition had to be firmly excluded. Doctrine was to be defended and proven by intellectual argument only, without the support of biblical and patristic authority, and with "Christ aside"-Christo remoto--as Anselm had boldly phrased it in Cur Deus Homo?49 Indeed, the goal was to try to transcend the boundaries set by traditional theology, with its frequent simple restatement of old answers, by focusing on rational demonstration, on dialectical relationships, and on the definition, identification, and classification of doctrine. Theology was to become a formal academic subject or science-a university discipline. Significantly, it was with Abelard that the term "theology," used until then to designate scriptural studies (sacra pagina), first became identified with the new highly abstract scientific theology of scholasticism. 50 That the reconciliation and synthesis between Greek philosophy and revelation achieved in due time by the Latin world marked a radical shift away from the theological methodology preferred until then by both Churches is indisputable. Doctrine was "analyzed, defined and codified in a way for which there was no previous parallel" in either East or West.51 In the long run this unilateral change in the rules of the game on the part of the Latin world could not but affect the future of East-West relations. Logic-oriented theology at any rate was to widen the distance between the two worlds. 52
As noted earlier, the new dialectic was to affect canon law as well. Church law soon also became an influential discipline, even a science, much like the new systematic study of the evidence of divine revelation. More fundamentally, it was also to become a factor of great importance in the life of the papal revolution. That its great growth was due in part to Gregorian theologians is not surprising. Granted canonists were at first primarily interested in reconciling the conflicts and discrepancies of their authorities and in imposing order on their varied material. Before long, however, they were to become papal propagandists as well, thanks to the Gregorian reformers' need to assert the legislative authority of the pope in the new legal system that was being created at the time. Quite simply, the spectacular advance of this practical discipline is also linked to the reactivated papacy and its apologists who wished to give legal strength and solidity to their abstract assertions of papal sovereignty. It is by no means an accident that the new wave of canonical studies coincided with the rise of papal monarchy in Latin Christendom. It is in point of fact the canonists who were before long to make the Roman pontiff not only supreme judge but supreme legislator in Christendom. The sweeping law-making powers ascribed co the popes by canonists were in the end to give substance and muscle to the new papacy.
Of course, the recovery and study of classical Roman law early in the twelfth century also inspired canonists in developing a corresponding ecclesiastical discipline. The task of systematizing and harmonizing the massive legislation of past councils, and of the precedents and pronouncements of various pontiffs and Church fathers into a single comprehensive collection, was accomplished first at Bologna, by the monk Gratian (1140). The result, his famous Concordance of Discordant Canons, or more commonly, Decretum, was to become the foundation of western canon law. Although manuals of Church law were known before 1140, none had been as complete as the new Decretum. Above all, in contrast with its partial predecessors, the new codification was furnished with a unified design; it was arranged not only topically but systematically, even logically. The entire manual was actually provided with a "dialectical" structure: all existing conflicting authorities, gaps, or discrepancies in the texts, were carefully lined up to be reconciled. As with the new logic-oriented science of theology, in brief, there was a rational weighing-up of arguments for and against, followed by their resolution. The work was at once a text of law and a commentary. This arrangement, as we should expect, was a great benefit to its users, including Gratian's immediate successors and subsequent commentators, the so-called Decretists, who were to continue his work of "harmonization." Why this initially purely private achievement soon became the authoritative text in western ecclesiastical courts and the foundation of all future canonical study in the schools of Europe is obvious.
But the Decretum Gratiani became an instrument of papal absolutism as well, to say nothing of its contribution to the growth of papal administrative unity and efficiency. To repeat, it was inevitable that Gregorians from the outset should turn to the canon lawyers for appropriate legal precedents, texts, and arguments, to support both their claims and deliberate aggressive centralization. In particular, their need to define the pope's supreme judicial authority over the Church-as iudex totius ecclesiae--soon became urgent. Indeed, if Gregory VII's Dictatus papae is a faithful guide, the entire canonistic activity of the early reformers was aimed at rediscovering and defining the supposedly forgotten privileges of the Roman pontiff. Gratian's definitive summary was to contribute to this enterprise in a fundamental way, both by the burst of legal scholarship that his codification was to generate and by the emphasis it was to place on papal authority. Quite simply, the reformers' promotion of the Church as a regnum or government, with the pope as monarch, was to become the foundation stone of Gratian's structure. For the monk of Bologna the pope's omnipotence as supreme judge in all ecclesiastical matters, and as the source of juridical authority in the Church, was at any rate never in doubt. For its part, the Roman Church by virtue of its authority was "alone able to judge concerning all men but no one is permitted to make judgment concerning it. "53 Indeed, in the end, the bishop of Rome was not even bound by the laws because he makes the laws.54 Such pronouncements, neatly summarizing the ideological progress made by the Gregorian movement in the period 1050-1150, were of course continued by Gratian's successors. They were helpful in the subsequent full unfolding of a separate law consisting of papal decretals-a new law that was both papal in origin and papal in spirit. Increasingly, in fact, the view of canonists was to be that papal decretals were both equal and superior to the canons of the ecumenical councils.55 Evidently papal authority had absorbed all other authority in the Church! To put it more bluntly, thanks to the decretists, by the end of the twelfth century, the popes were for all intents and purposes in possession of Justinian's sweeping law-making powers. It is a commonplace, but one worth repeating, that "it is in the sphere of canon law that the Gregorian reform strikes the reader as unmistakably revolutionary."56
Given these legal developments, it is not surprising that one of the more fundamental consequences of the Gregorian revolution should have been the transformation of the papacy into the most complex tribunal in Christendom. As early as the pontificate of pope Urban II, the expression curia, normally understood as a law court, was actually being used to describe the papal household. This is to say, in other words, the Curia Romana was beginning to be viewed as the ecclesiastical counterpart of the secular law court of a king or a feudal vassal (curia regis). The new legalism was beginning to affect the papacy deeply. In due course this was co lead co an unending flow of litigants to Rome and, necessarily, to an increase in the volume of legal business for the papacy. As a matter of plain fact legal rather than religious functions were to set the pattern of papal activity for the rest of the central Middle Ages. 57 Practically every papal incumbent in the period 1100-1300 was to be a lawyer. The Western Church was invaded by canonists and, for a time, even occupied by them. In the papal chambers, as St Bernard had once feared, more was being heard of the law of Justinian than of the law of Christ.58 Sadly, by the fourteenth century as we shall see, the papacy's legal involvements were to result in abuse and corruption as well. If the twelfth century satires on the Roman curia can be trusted, abuse was already a problem. This development was to prove tragic in the long run, both for the Western Church as a whole and for the papacy in particular.
3. Currents of thought: the East
Like the West, Byzantium was also attracted to Aristotelian logic and Platonic speculation. It was inevitable that this should be so, given the fact that the tradition of Greek antiquity was an essential element of Byzantine culture. The argument that Byzantine intellectuals felt comfortable and confident with this inheritance is a truism. As the polymath Psellus was to put it, the ancients were Byzantium's "own writers," the very source of its cultural chauvinism. After the Macedonian revival of the ninth century, the tradition of Greek learning was to continue virtually without interruption until the end of the empire. 59 In a very real sense, our present knowledge of Greek classical literature is largely dependent on this renewal in the age of Photius and Arethas of Caesarea. In the eleventh century the tradition was to gain further momentum with the reorganization of the imperial university of Constantinople and its two institutions of learning-the school of philosophy and the school of law. Inevitably, during this centralization of higher education, under the direction of such teachers as John Xiphilinus, John Italus, Michad Psellus, and their friends and pupils, legal and philosophical scholarship flourished. A fresh group of professional academics, a new urban intelligentsia, was emerging. No less inevitable perhaps was the fact that this age of intense intellectual activity and awakening was to be far more creative than its predecessor, the encyclopedic literary revival under the early Macedonians. The scholarly study of Plato and Aristotle, resumed again after centuries of neglect, was no longer purely antiquarian or imitative.
In some ways the renewed preoccupation with philosophy, law, and dialectic, which the more structured Byzantine institutions of higher education began to encourage in the mid-eleventh century, parallels the diverse achievements of the West, especially the growth of scholasticism and legal studies.60 Although the institutionalization of schools and the interest displayed by established law and philosophy faculties in both East and West did not develop in the same direction, the two worlds clearly mirrored each other. The promising "intimations of rationalism," to say nothing of the other changes of a socio-economic nature that occurred in eleventh and twelfth century Byzantium, were related to the broad transformation of the medieval world as a whole. 61 The common intellectual efforts and concerns of the two worlds at any rate indicate that neither was sealed off from the other. Mutual intellectual interchange and contact certainly did exist (to repeat), even if it was often unfriendly.
The prominent pan played by Michael Psellus (1018-79) in the educational innovations connected with the restoration of the university under Constantine IX is well known. Actually he was the first among Byzantium's new urban elite to be appointed professor of philosophy and to carry the title of hypatos ton philosophon. His productive career, vast literary output and, of course, teaching, were to influence a whole generation of scholars. Given his general penchant for philosophical inquiry, particularly Neoplatonism, it is not surprising that he was also a vigorous, even eloquent, supporter of dialectic for theological purpose. In defending himself against the attacks of his jurist-friend and subsequent patriarch, John VIII Xiphilinus (1064-75), Psellus maintained that such inquiry served a practical purpose. Syllogistic reasoning, invented and perfected by Hellenic wisdom, was indeed beneficial to both theology and philosophy. "To argue dialectically is not contrary to Church doctrine nor a method alien to philosophy, but rather only an instrument of truth and the means by which the answer to the question posed is discovered."62 As a hermeneutical tool of reason, at any rate, the device was entirely compatible with true piety and doctrine. On this point Psellus was certain, even immovable. "I may belong entirely to Christ, but I refuse to deny the wiser of our writers or the knowledge of reality, both intelligible and sensible."63 Overall, Psellus' support of syllogistic argument and more broadly of Hellenism, was similar in principle to the defense of dialectic espoused by western scholasticism. St Anselm was Psellus' slightly younger contemporary.
Of course Psellus was sensitive to the fact that the truths of Christianity could not be compromised. Any element in the pagan philosophical systems shown to be incompatible with official Church teaching had to be rejected. Nor could logical analysis be used methodically to resolve every doctrinal problem. Psellus' passionate denial that he was actually entirely under Plato's influence was grounded on such arguments. Doubtless the hypatos of philosophers managed to remain within the traditional boundaries of dogmatic theology. By cautiously formally avoiding any serious collision with the authorities, his religious loyalty never became a matter of public debate. His denials of apostasy or heresy, at any rate, were found convincing, even when his protests were so charged with insincerity and invention that they could not be taken at face value.64 Evidently, his disgrace in 1055, when he lost his faculty position, was temporary since, before long, he was back at the court as imperial tutor. Conceivably, the same would have been true of John ltalus, Psellus' pupil and successor to the chair of philosophy at the university, had he been more cautious. As it turned out, Italus was rather unfortunate in his efforts to interpret Christian doctrine in terms of rational principles. He was eventually brought before the patriarchal tribunal and condemned in two successive synodal proceedings (1076/77 and 1082).65 Not surprising, his errors, enshrined in the eleven anathemas added to the Synodicon by the synods, are virtually all doctrinal in nature. These include the assertion that the incarnation and the hypostatic union could be explained in terms of logic ( 1); perverse explanations or denials of the miracles of Christ and his saints (6); the conviction that the pagan philosophers (the first heresiarchs) were of greater importance than the Church fathers (5); the admission that ideas and matter were eternal (4 and 8); the denial of the bodily resurrection (9); the false belief in the pre-existence of souls (1 O); and the treatment of pagan literature as an independent source of truth rather than as a tool for educational purposes or instruction (7). 66
It is true, Italus' trial was partially politically motivated and reflected the tension between the new intelligentsia and the political establishment; it is likely that the new dynasty of Alexius I Comnenus, founded months before the last synodal proceeding involving John ltalus, was eager to give the appearance of being orthodoxy's protector.67 And yet, the propaganda value of this famous "show-trial" also should not be exaggerated. Although some of the details of the charges leveled against the accused may have been embroidered, there is apparently little reason to believe that he had been as circumspect as Psellus in his teaching. He resembled, it seems, the Latin Abelard both in his lack of caution and in his methodology. As such, he was quite capable of upsetting the authorities. "The vigor of the Orthodox reaction to the unorthodox ideas of the academics," it has been argued, "testifies to the strength of the rationalist threat to tradition ideology."68 No doubt, the Church also felt the need to respond to Italus' rational skepticism toward inherited doctrine in a direct way; it saw the trend as dangerous and, like its condemnation of past heresy, was anxious to make its position clear. As it happens, the notion-implied by many of the sanctions against Italus-that Christianity and Platonism are incompatible was not entirely novel. Actually, Italus' doctrinal deviations, condemned in the end as heretical by the synod, were virtually identical with Origen's own Platonism, anathematized five hundred years before by the fifth ecumenical council (553). Even the comparison between the ancient philosophers and the first heresiarchs was as old, if not older.
Significantly, the canonical sanctions of 1077/82 (the first to be added to the Synodicon since the final suppression of iconoclasm in 843) were before long supplemented by other decisions and condemnations. Italus' supporters were the first to feel the pressure by being denied any personal contact with their former teacher. This action was followed by the indictments of Theodore Blachernites and the monk Nilus. Then, in 1117 Italus' most famous pupil, Eustratius of Nicaea, the eminent commentator on Aristotle, was in turn condemned for his syllogistic approach to christological issues. According to his accusers he is said to have maintained that Christ had "reasoned in the manner of Aristotle," while Anna Comnena described him as more confident in his powers of rhetoric than the philosophers of antiquity. It was perhaps because of these powers that he had participated together with some of his later accusers in the Latin discussions of 1112. By mid-century the list of indictments was to grow longer as further synodal sanctions were added to the Synodicon. Apparently, despite official discouragement, interest in philosophy and dialectic persisted. The enthusiasm of literary circles for Neo-Platonism is in fact beyond question and is on the whole traceable to the earlier renaissance launched by Psellus and his circle. The well-known refutation of Proclus us by Nicholas of Methane, to say nothing of the polemic against the "Hellenizers" by the patriarch Michael III, must in part be explained by the study of Neo-Platonism by twelfth century Byzantine humanists.69 Indeed, most of the sanctions issued by the authorities were aimed it seems at prominent "liberal" intellectuals, including bishops (one of these was the patriarch-elect of Antioch, Sorerichus Panteugenus) as well as deacons. According to one recent estimate, there were some twenty-five such trials for "intellectual" heresy in the age of the Comnenoi. "And who knows how many do not appear in our patchy records. "70
To be sure, this "repression" should not be overstated. Apart from an occasional exile, brutal punishment was actually rarely used; none of Byzantium's independent-minded humanists was indeed ever condemned to death or burned at the stake. The campaign against them also did not involve the systematic censorship of Greek classical texts. In face, these continued to be read, copied, and studied, down to the breakup of the empire. Their use as school material was by no means discontinued. As sanction seven against Italus clearly implied, using pagan literature "for the sake of education," as opposed to adopting its "foolish" doctrines, was permitted. Official anathemas against "Hellenism" were never accompanied by book-burning. The attitude was characteristically Byzantine.71 To summarize, however high the number of "intellectual" heresy trials may have been, the goal of the Byzantine Church was never the total suppression of Hellenism. And yet, on the other hand, the reality of the opposition between conservative churchmen and secular scholarly humanists was undeniable. The complex cultural history of the age cannot in fact be adequately understood without chis fundamental tension and polarity between Greek thought and the Christian gospel - best symbolized by Italus' trial. Although the attitude of the Church was not inspired by outright suppression, its aim was in the end the practical elimination of Greek philosophy from the sphere traditionally reserved for theology proper. In the course of the Comnenian age, in more general terms, Orthodox Eastern Christendom increasingly argued that philosophy was not essential or indispensable for the solution of theological problems and the exposition of doctrine. Authentic knowledge of God and the truths of the catholic faith were to be grasped by means other than those offered by either Plato or Aristotle. On the whole, the canonical sanctions added to the Synodicon by the various councils of the eleventh and twelfth centuries against the Byzantine disciples of Greek wisdom find their significance in such arguments or convictions. To put it otherwise, the Christian East refused to enter into an alliance with philosophy in its attempt at doctrinal synthesis during this period. Its denunciation of the metaphysical systems of Byzantine intellectuals was, as such, quite consistent.
Arguably, in its rejection of Byzantine humanism, the Church was equally implicitly revealing its attitude towards Latin scholasticism as well. It was at any rate demonstrating that it could be far more hostile to Greek philosophy and the analytical approach to theology than the Latin West. Remarkably, "on the eve of the period when the West would commit its mind to the philosophy of the ancients and enter the great epoch of scholasticism, the Byzantine Church solemnly refused any new synthesis between the Greek mind and Christianity, remaining committed only to the synthesis in the patristic period. It assigned to the West the task of becoming more Greek than it was."72 As a consequence, the Orthodox world was by and large in the end to escape the negative effects of Aristotelian logic on both theology and canon law. In contrast with Latin Christendom the teaching and study of theology in the Christian East kept its religious status.73 Theology, conceived as an intellectual discipline, or as an investigation and systematization of revealed truth in the name of Aristotle, quite simply, remained outside of its theological field of vision.
Undeniably, the contrast between East and West on this issue is striking. By the late twelfth century western theologians by and large had ceased to speculate ad mentem patrum or to work in the same atmosphere of the fathers preferred until then by both Churches. Because of his attitude towards the proof from authority, the new professional Latin theologian was arguably willing to relativize the patristic inheritance. "Once the criticism of authorities has been introduced, even if it was for the sake of harmonizing them, the possibility of progressing beyond passive acceptance of them was suggested .... each of the fathers was situated, delimited, and characterized, with the effect of making his authority only relative."74 Oddly, this denigration of the patristic tradition apparently was furthered by the debate over the Filioque. Some western theologians it seems were soon convinced chat the Greek fathers were somehow not as authoritative as the fathers of the Latin church. Protest against Byzantine theology and the Greek language in the twelfth century was at any rate not uncommon. Robert of Melun, the successor of Abelard at Mount St Genevieve, was even willing to argue that it was unsuitable to use Greek in the exposition of Christian doctrine.75 To be short, increasingly, the Greek patristic heritage was deprived of its strength by the scholastic superstructure. By the thirteenth century, when a purely abstract systematic theology had emerged in the West, little of this legacy had survived. Latin theology was by then almost entirely dependent on human methods of argument, logic and philosophy. Still (to repeat what was said earlier of St Thomas), given the appreciation expressed by some Byzantine theologians for scholasticism, this western theological transition should not be distorted or exaggerated.
If the difference in theological perspective between the two Churches after the twelfth century is to be appreciated, an additional number of points need to be emphasized. In the first place, Byzantine Orthodox theology was never transformed into a school-theology; that is to say, it was never made either in schools or in universities. Genuine theological creativity was to be found far from such institutions as we shall see. Similarly, contrary to western practice, the subject was never studied or taught as a "science" with a formal academic methodology; exploring theology as a scientific discipline of higher education was simply unknown to the East. Finally, the professionalism that was to distinguish theology graduates of western universities everywhere, was altogether exceptional for Byzantium.76 The Orthodox theologian was actually never to know the structured theological training so characteristic of his western coeval. In the last analysis, the remarkable spiritual and theological maturity of such individuals as Theoleptus of Philadelphia, Nicholas Cabasilas or patriarch Gregory II of Cyprus (a contemporary of St Thomas Aquinas) was not the result of any formal theological training whatsoever. In the event, the theology of these and other gifted Byzantine theologians was very different from the theology familiar to Peter Lombard, Abelard, or St Anselm. Time and again the great theological system-builders of the West were to rely on philosophy to an extent incomprehensible for an Orthodox scholar. In contrast, to repeat, Byzantine theology was a continuation of the patristic legacy, and as such, was learned primarily by the reading and hearing of Scripture and of course by praying. It was never at any rate pursued as a purely rationalistic activity. Therefore, overall, it always remained a "kerygmatic theology, even when it was logically arranged and corroborated by intellectual arguments. The ultimate reference was still to faith, to spiritual comprehension ... [As such] it was not just a self-explanatory 'discipline' which could be presented argumentatively, i.e., aristotelikos [in the manner of Aristotle] without a prior spiritual engagement. This theology could only be 'preached' or 'proclaimed,' and not be simply 'taught' in a school-manner."78
Predictably, this fundamentally religious approach to theology was also shared by Byzantine contemplative monasticism. The position taken officially by the Church towards pagan philosophy always had the staunch support of monastics. All allegiance to the "foolish" secular wisdom of the ancients was automatically deemed as abomination by such circles. On the other hand, intellectuals were repeatedly expressing their reservations about monastic irrational mysticism.79 This opposition between Byzantine humanism and monasticism will, as we shall see in a later chapter, become especially obvious during the hesychast controversy in the fourteenth century. It was by no means accidental that the most original spokesmen of monastic theology and spirituality - Gregory Palamas and Symeon the New Theologian - were also adversaries of the secular humanistic currents prevailing during their lifetime. It is worth adding, in this connection, that in Byzantium the monastery remained a significant locus of theological creativity and productivity (in sharp contrast with the Latin cloister of the high Middle Ages). Real creativity, at any rate, was to be found largely in the monastery and not among Byzantium's secular humanist circles or among conservative churchmen. 80 The hesychast debates of the 1300s illustrate this in a forceful and impressive way. Doubtless the fact that the more dynamic theological current in late Byzantine thought was monastic might seem surprising. And yet in the end it is not. As it happens, "it is primarily because theological truth could be neither conceived as a system of concepts to be taught as a scholastic discipline, nor reduced to authoritative pronouncements of the magisterium that creative theologizing in medieval Byzantium was largely pursued in monastic circles."81
Needless to say, it follows from all the above that the change in methodology introduced in the West by scholasticism was to make theological exchange with the East rather difficult. Time and again the western complaint was to be that the Orthodox East was incapable of theologizing professionally or argumentatively. On the other hand, Byzantine churchmen could not understand how theology could be viewed as a rational discipline; listening to the logic-oriented Latin theologians in official debate (at Florence, for example) was for them often an incomprehensible, even loathsome exercise. To be short, the fundamental reorientation of western theology in the twelfth century, along with the papal Petrine claims, must be viewed as factors contributing to the disruption of Christendom. Both scholasticism and the Roman primacy, in a sense, changed the rules of the game and, as a consequence, destroyed the "living continuity with the common past of the Church universal. "82 The synchronous development of Latin scholasticism and schism at any rate was not a purely historical accident.
From the book 'The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy' by Aristides Papadakis
