Now, to business: there are two heresies that are featured in our reading for today that you should know something about. One of them is Monophysitism and the other is Nestorianism. The Monophysites, who enjoyed the support of the Empress Theodora, believed that Christ was one person in which the two natures, human and divine, were actually fused into one (hence the name, combining "mono" and "physis"). Whether this is heretical or not, strictly speaking, could be debatable, and it was at the Council of Chalcedon, which condemned it in 451 but did not eliminate it as a force. The orthodox position is that Christ combines two natures in one person, and that the human nature is not subsumed by the divine.
Nestorianism, named after Nestorius, a 5th century patriarch in Constantinople, continued to thrive in the near east even after being condemned at the council of Ephesus in 431. The essential teaching was that Christ is two natures inhering in two persons that are separate, one human and one divine, and that Mary gave birth only to the human Christ. To hold this view would be to deny her the title of Theotokos, or "god-bearer."
Regarding the Council of Chalcedon, its most important pronouncement was that the see of Constantinople had primacy over those of Antioch and Alexandria. This meant that the patriarch there held authority over the patriarchs of the other two cities, thus relegating them to a secondary status. This decision was not received with unanimous assent, to say the least. Another outcome of that council was a rift with the pope in Rome, who was miffed that an eastern council should presume to condemn Monophysitism when the pope held that only the Roman see had that authority. The eastern church was willing to acknowledge the superior prestige of Rome, but not bend to it in authority.
I'm sure, however, that you don't want to learn only about the controversies in the church at this point in time. Justinian, a major figure in our history of the early Middle Ages, is famous on a number of bases. First, there is the Justinian Code, far more important than the Theodosian Code that you enjoyed reading at the beginning of the term. The two sections of the code, the Institutes and the Digest, comprise the Corpus iuris civilis, the Roman law code that was passed down to legal scholars of the medieval period, who drew on these documents to formulate law for both the institutional church, for the Holy Roman Empire, and for the city governments in Italy. This did not happen right away, but there was in the 12th century a revival that brought the Justinian Code back into the forefront. By the way, Brian Tierney, editor of the excerpt linked here, was one of my professors in graduate school, and an expert on the subject of canon law.
Another important accomplishment of Justinian's reign, along with his building of the Hagia Sophia, was his effort ot reuniting the eastern and western half of the Empire. His successful conquest of Africa from the Vandals, and incursions as far as the western Mediterranean, were stunning achievements, but it is in his invasion of Italy that he had the most impact, most of it negative. His troops caused untold damage to that region, which was compounded by the appearance of the plague. This devastation was compounded by the invasion of the Lombards, a new group from the north that were particularly destructive (the name Lombard, or Longo-bard, means "long-beard). One of their most notable deeds was the sacking of St. Benedict's monastery at Montecassino in 577.
One thing that I hope Brown's account can do is impress on you the extent to which both Byzantium and Persia exhausted themselves in fighting with one another, although their interactions were by no means uniformly hostile. But by the time the Muslims appeared on the scene, both empires had overextended themselves and were not strong enough to stand up to this dynamic new presence.
Finally, we have Empress Irene and iconoclasm. This particular phenomenon occurs at various time in Christian history, another famous instance during the period of the Protestant Reformation. The term means "smashing of images," and it refers to the belief that all images of Christ and the saints should be destroyed. Images played a role in worship in both the east and the west, but in the east icons were believed to be a direct link to the divine. Some saw this as idolatry. The tendency for spirituality in the east to be have more of a mystical flavor than in the west (because of its stronger influence from neo-Platonism) contributed to the special importance of icons. Emperors threw themselves into the initiative to smash icons in an effort at undermining the power of the monasteries, but in the end they failed. The iconodule Irene, not a particularly savory figure in a lot of ways, was an exception to this tendency.
Our fourth chapter of Cruz/Gerberding, plus our readings in Brown, cover two major civilizations: the Byzantine and the Islamic Empires. Here are some terms and questions I want you to be able to consider:
Byzantium
And now for some questions:
I'll do the same for the Islamic section for Thursday.