Byzantine Rite

“ Lastly, the preponderance of the surrounding Roman rite had a tendency to overwhelm that of Constantinople. The Byzantine parishes were few and scattered. It was difficult and annoying for the Italo-Greeks to have to seek a priest of their own rite, or to abstain from receiving Sacraments. It was so much simpler to conform to the common use of the country. So we find always the same story. The bishops put down the Byzantine rite in one place; in another the Latin neighbours protest against it, and suspect its users of all kinds of heresies ”

“ It would hardly be possible to find an accusation that would offend them more, or be more unjust, than to say that they are not purest of the pure Byzantines, in their rites, habits, rule, and everything. At the same time Leo XIII founded, in the monastery, a college for Italo-Greeks, youths who are to become priests of their rite. These boys serve the church and sing the offices with the monks most beautifully. Any traveller who goes out from Rome on a Sunday morning may assist here at the Byzantine Liturgy, celebrated perfectly and sung exquisitely. ”

“ In 1592 the Jesuit rector made a great pretence of introducing the Byzantine rite "to be observed exactly in all things possible by all the Greek students." [31] Yet they still had to attend his Latin Mass every morning, and were bound to receive Holy Communion from him at least once a month "in azyme, according to the Latin manner." [32] This is, of course, the cardinal matter of all. It is absurd to say that a man observes the Byzantine rite when he receives Communion in one species and in azyme. ”

“ The policy of the Emperors, then, was to set up Metropolitans with provinces all over Lower Italy, to see that these were ordained at Constantinople, that they were Greeks, either Greeks from the East or Greeks of Italy or Sicily, to insist that they use the Byzantine rite, and so to detach all this part of the Church from its ancient immediate dependence on Rome. As soon as the Great Schism began the Byzantine Government and Patriarch naturally tried to drag these Greek bishops in Italy with them into schism. ”

“ Even before there had been riots with the “democracy in rags,” the poor people, joining the monks and abbots to make certain that the old-time religion of the Byzantines was kept true and pure even if this made the empire fall.
Nevertheless the old-time Orthodox Byzantine faith did not come into being just as it was and all at once. Since religion was so important, and since the Greeks loved to argue, the whole history of the Byzantines is filled with violent discussions and bitter differences of opinion about exactly what a man was supposed to believe. ”

“ Byzantium might be in decadence, her provinces falling away, her glory wasting; the follies of the court and emperors, the best manhood of the empire lost in cloisters and hermitages, the preference of the nobility for intrigue and diplomacy might be all working their deplorable results—nay, the results might be at hand! Still the passion of the people for fetes and holidays remained. Tastes are things of heredity. In nothing is a Byzantine of this day so nearly a classic Greek as in his delicacy and appreciation where permitted to indulge in the beautiful. ”

“ Byzantine, equally with Italian art, sprang from the last floraison of Roman Art, and grew up at Constantinople, the New Rome, but much modified by Greek and Syrian influences. At first the culture of the two Empires was so linked together, that it is the merest shade which distinguishes Roman Art in the East and West. The division widens, and the two branches stretch out, one, the purely Latin, soon to wither and almost perish, and the other to grow into that spreading tree of Byzantine Art, whose branches have scattered fruit in every part of Europe and the Levant. ”

“ Byzantine art is not only wonderful itself, but it shows how the Byzantines helped themselves to everything good that had been done before them. On the walls of a famous tomb in Ravenna, there is a mosaic of two doves at a drinking fountain that might have come from the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. There is also Byzantine art that bubbles over with Greek love of life. Some of it is filled with early Christian saints and symbols, like the peacock and the fish. There is some with the lions and eagles of the ancient Hittites, and others whose fierce, bearded saints are like Assyrian warriors. ”

“ The Byzantine Empire was much more than just one half of the old Roman Empire dragging out its days for another thousand years. It was a new Roman Empire based on Christianity. Practically every Byzantine was a Christian, and so it was Christianity that united all the many races and languages into a single people. In spite of all the arguments about this doctrine and that doctrine, practically every Byzantine believed in the official Orthodox faith, and as the emperor was head of this faith, that gave him additional power. ”

“ This is proved by what we have seen in the historic controversies of the Byzantine age. Relics were deemed more important than ritual, icons than liturgy. To treasure a saint's bone or kiss a picture of Christ—this was what most concerned the Greek Christian of the Byzantine period in the matter of religion. The best teachers of the Church deprecated the fetishism of relic worship ”

“ The discovery that in spite of all display of violence the Byzantine court must end by yielding, as soon as the Eastern church or even part of it sided in earnest with the see of St. Peter, first made in the dogmatic disputes of the fourth and fifth centuries, once more stood revealed.
Now for the second cause. Amongst the Byzantines there arose a great man, capable of gathering all elements favourable to the cause of ecclesiastical liberty, hitherto dispersed over the whole of the Eastern Empire, into one centre, and thus bringing them into practical touch with Rome. ”

“ Nothing has ever surprised us more, we will frankly own, than this coincidence of authors in treating the Byzantine empire as feeble and crazy. On the contrary, to us it is clear that some secret and preternatural strength it must have had, lurking where the eye of man did not in those days penetrate, or by what miracle did it undertake our universal Christian cause, fight for us all, keep the waters open from freezing us up, and through nine centuries prevent the ice of Mahometanism from closing over our heads for ever? ”

“ In all this we have a good example of the Byzantine attitude of that time. There is, first, frank acknowledgement that originally the sees of Southern Italy and Sicily were under the Pope (whether as Patriarch or as Metropolitan) ; but, because he is no longer in the Roman Empire (of the East, the Empire whose capital was Constantinople) , therefore he has lost all his rights. He is in the hands of Lombards, Goths, or Normans, whom the Byzantines pleasantly dismiss as Barbarians. We see also the typically Byzantine idea that politics must settle the whole question of ecclesiastical order. ”

“ The journeys of three emperors were unavailing for their temporal, or perhaps their spiritual, salvation; but they were productive of a beneficial consequence—the revival of the Greek learning in Italy, from whence it was propagated to the last nations of the West and North. In their lowest servitude and depression, the subjects of the Byzantine throne were still possessed of a golden key that could unlock the treasures of antiquity; of a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy. ”

“ The manner of building and painting, the tradition of jewellery, metal work and decoration that we call Byzantine, are so closely connected with the history and liturgy of the Orthodox Eastern Church, that we ought not to pass them over here without some notice. The Byzantine question is one of those that are most disputed by archaeologists. When the Romans had come under the influence of Greece, they, or their Greek artists, covered the Empire with the buildings and statues that we call Roman-Greek. ”

“ Thus, by the enthusiasm of faith, was called into existence that really primitive School of Painting which has received the name of Byzantine; because at the very time when it obtained the liberty of displaying itself, Constantine, transferring the seat of empire to Byzantium, necessarily took with him the body of artists of whom he was the protector; because, too, as we have before observed, Byzantium henceforth became for many centuries the sole focus whence light radiated towards the West, which was now plunged in barbarism. ”

“ All but twelve of their forty-eight grand viziers were either Byzantines or from former Byzantine provinces such as Albania, Dalmatia, or Greece.
Byzantine civilization affected much more of daily life than merely ceremonies and government, however. It entered into every phase of life. It was the Byzantines who invented the fork. From Constantinople it was taken to Italy, and medieval English tourists brought it back to Britain. But for a long time a man was considered sissy and affected if he used one instead of his fingers. ”

“ Of the moral and intellectual unprogressiveness of Byzantium we may say, finally, that the Christian State, like those of the Saracens and the Turks, was in large measure kept stationary precisely by the relation of constant strife set up by the existence of the enemy. Each was the curse of its antagonist. And Christianity did no more to raise men above that deadlock of enmity than did Islam; nay, the further factor of Byzantine isolation represented by the rupture between the Greek and Latin Churches was a special product of the Christian system. ”

“ Alike from any such complete change, complete degeneracy, or ultimate attainment of life and perfection, the genuine Greek style of the Byzantine empire was exempted. That Oriental splendour of gold and colour by which so early as the days of Justinian the Great, it sought to gloss over the feebleness of its reminiscences of classical beauty, remained the unchanged leading characteristic of its illuminations down to the final extinction of the empire in 1453. ”

“ Yet its imitative tendency induced the genius of the Eastern Empire to borrow from all its neighbors, and especially from Greece, whose art had greatly retrograded even before the accession of Constantine. The adoption of Christianity as the religion of the state was most unfavorable to sculpture, which was associated by the ignorant with the representation and worship of the gods of antiquity. The term “Byzantine,” as applied to decoration, is most comprehensive, and, employed by writers at will, has become indefinite. ”

“ The more ancient a nation is, the more liable is it to be overwhelmed by this dreadful evil. The Byzantine empire, during a thousand years of civilisation and opulence, did not produce one work of original thought; five hundred years after the light of Athenian genius had been extinguished, the schools of Greece were still pursuing the beaten paths, and teaching the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. ”

“ Is is admitted that Byzantine society created none of the elements which form this rich and brilliant synthesis of art. Nothing is owed to new inspirations; no particular note of a new race is struck; there is no influence of a special milieu, no discovery due to the existence of an artist of genius, all we can trace in the development of Byzantine civilization being the presence of able writers and perfect technicians, all seeking to give greater proportions to borrowed models. Roman, Greek and Oriental art united to give that interesting blend: the Byzantine. ”

“ Whereas the Byzantine Rome built avowedly upon Christianity as its own basis, and consecrated its own nativity by the sublime act of founding the first provision ever attempted for the poor, considered simply as poor, (i.e. as objects of pity, not as instruments of ambition.)
II. Secondly, as the great ægis of western Christendom, nay, the barrier which made it possible that any Christendom should ever exist, this Byzantine empire is entitled to a very different station in the enlightened gratitude of us western Europeans from any which it has yet held. ”

“ In the turn of the ages we are confronted by new Pagans who adhere to an obsolete religion; and the philosopher can only hope for an era when every one will have sufficient sense and science to think according to the laws of nature and civilization.
The history of the disintegrating and moribund Byzantine Empire has been explored by modern scholars with untiring assiduity; and the exposition of that debased political system will always reflect more credit on their brilliant researches than on the chequered annals of mankind. ”

“ As was well said by Gibbon, the mental paralysis of the Byzantines was "the natural effect of their solitary and insulated state." [368] The one civilisation from which Byzantium might latterly have profited—the Saracen—was made tabu by creed, which was further the efficient cause of the sunderance of Byzantine and Italian life. ”

“ With Constantine we find the Byzantine epoch in its maturity. With the simplicity of the early Christians we have remarked that everything like representation of the Godhead was eliminated or rather forbidden.
It was the Byzantines who created for the gem market token cameos and intaglios on which were incised effigies of the Holy Family, and incidents in every phase in that series of events that never has been equalled in historic interest in the records of time: the birth, life, trial, sufferings, death, and resurrection of the Son of God. ”