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Enforcing Orthodoxy in Byzantium*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Averil Cameron
Averil Cameron*
Affiliation:
Keble College, University of Oxford
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Extract

Following in the tradition of Montesquieu and Gibbon, Wolfgang Liebeschuetz has recently again argued that one of the two most revolutionary aspects of Christianity in its history since Constantine has proved to be religious intolerance. The Byzantine state certainly made many efforts to enforce orthodoxy, and the question arises whether Byzantium was therefore a ‘persecuting society’, to use the now-familiar formulation of R. I. Moore. In a telling aside, Paul Magdalino asked in the course of an important discussion of eleventh- and twelfth-century Byzantium whether it became ‘even more of a persecuting society than before’ (my italics). Another strand of scholarship however has seen a contrast in this respect between western and eastern Europe, and several recent authors have argued for a comparative degree of toleration in Byzantium, or at least for a limitation on the possibilities of real repression. However this desire to find a degree of toleration and religious freedom in earlier societies clearly derives from our own contemporary concerns, and despite recent attempts to claim the Emperor Constantine as the defender of religious toleration, I agree with those who argue that it is misguided to look for an active conception of religious toleration in this period. This paper starts from the position that Constantine himself, and successive emperors after him, inherited an existing assumption that religious conformity was the business of the state, and looks at some of the less obvious ways by which the Byzantine state attempted to promote and enforce orthodoxy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 43: Discipline and Diversity , 2007 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2007

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Footnotes

*

My thanks are due for the comments of audiences at All Souls, Oxford and The Catholic University of America. I am also grateful to the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton where I was a Visiting Fellow in 2005, and to discussion with colleagues and visitors there, to Joseph Streeter for bibliography on the debate on toleration, and especially to the editorial acuity of Kate Cooper.

References

1 Liebeschuetz, J. H. W. G., Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford, 1979), 293 Google Scholar; similarly Christianity is seen as an agent of Roman decline in his book The Decline and Fall of the Roman City (Oxford, 2002) and in several of his papers.

2 Moore, R. I., The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar; see now however Laursen, John Christian and Nederman, Cary J., eds, Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment (Philadelphia, PA, 1998)Google Scholar.

3 Magdalino, Paul, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143–1180 (Cambridge, 1993), 383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 For discussion of the idea of the East as more ‘tolerant’ than the West, see Berend, N., At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and ‘Pagans’ in Medieval Hungary, c.1000-c.1300 (Cambridge, 2001), 52–3 Google Scholar; for the concept of toleration as anachronistic in medieval societies: ibid., 184, 272. Against Byzantium as ‘repressive’: Herrin, J., ‘Toleration and Repression within the Byzantine Family’, in Nikolaou, K., ed., Toleration and Repression in the Middle Ages (Athens, 2002), 173–88 Google Scholar, at 174, 187–8; cf.Beck, H.-G., ‘Formes de non-conformisme à Byzance’, Bibl de la classe des lettres de l’Academie Royale de Belgique 5, ser. 65 (1979), 313–29 Google Scholar; Cheynet, J.-C, ‘Les limites de pouvoir à Byzance: une forme de tolerance?’, ibid., 15–28 Google Scholar; Dagron, G., ‘La règle et l’exception: analyse de la notion d’économie’, in Simon, D., ed., Religisöse Devianz: Untersuchungen zu sozialen, rechtlichen und theologischen Reaktionen auf religiöse Abweichung im westlichen und ostlichen Mittelalter (Frankfurt am Main, 1990), 1–18.Google Scholar

5 See Drake, H. A., Constantine and the Bishops: the Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore, MD, 2000)Google Scholar; in this argument it is the bishops, not the emperor, who represent intolerance. See also Drake, H. A., ‘Lambs into Lions: Explaining Early Christian Intolerance’, P&P 153(1996), 3–36 Google Scholar; Digeser, Elizabeth Depalma, ‘Lactantius, Porphyry and the Debate over Religious Toleration’, Journal of Roman Studies 88 (1998), 129–46 Google Scholar. For a critique, see Cameron, Averil, ‘Apologetics in the Roman Empire: a Genre of Intolerance?’, in Carrié, Jean-Michel and Testa, Rita Lizzi, eds, “Humana sapit”: Études d’Antiquité tardive offertes à Lellia Cracco Ruggini, Bibliothèque de l’Antiquité Tardive 3 (Paris and Turnhout, 2002), 219–27.Google Scholar

6 See Laursen, J. C. and Nederman, C. J., ‘Problems of Periodization in the History of Toleration’, Storia della Storiografia 37 (2000), 55–65.Google Scholar

7 ‘Because everything you (i.e. the proconsul of Africa) in your prudence explained in your report about their religion demonstrates that what our laws see as their crimes are born of a wild and false imagination, we have set deserved and suitable penalties for these people. We command that the authors and leaders of these sects receive severe punishment and be burnt in the flames with their detestable books’: Lex Dei sive Mosaicarum et Romanorum legum collatio 15.3, trans, in Roger Rees, Diocletian and the Tetrarchy (Edinburgh, 2004), 174.

8 See Lieu, Samuel N. C., Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and in China (2nd rev. edn, Tübingen, 1992), 198–201 Google Scholar; for a trial by fire recorded in the monastic literature, see 195. Public debates with Manichaeans: Lim, Richard, Public Disputation, Power and Social Order in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1995), ch. 3, 70–108 Google Scholar. In the context of the condemnation of Monotheletism by the Sixth Council in AD 680–1 a Monothelete was put to the test to see whether he could raise someone from the dead; he was unsuccessful and was deposed and anathematized: ed. Schwartz, E., Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum (Berlin, 1936) [hereafter: ACO], 2.2.2: 674–82.Google Scholar

9 According to Anselm of Alessandria in the thirteenth century on Cathars and Waldensians, Mani preached ‘around Dragovitsa, Bulgaria and Philadelphia’ in or not long before the period of the Latin empire in Constantinople: trans, in Moore, R. I., The Birth of Popular Heresy (London, 1975), 146 Google Scholar. On the precedent, and the development of legislation against heresy, see Caroline Humfress, ‘Roman Law, Forensic Argument and the Formation of Christian Orthodoxy (III—VI Centuries)’, in Susanna Elm, Éric Rebillard, and Antonella Romano, eds, Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire (Paris, 2000), 125–47; eadem, Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2007).

10 Lieu, Manichaeism, 217: ‘the majority of the laws against heretics in the [ninth-century] Basilica are repetitions of Justinianic laws against Manichaeans’; an edict issued by Justin I and Justinian in AD 527 ordered the death penalty, already prescribed by Anastasius, and Manichaeans were persecuted and put to death (ibid., 210–15).

11 Eusebius, Vita Constantini, 1.44 [hereafter: Eusebius, VC] (Eusebius attempts to persuade us of the emperor’s tolerance and his efforts at persuasion); 2.64-72 (Constantine’s letter to Alexander and Arius, esp. 69, ‘let each of you extend pardon equally, and accept what your fellow-servant in justice urges upon you’, and 70, Christians should not engage in such internal disputes).

12 Compare Eusebius, ibid., 3.64-5 (Constantine’s decree against sects, ‘the secret conspiracies of the heterodox … and the wild beasts, the captains of their sacrilege’, 3.66.1).

13 Eusebius, ibid., 2.56 (pagans may keep their temples, but need to be corrected and brought to the right way, which is the only way of holiness).

14 For Constantine’s views, see his own words in a letter of AD 314 (Optatus, Appendix 3: God’s selection of Constantine as earthly ruler includes a duty to ensure correct worship); in Appendix 7, a letter of AD 315, he threatens to come to North Africa and sort out the matter in person; in AD 317 he ordered the property of Donatists to be turned over to Catholics (Augustine, Epistula 88), and he gave up on this coercion only because he was occupied with his war against his rival Licinius. See on the Donatists, and on the violence towards them which followed the Council of AD 411 Michael Gaddis, There is no Crime for Those who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 2005), 103–30, 131–50.

15 Eusebius, VC, 3.63-5; their books are to be ‘hunted out’ (66.1).

16 See for example Runciman, Steven, The Byzantine Theocracy (Cambridge, 1973)Google Scholar; Magdalino, Paul, ‘The Medieval Empire (780–1204)’, in Mango, Cyril, ed., Oxford History of Byzantium (Oxford, 2002), 169–213 Google Scholar, at 206; see also Dagron, G., Emperor and Priest: the Imperial Office in Byzantium, trans. Birrell, Jean (Cambridge, 2003), 282–3.Google Scholar

17 See now Louth, Andrew and Casiday, Augustine, eds, Byzantine Orthodoxies (Aldershot, 2006).Google Scholar

18 On which, see Cameron, Averil, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: the Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1991)Google Scholar; eadem, ‘Ascetic Closure and the End of Antiquity’, in Wimbush, Vincent L. and Valantasis, Richard, eds, Asceticism (New York, 1995), 147–61.Google Scholar

19 Louth, Andrew, St John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology (Oxford, 2002), 155–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Garsoian, N., ‘Byzantine Heresy: a Reinterpretation’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 25 (1971), 85–113 Google Scholar; on changing approaches to medieval heresy, see Arthur McGrade, Stephen, ‘The Medieval Idea of Heresy: What are We to Make of it?’, in Biller, Peter and Dobson, Barrie, eds, The Medieval Church: Universities, Heresy and the Religious Life; Essays in Honour of Gordon Leff, SCH.S 11 (Woodbridge, 1999), 111—39.Google Scholar

21 For the question in relation to the sixteenth century, see Bossy, John, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1985), 170–1.Google Scholar

22 For a strong statement, see Gurevich, A., ‘Why I am not a Byzantinist’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 46 (1992), 89–96 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The present paper focuses on the level of the state; it goes without saying that at ground level, and especially at certain times and in certain places, uncertainty was the norm (see e.g. Dagron, G., ‘L’ombre d’un doute: l’hagiographie en question, VIe-XIe siècle’, ibid., 59–68)Google Scholar. Nor can I consider here the questions of mission and conversion, important though they are.

23 For the concept of an ‘essence’ of Orthodoxy, see Averintsev, S., ‘Some Constant Characteristics of Byzantine Orthodoxy’, in Louth, and Casiday, , eds, Byzantine Orthodoxies, 215–28 Google Scholar. In a book entitled The Making of Orthodox Byzantium 600–1025 (London, 1996) Mark Whittow takes the early 11th century as his concluding point, while the ending of the iconoclastic controversy in AD 843 is also often seen as a turning point (though Patricia Karlin-Hayter, ‘Methodios and his Synod’, in Louth and Casiday, Byzantine Orthodoxies, 55–74, vividly brings out the extent to which our ability to understand this event is hampered by the tendentiousness of the historical record).

24 Lyman, Rebecca, ‘The Politics of Passing: Justin Martyr’s Conversion as a Problem of “Hellenization” ’, in Miles, Kenneth and Grafton, Anthony, eds, Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middles Ages: Seeing and Believing (Rochester, NY, 2003), 36–60 Google Scholar, with extensive bibliography on theoretical approaches; also Averil Cameron, The Violence of Orthodoxy’, in Zellentin, Holger and Iricinschi, Edward, eds, Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity (Tübingen, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

25 The literature is now very large; see for instance Burrus, Virginia, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1995)Google Scholar; Buell, D. Kimber, Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy (Princeton, NJ, 1995)Google Scholar; eadem, Why this New Race? Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York, 2005).

26 See esp. Lieu, Judith, Image and Reality: the Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh, 1996)Google Scholar; eadem, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Craeco-Roman World (Oxford, 2004), with the papers in Goodman, Martin, Price, S. R. F., Rowland, C. J. and Edwards, Mark, eds, Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews and Christians (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar.

27 Millar, Fergus, ‘Repentant Heretics in Fifth-Century Lydia: Identity and Literacy’, Scripta Classica Israelica 23 (2004), 111–30 Google Scholar; cf. also idem, ‘Christian Emperors, Christian Church and the Jews of the Diaspora in the Greek East, CE 379–450’, Journal of Jewish Studies 55 (2004), 1–24. For late antiquity, see also for example the papers in section two of Klingshirn, W. E. and Vessey, M., eds, The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honour of R. A. Markus (Ann Arbor, MI, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 See Morris, Rosemary, ‘Curses and Clauses: the Language of Exclusion in Byzantium’, in Nikolaou, , Toleration and Repression, 313–26 Google Scholar, with attention to the Councils of Elvira (305) and Nicaea (325). Later abjuration formulae, prescribed for use in public rituals of re-reception, included lists of anathemas as an integral element: see e.g. Eleuteri, P. and Rigo, A., Eretici, dissidenti, musulmani e ebrei a Bisanzio: una racolta eresiologica del XII secolo (Venice, 1993), 16–19.Google Scholar

29 Boyarin, Daniel, Border-Lines: the Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia, PA, 2004), 67–73 Google Scholar, argues that despite references in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, 16.4, 47.4 and 96.2, the introduction of Jewish liturgical cursing of heretics, that is, Jewish Christians, was a gradual process which arose in response to Christian precedents including the council which condemned Paul of Samosata in AD 260. In any case by the Council of Nicaea Christians had taken the idea on board.

30 This work is a trilogy, consisting of Dialectics, On Heresies and On the Orthodox Faith; for an interesting and detailed discussion of all three parts, see Louth, St John Damascene, chs 4–6.

31 Humfress, ‘Roman Law’, 144–6; Justinian’s legislation extended to pagans, Jews, Samaritans and heretics: Codex Justinianus, I.5.12 (AD 527); 13–16, 18, 19 (AD 529); 20 (AD 530); 21 (AD 531); Nov. 45 (AD 537).

32 Malalas, John, Chronographia, ed. Dindorf, L. (Bonn, 1831), 449.Google Scholar

33 Inglebert, H., Interpretatio Christiana: les mutations des savoirs (cosmographie, géographie, ethnographie, histoire) dans l’antiquité chrétienne 30–630 après J.-C. (Paris, 2001)Google Scholar.

34 For similar techniques as used to promote and enforce Islam in Umayyad Syria, see Griffith, Sidney H., ‘Images, Islam and Christian Icons: a Moment in the Christian/Muslim Encounter in Early Islamic Times’, in Canivet, P. and Rey-Coquais, Jean-Paul, eds, La Syrie de Byzance à l’Islam, VIIe-VIIIe siècles (Damascus, 1992), 121–38, at 123–31 Google Scholar, under the headings “The Display of Islam’ and ‘Religious Polemic and the Dismantling of Public Christianity’. These prohibitions on crosses and processions as visible signs of Christianity are paralleled in modern times by the banning of minarets attached to mosques in the communist Balkans.

35 For the latter, see Patlagean, E., ‘Byzance et le blason pénal du corps’, in Du châtiment dans la cité. Supplices corporels et peine de mort dans le monde antique.Google Scholar Table ronde organisé par l’École française de Rome avec le concours du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Rome, 9–11 novembre 1982 (Paris, 1984), 405–26, esp. 420–1.

36 Eusebius, VC, 3.15.

37 Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1883), 1: 437–8.

38 Gouillard, J., ed., ‘Le Synodikon d’orthodoxie’, Travaux et Mémoires 2 (1967), 1–313 Google Scholar; see now Kotoula, Dimitra, ‘The British Museum Triumph of Orthodoxy Icon’, in Louth, and Casiday, , Byzantine Orthodoxies, 121–8 Google Scholar, with bibliography.

39 See Walter, C., L’iconographie des conciles dans la tradition byzantine (Paris, 1970)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Icons of the First Council of Nicaea’, in his Pictures as Language: How the Byzantines Exploited Them (London, 2000), 166–87. Scenes of iconophile saints suffering at the hands of iconoclasts and of iconoclasts defacing images were also a feature of a well-known group of post-iconoclast illustrated manuscripts.

40 See recently Neville, Leonora, Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950–1100 (Cambridge, 2004)Google Scholar.

41 See Speyer, W.,Büchervernichtung und Zensur des Geistes bei Heiden, Juden und Christen (Stuttgart, 1981), 76.Google Scholar

42 Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, 8.2.4 [hereafter: Eusebius, HE]; Martyrs of Palestine, pref. 1, 2.1.

43 Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica, 1.9 [hereafter: Socrates, HE].

44 Eusebius, VC, 3.64-5, 66; Socrates, HE, 1.9; Gelasius, Historia ecclesiastica, 2.36.1-2; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica, 1.21.4; Pope Symmachus on book-burning: Lieu, Manichaeism, 207.

45 Festal Letter 39, AD 367.

46 Speyer, Büchervernichtung, 131–2.

47 Malalas, Chronographia (ed. Dindorf, 449, 491); Nov. 42.1,2.

48 Speyer, Büchervernichtung, 155, Gregory, Moralia in Job XIV.56, 72–4, PL 75, 1077–9.

49 Herrin, Judith, The Formation of Christendom (Oxford, 1987), 278–9.Google Scholar

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51 ‘Vie et office de St Euthyme le jeune’, ed. L. Petit, Revue d’Orient Chrétien 8 (1903), 55–205, at 200.10-12; I owe this reference to Dr Dirk Krausmüller.

52 Chronique de Michel le Syrien:patriarche jacobite d’Antioche (1166–1199), ed. J.-B. Chabot, 4 vols (Paris, 1899–1924), 3: 166.

53 Matthew of Edessa, ‘Le chronique de Matthieu d’Édesse’, in Dulaurier, E., ed., Bibliothèque historique arménienne (Paris, 1858), 71 Google Scholar. In the fourteenth century Nicephorus Gregoras claims that after Palamas had been shipwrecked and fell into their hands, on questioning him as to their contents the Ottomans ordered his books to be thrown into the sea (Historiae Byzantinae, 29.8, ed. I. Bekker, CSHB 40 [Bonn, 1855], 228), a story which recalls the similar action of the eighth-century iconoclast emperor Constantine V in relation to the relics of S. Euphemia, according to Theophanes, Chronographia (ed. de Boor, I, 439).

54 Wilson, Nigel, Scholars of Byzantium (London, 1983), 14 Google Scholar, cf.Grumel, V., Regestes des actes du patriarcat de Constantinople i (Istanbul, 1947), 1003.Google Scholar

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63 Collectio Avellana, 167, ed. O. Günther, CSEL 35 (Vienna, 1895–8), 618–21.

64 PL 87, 81–2, letter of Pope Theodore.

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67 In the 540s North African bishops were prominent in opposing the emperor’s edicts condemning the Three Chapters: Maas, Exegesis and Empire, 49–50; when in 550 they excommunicated Pope Vigilius for accepting the emperor’s position, several were summoned to Constantinople and subsequently deposed, like Reparatus of Carthage, or arrested in Constantinople (their punishments are described by Victor of Tonnuna, Chronicon. s.a. 550, 551, 552. 553); on the treatment of Pope Vigilius, see Sotinel, C., ‘Emperors and Popes in the Sixth Century the Western View’, in Maas, Michael, ed., Companion to the Age of Justinian (Cambridge, 2005), 267–90, at 280–4 Google Scholar; Miaphysites: Van Rompay, Lucas, ‘Society and Community in the Christian East’, ibid., 239–66.Google Scholar

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72 Several of the texts relating to these events are only now being critically edited; for some orientation, see Brandes, W., ‘Juristische Krisenbewältigung im 7. Jahrhundert: die Prozessen gegen Papst Martin I und Maximos Homologetes’, in Burgmann, L., ed., Fontes Minores 10 (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), 141–212 Google Scholar; idem, ‘Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Seventh Century: Prosopographical Observations on Monotheletism’, in Averil Cameron, ed., Fifty Years of Prosopography: Rome, Byzantium and Beyond (Oxford, 2003), 103–18; Louth, Andrew, Maximus the Confessor (London, 1996), 7–18 Google Scholar; Allen, Pauline and Neil, Bronwen, eds, Maximus the Confessor and his Companions: Documents from Exile (Oxford, 2002), 10–26.Google Scholar

73 For example Brandes, W., ‘Apergios von Perge: ein Phantomhäretiker’, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 48 (1998), 35–40 Google Scholar; see also Cameron, Averil, ‘Texts as Weapons: Polemic in the Byzantine Dark Ages’, in Bowman, Alan K. and Woolf, Greg, eds, Literacy and Powerin the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1984), 198–215, at 208–10 Google Scholar.

74 See Wessel, S., ‘Literary Forgery and the Monothelete Controversy: Some Scrupulous Uses of Deception’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 42 (2001), 201–20 Google Scholar: Sixth Council, AD 680–1: ed. R. Riedinger, ACO, 2.2 (Berlin, 1990–2).

75 See Gray, The Legacy of Chalcedon’, 214; Lateran Synod (AD 649): ed. Riedinger, R., ACO, 2.1 (Berlin, 1984)Google Scholar; composition: Riedinger, R., ‘Die Lateransynode von 649 und Maximus Confessor’, in Heinzer, F. and von Schönborn, C., eds, Maximus Confessor actes du Symposium sur Maxime le Confesseur, Fribourg, 2–3 septembre, 1980 (Fribourg, 1982), 111–21 Google Scholar; Cameron, ‘Texts as Weapons’, 209. While this was an oppositional council, not an official one, the methodology did not differ.

76 Wessel, ‘Literary Forgery’, 210–15.

77 See Alexakis, Alexander, Codex Parisinus Graecus 1115 and its Archetype (Washington, DC, 1996)Google Scholar.

78 See Mango, Cyril, ‘The Availability of Books in the Byzantine Empire, AD 750–850’, in Byzantine Books and Bookmen: a Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium, 1971 (Washington, DC, 1975), 29–45.Google Scholar

79 See for example M.-F. Auzépy, ‘Manifestations de la propagande en faveur de l’orthodoxie’, in Brubaker, Leslie, ed., Byzantium in the Ninth Century: Dead or Alive? (Aldershot, 1998), 85–100 Google Scholar; eadem, L’hagiographie et l’iconoclasme byzantines: le cas de la Vie d’Étienne le jeune (Aldershot, 1999); eadem, Vie d’Étienne le jeune par Étienne le diacre (Aldershot, 1997).

80 Mansi, Concilia, 13.189B, 192D.

81 Cameron, Averil, ‘How to Read Heresiology’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modem Studies 33:3 (2003), 471–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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83 Grumel, V., ‘Autour du voyage de Pierre Grossolano, archevêque de Milan à Constantinople en 1112’, Échos d’Orient 32 (1933), 22–33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Darrouzès, J., ‘Les conférences de 1112’, Revue des Études Byzantines 23 (1965), 51–9.Google Scholar

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85 PG 130, 19–1362.

86 Kamateros was a high official of Manuel I Komnenos who in the 1170s collected in this work all the arguments used in the emperor’s debates with the Roman and Armenian Churches: Magdalino, Empire, 290.

87 For Epiphanius, see Cameron, Averil, ‘How to Read Heresiology’, 471–92; also eadem, ‘Jews and Heretics: a Category Error?’, in Becker, Adam H. and Reed, Annette Yoshiko, eds, The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Tübingen, 2003), 345–60.Google Scholar

88 PG 139–40.

89 So Magdalino, Empire, 367; this and other works such as the Sacred Arsenal also served as a form of propaganda literature for the emperor: ibid., 369, 454–7.

90 Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash), ‘Byzantine Hymns of Hate’, in Louth and Casiday, Byzantine Orthodoxies, 151–64. These hymns are particularly connected with the commemoration of the ecumenical councils; they are impossible to date precisely but seem to have been produced over the ninth to thirteenth centuries.

91 See Kolbaba, Tia M., The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins (Urbana, IL, 2000)Google Scholar; eadem, ‘Byzantine Perceptions of Latin ‘Religious Errors’: Themes and Changes from 850 to 1350’, in Angeliki E. Laiou and R. P. Mottahadeh, eds, The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World (Washington, DC, 2001), 117–43; eadem, “The Orthodoxy of the Latins in the Twelfth Century’, in Louth and Casiday, Byzantine Orthodoxies, 199–214.

92 See now Gaddis, There is no Crime. The voluminous Acts of the Council of Chalcedon are now available in an excellent annotated English translation by Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, TTH 45, 3 vols (Liverpool, 2005), and see also Fergus Millar, A Greek Roman Empire: Power and Belief under Theodosius II (408–450) (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 2006).

93 The extent to which this sense of hierarchy went can be seen in the tenth- and four teenth-century books of court ceremonial and in the several surviving lists of precedence to be followed at imperial banquets and other occasions, for which see Oikonomides, N., Les listes de de préséance byzantines des IXe et Xe siècles (Paris, 1972)Google Scholar; the patriarch of Constantinople was included in the invitation lists and instructions for precedence.

94 Canon law in Byzantium began with the canons issued by church councils, which were later collected, commented upon and expanded, especially from the twelfth century onwards; however it was characterized by diffuseness and a huge volume of material, as also by a lack of overall systematization (see Andreas Schminck, Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, s.v. canon law).

95 Hussey, J., The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire (Oxford, 1986), 310–12, 329.Google Scholar

96 For the shifting relationship between the emperor and the patriarch of Constantinople, and critique of the idea of ‘Caesaropapism’ in Byzantium, see Dagron, Emperor and Priest, 282–312.

97 Robert Browning, ‘Enlightenment and repression’, 18; see also Agapitos, P., ‘Teachers, Pupils and Imperial Power in Eleventh-Century Byzantium’, in Lee Too, Yun and Livingstone, Niall, eds, Pedagogy and Power: Rhetorics of Classical Learning (Cambridge, 1998), 170–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

98 Magdalino, Empire, 316–412.

99 PG 99, 1481 = Epistula 455 (ed. G. Fatouros, Theodori Studitae epistulae, 2 vols [Berlin- New York, 1992], 2: 647): letter to Theophilos of Ephesus who had written in favour of putting Manichaeans, i.e. Paulicians, to death: ‘What are you saying, most reverend? In the gospels the Lord forbade this, saying ‘No, lest when you collect the tares you root up the wheat with them. Let them both grow together till harvest’ (Migne text translated in Hamilton and Hamilton, Christian Dualist Heresies, 61). The representation of the Paulicians in orthodox sources is highly tendentious (another example of the manipulation of ideas): see C. Ludwig, ‘The Paulicians and Ninth-Century Byzantine Thought’, in Brubaker, Byzantium in the Ninth Century, 23–35.

100 Turner, D. R., ‘Parameters of Tolerance during the Second Iconoclasm, with Special Regard to the Letters of Theodore the Studite’, in Nikolaou, , Toleration and Repression, 69–85.Google Scholar

101 See Auzépy, L’Hagiographie et l’Iconoclasme Byzantin.

102 See I. Ševčenko, ‘Was there Totalitarianism in Byzantium? Constantinople’s Control over its Asiatic Hinterland in the Early Ninth Century’, in Cyril Mango and Gilbert Dagron, eds, with the assistance of Geoffrey Greatrex, Constantinople and its Hinterland (Aldershot, 1975). 91–105.

103 See Smythe, D., ‘Alexius I and the Heretics’, in Mullett, M. and Smythe, D., eds, Alexius I Komnenos, vol. 1: Papers (Belfast, 1996), 232–59.Google Scholar

104 Anna Comnena, Alexiad, 15.9-10.

105 Ibid., 14.8-9.

106 On which, see Kaldellis, A., ‘The Argument of Psellus’ Chronographia, (Leiden, 1999)Google Scholar; Psellus, and Italus, John: Wilson, N. G., Scholars of Byzantium (London, 1983), 153–6 Google Scholar, who argues (154) that John’s punishment was ‘not as drastic as it would have been in a modern society capable of exercising greater control’. Psellus’s teacher, John Mauropous, himself suspected of heterodoxy, defended ancient writers against the charge of atheism (ed. de Lagarde, P., ‘Quae in codice Vaticano graeco 676 supersunt’, Abhandlungen der Cött. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 28 (Göttingen, 1881), no. 43)Google Scholar.

107 Gouillard, J., ‘Le procès official de Jean l’Italien: les actes et leurs sous-entendus’, Travaux et Mémoires 9 (1985), 133–73 Google Scholar, at 169; cf. also Clucas, L., The Trial of John Italus and the Crisis of Intellectual Values in Byzantium in the Eleventh Century (Munich, 1981)Google Scholar.

108 See Patlagean, E., ‘Aveux et désaveux d’hérétiques à Byzance (Xe-XIIe siècles)’, in L’Aveu: Antiquité et Moyen Âge, Coll. de l’École française de Rome 88 (Rome, 1986), 243–60.Google Scholar

109 Ibid., 258–9.

110 On which, see Stoyanov, Yuri, The Hidden Tradition in Europe (London, 1994)Google Scholar; idem, The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy (New Haven, CT, 2000).

111 Non-legal sources tell of physical punishments exacted on persistent iconophiles under the Emperor Theophilos, even if the number is small: Patlagean, ‘Byzance et le blason pénal du corps’, 415.

112 Hajjar, J., Le synode permanente (synodos endemousa) dans l’Église byzantine des origines au XIe siècle, Orientalia Christiana analecta 164 (Rome, 1962)Google Scholar; Hussey, The Orthodox Church, 318–25.

113 See Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, ch. 6.