Light from the East: A Lecture Series on Eastern Christianity
Speaker: Rt. Rev. Archimandrite Mark Melone, Pastor
Date: October 15, 2006
Fr. Mark Melone: The Middle East is very much in the forefront of the news today: Palestine, Israel, Iran and Iraq. We often forget that these countries are also the places of origin of the Christian Faith.
What I am going to do is basically a presentation of Church history. We are going to do a couple of parts. The first part I'm going to do is very concrete — in a sense — very historical, then we'll take a little break, we'll do some theoretical stuff, and then I'm going to have some time for questions.
Let's start with a chart of the Apostolic Churches: Catholic, Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox. It's not a time line, but an arrangement of family groupings. Later I will be using this with the chart, to do something that is a little different on the wall. By that time everybody should be completely confused, and then we'll talk about some different things.
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I'd like to read the Epistle reading for Pentecost Sunday from the Acts of the Apostles:
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place,
and suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of mighty wind, and it
filled all the house where they were sitting, and appeared to them tongues,
as of fire, distributed and resting on each of them, and they were all filled
with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave
them utterance. Now they were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men,
from every nation under heaven. And at the sound the multitude came
together and they were bewildered because each one of them heard the
speaking in their own language, and they were amazed and wondered
saying: “Are not all those who are speaking Galileans, and how is it that we
hear each of us in his own native language? Parthian and Medes, Elamites,
and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,
Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrine, and
visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs — we hear
them telling in our own tongue the mighty works of God.”
When we think of the early church we often forget how multicultural it was. There were three basic strains — linguistic or cultural strains: Greek, Latin and Aramaic or Syriac.
We have to put aside modern concepts of national boundaries.
When we think of the Syria, for example, think of Lebanon and Palestine as one entity. Iraq and Iran, think of them as Persia. For the Greek world, think of the whole Mediterranean. There is at the time of Christ a common culture. It goes over the whole Mediterranean and the Middle East and it's a culture that is multi lingual.
At the time of Christ the common language in most places was Greek. It was in the Holy Land. That's why when Pilate puts the sign over the cross with Christ's charge on it: “The King of the Jews” he puts it in Greek as well as Latin and in Hebrew, so everybody can understand it.
Greek was the language used if you went to the store, everybody understood Greek. When you had to deal with Roman authority, you had to use Latin. So you had to know some Latin. When you were in the synagogue you heard some Hebrew but you did not understand it very well, but at home you used Aramaic or Syriac. The first translation of Scripture, and by Scripture I mean the Old Testament, was compiled in Greek about the year 250 to 150 BC, 200 years or so before Christ, by the Jewish community of Alexandria (Alexandria was considered the center of the ancient world as far as education went).
The first Christian catechetical schools were in Alexandria — also in Antioch. The Patriarch of Alexandria, or the “Pope of Alexandria” as he was called, was the one who was in charge of having his astronomers figure out the date of Pascha and send the announcement to all the other churches. But I am jumping ahead of myself.
Basically the point I want to get across is that you have a fairly unified culture, at least unified in a form of expression, Greek. This made the preaching of the Gospel easier. We also have to remember that the Gospels have come down to us in Greek for the most part. Perhaps there was a collection of sayings of Jesus in Syriac or Aramaic; perhaps there was a version of St. Mathew's Gospel that was in Aramaic, but by and large the New Testament was written in Greek. So we have then at the beginning — we read about Pentecost — the evangelization of much of the Greco-Roman World.
Does anybody know the first officially Christian country?
Armenia! In 310 the King of Armenia converted to Christianity and his entire country became Christian.
The second, the Roman Empire — Constantine — 313 — the edict of Milan stopped the persecution of Christians and not only stopped the persecution of Christians, but made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, that they were so happy with this in Egypt that the Coptic Christians began tearing down the pagan temples — occasionally with the pagans still in them (there had been severe persecutions of the Christians in Egypt before). Perhaps turnabout is fair play.
In 325 the Council of Nicea. And just a couple of more dates before I go back to that: 330 — Ethiopia became officially a Christian Country. The King converted. In 340 the city of Constantinople was founded on what was old Byzantium. Constantine moved the capital of the Empire there.
Now back to the Council of Nicea: there was in those first years of Christianity a teacher who was a priest of Constantinople, Arius, and he taught what became know as the Arian heresy that Jesus Christ was not truly God. That He was a man, a special person, maybe a prophet, but there was only one God. Sounds familiar? Arianism is going to rear its ugly head for a few hundred years. But anyway, the Emperor Constantine called the council against Arianism — the council began to write what we know as the Nicene Creed we chant every Sunday: “I believe in One God, the Father Almighty, maker of maker of heaven” and so on. That's one thing all the Apostolic Churches have in common: the Nicene Creed. Another is the same understanding of Sacraments — the Holy Mysteries: baptism, marriage, etc., and they all have the same understanding of Tradition.
It might be a good time now to define a couple words.
We will use the phrase fathers of the church a lot. What does that mean? It could be fathers and mothers of the church, too; but in a generic sense these are particular saints who are known for their teachings. The first attribute of a father of the church is holiness. The second character of a church father is that of Orthodoxy, or correctness of teaching. The third aspect is that of clarity of teaching.
Now here's one area, though, where the Eastern Church differs from Western Christianity. Most teachers in the West would say that the period of the Church fathers ended in the East with Saint John of Damascus in the seventh century, and in the West with Saint Isidore of Seville, roughly around the same time. The Eastern Churches disagree — their position is that the period of the church fathers has not ended because that would mean that the Holy Spirit has left the church without teachers, and there are still to this day church writers and fathers who fit these characteristics: holiness, orthodoxy of teaching and the clarity of expression.
A second term is the word catholic — what does it mean? You hear the definition all the time — universal. The primary definition is complete. The first person to use the word catholic was Saint Ignatius of Antioch, about the year 100. Tradition says that Ignatius was the little child that Christ held on his knees when He said: “Unless you become like a little you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” We have Ignatius' seven letters that he wrote on his way to his death. He uses the word catholic and makes a definition of the church especially related to the Eucharist, and says that where you have a bishop and his people and the Eucharist the whole church is there catholic — complete. That's going to make an interesting point later on.
What's the opposite of catholic — a trick question — Atheist? No! That's means without God. Heretic? Yes, it comes from the Greek verb heresis— to choose — to take a part and make the part the whole. Arius, for example says that Christ is man. That's true but he also says Christ is only man, that's He is not God also. Therefore, that's a heresy. Another heresy later on will say that Christ is only God.
The term orthodox means correct teaching, or correct worship — straight — the term orthodontics is related — straightening teeth. So straight teaching or straight worship — teaching and worship are related. The opposite? Heterodoxy, meaning another worship or another teaching! The fathers also were not unknown to use the word cacodoxy. You can guess the root of that. Just remember these aspects of these words.
The important thing is to remember that in the early church, East and West, that Christians called themselves Orthodox and Catholic. East and West both used the terms, and even to this day we all say the Creed and it says: “We believe in One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.” These terms later begin to take on political connotations. I want you to remember that we're using them in a strict theological sense, right now. It is curious that in the Roman Liturgy the First Eucharistic prayer says: orthodoxibus atque cultoribus (Orthodox worshippers). So, the Roman Catholic Church even used the word orthodox in that sense.
So back to the Councils! In 381 — the second Council — Council of Constantinople — when I say Councils, I mean Universal Councils — all the bishops all the teachers of the church came together. Why? Because there was a problem that had to be dealt with. There were still residuals of Arianism. The Councils also established what was known as the Pentarchy. Five heads: Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria.
This was how the church was organized around these important cities. Now, why do I have these different colors up here? This is going to be a little different from what is on the sheet, because we're dealing with linguistic issues. Remember, I said the language of the early church was Greek. Patriarchate of Jerusalem — primarily Greek speaking. Patriarchate of Rome — primarily Latin speaking. But not until after the third century.
So, even Rome was Greek speaking in the beginning and then later, becomes primarily Latin speaking, and the Patriarchate of Rome takes in all the areas of Latin West: North Africa, Europe excluding Greece and Southern Italy, because those areas are going to maintain relations with the Patriarchate of Constantinople — New Rome.
The Patriarchate of Antioch, in Syria — Greek speaking and Syriac speaking. So we have the two. It was in Antioch that the followers of Jesus were first called Christians.
The Patriarchate of Alexandria, in Egypt — Greek speaking and Coptic speaking, or Egyptian; the word Copt comes from the word Egopt — Egyptian — Copt. These churches trace their origin to the Apostles.
Jerusalem? Well, Jesus started that one. James, the Brother of the Lord, is the first Bishop of Jerusalem.
Rome? Peter and Paul — after they went to Antioch, so they — Peter's and Paul's origin is in Antioch but it was even earlier than that because Paul was baptized in Damascus by Saint Ananias who was given the title Equal to the Apostles though he is not strictly one of the twelve. So they traced their apostolic origin there.
Constantinople's tradition is that the Apostle Andrew preached Christianity in Byzantium — Constantinople.
Alexandria? The Apostle Mark the Evangelist and Peter — the Apostle Peter. Tradition says that Mark was the secretary of the Apostle Peter, this accounts for the prominent role that Peter plays in his gospel.
Armenia? Saint James, Saint Gregory the Illuminator. Ethiopian Christianity? The Apostle Thomas.
Now, at the bottom of the chart you see east Syrian and west Syrian churches, the Syro-Malankar church and the Syro-Malabar. Church tradition says that the Apostle Thomas established Christianity in the India in apostolic times and also what is today the Chaldean church in present day Iraq and Iran.
Then the Council of Ephesus — we talked about the role of the council — the Council of Ephesus — 431 said that Mary was the Mother of God. They used the word Theotokos. We use it — Bearer of God. Saint Cyril of Alexandria was a big proponent of that at the council. Now the problem was that, it was not accepted by what became the Syrian Church of the East. And that is down there, you see the little East Syrian on the bottom of the Chart — the list there — East Syrians. They did not accept that term. A break-up results.
In 451 along comes the Council of Chalcedon. And that's is important for a number of reasons that, first of all that it established that Jesus Christ is True God and True Man and that He has the nature of God and the nature of man. But now the heresy of monophysitism — the term comes from the word 'one nature' says that Christ only had one nature. He was God and man but the human part kind of got sucked into the divine part.
What happened was that some of the churches felt that Chalcedon was changing the primitive faith, so they refused to accept it. Constantinople was Chalcedonian. The result is another break up.
Now you have the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria — primarily Greek speaking Christians; Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch — primarily Greek speaking; Greek Orthodox of Jerusalem — Greek speaking. These are all Chalcedonians. Now, also those who did not accept Chalcedon: Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria, Armenian Church; Ethiopian Church; Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The Syriac churches did not accept Chalcedon either, so now we have the Syrian Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Syrian Patriarchate of Antioch. These are the non-Chalcedonians.
Question: Can you repeat the definition of Chalcedonian? I've gotten confused — talking about those churches, Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians.
Fr. Mark Melone: The Council of Chalcedon said that Jesus Christ is True God and True man, and He had the nature of God and the nature of man, so He had two natures: divine and human. And so that's the teachings of those churches. Now the non-Chalcedonian churches did not accept that because they said: “No! He had just the nature of God.” So the dispute was about the nature. And were these definitions of philosophical terms? Maybe, or maybe not. We're not going to get into that too much. So you have two groups now. You have the Chalcedonians and non- Chalcedonians. And they are not in communion with each other.
Now, here we go into the history of the Maronite Church. The Chalcedonian people from Greater Syria migrated to Mount Lebanon near the monastery of St. Maron, around the year 680 and that's where they received the name. They are basically by themselves developing their own liturgy in their own traditions until the time of the crusades.
In the early Christian world especially between Constantinople, and Rome and Jerusalem, there is a great deal of interplay. We like to think of clear boundaries between the Eastern Church and the Western Church. Well, that's just not the case. There were Egyptian monks in Ireland before Saint Patrick arrived there. There were Greek monks in Gaul, and there was a big monastery in Marseille, which was bilingual, the service was in Greek and in Latin.
Yes, in these earlier years, we have a great deal of cultural interplay. Let me give you an example: Saint Martin of Braga was Hungarian ,spent his monastic life in the holy land, in Palestine and in Egypt, and then became bishop in Braga, Portugal and brought the writings of the Eastern Fathers to the West. You have, for example, Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, about the year 680 — a Greek monk who brings Byzantine Christianity to the English Church.
Look at this map:
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You have all this interplay going on. You have a fairly unified expansive Byzantine Empire in the time of Justinian about the year 500 or 600.
Now the Islamic factor: in 617 the Koran is composed. And we have the beginning of the real time of disruption in the Middle East. Around 634 the Moslems take Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Mesopotamia (which becomes Iraq and Iran), and in 645 they take Carthage. Latin Christianity in North Africa is obliterated. And then they take the city of Ceuta — Gibraltar — from the Byzantines, and thus begin the invasion of Spain and Portugal, from that point.
Now 725-787 is the period of Iconoclasm, that's the persecution of those who honored the icons. The Byzantine Emperor said no icons, no pictures of the saints in the church. You have a great exodus to the West. There is an estimate that between 726 and 775 there were approximately 50,000 Syrian monks and nuns in Italy. Between the year 644 and 772, 14 of the 20 popes were Greek speaking either Hellenic or Syrian (again by Syrian I mean Middle Eastern in general) by birth. In 751 — the Moslems take Cordoba in Spain. 787 — the Second Council of Nicea re-establishes the holy icons. 813-844 — there is another period of iconoclasm. The Norman invasion of Italy takes place. 864 — Photius excommunicates Rome and vice-versa.
This is the beginning, in a sense of the trouble between the Western Church and the Byzantine Church — the Greek-speaking Patriarchates. St. Photius established the missions to the Slavs; he sent Cyril and Methodius to Eastern Europe to preach the Gospel, and said to use the local language of the people. Cyril and Methodius invent what's known as the Cyrillic alphabet and begin to evangelize Eastern Europe. Serbia, Bulgaria, Rus. Countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland, which were Eastern Christian countries, yet turns of history change them to Western. There are all kinds of political ramifications.
In the year 980 Rus was converted. In 1040 we have what is called The Great Schism and that aggravates separation between the Western Church and the Eastern Churches.
Please get through your mind that the separation into what came to be called Catholic churches and what came to be called Orthodox churches did not happen overnight. There is not one point, but a centuries' long process. It begins with several things. Charlemagne had himself crowned Holy Roman emperor on Christmas day in 800. Byzantines considered this treason — the only Roman Emperor was the emperor of New Rome — Constantinople. The Pope decided he would call himself the Vicar of Christ. Byzantines considered this treason — the only Vicar of Christ was the Emperor in Constantinople — the true Roman Emperor.
The West adds to the Nicene Creed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son”, which was not in the original. The West is seen to tamper with tradition. Then the focus shifted to other things: for example, the Byzantines said the Western Eucharistic bread doesn't have any yeast in it, so it's dead Jesus, not risen Jesus. The West fasted on Saturday, and other things.
Then to add to make things worse you have the crusades. The first Crusade is in 1095, to free the Holy Land for Christians. Unfortunately what it did was to end up supplanting the native Christian hierarchy. So now we have the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and the Latin Patriarchate of Antioch.
In 1200 the Fourth Crusade decided to stop off on the way to the Holy Land and sack Constantinople and fight Eastern Christians. Now we have a Latin Patriarchate in Constantinople.
All those wonderful Byzantine art treasures in Venice, for example, were originally booty from the East.
In 1261, Michael Paleologos takes back Constantinople. During the next century the Moslems threaten the Byzantine Empire. In 1439 there is a council in Florence. Because of the Moslem threat to Constantinople, the Byzantines go the West for help. “We'll help you if you become Roman Catholics.” The Council of Florence declared that all the Orthodox churches were united with the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern bishops all signed the union except for Saint Mark of Ephesus. Back home the people rejected the union.
In 1453, Constantinople falls. This began the period of Turkish occupation, and the separation is complete.
How did we end up with some of the Eastern Catholic churches? Various ways. In Eastern Europe, some Orthodox Bishops and people decided they would unite with the Roman Catholic Church for various reasons: some for the sake of the unity of the Church; some for political or economic reasons. Remember, the Christians of the East were under Moslem domination. For a measure of protection they allied themselves with the West.
From the 1500's on you have Western missionaries going to Eastern Christians. In 1724 there was a dispute in Antioch among the Orthodox Christians and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch split into to what became known as the Melkite Catholic Patriarchate or the Greek Catholic Patriarchate and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate.
But the condition for this communion with Rome was that the Melkite-Greek Catholics keep their own traditions: choosing their own bishops, married clergy, baptism and confirmation together and communion, and all those apostolic traditions, the forms of their liturgies, that they don't have to mutilate the Creed by adding and “and the Son” to it (this is a big theological issue for Eastern Christians). So you have those theological reasons, and you have the external pressures to go into communion with the Western Church. If you were a merchant, especially in Lebanon and Syria, you would come under the protection of the French King, if you were a Catholic and be protected from pirates; you were also exempt from certain taxes.
So you have European colonialism having theological results. There is strain, particularly in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch — between those who lean towards Constantinople, the Greeks and those who want a more independent existence. These two churches, especially, are feeling the pressure of being under Moslem domination and a growing sense of self-awareness.
I have to back track for a second. Where does the word Melkite from? It comes from the Syriac Malek — a king. It was not usually a compliment. It was a derogatory word, like the word Tory was used in the American Revolution; a person who was a loyalist to the King. What king? The Roman Emperor king in Constantinople! So the non-Chalcedonian, Syriac speakers, in Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem called the Christians who accepted Chalcedon, Melkites. It's a derogatory term that they were loyal to Constantinople. So the term goes underground for several years but it also applied to the Greek Orthodox of the Patriarchate of Antioch and the Greek Orthodox of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. They were called Melkite by the Syriac Christians, the non-Chalcedonians.
In 1724 — the group that became Catholic — said: “How do we distinguish ourselves from the Orthodox, because we look the same, we have the same traditions, but how do we distinguish ourselves? Well, we use the term Melkite.” Now to make it more confusing: in Arabic, the word روم (‘Room’) means Roman, not in a sense of old Rome, but New Rome — Constantinople. The Byzantines never called themselves Byzantines, they never called themselves Greeks. They called themselves Romans. They saw themselves as the continuation of the Roman Empire.
In Aleppo, there was a term — you never hear it any more, but around the turn of the century was still used — the Melkites called themselves رومجديد (‘Room Jdeed’) — the New Orthodox the New Romans. The word ‘Room’ meant Orthodox as well, so you have in Arabic: رومكاثوليك (‘Room Catoleek’), translated sometimes Roman Catholics — but it doesn't mean Roman Catholics, it means Greek Catholics. In Arabic: لاتين (‘Lateen’ — ‘Latin’) was used for what is rendered in English as “Roman Catholic”, because here you have the kind of foreign Christianity. If you are in a bad mood you could say فرنجية (‘Frangieh’ — ‘Franks’).
Now another term used for Greek Catholics is Byzantine Catholics, because of the old name of Constantinople — Byzantium. So those are all basically the same: Byzantine Catholic, Greek Catholic, Melkite, and Room Catoleek.
In 1800's the Melkite Church comes to Palestine. So in 1820 we have a Greek Patriarchate in Jerusalem and in the same time, a Greek Catholic Patriarchate in Alexandria. So all these are in existence now. Then about 1830 the Syrian Patriarchate of Antioch, and in the 1900's the Coptic Catholic Patriarchate in Alexandria all came into being. This is basically how the present situation in the Middle East came about. I have not touched on the Eastern Churches in Europe and the Slavic lands. Nor have I dwelled on the circumstances of the Apostolic Churches of the East. These topics are beyond our present scope. Let's break for questions.
Question: Are we all using the same Bible at this point?
Fr. Mark Melone: Yes, pretty much so.
The canon of Scripture, interesting point, was set in about the year 400 and 500, the councils dealt with that. Ironically, The first definition of Scripture was around the year 410 by a heretic — Marcion. He was the father of the heretical group called the Marcionites. He completely rejected the Old Testament, and decided that the canon of Scripture consisted completely of the New Testament. It was set about the fourth maybe fourth or fifth century. There is a lot of — you know the things of the Gospel of Judas — we found the Gospel of Judas, let's do the National Geography, the thing has been around since the sixth century — and was decided that it was not part of the Scripture.
Question: What do all these Churches have in common?
Fr. Mark Melone: All these Churches have an understanding of what we say in the Nicene Creed, we believe in the communion of saints, born of the Virgin Mary, all of that; all of these churches share that in common. We didn't even touch on the other stuff.
Question: Would you say that Patriarch of Constantinople and each one of the other Patriarchs were in communication about theological things?
Fr. Mark Melone: Now you have three groups basically they are in communication among themselves, let's say in communion, and by communion that means shared understanding and shared sacraments for example. You have the Chalcedonian churches, excuse me; you have what we call the Catholic churches, and then you have what we call the Orthodox churches and most of those are labeled up here as Greek Orthodox, and then you have what's called the Orthodox churches of the East who are non-Chalcedonian. We'll put every body who is in communion with each other.
Let's see: Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem over there, Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem over there, Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, Maronite Patriarchate of Jerusalem over here, Greek Catholic Patriarchate, Syrian Catholic Patriarchate, Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem… Chalcedonians, Non- Chalcedonians, Catholics, and Orthodox or Greek Orthodox.
Question: A little bit further back there you have the five of the Pentarchy. Which council was this?
Fr. Mark Melone: That was the Council of Constantinople in 381, second council — second ecumenical council.
Question: How was those five related to each other, was there a hierarchy of authority or?
Fr. Mark Melone: Well, yes. It set up a hierarchy of authority, Jerusalem was outside, because that was founded by Jesus, so it was the Church of churches. Then the first among equals was Rome, and second is Constantinople, third is Antioch, and fourth is Alexandria. So that was just for the sake of the order in the Church.
But no Bishop had — no Patriarch had authority over the Patriarchs. It was just like one of the disputes of Eastern Orthodox — Eastern Christianity in general with Western Christianity, the concept of Papacy — what is the role of the Papacy? No Orthodox would have a problem with the Primacy of Rome, but the question is how is that Primacy, how does it function? Does it mean you can interfere; you can tell other bishops what they can't do.
Question: Did you mean that each one of those churches had their own Patriarch?
Fr. Mark Melone: Yes each church of the Pentarchy had …
Question: Where does the word Pope originate?
Fr. Mark Melone: The word pope comes from the Egyptian word Apa which means father, but the definite article in Coptic is Peh so 'the father' is Peh Apa That's where it comes from. Who's the first Pope? Peter? No, trick question! Trick question! The first to call himself Pope is the Patriarch of Alexandria, it's the Coptic term; it's Egyptian. So the Patriarch of Alexandria Peh Apa — the Papa was the first one.
Question: And who was that Father?
Fr. Mark Melone: I don't know exactly who it was. It's very early. It's in the first three centuries.
Now, what happens is that later on refers to the Bishop of Rome, but also, ironically, any Greek priest is “Papa”. And if you go to Sicily today, the Greek Catholic priests use “Papa”. If I go there, I introduce myself “Papa Marco”. In Arabic ابونا (‘Abouna’ — ‘father’). Any Greek name or Italian name that begins with papa, like Papadopoulos, or Papagovani, indicates someone in the family was a priest.
You have the same name in Arabic; the name خوري (‘Khoury’) comes from priest, not an Arabic word — it's a Greek word. Comes from chorepiscopus which is “bishop of the countryside”. So the priest became the khoury — the local bishop. Nice! The word مطران (‘Mutran’) comes from metropolis or the big city.
The concept of Papacy — kind of “Super Bishop” thing — is from Constantinople. Patriarch John the Faster, around the year 600 tried to define himself as the Patriarch of Patriarchs. And who shut him down? Gregory the Great of Rome who said: “No bishop has the right to put himself above other bishops.” The Pope said it, it must be true.
Question: Middle Eastern Christianity seems so fragmented.
Fr. Mark Melone: Not as badly as present Western Christianity, but that's another lecture. But yes, you had historic sitautions where Christians sabotaged each other and the Moslems used these situations and the West as well. Some day we'll do a lecture about Christianity under Islam: about the head tax. Special clothes, certain jobs they couldn't hold things like that.
Question: I was wondering did a lot of conversions to Islam happen because of that division then.
Fr. Mark Melone: Yes. As a Christian in Islam you had no civil rights. If you were riding and if a Moslem went by, you had to get off your horse and bow down in the street. If you wanted to remain Christian (because “there is no compulsion in religion”), you were free to remain Christian, but you had to pay a head tax. So that was X amount of money, and when you went to pay the head tax you knelt down in front of the tax collector, you gave him the money, and he hit you with a stick, just to show what your social standing is like. And then every once in a while the Turks will come through and take the firstborn son of every family to serve — to become Moslem, first, he is converted to Islam. Some of the Christians, by the way — not every body died as a martyrs — some of the families got together and told one of the sons: “You go become Moslem then you can take care of the rest of us.” So there weere all kind of things.
From audience: Oh that's why we have families with the same name some of them are Christians and others Moslem.
Fr. Mark Melone: Yes.
From audience: (inaudible)
Fr. Mark Melone: No, this was before Islam came. Don't forget the Egyptian Christianity started with Christ, the Holy Family went to Egypt, which was evangelized by Saint Mark. So you have at very early stages the Egyptian Christianity. And what happened is they began, they're going around it's not much of the stretch. Later on it carries on because for example that Benedictine monasticism which was essentially communal never caught on Ireland because they already got the Egyptian monks there who were more hermits, so they didn't like the Benedictine structure. Saint Patrick's fame comes from — there were Christians in Ireland already but not a lot or successful, but he converted the upper class, he began to convert Dukes and royalty and so his mission was much more successful than…
Question: Where is the word Apostolic … Saint James… and I can see a little bit in the Roman Church, I can see our Byzantine Liturgy… A kind of half Orthodox and Catholic.
Fr. Mark Melone: Take your chart here and all the Pentarchy; Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria. Each of those five cities has a completely different Liturgical life, a way of prayers. Now there is influence back and forth from each other, but they followed different liturgies.
They went into these — the Byzantine churches all have basically the same Liturgy. The Roman Church has its own Liturgy. The Antiochian Church has two types of Liturgies related to each other, West Syrian and East Syrian. And then you have the Coptic Church and the Ethiopian Church related to each other liturgically. They have different prayers. The same basic thing — the Holy Mysteries: baptism, confirmation and all that stuff but different prayers and different ways of doing them: different hymns, because that's part of the Liturgy, different languages. Originally, you have these a sort of organized in family, like the Maronite Liturgy would bear a relationship to the Syriac Liturgy, or the Syro-Malabar Liturgy to the Caldenian Liturgy — they're a sort of the same languages with different music, but the text would be same. Saint Ephrem influenced all the Syriac churches, especially. The Armenian Liturgy comes right from Jerusalem and it's probably based on older later of the Byzantine Liturgy than our present Liturgy. So you can see there's a relationship with these.
Question: So which of these Liturgies has probably changed the least?
Fr. Mark Melone: Hard to say. There is a Liturgy of Saint James of Jerusalem but everybody has a version of it. There're prayers that we can trace back to the first centuries. We know that, we have texts.
Question: Just to get a clear understanding, when did the church decide to split or join, outside the logistics and the language or protection of law, whatever would be, when the theological decisions were made, to go here off or…? Did they have the idea that the Holy Spirit is moving us, or was it all strictly from the inside meetings of group? Did they have, I hope I am saying the question right, were they — did they believe this is — were they interpreting the Scripture different outside the language and logistics at that point?
Fr. Mark Melone: It's not a question of interpreting the Scriptures. It may be Liturgical, I mean linguistic influence, because you notice the groups are kind of divided into Syriac speaking, Syriac Coptic and Armenian speaking, Greek speaking, and Greek and Latin. So it was the definitions — the Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians — that's the first split and then you have the Orthodox and Roman Catholic split starting 8th century to the 12th century. And then you have the reuniting in the 17th century.
Question: Did the Maronites turn to the West around the time of reformation?
Fr. Mark Melone: No! The Maronite Church actually was older, the reestablished communion of Rome during the crusades.
Question: Father, In the Roman rite we have canon Law, the Canon Law in the Eastern Church is the same Canon Law?
Fr. Mark Melone: No! There's various disciplines. They're the same generic Canon law for the Eastern Catholic Churches but each of those will apply differently. And there is Orthodox Canon Law on which the Eastern Catholic Canon Law is based on it. Canons are a manifestation of a part of the Traditions — we'll talk about that next time, about the five manifestations of Traditions, and the Canon Law is one of them. Canon means a guide. So canon and law are a kind of two different terms. It shouldn't be in the same sense.
Next time we're going to talk about the concept of tradition and about how the liturgical life of the church is structured. Seasons and hours, and that will be a little easier than all of that. Thank you very much.