The monks continued as before to lead an austerely moral life. They practised prayer and fasting, devoted themselves to sacred literature, particularly under the Iconoclastic and Macedonian Emperors, and were frequently called upon to fill the highest offices in the Church. John of Damascus, Theodore of Studium, Methodius, Cyril, Nicetas Stethatus and Nicephorus Vlemmides, were all members of monastic orders, of which their zeal and their devout learning are worthy ornaments. Many new centers of monastic life sprang up during this period. The Monastery of The Sleepless Ones,, of Studium, of the Peribleptus, and others, were all founded in Constantinople; the island of Patmos saw the establishment of the Monastery of the Theologus, and Greece the Mega Spelaion. This period, too, saw the rise of Athos, whose first abot, John Colobus received in 867 the gift of the whole peninsula of Athos from the Emperor Basil the Macedonian. In 960, under Nicephorus Phokas, the venerable Athanasius built the Monastery of the “Megale Lavra” on Mount Athos, and drew up a monastic rule that divided the life of the monks between work and prayer. In the course of time, the Monasteries founded on Mount Athos or “Holy Mountain” as it was called, came to be divided into “cenobite” and “idiorrhythin.” In the former, the monks all lived under a common rule not only of worship, but of diet; while in the latter the monks were free to arrange for their food in their own cells. Apart from these monks who led a communal life subject to a definite rule, there were still many hermits who led a life of complete solitude cut off from all their fellows.

The Degeneration of Monastic Life.

   Monasticism, however, having so greatly extended its sphere, soon began to give justification to its critics. It had, in the first place, inordinately swollen its ranks. Whether fit or unfit for the monastic life, hundreds of men were constantly flocking to it, many of them with the sole object of avoiding their social responsibilities and their national obligations. Having once renounced the world, it was henceforth their duty to remain in their monastery; but many of them circulated in the towns, meddled in worldly matters, wore long, curly hair after the worldly fashion, and rivaled the most frivolous worldlings in ostentatious parade. Others were completely ignorant, and fanatically inimical to learning; so that there came a time when educated monks were rather the exception than the rule. Generally speaking, the account of monasticism which has been left for us by its enthusiastic admirer, Eustathius of Salonica, reveals not a little corruption among the monks; and it is this corruption that accounts for certain curious varieties of monastic life, to which Eustathius also refers. Some of these newfangled monks adopted the peculiar distinction of living naked; some never washed their feet, and others went perpetually filthy. Some kept an unbroken silence; some went about in chains; some lived all their life on the tops of trees or pillars; and some, finally, buried themselves alive in the earth. Still others, according to Choniates, called themselves “suppliants”; and, following the example of Moses and Miriam after the crossing of the Red Sea, they spent the hour of divine worship in dancing with the nuns to the praise and glory of the Lord.

Churches and Icons.

   The Middle Ages saw an enormous increase in the building of places of worship, which provided an adequate outlet for the religious feeling of the people, without, however, improving from an architectural point of view on the magnificent achievement of Justinian in the Church of Saint Sophia. The only difference and innovation was in respect of the roofing and the exterior of the church. Whereas in Justinian's time a single semi-circular dome had been considered sufficient to roof the whole building, the architects now preferred to construct around the central dome a number of smaller ones, supporting each one of them on a polygonic base so as to give it the appearance of a many-lighted lantern. The attention to ornament, too, which had formerly been concentrated on the interior of the church, now began to extend to the exterior as well, where beauty was sought by the skilful disposal of colored bricks. The brilliant but costly inlay-work of mosaic inside the church was replaced by the less expensive decoration of frescoes painted in liquid colors. Symbolic representation either disappeared entirely, or was confined to signs carved in wood beneath the sacred pictures on the iconostasis. Byzantine Iconography grew up austere, uncompromising and, as it were, foreign to the vanities of this world, breathing out a lesson of superhuman holiness. The iconoclasts set upon it barbarously, and very few works survived, except a certain number in the Monasteries of Mount Athos particularly. Such as they are, however, and taken in conjunction with the miniatures found in manuscripts, they suffice to prove that the criticism leveled at Byzantine Hagiography is in no way justified. Mount Athos and Salonica were the main artistic centers of Mediaeval Christianity in the East; and thence, it is said, came the great Greek artist of the thirteenth century, Manuel Panselenus, whose rules of painting are still observed today by the sacred artists of our Church. Statues were never permitted in Orthodox churches; but other plastic arts were brilliantly cultivated, such as wood-carving, gold-working, enameling and embroidery.

Ceremonies and Sacraments.

   Theologians were not yet agreed as to the number of the Sacraments. John of Damascus, in his work On the Orthodox Faith, mentions two, which are indeed the most essential, — Baptism and Holy Eucharist; Nicholas Babasilas refers to three, — Baptism, the Chrism and the Eucharist; and Theodore of Studium to six, — Baptism, the Chrism, the Eucharist, Ordination, Initiation into a monastic order, and the Rites of Burial. It was only in the fifteenth century that the great liturgist Simeon of Salonica first taught that there are seven Sacraments — namely, Baptism, the Chrism, the Eucharist, Repentance, Ordination, Marriage and Unction; and from his day to our own this reckoning has been accepted by the Church. The rite of Baptism has always been performed by a triple immersion and emersion in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The Chrism was performed by anointing with Holy Oil. The Holy Eucharist was celebrated with leavened bread, for the use of unleavened bread, habitual to the Armenians, the Jacobites and the Latin Church, was strictly forbidden to the Orthodox; and though Orthodox believers always continued to receive the Communion under both its forms, it appears that from the twelfth century onwards there arose the practice of using a spoon for the lay congregation, while the right of communion directly from the Chalice was reserved for the clergy. The confession of sins to a spiritual father was considered an essential preliminary to Repentance, which was, therefore, called “Confession,” and was a necessary preparation for Holy Communion; penance was imposed on those whose sins were particularly heavy not for punishment, but to assist their recovery. Marriage was optional for the clergy, but the higher offices of the Church were only tenable by unmarried clerics. The dissolution of marriage was normally only brought about by the death of one of the partners, after which the survivor might contract a second and third, but never a fourth marriage. Finally, the ceremony of Unction developed from a simple anointing with oil, after suitable prayers had been offered for the restoration of health, into a rich and imposing ceremony, consisting of seven parts and performed by seven priests.

Sacred Hymnology.

   The lengthening of the Church Calendar by the creation of new festivals and holidays in honor of the Lord, the Virgin Mary and the Saints, was followed by an enrichment of the Church Hymnal, in which the people and events commemorated were extolled. It is pleasant to record that, though the golden age of Sacred Poetry was at the beginning of the Middle Ages, and almost coincides with the Iconoclastic period. The first centuries of Christianity were spent in the attempt to free Christian Hymnology from the bondage of classical models; for, with few exceptions, all Christian poets composed their poems in accordance with the metre and language of Homer, Pindar, or Anacreon. Many years went by before the ancient forms of prosody gave way to meters based on the accentuation of words, and the unintelligible language of Homer and Pindar was replaced by a new tongue which was both popular and harmonious. This reform found its most perfect exponent in Romanus the Melodus, who is sometimes thought to have lived in the eighth century and sometimes still earlier. Tradition has it that Romanus lay sleeping one Christmas Day, when the Virgin appeared to him in a dream and, offering him a scroll of papyrus, urged him to eat it. When he did so, he savored a taste sweeter than honey; and, rising full of enthusiasm, he went up into the pulpit and began to sing before the whole congregation: — “The Virgin today bringeth forth the Supersubstantial and the earth offereth the cave to the Unapproachable.”

   Devoting himself thenceforth to the writing of hymns, he became the Orpheus of the Church; for poetic inspiration, fertility of imagination, suppleness of style and simplicity of language, are in no other ecclesiastical poet found in such happy combination. Around the name of Romanus, with whom Byzantine poetry attains its most perfect flowering, revolve others such as those of Andreas of Crete (d. 732), Ger-manus of Constantinople (d. 734), Cosmas the Singer (d. 760), Theophanes Graptus (d. 818), Theodore of Studium (d. 826), Methodius of Constantinople (d. 846), and others; and there were even Emperors, such as Justinian, Leo the Wise, Constantine Porphyrogenitus and Theodore Lascaris, who aspired to compose hymns for the Church; but none of them equaled or excelled Ronianus. At first the poets themselves set their poems to music, orally teaching the melody to their pupils. But later, John of Damascus (d. 780), who distinguished himself as much in hymnography as in theology, invented the system of musical notation, and transmitted to his successors a written record of the eight musical modes on which the various church hymns were chanted. He then went on to compose his Oktoechus, which contains poems divided according to the tune to which they are to be sung. It may here be noted that the hymnology of the Eastern Church has never made use of the organ, although the organ was a Greek invention, much used at the Hippodrome and in the palaces of Byzantium, and introduced thence into the West during the reign of Constantine Copronymus.

Part III.

(A.D. 1453-1930).

Modern Times.