The Roman liturgies, as a rule, arose in a society of celibate and/or continent (abstaining from sex in marriage despite being married) priests; priests who had no job but being priests.
where is the evidence that this is true? I have never seen evidence to support the idea of most western priests being continent or unmarried before 1000 A.D.
Perhaps you can explain why between 967 to 1067 in england before the Norman invasion, 70% of the bishops were from the ranks of monks. This is how the Eastern Churches continue to be today.
If only the west of today could have continued to be a monastic church it would not have developed the problems that it has.
Even before Islam took over, Zoroastrians, non-Christian Gnostics, Gnostic Christians, and even greco-roman paganism continued to exist because local rulers took no efforts to erradicate them.
This is completely false until the 9th century pagans continued to be persecuted throughout the Byzantine Empire.
"804 The Gentile Hellenes of Mesa Mani (Cape Tainaron, Lakonia, Greece) resist successfully the attempt of Tarasius, Patriarch of Constantinople, to convert them to Christianity.
850 to 860 Violent conversion of the last Gentile Hellenes of Mesa Mani by the Armenian “Saint” Nikon. "
It is true that in the East change was viewed as the enemy of tradition and moreso the opposite in the West. In the West lack of change was the reason Rome fell, in the East lack of change was the reason Constantinople survived.
For centuries Constantinople was the repository of greek and roman culture and of the tradition that had been built up in preceding ages in egypt, babylon, athens, rome and jerusalem. Our civilization wouldn’t be the way it is today if the city of Constantine hadn’t endured to transmit these traditions. To transmit the latin of Rome and the Greek of Athens. The skills, the art, the thought, the memories to the barbarians of the west and to their gradually more civlized successors. So the survival of constantinople was crucial because it helped to make our (western) past.
Perhaps the most important factor in it’s survival was the conviction that the empire was willed by God and protected by God and his anointed representatives. On the other hand it was this same religious conviction that goes a long way to explain the traditionalism, the extreme conservatism of byzantium. If your state is founded on the will of heaven, why innovate? A byzantine ruler might be dethroned, and God knows enough of them were. By murder, palace revolutions or riots in the city, but a change in emperor did not mean a change of policy, except in minor details, because to change it would have been something like changing your faith. And so with heaven’s approval secure, the byzantine sovereign the the byzantine state were both defenders of the faith.
The concentration of all authority in the hands of God’s representative was in itself a great source of strength
In the west men lived there lives under a lot of different legal systems, tribal law, local law, minorial law and the law of the central or would be central state fought a continuous battle for recognition from the countryside, from the provinces which took centuries and really didnt get settled until quite recent times.
The great landowners of the 6th century west were a law unto themselves. Spain, France and Italy are still not unified countries all having their own subtlely different languages, cultures & cuisines within
themselves.
But in the east there was only one law and that Roman law emanated from a single source: the ruler.
Even the decisions of the councils of the church needed the emperors approval. This is what has been called “caesaropapism”, a political system in which the head of state is also master of the church and the patriarch, the bishop of constantinople lived in the shadow of the imperial palace.
When Constantine died in 337 AD with his heir far from Constinople the embalmed remains of the dead emperor continued to rule the empire through a whole summer, autumn and winter with couriers reading their messages before it, ministers making reports to it, and courtiers seeking audience before it.
It’s important to realize however that even this macabre image of a ruling corpse had it’s roots in a long past. It was simply the triumph of the hellenistic view of the emperor’s lofty position, a view which had developed in the east since the days of Alexander which the romans had taken some time to adopt but which the Emperor Diocletian explicitly claimed in Rome at the end of the third century and it was very useful because it lent the Byzantine Empire a sort of authority and stability that the old unified empire had never had.
