178 Church, Eastern Orthodox
Constantinople and wanted to promote his own see over
trial of Constantinople. Arriving in Constantinople osten-
sibly to defend his expulsion of a monk expelled from
Egypt and being protected by Chrysostum, Theophilos
gathered 36 bishops hostile to John at a synod in the
Palace of the Oak at Chalcedon. There in 403 John was
condemned in absentia on charges that included support-
ing the heretical teachings of ORIGENand making trea-
sonable statements about the empress, even calling her a
Jezebel.
The Synod was followed by an edict of banishment
from the emperor, which in spite of a temporary recall
immediately after the Council of the Oak eventually led
to John’s exile in 404 to a tiny village near Antioch. His
continuing, almost universal support, kept alive by corre-
spondence from his place of exile, prompted the govern-
ment to order him marched on foot to a more remote and
desolate place, Cucusa in Armenia on the BLACKSEA. The
hardships of the march killed him at Komana in Septem-
ber 14, 407, before he could reach his destination. A new
emperor, Theodosios II (r. 408–450), as penance for the
injustice of his parents, had John’s body taken back to
Constantinople in 438.
Further reading:John Chrysostom, Jerome, Chrysos-
tom, and Friends: Essays and Translations,ed. Elizabeth A.
Clark (Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1979); On Virginity,
against Remarriage,trans. S. R. Shore (Toronto: Edwin
Mellen Press, 1983); Peter Brown, The Body and Society:
Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); J. N. D.
Kelly, Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostum—
Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1995); Robert L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the
Jews(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).
Church, Eastern Orthodox The Eastern Orthodox
or Byzantine Church has continued to exist to this
day in the various and interrelated forms of the Greek,
Russian, and other Slavic and western Asiatic churches.
All have had difficulty in accepting the ultimate author-
ity of the bishop of Rome, the pope. From the first
centuries of Christianity, the principal churches of the
universal church were organized around five patriar-
chates, of ROME,ANTIOCH,JERUSALEM,ALEXANDRIA, and
CONSTANTINOPLE. The Islamic conquests of the seventh
century effectively reduced the five to Rome and
Constantinople, though Alexandria and Antioch
remained centers for survival and of local expressions of
Christianity. Each patriarch administered his territory
but was supposed to act in communion with the other
patriarchs. The traditional equality of all of the patri-
archs to the primacy of the papacy was asserted even
more vigorously by the Byzantines after the Great
SCHISMof 1054. The sack of Constantinople in 1204 by
western and Latin crusaders closely linked to the Holy
See made later reconciliation more difficult, even in the
face of conquest by the OTTOMANTurks.Roman and Byzantine Dynasties
INTERNAL ORGANIZATION
For the Byzantines, the church was not a separate society
parallel to secular society, obeying carefully codified laws,
but a spiritual reality whose real home was in heaven
with GOD. The institutional church on Earth was the
community of Christians around their bishop and local
church. The bishops in turn were linked with their patri-
archs. The patriarchs were all intertwined among them-
selves and with councils. Such a conception was
definitely incompatible with the hierarchical structure of
the Western Church. There the pope was the prime
source of unity and authority.
The internal organization of the Byzantine Church
was closely tied with imperial power. The law of the
church and the law of the state were supposed to be in
agreement. There were always further tensions between
monasteries and patriarchs about such issues as the hier-
archical organization of the church and its relationship
with the Byzantine Empire.COUNCILS
For the Byzantines, only an ECUMENICAL COUNCILcould
decide a question of dogma. The main complaint against
the Roman church made by the Greek was that the
papacy added the FILIOQUECLAUSEto the formula of faith
defined by a council, without the problem’s being further
examined by another council. This was one of the most
vehement points of opposition between Byzantine and
Roman ecclesiology, since the latter assigned a role in
defining the faith to the pope that the Byzantines
acknowledged only to the councils.
Further reading:Aziz Suryal Atiya, History of East-
ern Christianity(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1968); Steven Runciman, The Eastern
Schism: A Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches
during the 11th and 12th Centuries(Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1955); Philip Sherrard, Church, Papacy, and
Schism: A Theological Enquiry(London: S.P.C.K., 1978);
Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church(Baltimore: Penguin
Books, 1963).church fathers SeeFATHERS OF THE CHURCH.Cid, El See RODRIGO DÍAZ DE VIVAR (EL CID
CAMPEADOR), HISTORY AND LEGENDS OF.Cimabue, Giovanni (Bencivieni, Cenni di Pepi, Bull-
headed)(ca. 1240–ca. 1302) innovative painter
Cenni di Pepi, called Cimabue, has been only slightly
documented from 1272 to 1302. He was mentioned as