Eastern Orthodoxy—Holy Tradition

Lecture 24

A

fter centuries of religious struggle, Christianity in the Byzantine
Empire settled into a long period of stability. The conflict over the
nature of Christ ended in a state of resolution fairly close to the
Chalcedonian position, and the violent turmoil unleashed by iconoclasm
finally ceased. The pressure exerted by external enemies made the Byzantine
Empire more compact and inward-turning. Constantinople remained the
greatest city in the world, but the age of imperial aggression and expansion
was over. Eastern Orthodoxy, furthermore, experienced no great intellectual
crises, such as the Reformation and Enlightenment. This lecture considers the
expansion of Orthodoxy to the Slavic peoples and three signal elements in
the Orthodox tradition: the liturgy, the role of monasticism, and spirituality.

The Mission to the Slavic Peoples
• An indication of the internal vibrancy of Christianity in the Byzantine
Empire was the mission to the Slavic peoples in the 9th century.

•    The mission was initiated by two brothers from Thessalonika, Cyril

(826–869)—earlier known as Constantine—and his older sibling,

Methodius (815–885). They are rightly designated as “the apostles

of the Slavs.”

o They were both highly educated, and both worked as part of

the vast and effective civil service established by Justinian that

was a hallmark of the late empire; both then became monks but

remained at the disposal of the emperor.

o In 860–861, the brothers went on a diplomatic mission to the

Khazars (north of the Caucasus) and, while there, learned

the Slavic language, which as yet existed only in speech, not

in writing.