Caesaropapism/ˌsiːzəroʊˈpeɪpɪzəm/ is the idea of combining thesocial and political power ofsecular government with religious power, or of making secular authority superior to the spiritual authority of the Church, especially concerning the connection of the Church with government. AlthoughJustus Henning Böhmer (1674–1749) may have originally coined the termcaesaropapism (Cäseropapismus),[1] it wasMax Weber (1864–1920) who wrote that "a secular, caesaropapist ruler ... exercises supreme authority in ecclesiastic matters by virtue of his autonomous legitimacy."[2] According to Weber, caesaropapism entails "the complete subordination of priests to secular power."[3]
In an extreme form, caesaropapism is where thehead of state, notably the emperor ("Caesar", by extension a "superior" king), is also the supreme head of the church (pope or analogous religious leader). In this form, caesaropapism invertstheocracy (orhierocracy in Weber), in which institutions of the church control the state. Both caesaropapism and theocracy are systems in which there is noseparation of church and state and in which the two form parts of a single power-structure.
Caesaropapism's chief example is the authority that theByzantine(East Roman) emperors had over theChurch of Constantinople andEastern Christianity from the 330 consecration ofConstantinople through the tenth century.[4][5] The Byzantine emperor would typically protect the Eastern Church and manage its administration by presiding overecumenical councils and appointingPatriarchs and settingterritorial boundaries for their jurisdiction.[6] The emperor exercised a strong control over the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and thePatriarch of Constantinople could not hold office if he did not have the emperor's approval.[7] Such emperors asBasiliscus,Zeno,Justinian I,Heraclius, andConstans II published several strictly ecclesiastical edicts either on their own without the mediation of church councils, or they exercised their own political influence on the councils to issue the edicts.[8] According toMetropolitan Kallistos Ware, the historical reality of caesaropapism stems from the confusion of the Byzantine Empire with theKingdom of God and the zeal of the Byzantines "to establish here on earth a living icon of God's government in heaven."[9]
However, Caesaropapism "never became an accepted principle in Byzantium."[10] Several Eastern churchmen such asJohn Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople[6] andAthanasius,Patriarch of Alexandria, strongly opposed imperial control over the Church, as didWestern theologians likeHilary of Poitiers andHosius,Bishop of Córdoba.[11] Saints, such asMaximus the Confessor, resisted the imperial power as a consequence of their witness to orthodoxy. In addition, at several occasions imperial decrees had to be withdrawn as the people of the Church, both lay people, monks and priests, refused to accept inventions at variance with the Church's customs and beliefs. These events show that power over the Church really was in the hands of the Church itself – not solely with the emperor.[12]
During a speech at the St. Procopius Unionistic Congress in 1959,John Dvornik stated, "...the attitude of all Orthodox Churches toward the State, especially the Russian Church is dictated by a very old tradition which has its roots in early Christian political philosophy... the Christian Emperor was regarded as the representative of God in the Christian commonwealth, whose duty was to watch not only over the material, but also the spiritual welfare of his Christian subjects. Because of that, his interference in Church affairs was regarded as his duty."[13] The regional church was elevated by the rivals of the Byzantine Empire, namely theSerbian andBulgarian empires, to patriarchate according to a prevailing theory during the time the status of the church had to be equal to the state.[14]
Following theFall of Constantinople in 1453, the sultans of theOttoman Empire took control of appointing thePatriarch of Constantinople and all Byzantine Rite Bishops within their dominions. According to historian Charles A. Frazee, the Greek Hierarchs appointed by the sultan and his advisors were almost invariably opposed to the reunification decrees at theCouncil of Florence and rejected the authority of thePapacy.[15]
At the same time, however, so great was the suffering of theGreek people under the Sultans that, in the February 14, 1908Papal allocutionRingraziamo Vivamente,Pope Pius X accused the Greek Orthodox Church under Turkish rule of having preferred, "a harsh yoke (that ofIslam) to the tenderness of their mother."[16]
Caesaropapism was most notorious in theTsardom of Russia whenIvan IV the Terrible assumed the titleTsar in 1547 and subordinated theRussian Orthodox Church to the state.[17] In defiance of the Tsar's absolute power,Philip, the Metropolitan of Moscow, preached sermons in Tsar Ivan's presence that condemned his indiscriminate use ofstate terror against real and imagined traitors and their families by theOprichnina. Metropolitan Philip also withheld the traditional blessing of the Tsar during theDivine Liturgy. In response, the Tsar convened a Church Council, whose bishops obediently declared Metropolitan Philip deposed on false charges of moral offenses and imprisoned him in a monastery. When the former Metropolitan refused a request from the Tsar to bless the 1570Massacre of Novgorod, the Tsar allegedly sentMalyuta Skuratov to smother the former Bishop inside his cell. Metropolitan Philip was canonized in 1636 and is still commemorated within the Orthodox Church as a, "pillar of orthodoxy, fighter for the truth, shepherd who laid down his life for his flock."[18]
Tsar Ivan's level of caesaropapism far exceeded that of the Byzantine Empire[19] but was taken to a new level in 1721, whenPeter the Great andTheophan Prokopovich, as part of theirChurch reforms, replaced thePatriarch of Moscow with a department of thecivil service headed by anOber-Procurator and called theMost Holy Synod, which oversaw the running of the church as an extension of the Tsar's government.[20]
ThePatriarchate was only restored on November 10 (October 28 O.S.), 1917, 3 days after theBolshevik Revolution, by decision of theAll-Russian Local Council. On 5 November 1917, after his election by vote as one of the three candidates for the restored Patriarchate of Moscow, MetropolitanVladimir of Kiev announced thatMetropolitan Tikhon had been selected for the position after adrawing of lots as the new Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.
Seeking to convinceSoviet authorities to stopthe campaign of terror and persecution against the Church,Metropolitan Sergius, acting as patriarchallocum tenens, tried to look for ways of peaceful reconciliation with the government. On July 29, 1927, he issuedhis famous declaration [ru]: anencyclical letter where he professed the absolute loyalty of the Russian Orthodox Church to theSoviet Union and to its government's interests.
This declaration, sparked an immediate controversy among the Russian Eastern Orthodox, many of whom (including many notable and respectedbishops in prisons and exile) brokecommunion with Sergius. This attitude of submission to the Soviet Government is sometimes derogatorily called "Sergianism", after Metropolitan Sergius and his declaration, and is to this day deemed by some Eastern Orthodox Christians, especiallyTrue Orthodox, as aheresy.
Later, some of these bishops reconciled with Sergius, but many still remained in opposition to the "official Church" until the election ofPatriarchAlexius I in 1945.
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Justinian I conquered the Italian peninsula in theGothic War (535–554) andappointed the next three popes, a practice that would be continued by his successors and would later be delegated to theExarchate of Ravenna. TheByzantine Papacy was a period ofByzantine domination of thepapacy from 537 to 752, when popes required the approval of theByzantine Emperor forepiscopal consecration, and many popes were chosen from theapocrisiarii (diplomatic envoys from the pope to the emperor) or from the inhabitants ofByzantine Greece,Byzantine Syria, orByzantine Sicily.
In theLatin West, medieval secular rulers vied with thepapacy for overall power, notably in theInvestiture Controversy of the 11th and 12th centuries and in the struggles betweenGuelphs and Ghibellines from the 12th to the 14th centuries, but neither the German Kings nor theHoly Roman Emperors ever succeeded in establishing any long-term dominance over the Vatican. Emperors could at times exert influence over the election of Bishops of Rome,[21]they could claim the right (Latin:jus exclusivae) to veto a papal candidate (last exercised in 1903 by His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty The Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary), or they could support rivalantipopes. "Conquering kings" (theTheophylacti between the 10th and 12th centuries, Napoleon I in 1809,Victor Emmanuel II in 1870, for example) could curb a Pope's political rule, but they could not reliably control the Holy Father, and the papacy generally asserted and maintained its spiritual independence from secular control. In protestant regions in theHoly Roman Empire, the princes had thesummepiscopate [de] and remained in control until the introduction of theWeimar Constitution in 1919.[citation needed]
During the dispute between KingHenry VIII of England andPope Clement VII over Henry's wish to have his marriage toCatherine of Aragonannulled, theEnglish Parliament passed theAct in Restraint of Appeals (1533). It stated:
Where by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and king, having the dignity and royal estate of theimperial crown of the same.[22]
The next year Parliament passed theFirst Act of Supremacy (1534) that explicitly tied the head of church to the imperial crown of England:
The only supreme head in earth of theChurch of England called Anglicana Ecclesia, and shall have and enjoy annexed and united to the imperial crown of this realm.[23]
TheCrown of Ireland Act, passed by the Irish Parliament in 1541 (effective 1542), changed the traditional title used by the Monarchs of England for the reign over Ireland, fromLord of Ireland toKing of Ireland and named Henry head of theChurch of Ireland, for similar reasons.
During the rule of QueenMary I of England (r. 1553–1558), the First Act of Supremacy was annulled, but during the reign of QueenElizabeth I theSecond Act of Supremacy, with similar wording to the First Act, was passed in 1559. During theEnglish Interregnum of 1649 to 1660 the laws were annulled, but the acts which caused the laws to be in abeyance were themselves deemed null and void by the Parliaments of theEnglish Restoration from 1660 onwards.
When Elizabeth I restored royal supremacy, she replaced the title "Supreme Head" with that of "Supreme Governor", a conciliatory change designed to mollify English Catholics and the more radical of the English Protestants.
According toNicholas Sanders (c. 1530 - 1581), however:
"The Queen lays down for her clergy a rule of life, outside of which they dare not move, not only in those things which Protestants call indifferent, but in all matters of Faith, discipline, and doctrine, in virtue of that supreme spiritual power with which she is invested: she suspends her bishops when she pleases, she grants a license to preach, either to those who are ordained according to her rite or to simple laymen, in the same way at her pleasure reduces those whom she will to silence. To show her authority in these things, she occasionally, from her closet, addresses her preacher, and interrupts him in the presence of a large congregation, in some such way as this: 'Mr. Doctor, you are wandering from the text, and talking nonsense. Return to your subject.'"[24]
Since 1559, the royal monarchs of England, of Great Britain, and of the United Kingdom have claimed the "Supreme Governor" status as well as the title of "Defender of the Faith" (which was originally bestowed on Henry VIII byPope Leo X but later revoked byPope Paul III, as that was originally an award for Henry VIII's 1521 anti-Lutheran treatiseDefence of the Seven Sacraments).
Despite his continued persecution of both CatholicRecusants andEnglish Dissenters,King James I (r. 1603–1625) preferred not to do anything else that might otherwise encourage factional strife within theAnglican Communion. His son and heir,King Charles I (r. 1625–1649), through his insistence upon promoting theHigh-Church reforms advocated by theCaroline Divines and by ArchbishopWilliam Laud, alienated opponents ofAnglo-Catholicism and lost his throne in the course of theEnglish Civil War of 1642-1651.[citation needed]
The1688 overthrow of theHouse of Stuart was caused by the efforts ofKing James II (r. 1685–1688) to partially annul the Act of Supremacy by grantingCatholic Emancipation more than two hundred years beforeDaniel O'Connell. As many Anglicans saw James's attempts as in violation of the King's Coronation Oath, Parliament blocked every bill, which caused the King to simply order Catholic Emancipation into effect using hisRoyal Prerogative. In response, Parliament successfully invited the King's son-in-law,William of Orange to invade England and to take the throne.
Even though King James II and his exiled heirs remained Catholics, their overthrow divided theAnglican Communion in what is now known as theNon-juring schism. AnglicanJacobites, or Non-Jurors, embraced theAnglo-Catholicism advanced by the Stuart monarchs between 1603 and 1688. During each of theJacobite risings, Non-Juring Anglican chaplains accompanied the Jacobite armies. The schism faded following[citation needed] the 1788 death of PrinceCharles Edward Stuart and the inheritance of his claim to the throne by his younger brother, PrinceHenry Benedict Stuart, aCatholic priest and Cardinal.
Weber's formal definition of caesaropapism inEconomy and Society reads as follows: 'a secular, caesaropapist ruler... exercises supreme authority in ecclesiastic matters by virtue of his autonomous legitimacy.
Caesaropapism entails 'the complete subordination of priests to secular power,' and it essentially means that church matters have become part of political administration ... .
The college of cardinals was founded in 1059 and hence the election of the pope was freed from secular intervention, notably that of the emperor.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Protestantism".Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. (not fully exploited)
The dictionary definition ofcaesaropapism at Wiktionary