Chapter 5 — Early Church: Greek Power Grabs

Prior to the 4th century AD, the city of Constantinople had no particular relevance, neither politically nor ecclesiastically.

In the early Christian world, the Church was headed by the bishop of Rome, who held supreme jurisdiction over the whole Church; second to him in rank and dignity was the bishop of Alexandria, followed by the bishop of Antioch in third place. This order and rank of the churches and bishops was based on the fact that the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul had established the primary see at Rome; St. Mark had established his see at Alexandria; while Antioch had been the original seat of St. Peter before he moved the seat to Rome.

Now, as mentioned, the concept of ‘New Rome’ is very much intertwined with religion, but more specifically with ambitious Greek clergy who sought to make themselves equal to — and even grander than — the Roman Pontiff. And the justification for the religious doctrine was very much interwoven with politics and secular events.

It began, as mentioned, at the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD, when an assembly of Greek bishops decreed that the bishop of Constantinople ought to enjoy privileges second to the bishop of Rome, “because it [Constantinople] is new Rome.” The Greek bishops were appealing to the newfound political importance of Constantinople in order to justify elevating their own ecclesiastical status by making Constantinople second in rank after Rome, thereby usurping the place of Alexandria.

This decree was not recognized nor approved by Rome.

In the following century, at the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD), the Greek clergy again attempted to aggrandize themselves, this time going much farther in their claims by asserting that Constantinople has equal authority together with Rome over the Church. This statement has gone down in history under the name of ‘Canon 28’.

When the papal legates found out about this ‘Canon 28’, they flatly rejected it. However, the Greek judges and clergy ignored the objections. When Pope Leo I learned of this, he too rejected the claim and rebuked the bishop of Constantinople, named Anataloius, referring to him as a “prideful self-seeker”. Anataloius then wrote a letter to the pope, apologizing and distancing himself from ‘Canon 28’, claiming that it was the fault of the ambitious Greek clergy under him and that he intends to submit to Rome’s decisions. In the end, Pope Leo refused to approve ‘Canon 28’.

However, in subsequent centuries — and still today — the Greek Church has insisted that the Bishop of Constantinople is equal to the Bishop of Rome. And the theological justification initially relied entirely on the myth of ‘New Rome’ and on the premise that Constantinople was capital of the Eastern Empire. It was therefore an imperial argument connected to politics.

However, later they also resorted to inventing fake legends in order to provide additional justifications. For example, they later devised the myth that St. Andrew the Apostle founded the church of Constantinople. Therefore — they argue — the bishopric of Constantinople is an ‘apostolic see’, and this thereby entitles Constantinople to the prestige and authority which it claims for itself. This legend dates back to the 8th or 9th century AD, to a forgery attributed to Dorotheus of Tyre. And together with it was even forged a fictional list of bishops spanning three centuries from St. Andrew to the time of Constantine, in order to advance the pretension that the See of Constantinople was equal to that of Rome and even older than that of Rome. This occurred during a period of heightened tension in which the Church of Constantinople was entering a schism from the Church of Rome and needed to provide greater justification for its position.

In reality, there was no bishop of Constantinople prior to the 4th century AD, or at least none who were historically recorded. The earliest attested bishop of Byzantium was Metrophanes, who was bishop from 306-314 AD, and he was subject to the metropolitan bishop of Heraclea in Thrace. The see of Byzantium/Constantinople was not founded by St. Andrew and it held no special place in the early Christian world; it was a lowly and insignificant bishopric which was subject to the jurisdiction of Heraclea. Only the desperate ambition of the Greek clergy in Constantinople to increase their ecclesiastical power from the late 4th century onward inspired the formulation of these legends, forgeries and historical revisionisms.

For hundreds of years the Greeks have lied about this, and continue to lie about it today.

And it gets still worse. Not content with desiring second place after Rome (381 AD), and not content with claiming equal dignity to Rome (451 AD), by the 12th century the Greeks were even claiming ecclesiastical primacy over Rome. This notion can be found in the writings of the Byzantine princess Anna Comnena, who argued that the bishop of Constantinople holds supreme jurisdiction over the whole Christian world, justifying it once again on the premise of ‘New Rome’ and the supposed ‘imperial transfer’ by Constantine, therefore conflating politics with ecclesiology:

“For when the imperial seat was transferred from Rome hither to our native Queen of Cities, and the senate, and the whole administration, there was also transferred the arch-hieratical primacy. And the Emperors from the very beginning have given the supreme right to the episcopacy of Constantinople, and the Council of Chalcedon emphatically raised the Bishop of Constantinople to the highest position, and placed all the dioceses of the inhabited world under his jurisdiction.” (Source: Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, Book I, Ch. XIII)

First they wanted to be second in rank; then they wanted to be equal in rank; then finally they claimed to be supreme over everyone! The Greeks are a covetous, vainglorious, dishonest people and always have been.

And because the Eastern Orthodox religion and ecclesiological claims are so interwoven with secular Byzantine politics and the mythology of ‘New Rome’, this is another major reason why many Greeks today still insist that they are the ‘real Romans’ and continue to usurp the Roman name and legacy. The Byzantine concept of translatio imperii was and still is intertwined with Orthodox religious doctrine, as the patriarch’s claim to primacy derived from a secular-political event — one which never actually took place.

Again, the basis for the Patriarch of Constantinople’s pretensions to ecclesiastical power rests upon the myth that Constantinople had been divinely chosen as the new political capital of the Roman Empire in the 4th century. This is why Orthodox Greek nationalists are usually at the forefront of proclaiming Roman legitimacy for themselves and for the Byzantine Empire: since without this their whole religion falls apart, and so too does their entire medieval identity — the one which they stubbornly maintained for some 1,500 years before rediscovering Hellenism in the 19th century.