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National Geographic : 1983 Dec
Contents
cunning, military might, terror-more ef fective than these were Byzantium's mis sionaries. The Orthodox faith forged unity out of a diversity of nations. It brought the Slavs into the Byzantine universe. The "apostles of the Slavs," ninth-century Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica, in vented an alphabet in which the newly con verted Slavs first learned to write. Their script, and the Greek-based Cyrillic that soon supplanted it, conveyed Byzantine lit urgy and learning to the Balkans, then to Russia, molding their thoughts, giving them brotherhood in faith and a Slavonic literary language, the Latin of the East. "Civilizing the Slavs was Byzantium's most enduring gift to the world," Harvard Professor Ihor Sevenko told me. Among the consequences, Kievan Russia emerged from pagan isolation to join the European po litical and cultural community. Byzantium was Russia's gateway to Europe. In Kiev, Professor Andrei Bielecki told me how Vladimir, prince in that Mother of Russian Cities, shopped about for a reli gion for his people. He sampled the Hebrew, Latin, and Islamic faiths. Fond of women, he favored the Muslim promise after death of fulfillment of carnal desires. But alas. No wine. "Drinking is the joy of the Rus," a chronicle has him say. So he sent emissaries to Constantinople. Inspired by the resplendent liturgy in Hagia Sophia, they "knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor.... We only know that God dwells there among men .... " Whereupon Vladimir had his people, on pain of the sword, baptized in the Dnieper. Out of the wreckage of the Mongol em pire, princes of Muscovy climbed to power, golden domes and crosses gleaming above the red-brick walls of their Kremlin. Cos sacks, fur traders, missionaries spread across Siberia. At Sitka, on snow-peaked Baranof Island in Alaska, the icons, incense, and chanting in onion-domed St. Michael's Cathedral serve as reminders that in the 18th century the faith of Byzantium came across the Be ring Sea to its fourth continent: Russian America. Here I joined a Tlingit congrega tion worshiping with an Aleut priest-a rit ual like that I had witnessed in Justinian's monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai. "We change very little," Father Eugene Bourdukofsky said as he proudly showed me an icon, the Virgin of Sitka. "That is the essence of Orthodoxy, the true faith." TO CHANGE or not to change. Here was a key to understanding the chasm that divides the thought world of Byzantium-and Eastern Europe from the West. The West transformed itself through the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, and the rise of science into a dynamic society enshrining the individual and progress through free inquiry and experiment. The East, until the 18th century, remained es sentially static. Byzantine thought sees its world not in process; it has arrived, its eter nal order God-ordained. The Byzantine mind transformed the classical Greek word "to innovate" into "to injure." In a monarch, a penchant for inno vation is disastrous, Procopius insisted, for where there is innovation, there is no se curity. In a subject, deviation is not only heresy but also a crime against the state. So threatening was change that ritual reforms in 17th-century Russia split the church. Old Believers endured unspeakable tortures and martyred themselves in mass suicide rather than make the sign of the cross with three fingers instead of two. Ritual details widened the rift between Rome and Constantinople in the 11th cen tury. Until then East and West shared a common faith and heritage. The patriarchs of five Christian centers had helped shape this universal faith. Then in the seventh century the march of Islam engulfed three-Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. (Continuedon page 746) Holy grottoes of Cappadocia once housed the largest community of monks in Asia Minor. From here missionariesspreadthe Christianfaith as far as Ethiopia. Some 300 beautifullyfrescoed churches and dwelling spaces for 30,000 were carvedfrom the soft volcanicpinnacles between the 4th and 14th centuries. NationalGeographic,December 1983 736
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