Jan-Markus Kötter.Zwischen Kaisern und Aposteln: Das Akakianische Schisma (484–519) als kirchlicher Ordnungskonflikt der Spätantike.

Abstract

The Acacian Schism pitted the see of Rome against that of Constantinople for more than three decades (484–519). The schism started when Acacius of Constantinople accepted the so-called Henotikon of the Emperor Zeno, which sought to reunite the churches after the Council of Chalcedon. To Rome it meant a dangerous devaluation of the Fourth Ecumenical Council and the acceptance of heretics as orthodox. The schism ended with a compromise: Constantinople embraced the theology of the West as the basis of orthodoxy, whereas Rome accepted Constantinople as only second to itself. The schism has often been understood as one in the many battles about the legacy of Chalcedon and as a sign of the estrangement of East and West. This book by Jan-Markus Kötter, a reworked version of his 2011 Frankfurt PhD thesis, proposes to understand it as a conflict about the nature and organization of the Christian Church. To this end, he develops a theoretical model, which identifies three areas of potential conflict in the ancient church: dogma, hierarchy, and empire. If the first two were already operative before Constantine, conflict about the relation to the empire only becomes a theme when there is a “Reichskirche.” This term has often been understood as meaning a church under tutelage of the Roman Empire (for a critique of that idea, see Steffen Diefenbach, “Constantius II. und die “Reichskirche”—ein Beitrag zum Verhältnis von kaiserlicher Kirchenpolitik und politischer Integration im 4. Jh.,” Millennium 9 [2012]: 55–122), but Kötter proposes to understand it in a descriptive sense, namely as the coexistence of church and Christian Empire. The Acacian Schism should then be understood as a conflict about the correct organization of the church: whereas Rome founded its claims on its apostolic origins, Constantinople claimed leadership in the Eastern Church by virtue of being the residence of the emperor. In Kötter’s model, both sees represent two opposite poles, one that stakes its claim on the autonomy of the church, and another that relies on imperial, not ecclesiastical, arguments for its claims. If often expressed in sociological terms, Kötter’s approach can be said to shift our understanding of the Acacian Schism away from a purely dogmatic understanding (as a conflict about orthodoxy and heresy) to an ecclesiological one: which church represents the ideal Christian community? In this way, he follows an approach first introduced by Philippe Blaudeau (most recently, Le siège de Rome et l’Orient 448–536: étude géo-ecclésiologique [2012], which includes much of the same material). Just like Blaudeau, Kötter avoids focusing on just the two main players and restores agency to the sees of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. The thirteen chapters in the book offer two things: on the one hand, a narrative of the schism, and, on the other, a structural analysis of the aims and strategies of the various players involved. The narrative is clear and will be a point of reference for years to come. The analysis sometimes has a tendency to repeat things said earlier in the narrative. This is unavoidable given the set-up of the book, but it would have been a good idea to shift the exposition of the model from the very end to the beginning. A consequence of Kötter’s approach is that one learns little about the internal developments in the various sees. There may be too much focus on competition among the patriarchs at the expense of a discussion about how they addressed different constituencies within their bishoprics. A more prominent look at these local dynamics would have enriched the book. Kötter, however, succeeds in showing how the overarching aims of each see remain remarkably constant. His intention to offer a model sometimes leads him to some disputable over-generalizing statements. I would, for example, quarrel with the idea that apostolicity presupposes an ahistorical view of the world, according to which Rome’s position would be due to a once-and-for-all decision by God, whereas Constantinople’s position does more justice to human history. Apostolicity is, in fact, a choice for another point of reference, internal to the history of the church, and for a focus on distant origins. It is, moreover, a strong factor in the production of history, as a look at apocryphal stories shows. I therefore fail to see why it would have to be tied up with a “static perception” of history (194 n. 619). Such considerations do not subtract substantially from the value of this book. It is one of the few works available that goes beyond musing about the structural instability of the church in Late Antiquity and seeks to explain it.