Law and Orthodox Christianity after Byzantium

Abstract

Abstract This chapter outlines the Orthodox Christian experience of law and practice of jurisprudence from 1453 to 1918. The chapter first surveys the legal and political regimes under which Orthodox communities lived after Byzantium: the Ottoman Empire, Muscovy, and Western polities. Next, the chapter describes the nomocanonical tradition, the principal jurisprudential tradition of post-Byzantine Orthodoxy until the nineteenth century. Tensions in the nomocanonical tradition are described: the tension between ecclesiastical canons and Byzantine imperial laws within the nomocanon, and between nomocanonical norms and local custom. The history of capital punishment in Russia illustrates these tensions. Following a description of higher education in the Orthodox world, the chapter turns to epochal changes affecting Orthodox jurisprudence and church government in modern times, beginning with Peter the Great’s church constitution (1721). Peter’s synodal system undermined the canonical order of the Orthodox Church. Criticism of the synodal system was the context in which the modern study of Orthodox canon law and other advancements in Orthodox jurisprudence arose in nineteenth-century Russia. The critical wave peaked in the Russian conciliar movement of 1905–17. The nation-states that emerged from the Ottoman Empire between 1830 and 1914 also contributed to modern Orthodox jurisprudence. The prevailing trend in those polities was inclined to state supervision of the church in the interests of nation-building and territorial expansion. The contribution of Orthodox jurists in the Austrian (Austro-Hungarian) Empire is also noted.