The condition of the church in the system of byzantine society

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Over the centuries, the fact of belonging to Christianity gradually became an integral feature of Roman status. A full-fledged citizen subject to the emperor must not be a pagan, a representative of another religion. The Romans, Byzantine society, ultimately do not constitute a national, ethnic unity. The Byzantines were aware of this fact, contemporaries quite clearly emphasized the positive or negative features of the rule of certain dynasties, based on their ethnic groups. But this circumstance is perceived as natural. None of the peoples inhabiting the empire had a monopoly on state power. The Romans were a multinational people who professed a single religion, obeyed Roman law, obeyed the power of the emperor and was a unifying force. The heritage of Greek culture, the state Greek language were the basis of cultural, but not ethnic unity of society. The Emperor, Constantine I, laid the foundations of the institution of ecclesiastical organization in the administrative and legal system of the empire: the liberation of the clergy from the usual duties of Roman citizens; legal personality of church institutions, for example, the right to accept in their favor the inheritance by will, the performance of state duties; judicial powers in civil cases of members of the Christian community and more. In the Eastern Church, due to the significant economic role of various church institutions, especially monasteries, a special branched administration was formed, the importance of which for the population sometimes exceeded the state. The church was in fact a special bureaucratic organization that had its own goals and interests of existence and development. The unity of secular and ecclesiastical authorities was recognized as the basic principle, but their role and relations in the life of the Christian community have always caused fraught debates.In the most general form, the Byzantine doctrine of the role and purpose of the institution of the church, in its narrow sense, can be reduced to two main provisions. The church is an organic continuation, with its peculiarities, of state power. At the same time, according to other doctrines, the church has some autonomy, the political organization of Byzantine society includes two equal structures –– the institution of state power, which was embodied in the emperor, and spiritual power, especially the Patriarch of Constantinople. This scheme of basic concepts is not exhaustive, it reflects only the main directions of political and legal thought.