4. Marriage

The Byzantine theological, liturgical and canonical tradition unanimously emphasizes the absolute uniqueness of Christian marriage, relying on the 5th chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians. As a sacrament (mysterion), the marriage union reflects the union between Christ and the Church, between Yahweh and Israel, and therefore can only be one thing – an eternal bond that cannot be destroyed by death itself. In its sacramental nature, marriage transforms and transcends the corporeal, carnal union, and the contractual union supported by a contract concluded according to the law: human love is projected into the eternal Kingdom of God.

Only such a fundamental understanding of Christian marriage can explain the fact that until the tenth century, no remarriage, whether by widows or divorcees, was blessed in the Church. Referring to the custom of "coronation" of the married couple – which is a characteristic feature of the Byzantine rite of marriage – the canon attributed to Nicephorus the Confessor (806-815) specifies: "Those who enter into a second marriage are not married and are not admitted to the most pure sacraments for two years; those who enter into a third marriage are excommunicated for five years" (487). This text, which only repeats the earlier prescriptions of the canons of Basil 488, suggests that the second and third marriages of widowed or divorced persons can only be considered civil contracts. In fact, if the marriage received the blessing given at the Eucharist, where the newlyweds received communion, then the temporary excommunication required excluded the participation of the Church or its blessing in cases where remarriages were entered.

The absolute uniqueness as a norm of Christian marriage was also affirmed by the increased demands of Byzantine canon law on the clergy: a person who was married twice, or by his first marriage, but to a widow or divorced, was not recognized as a suitable candidate for ordination to the deacon or priesthood. But the laity, after a period of repentance and excommunication from the sacraments of the Church, were again admitted to full communion with the Church, even after the second or third marriage; Understanding and tolerance extended to them when they either could not accept solitude or decided to take a second chance to create a truly Christian marriage. It is obvious that the Byzantine tradition approached the question of remarriage – after widowhood or divorce – within the framework of penitential discipline. Marriage as a Sacrament implies the receipt of the grace of God; But for this grace to work, human participation ("synergy") is necessary. This is true of all the sacraments, but especially of Baptism, the fruits of which can be squandered by sin and regained through repentance. As for marriage, which presupposes a personal understanding and psychological adjustment of two people, the Byzantine custom recognized the possibility of initial error, at the same time agreeing that living alone, in cases of death of the partner or simply his absence, is a greater evil than the remarriage of those who are unable to "endure" loneliness.

The possibility of divorce in all eras remained an integral part of Byzantine civil law. Within the framework of the "symphony," i.e., the agreement between Church and State, the right to divorce has never been disputed, a fact that cannot be explained by reference to Caesaropapism alone. In the Byzantine Church there has never been a shortage of saints who are always ready to condemn imperial despotism, social injustice, and other evils contrary to the Gospel. John Chrysostom (398-404), Theodore the Studite (d. 820), or Patriarch Polyeuctus (956-970) found the strength to fearlessly oppose the authorities; None of them, however, opposed the divorce law. Obviously, they considered divorce to be an inevitable factor in human life in a fallen world, where man is free to accept grace and to reject it; where sin is inevitable, but repentance is always available; where the ecclesiastical will not be a compromise that betrays the norms of the Gospel, but sympathy and mercy for human weakness.

This approach of the Byzantine Church was maintained quite strictly as long as the primary functions of the Church (the Church must strive for the presence of the Kingdom of God in human life) and the functions of the state (it must govern fallen humanity, choosing the lesser evil and maintaining order by legal means) remained clearly distinguished. On the question of marriage, this essential distinction disappeared (at least in practice) when the Emperor Leo VI (d. 912) issued his Novella, which formally gave the Church the legal duty to certify the validity of all marriages. Civil marriage as a legitimate option for the life of free citizens disappeared; and soon, quite logically, Alexius I Comnenus made it the duty of slaves to formalize marriage in the Church. By these decrees, the imperial power theoretically granted the Church formal control over the marital behavior of all citizens. In reality, however, the Church was shifted direct responsibility for those inevitable compromises that had previously been resolved by the possibility of civil marriages and divorces, while at the same time the possibility of applying penitential customs disappeared. Once the Church had gained legitimate authority over the institution of marriage, it now had to cope with the legal difficulties of its new responsibility. Of course, it began to "grant divorces" (previously they were allowed only by secular courts) and to allow "remarriages" in churches; After all, without such a "remarriage", the second or third marriage, according to the new law, would remain legally null and void. True, the Church achieved the recognition of the complete invalidity of the fourth marriage (at the Council in 920), but she had to make concessions on many other issues.

However, the Church managed to preserve in the basic principle the essential distinction between the first and subsequent marriages: a special service was developed for remarriages – the wedding was separated from the Eucharist and the entire rite was given a penitential character. Thanks to this, it became clear that second and third marriages are not the norm and as such have a sacramental flaw. The greatest difference between the Byzantine theology of marriage and its medieval Latin counterpart is that the Byzantines strongly emphasized the uniqueness of Christian marriage and the eternity of the marital bond; It did not occur to the Byzantines that marriage was a legal contract that automatically ceased to be valid after the death of one of the contracting parties. In Byzantium, the marriage of a widower or widow was tolerated, as well as marriage after divorce. But this "tolerance" does not equate to approval. It implied repentance, and remarriage was allowed only to those men and women whose previous marriages could be regarded as practically non-existent (various codes of imperial law listed possible variants of this situation). Meanwhile, the Latin West did not tolerate legal divorce, but recognized, without restriction, the right to any number of remarriages for a widower or widower. Guided in its practice by the legal concept of a contract that is indissoluble as long as both parties to the contract are alive, the West does not seem to have taken into account the consideration that marriage, if it is a sacrament of the Church, is projected, as an eternal bond, into the Kingdom of God; And, like all other sacraments, marriage presupposes a free response and the possibility that a person will reject marriage or make a mistake in it, and that, after such a sinful refusal to marry or a mistake, there is always the possibility of repenting and starting from the beginning. Such were the theological foundations of the early Christian Church's tolerance of divorce, and they remained so in Byzantium.

5. Healing and Death

Often combined into a single sacrament with repentance, the performance of "unction" never developed, except for a number of areas in the Christian East where it occurred after the sixteenth century – into the sacrament of the "last anointing", performed only on the dying. In Byzantium, the sacrament of Extreme Unction was a rite of priests (usually seven, according to James 5:14, which was considered the biblical basis of this sacrament). It consisted of the reading of passages from the Scriptures and the offering of prayers for healing, the texts of which decidedly did not allow magical interpretations of the rite. Healing was sought only within the framework of repentance and spiritual salvation, and was not considered an end in itself. Whatever the outcome of the illness, the anointing itself signified divine forgiveness and liberation from the vicious circle of sin, suffering, and death in which fallen humanity is trapped. Sympathizing with the sufferings of man, the Church, through the mouths of her elders, asks for relief, forgiveness, and eternal freedom for her suffering member. This is the meaning of the holy anointing of the body.

The funeral service, which was also considered by some Byzantine authors to be a "sacrament," had no other meaning. Likewise, in death, the Christian remains a member of the Living and Resurrected Body of Christ, in which he was included through Baptism and the Eucharist. The Church gathers for the funeral service in order to bear witness to this truth, visible only with the eyes of faith, but already experienced by every Christian who has a reverent fear of the coming Kingdom.