The Epanagoge, too, proceeds from the parallelism of the king and the patriarch, "the greatest and most indispensable parts of the state," and it defines the duties of each of them. "The task of the Tsar is to protect and provide the forces of the people with good administration, to restore the damaged forces by vigilant care, and to acquire new strength by wisdom and just ways and actions. The goal of the patriarch is, firstly, to protect those people whom he received from God in piety and purity of life... he must convert all heretics, as far as possible, to Orthodoxy and the unity of the Church... and also to lead to the adoption of the faith of the infidels, striking them with splendor and glory and the miracle of their service... The tsar must do good, which is why he is called a benefactor... The goal of the patriarch is the salvation of the souls entrusted to him; he must live in Christ and be crucified for the world... The tsar must be the most excellent in Orthodoxy and piety... versed in the dogmas of the Holy Scriptures. Trinity and in the definitions of salvation through the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ... It is characteristic of the patriarch to be a teacher and to treat the high and the low equally without restrictions... and to speak about the truth and the defense of dogmas in the face of the tsar and not to be embarrassed... The Patriarch alone must interpret the canons of the ancients and the definitions of the Holy Fathers and the regulations of the Holy Councils... The Tsar has the right to reinforce, first, everything written in the Divine Scriptures, then also all the dogmas established by the Seven Holy Councils, as well as selected Roman laws..."

Although the Epanagoge forever remained only a bill, its influence on Byzantine society was enormous. And in the Slavic lands even more: from the beginning it was treated as a law with force.

It is important to note that the cement connecting the imperial and ecclesiastical in the state was Orthodoxy, the guardian of which was the Patriarch, and the protector was the emperor. But the emperor, and this is repeatedly emphasized in the Epanagoge, is a layman, and his service is worldly. So there can be no question of any "caesaropapism" allegedly expressed in this document. Moreover, in the entire subsequent history of the Byzantine Church we will not find any attempts by the emperors to interfere in the dogmatic life of the Church (with the exception of unionist attempts already at the very end of the existence of the Byzantine Empire). A new type of iconographic depiction of the emperor became standard - the "Emperor before Christ", a servant of God bowed in bow before his Lord and Master. On the other hand, beginning with Photius, we see powerful patriarchs interfering in the life of the state and even partially overshadowing the emperors: for example, Photius himself, as well as Patriarchs Nicholas the Mystic, Polyeuctus, Michael Cerularius, and others. It seems characteristic that Photius, despite all his truly numerous merits and the extremely important role he played in church history, was canonized only recently.

Only in late Byzantium did the emperor and the patriarch find the right balance between their roles and duties. But this will happen in an ever-shrinking Empire, pressed on all sides by enemies, at the very end of its history.

2. In theology, too, we are moving into a new epoch. The great epoch of the Ecumenical Councils has come to an end. Along with its completion, active dogmatic theological creativity also slowed down. The time of comprehension of the accumulated heritage began, the time of penetration into the depths. From now on, either a more "systematic" or a "mystical" theology was developed. Of course, this division into theological epochs is very conditional, but nevertheless we can speak of a general trend of theological thought. There is no doubt that it was in the post-iconoclastic era that the beginning of the so-called "school" theology, i.e. theology as an academic discipline, occurred.

The victory of icon veneration entailed a real cultural revival. The University of Constantinople began to function again. Caesar Bardas (uncle of Emperor Michael the Drunkard) gathered in it a remarkable circle of scholars. Such luminaries as the future Patriarch Photius and Constantine-Cyril, the future Slavic enlightener, came out of it.

An extremely important aspect of that time was also liturgical creativity. At the end of the iconoclastic period and in the post-iconoclastic era, our worship took shape, acquiring the final form in which we know it today. It is in the divine services that a deep comprehension of the theological heritage takes place. Divine services have become the spring, the living water of which is nourished by all subsequent generations. It is necessary to always remember the main principle of our attitude to worship: Lex orandi lex credendi est - the law of prayer is the law of faith, i.e. we believe as we pray. That is why any attempts at Uniatism - i.e. the preservation of the "Eastern Rite" while accepting Roman Catholic theology - are fundamentally unacceptable for Orthodoxy, as an obvious blasphemous spiritual masquerade.

The main names in this process of translating theology into liturgical images are Sts. John of Damascus and Theodore the Studite. According to tradition, St. John of Damascus is the creator of the Octoechos, i.e. a collection of hymns, divided into 8 tones. In all likelihood, the backbone of the Octoechos really belongs to him. In addition, the text of the services of Easter, Baptism, Transfiguration and a number of other major holidays is attributed to him.

This is how the liturgical creativity of Byzantium of this period is characterized by Archpriest S. Alexander Schmemann: "This is a very remarkable liturgical poetry in content and form, the influence of which in Byzantine hymnography will be decisive. But characteristic, firstly, is Damascene's desire to consolidate the divine services into a certain scheme, and secondly, the almost complete dependence of his theological motifs on the patristic tradition. Byzantine worship is the melting down into liturgical form of the dogmatic achievements of the preceding epoch. It is almost entirely painted in Trinitarian and Christological colors.

The same pathos of completion and consolidation marks the liturgical activity of the Studite Center, headed by St. Theodore the Studite. His circle belongs to the text of both "Triodions" (Lenten and Colored), a number of Lenten services. Here the "Typikon" gradually took shape, i.e. a liturgical rule, striving for more and more "fixation" of the service. Each Byzantine generation will only have to fill in the empty spaces in this scheme. The liturgical heritage of Byzantium is so enormous that one should not expect from it only treasures. It contains a lot of rhetorical exercises, rehashes, imitations. On the whole, it is a majestic building, in which many things are marked by enduring beauty and the deepest meaning. In the Typikon itself (or, rather, the "Typicons," since there were a great many of them, they were copied and perfected, but at the basis of all of them lies the Studite Typikon), if one is able to decipher their "encrypted" language, a whole philosophy of Christian life is revealed, a very subtle, very well-thought-out conception of the Christian worldview. Suffice it to point out the radiant beauty of the Paschal service, the richness of the liturgical cycles - Christmas, Great Lent, the Mother of God, the theological depth of the "Octoechos" or "Triodion". For centuries this liturgical richness will be the main source of knowledge, religious life, and religious inspiration in the Orthodox world, and in it, in the darkest ages, when traditions are interrupted, enlightenment becomes impoverished, the people of the Church will again and again find the spirit of the universal, all-embracing, inexhaustibly profound Orthodoxy of its golden epoch... "The entire spiritual culture, the theological erudition of the Byzantine and the citizen of Holy Russia, which seems to the sons of proud European culture to be something wild and gloomy, was obtained by them in the Church, in the church, in liturgical theology, as a living experience of the Church. There were no seminaries, academies, or theological faculties, and God-loving monks and pious Christians drank the living water of the knowledge of God from the stichera, the canon, the sedals, the prologue, and the chetii-minei. The church kliros and pulpit then replaced the professor's cathedra. During the vigils, matins, compline, to the touching singing of the sweet-voiced "podobnov", to the sounds of the ancient Znamenny and Greek chants, strong piety was cultivated... unshakable, an Orthodox worldview was developed, embodied in life and reality, and not only remaining a vague philosophical theory. They collected these "prayer springs" in churches and, experiencing them reverently, built their way of life and way of life according to them" (Archim. Cyprian Kern).

Without a doubt, liturgical creativity is the pinnacle of Byzantine Orthodoxy: it indicates a deep understanding of the dogmatic insights of the preceding epoch and their assimilation by the Church's consciousness, and the inner continuity of life and tradition. But in essence it still only embodies the experience of the past in beautiful forms, fixes it in the liturgical "system". And everything that is really new in the Byzantine period is usually immeasurably weaker, more rhetorical, and in a sense is only an ornament; such is the luxuriant flowering of liturgical symbolism, the complication of rites, the lengthening - sometimes unnecessary - of the prayers and hymns of an earlier epoch classical in their conciseness and expressiveness. Mutatis mutandis, late Byzantine liturgical creativity appears to be a kind of "baroque" in comparison with the transparent simplicity of pure Byzantinism.

We see a similar desire to systematize tradition in the work of Symeon Metaphrastus (10th century), the codifier of the lives of saints, or Ikumenia, a well-known Byzantine exegete. Everything here is Orthodox, traditional, very often beautiful and clever - but it does not add anything to what has already been said by ancient authors. Even more typical is the famous monument of the twelfth century - the epoch of the Comneni - "Panoplia" by Euthymius Zigaben, an example of "official" theology. Since that time we have been encountering this kind of "panoplia" more and more often: they are theological collections of answers and arguments for all cases. In the capital, at the court, there is much debate on theological topics, but these are brilliant verbal disputes, and not a genuine dispute about "the one thing that is required." "It was fashionable to talk about theology, the court competed with the clergy, professional theologians contrived in subtleties to find topics and fish out of the Scriptures questions that could baffle their opponents..." (F. Shalandon). And this spirit marked official theology until the very end of the Empire."

This harsh assessment of Fr. Alexander Schmemann is in many respects justified. However, it should not be forgotten that the genuine creative spirit of Byzantine theology never faded, that it lived and developed in the Church. In the period under consideration, he appeared more and more in monastic life, in that invisible spiritual podvig that was performed daily and nightly within the monastery walls. And in remembrance of this, it is enough to cite at least such names as St. Symeon the New Theologian and St. Gregory Palamas...

3. On the foreign policy side, in the post-iconoclastic period, the political interests of the Empire narrowed in the East. As subsequent history has shown, the West was finally lost. The papacy found defenders and patrons - the Franks.