When God became incarnate from the Most-Pure One, polytheism of idols is abolished...

If Christianity and the Caesarist experience of the holy power in the era of Constantine met, constituting two poles of Byzantine social psychology, which necessarily complemented each other, then their deep conjugation should be thought of as rather contradictory. Christianity was able to become the spiritual correlate of the absolutist state precisely – such is the paradoxical logic of reality – thanks to its moral isolation from this state. Of course, after the Christianization of the empire, the church went very far towards the secular power: Christians, who once died for refusing to deify the emperor, began to depict earthly rulers with the attributes of the King of Heaven. And yet in the Gospel there were: "My kingdom is not of this world" and "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's," and these words could not disappear from the memory of believers. Moreover, they were exactly what the subjects of the sacred Roman state needed.

He also knew that when things got really bad, he could go to a monastery, to a skete, to the desert — and there to give himself over to the power of such principles, in the face of which worldly power is insignificant and contemptible. In the fact that the newborn Christ was recorded as a subject of the Emperor Augustus, the Byzantine exegetes saw a fundamental abolition of the pathos of power and citizenship: "... By registering as a slave, He abolished the slavery of our nature. For those who serve the Lord are no longer slaves of men; as the Apostle says: "Do not become slaves of men"[14].

The transcendental holiness and transcendent insignificance of earthly power – this antinomy, which is revealed in the Christian consciousness, can be called characteristic of the East (with the proviso that the words "East" and "West" for the history of culture can serve as symbols rather than exact terms denoting equal concepts).

And here we come to the second point of our reflections, the process of Orientalization of the Mediterranean spiritual world, within which both the psychology of Caesarism and the psychology of Christianity developed. The establishment of the empire meant the triumph of such a system of relations between power and man, which had long been worked out in Middle Eastern despotisms. It was not for nothing that in the time of Caesar and Octavian there were dark rumors about the impending transfer of the imperial capital to the east (which more than three centuries later had to be carried out in practice).

And I will give you the treasures that are kept in darkness and the hidden riches, that you may understand that I am the Lord who calls you by name..." (Chapter 45, verses 1-3). The drama of the sacred world-power, interpreted in a pagan way by Augustus and in a Christian way by Constantine, has been enacted in the East throughout its history, and during this time not only the rulers but also the subject have had occasion to learn their roles with a thoroughness which was lacking in the descendants of the republican peoples of the Mediterranean, who fell into the conditions of the empire. In the times of the polis, the Greeks were accustomed to speak of the subjects of the Persian state as beaten serfs; the wisdom of the East is the wisdom of the beaten, but there are times when, according to the proverb, two unbeaten men are given for a beaten. In the spaces of the old Oriental despotisms, such an experience of moral behavior in conditions of deep-rooted political unfreedom was accumulated, which the Greco-Roman world could not even dream of (this experience, as we know from Leskov's story "Odnodum", was able to help a hungry lover of one Eastern book – the Bible – to remain straight in the world of crookedness as early as the 19th century). In order to grasp the specifics of the Eastern experience, it is useful to recall for contrast the ancient ideal of spiritual freedom in the face of death – the ideal of Socrates. The Athenian sage knows for sure that he can be killed, but cannot be humiliated by brutal physical violence, that his measured speech at the trial will take as long as the rights of the accused guarantee him, and no one will silence him by striking his eloquent lips (as happens in the New Testament with Jesus and the Apostle Paul). When Socrates calmly picks up his cup of hemlock, it is a beautiful gesture that radiates the illusion of infinite spiritual freedom, but this illusion is conditioned by the social guarantees that a free city republic provides to a full citizen. It is possible to maintain a calm posture, to measure the modulations of one's voice and the movements of one's soul that manifest themselves in these modulations, in the face of death, but not under torture[16]. Even Seneca, at the dawn of the imperial era, was allowed to cut his veins with his own hands and demonstrate the spectacle of ataraxia for the last time[17] - a high-ranking Stoic continued to be an actor, with the consent of the murderers, completing his role; but the captives who were nailed en masse to crosses by Vespasian's soldiers, or those Asia Minor women who were tortured by the aesthete and writer Pliny the Younger due to the boring duty of service, were in a completely different life situation.

As for the Near Eastern world, in its despotisms, the dignity of the human body was from time immemorial treated differently from the civic consciousness of the Greeks. Even the confidant of the Persian sovereign had to prostrate himself before him (the very custom of proskinesis that so shocked Callisthenes and seemed to Diogenes inadmissible even in relation to the gods[18] and which was sublimated in the Byzantine ascetic practice of prostrations at prayer!), and in case of disgrace he could be impaled. Such an execution as crucifixion was used in the Greco-Roman world for slaves and other people with no equal rights, but in the East, the Hasmonean monarch Alexander Jannaeus could give hundreds of revered teachers of the Jewish people from among the Pharisees to be crucified. The Oriental scribe, the sage or prophet, the Oriental nobleman, and then the Eastern king (remember the gouged out eyes of Hezekiah, whose fate was the prototype of so many imperial destinies in the Byzantine centuries!) knew well that their bodies were in no way guaranteed against such abuses, which would simply leave no room for Socratic equanimity. In such social conditions, which were gradually becoming characteristic of the Mediterranean, the classical ancient concept of human dignity turned into an empty phrase, and truth and holiness appealed to the hearts of people in the most unaesthetic, most unplastic image possible, in the stunning guise of the "Servant of Yahweh" from Isaiah 53, who was a type of Christ for Christians:

«… In Him there is neither form nor majesty; and we saw Him, and there was no form in Him that drew us to Him, He was despised and rejected before men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with sickness, and we hid our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not value Him."

The Old Testament is a book in which no one is ashamed to suffer and cry out for their pain. No lamentation in Greek tragedy knows such bodily, wombly images of suffering: a man's heart melts in his chest and pours into his womb, his bones are deeply shaken, and flesh sticks to bone (cf. Psalms b, 21, 37, 54, 68, 101, and especially the monologues of the protagonist of the Book of Job). In this connection, we note that the Old Testament perception of man is no less corporeal than the Greek, but for him the body is not a posture but pain, not a gesture but a trembling, not a three-dimensional plasticity of muscles, but a wounded "secret depths of the bowels" (hadrej-baten, cf. the Book of Proverbs of Solomon, ch. 20, v. 27 and especially 30); This body is not contemplated from without, but felt from within, and its image is composed not of the impressions of the eye, but of the vibrations of the womb — the image of a suffering and tormented body, in which, however, there lives such a bloody, belly, heartfelt warmth of intimacy that is alien to the statuarial body of the Hellenic athlete. It is quite consistent that sensitivity to the vibrations of the human gut is adopted by Byzantine Christianity, sharply distinguishing the style of its mysticism from the traditions of pagan Platonism. "While Christianity has developed the most detailed and complex physiology of prayer," notes A. Losev, "Platonism on the thousands of pages devoted to ecstasy almost does not utter a word about it. The Fathers and ascetics of the Orthodox East precisely defined the stages of prayer: it begins verbally, on the tongue, descends into the throat and chest, interlocks with the breath (so that every breath is already a prayerful cry), and finally passes into the heart... The Platonist perceives his divinity with his whole body and soul, not distinguishing between the physiological moments of ascent: the hesychasts, on the other hand, perceive their God with their breath and heart; they bring the mind into the chest and heart"[20]. But only the breath (ne§ama), which dies with a strong feeling (cf. Daniel 10:17) and can praise (cf. Psalm 150:6), and even more so the heart (, lebab), which trembles with terror and joy and sometimes becomes like soft, melting wax (cf. Psalm 21:15), the heart mentioned 851 times throughout the books of the Old Testament, are the most important symbols of the biblical concept of man. Among these symbols, the womb must also be mentioned, first of all, of course, the mother's womb (rehem) giving birth in agony, which in biblical semantics is a synonym for all mercy and pity ("blago-womb", eu-splanchnia, as the Byzantines and the Slavs baptized by the Byzantines learn to express themselves from the Bible[21]), but also the womb in general as an image of intimate hiddenness[22] and, last but not least, as an expression of soft, sensitive, painful insecurity before a blow (cf. the passage from Proverbs 20, 30 already quoted).

Да, в слове ветхозаветных и новозаветных текстов выговаривает себя уязвимость и уязвленность, но такая, которая для слова есть одновременно возможность совершенно особой остроты и проникновенности (наши слова «острота» и «проницание» недаром связаны с представлением о чем–то ранящем и прободающем). Вспомним, что восточные ваятели первых веков нашей эры, нащупывавшие в пределах античного искусства скульптуры неантичные возможности экспрессии, начали просверливать буравом зрачки своих изваяний, глубокие и открытые, как рана: если резец лелеет выпукло–пластичную поверхность камня, то бурав ранит и взрывает эту поверхность, чтобы разверзнуть путь в глубину, и эрмитажный бюст Забдибола из Пальмиры (середина II в.) — отличный тому пример. Этот бюст по своей внешней форме — еще изваяние, по своей внутренней форме — уже икона: тело — только подставка для лица, лицо — только обрамление для взгляда, для экспрессии пробуравленных и буравящих зрачков. Новая, неведомая классическому искусству зрячесть дана нашему восприятию как рана: косное вещество уязвилось и прозрело. Таков художественный символ, стоящий на пороге новой эпохи.

Когда мы уясняем себе специфику библейского отношения к человеческой участи и сравниваем его с внутренней установкой античной литературы и античной философии, важно не забыть один момент — оценку страха и надежды. Для наивного, еще не этического, еще не одухотворившегося мироотношения само собой разумеется, что угроза страшит, а надежда радует, что удача и беда однозначно размежеваны между собой, и их массивная реальность не вызывает никакого сомнения: удача — это хорошо, беда — это худо, гибель — это совсем худо, хуже всего. Так воспринимает вещи животное, так воспринимает их бездуховный, простодушно–беззастенчивый искатель корысти, пошлый обыватель, но так же и униженный изгой общества: кто станет требовать от сеченого раба, чтобы он «был выше» страха истязаний или надежды на освобождение? Но свободный человек — другое дело: аристократическая мораль героизма, эллинское «величие духа» предполагают как раз презрение к страху и надежде. Когда герой (будь то в мифе, в эпосе или в трагедии) идет своим путем, неизбежным, как движение солнца, и проходит его до конца, до своей гибели, то это по своему глубочайшему смыслу не печально и не радостно — это героично. Ибо по беда героя внутренне уже включает в себя его предстоящую гибель (так Ахилл, убивая Гектора, знает, что теперь на очереди он), и поэтому ее плоско, пошло и неразумно воспринимать как причину для наивной радости; с другой стороны, гибель его без остатка входит в баланс победной судьбы, и поэтому о погибших героях не следует всерьез жалеть:

Им для того ниспослали и смерть и погибельный жребий

Боги, чтоб славною песнию были они у потомков, —

как замечает по этому поводу Гомер. Испытывать жалость и тем паче внушать жалость вообще не аристократично — «лучше зависть, чем жалость»[23], как говорит певец атлетической доблести Пиндар. Позднее философы станут включать жалость в свои перечни порочных страстей, подлежащих преодолению[24]. Следует оговориться: и в жизни и в поэзии греки были слишком естественными, чтобы достигнуть той неумолимой бесчувственности, которая конструируется ими в качестве отвлеченного идеала. Герои Гомера и трагедии то и дело проливают обильные слезы, чаще всего над самими собой, но иногда и над чужим горем. Надо сказать, что они делят с персонажами Ветхого Завета свойство южной чувствительности и впечатлительности (присущее также крещеным византийским потомкам эллинов): суровые нордические герои «Саги о Вольсунгах» или «Песни о Нибелунгах» скорее всего нашли бы Ахилла неженкой и плаксой. Важно, однако, что если эллин классической эпохи допускал жалостливость как простительную и даже привлекательную слабость, если он шел так далеко, что ценил ее как чисто социальную добродетель «приятного в обхождении» члена человеческого общежития, — ему бы и в голову не пришло как–то связывать слезы жалости со сферой духа, с путями внутреннего самоочищения сердца. Забежим вперед и приведем для контраста рассуждение сирийского христианского мистика (Исаак Ниневийский, конец VII в.):