Caesaropapism is the idea of combining the power of
secular government with, or making it superior to, the spiritual authority of the
Christian Church; especially concerning the connection of the Christian Church with government. In its extreme form, it is a political theory in which the head of state, notably the Emperor ('Caesar', by extension an 'equal' King), is also the supreme head of the church ('papa', pope or analogous religious leader). In this form, it inverts
theocracy in which institutions of the Church control the state.
Extended use
Passional Christi und Antichristi, by the Lutheran
Lucas Cranach the Elder. This woodcut of the traditional practice of kissing the Pope's toe is from
Passionary of the Christ and Antichrist. The two fingers the Pope is holding up symbolizes his claim to be the Church's substitute for Christ's earthly presence.
The term is just as applicable to similar reports between secular and religious power when the titles of one or both office holders are different, and even at a smaller scale than the universal church, and is even used when the control is less than total. Thus the French kings are a good example of a non-imperial Catholic monarchy that was rather successful in getting a great say in the French church (such as
commendatory prelatures) and getting access to significant income from church property; during and around the 'Babylonian Exile' of the papacy in
Avignon they even had a heavy hand in the papacy as such; and aspects of
Gallicanism reflect the desire to give even the liturgy (even when Latin was the only language for church rites) a distinctive French flavour.
After the introduction of
Protestantism, the immense fermentation caused by the introduction of socially subversive principles into the life of a people would exhaust its revolutionary beginnings, and result in a new form of social and religious order - the residue of the great Protestant upheaval in Europe was territorial or State Religion, based on the religious supremacy of the temporal ruler, in contradistinction to the old order in which the temporal ruler took an oath of obedience to the Catholic Church.
Martin Luther's first reformatory attempts were radically democratic. He sought to benefit the people at large by curtailing the powers of both Church and State. The German princes, to him, were "usually the biggest fools or the worst scoundrels on earth". In 1523 he wrote: "The people will not, cannot, shall not endure your tyranny and oppression any longer. The world is not now what it was formerly, when you could chase and drive the people like game". This manifesto, addressed to the poorer masses, was taken up by
Franz von Sickingen, a Knight of the Empire, who entered the field in execution of its threats. His object was twofold: to strengthen the political power of the knights — the inferior nobility — against the princes, and to open the road to the new Gospel by overthrowing the bishops, but his enterprise had the opposite result: the knights were beaten, lost what influence they had possessed, and the princes were proportionately strengthened. The rising of the peasants likewise turned to the advantage of the princes: the fearful slaughter of
Frankenhausen (1525) left the princes without an enemy and the new Gospel without its natural defenders. The victorious princes used their augmented power entirely for their own advantage in opposition to the authority of the emperor and the freedom of the nation.
Caesaropapism in the Eastern Church
Caesaropapism's chief meaning is the authority the
Byzantine emperors had over the
Eastern Christian Church from the 500s through the tenth century. The Byzantine emperor would typically protect the Eastern Church and manage its administration by presiding over councils and appointing patriarchs and setting territorial boundaries for their jurisdiction.
The emperor, whose control was so strong that "caesaropapism" became interchangeable with "Byzantinism", was called "
Pontifex Maximus" after the fourth century, and the Patriarch of Constantinople could not hold office if he did not have the emperor's approval. Eastern men like
St. John Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople
and
St. Athanasius, Patriarch of Alexandria, strongly opposed imperial control over the Church, as did Western theologians like
St. Hilary and Hosius,
Bishop of Córdoba. Such emperors as
Basiliscus,
Zeno,
Justinian I,
Heraclius, and
Constans II published several strictly ecclesiastical edicts either on their own without the mediation of church councils, or they exercised their own political influence on the councils to issue the edicts. Caesaropapism was most notorious in
Russia when
Ivan IV the Terrible assumed the title Czar in 1547 and subordinated the
Russian Orthodox Church to the state. This level of caesaropapism far exceeded that of the Byzantine Empire. Caesaropapism existed in the Orthodox Church in
Turkey until 1923 and in
Cyprus until 1977, when
Archbishop Makarios III died. However, in no way is caesaropapism a part of
Orthodox dogma. The historical reality, as opposed to doctrinal endorsement or dogmatic definition, of caesaropapism stems from, according to
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, the confusion of the Byzantine Empire with the
Kingdom of God and the zeal of the Byzantines "to establish here on earth a living icon of God's government in heaven."
See also
Notes and References
Category:Christian lawCategory:EcclesiologyCategory:Political theoriesCategory:Christianity-related controversiesCategory:Christian politicsCategory:Christianity under the Roman Empireast:Cesaropapismubg:Цезаропапизъмcs:Caesaropapismusda:Cæsareopapismede:Cäsaropapismusel:Καισαροπαπισμόςes:Cesaropapismofr:Césaropapismeko:황제교황주의ia:Cesaropapismoit:Cesaropapismonl:Cesaropapieja:皇帝教皇主義pl:Cezaropapizmpt:Cesaropapismoro:Cezaropapismru:Цезаропапизмsk:Cézaropapizmussl:Cezaropapizemth:ทวิโลกาธิปไตยzh:政教合一
