Theocracy or Caesaropapism? (continued and conclusion)
Article summary proposed by the Contacts review with LLM assistance
This article constitutes the second and final part of a historical and canonical study devoted to relations between Church and State in the Byzantine and Orthodox tradition. Sergey Troitsky successively examines the theory of "symphony" as formulated in Justinianic legislation, the contradictory notion of the "Christian State," and then the theory of imperial unction developed by Theodore Balsamon in the twelfth century. The author shows that this last theory, circumstantial in origin and doctrinally unfounded, legitimized a caesaropapism whose harmful effects spread throughout Byzantium, Serbia, and Russia up to the imperial period. The principal contribution of the article lies in a rigorous critical analysis of the canonical and historical foundations of caesaropapism, clearly distinguishing the Orthodox ecclesiological norm from its successive political distortions.
This article has not been translated yet — it is available in its French version here.
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