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822 27. the definition and enforcement of orthodoxy
affected chiefly the aristocratic class, 32 resulted in a spate of trials and executions.
It was an act which, like the closing of the Neoplatonist academy
of Athens and the confiscation of its endowment in 529–32, demonstrated
that for Justinian the enforcement of orthodoxy entailed the eradication of
paganism. Yet, as the missionary efforts of John of Ephesus were to show
a decade later, paganism did survive this onslaught. It has been argued that
Justinian’s anti-pagan measures, which had a deleterious effect on secular
higher education, were responsible for the decay of ancient literature and
culture, the renaissance of which had begun under Constantius two centuries
earlier. 33
In the administration of churches and clergy Justinian brought all under
his control. 34 His was a total religious policy in which pagans, heretics,
Samaritans and Jews were also to accept Chalcedonian orthodoxy, as is evidenced
inter alia by the concerted mission effort in his reign. On the liturgical
front as well, Justinian consequently left little to chance. The liturgical
chant, the Trishagion, including the formula ‘One of the Holy Trinity
suffered in the flesh’, which the emperor had championed as a tool for
ecclesiastical unity even before becoming sole regent, was subsumed into
a profession of faith and enshrined in the introduction to his legal code in
528. 35 According to Theophanes, 36 in 535 Justinian ordered that the hymn
Ho monogenes (which began with the words ‘Onlybegotten Son and Word
of God’) was to be sung in the liturgy at Constantinople. In its terminology
the hymn was acceptable to both sides – the anti-Chalcedonian tradition
even attributed its introduction to Severus of Antioch. A further step
was taken by the emperor at the Council of Constantinople in 553, when
an anathema was placed on anyone who did not confess that Christ, ‘who
was crucified in the flesh, is true God and Lord of glory, and one of the
Holy Trinity’. 37 Like the Cherubic hymn introduced into the liturgy in
573–4 by Justin II, 38 the Ho monogenes and its manipulation by Justinian
show that theology in the sixth century had turned its back on the
Antiochene tradition and was tending in an Alexandrian direction. 39 It is
also no accident that the great melodist Romanos, who composed his kontakia
or liturgical hymns during Justinian’s reign, is decidedly anti-
Nestorian, while reticent about christological heresies in the period before
or after Chalcedon. 40
The nature of Justinian’s collaboration with the empress Theodora in
ecclesiastical politics is difficult to determine; it has been seen variously as
clever or despicable. This is in large part caused by the extreme bias with
which she is portrayed in contemporary sources, particularly Procopius of
32 Chuvin, Chronicle 135. 33 Lemerle, Byzantine Humanism 77. 34 Nov. 6; CJ i.3.41; i.3.47.
35 CJ i.1.5. 36 Chron. A.M. 6028, p.216 de Boor. 37 ACO iv.1.242.
38 Cedrenus, Historiarum compendium, ed. Niebuhr, vol. 35, 685 lines 3–4.
39 See further Schulz (1986) 21–2. 40 Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition ii.2.513–23.
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