The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate by A. Edward Siecienski (review)

Readers familiar with Edward Siecienski's exposition of the debates surrounding the filioque addition to the Nicaean-Constantinopolitan Creed will not be surprised to encounter the same level of academic excellence in this, his second monograph. Siecienski's objective in writing his book is clear enough: "to trace the history of the Orthodox understanding of the papacy and the place it has played in East-West relations since the beginning of the 'estrangement' that eventually split them apart" (xi). His sage monitum to readers follows: "this is a history of what has been, not necessarily a theology of what should be" (xiii).

Siecienski divides his book into two related but distinct parts. The first three chapters investigate the problems of "the historical Peter"; the "Peter in Scripture"; and finally how the early church fathers interpreted Peter, up to the critical pontificate of Pope Leo the Great. Siecienski completes the foundational part of the book by then turning to the conditions of the Church of Rome through the pontificate of Gregory the Great. The conclusion reached by many other scholars regarding the relationship of the Pope of Rome to the other Patriarchates of the late ancient and early medieval church informs Siecienski's conclusion that "the eighth century was an era of great change for relations between the papacy and the East" (207). The remaining five chapters offer a narrative on the Orthodox relationship with the Roman papacy from the seventh to the twenty-first centuries.

Appropriately modest in his final judgment made as an historian, Siecienski reprises the conclusion he arrived at in his first book—that there remain grounds today "for both optimism and caution" (417). The preceding chapters provide the basis for his caution.

A good deal of his reticence stems from Siecienski's awareness of how alarmed the non-Latin bishops of the then-church reacted to claims advanced by Rome by the ninth century that struck them as nothing less than revolutionary. Siecienski opts to focus (as have all Orthodox commentators) on the confrontation between Pope Nicholas I and Patriarch Photius, since no bishop of Rome prior to Nicholas had explicitly claimed a role for the papacy as "teacher and head of all churches." This major shift in metaphors, away from the earlier practice of popes addressing other bishops as "your Fraternity," did not go unremarked, a point Siecienski notes had characterized Gregory the Great's annoyed letter to John the Faster, and his rejection of the attempt of Eulogius of Alexandria to address him as "universal pope" (191–94). Gregory, preferring the self-identity of "servant of the servants of God," exhibited a mark of humility Siecienski dryly remarks "future popes would have done well to emulate" (194).

Siecienski's analysis of the post-Photian relationships appropriately identifies 1054 as a dust-up between Rome and Constantinople, not a schism between "East" and "West." Debates continue to swirl among both secular and church historians about whether "revolutionary" best describes the eleventh-century developments in the papacy. Siecienski opts for emphasizing the impact of the Crusades and the Latin Kingdoms to illustrate that by the twelfth century Orthodox critics explicitly focused on the primacy issue, finally concluding that even before the catastrophic destruction of Constantinople in 1204 the issues were already well-defined. Orthodox writers by then were arguing that the Donation of Constantine proved that the papacy was the creation of Constantine, not God or Peter (275–26). The Lateran Council of 1215 may have finally accepted the controversial Canon 28 of Chalcedon, but this concession was a moot point given the novel direction of the papacy toward a doctrine of supremacy. Siecienski notes that politics, not theology, dominated the entire period from the abortive Council of Lyons and through the failed Council of Florence-Ferrara, even though the brief flurry of interest in conciliar theory among Latin theologians (including the formidable Nicolas of Cusa) raised cautious hopes among the...