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Nicolas Kamas,
Public Orthodoxy,
The impending Great and Holy Council has provoked a number of
reactions, from joy to hostility, on many of the topics it has promised
to address. Among these has been the relationship of the Orthodox Church
to other forms of Christianity, which highlights the long-standing
problem of the reception of converts who have already received some form
of Trinitarian baptism
One approach has been taken by those who insist
on the loss of grace and totally heretical nature of those not
belonging to the Orthodox Church, whose incorrect baptismal ritual
prevents the application of economia and their reception by any
means other than baptism. This view has found its fullest recent
expression in the works of George Metallinos. The opposite view, recently articulated by George Demacopoulos in this forum, insists that “no Byzantine canonist or apologist ever thought that Latin theological errors, such as the filioque,
were so great that they required rebaptism.” Demacopoulos accuses his
opponents of relying “on a highly selective and reductionist
appropriation of our rich canonical tradition to justify simplistic
ideological conceits.” While the latter statement may have some truth to
it, Demacopoulos fails to acknowledge the extent to which the practice
of receiving Latin Christians by (re)baptism was discussed and applied
in Byzantium from the eleventh century through the end of the Middle
Ages.
First, it seems clear that some Byzantine clergy did rebaptize
Latins. Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida complained in his infamous
excommunication of Patriarch Michael Cerularius that Michael’s followers
“like the Arians, rebaptize those already baptized in the name of the
holy Trinity, and especially Latins” and that they hold that “except for
the church of the Greeks […] the true sacrifice and baptism had
perished from the entire world.” Subsequent Latin authors, like Odo of
Deuil and Hugh Etherianus – and even the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 –
identified and criticized the practice of Greeks who rebaptized Latins.
The concerns expressed by Byzantine apologists about the baptismal
practices of Latins are twofold. Both reasons concern points of ritual,
something that ought not be surprising. Even the most cursory glance at
the history of the division between the churches reveals the enormous
role that ritual differences played, especially when it came to the use
of azymes (unleavened bread) in the Eucharist. Greek and Latin
apologists alike claimed that the wrong ritual form or formula could
invalidate the sacrament and imply the existence of a deeper heresy.
Several Greek apologists, when confronted by reports of Latin
baptismal practices, made a tacit appeal to Canon 7 of Constantinople I
and Canon 95 of the Quinisext Council in Trullo. The same Patriarch
Michael who was excommunicated by Humbert complained in a letter to
Peter, the Patriarch of Antioch, that the Latins “baptize those who are
being baptized with a single immersion while they say the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” The passage comes in the midst
of a long line of other complaints (regarding clerical marriage, the filioque,
etc.) and indicates his strong disapproval of the practice of single
immersion. Even so, this could be dismissed as the uniquely antagonistic
attitude of a spiteful and ambitious cleric had similar charges not
been made by Constantine Stilbes (mid-12th–early 13th c.), Ps.-Athanasios II of Alexandria (late 13th c.), the Panoplia (late 13th c.), St. Meletios Galesiotes (c. 1209-1286), and Joseph Bryennios (early 15th
c.), among others. Even Balsamon, while he does not name the Latins
specifically, also opined that everyone who had been baptized with a
single immersion should be baptized again.
A second concern may have developed by the first half of the
thirteenth century. The use of different grammatical voices was one of
the primary discrepancies between the formulas used by the two churches.
The Greek formula, “The servant of God is baptized,” emphasized the
action of Christ and the Holy Spirit, rather than the priest, in the
celebration of the Mystery. The Latin version instead used the active
voice (“I baptize you”) to establish the intent of the action. To the
critics of each tradition, however, the Greek formula lacked intent, and
thus was invalid, while the Latin use was an arrogant usurpation of the
ministry of the Trinity, and so was devoid of grace. This resulted in
rebaptisms, especially of Greeks in southern Italy during the
pontificate of Gregory IX (r. 1227–1241) (readers interested in this
topic are referred to the work of Yury Avvakumov). Greek authors were
also quick to criticize the Latin practice on these grounds, and
accusations of this kind lasted at least through the time of St. Symeon
of Thessaloniki (c. 1381–1429).
As tempting as it may be to interpret the sources to mean more than
they say, there are several important caveats to the above. First, there
are no recorded conciliar statements on the issue until the fifteenth
century, when chrismation/anointing, rather than baptism, was
established as the normative method for receiving Latins. Second, there
was no general sense of schism in the eleventh century. The earliest
Byzantine critics of Latin baptism believed their Western counterparts
somehow still to be in the Church. Third, although several of the
authors listed above attribute single-immersion baptism to all Latins, a
triple-immersion ritual was the more common option in the West.
Balsamon himself is on the record as recommending a simple statement of
faith in the reception of (at least most) Latins. Fourth, several of the
works (and a majority of the earlier ones) critical of Latin baptisms
never actually argue that they are invalid, but rather imply that the
form is dispreferred. There was a diversity of opinion about the
validity of Latin sacraments even among those who wrote against them.
Finally, and most importantly, our knowledge of the matter is far from
complete. A treatise by the Byzantine Patriarch Germanus II (r.
1223–1240) on Latin baptisms, for instance, seems never to have been
printed in modern times and may be extant only in manuscripts if it
survives at all. Other examples abound, and the lack of good scholarship
on the matter effectively prevents conclusive statements of any kind.
The reception of converts to Orthodoxy has been and remains a
complicated problem, and it can only be hoped that those who make
decisions concerning it will take the time to familiarize themselves
with the broader scope and history of the issue.
Nicolas Kamas is a doctoral candidate in the Medieval Institute
at the University of Notre Dame. His dissertation is a commentary and
edition of the works of Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida against the
Greeks.