Church, Nation and State at the Frontiers of Christianity: Polish and Russian
Institutional Experiences (II): The Chosen People and Their Mission
The evolution of the two institutions that ensured the indispensable
continuity for the succession of the classical world in relation to the
developments of modernity, the state and the church, evolves on specific
coordinates in Central and Eastern Europe, both in relation to the paradigms of
northwestern Christianity, accepted as such by medieval studies, as well as to
the political and spiritual universe under the nominal authority of the
Byzantine emperor and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Regarding the first one,
historians reconstructed the evolution towards the territorial state through
assuming responsibilities in relation to the interests and aspirations of the
inhabitants for the benefit of the territorial monarchy; regarding Byzantium,
political atomization, impact with the classical crusade and spiritual dilemmas
made its survival a priority for the Orthodox political and religious elite.
The collapse of state authority and the institutional crisis increased by the
Mongol invasion led to favorable circumstances for a moral regeneration that
rendered the church the sole depository of national identity, in the ethno-
confessional sense of the concept and bestowed it with the authority to
legitimize the political initiatives that led to the restoration of the Kingdom
of Poland by the coronation of a Piast sovereign and the unification of Russian
principalities under the authority of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. Some modern
historians state that in the West the state created the nation, but at the
opposite end of the continent the nation created the state under the guidance
of the word from the pulpit, and this avant la lettre civic commitment of the
clergy, assumed by virtue of its responsibilities to the existence of believers
can be documented both at the institutional level, in the sense of establishing
a functional alliance between the throne and the altar, and especially in terms
of subsuming the state agenda to the larger spiritual mission.
FLORIAN DUMITRU SOPORAN
|
|
