This book focuses on the attempts of three ascetics--John Moschus, Sophronius of Jerusalem, and Maximus Confessor--to determine the Church's power and place during a period of profound crisis, as the eastern Roman empire suffered serious reversals in the face of Persian and then Islamic expansion. By asserting visions which reconciled long-standing intellectual tensions between asceticism and Church, these authors established the framework for their subsequent emergence as Constantinople's most vociferous religious critics, their alliance with the Roman popes, and their radical rejection of imperial interference in matters of the faith. Situated within the broader religious currents of the fourth to seventh centuries, this book throws new light on the nature not only of the holy man in late antiquity, but also of the Byzantine Orthodoxy that would emerge in the Middle Ages, and which is still central to the churches of Greece and Eastern Europe.

This book focuses on the attempts of three ascetics - John Moschus, Sophronius of Jerusalem, and Maximus Confessor - to determine the Church's power and place during a period of profound crisis, as the eastern Roman empire suffered serious reversals in the face of Persian and then Islamic expansion. By asserting visions which reconciled long-standing intellectual tensions between asceticism and Church, these authors established the framework for their subsequent emergence as Constantinople's most vociferous religious critics, their alliance with the Roman popes, and their radical rejection of imperial interference in matters of the faith. Situated within the broader religious currents of the fourth to seventh centuries, this book throws new light on the nature not only of the holy man in late antiquity, but also of the Byzantine Orthodoxy that would emerge in the Middle Ages, and which is still central to the churches of Greece and Eastern Europe.

The Lateran Synod of 649 was a major event in the 'monothelete' controversy of the seventh century over 'wills' and 'operations' in Christ. It represented a determined attempt by the papacy to frustrate and reverse the ecclesiastical policy of the emperor and patriarch at Constantinople. It represented the boldest challenge to imperial authority by churchmen that late antiquity had seen. The theology adopted by the synod and its expression in a series of speeches was the work of a team of Greek monks under the leadership of St Maximus the Confessor. This translation will add to the still limited body of material available in English for the study of a writer who is widely held to have been the greatest of all Byzantine theologians. The Acts of the synod have been a major puzzle ever since their editor, Rudolf Riedinger, demonstrated that the Greek version, not the Latin, is the original, even though the council must have conducted its business in Latin. This edition offers a new explanation of this anomaly, which restores authenticity to the synodal sessions, without denying that the Acts, as published, were not a straight factual record but propaganda intended to convince the Roman world of the orthodoxy and authority of the papacy.

The Lateran Synod of 649 was a major event in the 'monothelete' controversy of the seventh century over 'wills' and 'operations' in Christ. It represented a determined attempt by the papacy to frustrate and reverse the ecclesiastical policy of the emperor and patriarch at Constantinople. It represented the boldest challenge to imperial authority by churchmen that late antiquity had seen. The theology adopted by the synod and its expression in a series of speeches was the work of a team of Greek monks under the leadership of St Maximus the Confessor. This translation will add to the still limited body of material available in English for the study of a writer who is widely held to have been the greatest of all Byzantine theologians. The Acts of the synod have been a major puzzle ever since their editor, Rudolf Riedinger, demonstrated that the Greek version, not the Latin, is the original, even though the council must have conducted its business in Latin. This edition offers a new explanation of this anomaly, which restores authenticity to the synodal sessions, without denying that the Acts, as published, were not a straight factual record but propaganda intended to convince the Roman world of the orthodoxy and authority of the papacy.