Fr. Alexander Schmemann, in his essay “A Meaningful Storm”, described the history of the Church as consisting of a series of layers. The earliest layer (and most fundamental, I would suggest) is that of the early church, a time of pagan persecution when the Church lived its life in the catacombs as a hounded and illegal sect. (Well, it lived in the catacombs metaphorically speaking—the Sunday service never was actually held in the catacombs, which were places of burial.) Then came the second layer, after the Peace of Constantine, when the first Christian Emperor called off the dogs of persecution and gave the Church a privileged place in the sun, beginning the long and glorious Byzantine experiment of Church-State symphonia. After about a ...
