1 00:00:06,300 --> 00:00:13,100 Here in the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople, on 16 July 1054, 2 00:00:13,100 --> 00:00:16,820 a disaster unfolded for Christianity. 3 00:00:20,700 --> 00:00:27,740 It was actually during a service that a papal delegation swept up to the altar and placed on it 4 00:00:27,740 --> 00:00:32,740 a document excommunicating the leader of the Church in Constantinople, the Patriarch. 5 00:00:34,700 --> 00:00:38,900 The Patriarch excommunicated the Pope in return. 6 00:00:41,380 --> 00:00:45,420 The moment has come to be remembered as the Great Schism, a split between 7 00:00:45,420 --> 00:00:49,700 Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Western Catholic Christianity. 8 00:00:49,700 --> 00:00:54,020 At the time, it seemed like one petty incident in a whole series of disagreements. 9 00:00:54,020 --> 00:01:01,340 But the fact remains that a thousand years later that split between East and West is still there. 10 00:01:09,420 --> 00:01:13,980 Today, Eastern Orthodox Christianity flourishes in the Balkans and Russia. 11 00:01:13,980 --> 00:01:20,380 And it has over 150 million worshippers worldwide. 12 00:01:20,380 --> 00:01:25,020 But much of my third programme charts its fight for survival. 13 00:01:28,100 --> 00:01:35,180 After its glory days in the Eastern Roman Empire, it stood right in the path of Muslim expansion, 14 00:01:35,180 --> 00:01:40,180 suffered betrayal by crusading Catholics, 15 00:01:40,180 --> 00:01:44,780 was seized by the Russian Tsars to ally with tyranny 16 00:01:44,780 --> 00:01:49,460 and faced near-extinction under Soviet Communism. 17 00:01:51,420 --> 00:01:53,460 So what is Orthodoxy? 18 00:01:53,460 --> 00:01:57,300 And what is the secret of its endurance? 19 00:02:22,940 --> 00:02:27,380 I'm the guest here of the congregation of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in London. 20 00:02:32,860 --> 00:02:34,900 CHORAL SINGING 21 00:02:36,300 --> 00:02:41,380 What you get in any Orthodox act of worship is a fragment of a vast 22 00:02:41,380 --> 00:02:46,540 annual ballet of worship, carefully choreographed 23 00:02:46,540 --> 00:02:50,420 and woven into a texture of ancient music 24 00:02:50,420 --> 00:02:54,980 to reflect the timelessness of God's imperial court in Heaven. 25 00:03:06,820 --> 00:03:11,220 On that spoon, bread and wine mingle to symbolise 26 00:03:11,220 --> 00:03:16,340 the indivisible nature of Christ who is both human and divine. 27 00:03:16,340 --> 00:03:18,340 HE SPEAKS BYZANTINE GREEK 28 00:03:28,820 --> 00:03:32,780 All around us are the symbols of 1500 years of Orthodox tradition. 29 00:03:35,220 --> 00:03:37,900 The deeply venerated icons. 30 00:03:40,740 --> 00:03:44,700 And this fierce-looking bird, the double-headed eagle. 31 00:03:49,060 --> 00:03:54,860 What story is this ancient, passionate drama trying to tell us? 32 00:03:59,180 --> 00:04:05,060 It pulls us back to one of the great crises of Mediterranean civilisation. 33 00:04:08,300 --> 00:04:13,420 The greatest empire which the West had ever known seemed to be tottering into ruin. 34 00:04:20,260 --> 00:04:25,660 From the beginning of the 4th century, the Roman Empire was Christian. 35 00:04:25,660 --> 00:04:29,940 But then the Christian God seemed to give up on it. 36 00:04:31,700 --> 00:04:35,020 In the West, barbarians overran it. 37 00:04:35,020 --> 00:04:40,340 In 410, they seized Rome itself. 38 00:04:41,940 --> 00:04:48,300 Yet still, in the Eastern half of the Empire, there was another capital beyond the invaders' reach. 39 00:04:48,300 --> 00:04:55,780 Today we call it Istanbul, but that's just a version of its original name, Constantinople, 40 00:04:55,780 --> 00:05:00,300 given it by its founder, Constantine the Great. 41 00:05:12,140 --> 00:05:19,540 Constantine had founded his city on the site of an old Greek fishing port called Byzantion. 42 00:05:20,580 --> 00:05:24,940 His dream was for Constantinople to become the perfect Christian capital. 43 00:05:24,940 --> 00:05:28,740 Indeed, he thought of it as the new Rome. 44 00:05:30,420 --> 00:05:34,620 Two centuries later, the dream lived on for a husband and wife 45 00:05:34,620 --> 00:05:39,500 who took power in the Eastern Empire in 518. 46 00:05:39,500 --> 00:05:44,940 Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora. 47 00:05:44,940 --> 00:05:47,700 They were one of the most unlikely couples 48 00:05:47,700 --> 00:05:49,820 ever to rule in Constantinople. 49 00:05:49,820 --> 00:05:51,620 He was a peasant from the Balkans. 50 00:05:51,620 --> 00:05:57,020 She was a former circus artist of allegedly daunting sexual prowess. 51 00:05:58,020 --> 00:06:03,540 Together, they set out to regain the lost territories of the Christian Roman Empire. 52 00:06:03,540 --> 00:06:06,700 Instead, they created something new, 53 00:06:06,700 --> 00:06:09,900 the Byzantine Empire. 54 00:06:13,140 --> 00:06:19,980 Justinian moulded his new Christian Byzantine Empire round one church. 55 00:06:19,980 --> 00:06:24,580 Put up in just under six years, it was far and away the largest 56 00:06:24,580 --> 00:06:27,780 religious building in the Christian world. 57 00:06:27,780 --> 00:06:32,020 The Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia. 58 00:06:37,860 --> 00:06:43,100 When Justinian entered the building for the first time he was heard to murmur, 59 00:06:45,380 --> 00:06:49,060 "Solomon, I have surpassed thee." 60 00:07:02,620 --> 00:07:05,860 That's the sort of ambition we're seeing here. 61 00:07:05,860 --> 00:07:11,100 An emperor who can outdo the Bible's most glorious king of Israel. 62 00:07:12,740 --> 00:07:20,580 For nearly 1000 years, this was the scene of a constant round of sacred imperial ceremony. 63 00:07:20,580 --> 00:07:25,500 The Emperor and Patriarch were the leading actors in the drama, 64 00:07:25,500 --> 00:07:28,580 a union of church and throne. 65 00:07:33,340 --> 00:07:37,460 Today, Hagia Sophia is clogged with scaffolding. 66 00:07:39,940 --> 00:07:42,780 And frankly, there's a sadness about the place. 67 00:07:47,940 --> 00:07:55,740 It takes you a while to get over that and see one of the most sumptuous spaces ever created by human beings. 68 00:07:59,340 --> 00:08:02,420 The dome covers a vast congregational space, 69 00:08:02,420 --> 00:08:05,300 trying to bring Heaven into daily worship. 70 00:08:07,700 --> 00:08:15,620 Because the dome IS Heaven, the sky above turned into human architecture. 71 00:08:15,620 --> 00:08:21,420 And that's the key difference between Eastern Christianity and the Christianity of the Latin West. 72 00:08:23,060 --> 00:08:28,140 The Western Church has insisted that original sin 73 00:08:28,140 --> 00:08:32,820 opened a great gulf between God and humanity. 74 00:08:32,820 --> 00:08:37,700 But Eastern Christianity tells its followers 75 00:08:37,700 --> 00:08:42,540 that God and human beings can meet, even unite. 76 00:08:42,540 --> 00:08:47,700 It's a risky, exhilarating thought. 77 00:08:47,700 --> 00:08:55,740 And nothing expresses that mystical urge to make the invisible visible more than Byzantine Art. 78 00:08:55,740 --> 00:09:00,060 Even though it's an art which is the result of a theological compromise. 79 00:09:00,060 --> 00:09:05,140 The solution to a big headache which all Christians face - 80 00:09:05,140 --> 00:09:08,540 how to make a picture out of the divine. 81 00:09:26,940 --> 00:09:33,660 The archaeological museum in Istanbul is full of sculpture from the Greek world before Christ. 82 00:09:35,260 --> 00:09:42,500 Greeks took it for granted that you represent gods and goddesses with as much beauty as you can. 83 00:09:42,500 --> 00:09:46,620 Christianity took shape in this Greek world. 84 00:09:46,620 --> 00:09:52,660 But Christians also believe that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. 85 00:09:52,660 --> 00:09:57,300 That points to a great fault line running through all Christianity. 86 00:09:59,820 --> 00:10:06,660 Greeks thought it natural to portray the divine as human but Jews came to find it profoundly shocking. 87 00:10:06,660 --> 00:10:08,740 Jews stuck to their second commandment - 88 00:10:08,740 --> 00:10:13,180 "You shall make no graven image for yourself, you shall not bow down to them or serve them." 89 00:10:13,180 --> 00:10:17,180 Who were Christians to follow, Jews or Greeks? 90 00:10:21,500 --> 00:10:25,540 The Western church tied itself in knots on this question. 91 00:10:27,180 --> 00:10:31,260 But Eastern Christians did something rather ingenious. 92 00:10:31,260 --> 00:10:35,700 They simply created art that was not graven. 93 00:10:35,700 --> 00:10:40,340 In other words, nothing sculpted, just flat surfaces. 94 00:10:40,340 --> 00:10:46,660 The busy jewelled walls of mosaics, or paintings on wood. 95 00:10:46,660 --> 00:10:54,660 And those wooden painted tablets became the defining feature of the Orthodox Church, the icon. 96 00:10:54,660 --> 00:10:58,180 This is not just art, 97 00:10:58,180 --> 00:11:04,340 it's a three-way meeting, between artist, worshipper and God. 98 00:11:08,460 --> 00:11:11,740 Very few of the first icons survive. 99 00:11:11,740 --> 00:11:16,300 To see them, I've had to travel to the fringes of the old Byzantine Empire. 100 00:11:16,300 --> 00:11:20,060 The Sinai Peninsula, in modern Egypt. 101 00:11:33,020 --> 00:11:35,020 Here at the foot of Mount Sinai 102 00:11:35,020 --> 00:11:39,260 is one of the most ancient Christian monasteries in the world. 103 00:11:43,180 --> 00:11:49,020 Back in the 6th century, it was a frontier-post for the Byzantine Empire 104 00:11:49,020 --> 00:11:54,420 and another proof of the Emperor Justinian's enthusiasm for Christian building. 105 00:11:58,140 --> 00:12:03,740 Within its great fortress walls is the world's oldest collection of icons. 106 00:12:07,900 --> 00:12:12,260 The word icon means just what it says. 107 00:12:12,260 --> 00:12:14,420 The Greek word for "image". 108 00:12:16,540 --> 00:12:18,740 A face, a person, a scene 109 00:12:18,740 --> 00:12:24,780 painted on a portable wooden panel in special, prescribed ways. 110 00:12:29,100 --> 00:12:33,940 God, Christ, the saints of the Church. 111 00:12:36,820 --> 00:12:44,260 Icons invite the worshipper to stand not before a painting, but a real person. 112 00:12:44,260 --> 00:12:48,940 Each of them is an invitation to climb a ladder to Heaven. 113 00:12:51,580 --> 00:12:53,580 CHANTING 114 00:13:02,580 --> 00:13:07,020 Icons are focal points in every Orthodox church. 115 00:13:07,020 --> 00:13:11,500 They cover a screen in front of the altar called the iconostasis. 116 00:13:15,860 --> 00:13:22,380 Today, you couldn't imagine Orthodox tradition, so mystical, so ancient, without icons. 117 00:13:25,500 --> 00:13:27,700 But it wasn't always so. 118 00:13:32,700 --> 00:13:38,380 From the 7th century a series of emperors did their best to wipe out icons from Byzantine religion. 119 00:13:38,380 --> 00:13:44,540 And strange though it may sound, it was because they'd begun to doubt that God was on their side. 120 00:13:54,180 --> 00:13:57,180 There was a good reason to worry, a sudden and unexpected 121 00:13:57,180 --> 00:14:02,820 challenge to the Byzantine Empire from a new religious force, Islam. 122 00:14:06,660 --> 00:14:12,980 By the middle of the 7th century, Muslim armies had snatched two thirds of Byzantian territory, 123 00:14:12,980 --> 00:14:17,900 including the great holy cities of Damascus, Antioch and Jerusalem. 124 00:14:26,660 --> 00:14:30,980 Twice, Islamic armies reached the outer walls of Constantinople. 125 00:14:34,820 --> 00:14:42,500 And as the Byzantines brooded on why God might have switched sides, they made a connection. 126 00:14:42,500 --> 00:14:46,740 A big difference between Islam and Orthodoxy. 127 00:14:46,740 --> 00:14:49,540 Muslims never make a picture of the divine. 128 00:14:52,540 --> 00:14:57,020 The holy book of the Qur'an forbids Muslims to make images of the sacred. 129 00:14:57,020 --> 00:14:59,580 The divine cannot be represented. 130 00:14:59,580 --> 00:15:02,620 And Muslims were winning campaigns against the Byzantines. 131 00:15:02,620 --> 00:15:08,660 Put two and two together, Christians, like Muslims, must destroy their images to win back God's favour. 132 00:15:12,300 --> 00:15:17,660 And so, with the survival of his empire at stake, the Emperor Leo III 133 00:15:17,660 --> 00:15:22,020 ordered the wholesale removal of icons from all Byzantine churches. 134 00:15:28,420 --> 00:15:32,660 At the present day of course, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople 135 00:15:32,660 --> 00:15:37,540 presides over a church rich in icons. 136 00:15:37,540 --> 00:15:41,380 His own Church of St George is full of them. 137 00:15:41,380 --> 00:15:44,820 So what brought icons back? 138 00:15:44,820 --> 00:15:49,940 It was clear that, in destroying them, Leo was asking for trouble. 139 00:15:49,940 --> 00:15:51,900 Riots broke out across the Empire. 140 00:15:51,900 --> 00:15:55,260 It was a full-scale backlash. 141 00:16:01,860 --> 00:16:06,980 Amid argument and violence, iconoclasm was born. 142 00:16:06,980 --> 00:16:09,300 The word means "smashing images". 143 00:16:09,300 --> 00:16:12,620 It was one of the great traumas of Christian history, 144 00:16:12,620 --> 00:16:16,660 and it soaked up energy in Byzantium for more than a century. 145 00:16:19,180 --> 00:16:25,220 Painting or venerating icons led to torture, sometimes death. 146 00:16:28,820 --> 00:16:35,620 And many were prepared to die rather than see their churches stripped of this divine gateway to God. 147 00:16:42,980 --> 00:16:49,980 It was an Empress, Theodora, who at last stopped iconoclasm in the year 843. 148 00:16:49,980 --> 00:16:54,580 She commissioned a new liturgy, The Triumph Of Orthodoxy. 149 00:17:01,900 --> 00:17:08,420 It acclaims those who defended icons and it gleefully names their enemies. 150 00:17:08,420 --> 00:17:13,980 So the very worship of the Church enshrines the memory of that traumatic century. 151 00:17:18,620 --> 00:17:25,980 The violent reaction to Iconoclasm demonstrated that Orthodoxy was not just a religion of the powerful. 152 00:17:25,980 --> 00:17:29,540 It was the possession of ordinary people too. 153 00:17:29,540 --> 00:17:33,900 Future rulers would forget that at their peril. 154 00:17:39,260 --> 00:17:46,220 Right at the heart of Istanbul is a last word from the defeated iconoclasts. 155 00:17:46,220 --> 00:17:54,060 The 8th-century Church of Holy Peace, Hagia Irene, built by an iconoclast Emperor. 156 00:17:56,340 --> 00:18:02,620 Now it's a concert hall, stripped of nearly everything from its Christian past. 157 00:18:02,620 --> 00:18:09,580 Except for a heart-stopping remnant from the fleeting era of iconoclast Orthodoxy. 158 00:18:11,620 --> 00:18:18,980 Up in the apse, at the far end, over the altar, a simple black cross in mosaic against a gold background. 159 00:18:18,980 --> 00:18:22,620 And that is iconoclastic art. 160 00:18:22,620 --> 00:18:26,860 That is what the iconoclasts put in their churches. 161 00:18:35,060 --> 00:18:36,820 You don't see this very often. 162 00:18:48,260 --> 00:18:50,900 800 years after the death of Jesus, 163 00:18:50,900 --> 00:18:56,340 Christianity was still expanding across the known world and beyond. 164 00:18:56,340 --> 00:18:59,780 The Church of the East was established in the Middle East, 165 00:18:59,780 --> 00:19:04,460 spreading its message from Baghdad to the far ends of Asia. 166 00:19:04,460 --> 00:19:08,980 The Western wing of the Church, the Latin Church based in Rome, 167 00:19:08,980 --> 00:19:13,700 was reviving and sending missions south, west and north. 168 00:19:13,700 --> 00:19:19,340 And sandwiched between them was the Orthodoxy of the Byzantine Empire. 169 00:19:24,340 --> 00:19:27,380 The Byzantine Empire might be battered and bruised, 170 00:19:27,380 --> 00:19:30,500 but it was still the world's largest Christian power. 171 00:19:30,500 --> 00:19:34,620 It had survived both Islam and iconoclasm. 172 00:19:34,620 --> 00:19:37,660 The Church of the West and the East were still united 173 00:19:37,660 --> 00:19:40,540 and the West had welcomed the defeat of iconoclasm, 174 00:19:40,540 --> 00:19:42,820 which had always horrified the papacy. 175 00:19:42,820 --> 00:19:47,980 But in practice, the gulf between Rome and Constantinople was deepening. 176 00:19:52,660 --> 00:19:58,020 Whilst the Orthodox had been arguing about iconoclasm, an ambitious ruler had united 177 00:19:58,020 --> 00:20:04,220 most of what are now France, Germany and Italy into a new Latin Empire. 178 00:20:04,220 --> 00:20:09,780 Western Christians celebrate him as Charlemagne, Charles the Great. 179 00:20:09,780 --> 00:20:12,100 Not the Orthodox. 180 00:20:12,100 --> 00:20:15,820 Charlemagne sent Catholic missionaries to convert non-Christian 181 00:20:15,820 --> 00:20:21,660 Slavs in the no-man's land between his Empire and the Byzantine Empire. 182 00:20:28,420 --> 00:20:30,300 What was worse for the Byzantines? 183 00:20:30,300 --> 00:20:33,820 Central Europe full of unconverted souls ripe for hell, 184 00:20:33,820 --> 00:20:37,820 or central Europe full of devout little Catholic Christian Slavs 185 00:20:37,820 --> 00:20:41,180 all grateful to Charlemagne? Something must be done. 186 00:20:41,180 --> 00:20:45,060 The race was on to see who could get the Slavs to Heaven the quickest. 187 00:20:45,060 --> 00:20:46,700 East or West? 188 00:20:52,540 --> 00:20:56,060 Today Velehrad is in Roman Catholic territory, 189 00:20:56,060 --> 00:21:02,100 and this is an overwhelmingly Catholic celebration of Slavic Christian heritage. 190 00:21:02,100 --> 00:21:05,500 But it wasn't always so. 191 00:21:05,500 --> 00:21:10,740 The men embroidered on those stoles are heroes of Orthodoxy. 192 00:21:10,740 --> 00:21:12,700 Cyril & Methodius. 193 00:21:12,700 --> 00:21:18,780 And they stole a march on Charlemagne's missionaries in what was then Great Moravia. 194 00:21:21,940 --> 00:21:27,460 Because the crucial question arose of which language the Slavs should worship God in, Greek or Latin? 195 00:21:27,460 --> 00:21:31,020 And Cyril and Methodius brilliantly outflanked the Latins 196 00:21:31,020 --> 00:21:33,660 by answering the question with "Neither!" 197 00:21:33,660 --> 00:21:36,980 The Slavs could worship God in their own language. 198 00:21:36,980 --> 00:21:38,620 But now another problem. 199 00:21:38,620 --> 00:21:41,420 Slavonic languages had never been written down. 200 00:21:41,420 --> 00:21:44,220 Cyril and Methodius had an answer to that too. 201 00:21:58,180 --> 00:22:02,540 This is the answer to the problem - an entirely new alphabet with symbols 202 00:22:02,540 --> 00:22:08,380 completely unlike Greek or Latin because they're meant to represent the sounds of Slavonic. 203 00:22:08,380 --> 00:22:11,460 But actually it was extremely difficult to use, 204 00:22:11,460 --> 00:22:15,860 so someone decided to start again with characters much more like Greek. 205 00:22:15,860 --> 00:22:22,580 But with exquisite tact, whoever it was, named their alphabet after Cyril - Cyrillic. 206 00:22:22,580 --> 00:22:27,460 And it's the alphabet still used by the Russians, the Bulgarians and the Serbs. 207 00:22:29,700 --> 00:22:35,460 Cyril and Methodius were getting the Slavs to worship in the language which they used in the marketplace. 208 00:22:35,460 --> 00:22:37,420 That's what I find most astonishing. 209 00:22:37,420 --> 00:22:40,540 The cliche about Orthodoxy is that it's timeless, 210 00:22:40,540 --> 00:22:45,940 ultra-conservative, unchanging but this was innovative, creative. 211 00:22:48,820 --> 00:22:52,460 The great contribution which Cyril and Methodius made to Orthodoxy 212 00:22:52,460 --> 00:22:57,260 was to equip it to stay Orthodox in a rich variety of cultures. 213 00:22:58,980 --> 00:23:04,140 Eventually even some which were not Slav at all, like the Romanians. 214 00:23:05,860 --> 00:23:11,540 This would prove absolutely vital for Orthodoxy's long-term survival. 215 00:23:11,540 --> 00:23:15,700 But the immediate result was bitterness. 216 00:23:15,700 --> 00:23:18,420 Competition between Latin and Orthodox missionaries 217 00:23:18,420 --> 00:23:25,900 in central Europe underlined the growing distance between the two wings of the old Imperial Church. 218 00:23:36,700 --> 00:23:39,460 For the first thousand years of its existence, 219 00:23:39,460 --> 00:23:45,260 the Church in the former Roman Empire had managed more or less to keep the appearance of one Church. 220 00:23:47,420 --> 00:23:52,780 The Orthodox emblem on the headquarters of the Patriarch in Istanbul is the double-headed eagle. 221 00:23:52,780 --> 00:23:55,820 One head for East, one for West. 222 00:23:59,100 --> 00:24:06,540 I don't think that it's coincidence that Byzantine Emperors started using this symbol around 1000 AD, 223 00:24:06,540 --> 00:24:12,060 just when unity between the Eastern and Western Churches was draining away. 224 00:24:15,940 --> 00:24:22,180 Separated by geography, language and culture, East and West had been drifting apart. 225 00:24:29,180 --> 00:24:33,980 There was in particular a little matter of words, 226 00:24:33,980 --> 00:24:38,180 in fact one little Latin word - "Filioque". 227 00:24:38,180 --> 00:24:42,340 It means "and the Son". 228 00:24:42,340 --> 00:24:45,380 The Filioque was a tiny, Western addition to the Nicene Creed 229 00:24:45,380 --> 00:24:49,220 which is a creed held in common between the Western and the Eastern Churches. 230 00:24:49,220 --> 00:24:51,740 It says the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, 231 00:24:51,740 --> 00:24:55,100 but the Court of Charlemagne in the 9th century added "and the Son". 232 00:24:55,100 --> 00:24:57,580 The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. 233 00:24:57,580 --> 00:25:01,580 This was the source of both tension and then crisis for centuries. 234 00:25:04,620 --> 00:25:09,220 That one word, "Filioque", escalated East-West tensions. 235 00:25:10,780 --> 00:25:16,620 The Byzantine Church felt ANY change to the Creed was blasphemy. 236 00:25:16,620 --> 00:25:20,300 This was not going to end well. 237 00:25:23,460 --> 00:25:26,380 The crisis point came in 1054. 238 00:25:29,660 --> 00:25:33,980 Envoys from the Bishop of Rome arrived in Constantinople to deal with the growing rift. 239 00:25:38,540 --> 00:25:40,500 They were spoiling for a fight. 240 00:25:50,380 --> 00:25:54,380 Matters came to a head in the middle of the liturgy in Hagia Sophia. 241 00:25:57,900 --> 00:26:01,540 The Cardinal from Rome lost his temper 242 00:26:01,540 --> 00:26:06,180 and took it upon himself to excommunicate the Patriarch of Constantinople. 243 00:26:08,220 --> 00:26:10,900 The Patriarch reciprocated. 244 00:26:16,260 --> 00:26:23,660 At the time, this melodrama in Hagia Sophia seemed just a passing diplomatic spat. 245 00:26:26,820 --> 00:26:34,420 But nearly 1000 years later, the schism between the Latin West and the Greek East has never been healed. 246 00:26:38,100 --> 00:26:41,300 And within 200 years any chance of reconciliation 247 00:26:41,300 --> 00:26:48,260 was given a final, fatal blow in one of the most shameful episodes in Christian history. 248 00:26:52,300 --> 00:26:54,340 HE SPEAKS IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE 249 00:27:00,180 --> 00:27:06,140 In the decades following the Great Schism the Byzantine Empire was once more at the mercy of Muslim armies. 250 00:27:07,740 --> 00:27:14,140 The Byzantines swallowed their pride and appealed to Western Catholic leaders for help. 251 00:27:16,900 --> 00:27:23,820 And so in 1095 Pope Urban II launched the first of many Crusades. 252 00:27:27,420 --> 00:27:33,820 The Latin Christian soldiers of the Fourth Crusade turned out to be less interested in defending the Holy Land 253 00:27:33,820 --> 00:27:38,420 than in their own wealth, power and glory. 254 00:27:38,420 --> 00:27:45,620 In an astonishing act of betrayal, they attacked the very people they were supposed to protect - 255 00:27:45,620 --> 00:27:48,180 Christian Constantinople. 256 00:27:54,900 --> 00:27:58,260 The Crusaders broke through the walls in spring 1204. 257 00:27:58,260 --> 00:28:01,020 Thousands in the city died before it fell. 258 00:28:01,020 --> 00:28:06,140 The known world's wealthiest and most cultured city was comprehensively trashed. 259 00:28:10,860 --> 00:28:16,020 And the rape of Constantinople was carried out not by Muslims as the Byzantines had always feared... 260 00:28:17,180 --> 00:28:18,820 ..but by Catholic Christians. 261 00:28:25,820 --> 00:28:29,660 If 1054 had marked the formal separation between East and West, 262 00:28:29,660 --> 00:28:34,700 then 1204 was the gut-wrenching emotional point of no return. 263 00:28:39,740 --> 00:28:45,700 Constantinople was occupied by Western Catholic carpet-baggers for 57 years. 264 00:28:48,740 --> 00:28:54,780 But even though Orthodoxy snatched back its city, the empire never recovered. 265 00:28:57,620 --> 00:29:01,900 For the first time, the Orthodox Church stood alone. 266 00:29:03,540 --> 00:29:07,340 Western Christianity had broken Byzantium's spirit 267 00:29:07,340 --> 00:29:12,540 and now another great power would finish the job. 268 00:29:18,940 --> 00:29:26,020 During the 15th century, the Ottoman Turks ruthlessly gobbled up the Byzantine lands. 269 00:29:26,020 --> 00:29:31,460 Soon all that was left was the once great city of Constantinople, 270 00:29:31,460 --> 00:29:34,820 now a collection of shrunken villages, 271 00:29:34,820 --> 00:29:38,060 with Hagia Sophia still looming over them all. 272 00:29:38,060 --> 00:29:43,220 Ottoman besiegers snatched their chance. 273 00:29:43,220 --> 00:29:49,740 On 29 May 1453, the Ottomans poured into the city. 274 00:29:49,740 --> 00:29:53,140 In Hagia Sophia morning service bravely carried on 275 00:29:53,140 --> 00:29:58,220 while the Turks battered down the great door reserved for imperial processions. 276 00:30:01,420 --> 00:30:07,380 The Sultan gave orders that Muslim prayers be chanted out from the grand pulpit. 277 00:30:10,540 --> 00:30:13,980 Hagia Sophia had become a mosque! 278 00:30:28,020 --> 00:30:32,860 It was a savage end to the long Christian history of the Byzantine Empire. 279 00:30:35,260 --> 00:30:40,100 Now all the strongholds of Byzantine Orthodoxy were under Muslim control, 280 00:30:40,100 --> 00:30:43,660 including four of the five ancient Patriarchates. 281 00:30:43,660 --> 00:30:49,780 Only Rome was free and Rome was not Orthodox. 282 00:30:49,780 --> 00:30:51,980 For the next four centuries and more, 283 00:30:51,980 --> 00:30:54,940 Orthodox Christians were second-class citizens 284 00:30:54,940 --> 00:30:57,660 in the lands that their Emperor had once ruled. 285 00:31:00,260 --> 00:31:06,100 In the mid-15th century, Orthodoxy might seem to be fated to be pushed into ever-narrower confines, 286 00:31:06,100 --> 00:31:10,140 like the Church of the East or the ancient Churches of North Africa. 287 00:31:10,140 --> 00:31:14,980 But remember that mission of Cyril and Methodius back in the 9th century? 288 00:31:14,980 --> 00:31:18,940 Now that came to the rescue of the Orthodox future. 289 00:31:23,060 --> 00:31:28,140 Cyril and Methodius had established a lifeline for Orthodoxy in Moravia. 290 00:31:28,140 --> 00:31:35,500 Over the next 500 years, its spread north was to prove vital in this new crisis. 291 00:31:35,500 --> 00:31:41,780 Orthodoxy's future now lay far from its origins in lands of an entirely different character. 292 00:31:47,500 --> 00:31:54,380 Its people lived in the darkness of harsh winters, in communities often tiny, and widely separated. 293 00:31:58,740 --> 00:32:02,540 Orthodoxy didn't just survive, it flourished, 294 00:32:02,540 --> 00:32:07,140 moving out of the work of Cyril and Methodius east to Kiev, 295 00:32:07,140 --> 00:32:13,620 encompassing everything we now think of as Russia to the frozen wastes of the Arctic in the far north. 296 00:32:15,700 --> 00:32:19,020 Ordinary people took to Orthodox Christianity 297 00:32:19,020 --> 00:32:25,100 with a fierce commitment that shaped and even defined a Russian identity. 298 00:32:25,100 --> 00:32:29,300 Their faith was brought to them by lone individuals, wandering hermits 299 00:32:29,300 --> 00:32:34,660 and holy men who sometimes settled in small communities. 300 00:32:34,660 --> 00:32:39,660 And gradually over two centuries you had a great scatter of monasteries, 301 00:32:39,660 --> 00:32:43,580 perhaps 100 or more, all over what is now northern Russia. 302 00:32:43,580 --> 00:32:48,260 But still there would be holy men wandering beyond those communities 303 00:32:48,260 --> 00:32:51,900 and that really is what rooted Orthodoxy in the people. 304 00:32:51,900 --> 00:32:59,180 These ordinary men getting close to those scattered, lonely people over that vast territory 305 00:32:59,180 --> 00:33:01,980 made Orthodoxy people's religion. 306 00:33:07,460 --> 00:33:14,700 But this people's religion was also inextricably linked with the rise of what became the Russian Empire. 307 00:33:14,700 --> 00:33:20,500 Its rulers learned to use the Church to expand and control the Empire 308 00:33:20,500 --> 00:33:22,860 and make their rule sacred. 309 00:33:24,780 --> 00:33:31,660 The Orthodox Church came to be at the centre of a three-way tug of war between the ambitions of the Tsars, 310 00:33:31,660 --> 00:33:37,580 the clergy and the devout faith of the Russian people. 311 00:33:37,580 --> 00:33:43,540 During the 14th century, as holy men and women spread Christianity amongst the people, 312 00:33:43,540 --> 00:33:46,820 the rulers of a modest settlement with big ideas 313 00:33:46,820 --> 00:33:51,380 were quietly turning themselves into a power you couldn't ignore. 314 00:33:54,820 --> 00:33:57,460 The settlement was Moscow. 315 00:33:59,420 --> 00:34:04,140 And the ruling dynasty fashioned itself as heir of the Byzantine Empire. 316 00:34:11,860 --> 00:34:15,340 Just to make sure of its claim, in 1472 the Grand Prince of Muscovy, 317 00:34:15,340 --> 00:34:19,260 Ivan III, married the niece of the last Byzantine emperor and he adopted 318 00:34:19,260 --> 00:34:25,180 the double headed Byzantine eagle as his symbol and just occasionally he used the title "Tsar" 319 00:34:25,180 --> 00:34:29,860 which is simply the Roman imperial Kaiser, Caesar. 320 00:34:29,860 --> 00:34:37,340 The first Rome had fallen to barbarians and sunk into Roman Catholic heresy. 321 00:34:37,340 --> 00:34:42,860 The second Rome, Constantinople, was now in the hands of Islam. 322 00:34:42,860 --> 00:34:49,340 The Orthodox Church of Russia now seized the title "the third Rome". 323 00:34:49,340 --> 00:34:53,300 Eventually it even gained its own Patriarch in Moscow. 324 00:34:54,540 --> 00:34:59,860 But though Russian Orthodoxy's origins were in Byzantium, the rule of the Tsars 325 00:34:59,860 --> 00:35:07,100 and the intense religion of its people created a Church which was distinctively Russian in character. 326 00:35:07,100 --> 00:35:11,380 You can see that straightaway from a short walk through Moscow. 327 00:35:15,180 --> 00:35:20,620 Russia's church domes took on the shape of an onion. 328 00:35:20,620 --> 00:35:26,820 Some think the design was inspired by manuscript pictures of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. 329 00:35:26,820 --> 00:35:28,500 Others see it as just practical. 330 00:35:28,500 --> 00:35:31,500 A way of stopping the build-up of snow. 331 00:35:31,500 --> 00:35:36,940 Either way, the design redrew the Russian landscape. 332 00:35:45,820 --> 00:35:50,260 The most famous of these churches was built in the 16th century... 333 00:35:53,060 --> 00:35:56,700 ..St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow's Red Square. 334 00:35:59,020 --> 00:36:02,700 Its exterior is startlingly original. 335 00:36:03,820 --> 00:36:10,740 An eight-sided central church rising into a spire, hemmed in by eight smaller churches. 336 00:36:12,380 --> 00:36:17,340 Do you remember how Byzantine Orthodoxy looked to one great church in Constantinople? 337 00:36:17,340 --> 00:36:22,180 The Holy Wisdom had been built by a great Emperor and military commander, Justinian. 338 00:36:22,180 --> 00:36:27,820 Well, you could say that this church was intended to do the same thing for Russian Orthodoxy. 339 00:36:27,820 --> 00:36:34,260 The only problem was that it was built by the maddest, cruellest emperor in world history. 340 00:36:34,260 --> 00:36:40,140 Ivan the Terrible placed St Basil's in the centre of Moscow in 1552. 341 00:36:42,260 --> 00:36:45,260 And like Justinian 1,000 years before, 342 00:36:45,260 --> 00:36:49,500 he made his church the centrepiece of his Russian Orthodox Empire. 343 00:36:51,060 --> 00:36:58,060 Of course, Ivan is better remembered for persecuting and butchering millions of his subjects. 344 00:36:58,060 --> 00:37:01,780 And inside St Basil's you get an idea of his mindset. 345 00:37:03,180 --> 00:37:06,180 If you look at it on a plan it looks perfectly rational 346 00:37:06,180 --> 00:37:11,500 and symmetrical but no-one ever did see it in plan apart from the architect and the patron. 347 00:37:11,500 --> 00:37:17,300 Your actual experience of it, once you're inside, is a combination of vertigo and claustrophobia. 348 00:37:22,420 --> 00:37:27,140 I don't think that it's too much to say it feels...deranged. 349 00:37:31,100 --> 00:37:33,780 In Russian, the word "terrible" 350 00:37:33,780 --> 00:37:36,100 is better understood as "awesome" 351 00:37:36,100 --> 00:37:41,940 but the English translation "terrible" gets Ivan just right. 352 00:37:41,940 --> 00:37:48,860 Born in 1530, he was crowned at the age of only 16, as the first Tsar of Russia. 353 00:37:48,860 --> 00:37:54,100 And this gave him ideas about the Orthodox Church. 354 00:37:54,100 --> 00:37:58,740 He became obsessed with making Russia holy Russia, 355 00:37:58,740 --> 00:38:02,700 with himself at the centre as God's representative on earth. 356 00:38:02,700 --> 00:38:06,740 Early in his reign he was full of energy, building churches, 357 00:38:06,740 --> 00:38:10,980 ordering exact rules for how icons should be painted. 358 00:38:14,580 --> 00:38:22,260 That concern for holiness was not necessarily a bad idea, but it was perverted into tyranny. 359 00:38:26,020 --> 00:38:28,420 During his 37-year reign, 360 00:38:28,420 --> 00:38:34,860 Ivan exercised absolute power through atrocities on an insane scale. 361 00:38:37,180 --> 00:38:42,100 And he clearly came to love terrifying and hurting people, just because he could. 362 00:38:42,100 --> 00:38:47,300 And yet the metropolitan bishop of Moscow who crowned him left him with a terrible sense of sin. 363 00:38:47,300 --> 00:38:52,140 Ivan once cried out in a letter, "I, a stinking hound, 364 00:38:52,140 --> 00:38:58,420 "whom can I teach, what can I preach, and how can I enlighten anybody?" 365 00:38:59,980 --> 00:39:05,060 Ivan's concern for the welfare of his soul was amply justified. 366 00:39:05,060 --> 00:39:10,820 His religious despotism reached deep into the lives of his subjects, 367 00:39:10,820 --> 00:39:16,980 as he dictated how Orthodoxy should be practised down to the minutest detail. 368 00:39:20,860 --> 00:39:25,820 Not even men's beards escaped his judgment. 369 00:39:25,820 --> 00:39:31,620 For Ivan, the beard was an ornament given by God to Jesus, 370 00:39:31,620 --> 00:39:35,460 so he forbade the shaving of beards. 371 00:39:35,460 --> 00:39:39,580 And heaven help anyone who went against him. 372 00:39:43,940 --> 00:39:48,980 Ivan was convinced that God had made him Emperor when the Metropolitan crowned him. 373 00:39:48,980 --> 00:39:54,740 So that anyone who opposed Ivan was a heretic and deserved the punishment of death, 374 00:39:54,740 --> 00:39:57,500 preferably in as nasty a way as possible. 375 00:40:04,740 --> 00:40:11,780 In the worst years of his reign, Ivan enforced his crazy tyranny across the Empire through the Oprichniki... 376 00:40:14,700 --> 00:40:18,100 ..a perverted version of a religious order, 377 00:40:18,100 --> 00:40:21,420 robed in black cloaks as they went about their inhuman business. 378 00:40:23,340 --> 00:40:27,180 Millions of Russians were killed in Ivan's purges. 379 00:40:29,780 --> 00:40:35,100 And yet one man dared to stand up to the tyrant. 380 00:40:35,100 --> 00:40:42,300 And St Basil's Cathedral is now named after this hero of humble Orthodox faith. 381 00:40:42,300 --> 00:40:48,540 St Basil was a very particular, peculiar sort of hermit - a Holy Fool. 382 00:40:48,540 --> 00:40:53,060 Holy Fools overturned all the rules of normal society. 383 00:40:53,060 --> 00:40:56,220 They behaved like madmen to show the power of God. 384 00:40:56,220 --> 00:41:00,900 And St Basil showed that very well because he was one of the very few people 385 00:41:00,900 --> 00:41:05,020 who could stand up to Ivan the Terrible and get away with it. 386 00:41:05,020 --> 00:41:11,740 In the middle of Lent, the saint once thrust some meat into the hands of the astonished Tsar, 387 00:41:11,740 --> 00:41:18,540 telling him that there was no point in him trying to fast since he had committed so many crimes. 388 00:41:18,540 --> 00:41:23,420 Ivan was humbled, St Basil unpunished. 389 00:41:25,380 --> 00:41:31,860 St Basil's story is the perfect reminder of a repeated keynote in Russian Orthodox history. 390 00:41:35,180 --> 00:41:42,020 The depth of faith among ordinary Russians was so profound that whatever the Tsars did to them, 391 00:41:42,020 --> 00:41:45,260 they obstinately continued to worship in their own way. 392 00:41:45,260 --> 00:41:49,620 Religion was woven inextricably into the fabric of ordinary life, 393 00:41:49,620 --> 00:41:54,820 often in alarmingly eccentric ways, as in the case of the sect known as the Skoptsy. 394 00:41:54,820 --> 00:41:58,500 Well, they were devoted to eliminating sexual lust from humankind 395 00:41:58,500 --> 00:42:00,300 by cutting off their genitals. 396 00:42:00,300 --> 00:42:03,780 Their founder had read his Russian bible but he'd misread it. 397 00:42:03,780 --> 00:42:07,580 He read the word for Jesus the Redeemer, "iskupitel" 398 00:42:07,580 --> 00:42:10,340 as "oskopitel" - castrator. 399 00:42:11,860 --> 00:42:18,140 A century after Ivan the Terrible, another Tsar came up against that strength of feeling 400 00:42:18,140 --> 00:42:20,420 with bloodstained results. 401 00:42:20,420 --> 00:42:24,900 Tsar Aleksei and his Patriarch both wanted to tidy up the Church, 402 00:42:24,900 --> 00:42:30,140 take it back to a pure Byzantine Orthodoxy. 403 00:42:30,140 --> 00:42:33,260 Take sacred blessings, for instance. 404 00:42:33,260 --> 00:42:36,900 In the Byzantine tradition, clergy made the sign of the blessing 405 00:42:36,900 --> 00:42:41,100 using three fingers to symbolise the Trinity. 406 00:42:42,620 --> 00:42:48,380 But in Russia, two fingers were used to symbolise the two natures of Christ. 407 00:42:48,380 --> 00:42:55,500 Now, Aleksei ordered Russian clergy to change the sign of the blessing to three fingers. 408 00:42:59,060 --> 00:43:05,300 It might seem utterly trivial to us but in that world, every detail mattered. 409 00:43:08,500 --> 00:43:14,460 Your average Russian couldn't care less about being faithful to Greek Orthodox tradition. 410 00:43:14,460 --> 00:43:18,820 They knew what Orthodoxy was - it was Russian. 411 00:43:18,820 --> 00:43:22,140 And this was heresy. 412 00:43:22,140 --> 00:43:26,980 So thousands, eventually millions of them, defied the Tsar. 413 00:43:29,260 --> 00:43:35,420 Some left the Tsars' Church and became known as "Old Believers." 414 00:43:37,420 --> 00:43:40,780 Many were burned at the stake for their defiance. 415 00:43:43,220 --> 00:43:51,180 And some, rather than submit to the Tsar's heretical authority, actually set fire to themselves. 416 00:44:05,380 --> 00:44:08,860 The Imperial Church was still there. 417 00:44:08,860 --> 00:44:12,580 It continued to serve the people of this vast empire. 418 00:44:17,420 --> 00:44:21,620 But between Tsarist autocracy and the lives of the people, 419 00:44:21,620 --> 00:44:24,060 there was that third force - 420 00:44:24,060 --> 00:44:27,340 the hierarchy of the Church... 421 00:44:27,340 --> 00:44:32,620 and a question that even the Byzantines had never quite resolved. 422 00:44:32,620 --> 00:44:35,700 Who was truly God's representative on earth? 423 00:44:35,700 --> 00:44:41,020 The Tsar or the head of the Russian Church, the Patriarch? 424 00:44:43,180 --> 00:44:48,660 In 1689, the throne of Russia was inherited by Peter the Great. 425 00:44:48,660 --> 00:44:52,940 He settled that question for the next two centuries. 426 00:44:52,940 --> 00:44:57,620 Where Ivan the Terrible had been mad, Peter the Great was rational. 427 00:44:57,620 --> 00:44:59,500 But he was still a tsar. 428 00:45:01,060 --> 00:45:07,420 He saw Orthodox Christianity as just another useful tool to control the Russian Empire. 429 00:45:09,060 --> 00:45:13,820 And this is his statue - one of Moscow's latest tourist attractions. 430 00:45:13,820 --> 00:45:17,700 It's widely hated in the city but I'm going to be unfashionable. 431 00:45:17,700 --> 00:45:20,780 I rather like it. It's quite fun. 432 00:45:20,780 --> 00:45:26,020 Peter astride his ship from his brand-new navy. 433 00:45:26,020 --> 00:45:32,580 Peter was a moderniser and a big part of his modernising Russia was to seize control of the Church. 434 00:45:32,580 --> 00:45:35,620 For nearly two centuries after his time there was no Patriarch. 435 00:45:35,620 --> 00:45:38,820 The Church was run by a set of state bureaucrats. 436 00:45:38,820 --> 00:45:41,940 So now the Church had lost control of its own decision-making. 437 00:45:52,140 --> 00:45:55,900 There was now no question as to who was in charge - 438 00:45:55,900 --> 00:45:58,060 the Tsar. 439 00:46:02,100 --> 00:46:06,100 As usual, in Christian history, the Church made the best of it. 440 00:46:06,100 --> 00:46:07,980 In fact, it prospered. 441 00:46:10,140 --> 00:46:14,180 In the 19th century Russian monastic life flourished. 442 00:46:14,180 --> 00:46:17,020 Churches actually got more crowded. 443 00:46:17,020 --> 00:46:19,860 And at least the Church was safe. 444 00:46:21,980 --> 00:46:27,140 Orthodoxy had survived a turbulent 1,300 years. 445 00:46:29,580 --> 00:46:33,060 But its next encounter nearly wiped it out. 446 00:46:37,900 --> 00:46:40,820 At the start of the 20th century, 447 00:46:40,820 --> 00:46:46,300 Russia was a great European power under Tsar Nicholas II. 448 00:46:46,300 --> 00:46:53,580 And yet by 1918 his world had been overwhelmed in the Great War and Revolution. 449 00:46:55,420 --> 00:46:59,940 And in the thick of it all was a Russian peasant from Siberia... 450 00:47:02,100 --> 00:47:08,540 ..a wandering hermit who became the focus of a public scandal surrounding the Tsar's family. 451 00:47:08,540 --> 00:47:13,100 The Tsarina believed that God spoke to her, through the hermit. 452 00:47:13,100 --> 00:47:19,100 But his enemies said he was a lecherous drunk whose interference crippled the government. 453 00:47:24,260 --> 00:47:27,540 In the last days of the Tsars, during the First World War, 454 00:47:27,540 --> 00:47:30,180 Grigori Rasputin gained an extraordinary hold 455 00:47:30,180 --> 00:47:32,260 over Tsar Nicholas II and his Empress 456 00:47:32,260 --> 00:47:35,820 because he appeared to be able to stem the haemophilia of their son. 457 00:47:35,820 --> 00:47:39,300 Was Grigori Rasputin a Holy Fool or a crazy drunk? 458 00:47:39,300 --> 00:47:41,260 Well, perhaps he was both. 459 00:47:41,260 --> 00:47:46,380 But his peasant faith made a fool out of the Tsars and helped to doom their regime. 460 00:47:50,380 --> 00:47:53,260 Russia was descending into nightmare. 461 00:47:53,260 --> 00:47:55,660 It was losing the war with Germany. 462 00:47:55,660 --> 00:47:59,540 Its people were starving and turning to revolution. 463 00:47:59,540 --> 00:48:04,340 And the Rasputin scandal became hugely symbolic, 464 00:48:04,340 --> 00:48:08,140 a dose of poison for the Tsarist regime. 465 00:48:08,140 --> 00:48:14,420 As hundreds of thousands died on the front, the troops voted with their feet and mutinied. 466 00:48:18,500 --> 00:48:23,180 In February 1917 there was revolution. 467 00:48:25,860 --> 00:48:33,740 The Russian Emperor was forced to abdicate, bringing to an end nearly 500 years of Tsarist rule. 468 00:48:37,900 --> 00:48:41,580 For the Church, there was a brief moment of hope. 469 00:48:41,580 --> 00:48:48,180 A liberal provisional government was formed, Russia's first real experience of democracy. 470 00:48:48,180 --> 00:48:52,180 In Moscow a council of bishops, clergy and laypeople 471 00:48:52,180 --> 00:48:57,220 made plans for a revived Church, free of Tsarist interference. 472 00:48:58,860 --> 00:49:04,540 Triumphantly, they elected a new Patriarch, the first since Peter the Great. 473 00:49:08,660 --> 00:49:11,700 But it proved to be a false dawn. 474 00:49:13,740 --> 00:49:20,700 In October of that year, worldwide Orthodoxy met its most terrible enemy so far. 475 00:49:20,700 --> 00:49:23,300 Soviet Communism. 476 00:49:25,540 --> 00:49:30,180 With Lenin at its head, the Bolshevik Party seized the revolution 477 00:49:30,180 --> 00:49:37,540 and installed a dictatorship of the proletariat, with absolute power over all Russia. 478 00:49:37,540 --> 00:49:43,420 In this new world order there was no place for God. 479 00:49:45,060 --> 00:49:48,420 Orthodoxy had shaped Russia since the 10th century. 480 00:49:48,420 --> 00:49:52,220 But the Bolsheviks saw all religion as the opium of the masses, 481 00:49:52,220 --> 00:49:58,420 a symptom of false consciousnesses and, worst of all, an obstacle to scientific socialism. 482 00:50:06,060 --> 00:50:11,420 In January 1918, Lenin formally separated Church from State. 483 00:50:15,420 --> 00:50:21,380 And that was just the first step in a systematic policy to purge Christianity 484 00:50:21,380 --> 00:50:25,820 altogether from Russian life, and force atheism on its people. 485 00:50:27,500 --> 00:50:31,540 But it was a policy Lenin did not live to carry out. 486 00:50:36,460 --> 00:50:41,380 The task was followed through even more ruthlessly by a man who, 487 00:50:41,380 --> 00:50:46,060 in just 10 years, brought Orthodoxy close to extinction - 488 00:50:46,060 --> 00:50:52,780 something neither Catholic crusaders, Muslim armies, nor Russian tyrants 489 00:50:52,780 --> 00:50:55,700 had managed to do in 1,000 years. 490 00:50:55,700 --> 00:50:59,300 Joseph Stalin was a Georgian gangster 491 00:50:59,300 --> 00:51:04,460 whose mother had once hoped he would become a bishop. 492 00:51:04,460 --> 00:51:09,340 Instead, he had manoeuvred his way up through the ranks of the Bolshevik party 493 00:51:09,340 --> 00:51:12,180 to become supreme ruler of the Soviet Union. 494 00:51:12,180 --> 00:51:16,500 A red tsar, one might say. 495 00:51:16,500 --> 00:51:21,700 His plan was to wipe out all real life in Orthodoxy. 496 00:51:25,300 --> 00:51:30,420 In a society without God there was no need for churches. 497 00:51:30,420 --> 00:51:36,980 This is the dynamiting of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in 1931. 498 00:51:36,980 --> 00:51:41,700 Then there were the human victims - the Orthodox faithful. 499 00:51:46,860 --> 00:51:51,980 Around 40,000 priests and 40,000 monks and nuns, 500 00:51:51,980 --> 00:51:56,060 plus millions of laypeople died as a result of Soviet terror. 501 00:51:56,060 --> 00:51:59,500 There was a manic thoroughness to the campaign. 502 00:52:02,780 --> 00:52:09,260 Some local Soviet commanders lined up icons, sentenced them to death and shot them! 503 00:52:13,300 --> 00:52:17,980 By 1939 only a few hundred churches remained open 504 00:52:17,980 --> 00:52:21,860 and only four bishops were not in prison. 505 00:52:21,860 --> 00:52:25,060 And yet Russian Orthodoxy survived. 506 00:52:25,060 --> 00:52:31,220 In the Second World War, Stalin was forced into a remarkable U-turn. 507 00:52:31,220 --> 00:52:34,420 Stalin needed the Church's support to win the war. 508 00:52:34,420 --> 00:52:38,260 And in order to use the Church, he needed to recognise the Church. 509 00:52:38,260 --> 00:52:42,140 It was Orthodoxy's patriotism that saved it from extinction. 510 00:52:43,740 --> 00:52:46,260 Stalin had to accept that for many Russians 511 00:52:46,260 --> 00:52:50,580 it wasn't the state that embodied Russian culture and national feeling... 512 00:52:50,580 --> 00:52:52,420 it was the Church. 513 00:52:52,420 --> 00:52:58,540 And so he allowed churches, theological schools and monasteries to reopen. 514 00:52:58,540 --> 00:53:04,700 But after the war, it was Soviet business as usual. More persecution. 515 00:53:08,580 --> 00:53:14,100 At the end of the Second World War, Soviet rule gripped most of Eastern Europe. 516 00:53:14,100 --> 00:53:19,380 When Stalin died in 1953, Russia was a world superpower. 517 00:53:19,380 --> 00:53:23,700 And for the next 30 years it held Orthodoxy prisoner. 518 00:53:26,460 --> 00:53:29,380 Yet the Orthodox Church kept its faithful followers, 519 00:53:29,380 --> 00:53:34,540 maintained its ancient liturgy and music through all the traumas inflicted on it by the Soviet Union. 520 00:53:36,140 --> 00:53:40,900 Indeed, Orthodoxy outlived the communist world order. 521 00:53:45,140 --> 00:53:51,660 When General Secretary Gorbachev tried to implement a more humane communism, "glasnost," 522 00:53:51,660 --> 00:53:54,460 it turned into an endgame for the system. 523 00:53:57,820 --> 00:54:02,380 By the 1990s it was all over. 524 00:54:02,380 --> 00:54:05,820 All the emotional power had drained out of state communism. 525 00:54:05,820 --> 00:54:13,180 And nothing showed that more than the moment in 1991 when a crowd toppled this statue, that of Dzerzhinksy, 526 00:54:13,180 --> 00:54:18,460 the architect of the KGB system, which is now relegated to a quiet park - 527 00:54:18,460 --> 00:54:21,340 a sort of retirement home for tyranny. 528 00:54:23,660 --> 00:54:29,780 For 70 years, the Soviets had told their subjects that communism was the future. 529 00:54:30,900 --> 00:54:33,460 Now communism had gone. 530 00:54:37,900 --> 00:54:41,180 What was compelling enough to fill that gap? 531 00:54:44,180 --> 00:54:46,860 Orthodoxy. 532 00:54:51,460 --> 00:54:56,460 It has triumphantly seized back its place at the heart of Russian life. 533 00:55:03,220 --> 00:55:06,500 In the 1990s, money poured in from the public 534 00:55:06,500 --> 00:55:12,620 for the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in the centre of Moscow, 535 00:55:12,620 --> 00:55:17,540 the Cathedral which Stalin had obliterated 70 years before. 536 00:55:28,300 --> 00:55:32,700 In its sufferings, Orthodoxy survived catastrophes 537 00:55:32,700 --> 00:55:36,460 quite unlike those faced by Catholicism and Protestantism. 538 00:55:36,460 --> 00:55:41,540 Stripped of the power it knew under the Byzantine Emperors, 539 00:55:41,540 --> 00:55:45,780 it saw its freedom stolen by the Russian Tsars, 540 00:55:45,780 --> 00:55:49,780 its people nearly all expelled from Asia Minor, 541 00:55:49,780 --> 00:55:55,340 its very existence nearly destroyed by the Bolsheviks. 542 00:55:55,340 --> 00:56:00,100 But in 21st century Russia, the double-headed eagle of Byzantium 543 00:56:00,100 --> 00:56:05,340 has once more became the proud emblem of modern Russia. 544 00:56:05,340 --> 00:56:09,260 There is still a legacy for the Eastern Roman empire. 545 00:56:13,180 --> 00:56:17,900 But solve one question, and another appears. 546 00:56:17,900 --> 00:56:22,900 Can Orthodoxy survive its first meeting with Western freedom? 547 00:56:22,900 --> 00:56:28,540 The world of capitalism, consumerism, scepticism and sexual freedom? 548 00:56:32,940 --> 00:56:37,900 So far, the instinct seems to have been to reaffirm old certainties. 549 00:56:37,900 --> 00:56:42,060 And you can understand why, if you think back to all those places I've been. 550 00:56:42,060 --> 00:56:47,940 The solemn unfolding of the liturgy, the serene gaze of the saints, 551 00:56:47,940 --> 00:56:51,820 the experience of God in wordless prayer. 552 00:56:53,660 --> 00:56:59,020 And yet for all that, Orthodoxy may still have to learn from western Christians 553 00:56:59,020 --> 00:57:04,780 how to cope with new challenges, which western Christianity itself has helped to create. 554 00:57:20,460 --> 00:57:23,420 So, in next week's programme, we're turning west again. 555 00:57:23,420 --> 00:57:27,660 We're going to see how the great monarchy which was the medieval Western Church 556 00:57:27,660 --> 00:57:29,580 split in two in the Reformation. 557 00:57:31,540 --> 00:57:35,300 And then we'll go on to meet the forces of the modern world, 558 00:57:35,300 --> 00:57:40,660 from which no Christianity of the 21st century can now hide. 559 00:57:43,980 --> 00:57:47,100 Why not take part in the Open University's online survey, 560 00:57:47,100 --> 00:57:51,260 "What does it mean to be a Christian today?" At - 561 00:57:54,820 --> 00:57:57,260 And follow the links. 562 00:58:16,500 --> 00:58:19,580 Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd 563 00:58:19,580 --> 00:58:22,580 E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk