WI Eastern Orthodox Christianity underwent a Reformation?

Maharajah

Firstly - why was Eastern Christianity never affected by the Reformation? Surely many of the problems in the Western Church were shared by the Eastern one.

How would a movement to reform the Eastern Church come about, and where? (And when?) Could it ever become the majority or state religion anywhere? What kind of impact would it have on history?

What would it look like? The traditions and services of Protestant churches in OTL owe much to earlier Catholic traditions.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

It kinda sorta in Russia. Those who didn't like it were called Old Believers (or, in their preferred terminology, "Old-Ritualists").
 

Tapirus Augustus

Dan1988 said:
It kinda sorta in Russia. Those who didn't like it were called Old Believers (or, in their preferred terminology, "Old-Ritualists").
Click to expand...

But the reforms weren't really theological, they were just some tweaking of the finer points of liturgy. The fact that such minor dabbling caused a schism speaks to how anti-reform the Orthodox church has always been. There just isn't a market for massive reform.
 

cimon

The Reformation was exclusive to the West and its product was mainly the Protestants;whatever concerned the Catholic Church came with the counter reformation,but we didn't witness any essential differences in the Catholic Church.I am not an expert about the Catholic Church,so I have to ask two questions:
A) In what precisely was the Catholic Church reformed?
B) I what aspect(S) should the Orthodox church be reformed?
 
LSCatilina

LSCatilina

cimon said:
A) In what precisely was the Catholic Church reformed?
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Council of Trent.

Basically all the orders (not married priest, no longer priest-peasants, no not formed priests) made during Middle-Ages without sucess were applied.

That, and the theological reaffirmation (but also clarification) of dogmas instead of..."Kinda like that".

For answering the OP, someone mentioned some times ago, that some greek humanists tried to actually import reforms principles inside orthodox church. I don't remember the details, but it could be interesting to search about it.
 

Basileus Giorgios

Because the Orthodox Church was a plaything of the Eastern Roman Empire- generally, whatever the Imperial doctrine was, the rest of the Church would have to go along with it. Openly and loudly challenging this was a form of treason against the centralised Roman Empire, not just a religious issue. Of course, people could and did quietly disobey Orthodox teachings in their own way, but openly making a stand on the matter was a good way to get yourself killed in a world where Orthodoxy was so closely associated with the well-being of the state.

And, later, the Orthodox Church was the institution that brought the Christians of the Balkans together under the Ottoman Turks- so, again, challenging the Church would be a challenge to a centralised state that could and would be dealt with rather more effectively than it could be in Western Europe.
 

Elfwine

And the Old Believer issue is a matter of tampering with what people held sacred, which is by definition not a minor issue.

So . . . rather different situation anywhere you look at it.
 
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Blackfox5

The Orthdoxo Church didn't have a pope. Therefore, no reformation.

The Reformation was based on:

1) Ongoing sales of indulgences so that Rome had more money. It created theological and nationalist resentment.

2) Obstensible reason for various taxes, tithes, and other money sent to Rome was for crusades to liberate Constantinople/Jeruslaem that never happened.

3) Discrediting of the Papacy by the Great Schism.

4) Ongoing scandalous behavior by the Popes damaging the prestige of the Papacy.

5) Rising nationalism that created resentment that the national church was lead by a "foreign prince".

6) A desire to steal Church lands and money by the kings of Europe.

None of these apply to the Orthodox church.

There was no single bishop in charge of the Orthodox so any corruption or monetary issues were local affairs that did not discredit the Church as a whole. No Great Schism that damaged the unity of the Orthodox Church. And since the Orthodox areas had the doctrine of caesaropapism that prostrated the church to powerful rulers and in Russia a strong tradition of the ruler acting like he owned everything, princes and tsars could take anything they like without having to worry that some bishop would opppose him.

So there was almost none of the reasoning for the Reformation.

In contrast, the "Third Rome" of Moscow saw the need for keeping a unified, Orthodox Church that served the rulers of Moscow in their attempt to consolidate and unite the remaining independent Orthodox lands in Russia around the same time. Moscow was not going to tolerate independent reformers who would put their theological whimsies ahead of their need for a united doctrine/church.

Now, on a related level, there was an ongoing anti-clerical forment in Latin Christianity that would erupt from time to time by reformers like the Waldensians, or extreme poverty advocates like the Fraticelli. However, by themselves they were insufficient for the reformation, at least the reformation we got IOTL. Although I can't name any off hand, I would not be surprised if the Orthodox church had basically the same kind of movements as these. But without the above, they were insufficient to gain adherence.

Another thing is that the support for the Reformation was largest in the new middle class. These people had the wealth and free time to devote to thinking about religious issues for themselves at the same time the printing press made the bible available to them in their own language. The Orthodox lands lacked such a relatively large bourgeosie population.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Inthe west there was also the rise of the merchant middle class, and the invention of printing.

Bibles widespread among the laity was a huge impetus towards reformation.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Because the Orthodox hierarchs learned how to argue like a Jesuit (from the Jesuits) and succeeded in largely stymieing reform outside of the Ukraine.

Too, it's hard to reform when the Church has two bosses constantly working to maintain a status quo; a secularish one (Tsar or Sultan) and an ecclesiastic one (Constantinopolitan or Muscovite patriarch). The whole point of the Church's concept of harmonia is basically structured to prevent the lay from "polluting" the ecclesiastic.
 

DominusNovus

Fragment the political scene where the Orthodox church held sway. Of course, one could say that this did happen, and the church did undergo a reformation of sorts. Look at the Christian communities in the Middle East, and see how they're all fairly distinct and independent of one another in terms of doctrine and authority. Granted, this all took place *very* early on in the Church's history, and the analogy isn't exactly perfect, but there it is.
 

EWHM

Blackfox has the bulk of it---particularly his causes 1,4, and 5. These are the things that created a Martin Luther and a Germany willing to back him.
Interestingly, Dante warned the Church about this several hundred years prior (read the Purgatario, and his compressed version of church history at the top of Purgatory in the 'Earthly Paradise'). If they'd avoided either point 1 or 4, Luther would have at most been another Huss, easily discarded if necessary. There's not much that could have been done about point 5, at least from the perspective of the Church, but it wouldn't be fatal without the outrages of 1 and 4.
 

Kosta

Banned
Blackfox5 said:
1) Ongoing sales of indulgences so that Rome had more money. It created theological and nationalist resentment.
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I have to say, I have shocked and kind of horrified to find out there were some cases where our monks in Jerusalem and Romania did sell indulgences to fund churches or something, but I do think that you're absolutely right in saying that a more regional Church helped make these cases isolated and small.
 
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