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Educating the English: Dr. Thomas Smith (1633-1710) of Magdalen College, Oxford was a contemporary of Benjamin Woodruffe.1 Although Smith was not directly engaged with Woodruffe’s efforts to establish a Greek College at Worcester at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Smith’s knowledge of and writing about the Greek Orthodox tradition provided an important contextual element in the wider field of ecclesiastical interest which gave impetus to the plan. For Thomas Smith was one of the most learned members of a loose circle of ecclesiastically conservative clerics who in many ways were the pride of the Restoration Church, and whose scholarly and theological interest in the ancient Christian tradition, together with a strong anti-papalism, provoked a critical interest in, and practical support for, the Greek Orthodox Church. Thomas Smith was a thoroughly bookish man. By the end of his life he was envied for his library, and was reputed to possess the most thorough knowledge of books in England.2 While not a practical ecumenist, Smith nevertheless aided the inter-confessional contacts of the late Restoration period with his learning and his writing on the subject of Orthodoxy. His contribution is exemplified in his most important work on the subject, namely, his Account of the Greek Church (to use its short title) published in Oxford in 1680.3 The long history of Anglican and Orthodox relations is one that began in the sixteenth century with mercantile concerns as the English sought to extend their emerging commercial empire. It was, after all, the age of commercially-inspired exploration. But as a result of such enterprises there soon emerged a literature which not only documented successful and unsuccessful contacts with hitherto unknown trading partners, but opened to the literate English public, not least clergy, descriptions of Orthodox church life both in slavic and mediterranean territories. That connivance between commercial and 'ecumenical' interests, and the literature that resulted from it, was aided, of course, by the presence of chaplains and clerical scholars. In both cases linguistic and scholarly support for England's commercial and political aspirations went hand in hand with theological investigation, ecclesiastical observation, even personal contact with the Orthodox. Dr. Thomas Smith's contribution to this growing literature, and to the ecumenical awareness that it fostered, resulted from precisely such a confluence. THOMAS SMITH Smith was the son of a London merchant. He was born in 1633, and was only seven years old when the 'Root and Branch' Petition for the abolition of episcopacy, signaling the point of no return for the Church of England, was passed by Parliament. We know nothing of the religion with which Smith grew up, but from later accounts, his time at Queen's College, Oxford, did nothing to engender or strengthen any presbyterian sympathies he might have had. In fact, from later literary evidence where he extols Lancelot Andrewes, the prodigious James Ussher, and the learned and combative John Cosin,4 and then from his Non-juring commitments in old age, Smith seems to have been a man whose style of religion and theology was solidly episcopal and reformed according to 'the constant norm of religion', as Cosin himself once put it: 'one Canon, two Testaments' chiefly, followed by 'three Symbols, the first four Councils, the continuity and consensus of the catholic fathers of the church's five centuries'.5 Smith's life and work were largely connected with his adoptive college, Magdalen, where he became a probationary fellow in 1663, a full Fellow four years later, and Dean in 1674 after taking his B.D. Smith's interest in theology was matched by his zeal for the oriental languages. Such was his oriental learning that he was known by his contemporaries in Oxford as 'the Rabbi'. Indeed, it was just that expertise that led to Smith's only absence from Oxford during his tenure as Fellow. Beginning in 1668 Smith traveled through the Mediterranean to Constantinople where for three years he was chaplain to the English ambassador, Sir Daniel Harvey. For Smith's subsequent interests and influence this trip was decisive. The three years, between 1668 and 1670, gave Smith an unparalleled opportunity to acquaint himself first hand with the circumstances, practices and personalities of the Greek Orthodox Church, and to collect and study related texts and manuscripts. The Account of the Greek Church Upon his return to Oxford in 1670/1 Smith was armed with a rich supply of information and experiences about the Greek Church to share. It took time to digest and rework it all. It was, perhaps, an incentive to Smith that during the decade of the 1670s efforts were underway to establish a Greek parish in London to serve the resident and visiting Greek community. The scheme was effectively supported by Henry Compton (1632-1713) who had been made Bishop of Oxford for a brief space in 1674 before moving to the see of London early in the following year. There are no details about Smith's exact relationship with Compton, nor any information about his direct involvement in Compton's initiatives, which resulted in the creation of St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church in Soho in 1677.6 But Smith's first attempts to present in literary form the results of his sojourn among the Orthodox in two Latin epistolae were presented to Compton. One was an account of the state of the seven churches of Asia Minor, a work that gave Smith ample scope to comment upon the relationship between the Greeks and their Ottoman rulers. The second, larger and more important work was a description of the Greek Orthodox Church, De Graecae Ecclesiae Hodierno Statu Epistola, published in Oxford in 1676. That second Latin treatise was then translated by Smith himself for publication in English as An Account of the Greek Church as to its doctrine and rites of worship: with several historical remarks interspersed, relating thereunto. It appeared in 1680 and was dedicated (once again) to Compton in recognition of his efforts on behalf of the Greek community in London. Smith's roughly 250 page account follows a rationale apt for a western Christian's introduction to the Orthodox Church. Thus, experience and expertise are brought together. 'I have taken,' Smith says in his preface ‘To the Reader’,
He then goes on, in a work that is fully indexed, to describe for his readers the services of the Orthodox Church, the architectural setting of its worship, its episcopal structure and sees, the monastic tradition, the eucharistic liturgy, the creedal basis of the Greek Church, and its views on controversial points. The appendix includes texts of several liturgical hymns. It would be wrong to suppose, though, that Smith's purposes are simply descriptive. He writes, he describes, he comments from within a definite reformed western tradition and with an overt commitment to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. His Account is therefore both interested and appreciative yet critical at the same time. Behind such criticism lies Smith's subscription to Cosin's view of the Church of England: 'prisca, casta, defoecata' [pure, chaste, purified].8 But there is perhaps another reason for Smith's critical eye. In his attempts to provide what Smith himself describes as 'a Sanctuary for the poor distressed Bishops and Priests of that Communion to fly unto...',9 Bishop Compton had become embroiled in controversy with the Greek hierarchy in Constantinople. In establishing St. Mary's Greek Church in Soho, Compton had laid down four requirements for the life and work of the parish: 1. no pictures or icons were allowed; 2. all officiating clergy must repudiate transubstantiation; 3. no prayers to the saints were to be said; and 4. the clergy must disown the Council of Bethlehem.10 To some extend, then, Smith's Account seeks to provide substantial support for the Bishop of London's requirements. It is no surprise, therefore, that Smith's ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ to the Bishop of London not only applauds the bishop's attempt to provide a spiritual home for the Orthodox; it also suggests that the bishop's interests coalesce with a purpose implicit in Smith's Account, namely, 'to reduce them [viz. the Greeks] from those errours and corruptions, which have late crept in among them, by bringing them into a nearer and more familiar acquaintance with the Doctrin, and rites of Worship established in the Church of England.' There is, therefore, a tone of apologia for the Church of England as the branch of Christendom most worthy of emulation by the Orthodox in many aspects of its life and doctrine. So much to introduce the work and its context. What picture of the Orthodox Church would Smith's Account present to an English reader of the 1680s? Particular Points: Worship Under the constraints of Ottoman rule the worship of Orthodox Church life stood out since in most other ways the life of the Greek Church was straightened. So Smith begins his Account with a description of the Orthodox services. Much of this portion of his text benefited from later study of the books which he brought back from the East. He collected, for instance, a 'Menology', or church calendar, and studied it carefully, comparing and contrasting it with the calendar of the Book of Common Prayer. Whether or not Smith realized the hand of the monastic tradition in the liturgy of the church is unclear. Based on his first-hand experience as an observer, though, he regarded the Orthodox offices as 'long and tedious'.11 Smith is most affirming in his comments on the services where he espies a clear resonance or actual continuity with early Christian practices which he recognized from his own study of early Christian texts. So he is in a position to make comments like this about the festival Eucharists:
Smith himself witnessed the Orthodox Holy Week services at least once in Constantinople and is expansive in describing the services which the Book of Common Prayer had largely abandoned. He is both impressed and repelled at what he sees. Of the Good Friday evening liturgy, for instance, he comments:
But he is clearly impressed by the patriarchal liturgy of Easter Eve itself.
Texts were only one resource. Smith also resorted to the local clergy for explanations or ambiguous or complex liturgical points. One such clergyman was Fr. Jeremias Germanos, in whom Smith probably already knew as a result of a visit to Oxford in 1668/9 when he was happily entertained by men with philhellenic interests.15 After his overview of the liturgical life of the Orthodox, Smith turns to ecclesiastical structures. The one point of interest in this brief and factual part of the Account is this: Smith praises the Greeks for maintaining their episcopal system even under Turkish oppression. The Orthodox witness could be seen to undercut non-conformist rejection of episcopacy. In the years following the Restoration of king, Prayer Book and episcopacy, when a hard line was taken on non-episcopally ordained ministers, Smith's praise for the Orthodox maintenance of episcopacy under duress would have some apologetic, even polemical force in justifying the Church of England’s firmer discipline regarding non-episcopally ordained ministers. After all, if Greek Christians can maintain episcopacy under fierce anti-Christian persecution, what reason can reformed Christians have for abandoning it? While it may have been the first, it would certainly not be the last time that Orthodoxy would be cited in regard to the Church of England’s own issues about ministry. The Monastic Tradition The extent of interest in the monastic tradition displayed in Smith's Account suggests that he realized how central monasticism is in the religious culture of the Greeks. It is all the more interesting in light both of the absence of a monastic culture in the reformed Church of England, and of the suspicion of monasticism generally that was so typical of the Protestant religious literature of the period.16 In any case, his descriptions of monastic life are among the most interesting passages in the Account. While by his own admission, Smith’s is not the first description of Mt. Athos in English,17 still he recognizes its importance for the Orthodox monastic world as 'The chief Seat of these Religious...indeed [it is] the principal Seminary of the Greek Church'18:
Of aspects of the monastic regimen generally Smith gives us a close account.
It is within this description of the monasteries of the area around Constantinople that Smith has occasion to tell a charming story which also illustrates that the relations between Islamic Turks and Christian Greeks were not always bad. The narrative that follows describing an occurrence near a monastery on grounds belonging to the mosque of the emperor Bayazid in Constantinople, was related to Smith by the hegoumenos Macarius ‘acquainted with me,’ says Smith, ‘when I was upon the place with him’.21 ‘I received the following narration’: He goes on, That in the year 1661. or 1662. (for I have forgot the exact year) the present Emperour Sultan Mohamet Chan, hunting not far from the Euxine, (to which exercise he is very much addicted,) in the pursuit of his game, at last, wearied and tired, lighted to rest at a Fountain at some little distance from their Convent. Upon the news of which, they consulted, whether they should wait upon him with some poor Present or no: at last one of the pert Monks undertook it. Advancing toward the Emperour, having made his reverence after the custom of the Country, and making an excuse for the presumption he was guilty of, presented him with a little Cheese and a basket of Cherries: then [sic.] which latter nothing could have been more welcome to him, being thirsty and over-heated with excessive riding, and who yet in such an extremity abhorred the least thought of Wine. After some little time he calls the poor Kaloir, and very calmly asked him, whether he would become a Musulman, out of design questionless to have preferred him. But he, no way wrought by this powerfull temptation, continued speechless in his humble posture, with his eyes fixt upon the ground. The Emperour no way displeased with his behaviour, which he looked upon as a modest denial, Well, said he, I perceive you have a mind to continue as you are; and then bidding him look up, made a half circle with his hand, telling him, he gave the grounds lying about, which he thus markt out, to the Convent; and then commanded one of his favourite-Attendants to give the poor man thirty pieces of Gold.22 Thus, despite Smith’s serious scholarly purposes, he peppers his text with stories of real human interest. The Divine Liturgy Just as Smith's narrative could be charming, so it could be critical. An instance of this arises within Smith's long commentary on the Orthodox eucharistic rite. A case in point is what Smith calls 'the second or great Introitus or Entrance or access to the Altar'.
Smith's positive interest in the eucharistic rite is focused on the eucharistic prayer that follows. He provides lengthy quotations from the eucharistic text of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom; he even manages to capture something of the dynamic dramatic quality of the rite in the interplay between priest and choir, and the priest's own use of sotto voce and full voice in the saying of the eucharistic prayer. Following the description of the liturgy as a whole, Smith turns to controversial matters relating to the Eucharist: the time of consecration, metousiosis (transubstantiation), the use of leavened bread, once daily celebration, the communion of children, and the reservation for use of the sick.24 As to the first matter, 'In what moment of time the Consecration is made', Smith understands both the eucharistic prayers themselves, and the ancient commentators, to emphasize the sanctifying role of the Holy Spirit. 'As to the moment of Consecration', he says,
In no sense does Smith question or challenge this theology of consecration. It may even be that his textual commentary contributed toward the Non-juror commitment to the epicletic tradition in the eucharistic prayer. That same text hints at another issue which Smith takes up in detail in his Account, the issue of transubstantiation, or metousiosis. It was, of course, a polemical inheritance from the controversies with Rome in the previous century. Even among 'high-church' divines in the Interregnum and Restortation periods it continued to be a vigorously contested point.26 Smith’s support of Bishop Compton, who forebade the Greek parish’s acceptance of the doctrine of transubstantiation as taught, for instance, by the Council of Bethlehem, gave an immediate polemical edge to Smith's discussion. In Smith's critique there are two main points. First, in keeping with English divines before him, Smith insists that there is a change in the elements which cannot and should not be defined. He gives this position away in his discussion of the moment of consecration. He refers to 'the Change, whatever it may be...'27. Without entering into the details of scholastic metaphysics, Smith asserts that there is a change which need not, indeed, does not involve a substantial change in any technical sense. The issue was more complex from the Orthodox side, however. Smith knew that among them the term 'transubstantiation' (metousiosis, metabole, metapoiesis) was evolving. He is refering to the influence of Latin scholastic categories which began to infiltrate the theology, writing, even the public documents, of Orthodoxy in this period. Given the English Church's firm opposition to transubstantiation, and with Compton's regulations in mind, it is important for Smith not just to instruct the English but to remind the Orthodox of the state of this issue from the point of view of their own usage and theology. Smith therefore provides an extended discussion of the history and meaning of the term among Orthodox writers and documents, and in their liturgies reminding his readers, for instance, that Patriarch Jeremias of Constantinople, in writing to the Wittenburg divines about Orthodox eucharistic doctrine, asserts 'that after the Consecration the Bread is changed into the very Body of Christ, and the Wine into his very Bloud, by the Holy Spirit, without defining more particularly the nature and manner of the change'.28 In fact, argues Smith, Orthodox liturgy uses words which signify real change in the object of sacramental grace without meaning substantial change. He cites, for instance, the baptismal liturgy where the verb metapoiethenai is used of the person receiving sacramental grace. In no sense does it mean that they cease to be substantially what they are, however else they might be changed. All of this, then, should be borne in mind by a reader, English or Orthodox, who turns to the canons of the Council of Bethlehem and finds the term 'transubstantiation'. Thus, Smith's Account serves to legitimize Bishop Compton's insistence that the canons of Bethlehem be rejected by English and Orthodox alike as a teaching that is inconsistent with both the reformed doctrine of the Church of England as well as the historic teaching of the Greek Church. It was less easy for Smith to disconnect Orthodox tradition from the iconographic tradition which Bishop Compton also sought to bar from London's Greek Church. While Smith explicitly intends 'onely a Narrative' and 'not a Confutation,’29 he leaves his English reader in no doubt as to the good sense of Compton's disallowance of 'Pictures...of our Savious, and of the Saints' which the Orthodox count 'sacred and venerable.’30 'These', he says, 'they reverence and honour by bowing and kissing them, and saying their prayers before them'.
It should be borne in mind, however, that in many of his comments about Orthodoxy Smith is concerned with the relationship between Christianity and Islam. In the matter of icons in particular he regards the 'subtil and nice distinctions' too much for the 'gross and dull' Ottomans. The net result is simply the conclusion that Christians are idolaters. Reformed Orthodoxy Nevertheless, Smith is clear in his fundamental approbation of the orthodoxy of the Greek Church and its share with the Church of England in the foundational twin doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. At the same time, Smith wishes to see the Greek Church reformed of practices and beliefs that do not, in his view, express the faith and practice of the church of the first five centuries. This desire for a reformed Orthodoxy accounts for Smith's reverence, even adulation, for the ill-fated Patriarch Cyril Lucaris. To his Account of the Greek Church Smith appended a narrative entitled 'The State of the Greek Church under Cyrillus Lucaris'. To a large extend that text is polemic against the Roman Catholic Church, and fuels the long-standing English suspicion of Jesuits. Positively, though, it presents the murdered patriarch as a martyr, sacrificed for the reformed purity of the Orthodox Church. In fact, Smith, a devotee (like many in the Restoration Church) to the royal martyr, likens Lucaris' sacrifice for the church to Charles I's martyrdom on behalf of the reformed Church of England. In the hands of Smith, Lucaris represents for the English what the Greek Church as a whole might be, a partner with the Church of England in an alliance of Christian churches reformed according to the ancient catholic church. Conclusion It is well known that the plan for a Greek College failed. The efforts at practical support in Oxford at the turn of the eighteenth century lapsed and were forgotten. 'The curtain,' as Edward Carpenter put it, 'which separated the East from the West, although lifted for a short time, soon fell again'.32 It is also true that Smith's sojourn in the east gave him little hope of reform in the Greek Church such as Patriarch Cyril might have promoted. 'Indeed, considering the present state of things, there is little sign or hope of a Reformation’, he laments. 'For the misery of it is', says Smith,
Smith's remark, however true or false, reveals an emerging historical-critical perspective in which the benchmark of antiquity is critically applied. In applying this benchmark to the Greek Church Smith uses the very measure which the Interregnum and Restoration clergy fought so hard to identify, defend and apply to the Church of England itself. The accession of James II, Smith's own brief ejection from Magdalen College, the subsequent Revolution, and the crisis of oath and allegiance that affected some royalist clergy, all took their toll on Smith. Some years before his death in 1710 he gravitated toward the Non-juring movement. Both his theological style and his ecumenical sympathies were broadly consistent with Non-juring ideals. It is likely that his Account, in the hands of friends like the aged William Sancroft and younger Non-jurers too, provided a spring-board for the contacts with the Orthodox hierarchy made during the archepiscopate of William Wake. It is well known that their correspondence on church union was cut short by Wake's intervention. However, that eighteenth-century attempt provided rich documentation for nineteenth-century Tractarians like William Palmer and William Birkbeck who developed the ecumenical possibilities opened up by the Tractarians in new ways. Smith's Account of the Greek Church may be said to flow as a hidden spring into those initiatives. Thus, however limited and at times even prejudiced Thomas Smith and his Account may seem to be to contemporary readers, they have played a part in furthering the ecumenical knowledge and commitments upon which the twentieth century so constructively built. — The Rev'd Dr. Charles Miller NOTES 1 There is no biographical material on Smith apart from the entry in the Dictionary of National Biography , XVIII, pp. 539-541 2 Ibid., p. 541. 3 The full title of the work is An Account of the Greek Church as to its doctrine and rites of worship: with several historical remarks interspersed, relating thereunto. To which is added an account of the state of the Greek church under Cyrillus Lucaris, patriarch of Constantinople, with a relation of his sufferings and death (London, 1680). 4 Smith’s Vitae Quorundam Erudissimorum et Illustrium Vivorum (London, 1717) was published posthumously, and included ‘Lives’ of seven eminent scholars and clergy. The clergy included, viz., James Ussher and John Cosin, may well indicate something of Smith’s theological pedigree: a moderately ‘high’ Anglicanism, philologically sophisticated, anti-Roman, deeply committed to the study and witness of Christian antiquity, to episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer. A further indicator of Smith’s sympathies is the fact that his life of Cosin includes a reprint of the latter’s apologetic tract Regni Angliae Religio Catholica first published at Edward Hyde’s direction in Paris in 1652. Cosin’s tract presents the credentials of the reformed Church of England, and spells out the authorities for its doctrine, worship and order. 5 From his Religio Catholica, chapter 1 from the L.A.C.T. edition (Oxford, 1843 ), p. 343. 6 On Compton see Edward Carpenter, The Protestant Bishop (London, 1956). His chapter ‘The Greek Orthodox Church’ (pp. 357-364) recounts the story of both the Greek parish and the Greek college efforts. 7 Smith, Account, p. a3. 8 So described in the extended title to Cosin’s treatise, op. cit. 9 So in the Epistle Dedicatory of Smith’s Account. 10 Carpenter, pp. 360-361. 11 Account, p. 27. 12 Ibid., p. 29. 13 Ibid., pp. 43-44. 14 Ibid., p. 44. 15 The visit is recalled by John Covel in the Preface to his Account Of the Present Greek Church (Cambridge, 1722), p. i. 16 Consider, for instance, the bitterly critical accounts of Nicholas Farrer’s ‘Arminian Nunnery’ in the 1640s. Smith may have been drawn to this state of life. He is credited with an English translation of The Life of St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi, A Carmelite Nun, written by the French Carmelite Pere Lezin de Sainte Scholastique. The prospect is especially curious in light of Smith’s sharp anti-papalist sentiments which eventually caused his ejection from Magdalen for a brief period prior to the revolution of 1688. 17 He refers to a description recently published in English by the Archbishop of Samos, Joseph Georgirenes. 18 Account, p. 97. 19 An anglicized form of the Greek term kaloergos. 20 Ibid., pp. 100-101. 21 Ibid., p. 105. 22 Ibid., pp. 105-106. 23 Ibid., p. 134-135. 24 Ibid., pp. 136ff. 25 Ibid., pp. 144-5. 26 In the hands of, say, John Bramhall, John Cosin and Herbert Thorndike. 27 Account, p. 145. Italics mine. 28 Ibid., p. 148. 29 Ibid., p. 213. 30 Ibid., p. 211. 31 Ibid., pp. 212-13. 32 Carpenter, op. cit. p. 364. 33 Preface |
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