The Byzantine tradition, as such, never adopted a single theoretical attitude to the monarchy, but developed instead a set of responses that rose from a common set of stimuli and authoritative evidences; responses that varied according to the manner in which the emperors of any given period intersected more or less vigorously with the monks, the remaining city populations, and the hierarchs, on matters of religious controversy. The descriptive ‘Byzantine’ theology of kingship, therefore, emerges as less of a coherent theory, than a series of rhetorical tropes that could be applied. Several of these were continuations of ancient kingship theory: such as the idea that monarchy stabilised earthly order as a mimesis of monotheistic rule. Many Christian writers found this a helpful analogy in a polytheistic environment, though never to the extent that they simply absorbed the classical Hellenistic ideas that the King was an earthly mirror of the divine will for his subjects, such that the affairs of this earthly dominion ran parallel with those determined in heaven. The biblical notion of the apostate king, along with Jesus’ sceptical teachings about the powers of this world, conspired to prevent this. What the scriptural body of evidence did allow, however, came out among the Byzantines as three descriptive marks; a particularly East-Christian refiguring of ancient kingship theory. I take these three marks to be the ascription of a priestly status to the Christian king, some view of his office as apostolic (though this in itself was a complex issue ), and lastly the aspiration that there would be an attempt at symphonia 25 between the earthly ruler and God’s Kingdom ( as was also the central aspiration of the Lord’s prayer 26) and a corresponding symphonia between the church and the state in a Christian imperium.
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