Caesaropapism

Although Justus Henning Böhmer (1674–1749) may have originally coined the term caesaropapism (Cäseropapismus),[1] it was Max Weber (1864–1920) who wrote that "a secular, caesaropapist ruler ... exercises supreme authority in ecclesiastic matters by virtue of his autonomous legitimacy.

[4][5] The Byzantine Emperor would typically protect the Eastern Church and manage its administration by presiding over ecumenical councils and appointing Patriarchs and setting territorial boundaries for their jurisdiction.

According to historian Charles A. Frazee, the Greek Hierarchs appointed by the Sultan and his advisors were almost invariably opposed to the reunification decrees at the Council of Florence and rejected the authority of the Papacy.

"[15] Caesaropapism was most notorious in the Tsardom of Russia when Ivan IV the Terrible assumed the title Czar in 1547 and subordinated the Russian Orthodox Church to the state.

In response, the Tsar convened a Church Council, whose bishops obediently declared Metropolitan Philip deposed on false charges of moral offenses and imprisoned him in a monastery.

Seeking to convince Soviet authorities to stop the campaign of terror and persecution against the Church, Metropolitan Sergius, acting as patriarchal locum tenens, tried to look for ways of peaceful reconciliation with the government.

On July 29, 1927, he issued his famous declaration [ru]: an encyclical letter where he professed the absolute loyalty of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Soviet Union and to its government's interests.

This declaration, sparked an immediate controversy among the Russian Eastern Orthodox, many of whom (including many notable and respected bishops in prisons and exile) broke communion with Sergius.

It stated: Where by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and king, having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the same.

According to Nicholas Sanders (c. 1530 - 1581), however: "The Queen lays down for her clergy a rule of life, outside of which they dare not move, not only in those things which Protestants call indifferent, but in all matters of Faith, discipline, and doctrine, in virtue of that supreme spiritual power with which she is invested: she suspends her bishops when she pleases, she grants a license to preach, either to those who are ordained according to her rite or to simple laymen, in the same way at her pleasure reduces those whom she will to silence.

His son and heir, King Charles I (r. 1625–1649), through his insistence upon promoting the High-Church reforms advocated by the Caroline Divines and by Archbishop William Laud, alienated opponents of Anglo-Catholicism and lost both his throne and his head in the course of the English Civil War of 1642-1651.

The 1688 overthrow of the House of Stuart was caused by the efforts of King James II (r. 1685–1688) to partially annul the Act of Supremacy by granting Catholic Emancipation more than two hundred years before Daniel O'Connell.