Are Orthodox Priests Prohibited from Bearing Arms?

Abbot Tryphon Holding a Toy Gun, Inciting Mass Hysteria on Twitter

By Bp. Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West)

Q: Are Orthodox priests prohibited from bearing arms? 

A: It is important to remain balanced on issues such as these, brothers, and to hear the whole tradition of the Church. The Latin West never completely canonically prohibited the bearing of arms by clergy, sometimes recommending the use of blunt instruments so as not to draw blood, but there is a Byzantine cultural sensibility and later canonical tradition that does preclude the possibility of armed clergy. 

This is an opinion written on the issue by one of our Ukrainian Canonist, Fr. Bohdan Hladio: 

“Hunting is referred to in the canonical legislation only in as much as Christians are to refrain from taking part in the arena spectacles during which animals were killed (Canon 51 of the Quinisext Council). The interpretation of this canon is accepted as sufficient to forbid clerics from hunting, for if it is forbidden to even watch an animal being killed, how much more should it be forbidden to kill the animal oneself. This legislation applies even to monastics who are not ordained, but in reference to the person of the priest or bishop there is a very specific reason for it. The priest is ordained to offer to God the bloodless sacrifice, and therefore the spilling of blood is incompatible with his calling. (The fact that clerics have always been forbidden to bear arms is clearly underlined in the history of the destruction of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders in 1204. It was inconceivable for the Orthodox that priests and monks could bear arms, and yet they saw with their own eyes Latin clerics and monastics doing so). It is for this same reason that it is forbidden to bind Gospel books in leather covers — because nothing which has been killed is permitted on the altar where the bloodless sacrifice is performed. 

“If a priest accidentally kills someone, in an automobile accident for example, he is forbidden to continue to serve at the altar. This may seem a great punishment for an act for which the priest himself does not bear responsibility, but the Church’s tradition and the canonical legislation on this matter is very clear (Canon 66 of the Apostolic Canons, Canon 5 of St. Gregory of Nyssa, etc). This is related to the same point made above, that the spilling of blood is incompatible with the priesthood, for the priest is to dispense Life (the Holy Mysteries), not death. This again points to an idealized conception of the person of the priest, in other words, to the idea that the priest should exemplify Christian teaching not only in his words, but in his life.”

As you can see, it is hard for the esteemed Canonist to point out what canons are actually being broken, but it is more of an attitude and an underlying cultural assumption than anything else. Scripture recommends peaceful men, married, not given to fighting or “striking,” to be elevated to the episcopacy (1 Timothy 3:3). Later monastic ideals, which precluded the eating of meat, self-defense, and even picking up a weapon in defense of others, came to dominate Eastern attitudes of war, even as Islam threatened to completely annihilate the Eastern Empire (and these attitudes are shown to have directly contributed to the Fall of Byzantium by such scholars as Ostrogorsky, Hussey and Runciman). These ideals became powerful with the ascension of the Monastic Episcopacy, which excluded married priests and their practical considerations from the leadership of the Church. Late Byzantine canonists connected the “blood work” of the Holy Eucharist with the prohibition in Acts 15 against eating blood, things strangled or offered to idols, and combined these with the ceremonial purity requirements of medieval priesthood, concluding that those involved in the “metaphysical shedding of blood” in the Great Sacrifice of the Christian Altar must not shed blood anywhere else. Such attitudes eventually triumphed in Byzantium to the extent that even Christian layman soldiers defending their homeland from Islamic invasion were temporarily excommunicated for shedding their enemy’s blood for three years. However, as Constantinople waned under constant Ottoman attack and Western reinforcements never arrived, these strict canons were thrown by the wayside as everyone in Constantinople partook of the Holy Eucharist together before the fall of the city on May 29, 1453, and heroically made their last stand, Greeks and Latins shoulder to shoulder. 

The West’s attitude regarding bearing arms and waging war was essentially derived from St. Augustine’s City of God and in his Contra Faustum Manichaeum (22:69–76) where he proposes a “Just War Theory.” The Saint posits moral parameters that would later be extrapolated by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica for Christians to righteously take up and bear arms. The Western doctrinal understanding precludes preemptive attacks, defensively fighting to prevent the unjust deaths of the innocent, and fighting to maintain the truths of the Christian religion against the Spirit of Antichrist, which constantly seeks to extinguish the truth of the Gospel through heresy, war and deceitful education.

This triumph of the East’s theological rejection of priestly participation in self-defense or a justified war was finally canonically documented in the All-Russia Sobor of 1917-18, which did prohibit priests from bearing arms, but this is not an ecumenical council and should only be considered locally. It is interesting that such pacifist inclinations seem completely forgotten and dismissed within the contemporary Russian world. 

Contrary to what we are seeing online and in the canons, Orthodox priests were highly involved in defending their people in times of war, especially during the World Wars. 

A Serbian Orthodox Priest in WWI from Wikimedia Commons

Orthodox Priest Who Fought in War: 

Luka Lazarević (1774–1852), Serbian Orthodox priest, vojvoda (general) of the Serbian Revolution. 

Matija Nenadović (1777–1854), Serbian Orthodox archpriest, commander in the Serbian Revolution. 

Athanasios Diakos (1788–1821), Greek Orthodox priest, commander in the Greek War of Independence. 

Mićo Ljubibratić (1839–1889), Serbian Orthodox priest, fought in the Herzegovina Uprising. 

Bogdan Zimonjić (1813–1909), Serbian Orthodox priest, active during the 1852–62 and 1875–78 uprisings in Herzegovina. 

Vukajlo Božović, Serbian Orthodox archpriest, fought in the Balkan Wars. 

Jovan Grković-Gapon (1879–1912), Serbian Orthodox priest, guerrilla in Macedonia. 

Tasa Konević, Serbian Orthodox priest, guerrilla in Macedonia. 

Mihailo Dožić (1848–1914), Serbian Orthodox priest, guerrilla in Potarje (1875–78). 

Stevan Dimitrijević (1866–1953), Serbian Orthodox priest, guerrilla in Macedonia (fl. 1904). 

Momčilo Đujić (1907–1999), Serbian Orthodox priest, World War II Chetnik. 

Vlada Zečević (1903–1970), Serbian Orthodox priest, Yugoslav Partisan. 

Since the late medieval times, the Epigonation was given to clerics by the emperor instead of a decorative sword, to commemorate their bravery and loyalty, without breaking the Byzantine tradition that priests did not carry swords. It is called a “Palitza” in the Slavic tradition, and gradually changed meaning from a courtly award to a symbol of a priest who carries “the Sword of the Spirit” and able to hear confessions. 

The "Sword of the Spirit" in Eastern Vestments

On the other hand, such a tradition never developed in the West, and the custom of clerical swords is well documented. Swords were made to look like crosses, and religious heraldry did not shy away from them. 

Seal of the Sword Brothers of the Crusades

A Late Medieval Woodcut Showing a Warrior Bishop with Crosier and Sword

It was, however, customary for clerics to arm themselves with maces or clubs, and there is a canonical tradition in the West of recommending blunt instruments of defense to monks. 

It may be that the West was far more formidable to Islam because of the tradition of warrior bishops. We know that the Vikings were also impressed, especially by the Saxon Bishop St. Heahmund (celebrated on March 22nd), who was immortalized as a great warrior and noble opponent to the pagans. He is commemorated as a Saint in the Orthodox Church.

Medieval History of Warfare Issue on "Warrior Bishops"

Illuminated Manuscripts Illustrating Warrior Bishops

Like everything else we study here, this issue is very complicated and nuanced. Much less cut and dry than internet Orthodoxy would like us to believe. This is true in every area, and we have to be cautious not to become a caricature of ourselves, as we spin into purity spirals and try to “out holy” the other brothers and sisters by our pious platitudes and deep understandings of the holy canons. 

I find the scandal over Abbot Tryphon's picture more indicative of our current US political bifurcation than of any actual canonical or historical issue, since, obviously, it represents a strong, ready, traditional, hierarchical Patriarchy that is identified as the primary enemy of the Political Left. The dear Abbot posing under an American flag, hold a rifle with bearded young men, checks off all of the Leftists’ “fear factors” and lends itself to outlandish interpretations that anyone who knows Abbot Tryphon would dismiss immediately out of hand. The “culture wars” are always wars of iconography, and this picture encapsulates a vision of an American future that anti-Western and anti-traditionalist ideologues find deeply disgusting. Thankfully, for us, it presents an opportunity to talk about our Holy Tradition and how we should understand and interpret canon law! 

Reproduction of a Western Medieval Bishop's Helmet

(List of priests who took up arms from Wikipedia)