ABSTRACT
Claiming authority over another person in a pre-modern society, such as that of the Byzantine Empire, could always best be justied if this authority was declared as divine. And this was also true if the authority in question was actually a political, not a spiritual one. e Christian text central to the issue of political authority in its relation to the spiritual is the Epistle to the Romans, where Saint Paul says at the beginning of Chapter 13: ‘Let every soul be subject unto the higher authorities. For there is no authority but of God: the authorities that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resists the authority, resists the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation’. Although the authenticity of this passage has been doubted, it has nevertheless also been much debated up to the present, and it had far-reaching consequences in Christian religious thought and political theory of all times.1
