A way through which the Byzantine ideology found itself an efficient expression, which we could name with a certain reserve – connected to some aspects of the modern meaning of the term – propaganda, is the way in which the secular power was exercised through a well organized administration. What mattered in this efficient administration was the fact that it had at any level to reflect its only source of authority – the emperor, who had to be seen as a sun visible by its rays…. … But the most significant element in this depiction of the administration is the fact that, like the imperial institution, it was based upon a precise ideological justification, what we could essentially include in the concept of hierarchy. But for the Byzantine the hierarchy had a different sense than for the modernist and we could understand the Eastern definition of the concept by identifying the texts that founded it. In fact, this is the way to find the main theoretical support of what we call Byzantine ideology. Dionysios the Aeropagites, the author who first mentions the hierarchy theme within the Christian background, understood it as a way to perfect oneself through participation. The superiorinferior diagram is not appropriated to this description: no matter on what level you are, adopting and participating to a hierarchy could lead you to perfection. The ones who find themselves on superior levels of the hierarchy have to proper mediate the transmission of good. Irrespective of the level of a person, if the hierarchy he adopted is one that transmits the good, he will maximal fulfil his potentiality, he could reach perfection. This display of the senses of a hierarchy is based on a fundamental supposition of the Byzantine spirituality: the existence of man as a person, which means absolute identity, uniqueness, non-repeatability. The hierarchy is understood as an existential dynamics which includes in a chain the movement of the persons towards their perfection as good people. At least this was the ideal that animated the organization of the Byzantine social structures, and of course the historic reality reflected more or less its completion.
(Dan Chiţoiu, Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 8, 23 (Summer 2009), p. 62)