"If an absolute refusal be given, or if it is so contrived that before you have an audience you are suddenly put with Timotheus, say, "Let your piety grant us a private audience to set forth the causes for which we have been sent". If he say, "Speak before him," answer, "We do no offence, but our legation also contains his person, and he cannot be present at our communications". And on no account enter into anything in his presence; but when he has gone out produce the text of your mission."
The exact conditions which the legates carried to the emperor were these: "The Council of Chalcedon and the letters of Pope St. Leo to be kept. The emperor, in token of his agreement, to send an imperial letter to all the bishops signifying that he so believes and will so maintain. The bishops also to express their agreement in Church in presence of the Christian people that they embrace the holy faith of Chalcedon and the letters of Pope St. Leo, which he wrote against the heretics, Nestorius, Eutyches, and Dioscorus, also against their followers, Timotheus Ailouros, Peter, or those similarly guilty, likewise anathematising Acacius, formerly bishop of Constantinople, and also Peter of Antioch, with their a.s.sociates. Writing thus with their own hand in presence of chosen men of repute, they will follow the formulary which we have issued by our notary.
"Those who have been banished in the Church"s cause are to be recalled for the hearing of the Apostolic See, that a trial and true examination may be held. Their cause to be reserved entire.
"If any holding communion with the sacred Apostolic See, preaching and following the Catholic faith, have been driven away, or kept in banishment, these, it is just, to be first of all recalled.
"Moreover, the injunction we have laid upon the legates, that if memorials be presented to them against bishops who have persecuted Catholics, their judgment be reserved to the Apostolic See, that in their case the const.i.tutions of the fathers be maintained, by which all may be edified."
Anastasius[96] tried again the old arts. He made a bid of everything to gain the legates. He seemed ready to accept everything save the demand regarding Acacius, which he was bound to reject on account of the Byzantine people. Both to the legates on their return to Rome, and to two officers of his court whom he sent to Rome, he gave honourable letters for the Pope, whom he invited to be present at the projected council, and endeavoured to satisfy fully by an orthodox profession of faith wherein he expressly recognised the Council of Chalcedon. One only point, he said, whatever might be his personal feeling, he could not concede, that regarding Acacius, since otherwise the living would be driven out of the Church for the dead, and great disturbances and blood-shedding would be inevitable. He left it to the Pope"s consideration. He also wrote to the Roman senate to use its influence for the restoration of peace to the Church, as well with the Pope as with king Theodorick, "to whom," said the emperor, "the power and charge of governing you have been committed". It may be added that Theodorick favoured, as far as he could, the restoration of peace.
Pope Hormisdas, in his answer, praised the zeal made show of by the emperor, and wished that his deeds would correspond to his words. He could not contain his astonishment that the promised emba.s.sy was so long in coming, and that the emperor instead of sending bishops to him, sent two laymen of his court, in whom he soon recognised Monophysites, who tried to gain him in their favour. In a letter to St. Avitus and the bishops of his province, he discloses the judgment which he had formed. "As to the Greeks, they speak peace with their mouth, but carry it not in their hearts; their words are just, not their actions; they pretend to wish what their deeds deny; what they professed, they neglect; and pursue the conduct which they condemned."[97] Still he resolved to send a new emba.s.sy to Constantinople in 517, at the head of which he put the bishops Ennodius and Peregrinus. He gave them letters to the emperor, the patriarch Timotheus, the clergy and people of Constantinople.
Anastasius had endeavoured to delay the whole thing, and to deceive the orthodox until he found himself strong again, and was no longer in danger from Vitalian. To bribe the people, he gave the church of Constantinople seventy pounds" weight of gold for ma.s.ses for the dead. With regard to the treatment of Acacius, he had the majority on his side, who were not easily brought to condemn him. Here, also, he had a pretext to break off impending agreements. When his wife Ariadne died, he showed himself still less inclined to peace. She had been devoted to Macedonius, and often interceded for the orthodox. As soon as he thought himself quite secure, he not only altered his behaviour and language to the Roman See, but, in the words of the Greek historian, about 200 bishops who had come to Heraclea from various parts had to separate without doing anything, "having been deluded by the lawless emperor and Timotheus, bishop of Constantinople".[98] The Pope"s legates he tried to corrupt; when that did not succeed, he dismissed them in disgrace, and sent the Pope an insolent letter, in which he said he desisted from any requests to him, as reason forbade to throw away prayers on those who would listen to nothing, and while he might submit to injuries, he would not endure commands. Thereupon broke out a great persecution against Catholics, which the Archimandrites of the second Syria report to Hormisdas.
In a supplication signed by more than two hundred, they address him:[99]
"Most blessed Father, we beseech you, arise; have compa.s.sion on the mangled body, for you are the head of all. Come to save us. Imitate our Lord, who came from heaven on earth to seek out the strayed sheep. Remember Peter, prince of the Apostles, whose See you adorn, and Paul, the vessel of election, for they went about enlightening the earth. The flock goes out to meet you, the true shepherd and teacher, to whom the care of all the sheep is committed, as the Lord says, "My sheep hear My voice". Most holy, despise us not, who are daily wounded by wild beasts." All that the Roman See had gained was that the orthodox bishops and many conspicuous easterns attached themselves to it, and the formulary binding them to obedience to the decisions of the Roman See found very many subscribers. The empire was in the greatest confusion when Anastasius died suddenly in the year 518, hated by the majority of his people, as perjured, heretical, and rapacious.
Just before him died the heretical patriarchs, John II. of Alexandria and Timotheus of Constantinople.
Then suddenly,[100] as in the third century the Illyrian emperors saved the dissolving empire, another peasant, who in long and honourable service had risen to the rank of general, and was respected by all men as a virtuous man and a good Catholic, was called to take up that eastern crown of Constantine, which Zeno and Anastasius had soiled with the iniquities and perfidies of forty years.
At Bederiana, on the borders of Thrace and Illyria, there had lived three young men, Zimarchus, Ditybiotus, and Justin. Under pressure of misfortune they deserted the plough, and sought a livelihood elsewhere. They started on foot, their clothes packed on their backs, no money in their purses, with a loaf in their knapsacks. They came to Byzantium and enlisted. Twenty years of age and well grown, they attracted the notice of the emperor Leo I.: he enrolled them among his life-guards. Justin served as captain in the Isaurian war. For some unknown fault he was condemned to death by his general, and the next day was to be executed. The general, says Procopius, was changed by a vision which he saw that night. Under Anastasius, Justin rose to the rank of senator, patrician, and commander of the imperial guard. On the death of Anastasius, the eunuch Amantius, who was lord chamberlain, and had been up to that time all powerful, sent for Justin, and gave him great sums of money to get the voice of the soldiers and the people, for a creature of his own, named Theocritus, in whose name he intended to rule. Justin distributed the money in his own name, and on the 9th July was proclaimed emperor by army and people. He was sixty-eight years old, and, if Procopius may be believed, could not even write his own name, at least in Latin. But he was of long experience, and admirable in the management of affairs. His wife was named Lupicina, of barbarian birth.
Justin, in the first year of his service, had bought her as a slave, and married her. When he became emperor he crowned her as empress, and with the applause of the people gave her the name of Euphemia. He had a nephew born at Tauresium, a village of Dardania, near Bederiana. He was called Uprauda in his own land; his father was Istock, his mother Vigleniza. The Romans changed these Teuton names to Justinian, Sabbatius, and Vigilantia.
Uprauda, the Upright, was the future emperor Justinian.
The accession of Justin was received with universal joy; and the new emperor at once sent a high officer, Gratus, count of the sacred consistory, to announce it to Pope Hormisdas, with a letter in which he said that "John, who had succeeded as bishop of Constantinople, and the other bishops a.s.sembled there from various regions, having written to your Holiness for the unity of the churches, have earnestly besought us also to address our imperial letters to your Beat.i.tude. We entreat you, then, to a.s.sist the desires of these most reverend prelates, and by your prayers to render favourable the divine majesty to us and the commonwealth, the government of which has been entrusted to us by G.o.d."[101]
The count Justinian also wrote to Pope Hormisdas that "the divine mercy, regarding the sorrows of the human race, had at length brought about this time of desire. Thus I am free to write to your apostolate, our Lord, the emperor, desiring to restore the churches to unity. A great part has been already done. It only requires to obtain the consent of your Beat.i.tude respecting the name of Acacius. For this reason his majesty has sent to you my most particular friend Gratus, a man of the highest rank, that you might condescend to come to Constantinople for the restoration of concord, or at least hasten to send bishops. .h.i.ther, for the whole world in our parts is impatient for the restoration of unity."[102]
The result was that Pope Hormisdas held a council at Rome in 518, at which all that had been done by his predecessors, the Popes Simplicius, Felix, Gelasius, and Symmachus, was carefully reviewed, and all present decreed that the eastern Church should be received into communion with the Apostolic See, if they condemned the schismatic Acacius, entirely effacing his name, and also expunged from the diptychs Euphemius and Macedonius, as involved in the same guilt of schism. And a pontifical legation was then named to carry out the desire of the council, and they bore with them an instruction, from which they might not depart by a hair"s-breadth.[103]
The Pope wrote letters to the emperor, to the empress, to the count Justinian, especially to the bishop of Constantinople, recommending his legates, and exhorting the bishop to complete the work which was begun by condemning Acacius and his followers; also to the archdeacon Theodosius and the clergy of Constantinople.[104] He points out especially that he wants nothing new, or unusual, or improper, for Christian antiquity had ever avoided those who had a.s.sociated with persons condemned; whoever teaches what Rome teaches, must also condemn what Rome condemns; whoever honours what the Pope honours, must likewise detest what he detests. A perfect peace admits of no division. The worship of one and the same G.o.d can only hold its truth in the unity of confession which embodies the belief.
The papal legates were received honourably on their journey, and found the bishops in general disposed to sign the formulary issued by the Pope. In March, 519, they came to Constantinople, where they found the greatest readiness. The patriarch John took the formulary, and gave it the form of a letter, which seemed to him more honourable than a formulary such as those who had fallen would sign. He prefixed to the doc.u.ment which the Pope required to be subscribed the following preface:
"Brother most dear in Christ, when I received the letters of your Holiness, by the n.o.ble count Gratus, and now by the bishops Germa.n.u.s and John, the deacons Felix and Dioscorus, the priest Blandus, I rejoiced at the spiritual charity of your Holiness, in bringing back the unity of G.o.d"s most sacred churches, according to the ancient tradition of the fathers, and in hastening to reject those who tear to pieces Christ"s reasonable flock. Be then a.s.sured that, as I have written to you, I am in all things one with you in the truth. All those rejected by you as heretics I also reject for the love of peace. For I accept as one the most holy churches of G.o.d, yours of elder, and this of new Rome; yours the See of the Apostle Peter, and this of the imperial city, I define to be one. I a.s.sent to all the acts of the four holy councils--that is, of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon--done for the confirmation of the faith and the state of the Church, and suffer nothing of their good judgments to be shaken; but I know that those who have endeavoured to disturb a single iota of their decrees have fallen from the holy, universal, and apostolical Church; and using plainly your own right words, I declare by this present writing,"[105] &c.
This is the preface given to his letter by the patriarch John; he then adds the formulary issued by the Pope from his council in Rome as the terms of restored communion between the East and West.
"The first condition of salvation is to maintain the rule of a right faith, and to deviate no whit from the tradition of the fathers; because the decree of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be pa.s.sed over, in which He says, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church ". These words are proved by their effect in deed, because the Catholic religion is ever kept inviolate in the Apostolic See. Desiring, therefore, not to fall from this faith, and following in all thing the const.i.tutions of the fathers, we anathematise all heresies, but especially the heretic Nestorius, formerly bishop of Constantinople, condemned in the Council of Ephesus by Coelestine, Pope of Rome, and the venerable Cyril, bishop of Alexandria; and together with him we anathematise Eutyches and Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria, condemned in the holy Council of Chalcedon, which we follow and embrace with veneration, which followed the holy Nicene Council, and set forth the apostolic faith. To these we join Timotheus the parricide, surnamed Ailouros, and anathematise him, condemning in like manner Peter of Alexandria, his disciple and follower in all things; so also we anathematise Acacius, formerly bishop of Constantinople, who became their accomplice and follower, and those who persevere in communion and partic.i.p.ation with them; for whoever embraces the communion of condemned persons shares their judgment. In like manner we condemn and anathematise Peter of Antioch, with all his followers. Hence we approve and embrace all the letters of St. Leo, Pope of Rome, which he wrote in the right faith.
Therefore, as aforesaid, following in all things the Apostolic See, we preach all which it has decreed; and therefore I trust to be with you in that one communion which the Apostolic See proclaims, in which the solidity of the Christian religion rests entire and perfect,[106] promising that these who in future are severed from the communion of the Catholic Church, that is, who do not in all things agree with the Apostolic See, shall not have their names recited in the sacred mysteries. But if I attempt in aught to vary from this my profession, I declare that by my own condemnation I partake with those whom I have condemned. I have subscribed with my own hand to this profession, and directed it in writing to thee, Hormisdas, my holy and most blessed brother, and Pope of Great Rome, by the above-named venerable bishops, Germa.n.u.s and John, the deacons Felix and Dioscorus, the priest Blandus."
The names of Acacius, Fravita, Euphemius, and Timotheus, four bishops of Constantinople, also of the emperors Zeno and Anastasius, who reigned from 474 to 518 (if we include a few months of Basiliscus), were erased from the diptychs in the presence of the legates. After that, at the instance of the emperor, the other bishops, the abbots, and the senate had signed the formulary, a solemn service was celebrated, to the great joy of the people, in the Cathedral on Easter eve, the 24th March, to mark the act of reconciliation, and not the least disturbance took place. The official narration[107] of the five legates to Pope Hormisdas records the enthusiasm with which they were received at Constantinople. "From the palace we went to the church with the vast crowd. No one can believe the exultation of the people, nor doubt that the Divine Hand was there, bestowing such unity on the world. We signify to you that in our presence the name of the anathematised prevaricator, Acacius, was struck out of the diptychs, as likewise that of the other bishops who followed him in communion. So also the names of Anastasius and Zeno. By your prayers peace was restored to the minds of Christians: there is one soul, one joy, in the whole Church; only the enemy of the human race, crushed by the power of your prayer, is in mourning."
The emperor Justin wrote to Pope Hormisdas:
"Most religious Father, know that what we have so long earnestly sought to effect is done. John, the bishop of New Rome, together with his clergy, agrees with you. The formulary which you ordered, which is in agreement with the council of the most holy Fathers, has been subscribed by him. In accordance with that formulary, the mention at the divine mysteries of the prevaricator Acacius, formerly bishop of this city, has been forbidden for the future, as well as of the other bishops who either first came against the apostolic const.i.tutions, or became successors of their error, and remained unrepentant to death. And since all our realm is to be admonished to imitate the example of the imperial city, we have directed everywhere our princely commands, so great is our desire to restore the peace of the Catholic faith to our commonwealth, to gain for my subjects the divine protection. For those whom the same realm contains, the same worship enlightens, what greater blessing can they have than to venerate with one mind laws of no human origin, but proceeding from the Divine Spirit? Let your Holiness pray that the divine gift of unity, so long laboured for by us, may be perpetually preserved."[108]
Thus history tells us that, in the year 484, Acacius, bishop of Constantinople, being condemned by Pope Felix, answered by striking the name of Pope Felix out of the diptychs, and that, in the year 519, the name of Acacius was erased from the diptychs in his own church; that his own successor not only gave up his memory, but, together with 2500 bishops,[109] signed a formulary which attributes to the Roman See the words of our Lord to St. Peter, which declares "that the Catholic religion is ever kept inviolate in the Apostolic See," "in which the solidity of the Christian religion rests entire and perfect," and which lays down the rule that whoever does not live and die in the communion of the Roman See has no claim to commemoration in the Church.
Let us now shortly review the facts which have pa.s.sed under our notice since St. Leo returned from his interview with the pirate Genseric in the year 455.
In that fatal year the Theodosian house became extinct in the West so far as government was concerned. Valentinian"s miserable widow, daughter of the eastern, wife of the western, emperor, during a short two months the prey of her husband"s murderer, became with her daughters the captive of the Vandal freebooter, and saw the elder compelled to marry his son Hunnerich, the future persecutor of the Church. Twenty years succeed in which emperors are enthroned and pa.s.s like shadows, until the Herule general Odoacer, commanding for the time the Teuton mercenaries, deposes the last imperial phantom, Romulus Augustulus, and rules Rome and Italy with the t.i.tle of Patricius. The western emperor is suppressed.
In 457, the Theodosian house becomes extinct in the East by the death of the emperor Marcian, before whom the heiress of the empire, St. Pulcheria, granddaughter of the great Thedosius, had died in 453. He was succeeded by Leo, a soldier of fortune, but an orthodox emperor, who supported St. Leo.
The emperor Leo reigned until 474, and after a few months, in which his child grandson, Leo II., nominally reigned, the eastern crown was taken by Zeno and held till 491, with the exception of twenty months in which Basiliscus, a successful insurgent, was in possession. As Zeno had reigned in virtue of being husband of the princess Ariadne, daughter of Leo I., so Anastasius, in 491, in the words of the Greek chronicle, "succeeded to his wife and the empire," and he reigned twenty-seven years, to 518.
During this whole period, from the death of the emperor Leo I. in 474 to that of the emperor Anastasius in 518, the political state of the East and West was most perilous to the Church. In the East, the three sovereigns, Zeno, Basiliscus, and Anastasius, were unsound in their belief, treacherous in their action, scandalous in their life. The Popes addressed with honour, as the vice-gerents of divine power, men whom, as to their personal character, they must have loathed. Their government, moreover, was disastrous to their subjects--a tissue of insurrections, barbaric invasion, and devastation; at home, civil corruption of every kind.
In the West, Teuton conquerors had taken possession of the Roman empire.
The Herule Odoacer had been put to death in 493 by the Ostrogoth Theodorick, who, like Odoacer before him, reigned with cognisance and approbation of the eastern emperor for thirty-three years. Both Odoacer and Theodorick were Arians; so also Genseric and his son Hunnerich, who ruled the former Roman provinces in Africa; so the Visigoths in southern France and Spain; so the Burgundians at Lyons. One conquering race only, that of the Franks, was not Arian, but pagan, until the conversion of Clovis, in 496, gave to the West one sovereign, Catholic and friendly to the Pope. We have seen in what terms Pope Anastasius welcomed his baptism. The population in the old Roman provinces which remained faithful to the Catholic religion was a portion of the old proprietors, such as had not been dispossessed by the successive confiscations and redistributions of land under the victorious northern invaders, and the poor, whether dwelling in cities or cultivating the soil. And these looked up everywhere to their several bishops for support and encouragement under every sort of trial.
All men were sorted under two divisions in the vast regions for which Stilicho had fought and conquered in vain: the one division was Arian and Teuton, the other Catholic and Roman. And as the several Catholic people looked to their bishops, so all these bishops looked to the Pope; and St.
Avitus expressed every bishop"s strongest conviction when he said, writing in the name of them all, "In the case of other bishops, if there be any lapse it may be restored; but if the Pope of Rome is endangered, not one bishop, but the episcopate itself will seem to be shaken".
When the western emperor was suppressed the Pope became locally subject for about fourteen years to the Arian Odoacer, and then for a full generation to the Arian Theodorick. The latter soon found, by a calculation of interest, that the only way to rule Italy and the adjoining territories which his conquering arms had attached to Italy was by maintaining civil justice and equality among all his subjects. He took two of the n.o.blest Romans, Boethius and Ca.s.siodorus, for his friends and counsellors, and in the letters of the latter, from about the year 500 to the end of Theodorick"s reign, we possess most valuable information as to the way in which Theodorick governed. Odoacer would seem likewise, during the years of his government until he was shut up in Ravenna, to have followed a like policy. But that the position of the Pope under Odoacer and Theodorick was one of great difficulty and delicacy no one can doubt. Gelasius speaks of his having had to resist Odoacer "by G.o.d"s help, when he enjoined things not to be done".[110] And in 526 Pope John I. paid with his life, in the dungeon of Ravenna, the penalty for not having satisfied the Arian exactions of Theodorick in the eastern emba.s.sy imposed upon him.
I mention these things very summarily, having already given them with more or less detail, but I must needs recur to them because, in weighing the transactions which the schism of Acacius brought about, it is essential to bear in mind throughout the embarra.s.sed and subject political situation in which all the Popes concerned with that schism found themselves.
Within seven years after the western emperor had been suppressed, and the overlordship of the East been acknowledged by the Roman senate as well as the Teuton conqueror, what happened?
A bishop of Constantinople, as able and popular as he was unscrupulous, had established a mental domination over the eastern emperor Zeno. He reigned in the utmost sacerdotal pomp at Constantinople; he beheld Old Rome sunk legally to the mere rank of a munic.i.p.al city, and the See of St. Peter in it subject to an Arian of barbaric blood. He thought the time was come for the bishop of the imperial city to emanc.i.p.ate himself from the control of the Lateran Patriarcheium. Having gained great renown by his defence of the Council of Chalcedon against the usurper Basiliscus, having denounced at Rome the misdeeds and the heresy of the Eutychean who was elected by that party at Alexandria, and having so been high in the trust of Pope Simplicius, he turned against both Pope and Council. He set up two heretics as patriarchs--Peter the Stammerer, the very man he had denounced, at Alexandria, and Peter the Fuller at Antioch. He composed a doctrinal statement, called the "Form of Union," which, by the emperor"s edict, was imposed on the eastern bishops. It was a scarcely-veiled Eutychean doc.u.ment. He called to his aid all the jealousy which Nova Roma felt for her elder sister, all the pride which she felt for the exaltation of her own bishop. If he succeeded in maintaining his own nominees in the two original patriarchates of the East, he succeeded at the same time in subjecting them to his own see. He crowned that series of encroachments which had advanced step by step since the 150 bishops of the purely eastern council held at Constantinople just a hundred years before set the exaltation of the imperial city on a false foundation. In fact, if this his enterprise succeeded, he obtained the realisation of the 28th canon, which Anatolius attempted to pa.s.s at Chalcedon, and which Pope Leo had overthrown. But most of all, both in the government of the Church and in the supreme magisterium, the determination of the Church"s true doctrine, he deposed the successor of St. Peter, and but one single step remained, to which all his conduct implied the intention to proceed. For the logical basis of that conduct was the a.s.sertion that, as the bishop of Rome had been supreme when, and because, Rome was the capital of the empire, so when Constantinople had succeeded Rome as capital, her bishop also succeeded to the spiritual rights of the Primacy.
We may sum up the attempt of Acacius in a single word: the denial that the Pope had succeeded to the universal Pastorship of St. Peter.
This, then, was the point at issue, and when the western emperor was suppressed, and the overlordship of the eastern emperor acknowledged, the Pope was deprived of all temporal support, and left to meet the attack of Acacius in the naked power of his apostolate. From the year 483, when the deeds of Acacius led to his excommunication, followed by the schism, to its termination in 519, the Popes, being subjects of Arian sovereigns, who were likewise of barbaric descent, braved the whole civil power of the eastern emperors, as well as the whole ecclesiastical influence of the bishops of Constantinople. Not only were Zeno and Anastasius unorthodox, but likewise they were bent on increasing the influence of that bishop whom they nominated and controlled. The sovereigns of the East had been able, even by a simple practice of Byzantine etiquette, to put their own bishop in a position of determining influence over the whole eastern episcopate. For we learn from the instruction of Pope Hormisdas to his legates that it was the custom for every bishop to be presented to the emperor by the bishop of Constantinople. The Pope most strictly enjoins his legates not to submit to this. The effect of such a rule upon the eastern bishops who frequented the court of an absolute sovereign exhibits another cause of that perpetual growth which accrues to the bishop of the imperial city.
Every human power, every conjunction of circ.u.mstances, seemed to be against the Popes in this struggle. While the East was thus in hostile hands, under emperors who were either secretly or avowedly heretical, the West was under Arian domination. Italy was ruled from 493 to 526 by a man of great ability. Few rulers have surpa.s.sed Theodorick either in success as a warrior or in political skill. He had, further, enlaced the contemporary rulers in the various countries of the West in ties of relationship with himself. He had married Andefleda, sister of Clovis; he gave Theudigotha, one of his own daughters by a concubine, to Alaric of Toulouse, king of the Visigoths, and another, Ostrogotha, to Sigismund, king of the Burgundians, at Lyons. Even before he had conquered Odoacer, in 493, he was in strict alliance with the king of the Vandals in Africa, to whom he gave his sister Amalafrieda to wife, and her daughter Amalaberga to the king of the Thuringians. He solicited the royal t.i.tle in 496 by an emba.s.sy to Anastasius, and the result of that emba.s.sy was that the chief man in it, Faustus, patrician and senator, when he returned to Rome, contrived to raise a schism in the clergy itself against Pope Symmachus. This schism was the greatest difficulty which the Pope in all this period encountered.
Theodorick in political talent and warlike genius reminds historians of Charlemagne: but instead of having that monarch"s faith, he was an Arian.
His equal treatment of Arian and Catholic was a carefully thought-out policy; nor did he scruple at the very end of his career to sacrifice even the very life of the Pope to his political schemes. He favoured the senate of Rome in its corporate capacity; he favoured individual senators, but always as instruments of his own absolute rule, the key to which was to unite the use of the Roman mind in administration with the Gothic arm in action. When the end of the schism came, he had married his only child Amalasunta, the heiress of his kingdom, to Eutharic, who in the first year of the emperor Justin was consul of Rome with that prince, and nominated by him.
On what, then, did the Pope rely? On one thing only--that in the inmost conscience of the Church, in East and West, he was recognised as St.
Peter"s successor; that upon everyone who sat in the Apostolic See had descended the mighty inheritance, the charge which no man could execute except he were empowered by divine command and sustained by divine support.
For as it required G.o.d to utter the words, "Upon this rock I will build My Church"; "If thou lovest Me, feed My sheep"; "Confirm thy brethren "; so it no less required G.o.d to enable any man to fulfil that charge. But how when it comes to a succession of men? How many families can show a continuous succession of three temporal rulers equally great? Can any family show four such? Can anyone calculate the power which maintains such a succession through centuries?
Here, after four full centuries, in that one belief the seven next successors of St. Leo--Hilarus, Simplicius, Felix, Gelasius, Anastasius, Symmachus, and Hormisdas--stood as one man. Their counsels did not vary.
Their resolve was one. Their course was straight. In Leo"s time the earth reeled beneath the tread of Attila, the city groaned beneath Genseric"s hoof. And now three heretics--despots, and ign.o.ble despots, if ever such there were--filled the sole imperial throne. Arians, closely connected by family ties and identical interests, divided the West among them. The seven Popes sat on at the Lateran in the palace which Constantine had given them, and said Ma.s.s in the church which he had built for them. Three of his degenerate successors tried every art against them and failed. During twenty years of this time, from 476 to 496, no ruler small or great acknowledged the Catholic faith. The East was Eutychean, the West Arian. At length St. Remigius baptised the Frankish chief as first-born of the Teuton race in the Catholic faith of the Holy Trinity, and the Pope at Rome gave utterance as a father to his joy. The end was that the schism was terminated on the part of the bishop, the heir of the seat and the ambition of Acacius, by the prince, by his n.o.bles, among them the legislator who was to be Justinian, and by 2500 bishops throughout the East, acknowledging in distinct terms that one unique authority on which the Popes had rested throughout the contest. They declared solemnly, in celebrating the holiest mystery of the Christian faith, that the word of the Lord cannot be pa.s.sed over, saying, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church". They added that the course of five hundred years had exemplified the fact "that the solidity of the Christian religion rests entire and perfect in the Apostolic See". The rebellion of Acacius in 483 drew forth this confession from his successor, John II., in 519.
The seven successors of St. Leo stood as one man. No variation in their language or their conduct can be found. Not so the seven successors of Anatolius at Constantinople. That bishop, who had seen himself foiled by the vigour and sagacity of St. Leo at the Council of Chalcedon, lived afterwards on good terms with him, and died in 458, in his lifetime. He was succeeded by Gennadius, who, during the thirteen years of his episcopate, was faithful both to the creed which St. Leo had preserved and to the dignity of the Apostolic See. He was followed by Acacius, who occupied the see from 471 to 489. There was some quality in Acacius which gained the favour of princes. He had charmed at once the old emperor Leo I.; but Zeno, whose influence first made him bishop, afterwards followed all his teaching. He had also gained a renown for orthodoxy by refusing the attempt of Basiliscus to make the imperial will a rule of Church doctrine.
It was when his stronger mind had mastered Zeno that he began the desperate attempt against the doctrine and discipline of the Apostolic See which has been our chief subject. But when he died in 489, his successor Fravita at once renounced the position which he had taken up by asking the recognition of Pope Felix and restoring his name in the diptychs. It is true that in his conduct he was double-dealing, and, while he sought for the Pope"s recognition, parleyed with the heretical patriarch of Alexandria. But he died in three months, and was succeeded by Euphemius, who likewise repudiated the act of Acacius, and earnestly sought reconciliation with the Pope, while he was unwilling to fulfil the condition of it--that he should erase the name of Acacius from the diptychs. The six years" episcopate of Euphemius was one long contest with the treachery and persecution of the emperor Anastasius, who at last, by help of the resident council, was able to depose him. He placed Macedonius in his stead, who again sought to be reconciled with the Pope, but only would not pay the price of renouncing the person, as he fully renounced the conduct, of Acacius. During fifteen years, from 496 to 511, as Euphemius had resisted the covert heresy of Anastasius, so did Macedonius, and, like him, he fell at last before the enmity of the emperor. Upon the deposition of Macedonius, the emperor obtained the election of Timotheus, who during seven years was his docile instrument. When he died in 518, the bishop John was elected, whose great desire was the restoration of unity, with the maintenance of the faith of Chalcedon. By side of the seven Popes succeeding St. Leo put the seven bishops of the emperor"s city. We find two--the first and the last--Gennadius and John, blameless. The second, Acacius, author of all the evil in a schism of thirty-five years. The third, the fourth, and the fifth shrink from the deed of Acacius; and two of them are deposed by the emperor, while his people respect and cherish their memory. The sixth is a mere tool of the emperor.
Four eastern emperors occupy the sixty years from Marcian to Justin. Three of them are of the very worst which even Byzantium can show. Their reply to the appeal of the Pope to "the Christian prince and Roman emperor" was to betray the faith and sacrifice Rome to Arian occupation.
But when we turn from the bishops and emperors of the eastern capital to the seats of the ancient patriarchs, to the Alexandria of Athanasius and Cyril, to the Antioch of Ignatius, Chrysostom, and Eustathius, no words can express the division, the scandals, the excesses, which the Eutychean spirit, striving to overthrow the Council of Chalcedon, showed during those sixty years. With this spirit Acacius played to stir up the eastern jealousy against the Apostolic See of the West, and he found a most willing coadjutor in the eastern emperor, the more so because that See was no longer locally situated in his domain. The chance of Acacius lay throughout in the pride of that monarch who was become the sole inheritor of the Roman name, as Pope Felix reminded him, and who would fain see Nova Roma the centre of ecclesiastical rule, as it was become the head of the diminished empire. Anastasius, after Zeno, was still more swayed by these motives than his predecessor.
But here we touch the completeness of the success which followed the trust placed in their apostolate by the seven immediate successors of St. Leo. In proportion as Rome became in the temporal order a mere munic.i.p.al city, the sacerdotal authority of its bishop came out into clearer light. Three times in the fifth century Rome was mercilessly sacked--in 410, in 455, in 472.
Its senators were carried into slavery, its population diminished. The finishing stroke of its ignominy may be said to be the deposition, by a barbarian _condottiere_, of the poor boy whose name, repeating in connection the founder of the city with the founder of the empire, seemed to mock the mortal throes of the great mother. But this lessening of the secular city, so far from lessening the authority of the spiritual power, reveals to all men, believers or unbelievers, that the pontificate, whose seat is locally in the city, has a life not derived from the city. Rome"s temporal fall exhibits in full the intangible spiritual character of the pontificate. If St. Peter had to any seemed to rule because he was seated on the pedestal of the Caesarean empire, when that empire fell the Apostle alone remained to whom Christ gave the charge, whom He invested with the "great mantle".[111] The bishop of the city in which an Arian Ostrogoth ruled supreme as to temporal things was acknowledged by the head of the empire, from whom the Ostrogoth derived his t.i.tle, as the person in whom our Lord"s word--the creative word which founds an empire as it makes a world--was accomplished, had been during five hundred years accomplished, would be for ever accomplished.[112]
The malice of Acacius largely led to this result. His attack was the prelude to the sifting of the Pope"s prerogative during thirty-five years: its sifting by a rival at Constantinople, by the eastern bishops, by the eastern emperor, who had now also become the sole Roman emperor; and the sifting was followed by a full acknowledgment. Nothing but this hostile conduct would have afforded so indubitable a proof of the thing impugned.
While the ancient patriarchates which had formed the substructure of the triple dais on which the Apostolic See rested were falling into irretrievable confusion, while the new State-made patriarch at Constantinople was trying to nominate and, if he could, to consecrate his elders and superiors at Alexandria and Antioch, who descended from Peter, the essential prerogative of the Apostolic See itself came forth into full light. The bishops at Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and every other city in the world would be great or small in influence according to the greatness or smallness of their city. If the city fell altogether, the see would fall. Its life was tied to the city. But it was not so with that pontificate on which the Church was built. There and there only the living power was given by Christ to a man: not local, nor limited, nor transitory. This was the great truth which the Acacian schism helped to establish in the minds of men, and which was proclaimed in that Nova Roma where Acacius had refused the judgment of Pope Felix, and had tried to put himself on an equality. As a result, in the terms of union which have been above recited, the action of Acacius has had the honour to condemn the rebellion of Photius three hundred years before it arose, and every other rebellion which has imitated that of Photius.