The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I

Acacius had now been eleven years bishop. He had gained at once the emperor Leo; he had appeared to defend the Council of Chalcedon when Basiliscus attacked it; he had further gained mastery over Zeno; but, more than all this, he had seen Rome sink into what to eastern eyes must have seemed an abyss. St. Leo had compelled Anatolius to give up the canons he so much prized; since then northern barbarians had twice sacked Rome, and Ricimer's most cruel host of adventurers had reaped whatever the Vandal Genseric had left. If there was a degradation yet to be endured it would be that a Herule soldier of fortune should compel a Roman senate to send back the robes of empire to Constantinople, and be content to live under a Patricius, sprung from one of the innumerable Teuton hordes, and sanctioned by the emperor of the East; and Acacius would not forget that in the councils of that emperor he was himself chief.

If New Rome held the second rank because the Fathers gave the first rank to Old Rome, in that it was the capital, what was the position of New Rome and its bishop when Old Rome had ceased in fact to be a capital at all? At that moment – thirty years after St. Leo had confirmed the greatest of eastern councils and been greeted by it as the head of the Christian faith – the Rome in which he sat had been reduced to a mere municipal rank, and its bishop, with all its people, lived under what was simply a military government commanded by a foreign adventurer. Odoacer at Ravenna was master of the lives and liberties of the Romans, including the Pope.

Acacius had had this spectacle for some years before him, when Pope Felix, succeeding Pope Simplicius, called him to account for entirely reversing the conduct which he had pursued at the time when Basiliscus had usurped the empire. Then he defended the Council of Chalcedon and its doctrine; then he denounced to the Pope Peter the Stammerer as a heretic and a man of bad life, and had called for his condemnation and obtained it. He had now taken upon himself not even to ask from the Pope this man's absolution, but to absolve himself the very heretic he had caused to be condemned, and to put him into the see of Alexandria, with the rejection of the bishop legitimately elected, and approved at Rome, and to compose for the emperor a doctrinal decree, which he subscribed himself first as the first of the patriarchs, and was compelling all other bishops to sign under pain of deprivation; when, behold, St. Leo's third successor called him to account in exactly the same terms as St. Leo would have used, and required him to meet at Rome the accusation brought against him by John Talaia, a duly elected patriarch of Alexandria, just as St. Julius, a hundred and forty years before, had invited the accusing bishops at Antioch to meet St. Athanasius before his tribunal. He who resided in a state only second to the emperor in the real capital of the empire to go to a city living in durance under the northern barbarians, and submit to the judgment of one whose own tribunal was in captivity to such masters!

But, on the other hand, Pope Felix spoke to the emperor as none but popes have ever spoken. He called him his son, but he required from him filial obedience. Above all he spoke in one character, and in one alone – as the heir of that St. Peter whom the voice of the Lord had set over His Church; he spoke from Rome, not because it was or had been capital of the empire, but because it was St. Peter's See, and precisely because he succeeded St. Peter in his apostolate.

The respective action, therefore, of Pope Felix on one side, and of Acacius on the other, brought to an issue the most absolute of contradictions. The Pope claimed obedience, as a superior, from Acacius. When that obedience was refused, he exerted his authority as superior, and degraded Acacius both from his rank as bishop, and from Christian communion. And a special token of that sentence was to order his name to be removed from the diptychs, and to enjoin the people of his own diocese to hold no communion with him, on pain of incurring a like penalty with him. Acacius answered by practically denying the Pope's authority to do any such act. He asserted himself to be his equal by removing the Pope's name from the diptychs. There could be no more striking denial of any such authority as the claim to inherit Peter's universal pastorship, than to treat the Pope himself as, in virtue of that pastorship, he had treated Acacius.

Even apart from this, the conduct of Acacius carried with it a double denial of the Pope's authority: a denial that he was the supreme judge of faith; and a denial that he was the supreme maintainer of discipline in its highest manifestation, the order of the hierarchy itself.

He denied that the Pope was the supreme judge of faith, by drawing up a formulary of doctrine, which he induced the emperor to promulgate by imperial decree; and this independently of what doctrine that formulary might contain. Further, he did this by supporting two persons judged to be heretical by the Holy See – Peter the Fuller at Antioch, Peter the Stammerer at Alexandria. He denied that the Pope was the supreme maintainer of discipline, by making the two great sees of the East and South subordinate to himself. As the Pope expressed it in his sentence, he had done "nefarious things against the whole Nicene constitution," of which the Pope was special guardian. In fact, his conduct was an imitation of that pursued in the preceding century by Eusebius of Nicomedia, by Eudoxius, and all their party. It was even carried out to its full completion. The emperor was made the head of the Church, on condition of his leading it through the bishop of Constantinople. Acacius put together the canon of the Council of 381, which said that the bishop of New Rome should hold the second rank in the episcopate, because his city is New Rome, with the canon attempted to be passed at Chalcedon, and cashiered by St. Leo, that the fathers gave its privileges to Old Rome because it was the imperial city. Uniting the two, he constructed the conclusion, that as Old Rome had ceased to be the imperial city, which New Rome had actually become, the privileges of Old Rome had passed to the bishop of New Rome.

This he expressed by removing the name of the Pope from the diptychs in answer to his sentence of degradation and excommunication. As the Pope could not suffer the conduct of Acacius, without ceasing to hold the universal pastorship of St. Peter, so Acacius could not submit to it without admitting that pastorship. He denied it in both its heads of faith and government by his conduct. He embodied that denial unmistakably in removing the Pope's name from the diptychs.

To lay down a parity between the ecclesiastical privileges of the two sees, Rome and Constantinople, because their cities were both capitals, is implicitly to deny altogether the divine origin of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. That is, to deny that the Church is a divine polity at all. The conduct of Acacius was to bring that matter to an issue. The end of it will show whether he was right or wrong.

He lived for five years, from 484 to 489, strong in the emperor's support, who did everything which he suggested. And he had his part as a counsellor, as well as a bishop, in one most important transaction, which took place in this interval. The reign of Zeno was disturbed by perpetual insurrections and perils. In these Theodorick the Goth had been of great service to him, so that in this year, 484, Zeno had made him consul at Rome. But Theodorick afterwards thought that Zeno had treated him very ill. He marched upon Constantinople: Zeno trembled on his throne. Something had to be done. What was done was to turn Theodorick's longing eyes upon the land possessing "the hapless dower of beauty".46 Zeno commissioned him to turn Odoacer out, and to take his place. In 489, Theodorick led the great mass of his people into Italy, at the suggestion, and with the warrant of, the man whom Pope Felix had appealed to as his son, the Roman emperor and Christian prince. And so, as an emperor and a bishop of Constantinople, a hundred years before, had led the Gothic nation into the Arian heresy, under the belief that it was the Christian faith, another emperor of Constantinople and another bishop turned that Gothic nation upon the Roman mother and the See of Peter, regardless that they would thereby become temporal subjects of those who were possessed by the "Arian perfidy". Beside Eudoxius and Valens in history stand Acacius and Zeno; and beside Alaric, let loose with his warlike host by the younger sister on the elder in 410, stands Theodorick, commissioned, in 489, with all his people, to occupy permanently the birthplace of Roman empire.

The eastern bishops47 crouched before the emperor's power and his patriarch's intrigues, who deposed those who were not in his favour, and tyrannised over the greater number, so that many fled to the West. John Talaia himself, the expelled patriarch of Alexandria, received the bishopric of Nola from the Pope, to whom he had appealed. This continued to be the state of things during five years, from 484 to 489, when Acacius died, still under sentence of excommunication. One of the greatest bishops of his time, St. Avitus of Vienna, characterises him with the words, "Rather a timid lover than a public asserter of the opinion broached by Eutyches: he praised, indeed, what he had taken from him, but did not venture to preach it to a people still devout, and therefore unpolluted by it". Another equally great bishop, Ennodius of Ticinum – that is, Pavia – says: "He utterly surrendered the glory which he had gained, in combating Basiliscus, of maintaining the truth"; while the next Pope Gelasius charges him with intense pride; the effect of which was to leave to the Church "cause for the peaceful to mourn and the humble to weep".

But all this evil had been wrought by Acacius, and upon his death it remained to be seen how his successor would act. He was succeeded by Fravita,48 who, so far from maintaining the conduct of Acacius in excluding the name of Pope Felix from the diptychs, wished above all things to obtain the Pope's recognition. He would not even assume the government of his see without first receiving it. It was usual for patriarchs and exarchs to enter on their office immediately after election and consecration, before the recognition of the other patriarchs which they afterwards asked for by sending an embassy with their synodal letter. It seems Fravita would make no use of this right, but besought the Pope's confirmation in a very flattering letter. It would seem also that, by the death of Acacius, the emperor Zeno had been delivered from thraldom, and returned to some sentiment of justice. For he supported the letter of the new patriarch by one himself to the Pope, and it is from the Pope's extant answers49 to these two writings that we learn some of their contents. To the emperor, the Pope replies that he knows not how to return sufficient thanks to the divine mercy for having inspired him with so great a care for religion as to prefer it to all public affairs, and to consider that the safety of the commonwealth is involved in it. That, desiring to confirm the unity of the Catholic faith and the peace of the churches, he should be anxious for the choice of a bishop who should be remarkable for personal uprightness and, above all things, for affection to the orthodox truth. That the Church has received in him such a son, and that the pontiff, in whose accession he rejoices, has already given an indication of his rule in referring the beginning of his dignity to the See of the Apostle Peter. For the newly-elected pontiff acknowledges in his letter that Peter is the chief of the Apostles and the Rock of the Faith: that the keys of the heavenly mysteries have been entrusted to him, and therefore seeks agreement with the Pope. Then, after enlarging upon the misdeeds of Acacius, and his rejection of the Council of Chalcedon, and his absolution of notorious heretics, the Pope beseeches the emperor to establish peace by giving up the defence of Acacius. "I do not extort this from you – as being, however unworthy, the Vicar of Peter – by the authority of apostolic power; but, as an anxious father earnestly desiring the prosperity of a son, I implore you. In me, his Vicar, how unworthy soever, the Apostle Peter speaks; and in him Christ, who suffers not the division of His own Church, beseeches you. Take from between us him who disturbs us: so may Christ, for the preservation of His Church's laws, multiply to you temporal things and bestow eternal."

In his answer to Fravita, Pope Felix expresses the pleasure which his election gives, and the hope that it will bring about the peace of the Church. He takes his synodal letter as addressed to the Apostolic See, "through which, by the gift of Christ, the dignity of all bishops is made of one mass,"50 as a token of good-will, inasmuch as his own letter confesses the Apostle Peter to be the head of the Apostles, the Rock of the Faith, and the dispenser of the heavenly mystery by the keys entrusted to him. He is the more encouraged because the orthodox monks formed part of the embassy. But when the Pope required a pledge from them that Fravita should renounce reciting the names of Peter the Stammerer and Acacius in the church, they replied that they had no instructions on that head. For this reason the Pope delayed to grant communion to Fravita, and he exhorts him, in the rest of the letter, not to let the misdeeds of Acacius stand in the way of the Church's peace. "Inform us then, as soon as possible, on this, that God may conclude what He has begun, and that, fully reconciled, we may agree together in the structure51 of the body of Christ."

Fravita died before he received the answer of the Pope, having occupied the see of Constantinople only three months, and out of communion with the Pope.

It would seem that the first successor of Acacius as well as the emperor receded both from his act and the position which it involved. They acknowledged in their letters, as we learn from the Pope's recitation of their words, the dignity of the Apostolic See. What they were not willing to do was to give up the person of Acacius. What the subsequent patriarchs, Euphemius and Macedonius, alleged, was that he was so rooted in the minds of the people that they could not venture to condemn him by removing his name from commemoration in the diptychs.

In 490, Euphemius followed in the see of Constantinople. He was devoted to the Council of Chalcedon, and ever honoured in the East as orthodox. He replaced the Pope's name in the diptychs, and renounced communion with Peter the Stammerer, who had again openly anathematised the Council of Chalcedon; only he refused to remove from the diptychs the names of his two predecessors. Pope Felix had written, on the 1st May, 490, to the archimandrite Thalassio,52 not to enter into communion with the bishop who should succeed Fravita, even if he satisfied these demands respecting Acacius and Peter the Stammerer, unless with the express permission of the Roman See. This condition he maintained, acknowledging Euphemius as orthodox, but not as bishop, because he would not remove from the diptychs the names of two predecessors who had died outside of communion with the Roman See.

Euphemius had himself subscribed the Henotikon of Zeno, without which the emperor would never have assented to his election; but he confirmed in a synod the Council of Chalcedon. When, in April, 491, Zeno died, and through the favour of his widow, the empress Ariadne, Anastasius obtained the throne in a very disturbed empire, the patriarch long refused to set the crown on his head, because he suspected him to favour the Eutychean heresy. The empress and the senate besought him in vain. He only consented when Anastasius gave him a written promise to accept the decrees of Chalcedon as the rule of faith, and to permit no innovation in Church matters. On this condition he was crowned: but emperor and patriarch continued at variance. The emperor tried to escape from his promise in order to maintain Zeno's Henotikon, which he thought the best policy among the many factions of the East. Euphemius was in the most unhappy position with the monks, who would not acknowledge him because he was out of communion with the Pope on account of Acacius.

Pope Felix, having all but completed nine years of a pontificate, in which he showed the greatest fortitude in the midst of the severest temporal abandonment, died in February, 492. Italy then had been torn to pieces for three years by the conflict between Odoacer and Theodorick. Gondebald, king of the Burgundians, had cruelly ravaged Liguria. Then it was that bishops began to build fortresses for the defence of their peoples. The Church of Africa was in the utmost straits under the cruelty of Hunneric. Pope Gelasius succeeded on the 1st March, 492. His pontificate lasted four years and eight months; during the whole course of which his extant letters show that he was no less exposed to temporal abandonment than Felix, and no less courageous in maintaining the pastorship of Peter.

But the death of the emperor Zeno in 491, and the death of Pope Felix III. ten months afterwards, in 492, require us to make a short retrospect of the temporal condition of empire and Church at this time. Zeno, receiving the empire at the death of his young son by Ariadne, Leo II., in 474, had reigned seventeen years, if we comprise therein the twenty months during which the throne was occupied by the insurgent Basiliscus from 475 to 477, precisely at the moment when Odoacer terminated the western empire. Zeno, recovering the throne in 477, had acted as a Catholic during about four years. Pope Simplicius had warmly congratulated him on the recovery of the empire on the 8th October of that year. In 478, the Pope had thanked Acacius for informing him that the right patriarch, Timotheus Solofaciolus, had been restored at Alexandria. But from 482 all is altered. The chronicle of Zeno's reign becomes a catalogue of misfortunes. The publication of his Formulary of Union is a gross attack upon the spiritual independence of the Church. He imposes it upon the eastern bishops on pain of expulsion. He puts open heretics into the sees of Alexandria and Antioch. All this is done under the advice and instigation of Acacius, who is the real author of the Henotikon, and who completes his acts by open defiance of Pope Felix. When Zeno died he left the empire a prey to every misery. In Italy, Herules and Ostrogoths were desperately contending for the possession of the country. Barbarians beyond the Danube incessantly threatened the north-eastern frontiers. There was no truce with them but at the cost of incessant payments and every sort of degradation. Egypt and Syria were torn to pieces by the Eutychean heresy. The infamous surrender of Italy to Theodorick in 488 has been touched upon. By that the support which the Ostrogothic king had given to keep Zeno on a tottering throne, followed by the terror which his discontent had caused at Constantinople, purchased from the Roman emperor himself the sacrifice of Rome and all the land from the Alps to the sea. Such was the man with whom the Popes Simplicius and Felix had to deal. To him it was that, from a Rome which drew its breath under an Arian Herule, the commander of adventurers who sold their swords for hire, these Popes wrote those letters full of Christian charity and apostolic liberty which have been quoted.

When Zeno died in 491, he was attended to the grave by the contempt of his own wife and the malediction of the people, whom his cruelty, debauchery, and perfidy had alienated. I take from an ancient Greek document53 a note of what followed. "When Zeno died, Anastasius succeeded to his wife and the empire; and he assembled an heretical council in Constantinople on account of the holy Council of Chalcedon, in which, by subjecting Euphemius to numberless calumnies, he banished him beyond Armenia, and put in the see the most blessed Macedonius. Macedonius called an upright council, and expressly ratified the decrees of faith passed at Chalcedon; but through fear of Anastasius he passed over in silence the Henotikon of Zeno." "When now Peter the Fuller was cast out of Antioch, Palladius succeeded to the see. And when he died Flavian accepted the Henotikon of Zeno; and he expressly confirmed the three holy Ecumenical Councils, but to please the emperor he passed over in silence that of Chalcedon. Now the emperor Anastasius sent order by the tribune Eutropius to Flavian and Elias of Jerusalem to hold a council in Sidon, and to anathematise the holy Council of Chalcedon. But Elias dismissed this without effect; for which the emperor was very indignant with the patriarchs. But when Flavian returned to Antioch, certain apostate monks, vehement partisans of the folly of Eutyches, assembled a robber council, ejected and banished Flavian, and put Severus in his stead. He, called the Independent,54 set out with two hundred apostate monks from Eleutheropolis for Constantinople, muttering threats against Macedonius. Now this man without conscience had sworn to Anastasius never to move against the holy Council of Chalcedon: he broke the oath, and anathematised it with an infamous council. So the emperor Anastasius had involved Macedonius of Constantinople in many accusations and expelled him from his see, and banished him to Gangra. Not long after, having sent away both him and his predecessor Euphemius, under pretence that the patriarchs had arranged with each other to take refuge with the Goths, he slew them with the sword. But the heretic Timotheus, surnamed Kolon and Litroboulos,55 he gave to the Church as being of one mind with himself and obedient to his counsels. This man called a most impious synod, and lifted up his heel against the holy Council of Chalcedon. In agreement with Severus, they sent their synodical letters together to Jerusalem. These not being received kindled Anastasius to anger. So he banished Elias from the holy city to Evila and put John in his see, and sent thither the synodical acts of Severus and Timotheus."

The emperor Anastasius, whose dealings with the eastern patriarchs in his empire are thus described, reigned for 27 years, from 491 to 518. It is to him that, in the long contest which we are following, the four Popes, Gelasius, Anastasius, Symmachus, and Hormisdas, have to direct their letters, their exhortations, and their admonitions. During the whole of this time, from 493, when the conflict between Odoacer and Theodorick is terminated, they will have exchanged the local rule of the Arian Herule for that of the Arian Ostrogoth. All write under what a pope of our own day has called "hostile domination". They write from the Lateran Patriarcheium, not, as St. Leo I., under the guardianship of one branch of the Theodosian house at Rome to another branch at Constantinople, but to eastern emperors, the first of their line who openly assume the right to dictate to Catholics what they are to believe. Zeno, Basiliscus, and Anastasius found patriarchs, who could sanction by their subscription much greater violations of all Christian right than St. Athanasius had denounced in Constantius, and St. Basil in Valens. They found, also, five Popes in succession, living themselves "under hostile domination," who resisted their tyranny, and saved both the doctrine and the discipline of the Church. Without these Popes it is plain that the Council of Chalcedon would have been given up in the East, and the Eutychean heresy made the doctrine of the eastern Church.

We have seen the courageous act of the patriarch Euphemius in refusing absolutely to crown Anastasius, whom he suspected to be an Eutychean, until he had received a written declaration from him that he would maintain the Council of Chalcedon. In the first three years of his reign, Anastasius gained popularity by enacting wise laws, and by removing a severe and detested tax, so that, in the words of the ancient biographer of St. Theodore, "what was to become a field of destruction appeared a paradise of pleasure".56

As soon as Gelasius became Pope, Euphemius sent him, according to custom, synodal letters. He assured the Pope of his true faith. He recognised in him the divinely appointed head of the Church. We have the answer of the Pope to his letter, and as this recognition on the part of the bishop immediately following Acacius is all-important, it will be well to quote the very words which show it.57 "You have read," writes Pope Gelasius to Euphemius, "the sentence, 'Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God'; that word, for instance, by which He promised that the gates of hell should never prevail over the confession of the blessed Apostle Peter. And, therefore, you thought, with reason, because God is faithful in His words, unless He had promised to institute some such thing, He would not bring about a true fulfilment of His promise. Then you say that we, by the grace of the Divine Providence, as He (i. e., Christ) pointed out, do not fail in charity to the holy churches because Christ has placed me in the pontifical seat, not needing, as he says, to be taught, but understanding all things necessary for the unity of the Church's body. I, indeed, personally, am the least of all men, most unworthy for the office of such a see, except that supernal grace ever works great things out of small. For what should I think of myself, when the Teacher of the nations declares himself the last, and not worthy to be called an apostle. But to return to your words; if you have with truth ascertained that these gifts have been conferred on me by God, which, whatever goods they are, are gifts of God, follow then the exhortation of one who needs not to be taught, of one who, by supernal disposition, keeps watch over all things which touch the unity of the churches, and, as you assert, offers a bold resistance to the devil, the disturber of true peace and the structure which contains it. If, then, you pronounce that I am in possession of such privileges, you must either follow what you assert to be Christ's appointment, or, which God forbid, show yourself openly to resist the ordinances of Christ, or you throw out such things about me for the pleasure of making a show."58