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

A more emphatic attestation of that authority than the confession given in 519 to Pope Hormisdas by the whole Greek episcopate, and by the emperor at the head of his court, could hardly be drawn up. It settled for ever the question of right, and estopped Byzantium, whether in the person of Cæsar or of patriarch, from denial of the Pope's universal pastorship, as derived from St. Peter. We have seen that not only did Justinian, when the leading spirit in his uncle's freshly-acquired succession to the eastern empire, do his utmost to bring about this confession, but that in the first years of his reign his letter to Pope John II. reaffirmed it; and his treatment of Pope Agapetus when he appeared at Constantinople, not only as Pope, but in the character of ambassador from the Gothic king Theodatus, exhibited that belief in action. But now a state of things quite unknown before had ensued. Hitherto Rome had been the capital, of which even Constantine's Nova Roma was but the pale imitation. But the five times captured, desolate, impoverished Rome which came back under Narses to Justinian's sway, came back not as a capital, but as a captive governed by an exarch. Was the bishop of a city with its senate extinct, its patriciate destroyed, and with forty thousand returned refugees for its inhabitants, still the bearer of Peter's keys – still the Rock on which the City of God rested? Had there been one particle of truth in that 28th canon which a certain party attempted to pass at the Council of Chalcedon, and which St. Leo peremptorily annulled, a negative answer to this must now have followed. That canon asserted "that the Fathers justly gave its prerogatives to the see of the elder Rome because that was the imperial city". Rome had ceased to be the imperial city. Did the loss of its bishop's prerogatives follow? Did they pass to Byzantium because it was become the imperial city, because the sole emperor dwelt there? Thus, about a hundred years after the repulse of the ambitious exaltation sought by Anatolius, its rejection by the provident wisdom and resolute courage of St. Leo was more than justified by the course of events. St. Leo's action was based upon the constitution of the Church, and therefore did not need to be justified by events. But the Divine Providence superadded this justification, and that under circumstances which had had no parallel in the preceding five hundred years.

For when Belisarius, submitting himself to carry out the orders of an imperious mistress, deposed, as we have seen, the legitimate Pope Silverius by force in March, 537, Vigilius, in virtue of the same force, was consecrated a few days after to succeed him. The exact time of the death which Pope Silverius suffered in Palmaria is not known. But Vigilius is not recognised as lawful Pope until after his death, probably in 540. He then ascended St. Peter's seat with a blot upon him such as no pontiff had suffered before. And this pontificate lasted about fifteen years, and was full of such humiliation as St. Peter had never suffered before in his successors.

We are not acquainted with the detail of events at Rome in those terrible years, but we learn that, as Pope John I. was sent to Constantinople as a subject by Theodorick, and Pope Agapetus again as a subject by Theodatus, so Vigilius was urged by Justinian to go thither, and that after many delays he obeyed the emperor very unwillingly.

But it is requisite here to give a short summary of what Justinian had been doing in the affairs of the eastern Church from the time that Pope Agapetus, having consecrated Mennas to be bishop of Constantinople, died there in 536. After the Pope's death, Mennas proceeded to hold in May and June of that year a synod in which he declared Anthimus to be entirely deposed from the episcopal dignity, and condemned Severus and other leaders of the Monophysites. In this synod Mennas presided, and the two Roman deacons, Vigilius and Pelagius, who had been the legates of Pope Agapetus, but whose powers had expired at his death, sat next to him, but only as Italian bishops. How little the patriarch Mennas could there represent the Church's independence is shown by his words to the bishops in the fourth session: "Your charity knows that nothing of what is mooted in the Church should take place contrary to the decision and order of our emperor, zealous for the faith," while of their relation to the Pope he said: "You know that we follow and obey the Apostolic See; those who are in communion with it we hold in communion; those whom it condemns we also condemn".[139 - Mansi, viii. 969; Photius, i. 163.] Justinian, irritated by the boldness of the Monophysites, added the sanction of law to the decrees of this council, which deposed men who had occupied patriarchal sees. He used these words: "In the present law we are doing an act not unusual to the empire. For as often as an episcopal decree has deposed from their sacerdotal seats those unworthy of the priesthood, such as Nestorius, Eutyches, Arius, Macedonius, and Eunomius, and others in wickedness not inferior to them, so often the empire has agreed with the authority of the bishops. Thus the divine and the human concurred in one righteous judgment, as we know was done in the case of Anthimus of late, who was deposed from the see of this imperial city by Agapetus, of holy and renowned memory, bishop of Old Rome."[140 - Mansi, viii. 1149.]

In the intrigue of Theodora with Vigilius, Mennas took no part. He took counsel with the emperor how to maintain the Catholic faith in Alexandria against the heretical patriarch Theodosius. By the emperor's direction, ordering him to expel Theodosius, Mennas, in 537 or 538, consecrated Paul, a monk of Tabenna, to be patriarch of Alexandria. The act would appear to have been done in the presence of Pelagius, then nuncio in Constantinople, without reclamation on his part, or of the nuncios who represented Antioch and Jerusalem. Mennas in this repeated the conduct of Anatolius and Acacius in former times, who were censured, the one by St. Leo, the other by Pope Simplicius. By this event the four eastern patriarchs seemed to agree to accept the first four councils, and the unity of the Church to be quite restored, from which Alexandria had until then stood aloof; but the patriarch Paul came afterwards in suspicion of heresy and had to give way to Zoilus. Mennas was on the best terms with the emperor; he might easily have used the deposition of Silverius and the unlawful exaltation of Vigilius in 537 for increase of his own influence, had not a feeling of duty or love of peace held him back. But Vigilius also, when he came to be acknowledged, had come to realise his position and its responsibility. He was far from fulfilling the unlawful promises made to Theodora, and from favouring the Monophysites. The empress found that she had thrown away her money and failed in her intrigue. In letters[141 - Mansi, ix. 35-40.] to the emperor and to Mennas, in 540, Vigilius declared his close adherence to the acts of his predecessors, St. Leo in particular, and to the decrees in faith of the four General Councils, while he confirmed the acts of the council held by Mennas against Severus and the other Monophysite leaders.

In the meantime new dissensions threatened to agitate the whole eastern realm.[142 - Narrative drawn from Photius, i. 165-6, down to "Ferrandus," p. 232, below.] The partisans of Origen in Palestine and the neighbouring countries rose. At their head stood Theodore Askidas, archbishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, and Domitian, metropolitan of Ancyra, who had obtained, by favour of Justinian, these important sees. Ephrem, patriarch of Antioch about 540, condemned Origenism in a synod. Pelagius, being papal nuncio at Constantinople, had, together with Ephrem, patriarch of Antioch, condemned the patriarch Paul of Alexandria at Gaza. Deputies from Peter, patriarch of Jerusalem, and the orthodox monks journeyed with Pelagius to Constantinople, to present to the emperor an accusation against the Origenists. Pelagius had much influence with Justinian, and he and Mennas procured for the petitioners access to the emperor. They asked him to issue a solemn condemnation of Origen's errors. The emperor listened willingly, and issued in the form of a treatise to Mennas a still extant censure of Origen and his writings. He called upon the patriarchs to hold synods upon them. Mennas, in 543, held one in the capital, which issued fifteen anathemas against Origen.[143 - Mansi, ix. 487-537.] Theodore Askidas and Domitian, by submitting to the imperial edict and the condemnation of Origen, kept their places and secured afresh their influence, which the monks of Palestine, who were not Origenistic, felt severely. They even managed, in the interest of their party, to turn the attention of the dogmatising emperor to another question, and moved him to issue, in 544, the edict upon the Three Chapters. He thought he was bringing back the Monophysites to orthodoxy. He was really casting a new ferment into the existing agitation.

At first the patriarch Mennas was very displeased with this edict censuring in the so-called Three Chapters Theodoret, Ibas, and Theodore of Mopsuestia as Nestorians. He considered the credit of the Council of Chalcedon to be therein impeached, and declared that he would only subscribe to it after the Pope had subscribed. Afterwards, being more strongly pressed, he subscribed unwillingly, but with the reservation, confirmed to him even upon oath, that if the Bishop of Rome refused his assent his signature should be returned to him, and his subscription be regarded as withdrawn. The other eastern patriarchs also at first resisted, but finished by complying with the imperial threats, as particularly Ephrem of Antioch. Most of the bishops, accustomed to slavish subjection to their patriarchs, followed their example, and Mennas had to urge the bishops under him by every means to comply. However, many bishops complained of this pressure to the papal legate Stephen, who pronounced against the edict, which seemed indirectly to impeach the authority of the Fourth Council. He even refused communion with Mennas because he had broken his first promise and given his assent before the Pope had decided upon it. Through the whole West the writings of Theodore, Theodoret, and Ibas were little known, but the decrees of Chalcedon were zealously maintained. The edict was refused, especially in Northern Africa. It was censured by the bishop Portian in a writing addressed to the emperor, and by the learned deacon Ferrandus.

Means had been taken by fraud and force to win the whole East to consent to the edict.[144 - Hefele, ii. 790.] Mennas, patriarch of Constantinople; Ephrem, patriarch of Antioch; Peter, patriarch of Jerusalem, crouched before the tyranny of Justinian; and so also Zoilus of Alexandria, though he promised Vigilius that he would not sign the edict, afterwards subscribed it.[145 - Hergenröther, K.G., i. 344-5; Photius, i. 166.] At this point Justinian sought before everything to get the assent of the Pope, and he sent for Vigilius to Constantinople. He claimed the presence of Vigilius as his subject in virtue of the conquest of Belisarius: he meant to use this authority of Vigilius as Pope for his own purpose. Vigilius foresaw the difficulties into which he would fall. At length he left Rome in 544, before Totila began the second siege. He lingered in Sicily a year, in 546; he then travelled through Greece and Illyricum. At last he entered Byzantium on the 25th January, 547, and was welcomed with the most brilliant reception. Justinian humbly besought his blessing, and embraced him with tears. But this good understanding did not last long. Vigilius approved the conduct of his legates and refused his communion to Mennas, who, in signing the formula of Hormisdas, had bound himself to follow the Roman See, and had broken his special promise. Vigilius withdrew it also from the bishops who had subscribed the imperial edict. He and the bishops attending him saw in this edict a scheme to help the Acephali, upon whom Vigilius repeated his anathema. But Mennas feared the emperor much more than he feared the Pope, whose name he now removed from commemoration at the Mass. Vigilius, like the westerns in general, considered the edict to be useless and dangerous, as giving a pretext for seeming to abrogate the Council of Chalcedon, and also as a claim on the part of the emperor to the highest authority in Church matters. Justinian tried repeatedly his personal influence with the Pope, that also of bishops and officers of State. He even had him watched for a length of time and cut off from all approach, so that the Pope exclaimed, "If you have made me a prisoner, you cannot imprison the holy Apostle Peter". Yet the intercourse of Vigilius with eastern bishops soon convinced him that they were generally agreed with the emperor; that a prolonged resistance on his part would produce a new division between Greeks and Latins; that considerable grounds existed for the condemnation of the Three Chapters, with which, hitherto, he had not been well acquainted. So he allowed the subject to be further considered, held out a prospect of agreeing with the emperor, and readmitted Mennas to his communion, who restored the Pope's name in the liturgy. This reconciliation took place on the feast of the Princes of the Apostles, 29th June, 547.

The Pope, after further conferences with bishops present at Constantinople, seventy of whom had not signed the imperial edict, issued, on the 11th April, 548, his Judgment, directed to Mennas, of which all but fragments are lost. In it he most strongly maintained the authority of the four General Councils, especially of the fourth; put under anathema the godless writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and also his person; the letter said to be written by Ibas to Maris, which Justinian had marked as supposititious, and the writings of Theodoret, which impugned orthodoxy and the twelve anathemas of Cyril. It was his purpose to quiet excitement, satisfying the Greeks by a specific condemnation of the Three Chapters, and the Latins by maintaining the rank of the Council of Chalcedon. And he required that therewith the strife should cease. But neither side accepted the condition. The westerns, especially Dacius, archbishop of Milan, and Facundus, bishop of Hermiane, vehemently attacked his Judgment. So did many African monks. Even two Roman deacons, the Pope's own nephew Rusticus, and Sebastianus, though they began by supporting the Judgment, became very violent against the Pope, spread the most injurious reports against him, and disregarded his warnings. He deposed and excommunicated them. False reports were spread that, against the Council of Chalcedon, the Pope had condemned the persons of Theodoret and Ibas, and had gone against the decrees of his predecessors. The Pope, after the death of the empress Theodora, on the 28th June, 548, had continued by the emperor's wish at Constantinople, especially since Totila had retaken Rome in 549. He had gone to Thessalonica and returned; he tried in several letters to the bishops of Scythia and Gaul to correct their misconceptions. These, however, prevailed with the bishops of Illyria, Dalmatia, and Africa, who in 549 and 550 separated themselves from the communion of Vigilius. A thing not heard of before now occurred. The Roman Bishop stood with the Greek bishops on one side, the Latin bishops on the other, and the bewilderment increased from day to day.

In the summer of 550 the Pope and the emperor came to an agreement that a General Council should be held at which the western bishops should be present, until which all dispute about the Three Chapters, and any fresh step on the subject, should be forbidden, and in the meantime the Pope's Judgment should be returned to him. That took place at once, and preparations were made for the council. In June a council held at Mopsuestia by direction of the emperor declared that from the time of human memory the name of its former bishop, Theodore, had been erased from commemoration, and the name of St. Cyril put in. But the western bishops avoided answering the invitation to the council. The Illyrian did not come at all; the African sent as deputies Reparatus, the primate of Carthage, Firmus of Numidia, and two Byzacene bishops. These were besieged both with threats and presents; two were induced to sign the imperial edict; the other two were banished, Reparatus under charge of a political crime. While the western bishops showed still less inclination to appear, the court broke its agreement with Vigilius. A new writing against the Three Chapters was read in the palace before several bishops, and subscribed by them. Theodore Askidas, the chief contriver, and his companions, excused themselves to the Pope, who called them to account, and begged pardon, but spread the writing still more, set the emperor against Vigilius, and induced him to publish, in 551, a further edict under the name of a confession of faith. It contained, together with a detailed exposition of doctrine upon the Trinity and Incarnation, thirteen anathemas, with the refutation of different objections made by the defenders of the Three Chapters; for instance, that the letter of Ibas had been approved at Chalcedon, the condemnation of dead men forbidden, and Theodore of Mopsuestia been praised by orthodox Fathers.

The restoration of peace was thus made much more difficult, and the promise given to the Pope broken. The Pope protected himself against this violation of the agreement, by which nothing was to be done in the matter before the intended council, and considered himself released from his engagements. He saw herein the arbitrary interference of a despotic ruler anticipating the council's decision, which put in question the Church's whole right of authority, and much increased the danger of a schism. In an assembly of Greek and Latin bishops held in the Placidia palace, where he resided, he desired them to request the emperor to withdraw the proposed edict, and to wait for a general consideration of the subject, and especially for the sentence of the Latin bishops. If this was not granted, to refuse their subscription to the edict. Moreover, the See of Peter would excommunicate them. Dacius, also, archbishop of Milan, spoke in this sense. But the protest was disregarded, and Theodore Askidas, who had formed part of the assembly, went with the bishops of his party to the Church in which the edict was posted up, held solemn service there, struck out of the diptychs the patriarch Zoilus of Alexandria, who declined to condemn the Three Chapters, and proclaimed at once Apollinaris for his successor, with the consent of the weak Mennas, and in contempt of the Pope's authority. Not only now were the Three Chapters in question, but the whole right and independence of the Church's authority. Vigilius, having long warned the vain court-bishop Theodore Askidas, always a non-resident in his diocese, and having now been witness of a violence so unprecedented, put him under excommunication.

At this resistance Justinian was greatly embittered, and was inclined to imprison the Pope and his attendants. The Pope took refuge in the Church of St. Peter, by the palace of Hormisdas. He repeated with greater force his former declaration, entirely deprived Theodore Askidas, and put Mennas and his companions under ban, until they made satisfaction, on the 14th August, 551. At least the sentence was kept ready for publication. He was attended by eleven Italian and two African bishops. The emperor sent the prætor with soldiers to remove him by force. Vigilius clung to the altar, so that it was nearly pulled down with him. His imprisonment was prevented by the crowd which burst in, indignant at the ill-treatment offered to the Church's first bishop, and by the disgust of the soldiers at the gaol-work put upon them. The emperor, seeming to repent his hastiness, sent high officers of State to assure the Pope of personal security, at first with the threat to have him removed by force if he was not content with this; then he empowered the officers to swear that no ill should befal him. The Pope thereon returned to the palace of Placidia. But there, in spite of oaths, he was watched, deprived of his true servants, surrounded with paid spies, attacked with every sort of intrigue, even his handwriting forged. Then, seeing his palace entirely surrounded by suspicious persons, he risked, on the 23rd December, 551, a flight across the Bosphorus to the Church of St. Euphemia in Chalcedon, in which the Fourth Council had been held. Here, in January, 552, he published his decree against Theodore and Mennas, and was for a long time sick. When the emperor, with the offer of another oath, sent high officials to invite him to return to the capital, he replied that he needed no fresh oaths if the emperor had only the will to restore to the Church the peace which she enjoyed under his uncle Justin. He desired the emperor to avoid communion with those who lay under his ban. In his Encyclical of the 5th February, 552, he made known to all the Church what had passed, and expressed his belief and his wishes. Even in his humiliation the successor of Peter inspired a great veneration. They tried to approach him. He soon received a writing from Theodore Askidas, Mennas, Andrew, archbishop of Ephesus, and other bishops, in which they declared their adherence to the decrees of the four General Councils which had been made in agreement with the legates of the Apostolic See, as well as to the papal letters. They consented also to the withdrawal of all that had been written on the Three Chapters, and besought the Pope to pardon as well their intercourse with those who lay under his ban as the offences committed against him, in which also they claimed to have had no part. So things were brought to the condition in which they were before the appearance of the last imperial edict. Vigilius now returned from Chalcedon to Constantinople.

Mennas, who died in August, 552, was succeeded by Eutychius. He addressed himself to the Pope on the 6th January, 553, whose name had been restored by Mennas to the first place in the diptychs. Eutychius presented his confession of faith. He also proposed that a decision, in respect of the Three Chapters in accordance with the four General Councils, should be made in a meeting of bishops under the Pope's presidency. Apollinaris of Alexandria, Domnus of Antioch, Elias of Thessalonica, and other bishops subscribed this request. The Pope, in his reply of the 8th January, praised their zeal, and accepted the proposition of a council which he had before approved. Negotiations then began about its management. Here the emperor resisted the Pope's proposals in many points. He would not have the council held in Italy or Sicily, as the Pope desired, nor carry out his own proposal to summon such western bishops as the Pope named. He proposed further that an equal number of bishops should be consulted on both sides; hinting, moreover, that an equal number should be drawn from each patriarchate, while Vigilius meant an equal number from the East and the West, which he thought necessary to bring about a successful result. At last the emperor caused the council actually to meet on the 5th May, 553, under the presidency of Eutychius, with 151 bishops, among whom only six from Africa represented the West, against the Pope's will, in the secretarium of the chief church of Constantinople. First was read an imperial writing of much detail, which entered into the previous negotiations with Vigilius; then the correspondence between Eutychius and the Pope. It was resolved to invite him again. Vigilius refused to take part in the council, first on account of the excessive number of eastern bishops and the absence of most western; then of the disregard shown to his wishes. Further, he sought to preserve himself from compulsion, and maintain his decision in freedom. He had reason to fear the infringement of his dignity. Moreover, no one of his predecessors had taken personally a part in eastern councils, and Pope Celestine had forbidden his legates to enter into discussion with bishops, and appear as a party. The Pope maintained his refusal not only to the high officers of the emperor, but to an embassy from the council, at the head of which stood three eastern patriarchs. This he did, being the emperor's subject; being also in the power of an emperor who was able to appear to the eastern bishops almost the head of the Church, and to sway them as he pleased. The Pope would only declare himself ready to give his judgment apart. An account of this unsuccessful invitation was given in the council's second session of the 8th May. The western bishops still in the capital were invited to attend, but several declined, because the Pope took no part. At the third session, of the 9th May, after reading the former protocols, a confession of faith entirely agreeing with the imperial document communicated four days before was drawn up, and a special treatment of the Three Chapters ordered for another day. At the fourth session, seventy-one heretical or offensive propositions of Theodore of Mopsuestia were read and condemned. In the fifth, the opposition made to him by St. Cyril and others was considered, as well as the question whether it is allowable to anathematise after their death men who have died in the Church's communion. This was affirmed according to previous examples, and testimony from Augustine, Cyril, and others. Theodoret's writings against Cyril were also anathematised. In the sixth session, the same was done with the letter of Ibas. In the seventh session, several documents sent by the emperor were read, specially letters of Pope Vigilius up to 550, and a letter from the emperor Justin to his prefect Hypatius, in 520, forbidding that a feast to Theodore or to Theodoret should any longer be kept in the city of Cyrus. The imperial commissioner informed the council, likewise, that the Pope had sent by the sub-deacon Servusdei a letter to the emperor, which the emperor had not received, and therefore not communicated to the council. The longer Latin text of the acts also says that the emperor had commanded the Pope's name to be erased from the diptychs, without prejudice, however, to communion with the Apostolic See, which the council accepted. It held its last sitting on the 2nd June, 553, and issued fourteen anathemas in accordance with the thirteen of Justinian. There were then present 165 bishops.

The document brought to the emperor by the sub-deacon in the Pope's name, but rejected, must be what has come down to us as the Constitution of the 14th May. It had the subscription of Vigilius, of sixteen bishops – nine Italian, three Asiatic, two Illyrian, and two African – with three Roman clergy. It decidedly rejected sixty propositions drawn from the writings of Theodore; anathematised five errors as to the Person of Christ; forbade the condemnation of Theodore's person, and of the two other Chapters. If this document was really drawn up by Vigilius, who had persisted during almost six years, as the emperor admitted, in condemning the Three Chapters, it must be explained by the Pope finding his especial difficulty in the manner of terminating the matter, so that the western bishops should be entirely satisfied that the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon remained inviolate; that he purposed only to condemn errors, but spare persons; that he wished to set his refusal against the pressure of the changeable emperor and the blind submission of the Grecian bishops, without surrendering any point of faith. Many irregularities appeared in what preceded the council and took place in it. Justinian's conduct was dishonouring to the Church, and he used force to get the decrees of the Council accepted. At last Vigilius, who seems with other bishops to have been banished, gave way to the pressure, and issued a decided condemnation of the Three Chapters, in a writing to Eutychius of 8th December, 553; and in a Constitution dated 23rd February, 554, he made no mention of the council, but gave his own decision in accordance with it, and independent of it, as he had before intended. Only by degrees the council held by Eutychius obtained the name of the Fifth General Council.

In August, 554, the Pope was again on good terms with the emperor, who issued at his request the Pragmatic Sanction for Italy. Then Vigilius set out to return to Rome, but died on his way at Syracuse in the beginning of 555. He had spent seven years in the Greek capital, in a position more difficult than had ever before occurred; ignorant himself of the language; struggling to his utmost to meet the dangers which assaulted the Church from every side. Now one and now another seemed to threaten the greater evil. He never wavered in the question of faith itself, but often as to what it was opportune to do: as whether it was advisable or necessary to condemn persons and writings which the Council of Chalcedon had spared: whether to issue a judgment which would be looked upon by the Monophysites as a triumph of their cause: which for the same reason would be utterly detested by most westerns, as a supposed surrender of the Council of Chalcedon; which, instead of closing the old divisions, might create new. Subsequent times showed the correctness of his solicitude.[146 - Translated from Hergenröther's K.G., i., pp. 345-351, from p. 232, above, "at this point Justinian sought," &c., with reference also to the life of Photius.]

The patriarch Eutychius who presided at this council by the emperor's order, without the Pope, was held in great consideration by Justinian, and was consulted in his most important affairs. When Justinian had restored with the greatest splendour the still existing Church of Santa Sophia, Eutychius consecrated it in his presence on the 24th December, 563. Justinian then allotted to the service of the cathedral 60 priests, 100 deacons, 90 sub-deacons, 110 lectors, 120 singers, 100 ostiarii, and 40 deaconesses, a number which much increased between Justinian and Heraclius.

Justinian in his last years was minded to sanction by a formal decree a special doctrine which, after long resisting the Eutycheans, he had taken from them. It was that the Body of Christ was from the beginning incorruptible, and incapable of any change. He willed that all his bishops should set their hands to this decree. Eutychius was one of the first to resist. On the 22nd January, 565, he was taken by force from his cathedral to a monastery; he refused to appear before a resident council called by the emperor, which deposed him, and appointed a successor. He was banished to Amasea, where he died, twelve years afterwards, in the monastery which he had formerly governed.[147 - Hergenröther, Photius, i. 174; Rump, K.G., ix. 283.]

But Justinian had become again, by the conquest of Narses, lord of Rome and Italy, and as such, in the year 554, issued at the request of Vigilius his Pragmatic Sanction. In Italy the struggle was at an end; the land was a desert. Flourishing cities had become heaps of smoking ruins. Milan had been destroyed. Three hundred thousand are said to have perished there. Before the recal of Belisarius, fifty thousand had died of hunger in the march of Ancona. Such facts give a notion of Rome's condition. In 554, Narses returned, and his victorious host entered, laden with booty, crowned with laurels. It was his task to maintain a regular government, which he did with the title of Patricius and Commander.[148 - See Reumont, ii. 58-62; Gregorovius, i. 453-9.] The Pragmatic Sanction was intended to establish a new political order of things in Italy, which was reunited to the empire. The two supreme officials of the Italian province were the Exarch and the Prefect. The title of Exarch then came up, and continued to the end of the Greek dominion in Italy. He united in himself the military and civil authority; but for the exercise of the latter the Prefect stood at his side as the first civil officer. Obedience to the whole body of legislation, as codified by Justinian's order, was enacted. For the rest the provisions of Constantine were followed. The administration of justice was in the hands of provincial judges, whom the bishops and the nobility chose from the ranks of the latter. It was then the bishops began to take part in the courts of justice of their own cities, as well in the choice and nomination of the officers as in their supervision.[149 - Reumont, 60.] The words Roman commonwealth, Roman emperor, Roman army, were heard again. But no word was said of restoring a western emperor. Rome retained only an ideal precedence; Constantinople was the seat of empire. Rome received a permanent garrison, and had to share with Ravenna, where the heads of the Italian government soon permanently resided. Justinian's constitution found existing the mere shadow of a senate. The prefect of the city governed at Rome. There is mention made of a salary given to professors of Grammar and Rhetoric,[150 - Gregorovius, 455.] to physicians and lawyers; but it is doubtful whether this ever came into effect. The Gothic war[151 - Ibid., 456.] seems to have destroyed the great public libraries of Rome, the Palatine and Ulpian, as well as the private libraries of princely palaces, such as Boethius and Symmachus possessed. And in all Italy the war of extermination between Goths and Greeks swallowed up the costly treasures of ancient literature, save such remnant as the Benedictine monasteries were able to collect and preserve.[152 - Reumont, 61.] No building of Justinian's in Rome is known. All his work of this kind was given to Ravenna. From this time forth every new building in Rome is due to the Popes.

Small reason had the Popes to rejoice that the rule of an orthodox emperor had followed at Rome that of an Arian king. Three months after the death of Vigilius at Syracuse Justinian caused the deacon Pelagius to be elected: he had difficulty in obtaining his recognition until he had cleared himself by oath in St. Peter's of an accusation that he had hastened his predecessor's death. The confirmation of the Pope's election remained with the emperor. This permanent fetter came upon the Popes from the interference of Odoacer the Herule in 484. After Justinian's death, the Romans sent an embassy to his successor complaining that their lot had been more endurable under the dominion of barbarians than under the Greeks.

When Narses,[153 - Gregorovius, 450-2.] re-entering Rome, celebrated a triple triumph over the expulsion of barbarians from Italy, the reunion of the empire, and the Church's victory over the Arians, a contemporary historian writes that the mind of man had not power enough to conceive so many reverses of fortune, such destruction of cities, such a flight of men, such a murdering of peoples, much less to describe them in words. Italy was strewn with ruins and dead bodies from the Alps to Tarentum. Famine and pestilence, following on the steps of war, had reduced whole districts to desolation. Procopius compares the reckoning of losses to that of reckoning the sands of the sea. A sober estimate computes that one-third of the population perished, and the ancient form of life in Rome and in all Italy was extinct for ever.

But before we make an estimate of Justinian's whole action and character and their result, a subject on which we have scarcely touched has to be carefully weighed.

What was the relation between the Two Powers conceived in the mind of Justinian, expressed in his legislation, carried out in his conduct, whether to the Roman Primate or the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople in his own eastern empire, or to the whole Church when assembled in council, as at Constantinople in 553? Was he merely carrying on as emperor a relation which he had inherited from so many predecessors, beginning with Constantine, or did he by his own laws and conduct alter an equilibrium before existing, and impair a definite and lawful union by transgressing the boundaries which made it the co-operation of Two Powers.

If we look back just a hundred years before his Digest appeared, we find, in the great deed[154 - See vol. v. 281.] in which the emperors Theodosius II. and Valentinian III. convoked the Council of Ephesus, the charge which they considered to be laid upon the imperial power to maintain that union of the natural and the spiritual government on which, as on a joint foundation, the Roman State, in the judgment of its rulers, was itself built. Some of the words they use are: "We are the ministers of Providence for the advancement of the commonwealth, while, inasmuch as we represent the whole body of our subjects, we protect them at once in a right belief and in a civil polity corresponding with it".

This first and all-embracing principle of protecting all and every power which existed in the commonwealth, and maintaining it in due position, was most firmly held by Justinian. As to his own imperial authority and the basis on which it rested, he says: "Ever bearing in mind whatever regards the advantage and the honour of the commonwealth which God has entrusted to our hands, we seek to bring it to effect".[155 - Constitutio, lxxxii. 667.] As to the Two Powers themselves, he recognises them thus: "The greatest gifts of God to men bestowed by the divine mercy are the priesthood and the empire; the former ministering in divine things, the latter presiding over human things, and exerting its diligence therein. Both, proceeding from one and the same principle, are the ornament of human life. Therefore nothing will be so great a care to emperors as the upright conduct of bishops, for, indeed, bishops are ever supplicating God for emperors. But if what concerns them be entirely blameless and full of confidence in God, and if the imperial power rightly and duly adorn the commonwealth entrusted to it, an admirable agreement will ensue, conferring on the human race all that is for its good. We then bear the greatest solicitude for the genuine divine doctrine, and for the upright conduct of bishops, which we trust, when that doctrine is maintained, because through it we shall obtain the greatest gifts from God,[156 - Honestatem quam illis obtenentibus credimus.] shall be secure in the possession of those which we have, and shall acquire those which have not yet come. But all will be done well and fittingly if the beginning from which it springs be becoming and dear to God. And this we are confident will be, provided the observance of the holy canons be maintained, such as the Apostles, so justly praised and worshipped, those eye-witnesses and ministers of God the Word, have delivered down to us, and the holy Fathers have maintained and carried out."[157 - Constitutio, vi. 48.] And he proceeds to give the force of civil law to the canons concerning the election of bishops and other matters.

In another law he says, "Be it therefore enacted[158 - 119. De ecclesiasticis titulis, p. 940. Sancimus. This word in Roman law in the time of Justinian is equivalent to the English formula, "Be it enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords spiritual and temporal and the Commons in Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same". There lies in these two formulæ, expressing the supreme legislative authority, a comparison between the constitution of the lower Roman empire and the medieval constitutions established everywhere by the influence of the Church under guidance of the Popes.] that the force of law be given to the holy canons of the Church which have been set forth or confirmed by the four holy Councils; that is, by the 318 holy Fathers in the Nicene, by the 150 in that of Constantinople, by the first of Ephesus, in which Nestorius was condemned, and by Chalcedon, when Eutyches, together with Nestorius, was put under anathema. For we accept the decrees of these four synods as the Holy Scriptures, and observe their canons as laws.

"And, therefore, be it enacted according to their definitions that the most holy Pope of Old Rome is the first of all bishops, and that the most blessed archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, holds the second place after the holy Apostolic See of Old Rome, but takes precedence of all other bishops."

In the laws just quoted we see three of the most important principles which run through the acts of Justinian. The first is, that the emperor, having the whole commonwealth committed to him by God, is the guardian both of human and divine things in it, which together make up the whole commonwealth; the second is, that there are Two Powers, the human and the divine, both derived from God. The third is, that while the emperor is the direct head of all human things, he guards divine things by accepting the decrees of General Councils as the Holy Scriptures, and by giving to the canons of the Church as descending from the Apostles, "the eye-witnesses and ministers of God the Word," the force of law.

If in these laws we find Church and State greet each other as friends, and offer each other a mutual support, because both aim at one object, and what the holiness of the Church required, advanced no less the peace, the security, and the welfare of the State, so a complete concurrence between them might be shown in all other respects.[159 - Riffel, 611-12, translated.] The State recognised and honoured the whole constitution of the Church as it had been drawn in its first lineaments by the author of the Christian religion, as in perfect sequence it had formed itself out of the Church's inmost life, and that in force and purity, because it had been free from the pressure of external laws. The proper position of the Roman bishop as supreme head of the whole Church, the relation of the patriarchs to each other, their privileges over the metropolitans, the close connection of these with their several bishops, were never for a moment unrecognised, because so clear a consciousness of these showed itself in the whole Catholic world, that no change was possible without a general scandal. Thus the laws of Church and State kept pace with each other, when it could not but happen that the ties between patriarch and metropolitan, between metropolitan and bishop, became more stringent, as external increase was followed by decline in inward life and the fervour of faith. Thus the regular course was that the metropolitan examined the election of the bishop by the clergy and people, consecrated him, introduced him to the direction of his charge, and by the litteræ formatæ gave him his place in the fabric of the Church. So the metropolitan was consecrated by his patriarch, in whose own election all the bishops of the province, but especially the metropolitans, took part. The metropolitan summoned his bishops, the patriarchs their metropolitans, to the yearly synods. The bishops did not vote without their metropolitan; they took counsel with him, sometimes intrusted him with their votes.[160 - See Justinian, Gloss. v., directed to the patriarch of Constantinople, Epiphanius. Epilogus, p 48: Hæc igitur omnia sanctissimi patriarchæ sub se constitutis Deo amabilibus metropolitis manifesta faciant, at illi subjectis sibi Deo amabilibus episcopis declarent, et illi monasteriis Dei sub sua ordinatione constitutis cognita faciant, quatenus per omnia Domini cultura maneat undique in eos incorrupta.] General laws of the Church, and also imperial edicts, were transmitted first to the patriarchs, and from them to the metropolitans, and from these to the bishops. Bishops might not leave their diocese without permission of the metropolitan, nor the metropolitan without that of the patriarch.[161 - Riffel, p. 615, translated.]

In like manner, we find in Justinian's laws the relation of the bishop to his diocese, and especially to his clergy, recognised as we find it presented by the Church from the beginning, and as the lapse of time had more and more drawn it out. The law's recognition secured it from all attack. The idea that without the bishop there is neither altar, sacrifice, nor sacrament had become, through the spirit of unity which rules the Church, a fact visible to all. The more heresies and divisions exerted their destroying and dissolving power, while the Church went on expanding in bulk, every divine service in private houses was forbidden. Since such assemblies attacked as well the peace and security of the State as the unity of belief, the governors of provinces, as well as the bishops, had most carefully to guard against such acts. Neither in city nor country could a church, a monastery, or an oratory be raised without the bishop's permission. This was made known to all by his consecrating the appointed place in solemn procession, with prayer and singing, by elevation of the cross. Without this such building was considered a place where errors lurked and deserters took refuge.[162 - Riffel, p. 617.] In this concurrent action of the laws of Church and State respecting the relation of the bishop to the whole Church and to his own clergy, we never miss the perfect union between the two even as to the smallest particulars. The conclusion is plain that the secular power did not intend to act here on the ground of its own supremacy, or as an exercise of its own majesty. Not only did it issue no new regulations whereby any fresh order should be in the smallest degree introduced: it raised to the condition of its own laws the canons which had long obtained force in the Church, whose binding power was accepted by everyone who respected the Church, as lying in themselves and in the authority from which they proceeded. These it took simply and without addition, and by so taking recognised in them the double character. So, if they were transgressed, a double penalty ensued. The Church's punitive power is contained in its legislative, the recognition of which is an acknowledgment of the former. This the State, not only tacitly but expressly, recognised. And by taking the Church's laws, it not only did not obliterate the character and dignity of that authority, from which they had issued, but it did not change the penalty, nor consider it from another point of view. It remained what it had always been, and from its nature must be, an ecclesiastical punishment. The State only lent its arm, when that was necessary, for its execution. With this, however, it was not content. The Church's life entered too deeply into the secular life. Those who were to carry on the one and sanctify the other stood in the closest connection with the whole State. So it made the canons its own proper laws, and thus attached temporal penalties to their transgression. So we find everywhere the addition that each violation would carry with it not only the divine judgment and arm the Church's hand to punish, but likewise draw down upon it the prescribed penalties from the imperial majesty.

But so far the empire was maintaining by its secular authority the proper laws and institutions of the Church. Justinian went far beyond this.[163 - Kurth, ii. 35.] His legislation associated the bishop with the count in the government of cities and provinces. It gave up to him exclusively the superintendence of morality and the protection of moral interests, the control of public works and of prisons. It bestowed on him a large jurisdiction – even more, put under his supervision the conduct of public functionaries in their administration, and conferred on him a preponderating influence on their election. In a word, it by degrees displaced the centre of gravity in political life by investing the episcopate with a large portion of temporal attributions.

To give in detail what is here summed up would involve too large a space. A few specimens must suffice. The bishop in his own spiritual office would have a great regard for widows and orphans.[164 - See Riffel, p. 624.] Parents when dying felt secure in recommending children to their protection against the avarice of secular judges. Hence the custom had arisen that bishops had to watch over the execution of wills, especially such as were made for benevolent purposes. They could in case of need call in the assistance of the governor. Their higher intelligence and disinterested character were in such general credit that they had no little influence in the drawing up of wills. But the State under Justinian was so far from regarding: this with jealousy, that he ordered, if a traveller should die without a will in an inn, the bishop of the place should take possession of the property, either to hand it over to the rightful heirs, or to employ it for pious purposes. If the innkeeper were found guilty of embezzlement, he was to pay thrice the sum to the bishop, who could apply it as he wished. No custom, privilege, or statute was allowed to have force against this. Those who opposed it were made incapable of testing. Down to the sixth century[165 - Riffel, p. 625.] we find no law of the Church touching the testamentary dispositions of Christians. Justinian is the first of whom we know that he entrusted the execution of wills specially to the supervision of bishops. That he did this shows the great trust which he placed in their uprightness.

It was to be expected that bishops should have a special care for the city which was their see.[166 - Ibid., pp. 629-35.] Various laws of Justinian gave them here privileges in which we cannot fail to see the foundation of the later extension of episcopal authority and influence over the whole sphere of secular life. With their clergy and with the chief persons in the city, they took special part in the election of defensors and of the other city officers; so also in the appointment of provincial administrators. It was their duty to protect subjects against oppressions from soldiers and exaction of provision, as well as against all excessive claim of taxes and unlawful gifts to imperial officers. A governor on assuming the province was bound to assemble the bishop, the clergy, and the chief people of the capital, that he might lay before them the imperial nomination, and the extent of the duties which he was to fulfil. Thus they were enabled to judge on each occasion whether the representative of the emperor was fulfilling his charge. Magistrates, before entering on office, had to take the prescribed oath before the metropolitan and the chief citizens. The oath itself was an act made before God, and as such under cognisance of the bishop. But special regulations enjoined him to watch over the whole conduct and each particular act of the governor. If general complaints were made of injustice, he was to inform the emperor. If only an individual had suffered wrongs, the bishop was judge between both parties. If sentence was given against the accused, and he refused to make satisfaction, the matter came before the emperor in the last resort. The emperor, if the bishop had decided according to right, condemned his governor to death, because he who should have been the protector of others against wrong had himself committed wrong. If a governor was deposed for maladministration, he was not to quit the province before fifty days, and he could be accused before the bishop for every unjust transaction. Even if he was removed or transferred to another charge, and had left behind him a lawful substitute, the same proceeding took place before the bishop. On this account civil orders also were sent to the bishops to be publicly considered by them, and kept among the church documents, their fulfilment supervised, and violations reported to the emperor. But, to complete this picture, it must be remarked that this supervision was not one-sided. The emperor sent even his ecclesiastical regulations not only through the patriarch of Constantinople to the metropolitans, but through the Prætorian prefect to the governors of provinces. He directed them to support the bishops in their execution, but he likewise enjoined them to report neglect of them to the emperor. Especially they were to watch the execution of imperial decrees upon Church discipline, and monasteries in particular. The rules, so often repeated because so frequently broken, respecting the inalienability of Church property, were to be specially watched, and also the celebration, as prescribed, of yearly synods. But the civil magistrates were only recommended to keep a supervision, which did not extend to the right of official exhortation; far less that they were allowed in any ecclesiastical matter, in which the bishop might be at all in fault, to act upon their own authority, or receive an accusation against him from whomsoever and for whatsoever it might be. But the bishop could act in his quality of judge between a party and the governor himself, if the party had called upon him. Especially, Justinian allowed bishops a decisive influence upon legal proceedings in certain branches. The inspection of forbidden games, public buildings, roads, and bridges, the distribution of corn, was under them. They were to examine the competence of a security. The curators of insane persons took oath before them to fulfil their duty. If a father had named none, the bishop took part in the choice of them; the act was deposited among the church documents. If the children of an insane father wished to marry, the bishop had to determine the dowry and the nuptial donation. In the absence of the proper judge, the bishop of the city could receive complaints from those who had to make a legal demand on another, or to protect themselves from a pledge falling overdue. The proofs of a wrong account could, in the accountant's absence, be made before the bishop, and had legal force. If the ground-lord would not receive the ground-rent, the feoffee should consign it at Constantinople to the Prætorian prefect or the patriarch, in the provinces to the governor, or in his absence to the bishop of the city where the ground-lord who refused to receive it had his domicile. Whoever found no hearing, either in a civil or criminal matter, before the judge of the province, was directed to go to the bishop, who could either call the judge to him, or go in person to the judge, to invite him to do justice to the complainant according to the strict law, in order that the bishop might not be obliged to carry the refusal of justice by appeal to the imperial court.[167 - See St. Gregory, Epis., x. 51 (vol. ii. 1080), where he writes to the ex-consul Leontius, in Sicily, who had beaten with rods the ex-prefect Libertinus: "Si mihi constare potuisset quia justas causas de suis rationibus haberent, et prius per epistolas vos pulsare habui; et si auditus minime fuissem, serenissimo Domino Imperatori suggererem".] If the judge was not moved by this, the bishop gave the complainant a statement of the whole case for the emperor, and the delinquent had to fear severe penalties, not alone because he had been untrue to his office, but because he did not allow himself, even at the demand of the bishop, to do what, without it, lay in the circle of his duties. But this referring to the bishop was not arbitrary – that is, not one which it lay in the will of the complainant to use or not, but necessary, so that anyone who appealed to the imperial court without this endeavour incurred, whether his complaint was founded or not, the same punishment as the judge who refused to give a decision at the bishop's request. Even if the complainant only suspected the judge, he was bound to apply to the bishop to join the judge in examining the matter, and to bring it to a strict legal issue. In the face of such honourable confidence which was placed in the bishops, and which was also justified in general by a happy result, we ought not to be surprised if either the emperor himself or inferior magistrates committed to them the termination of entangled processes, in which they exercised just such a jurisdiction as may either in general be exercised by delegates, or was committed to them for the special occasion.

The emperor[168 - Riffel, p. 635.] in his legislation left no part of the Church's discipline unregarded. His purpose was in all respects to make the State Christian; and he considered no part of divine and human things, whether it were dogma or conduct, – which, together, made up the Church's life, – withdrawn from his care and guardianship. Observances which had begun in custom, and gradually been drawn out definitely and enacted in canons, he took into his Digest, not with the intention of giving them greater inward force or stronger grounds as duties, but to show the unity of his own effort with that of the Church. He willingly put the imperial stamp on her salutary regulations. He showed his readiness to help her with external force wherever the inviolable sanctity of her laws seemed to be threatened by the opposition of individuals. In this he recognised the unchangeable order which is so deeply rooted in the nature both of Church and State, that order which is the greatest security for the wellbeing and prosperity of both. And the Church in the course of her long life had hitherto almost universally maintained this order; always, at least, in principle. If it was anywhere transgressed, it was either because the secular power was acting under special commission and approval of the Church, or, if that power acted without such approval, it met with open contradiction whereby not only the illegality of the particular action was marked, but the principle of the Church's freedom and independence was preserved.

There is a passage in the address of the eastern bishops to Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople, quoted in the Second Nicene Council of 789,[169 - Mansi, xii. 1130.] the Seventh General, which cites the words of Justinian given above in one of his laws. The bishops say in their own character – and they are bishops who describe themselves "as sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, that is, of the Arabian impiety" – "It is the priesthood which sanctifies the empire and forms its basis; it is the empire which strengthens and supports the priesthood. Concerning these, a wise king, most blessed among holy princes, said: The greatest gift of God to men is the priestly and the imperial power, the one ordering and administering divine things, the other ruling human things by upright laws."

If we considered the principles of Justinian alone as exhibited in his legislation, without regard to his conduct, we might, like the eastern bishops, take these words as the motto of his reign and the key to his acts as legislator. Indeed, it may be said that this legislation cannot be understood except by presupposing throughout the cordiality of the alliance between the Two Powers. In the election and the lives of bishops, in the discipline of religious houses, in the strict observance of the celibate life which has been assumed with full consent of the will by clergy and by monks, the emperor is as strict in his laws as the Church in her canons. The ruler of the State, who makes laws with a single word of his own mouth, who commands all the armies of the State, who bestows all its offices, who is, in truth, the autocrat, the impersonated commonwealth, shows not a particle of jealousy towards the Church as Church. He enjoins the strict observance of her canons in the fullest conviction that the end which she aims at as Church is the end which he also desires as emperor; that the good life of her bishops and priests is essential for the good of society in general; that the perfect orthodoxy of her creed is the dearest possession, the pillar and safeguard, of his own government. Heresy and schism are, in his sight, the greatest crimes against the State, as they are the greatest sins against the Church and against God. In the course of the two hundred years from Constantine to Justinian the Roman State, as understood by the Illyrian peasant who ruled it for thirty-eight years, had intertwined itself as closely with the Catholic Church as ever it had with Cicero's "immortal gods" in the time of Augustus, or Trajan, or Decius. It was the special pride and glory of Justinian to maintain intact this alliance as the palladium of the empire. And, therefore, his legislation touched every part of the ecclesiastical government, every dogma of the Church's creed, and only on account of this alliance did the Church acquiesce in such a legislation. I suppose that no greater contradiction can ever be conceived than that which exists between the mind of Justinian and the mind which now, and for a long time, has directed the nations of Europe, so far as their governments are concerned in their attitude towards the Church of God. In Europe are nations which are nurtured upon heresy and schism, whether as the basis of the original rebellion which severed them from the communion of the Church or as the outcome of "Free-thought" in their subsequent evolution through centuries of speculation unbridled by spiritual authority; nations, again, bisected by pure infidelity, or struggling with the joint forces of heresy and infidelity which strive to overthrow constitutions originally Catholic in all their structure. In one empire alone the attitude of Constantine and Justinian towards the Church is still maintained. It is that wherein the emperor rules with an amplitude of authority such as Constantine and Justinian held, whose successor he claims to be; where, also, an imperial aide-de-camp, booted and spurred, sits at the council board of a synod called holy, and is by far the most important member of it, for nothing can pass without his sanction – a synod which rules the bishops, being itself nothing but a ministry of the State, drawing, like the council of the empire, its jurisdiction from the emperor.

Justinian was a true successor of the great Theodosius in so far as he upheld orthodoxy, and endeavoured to unite all his subjects in one belief and one centre of unity. The greatest of the Roman emperors had for their first and chief motive, in upholding this first principle of imperial policy, the conviction that thus only they could hope to maintain the peace and security of the empire. Schism in the Church betokened rebellion in the State. In the fourth century heresy had driven the empire to the very brink of destruction. Besides this, all the populations converted from heathendom were accustomed to see a complete harmony between religion and the State, which appeared almost blent into one. Again, we must not forget that at this time the Christian religion had been lately accepted distinctly as a divine institution, and that it embraced the whole man with a plenitude of power which the indifference and division of our own times hardly allow us to conceive. Those who would realise this grasp of the Christian faith, transforming and exalting the whole being, may reach a faint perception of it by reading the great Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries – St. Basil, St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and St. Leo. They were not in danger of taking the moral corruption of an effete civilisation for the Christian faith. Again, the emperors, living in the midst of this immense intellectual and moral power – for instance, Justinian himself practising in a court the austerities of a monastery – recognised the confession of the same faith as the strongest band which united subjects with their prince. They thought that those who were not united with them in belief could not serve them with perfect love and fidelity. And, lastly, they hoped that their own zeal in maintaining the Church's unity unimpaired would make them worthier of the divine favour, and give success to all their undertakings. Let us take the words of Theodosius, one of the greatest and best among them, to his colleague the younger Valentinian, who up to the time of his mother Justina's death had been unjust to the Catholic cause and favoured the Arian heresy: "The imperial dignity is supported, not by arms, but by the justice of the cause. Emperors who feared God have won victories without armies, have subdued enemies and made them tributary, and have escaped all dangers. So Constantine the Great overcame the tyrant Licinius in a sea-fight. So thy father (the first Valentinian) succeeded in protecting his realm from its enemies, won mighty victories, and destroyed many barbarians. On the contrary, thy uncle Valens polluted churches by the murder of saints and the banishing of priests. Hence by guidance of Divine Providence he was besieged by the Goths, and found his death in the flames. It is true that he who has not unjustly expelled thee does not worship Christ aright. But thy perverse belief has given this opportunity to Maximus. If we do not return to Christ, how can we call upon His aid in the struggle?" The following emperors were of the same judgment: so that they attached to each decree which concerned ecclesiastical matters the motive of meriting thereby God's approval, since they not only took pains to please Him, but also led their subjects to do so. We employ, says Justinian, every care upon the holy churches, because we believe that our empire will be maintained, and the commonwealth protected by the favour of God, but likewise to save our own souls and the souls of all our subjects.

Justinian likewise would have a keen remembrance of the degradation from which his uncle had restored the empire. None knew better than he how the ignoble reigns of the usurper Basiliscus, of Zeno, and of Anastasius, by perpetual tampering with heresy and ruthless persecution of the orthodox, had well-nigh broken that empire to pieces. Had he not thrown all his energy, as the leading spirit of his uncle's realm, into that great submission to Pope Hormisdas which rendered its beginning illustrious?

Nevertheless a dark blot lies upon the name and memory of Justinian. He was not only successor of the great Theodosius in his ardent zeal for the Church's doctrine and unity, but likewise of Constantine, when he sullied his greatness and risked all the success of his former life by falling into the hands of the Nicomedian Eusebius.

The vast event by which the Christian Church had become a ruling power in the commonwealth had affected from that time forth the whole being of Church and State. Christian emperors had come to see in bishops the Fathers and Princes of such a Church, consecrated by God to that office, not appointed by men.[170 - Riffel, 562.] As such they had honoured them, committed to their wisdom and guidance the salvation of their own souls, and the weal itself of the commonwealth; not hindered them in the performance of their duties, not hampered them by restrictive laws. Rather they had protected them by external force from hindrance when invited thus to show their protection as heads of the State. Circumstances led them on to a more immediate entrance into the Church's special domain, and the things which happened in that domain led to this their entrance. It kept even pace with the developments and disturbances caused by heresy therein.

Christ had committed to the whole episcopate, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the task of spreading the seed of Christian doctrine over the earth, of watching its growth, of eradicating the false seed sown in night-time by the enemy. In proportion as the empire's head took part in this work, his influence on the episcopate could not but increase. If his participation was confined within its due limits, if the temporal ruler hedged the Church round from irruption of external power, if he rooted the tares out of her field only to clear her enclosure, his relation to the bishops remained merely external. But if he went on himself to lay down the limit of the Church's domain, or even if he only took an active part in such limitation; if he made himself the judge what was wheat and what was tares, in so doing he had won an influence on the bishops which did not belong to him. Then Church and State ran a danger of seeing their respective limits confused. Thus the relation of the bishops to the ruler of the State became then, and remains always, an unfailing standard of the Church's freedom and independence.

Now, striking and peremptory as the eastern submission to Pope Hormisdas was, in which Justinian, then a man of thirty-six, had taken large part; clear and unambiguous as in his legislation appears the recognition of the Two Powers, sacerdotal and imperial, which make together the joint foundation of the State, and are a necessity of its wellbeing; distinct, likewise, as is the imperial proclamation of the Pope as the first of all bishops in his laws, his letters, confirmed by his reception of the Popes Agapetus and Vigilius in his own capital city; frank and unembarrassed as his acknowledgment of St. Peter's successors, yet, when he had reached the mature age of seventy, and was lord by conquest of Rome reduced to absolute impotence, and of Italy as a subject province, his treatment of the first bishop, in the person of Vigilius, was a contradiction of his own laws as to the two domains of divine and human things. He passed beyond the limits which marked the boundaries of the two powers. He made himself the supreme judge of doctrine. He convoked a General Council without the Pope's assent; he terminated it without his sanction; he treated the Pope as a prisoner for resisting such action. It is true that St. Peter's successor – and this with a stain upon him which no successor of St. Peter had worn before him – escaped with St. Peter's life in him unimpaired; but so far as the action of Justinian went it was unfilial, inconsistent with his own laws, perilous in the extreme to the Church, dishonouring to the whole episcopate. The divine protection guarded Vigilius – that Vigilius whom an imperious woman had put upon the seat of a lawful living Pope – from sacrifice of the authority to which, on the martyrdom of his predecessor, he succeeded. He died at Syracuse, and St. Peter lived after him undiminished in the great St. Gregory. The names mean the same, the one in Latin, the other in Greek; but no successor ever took on himself the blighted name of Vigilius, while many of the greatest among the Popes have chosen for themselves the name of Gregory, and one at least of the sixteen has equalled the glory of the first.

In judging the conduct of Justinian, both in treatment of persons and in dealing with doctrine, we cannot fail to see that the imperial duty of protection passed into the imperial lust for mastery. If his treatment of Vigilius, whom he acknowledged in the clearest terms as Pope, was scandalous and cruel, still worse, if possible, was the assumption of a right to interpret and to define the Church's doctrine for the Church. The usurper Basiliscus had been the first to issue an imperial decree on doctrine. This was in favour of heresy. He was followed in this by the legitimate emperors Zeno and Anastasius, also in favour of heresy. On the contrary,[171 - Photius, p. 155.] the edicts of Justinian were generally in conformity with the decisions of the Church: generally occasioned by bishops, often drawn up by them. But in the council called by him at Constantinople in 553, he issued decrees on doctrines which only the Church could decide. In doing this he infringed her liberty as grossly as the three whose unlawful act he was imitating. The whole effect of his reign was that State despotism in Church matters lowered the dignity of the spiritual power. The dependence of his bishops on the court became greater and greater. The emperor's will became law in the things of the Church. He persecuted Vigilius: he deposed his own patriarch Eutychius. His example, as that of the most distinguished Byzantine monarch, told with great force upon his successors, for the persecution of future Popes and the deposition of future patriarchs.

The Italy which he had won at the cost of its ruin as to temporal wellbeing was, after his death in 565, speedily lost as to its greater portion, and the Romans[172 - Photius, 173.] of the East did little more for it. The Rome which he had reduced almost to a solitude, and ruled through a prefect with absolute power, escaped in the end from the most cruel and heartless despotism inflicted by a distant master on a province at once plundered and neglected. His own eastern provinces suffered terribly from barbarian inroads, and the end of the thirty-seven years' domination, which had seemed a resurrection at the beginning, showed the mighty eastern empire from day to day declining, the western bishops under the action of the Pope more and more exerting an independence which the East could not prevent, the patriarch of Constantinople more and more advancing as the agent of the imperial will in dealing with eastern bishops. What the See of St. Peter was at the end of the sixth century it remains to see in the pontificate of the first Gregory, who shares with the first Leo the double title of Great and Saint.

CHAPTER V

ST. GREGORY THE GREAT

"The banner of the Church is ever flying!
Less than a storm avails not to unfold
The Cross emblazoned there in massive gold:
Away with doubts and sadness, tears and sighing!
It is by faith, by patience, and by dying
That we must conquer, as our sires of old."

    – Aubrey de Vere, "St. Peter's Chains".
The historian,[173 - See Gregorovius, ii. 3, 4.] who has carefully followed the fortunes of Rome as a city during a thousand years, describes it as beginning a new life from the time when Narses, in the year 552, came to reside there as imperial prefect and representative of the absent eastern lord Justinian. Narses so ruled for fifteen years, but when he was recalled there ensued a long time of terrible distress and anxiety – a time of temporal servitude, but one also of spiritual expansion. The complete ruin of Rome as a secular city, the overthrow of all that ancient world of which Rome was the centre and capital, had been effected in the struggle ended by the extinction of the Gothic kingdom. By degrees the laws, the monuments, the very recollections of what had been, passed away. The heathen temples ceased to be preserved as public monuments. The Capitol, on its desolate hill, lifted into the still air its fairy world of pillars in a grave-like silence, startled only by the owl's night cry. The huge palace of the Cæsars still occupied the Palatine in unbroken greatness, a labyrinth of empty halls yet resplendent with the finest marbles, here and there still covered with gold-embroidered tapestry. But it was falling to pieces like a fortress deserted by its occupants. In some small corner of its vast spaces there might still be seen a Byzantine prefect, an eunuch from the court of the eastern despot, or a semi-Asiatic general, with secretaries, servants, and guards. The splendid forums built by Cæsar after Cæsar, each a homage paid by the ruler of the day to the Roman people, whom he fed and feared, became pale with age. Their history clung round them like a fable. The massive blocks of Pompey's theatre showed need of repairs, which were not given. The circus maximus, where the last and dearest of Roman pleasures – the chariot races – were no longer celebrated, stretched its long lines beneath the imperial palace covered with dust and overgrown with grass. The colossal amphitheatre of Titus still reared its circle perfect, but stripped of its decorations. The gigantic baths, fed by no aqueduct since the ruin wrought by Vitiges the Goth, rose like fallen cities in a wilderness. Ivy began to creep over them. The costly marble mantle of their walls dropped away in pieces or was plundered for use. The Mosaic pavements split. There were still in those beautiful chambers seats of bright or dark marble, baths of porphyry or Oriental alabaster. But these found their way by degrees to churches. They served for episcopal chairs, or to receive the bones of a saint, or to become baptismal fonts. Yet not a few remained in their desolation till the walls dropped down upon them, or the dust covered them for centuries. In course of time the rain perforated the uncared-for vaultings of these shady galleries. Having served for refuge to the thief, the coiner, or the assassin, they became like dripping grottoes.