Apostles; such is the plain meaning of the Saviour's declaration, _Tu
es Petrus_. St. Peter founded the Roman Church and instituted the
Roman bishopric. To Linus, the first bishop, Peter bequeathed his Divine
commission and his knowledge of the Christian verities. From Linus these
gifts descended without diminution to one after another in the unbroken
chain of his successors. Hence Rome is entitled to the same pre-eminence
among the churches which Peter held among his brethren. To examine the
historical basis of the legend would be a lengthy and unprofitable task.
Of St. Peter's connection with the Eternal City we know nothing certain,
except that he preached and suffered there. If bishops existed in his
time, there is some reason for thinking that the office was collegiate,
and that the committee of bishops was less important then in the
spiritual life of the community than at a later time. Not until the
second century did the episcopate become monarchical and the holder of
the office the supreme authority within the Church by which he was
elected. The change was complete by the time of Irenaeus, who wrote
_circa_ 180 A.D.; to him we owe our earliest catalogue of Roman
bishops, beginning with Linus and ending with Eleutherus, the twelfth
from Peter and the contemporary of Irenaeus. The later names in the list
are doubtless those of authentic bishops; the earlier may be in some
sense historical, the names of famous presbyters or of men who made
their mark on the old episcopal committee. A point of secondary interest
is that Irenaeus speaks of bishops, not of Popes; this title came into
use a hundred years after his time. More important is the fact that, in
the third century, when our documents become more copious, Rome is
generally recognised as first in dignity among the churches (_ecclesia
principalis_), but has no appellate jurisdiction and no legislative
powers. It is only admitted that, when disputes arise on points of
tradition, her testimony is entitled to special honour, as that of a
church which preserves the memory of Peter's teaching. As doctrinal
controversies become more acute and more fundamental, the importance of
tradition is emphasised, the authority of those who voice it is
magnified. Ultimately all the pretensions of the Holy See are founded on
the claim that she possesses the only undefiled tradition. But it was
not until long after the third century that the consequences of the
claim were realised even by the claimants.
If we were invited, at the present day, to suggest a means of conserving
intact a body of doctrinal definitions and disciplinary law, we should
not naturally select some mode of oral transmission as the safest
available. Yet this expedient has found much favour in the past. Even
among the Jews, with their extreme respect for sacred books, the written
word was made of none account by the traditions of expositors. The
votaries of the Greek mystic cults deliberately avoided writing down
their more important formulae. Several considerations were in favour of
this curious policy. There were no scientific canons for the
interpretation of written texts; allegorising commentators read their
own wild fancies into the plainest sentences. The only way of meeting
them was to fall back on the traditional interpretation. We use the
texts to test the traditions; but criticism in its early stages pursues
the opposite course, and as a natural consequence rates tradition above
Scripture. Other reasons which discouraged the use of writing were,
first, the fear that no literary skill might be equal to the difficulty
of accurate statement; secondly, the natural reluctance of the religious
mind to let the deepest truths be exposed to the vulgar scoffs and
criticism of the uninitiated; thirdly, some remnant of the primitive
superstition that the formulae of a ritual are magic spells, which would
lose their potency if published to the world; and, finally, the natural
instinct of a sacerdotal class to reserve the knowledge of deepest
mysteries to a select inner circle. For all these reasons a jealously
guarded tradition, commonly designated as the _arcana_ or _secreta_, was
to be found in all the early Christian Churches. To give a few examples:
the Apostles' Creed, the distinctive symbol of the Roman Church, was
preserved by oral tradition only down to the fourth century, and was not
imparted to any catechumen until the time of his baptism. The minute
rules of penitential discipline were first committed to writing by
Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, towards the close of the
seventh century; and this innovation was sharply criticised by some
ecclesiastical synods. Most remarkable of all is the reluctance of the
churches to write down the essential, operative parts of the Mass.
Written copies are first mentioned in the fourth century, and it was not
until a much later period that the diversities of local tradition were
corrected by the issue of a standard text. It might be supposed that the
non-existence of official copies was due to the want of any device, such
as printing, by which they could be cheaply multiplied. But there is a
curious fact which suggests that publication was considered undesirable.
One section of the Canon of the Mass was called the secret part
(_secretum_), and was recited by the celebrant in an undertone, that it
might not become known to the congregation. Similarly, all literary
exposition of such central doctrines as the Atonement, or the Trinity,
was deprecated by early theologians, who pass by them with the remark
that they are known to the initiate.
This cult of secrecy engendered difficulties which are written large
upon the page of history. Disputes arose about the wording of the
creeds, about the canon of the Scriptures, about the number and nature
of the mortal sins, and the penances which they should entail.
Periodically a curious investigator raised a storm by claiming that he
had discovered a flaw in the traditional formulae, or a mistake in the
sense which was currently attached to them. The one way of meeting such
doubts was to compare the traditions of the older churches. This could
be done by a provincial synod or a general council. But of these
tribunals the former was unsatisfactory, as its decisions were of merely
local validity and might be overruled by the voice of the universal
Church. The general council was hard to convene, particularly after a
rift had opened between the Eastern and the Western Churches. It was
easier to select as the final arbiter a bishop whose knowledge of
tradition was derived from an apostolic predecessor. In the East there
were three such sees (Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria), but in the West
Rome alone satisfied the necessary conditions. And the Bishops of Rome
could claim, with some show of reason, that their tradition was derived
from a worthier source, and had been better guarded against contagion,
than that of any other Apostolic Church. Was it not a well-established
fact that Rome had preserved an unwavering front in the face of the
heretical Arius, when even Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria had
wavered?
Recourse to Rome as the oracle of the faith was so obvious an expedient,
given the prevailing attitude towards tradition, that we can only be
surprised to find how slow and gradual was the triumph of the Roman
claims. The victory of logic was retarded both by the pride and by the
common sense of the other Western Churches. On the one hand, the See of
Carthage clung to the old ideal of Christendom as a confederation of
self-governing churches, which might consult one another as they pleased
but recognised no superior except a general council. Carthage carried
with her the whole Church of Africa, and furnished an example which less
illustrious communities were proud to imitate. The conquest of Africa by
the Vandal heretics was necessary before the African Christians would
consent to look to Rome as their spiritual metropolis. On the other
hand, the rulings of the Roman bishops were justly suspected of being
tempered by regard for expediency. Sometimes they relaxed penitential
discipline, for fear of driving the weaker brethren to apostasy.
Sometimes, under pressure from Constantinople, they proposed an
ambiguous compromise with heresy. Such considerations were but gradually
overborne by the pressure of circumstances. The spread of Arianism and
the irruption of the Teutons (themselves often Arians) at length
compelled the churches to take the obvious means of preserving their
imperilled uniformity and union.
It is in the acts of the Council of Sardica (343 A.D.) that we find the
first explicit recognition of the Pope as an arbiter and (we may almost
say) a judge of appeal. This council was merely a gathering of Western
bishops, and the canons which it passed were never accepted by the
Church of Africa. So doubtful was their validity that the Popes of the
next generation disingenuously asserted that they had been passed at the
earlier and more famous Council of Nicaea (325). Yet even at Sardica the
Pope was only endowed with one definite prerogative. Henceforward any
bishop condemned by a provincial synod might appeal to him; he could
then order a second trial to be held, and could send his legates to sit
among the judges; but he could not hear the case in his own court. More
striking than this decree are the words of the letter which the Council
addressed to Pope Julius: "It will be very right and fitting for the
priests of the Lord, from every province, to refer to their Head, that
is to the See of Peter." This recommendation was readily obeyed by the
Churches of Gaul and Spain. Questions from their bishops poured in upon
the Popes, who began to give their decisions in the form of open
letters, and to claim for these letters the binding force of law. Pope
Liberius (352-366 A.D.) appears to have commenced the practice, although
the earliest of the extant "Decretals" is from the pen of Pope Siricius
(385). Sixty years after Siricius' time, when the Western Empire was in
its death-agony, this claim to legislative power was formally confirmed
by the Emperor Valentinian III (445). But for some time after the
Council of Sardica the new prerogative was used with the greatest
caution. The Popes of that period use every precaution to make their
oracular answers inoffensive. They assure their correspondents that Rome
enjoins no novelties; that she does not presume to decide any point on
which tradition is silent; that she is merely executing a mandate which
general councils have laid upon her. Those who evince respect for her
claims are overwhelmed with compliments. A decretal of Innocent I
(402-417) begins as follows:--
"Very dear brother, the Church's rules of life and conduct are well
known to a priest of your merit and dignity. But since you have urgently
inquired of us concerning the rule which the Roman Church prescribes, we
bow to your desire and herewith send you our rules of discipline,
arranged in order."
On the other hand, no opportunity is lost of calling attention to the
Roman primacy. Pope Siricius (384-398) writes in one of his letters: "We
bear the burdens of all who are oppressed; it is the Apostle Peter who
speaks in our person." Through the more confidential and domestic
utterances of these Popes there runs a vein of haughty self-assertion.
In the homilies of Leo I (440-461) the text _Tu es Petrus_ rings
like a trumpet note; here we have the Roman ruler communing with his
Roman people, the pride of empire taking a new shape amidst the ruins of
that secular empire which the pagan Romans of the past had built up.
In the general chaos produced by the barbarian migrations the
consequence of the Papacy, as compared with that of other Western sees,
was considerably enhanced by various causes: by the ruin of Carthage,
the most unsparing of her critics; by the progressive deterioration of
the other churches, which was most marked in those provinces where the
barbarians were most readily converted; by the rising tide of ignorance,
which overwhelmed all rival conceptions of Christendom and blotted out
the past history of the Church. So great was this ignorance that
Innocent I could claim, without much fear of contradiction, that "no man
has founded any church in Italy, Sicily, Gaul, Spain, or Africa,
excepting those whom Peter and his successors have ordained as priests."
In the Italian peninsula there were three churches--Ravenna, Milan,
Aquileia--which obstinately refused to consider themselves mere
offshoots from the See of Peter. But the legend struck root and throve,
as successive Popes associated themselves with missions to the
unconverted tribes and with reforms in the barbarian churches.
Among the earlier events which contributed to make the Roman belief the
standard for all Western Christendom we need only mention the conquests
of the orthodox Frankish monarchy; the official conversions from
Arianism of the Burgundians (516) and the Visigoths in Spain (586); the
extirpation of the Vandals and Ostrogoths by Justinian's generals; the
missions of Augustine to England, of Wilfrid, Willibrord, and Boniface
to the Germans; the submission of the Frankish Church under the
influence of Boniface and Pepin the Short (748). Naturally the moral
influence of Rome in the northern lands was augmented by the revival of
the Western Empire, which meant the co-operation of Pope and Emperor in
the extension of the Christian Republic. Cyril and Methodius, the
Apostles of the Slavs, found it necessary to renounce the allegiance of
the Greek Church, and to place their converts under the protection of
Rome (866). It was from Rome that St. Adalbert went forth on his
ill-starred but glorious mission to the Prussians (997); and it was a
Pope, Sylvester II, who earned the glory of uniting the Hungarian people
to Western Christendom (1000). Finally, Canute the Great, of Denmark and
of England, came in the manner of a pilgrim (1027) to lay the homage of
his Scandinavian subjects on the altar of St. Peter. The Popes reaped
where they had not sown; but the harvest was rich and splendid.
No less important was the political character which the papal office
assumed with the revival of the Empire. Already under Gregory the Great
we can trace the beginnings of a temporal power. Naturally and
necessarily the Pope, already like other bishops a functionary charged
with important secular duties, took upon himself the protection and
government of Rome and the surrounding duchy, when the rulers of
Byzantium shook off these unprofitable responsibilities. Naturally and
excusably he claimed, over his vast Italian estates, the powers of
jurisdiction which every landowner was assuming as a measure of
self-defence against oppression or unbridled anarchy. In the time of
Pepin the Short a further step was taken. The Frank, unwilling to
involve himself in Italy yet anxious to secure the Holy See against the
Lombards, recognized Pope Stephen II as the lawful heir of the derelict
imperial possessions. And Charles the Great, both as King and as
Emperor, confirmed the donation of his father. To make the Pope an
independent sovereign was indeed a policy which he refused to entertain.
His ideal was that of the Eastern Emperors: himself as the head of State
and Church, the Pope as the Patriarch of all the churches in the Empire,
elected with the Emperor's approval, ruling the clergy with the
Emperor's counsel, enjoying over the lands of his see the largest
privileges bestowed on any bishop, but still in all secular affairs a
subject of the Empire. But on the other hand arose at Rome a different
conception of the Pope's prerogative. Long ago Pope Gelasius had
formulated the principle, more useful to his remote successors than
himself, of the Two Powers, Church and State, both derived from God and
both entitled to absolute power in their respective spheres. On this
principle the State should not interfere with episcopal elections, or
with matters of faith and discipline; it should not exercise
jurisdiction over the priesthood who are servants of the Church, or over
Church estates since they are held in trust for God and the poor. This
view was proclaimed to the world by Leo III, who caused to be set up in
the Lateran a mosaic representing in an allegory his relations to the
Empire. St. Peter sits enthroned above; Charles and Leo kneel to right
and left, in the act of receiving from the Apostle the pallium and the
gonfalon, the symbols of their respective offices.
No powerful Emperor ever accepted the Gelasian principle entire. To
refute it was, however, difficult, so well did it harmonise with the
current conception of the State. Under the later Carolingians it became
the programme both of reformers and of mere ecclesiastical politicians.
The new monasteries, founded or reorganised under the influence of
Cluny, placed themselves beneath the special protection of the Pope,
thus escaping from secular burdens. The national hierarchies hailed the
forgeries of the Pseudo-Isidore as the charter of ecclesiastical
liberty. Pope Nicholas I took his stand at the head of the new movement,
and gave it a remarkable development when he asserted his jurisdiction
over the adulterous Lothaire II (863). Nicholas died before he couldgive
further illustrations of his claim to be supreme, even over kings,
in matters of morality and faith. From his time to that of Hildebrand
there was no Pope vigorous enough to make a similar example. Dragged
down by their temporal possessions to the level of municipal seigneurs
and party instruments, the Popes from 867 to 962 were, at the best, no
more than vigorous Italian princes. To that level they returned after
the period of the Saxon Ottos (962-1002). In those forty years there
were glimpses of a better future; the German Pope, Gregory V, allied
himself to Cluny (996-999); as Sylvester II (999-1003) the versatile
Gerbert of Aurillac--at once mathematician, rhetorician, philosopher,
and statesman--entered into the romantic dreams of his friend and pupil,
Otto III, and formed others on his own behalf which centred round the
Papacy rather than the Empire. Sylvester saw in imagination the Holy See
at the head of a federation of Christian monarchies. But fate was no
kinder to him than to Otto; he outlived his boy patron only by a year.
VI
THE HILDEBRANDINE CHURCH
Modern life has travelled so far beyond medieval Christianity that it is
only with an effort we retrace our steps to the intellectual position of
a St. Bernard, a St. Francis, or the _Imitatio Christi_. Apart from
the difficulties of an unfamiliar terminology, we have become estranged
from ideas which then were commonplaces; beliefs once held to be
self-evident and cardinal now hover on the outer verge of speculative
thought, as bare possibilities, as unproved and unprovable guesses at
truth. Our own creeds, it may be, rest upon no sounder bottom of logical
demonstration. But they have been framed to answer doubts, and to
account for facts, which medieval theories ignored; and in framing them
we have been constrained partly to revise, partly to destroy, the
medieval conceptions of God and the Universe, of man and the moral law.
This is not the place for a critique of medieval religion. But, unless
we bear in mind some essential features of the Catholic system of
thought, we miss the key to that ecclesiastical statesmanship which
dominates the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The programme of the
great Popes, from Gregory VII to Boniface VIII, must appear a tissue of
absurdities, of preposterous ambitions and indefensible actions, unless
it is studied in relation to a theology as far remote from primitive
Christianity as from the cults and philosophies of classical antiquity.
The first article in this theology is the existence of a personal God
who, though all-pervading and all-powerful, does not reveal Himself
immediately to the human beings whom He has created to be His
worshippers, and does not so order the world that events shall always
express His will and purpose. He has endowed man with a sinful nature,
and has permitted His universe to be invaded by evil intelligences of
superhuman power and malignancy, who tempt man to destruction and are
bent upon subverting the Divine order of which they form a part. He is
supremely benevolent, and yet He only manifests the full measure of this
quality when His help is invoked by prayer; His goodwill often finds
expression in miracles--that is, in the suspending or reversing of the
general laws which He has Himself laid down for the regulation of the
universe and human destinies. He is inscrutable and incomprehensible;
yet to be deceived as to the nature of His being is the greatest of all
sins against His majesty. The goal of the religious life is personal
communion with Him, the intuitive apprehension and spontaneous
acceptance of His will, the Beatific Vision of His excellencies. But
this state of blessedness cannot be reached by mere self-discipline; the
prayers, the meditations, the good works of the isolated and
uninstructed individual, can only serve to condone a state of
irremediable ignorance. The avenue to knowledge of Him lies through
faith; and faith means the unquestioning acceptance of the twofold
revelation of Himself which He has given in the Scriptures and in the
tradition of the Church. The two revelations are in effect reduced to
one by the statement that only the Church is competent to give an
authoritative exposition of the sacred writings. Upon the Church hangs
the welfare of the individual and the world. Without participation in
her sacraments the individual would be eternally cut off from God;
without her prayers the tide of evil forces would no longer be held in
check by recurring acts of miraculous intervention, but would rise
irresistibly and submerge the human race.
A society charged with these tremendous duties, the only organ of the
Divine will and affording the only assurance of salvation, must
obviously be superior to all mundane powers. It would be monstrous if
her teaching were modified, if her powers of self-government were
restricted, to suit the ambitions or the so-called common sense of a lay
ruler. The Church stands to the State in the relation of the head to the
members, of the soul to the body, of the sun to the moon. The State
exists to provide the material foundations of the Christian society, to
protect the Church, to extend her sphere and to constrain those who
rebel against her law. In a sense the State is ordained by God, but only
in the sense of being a necessary condition for the existence of a
Christian Commonwealth. Logically the State should be the servant of the
Church, acting with delegated powers under her direction.
But theories, however logical, must come to terms with facts, or vanish
into the limbo of chimeras. The power of the Hildebrandine Church was
subject to serious limitations. On certain questions of importance the
national hierarchies were inclined to side with the State against the
Pope; and thus, for example, the claims of the Curia to tax the clergy,
and to override the rights of ecclesiastical patrons, were restricted at
one time or another by concordats, or by secular legislation such as the
English statutes of Provisors and Praemunire. Where the whole of the
clerical order presented a solid front, it was sometimes possible to
make good a claim against which there was much to be said on grounds of
common sense; as, for instance, benefit of clergy,--the exclusive
jurisdiction of the Church over criminous ecclesiastics,--which was
enforced even against a sovereign so powerful and so astute as Henry II
of England. But, in the last resort, the pretensions of the Church
depended for success upon a public opinion which was hard to move. Not
because the average layman was critical or anti-clerical, but because he
was illogical and unimaginative, he remained cold to any programme of
reform which could only be justified by long trains of deductive
reasoning; his natural impulse was against violent innovations, and he
felt rather than argued that the State, as the ultimate guarantee of
social order, must be maintained even at some cost of theological
consistency. Until he could be convinced that high moral issues and his
own salvation were at stake, it was useless or dangerous to
excommunicate his king and to lay his country under interdict. For want
of lay support the Church failed to make good such important claims as
those of immunity from national taxation and of jurisdiction in cases of
commercial contract. More striking still, she was prevented from
establishing the Inquisition in states where that tribunal would have
found no lack of work.