decree from the Roman people that the pope must reside in Rome.
John is declared deposed, and Pietro di Corvara, _Nicholas V_,
made pope.
1329 The Ghibellines turn against Ludwig; the Visconti and
Este families treat with the pope. Nicholas abdicates, and is
imprisoned at Avignon.
1332 John of Bohemia, who has settled the troubles of the
Ghibellines, plots with the pope to obtain Italy.
1333 The papal forces defeated at Ferrara. John abandons his
designs on Italy, and returns to Bohemia.
1334 The papal party loses most of its captured cities. Death
of John, as he is about to be tried for heresy. Jacques
Fournier, =Benedict XII=. He begins to build the palace of
the popes at Avignon, and attempts to curb the luxury of the
monastic orders.
1338 The German electors declare that the pope has no
jurisdiction over Germany.
1342 Pierre Roger, =Clement VI=. The Romans send an embassy to
urge him to return to Rome. He appoints the Fifty Year Jubilee.
1343 Clement renews excommunication of Ludwig.
1347 Revolution of Rienzi in Rome. He is elected tribune, and
carries out many reforms. After a defeat of the nobles he
commits many extravagant acts, and is compelled to abdicate.
1348 Joanna of Naples sells Avignon to the pope.
1349 The Flagellants declared to be heretics.
1351 Rienzi delivered to the custody of the pope by Charles IV
of Germany.
1352 Etienne d’Albert, =Innocent VI=.
1354 Cardinal Albornoz restores papal power in Rome. Rienzi
made senator. He rules badly, and is killed.
1356 The Golden Bull terminates the long strife between papacy
and empire.
1362 Guillaume de Grimoard, =Urban V=. Most of the pope’s
enemies have been quieted, but the Visconti still remain in
open hostility. The pope desires to return to Rome, since the
papal states are reduced to obedience.
1367 Urban removes to Rome. Death of Albornoz.
1370 Urban returns to Avignon and dies. Pierre Roger de
Beaufort, =Gregory XI=. England and France reject his offers of
mediation with contempt. Italy, after the death of Albornoz,
attempts to free herself from the pope. The Visconti are
all-powerful in the north. The whole south revolts. The Free
Companies ravage the country. Sir John Hawkwood serves now the
Guelfs and now the Ghibellines.
1376 Mission of St. Catherine of Siena to urge the pope to
return to Rome.
1377 Arrival of Gregory at Rome.
1378 Death of Gregory.
THE GREAT SCHISM OF THE WEST [1378-1417 A.D.]
1378 The Romans urge the election of a Roman pope; under this
pressure the cardinals choose Bartolommeo Prignani, =Urban
VI=. The French cardinals immediately band against him, and,
withdrawing to Fondi, pronounce the election invalid and elect
Robert of Geneva, _Clement VII_. Germany, England, Denmark,
Sweden, Poland, Hungary, and Italy (except Naples) support
Urban. France, Naples, Scotland, Savoy, Lorraine, and the
Spanish kingdoms support Clement. Urban resides at Rome;
Clement, at Avignon. Urban excommunicates Clement. Wycliffe
attacks the papal primacy.
1379 War between the two popes. Bloodshed and strife in Italy.
Defeat of Clement’s forces in Urban’s crusade against Naples.
St. Angelo surrenders. Clement retreats to Avignon.
1380 Joanna I of Naples attempts to poison Urban, who allies
himself with Hungary. Charles of Durazzo reaches Rome on his
way to Naples.
1381 Conquest of Naples by Charles of Durazzo and the
Hungarians. He takes the throne.
1383 Urban VI goes to Naples, which Louis of Anjou, adopted by
Joanna, has invaded. Urban obtains many advantages there for
himself and family.
1384 Hostilities arise between Urban and Charles, owing to the
former’s arrogance. Louis dies, and his forces are dispersed.
1385 Charles induces several cardinals to plot against Urban.
They are seized and tortured. Urban excommunicates Charles, who
ignores the bull. Siege and capture of Nocera by Charles’ army.
Urban flees to Genoa. Charles goes to Hungary, leaving Naples
to his son, Ladislaus.
1386 Urban orders the imprisoned cardinals (except one) put to
death. The doge of Venice compels Urban to leave Genoa; he goes
to Lucca.
1387 Urban moves to Perugia.
1388 Urban leaves Perugia for Naples, to which he has laid
claim. His army breaks up, and he retires to Rome.
1389 Death of Urban. Pietro Tomacelli, =Boniface IX=. Clement
crowns Louis II of Anjou king of Naples. Boniface adopts a
conciliatory spirit and recognises Ladislaus.
1390 The Jubilee brings a great revenue into Boniface’s
treasury. He recognises the many dynasties within the papal
states.
1392 Through influence of Boniface, who goes to Perugia, the
warfare among the states of northern Italy is terminated.
1394 Death of Clement VII. Pedro de Luna, _Benedict XIII_,
anti-pope.
1395 The University of Paris tries without success to heal the
schism.
1398 France withdraws its allegiance from Benedict, who resists
all efforts to make him abdicate. Scotland and Aragon alone
remain faithful to him. Boniface makes himself master of Rome.
1399 Surrender of Benedict, who has been besieged by the French
in Avignon. He promises to abdicate if Boniface will do the
same.
1400 A reaction in favour of Benedict sets in. Rising of the
Colonnas in Rome interferes with the Jubilee. The plague
destroys many pilgrims. Edicts against the Bianchi.
1402 Boniface declares Ladislaus king of Hungary.
1403 The Visconti begin to lose their power. Boniface recovers
Perugia, Bologna, and other towns by treaty. Benedict escapes
from Avignon and recovers the allegiance of France.
1404 Death of Boniface, followed by a rising in Rome. The
Orsini defeat the Colonnas. Cosimo de’ Migliorati, =Innocent
VII=. He possesses nothing in Rome but the Vatican and St.
Angelo. Ladislaus of Naples comes to Rome to settle differences
between pope and Romans.
1405 Innocent takes refuge at Viterbo. Sack of the Vatican by
the Roman populace. Ladislaus attempts to seize Rome, and the
people return to the pope. Futile negotiations between Innocent
and Benedict, who leave France for Genoa.
1406 Benedict at Savona. The University of Paris proceeds
against him. Innocent returns to Rome and dies. Angelo di
Corraro, =Gregory XII=.
1408 France, having tried in vain to end the schism, renounces
obedience to either pope. Benedict at Perpignan. Ladislaus
seizes Rome. Gregory finally settles in Rimini. The cardinals
of both parties arrange for a council at Pisa.
1409 Council of Pisa. The two popes refuse to appear, and are
deposed. Pietro Philarghi, =Alexander V=, elected. The greater
part of Christendom gives him allegiance, but Gregory is obeyed
in Bavaria, Naples, and Friuli, and Benedict in Aragon. The
three popes issue bulls of excommunication against each other.
Alexander issues bull against heresy in Bohemia.
1410 Rome is captured from Ladislaus by Alexander’s party.
Death of Alexander. Baltasare Cossa, =John XXII= or =XXIII=. He
allies himself with the cause of Louis of Anjou.
1411 On the election of the emperor Sigismund, Germany gives
allegiance to John. The pope, Louis, and the Orsini defeat
Ladislaus at Roccasecca.
1412 Peace between the pope and Ladislaus, who abandons
Gregory. The latter flees from Gaeta to Rimini. John Huss
protests against the sale of indulgences, and is excommunicated.
1413 Ladislaus makes treaty, and seizes Rome and other papal
possessions. John retreats to Florence, and turns to Sigismund
for help. The Council of Constance is agreed on.
1414 Ladislaus enters Rome, but dies shortly after. The people
restore Rome to John. John goes to Constance, and opens
council. Gregory and Benedict send representatives.
1415 Deposition of John by the council. He is imprisoned.
Voluntary abdication of Gregory. Benedict refuses to give up.
Perfidious treatment and execution of John Huss.
1416 Execution of Jerome of Prague at Constance.
1417 The council considers measures of reform. Election of Otto
di Colonna, =Martin V=, as pope. Benedict still opposes him.
Death of Gregory. Andrea Braccio takes Rome. Sforza and the
Neapolitans drive him out, and restore the papal governor.
FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION [1417-1513
A.D.]
1418 Close of the Council of Constance. Martin goes to Italy,
accompanied by Sigismund.
1419 Martin fixes his residence at Florence. John is pardoned,
and dies.
1420 Martin Sforza assists Louis III of Anjou in his attempts
on Naples. Reconciliation of Martin and Braccio. The latter
recovers Bologna for the pope. Martin goes to Rome.
1424 Death of Benedict XIII. Some of the cardinals elect Gil de
Munion (Ægidius Nuños), _Clement VIII_, and a single French one
elects _Benedict XIV_. Reform constitution of Martin. Death of
Braccio. Martin soon recovers all the papal possessions.
1429 Clement VIII submits to Martin. Cardinal Beaufort’s
crusade against the Hussites.
1431 Gabriel Condolmieri, =Eugenius IV=. He quarrels with
the Colonnas, and deprives them of their offices. They take
up arms against him, but peace is made. Eugenius favours the
Orsini. Opening of the Council of Bâle. It declares itself, in
spiritual matters, superior to the pope. Eugenius orders the
council dissolved.
1432 The council refuses to dissolve, and accuses the pope of
contumacy.
1433 Eugenius revokes his dissolution. Negotiations for a union
with the Greek church are begun.
1434 The limits of papal authority fixed by the council.
Eugenius gives Francesco Sforza the march of Ancona. Rising in
Rome against Eugenius, Niccolo Fortebraccio captures the city.
Eugenius escapes to Florence.
1435 Defeat and death of Fortebraccio. Eugenius quarrels with
the council.
1436 Eugenius removes to Bologna.
1437 The Council of Bâle summons Eugenius to answer charges; he
replies with a bull dissolving council and summoning another
at Ferrara, to which the emperor of Constantinople, Joannes
VIII, is invited, that a union between the two churches may
be effected. The council ignores the bull, and continues its
sittings.
1438 The Council of Bâle passes a decree suspending the pope.
Opening of the Council of Ferrara attended by the emperor and
patriarch of Constantinople. The pope’s fiscal rights annulled
in France. The Council of Bâle is henceforth recognised only in
Germany.
1439 The council removed to Florence. Union of the Greek and
Latin churches effected. It comes to nothing, through hostile
influences at Constantinople and the failure of Eugenius to
keep his promises. Deposition of Eugenius at Bâle. Amadeus VIII
of Savoy, _Felix V_, elected anti-pope. Eugenius excommunicates
the Council of Bâle.
1440 Coronation of Felix.
1441 Felix quarrels with the council over questions of money.
General peace in northern Italy concluded at Cremona.
1443 Felix deserts the council, but retains allegiance of
Germany. Henceforth it exists only in name. Eugenius leaves
Florence for Rome.
1445 Eugenius’ deposition of the archbishop of Cologne and
Trèves brings his dispute with the electors of Germany to a
climax. The emperor Frederick III comes to his aid.
1446 Treaty between Frederick and Eugenius. Two electors are
deposed, and the electors league against the pope.
1447 Through efforts of Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini the
obedience of Germany is restored. Death of Eugenius. Tommaso
Parentucelli, =Nicholas V=. Under him the revival of learning
properly begins. The Vatican library is founded. Frederick III
forbids any allegiance to Felix in Germany.
1448 Nicholas recognised by the German electors. Dissolution of
the Council of Bâle.
1449 Abdication of Felix.
1450 Francesco Sforza becomes lord of Milan. Peace restored in
Italy.
1451 Nicholas begins great building operations.
1452 Nicholas crowns Frederick III emperor. Cardinal Isidore
and a small force are sent to the relief of Constantinople.
1453 Plot of Stefano Porcaro to re-establish the Roman
Republic. It fails, and Porcaro is exiled. The Ottoman conquest
of Constantinople brings many learned men to Rome, who assist
in the Renaissance. Nicholas proclaims a crusade against the
Turks.
1454 League of Lodi.
1455 Alfonso Borgia, =Calixtus III=. His election is unpopular.
1456 Calixtus proclaims war against the Turks. The papal fleet
is sent, but only wins a few unimportant victories.
1458 At death of Alfonso of Naples, Calixtus claims Naples,
which he wants for a fief for his nephew, Pedro. These plans
are terminated by Calixtus’ death. Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini,
=Pius II=. He recognises Ferdinand as king of Naples.
1459 Congress of Mantua. Pius dreams of converting Muhammed to
Christianity.
1460 Publication of the bull “Execrabilis” in which appeals to
future councils are condemned. Revolt of Tiburzio in Rome. Pius
returns from Mantua and subdues it.
1463 Excommunication of George of Bohemia. Pius issues bull
retracting opinions he held at the Council of Bâle.
1464 In league with Venice and Hungary, Pius starts a crusade
against the Turks. He dies at Ancona and the crusade is
abandoned. Pietro Barbo, =Paul II=. He is apathetic about the
crusade. The moral corruption of the court begins to alienate
the respect of Germany.
1465 Paul recovers the patrimony from the sons of Everso di
Anguillara.
1469 Departure of Frederick III from Rome--the last appearance
of an emperor in Rome.
1470 Paul resigns his claim to Rimini. Publication of statutes
for the government of Rome.
1471 Francesco della Rovere, =Sixtus IV=. He pursues a policy
of family aggrandisement. He attempts a new crusade.
1472 The papal fleet plunders the Turkish coast, but makes
little effect.
1478 Sixtus tacitly abets the conspiracy against the Medici.
Interdiction of Florence for the execution of Archbishop
Salviati. War declared on the Florentines who are in alliance
with the king of Naples. Louis XI of France fails in offers of
mediation.
1480 Peace arranged. The conquest of Otranto by the Turks
unites all Italy (except Venice) against the invaders.
Absolution of Florence.
1481 The Turks surrender Otranto after death of Muhammed II.
Girolamo Riario seizes Forlì.
1482 Sixtus goes to war with Ferrara. Feuds in Rome. Victory at
Campo Morto of Roberto Malatesta, the papal general. Peace with
Ferrara.
1483 Excommunication of Venice for not making peace with
Ferrara. Savonarola begins to preach.
1484 Sixtus attacks the Colonnas in his designs to increase
power of Girolamo Riario. Death of Sixtus. The Romans attack
Riario and other members of the pope’s family. Giovanni
Battista Cibo, =Innocent VIII=.
1485 Siege of Rome by Virginio Orsini in a quarrel at the
instigation of Naples. Innocent intimidated. Relief of Rome by
Roberto Sanseverino.
1486 Rumours of French intervention lead the cardinals to urge
the pope to make peace with Ferdinand, which he does in a
manner favourable to Naples.
1487 Alliance of Innocent with Lorenzo de’ Medici.
1489 Djem, brother of Bajazet II, arrives a prisoner in Rome.
Innocent claims the kingdom of Naples because Ferdinand will
not pay tribute.
1492 Peace made between the pope and Naples after three years
of bickering. Death of Innocent. Rodrigo Borgia, =Alexander
VI=. He suppresses the disorder in Rome occasioned by
Innocent’s death. Naples offers obedience.
1493 Lodovico Il Moro arrays the pope, Milan, and Venice
against Florence and Naples and invites Charles VIII of France
to revive the Anjou claim to Naples. Alexander divides the
lands of the new world between the Spanish and Portuguese.
Peace made with Naples.
1494 Close alliance of the pope and Naples. Charles VIII
arrives in Italy.
1495 Charles in Rome. The pope comes to terms with him and
receives the obedience of France. Djem is delivered to Charles.
Death of Djem, probably due to natural causes and not to
poison administered by the pope, as usually believed. The pope
joins a league to expel Charles from Naples. Charles’ retreat.
Inundation of Rome.
1496 Alexander makes war upon the Orsini.
1497 Excommunication of Savonarola. Peace with the Orsini.
Divorce of Lucrezia Borgia from Giovanni Sforza. Murder of
Alexander’s son, the duke of Gandia, who has been made duke of
Benevento. Alexander’s mock plans for reform.
1498 The Orsini and Colonnas make peace in order to unite
against the pope. Alexander allies himself with France. His
object is the consolidation of Italy. Execution of Savonarola.
1499 Venice joins the pope and France against Milan. Louis XII
captures Milan.
1500 Cesare Borgia captures Imola and Forlì. Murder of
Lucrezia’s third husband, Alfonso of Este, at instigation of
Cesare. Year of Jubilee. Indulgences sold in foreign countries.
1501 Conquest of the Romagna by Cesare Borgia completed.
Conquest of Naples by the French. The Colonnas submit to the
pope.
1502 Cesare seizes Urbino and Sinigaglia.
1503 The pope takes violent measures against the Orsini family.
Death of Alexander. Francesco Piccolomini, =Pius III=. His
great desire is for peace. Cesare’s dominions begin to fall to
pieces. Death of Pius after a rule of less than four weeks.
Giuliano della Rovere, =Julius II=. He imprisons Cesare.
1504 Liberation of Cesare, who is again imprisoned and sent
to Spain. His domains are restored to the papacy. Inquisition
introduced into Naples. Julius begins to practise nepotism.
1505 Treaty between the pope and Venice.
1506 Foundation of the present St. Peter’s cathedral laid.
Capture of Perugia and Bologna by Julius.
1507 The emperor Maximilian plans to unite the empire and
papacy.
1508 League of Cambray against Venice.
1509 Julius joins the league and excommunicates the Venetians.
Defeat of Venice at Agnadello.
1510 Venice makes humiliating terms with Julius and is
absolved. France placed under the ban. At synod of Tours the
French bishops withdraw obedience and seek to depose Julius.
Julius makes an alliance with the Swiss. The Swiss guard of the
pope still exists. Julius makes war on the duchy of Ferrara.
1511 Julius besieges and captures Mirandola. Failure of the
expedition against Ferrara. The “Holy League” of the papacy.
Ferdinand and Venice to recover Bologna, captured by the
French. Gaston de Foix continues hostilities against Ferrara
and Venice.
1512 Successes of Gaston de Foix. His death at the battle of
Ravenna. Many cities surrender to the Holy League. Opening of
the Lateran Council to consider the schismatic French bishops.
Julius recovers Bologna.
1513 Death of Julius.
THE POPES FROM THE DEATH OF JULIUS II. [1513-1903 A.D.]
(The main political events of the papacy during this period are treated
in the History of Italy; the list of popes is continued here for the sake
of completeness.)
1513 =Leo X=, Giovanni de’ Medici. Concordat with Francis I
concerning appointment of French bishops (1515). Authorisation
of sale of indulgences (1517) brings about the Reformation.
Annexes Urbino and Perugia to the papal states. Alliance with
Charles V against Francis I. A great patron of literature and
art.
1522 =Adrian VI=, tutor of Charles V. Attempts reforms, but is
unable to stay the progress of the Reformation.
1523 =Clement VII=, Giulio de’ Medici. Enters the league
against Charles V. Imprisoned at the sack of Rome (1527).
Forbids the divorce of Henry VIII (1534).
1534 =Paul III=, Alessandro Farnese. Approves the establishment
of the Jesuits (1540) and calls Council of Trent (1545). Makes
his son duke of Parma and Piacenza.
1550 =Julius III= (Gianmaria de’ Medici).
1555 =Marcellus II=, Marcellus Cervius, dies in three weeks.
=Paul IV=, Giovanni Pietro Caraffa, intolerant and tyrannical.
Quarrels with Philip II of Spain who besieges Rome and makes
Paul sue for peace.
1559 =Pius IV=, Giovanni Angelo de’ Medici.
1566 =Pius V=, Michele Ghislieri. A violent persecutor of
dissenters.
1572 =Gregory XIII=, Ugo Buoncompagni. Introduces the Gregorian
calendar.
1585 =Sixtus V=, Felice Peretti. Builds Vatican library and
other great works.
1590 =Urban VII=, Giovanni Battista Castagna, lives thirteen
days. =Gregory XIV=, Niccolo Sfondrati.
1591 =Innocent IX=, Giovanni Antonio Facchinetti. Lives two
months.
1592 =Clement VIII=, Ippolito Aldobrandini. The Molinist and
Jansenist controversy begins. Ferrara annexed to the papal
states.
1604 =Leo XI=, Alessandro de’ Medici. Dies in four weeks.
=Paul V=, Camillo Borghese. Contest with Venice in regard to
ecclesiastical authority.
1621 =Gregory XV=, Alessandro Ludovisi. Founds the congregation
of the Propaganda.
1623 =Urban VIII=, Maffeo Barberini. Supports France in Thirty
Years’ War; annexes Urbino to his states.
1644 =Innocent X=, Giovanni Battista Pamfili. Condemns Treaty
of Westphalia and the Jansenists.
1655 =Alexander VII=, Fabio Chigi. Louis XIV takes Avignon from
him (1662).
1667 =Clement IX=, Giulio Rospigliosi. Temporary peace between
the French Jansenists and Jesuits.
1670 =Clement X=, Emilio Altieri.
1676 =Innocent XI=, Benedetto Odescalchi. Controversy with
Louis XIV over the ambassador’s privileges at Rome.
1689 =Alexander VIII=, Pietro Ottoboni. Aids Venice against the
Turks.
1691 =Innocent XII=, Antonio Pignatelli.
1700 =Clement XI=, Giovanni Francesco Albani. Jansenist
controversy renewed in France. Clement aids pretender to the
English throne.
1721 =Innocent XIII=, Michelangelo Conti.
1724 =Benedict XIII=, Vincenzo Marco Orsini. Makes an
ineffectual attempt to reconcile all divisions of Christianity.
1730 =Clement XII=, Lorenzo Corsini.
1740 =Benedict XIV=, Prospero Lambertini.
1758 =Clement XIII=, Carlo della Torre di Rezzonico. The papacy
loses Avignon for the second time (1768). The Neapolitans seize
Benevento.
1769 =Clement XIV=, Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio Ganganelli. He
suppresses the Jesuits.
1775 =Pius VI=, Giovanni Angelo Braschi. The French seize his
states and carry him to France a prisoner.
1800 =Pius VII=, Gregorio Luigi Barnaba Chiaramonti. Ratifies
concordat with France; crowns Napoleon emperor (1804). The
French take his states and imprison him (1809). Is restored
1814.
1823 =Leo XII=, Annibale della Genga.
1829 =Pius VIII=, Francesco Castiglione.
1831 =Gregory XVI=, Bartolommeo Alberto Cappellari.
1846 =Pius IX=, Mastai Ferretti. Begins as a reformer but
afterwards changes his policy. In 1870 the last of his
dominions are added to the kingdom of Italy.
1878 =Leo XIII=, Giacchino Pecci.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I. ORIGIN AND RISE OF THE PAPACY
[Sidenote: [42-842 A.D.]]
Like almost all the great works of nature and of human power in the
material world and in the world of man, the papacy grew up in silence
and obscurity. The names of the earlier bishops of Rome are known
only by barren lists, by spurious decrees and epistles inscribed,
centuries later, with their names; by their collision with the teachers
of heretical opinions, almost all of whom found their way to Rome;
by martyrdoms ascribed with the same lavish reverence to those who
lived under the mildest of the Roman emperors, as well as those under
the most merciless persecutors. Yet the mythic or imaginative spirit
of early Christianity has either respected, or was not tempted to
indulge its creative fertility by the primitive annals of Rome. After
the embellishment, if not the invention, of St. Peter’s pontificate,
his conflict with Simon Magus in the presence of the emperor, and the
circumstance of his martyrdom, it was content with raising the successive
bishops to the rank of martyrs without any peculiar richness or fullness
of legend.
The dimness and obscurity which veiled the growing church, no doubt threw
its modest concealment over the person of the bishop. He was but one
man, with no recognised function, in the vast and tumultuous population.
He had his unmarked dwelling, perhaps in the distant Transteverine
region, or in the then lowly and unfrequented Vatican. By the vulgar, he
was beheld as a Jew, or as belonging to one of those countless eastern
religions, which, from the commencement of the empire, had been flowing,
each with its strange rites and mysteries, into Rome. The emperor, the
imperial family, the court favourites, the military commanders, the
consulars, the senators, the patricians by birth, wealth, or favour, the
pontiffs, the great lawyers, even those who ministered to the public
pleasures, the distinguished mimes or gladiators, when they appeared
in the streets, commanded more public attention than the Christian
bishop, except when sought out for persecution by some politic or fanatic
emperor. Slowly, and at long intervals, did the bishop of Rome emerge to
dangerous eminence.
Christianity itself might seem, even from the first, to have disdained
obscurity--to have sprung up or to have been forced into terrible
notoriety in the Neronian persecution and the subsequent martyrdom of one
at least, according to the vulgar tradition, of its two great apostles.
What caprice of cruelty directed the attention of Nero to the Christians,
and made him suppose them victims important enough to glut the popular
indignation at the burning of Rome, it is impossible to determine. The
cause and extent of the Domitian persecution is equally obscure. The son
of Vespasian was not likely to be merciful to any connected with the
fanatic Jews. Its known victims were of the imperial family, against whom
some crime was necessary, and an accusation of Christianity served the
end.
At the commencement of the second century, under Trajan, persecution
against the Christians is raging in the East. That, however, was a
local or rather Asiatic persecution, arising out of the vigilant and
not groundless apprehension of the sullen and brooding preparation for
insurrection among the whole Jewish race (with whom Roman terror and
hatred still confounded the Christians), which broke out in the bloody
massacres of Cyrene and Cyprus, and in the final rebellion during the
reign of Hadrian, under Barchochebas (Bar Koziba). But while Ignatius,
bishop of Antioch, is carried to Rome to suffer martyrdom, the Roman
community is in peace, and not without influence. Ignatius entreats his
Roman brethren not to interfere with injurious kindness between himself
and his glorious death.
The wealth of the Roman community, and their lavish Christian use of
their wealth, by contributing to the wants of foreign churches, at all
periods, especially in times of danger and disaster (an ancient usage
which lasted till the time of Eusebius), testifies at once to their
flourishing condition, to their constant communication with more distant
parts of the empire, and thus incidentally, perhaps, to the class,
the middle or mercantile class, which formed the greater part of the
believers.
But the history of Latin Christianity has not begun. For some
considerable (it cannot but be an undefinable) part of the first three
centuries, the church of Rome, and most, if not all the churches of
the West, were, if we may so speak, Greek religious colonies. Their
language was Greek, their organisation Greek, their writers Greek, their
Scriptures Greek; and many vestiges and traditions show that their
ritual, their liturgy, was Greek. Through Greek the communication of the
churches of Rome and of the West was constantly kept up with the East;
and through Greek every heresiarch, or his disciples, having found his
way to Rome, propagated with more or less success his peculiar doctrines.
Pope Leo I (440-461) was the first celebrated Latin preacher, and his
brief and emphatic sermons read like the first essays of a rude and
untried eloquence, rather than the finished compositions which would
imply a long study and cultivation of pulpit oratory. Compare them with
Chrysostom.
[Sidenote: [42-312 A.D.]]
Africa, not Rome, gave birth to Latin Christianity. Tertullian was the
first Latin writer, at least the first who commanded the public ear; and
there is strong ground for supposing that, since Tertullian quotes the
sacred writings perpetually and copiously, the earliest of those many
Latin versions, noticed by Augustine, and on which Jerome grounded his
Vulgate, were African. Cyprian kept up the tradition of ecclesiastical
Latin. Arnobius, too, was an African.
Thus the Roman church was but one of the confederation of Greek religious
republics, founded by Christianity. As of apostolic origin, still more as
the church of the capital of the world, it was, of course, of paramount
dignity and importance. It is difficult to exaggerate the height at which
Rome, before the foundation of Constantinople, stood above the other
cities of the earth; the centre of commerce, the centre of affairs,
the centre of empire. The Christians, like the rest of mankind, were
constantly ebbing and flowing out of Rome and into Rome. The church of
the capital could not but assume something of the dignity of the capital;
it was constantly receiving, as it were, the homage of all the foreign
Christians, who, from interest, business, ambition, curiosity, either
visited or took up their residence in the Eternal City.
But if Rome, or the church of Rome, was thus the centre of the more
peaceful influences of Christianity, and of the hopes and fears of the
Christian world, it was no less inevitably the chosen battle-field of
her civil wars; and Christianity has ever more faithfully recorded her
dissensions than her conquests. In Rome every feud which distracted
the infant community reached its height; nowhere do the judaising
tenets seem to have been more obstinate, or to have held so long and
stubborn a conflict with more full and genuine Christianity. In Rome
every heresy, almost every heresiarch, found welcome reception. All new
opinions, all attempts to harmonise Christianity with the tenets of the
Greek philosophers, with the oriental religions, the cosmogonies, the
theophanies, and mysteries of the East, were boldly agitated, either by
the authors of the gnostic systems or by their disciples. Valentinus
the Alexandrian was himself in Rome, so also was Marcion of Sinope. The
Phrygian Montanus, with his prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla, if not
present, had their sect, a powerful sect, in Rome and in Africa. In Rome
their convert, for a time at least, was the pope; in Africa, Tertullian.
Somewhat later, the precursors of the great Trinitarian controversy
came from all quarters. Praxeas, an Asiatic; Theodotus, a Byzantine;
Artemon, an Asiatic; Noetus, a Smyrniote, at least his disciples the
deacon Epigenes and Cleomenes, taught at Rome. Sabellius, from Ptolemais
in Cyrene, appeared in person; his opinions took their full development
in Rome. Not only do all these controversies betray the inexhaustible
fertility of the Greek or eastern imagination, not only were they all
drawn from Greek or oriental doctrines, but they must have been still
agitated, discussed, ramified into their parts and divisions, through
the versatile and subtile Greek. They were all strangers and foreigners;
not one of all these systems originated in Rome, in Italy, or in Africa.
On all these opinions the bishop of Rome was almost compelled to sit
in judgment; he must receive or reject, authorise or condemn; he was a
proselyte, whom it would be the ambition of all to gain.
Thus, down to the conversion of Constantine, the biography of the Roman
bishops, and the history of the Roman episcopate, are one; the acts and
peculiar character of the pontiffs, the influence and fortunes of the
see, excepting in the doubtful and occasional gleams of light which
have brought out Victor, Zephyrinus, Calixtus, Cornelius, Stephen, into
more distinct personality, are involved in a dim and vague twilight.
On the establishment of Christianity, as the religion if not of the
empire, of the emperor, the bishop of Rome rises at once to the rank
of a great accredited functionary; the bishops gradually, though still
slowly, assume the life of individual character. The bishop is the first
Christian in the first city of the world, and that city is legally
Christian. The supreme pontificate of heathenism might still linger
from ancient usage among the numerous titles of the emperor; but so
long as Constantine was in Rome, the bishop of Rome, the head of the
emperor’s religion, became in public estimation the equal, in authority
and influence immeasurably the superior, to all of sacerdotal rank. The
schisms and factions of Christianity now become affairs of state. As long
as Rome is the imperial residence, an appeal to the emperor is an appeal
to the bishop of Rome. It was the slow and imperceptible accumulation of
wealth, the unmarked ascent to power and sovereignty, which enabled the
papacy to endure for centuries.
[Sidenote: [312-395 A.D.]]
The obscurity of the bishops of Rome was not in this alone their
strength. The earlier pontiffs (Clement is hardly an exception) were men
who of themselves commanded no great authority, and awoke no jealousy.
Rome had no Origen, no Athanasius, no Ambrose, no Augustine, no Jerome.
The power of the hierarchy was established by other master-minds; by the
Carthaginian Cyprian, by the Italian Ambrose, the prelate of political
weight as well as of austere piety, by the eloquent Chrysostom. The
names of none of the popes, down to Leo and Gregory the Great, appear
among the distinguished writers of Christendom. This more cautious and
retired dignity was no less favourable to their earlier power, than to
their later claim of infallibility. If more stirring and ambitious men,
they might have betrayed to the civil power the secret of their aspiring
hopes; if they had been voluminous writers, in the more speculative
times, before the Christian creed had assumed its definite and coherent
form, it might have been more difficult to assert their unimpeachable
orthodoxy.
The removal of the seat of empire to Constantinople consummated the
separation of Greek and Latin Christianity; one took the dominion of the
East, the other of the West. Greek Christianity has now another centre
in the new capital; and the new capital has entered into those close
relations with the great cities of the East, which had before belonged
exclusively to Rome. Alexandria has become the granary of Constantinople;
her Christianity and her commerce, instead of floating along the
Mediterranean to Italy, pour up the Ægean to the city on the Bosporus.
The Syrian capitals, Antioch, Jerusalem, the cities of Asia Minor and
Bithynia, Ephesus, Nicæa, Nicomedia, own another mistress. The tide
of Greek trade has ebbed away from the West, and found a nearer mart;
political and religious ambition and adventure crowd to the new eastern
court. That court becomes the chosen scene of Christian controversy; the
emperor is the proselyte to gain whom contending parties employ argument,
influence, intrigue.
That which was begun by the foundation of Constantinople, was completed
by the partition of the empire between the sons of Constantine. There are
now two Roman worlds, a Greek, and a Latin. In one respect, Rome lost in
dignity, she was no longer the sole metropolis of the empire; the East no
longer treated her with the deference of a subject. On the other hand,
she was the uncontested, unrivalled head of her own hemisphere; she had
no rival in those provinces, which yet held her allegiance, either as to
civil or religious supremacy. The separation of the empire was not more
complete between the sons of Constantine or Theodosius, than between
Greek and Latin Christianity.[b]
[Sidenote: [42-395 A.D.]]
The advance of Christianity involved an emancipation of religion from all
political elements, and this was inevitably followed by the establishment
of a distinct ecclesiastical body, with a constitution peculiar to
itself. In this separation of the church from the state consists,
perhaps, the most important and most effectually influential peculiarity
of Christian times. The spiritual and temporal powers may come into
close contact--they may remain in the most intimate communion; but a
perfect coalition can only take place occasionally, and for short periods
of time. In their reciprocal relations and position with regard to each
other, has since then been involved one of the most important questions
presented by all history.
[Illustration: ST. RADEGONDE, WIFE OF KING CLOTAIRE, RECEIVING RELIGIOUS
ROBES FROM ST. MEDARD
(From an old woodcut)]
It was nevertheless imperative on the ecclesiastical body to form
their constitution on the model of that of the empire; and accordingly
the hierarchy of the bishops, metropolitan patriarchs, was formed in
close correspondence with the degradations of the civil power. No long
time had elapsed before the bishops of Rome acquired the supremacy.
It is, indeed, a vain pretence to assert that this supremacy was
universally acknowledged by East and West, even in the first century,
or, indeed, at any time; but it is equally certain that they quickly
gained a pre-eminence, raising them far above all other ecclesiastical
dignitaries. Many causes concurred to secure them this position; for if
the relative importance of each provincial capital secured to its bishop
a corresponding weight and dignity, how much more certainly would this
result take place as regarded the ancient capital of the empire--that
city whence the whole had derived its name? Rome was, besides, one of
the most illustrious seats of the apostles; here had the greater number
of the martyrs shed their blood. The bishops of Rome had displayed the
most undaunted firmness throughout the different persecutions, and had
sometimes been scarcely installed in their sacred office before they
followed their predecessor in the path of that martyrdom by which his
seat had been vacated. In addition to all this, the emperors now found
it advisable to favour the advancement of a great patriarchal authority.
In a law that became decisive for the predominance of Rome as well as of
Christianity, Theodosius the Great commands that all nations claiming
the protection of his grace should receive the faith as propounded by
St. Peter to the Romans. Valentinian also forbade the bishops, whether
of Gaul or of other provinces, to depart from the received customs of
the church without the sanction of that venerable man, the pope of the
Holy City. Thenceforth the power of the Roman bishops advanced beneath
the protection of the emperor himself. But in this political connection
lay also a restrictive force; had there been but one emperor, a universal
primacy might also have established itself; but this was prevented by
the partition of the empire. The emperors of the East were too eagerly
tenacious of their ecclesiastical rights to make it possible that they
should promote the extension of power desired by the western patriarchs
in their dominions. In this respect also the constitution of the church
presents the closest resemblance to that of the empire.
THE PAPACY IN CONNECTION WITH THE FRANKISH EMPIRE
[Sidenote: [312-754 A.D.]]
Scarcely was this great change completed, the Christian religion
established, and the church founded, when new events of great importance
took place; the Roman Empire, so long conquering and paramount, was now
to see itself assailed by its neighbours; in its turn it was invaded and
overcome.
Amidst the general convulsion that ensued, Christianity itself received
a violent shock. In their terror, the Romans bethought themselves once
more of the Etruscan mysteries, the Athenians hoped to be saved by
Achilles and Minerva, the Carthaginians offered prayers to the genius
Cœlestis; but these were only temporary waverings, for even whilst the
empire was shattered in the western provinces, the church remained firm
and undisturbed throughout all. But she fell, as was inevitable, into
many embarrassments, and found herself in an entirely altered condition.
A pagan people took possession of Britain; Arian kings seized the
greater part of the remaining West; while the Lombards, long attached to
Arianism, and as neighbours most dangerous and hostile, established a
powerful sovereignty before the very gates of Rome.
The Roman bishops meanwhile, beset on all sides, exerted themselves with
all the prudence and pertinacity which have remained their peculiar
attributes to regain the mastery--at least in their ancient patriarchal
diocese; but a new and still heavier calamity now assailed them. The
Arabs--not conquerors merely, as were the Germans, but men inspired even
to fanaticism by an arrogant and dogmatising creed, in direct opposition
to the Christian faith--now poured themselves over the West as they
had previously done over the East. After repeated attacks, they gained
possession of Africa; one battle made them masters of Spain, their
general Musa boasting that he would march into Italy by the passes of
the Pyrenees and across the Alps, and cause the name of Mohammed to be
proclaimed from the Vatican.
This position was all the more perilous for the western portion of Roman
Christendom, from the fact that the iconoclastic dissensions were at that
time raging with the most deadly animosity on both sides. The emperor of
Constantinople had adopted the opposite party to that favoured by the
pope of Rome; nay, the life of the latter was more than once in danger
from the emperor’s machinations. The Lombards did not fail to perceive
the advantages derivable to themselves from these dissensions; their
king Aistulf took possession of provinces that till then had always
acknowledged the dominion of the emperor, and again advancing towards
Rome, he summoned that city also to surrender, demanding payment of
tribute with vehement threats.
The Roman see was at this moment in no condition to help itself, even
against the Lombards, still less could it hope to contend with the Arabs,
who were beginning to extend their sovereignty over the Mediterranean,
and were threatening all Christendom with a war of extermination.
But now the faith was no longer confined within the limits of the Roman
Empire. Christianity, in accordance with its original destiny, had long
overpassed these limits; more especially had it taken deep root among
the German tribes of the West; nay, a Christian power had already arisen
among these tribes, and towards this the pope had but to stretch forth
his hands, when he was sure to find the most effectual succour and
earnest allies against all his enemies.
[Sidenote: [496-715 A.D.]]
Among all the Germanic nations, the Franks alone had become Catholic
from their first rise in the provinces of the Roman Empire. This
acknowledgment of the Roman see had secured important advantages to the
Frankish nation. In the Catholic subjects of their Arian enemies, the
western Goths and Burgundians, the Franks found natural allies. We read
so much of the miracles by which Clovis was favoured--how St. Martin
showed him the ford over the Vienne by means of a hind, how St. Hilary
preceded his armies in a column of fire--that we shall not greatly err if
we conclude these legends to shadow forth the material succours afforded
by the natives to those who shared their creed, and for whom, according
to Gregory of Tours,[i] they desired victory “with eager inclination.”
But this attachment to Catholicism, thus confirmed from the beginning
by consequences so important, was afterwards renewed and powerfully
strengthened by a very peculiar influence arising from a totally
different quarter.
It chanced that certain Anglo-Saxons, being exposed for sale in the slave
market of Rome, attracted the attention of Pope Gregory the Great; he at
once resolved that Christianity should be preached to the nation whence
these beautiful captives had been taken. Never, perhaps, was resolution
adopted by any pope whence results more important ensued; together with
the doctrines of Christianity, a veneration for Rome and for the holy
see, such as had never before existed in any nation, found place among
the Germanic Britons. The Anglo-Saxons began to make pilgrimages to Rome;
they sent their youth thither to be educated, and King Offa established
the tax called “St. Peter’s penny” for the relief of pilgrims and the
education of the clergy. The higher orders proceeded to Rome, in the hope
that, dying there, a more ready acceptance would be accorded to them by
the saints in heaven. The Anglo-Saxons appear to have transferred to Rome
and the Christian saints the old Teutonic superstition, by which the gods
were described as nearer to some spots of earth than to others, and more
readily to be propitiated in places thus favoured.
But besides all this, results of higher importance still ensued when the
Anglo-Saxons transplanted their modes of thought to the mainland, and
imbued the whole empire of the Franks with their own opinion. Boniface
(originally Winfrid or Winfrith), the apostle of the Germans, was an
Anglo-Saxon; this missionary, largely sharing in the veneration professed
by his nation for St. Peter and his successors, had from the beginning
voluntarily pledged himself to abide faithfully by all the regulations of
the Roman see; to this promise he most religiously adhered. On all the
German churches founded by him was imposed an extraordinary obligation
to obedience. Every bishop was required expressly to promise that his
whole life should be passed in unlimited obedience to the Romish church,
to St. Peter and his representative. Nor did he confine this rule to the
Germans only. The Gallican bishops had hitherto maintained a certain
independence of Rome; Boniface, who had more than once presided in their
synods, availed himself of these occasions to impress his own views on
this western portion of the Frankish church; thenceforward the Gallic
archbishops received their pallium from Rome, and thus did the devoted
submission of the Anglo-Saxons extend itself over the whole realm of the
Franks.
The empire had now become the central point for all the German tribes of
the West. The fact that the reigning family, the Merovingian race, had
brought about its own destruction by its murderous atrocities had not
affected the strength of the empire. Another family, that of Pepin of
Heristal, had risen to supreme power--men of great energy, exalted force
of character, and indomitable vigour. While other realms were sinking
together into one common ruin, and the world seemed about to become the
prey of the Moslem, it was this race, the house of Pepin of Heristal,
afterwards called the Carlovingian, by which the first and effectual
resistance was offered to the Mohammedan conquerors.
[Sidenote: [395-715 A.D.]]
The religious development then in progress was also equally favoured by
the house of Pepin; we find it early maintaining the best understanding
with Rome, and it was under the special protection of Charles Martel and
Pepin le Bref that Boniface proceeded in his apostolic labours. Let us
consider the temporal condition of the papal power. On the one side the
East Roman Empire, weakened, fallen into ruin, incapable of supporting
Christendom against Islamism, or of defending its own domains in Italy
against the Lombards, yet continuing to claim supremacy even in spiritual
affairs. On the other hand, we have the German nations full of the most
vigorous life; victorious over the Moslem, attached with all the fresh
ardour and trusting enthusiasm of youth to that authority of whose
protecting and restricting influences they still felt the need, and
filled with an unlimited and most freely rendered devotion.
Already Gregory II perceived the advantages he had gained; full of a
proud self-consciousness, he writes thus to that iconoclast emperor,
Leo the Isaurian: “All the lands of the West have their eyes directed
towards our humility; by them are we considered as a God upon earth.” His
successors became ever more and more impressed with the conviction that
it was needful to separate themselves from a power (that of the Roman
Empire) by which many duties were imposed on them, but which could offer
them no protection in return. They could not safely permit a succession
to the mere name and empire to fetter them, but turned themselves rather
towards those from whom help and aid might also be expected. Thus they
entered into strict alliance with those great captains of the West, the
Frankish monarchs; this became closer and closer from year to year,
procured important advantages to both parties, and eventually exercised
the most active influence on the destinies of the world.[c]
With the division of the empire in the year 395, the question of the
Roman precedence of Constantinople was left for a time in abeyance; but
in the West the authority of the bishop of Rome became more and more
firmly established. In the following century the general conditions under
which he was called upon to act became so materially modified as to
constitute a new period in the history of our subject.
The characters of the men who filled the papal chair during this century,
most of them of exemplary life, some of commanding genius, would alone
suffice to constitute it a memorable era. “Upon the mind of Innocent
I,” says Milman,[b] “seems first distinctly to have dawned the vast
conception of Rome’s universal ecclesiastical supremacy.” Innocent I
(402-417) seems indeed to have been the first of the popes who ventured
to repudiate those political conceptions which threatened to circumscribe
the extending influence of his office. Innocent was succeeded by Zosimus
(417-418) and Boniface (418-422). The former, whose pontificate lasted
only twenty-one months, exhibits a noteworthy exception to the traditions
of his see, in the disposition he at one time showed to temporise with
Pelagianism, and even to set aside in its favour the decrees of his
predecessor. The pontificate of Boniface is notable as having been
preceded by a contested election which afforded the emperor Honorius an
opportunity for the exercise of his intervention, thereby establishing a
precedent for imperial interference on like occasions. At the instance
of Boniface himself, Honorius enacted an ordinance designed to avert the
scandals incident to such contests. By the new provisions, all canvassing
for the vacant chair was strictly prohibited; in the event of a disputed
election both candidates were to be deemed ineligible. The successor
of Boniface was Celestine I (422-432). The evidence afforded by the
events of his pontificate is somewhat conflicting in character. On the
one hand, we find the churches of Africa putting forward their latest
recorded protest against the Roman pretensions, adducing the sixth canon
of the Council of Nicæa in support of their protest; on the other hand,
the success with which Celestine intervened in Illyricum, and again in
connection with the sees of Narbonne and Vienne, proves that the papal
jurisdiction was being accepted with increasing deference in other parts
of the empire.
[Sidenote: [418-461 A.D.]]
Barbaric invasion, although resulting in the overthrow of many of the
institutions of civilisation, and in widespread suffering and social
deterioration, served but to enhance the influence and importance of
the Roman see. The apparent fulfilment of prophecy, pagan as well as
Christian, when the city was taken and sacked by Alaric (410), seemed
to complete the effacement of the temporal power in Rome. Neither the
western emperors nor the Gothic conquerors held their court in the
ancient capital, where the pope was now at once the most important and
conspicuous authority. In the African provinces, the demoralisation
occasioned by the fierce controversies and dissensions concerning
Pelagianism and Donatism compelled the Catholic communities to exchange
their former attitude of haughty independence for one of suppliant
appeal, and to solicit the intervention and counsel which they had before
rejected. Such was the aspect of affairs in the West when Leo the Great
(440-461), by some regarded as the true founder of the mediæval popedom,
succeeded to the primacy. A citizen of Rome by birth, he exemplified
in his own character many of the ancient Roman virtues--a tenacious
adherence to tradition in matters of religious belief, an indomitable
resolution in the assertion of the prerogatives of his office, and the
austere practice of the recognised duties of social life. This rigid
maintenance of orthodoxy had been instilled into him (or at least
confirmed) by the exhortations of Augustine, with whom he had become
personally acquainted when on a mission to the African province; and
before his election to the papal office the celebrated Cassian had
conceived so high an opinion of his virtues and abilities as to dedicate
to him his treatise on the Incarnation. Regarded, indeed, simply as the
able antagonist of the Manichæan and Eutychian heresies, and as the
first author of the collect, Leo would fill no unimportant place in the
annals of Latin Christendom; but his influence on church history in other
respects is of a far deeper and more potent kind. In none was it followed
by more important results than by the success with which he established
the theory that all bishops who, in questions of importance, demurred to
the decision of their metropolitan should be entitled to appeal to Rome.
He obtained the recognition of this principle not only in Illyricum,
as his predecessor Innocent had done, but also in Gaul; and the
circumstances under which he did so in the latter province constitute the
whole proceedings a memorable episode in church history.
[Sidenote: [461-532 A.D.]]
The chief obstacle to the recognition of the supremacy of the Roman
pontiff was now to be found in the revival of Arianism, which, professed
alike by the Goth and the Vandal, represented the dominant faith in the
chief cities of northern Italy, as well as in Africa, Spain, and southern
Gaul. But the rivalry thus generated only increased the disposition of
the Catholic party to exalt the prerogatives of their head, and the
attitude of Rome towards other churches continued to be more and more one
of unquestionable superiority. In the year 483 Pope Felix II (or III)[84]
ventured upon an unprecedented measure in citing Acacius, the patriarch
of Constantinople, to Rome, to answer certain allegations preferred
against him by John, patriarch of Alexandria, whom he designated as
“_frater et coepiscopus noster_” (Thiel,[j] _Epistolæ_, p. 239). On
Acacius’ refusing to recognise the legality of the letter of citation,
he was excommunicated by Felix. The successor of Felix, Gelasius I
(492-496), refused to notify, as was customary, his election to the
patriarch of Constantinople, and by his refusal implicitly put forward a
fresh assumption, viz., that communion with Rome implied subjection to
Rome. Throughout the pontificate of Gelasius the primacy of the Roman see
was the burden of his numerous letters to other churches, and he appears
also to have been the first of the pontiffs to enunciate the view that
the authority which he represented was not controllable by the canons
of synods, whether past or present. In Italy these assumptions were
unhesitatingly accepted. The Palmary synod, as it was termed, convened in
Rome during the pontificate of Symmachus (498-514), formally disavowed
its own right to sit in judgment on his administrative acts. Ennodius,
bishop of Pavia, (_circa_ 510), declared that the Roman pontiff was to
be judged by God alone, and was not amenable to any earthly potentate or
tribunal. It is thus evident that the doctrine of papal infallibility,
though not yet formulated, was already virtually recognised.
During the Gothic rule in Italy (493-553), its representatives manifested
the utmost tolerance in relation to religious questions, and showed
little disposition to impose any restraints on the policy of the popes,
although each monarch, by virtue of his title of “king of the Romans,”
claimed the right to veto any election to the papal chair. In the year
483, when Odoacer sent his first lieutenant, Basilius, from Ravenna
to Rome, the latter was invested with the titles _eminentissimus_ and
_sublimis_. The pope accordingly appeared as politically the subject
of his Arian overlord. The advantage thus gained by the temporal power
appears to have been the result of its intervention, which Simplicius
(468-483) had himself solicited, in the elections to the papal office,
and one of the principal acts of the Palmary synod (above referred
to) was to repudiate the chief measures of Basilius, which had been
especially directed against the abuses that prevailed on such occasions,
and more particularly against bribery by alienation of the church
lands. The assertion of this authority on the part of the civil power
was declared by the synod to be irregular and uncanonical, and was
accordingly set aside as not binding on the church. The fierce contests
and shameless bribery which now accompanied almost every election were
felt, however, to be so grave a scandal that the synod itself deemed
it expedient to adopt the ordinance issued by Basilius, and to issue
it as one of its own enactments. In order more effectually to guard
against such abuses, Boniface II, in the year 530, obtained from a
synod specially convened for the purpose the power of appointing his
own successor, and nominated one Vigilius--the same who ten years later
actually succeeded to the office. But a second synod, having decided that
such a concession was contrary to the traditions of episcopal succession,
annulled the grant, and Boniface himself committed the former decree to
the flames. At his death, however, the recurrence of the old abuses in
a yet more flagrant form induced the senate to obtain from the court
of Ravenna a measure of reform of a more comprehensive character, and
designed to check not only the simoniacal practices within the church
itself, but also the extortion of the court officials.
[Illustration: AN ANCIENT CONCEPTION OF ST. PETER
(From a woodcut in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris)]
[Sidenote: [526-590 A.D.]]
In the year 526 Dionysius Exiguus, a monk in Rome, undertook the labour
of preparing a new collection of the canons of the councils, and, finding
his production favourably received, proceeded also to compile a like
collection of the papal letters or decretals, from the earliest extant
down to those of Anastasius II in his own day. The letters of the popes
were thus placed on a level with the rescripts of the emperors, and in
conjunction with the canons formed the basis of the canon law, which
afterwards assumed such importance in connection with the history of the
church. The negative value of the collection formed by Dionysius may be
said, however, almost to equal that of its actual contents; for, from
the simple fact that it does not contain those yet earlier decretals
subsequently put forth by the pseudo-Isidorus, it affords the most
convincing disproof of their genuineness.
The substitution of the rule of the Greek emperors for that of the Gothic
monarchs was inimical in almost every respect to the independence and
reputation of the popedom. For a short interval before Justinian landed
in Italy, Agapetus (535-536), appearing as the emissary of Theodotus to
the Eastern court, assumed a bearing which inspired the emperor himself
with respect, and his influence was sufficiently potent to procure the
deposition of one patriarch of the Eastern capital and to decide the
election of another. But, after Belisarius entered Rome and the city
had been reduced to subjection, the pontiff was seen to be the mere
vassal of the emperor, and not only of the emperor but of the courtesan
on the imperial throne. The deposition of Silverius (536-540), and his
mysterious fate at Pandataria, together with the elevation of Vigilius
(540-555), the nominee of the abandoned Theodora and her pliant slave,
completed the degradation of the Roman see. Each successive pope was now
little more than a puppet which moved at the pleasure of the Eastern
court, and the _apocrisiarius_ or deputy whom he maintained at that
court was generally (as in the case of Pelagius I, Gregory I, Sabinian,
Boniface III, Martin) his own successor--an honour purchased, it can
hardly be doubted, by systematic compliance with the imperial wishes. In
the career and fate of Vigilius the papal office was dishonoured as it
had never been before, at once by the signal unworthiness of its bearer
and by the indignities heaped upon him by the savage malice of his foes.
So sinister, indeed, had become the relations between the Roman bishop
and the eastern court that Pelagius I (555-560) is said to have besought
Narses to send him to prison rather than to Constantinople.
In the year 568 the Lombards invaded Italy. Like the Goths they became
converts to Arianism; but they were also far less civilised, and looked
with little respect on Roman institutions and Roman habits of thought,
while their arrogance, faithlessness, and cruelty gained for them the
special detestation of the Roman see. Their conquests did not extend over
all Italy. Ravenna and the Pentapolis, Venice, Rome, and its duchy (as
the surrounding district was then termed), Naples, Calabria, and Sicily,
remained subject to the empire. In the peninsula the pope was, after the
exarch of Ravenna, the most powerful potentate, and the presence of a
common foe caused the relations between himself and the empire to assume
a more amicable character. The emperor, indeed, continued to control
the elections and to enforce the payment of tribute for the territory
protected by the imperial arms; but on the other hand the pontiff
exercised a definite authority with the Roman duchy and claimed to have
a voice in the appointment of the civil officers who administered the
local government. From the time of Constantine the Great the church had
possessed the right of acquiring landed property by bequests, and the
Roman see had thus become greatly enriched. Some of its possessions lay
far beyond the confines of Italy.[f]
GREGORY THE GREAT (590-604 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [42-590 A.D.]]
The papal monarchy thus rose insensibly upon the episcopal aristocracy.
From the first, the word of the successor of St. Peter as bishop of
the Eternal City had a high degree of authority. The title of “pope,”
attributed in theory to every bishop, was finally reserved for him of
Rome alone, a change already manifest under Leo the Great, but not
completely brought about until the time of Gregory VII. The bishop of
Rome had possessed since the days of the Roman Empire valuable property
in the capital and throughout Italy. He had even acquired some across the
Alps, for example, in the province of Arles, where he charged the bishop
of that city with administering it. Besides this he occupied in Rome
itself, that is to say in the most famous city in the world, that great
estate which had been assigned to the bishops by the municipal régime in
the last days of the empire.
St. Leo (440-461) gave much prestige to his office by the great rôle he
played in public affairs and his successful intercession with Attila. He
obtained from Valentinian III a decree in which the emperor invited “the
entire church to recognise its head in order that peace might forever
be preserved”; and at the same period we see him restoring a Gallican
bishop to the see from which he had been driven, and transferring the
metropolitan seat from Arles to Vienne.
Under the Ostrogoths the church of Rome, treated elsewhere with leniency,
could make no progress. But when their power had fallen (553) and Rome
came once more under the authority of the emperor of Constantinople,
the great distance of her new master opened up a brighter future. The
Lombard invasion brought into the church’s territory a large number of
refugees, and the Roman population recovered some of its old energy in
the double hatred for barbarians and Arians. As for the exarch whom the
eastern emperor had charged with the government of his Italian provinces
and invested with direct authority over the dukes and military counts
of Naples, Rome, Genoa, etc., this official could scarcely make his
authority felt in the western half of Italy, relegated as he was to
Ravenna, and separated from Rome by the Lombard dominion which included
Spoleto.
[Sidenote: [590-604 A.D.]]
It was at this juncture favourable, though dangerous in some respects,
that Gregory I appeared (590-604). Descended from the noble Anicia
family, Gregory added to distinction of birth every advantage of body
and mind. While under thirty he was prefect of Rome, but at the end of
several months he abandoned honours and thoughts of worldly things,
and sought the retirement of the cloister. But his reputation did not
permit him the obscurity he desired. Sent to Constantinople about 570
as secretary and later as apocrisiary (a sort of grand almoner) by
Pope Pelagius II, he rendered valuable service to the holy see in its
relations with the empire and in its struggles with the Lombards. In
590 the clergy, the senate, and the people raised him with one voice
to the supreme pontificate, as successor to Pelagius; but as all
elections had to be confirmed by the emperor at Constantinople, Gregory
wrote in supplication that his might not be sanctioned. The letter was
intercepted, and Maurice’s orders of ratification soon arrived. Gregory
hid; he was discovered and brought back to Rome.
Pope in spite of himself, he used all his talent and power to fortify
the papacy,[85] propagate Christianity, and improve the discipline and
organisation of the church. Although he pleaded that the episcopacy, and
especially his own, “was the office of a shepherd of souls and not of
a temporal prince,” he did not neglect the temporal power of the holy
see. It happened, since the emperor was so little in touch with Italian
affairs, that the soldiers charged with defending Rome against the
Lombards had received no pay. Gregory paid them, took upon himself the
work of defence, and armed the clerics. When Agilulf, whose aggression
had provoked these preparations, was compelled to withdraw, Gregory
treated with him in the name of Rome, in spite of protests from the
exarch.
Feeling thus strengthened in his position, he undertook to propagate
Christianity and orthodoxy both within and without the limits of the
ancient Roman Empire. Within its boundaries there were still some pagans
in Sicily, Sardinia, even at Terracina (Tarracina) at the very gates of
Rome, and doubtless also in some parts of Gaul, since there exists a
decree of Childebert’s dated 554, with the title _For the Abolition of
the Remainder of Idolatry_. There were Arians very close to Rome, the
Lombards. By the intervention of Queen Theudelinda, Gregory succeeded in
having the heir to the Lombard throne, Adalwald, raised in Catholicism.
Since 587 the Visigoths in Spain under Recared had been converted.
As for Great Britain, it was still entirely pagan, and Gregory sent
thither the monk Augustine and forty Roman missionaries (596). They
landed on the island of Thanet, and going from there sought Ethelbert,
king of Kent, who permitted them to preach their doctrines at Canterbury.
From this point Christianity spread rapidly towards the north and west,
until by 627 it was firmly established in Northumberland. St. Augustine,
archbishop of Canterbury, had been named primate of England by Gregory
the Great, with whom he kept up a constant correspondence that is still
in existence.
Ireland, “the isle of saints,” had already been converted, and now monks
were leaving it to win over the barbarians. At this period St. Columban,
the monk who denounced Brunehild’s crimes with such boldness, set out to
preach the Gospel to the mountaineers of Helvetia, and founded in their
midst abbeys surrounded by fertile fields. After him St. Rupert travelled
far into Bavaria and established the diocese of Salzburg.
Thus Christianity spread its spirit of proselytism, and St. Gregory
fostered it greatly by the mild precepts he inculcated in his
missionaries, and the skill with which he facilitated the transition
from pagan to Catholic. He wrote to St. Augustine: “You must take care
not to destroy the pagans’ temples, but only their idols; use holy water
in washing out the edifice, build altars and deposit relics in them. If
their temples are well built, so much the better; for it is important
that these same ones pass from the cult of demons to that of the true
God. When the nation sees its ancient places of worship remain, it will
be more disposed to visit them through habit and to worship the true God.”
At home Gregory laboured with success to co-ordinate the powers of the
church, in making recognised above everything that of the holy see. We
find him bestowing the title of vicar of the Gauls upon the bishop of
Arles, to correspond with Augustine archbishop of Canterbury, with the
archbishop of Seville for Spain, and him of Thessalonica for Greece; and
finally sending secret legates to Constantinople. In his pastoral which
he wrote on the occasion of his election, and which became a general
regulation throughout the West, he prescribed the bishops their duties
according to the decision of several councils. To bind the hierarchy
together he sought to prevent the encroachments of one bishop upon
another. “I have given you Britain to direct spiritually,” he wrote to
the ambitious Augustine, “and not Gaul.” He favoured the monasteries,
looked with vigilance after their discipline, and reformed church
singing, substituting for the Ambrosian chant, “which,” according to a
contemporary, “was like the distant sound of a chariot rolling over the
stones,” that Gregorian chant which bears his own name.[d]
The darkest stain on the name of Gregory is his cruel and unchristian
triumph in the fall of the emperor Maurice--his base and adulatory praise
of Phocas, the most odious and sanguinary tyrant who had ever seized the
throne of Constantinople. It is the worst homage to religion to vindicate
or even to excuse the crimes of religious men; and the apologetic
palliation, or even the extenuation of their misdeeds rarely succeeds in
removing, often strengthens, the unfavourable impression.
Gregory was spared the pain and shame of witnessing the utter falsehood
of his pious vaticinations as to the glorious and holy reign of Phocas.
In the second year of the tyrant’s reign he closed the thirteen important
years of his pontificate. The ungrateful Romans paid but tardy honours
to his memory. His death (March 10th, 604) was followed by a famine,
which the starving multitude attributed to his wasteful dilapidation of
the patrimony of the church--that patrimony which had been so carefully
administered and so religiously devoted to their use. Nothing can give a
baser notion of their degradation than their actions. They proceeded to
wreak their vengeance on the library of Gregory, and were only deterred
from their barbarous ravages by the interposition of Peter the faithful
archdeacon. Peter had been interlocutor of Gregory in the wild legends
contained in the _Dialogues_.[k] The archdeacon now assured the populace
of Rome that he had often seen the Holy Ghost in the visible shape of a
dove hovering over the head of Gregory as he wrote. Gregory’s successor
therefore hesitated, and demanded that Peter should confirm his pious
fiction or fancy by an oath. He ascended the pulpit, but before he had
concluded his solemn oath he fell dead. That which to a hostile audience
might have been a manifest judgment against perjury, was received as a
divine testimony to his truth. The Roman church has constantly permitted
Gregory to be represented with the Holy Ghost, as a dove, floating over
his head.
The historian of Christianity is arrested by certain characters and
certain epochs, which stand as landmarks between the close of one age of
religion and the commencement of another. Such a character is Gregory
the Great; such an epoch his pontificate, the termination of the sixth
century. Gregory, not from his station alone, but by the acknowledgment
of the admiring world, was intellectually, as well as spiritually, the
great model of his age. He was proficient in all the arts and sciences
cultivated at that time; the vast volumes of his writings show his
indefatigable powers; their popularity and their authority, his ability
to clothe those thoughts and those reasonings in language which would
awaken and command the general mind.
His epoch was that of the final Christianisation of the world, not in
outward worship alone, not in its establishment as the imperial religion,
the rise of the church upon the ruin of the temple, and the recognition
of the hierarchy as an indispensable rank in the social system, but in
its full possession of the whole mind of man, in letters, arts as far as
arts were cultivated, habits, usages, modes of thought, and in popular
superstition.
Not only was heathenism, but, excepting in the laws and municipal
institutions, Romanity itself absolutely extinct. The reign of Theodoric
had been an attempt to fuse together Roman, Teutonic, and Christian
usages. Cassiodorus, though half a monk, aspired to be a Roman statesman,
Boethius to be a heathen philosopher. The influence of the Roman schools
of rhetoric is betrayed even in the writers of Gaul, such as Sidonius
Apollinaris; there is an attempt to preserve some lingering cadence of
Roman poetry in the Christian versifiers of that age. At the close of
the sixth century all this has expired; ecclesiastical Latin is the only
language of letters, or rather letters themselves are become purely
ecclesiastical. The fable of Gregory’s destruction of the Palatine
library is now rejected as injurious to his fame; but probably the
Palatine library, if it existed, would have been so utterly neglected
that Gregory would hardly have condescended to fear its influence. His
aversion to such studies is not that of dread or hatred, but of religious
contempt; profane letters are a disgrace to a Christian bishop; the truly
religious spirit would loathe them of itself.
What, then, was this Christianity by which Gregory ruled the world? Not
merely the speculative and dogmatic theology, but the popular, vital,
active Christianity, which was working in the heart of man; the dominant
motive of his actions, as far as they were affected by religion; the
principal element of his hopes and fears as regards the invisible world
and that future life which had now become part of his conscious belief.
CHRISTIAN MYTHOLOGY
The history of Christianity cannot be understood without pausing at
stated periods to survey the progress and development of this Christian
mythology, which, gradually growing up and springing as it did from
natural and universal instincts, took a more perfect and systematic form,
and at length, at the height of the Middle Ages, was as much a part of
Latin Christianity as the primal truths of the Gospel. This growth, which
had long before begun, had reached a kind of adolescence in the age of
Gregory, to expand into full maturity during succeeding ages. Already
the creeds of the church formed but a small portion of Christian belief.
The highest and most speculative questions of theology, especially in
Alexandria and Constantinople, had become watchwords of strife and
faction, had stirred the passions of the lowest orders; the two natures,
or the single or double will in Christ, had agitated the workshop of
the artisan and the seats in the circus. Christ assumed gradually more
and more of the awfulness, the immateriality, the incomprehensibleness,
of the Deity, and men sought out beings more akin to themselves, more
open, it might seem, to human sympathies. Believers delighted in those
ceremonials to which they might have recourse with less timidity; the
shrines and the relics of martyrs might deign to receive the homage
of those who were too profane to tread the holier ground. Already the
worship of these lower objects of homage begins to intercept that to the
higher; the popular mind is filling with images either not suggested
at all, or suggested but very dimly by the sacred writings; legends of
saints are supplanting, or rivalling at least, in their general respect
and attention, the narratives of the Bible.
Of all these forms of worship, the most captivating, and captivating to
the most amiable weaknesses of the human mind, was the devotion to the
Virgin Mary. The worship of the Virgin had first arisen in the East; and
this worship, already more than initiate, contributed, no doubt, to the
passionate violence with which the Nestorian controversy was agitated,
while that controversy, with its favourable issue to those who might
seem most zealous for the Virgin’s glory, gave a strong impulse to the
worship. The denial of the title “the mother of God,” by Nestorius,
was that which sounded most offensive to the general ear; it was the
intelligible odious point in his heresy. The worship of the Virgin
now appears in the East as an integral part of Christianity. Among
Justinian’s splendid edifices arose many churches dedicated to the mother
of God. The feast of the Annunciation is already celebrated under Justin
and Justinian. Heraclius has images of the Virgin on his masts when
he sails to Constantinople to overthrow Phocas. Before the end of the
century the Virgin is become the tutelar deity of Constantinople, which
is saved by her intercession from the Saracens.
WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN
In the time of Gregory the worship of the Virgin had not assumed that
rank in Latin Christianity to which it rose in later centuries, though
that second great impulse towards this worship, the unbounded admiration
of virginity, had full possession of his monastic mind. With Gregory
celibacy was the perfection of human nature; he looked with abhorrence on
the contamination of the holy sacerdotal character, even in its lowest
degree, by any sexual connection. No subdeacon, after a certain period,
was to be admitted without a vow of chastity; no married subdeacon to be
promoted to a higher rank. In one of his expositions he sadly relates the
fall of one of his aunts, a consecrated virgin; she had been guilty of
the sin of marriage. Of all his grievances against the exarch of Ravenna,
none seems more worthy of complaint than that he had encouraged certain
nuns to throw off their religious habits and to marry. Gregory does
not seem to have waged this war against nature, however his sentiments
were congenial with those of his age, with his wonted success.[86] His
letters are full of appeals to sovereigns and to bishops to repress the
incontinence of the clergy; even monasteries were not absolutely safe.
ANGELS AND DEVILS
It was not around the monastery alone, the centre of this preternatural
agency, that the ordinary providence of God gave place to a perpetual
interposition of miraculous power. Every Christian was environed with
a world of invisible beings, who were constantly putting off their
spiritual nature and assuming forms, uttering tones, distilling odours,
apprehensible by the soul of man, or taking absolute and conscious
possession of his inward being. A distinction was drawn between the pure,
spiritual, illimitable, incomprehensible nature of the Godhead, and
the thin and subtile but bodily forms of angels and archangels. These
were perceptible to the human senses, wore the human form, spoke with
human language; their substance was the thin air, the impalpable fire;
it resembled the souls of men, but yet, whenever they pleased, it was
visible, performed the functions of life, communicated not with the mind
and soul only but with the eye and ear of man.
The hearing and the sight of religious terror were far more quick and
sensitive. The angelic visitations were but rare and occasional; the
more active demons were ever on the watch, seizing and making every
opportunity of beguiling their easy victims. They were everywhere
present, and everywhere betraying their presence. They ventured into
the holiest places; they were hardly awed by the most devout saints;
but, at the same time there was no being too humble, to whose seduction
they would not condescend--nothing in ordinary life so trivial and
insignificant but that they would stoop to employ it for their evil
purposes. They were without the man, terrifying him with mysterious
sounds and unaccountable sights. They were within him, compelling all his
faculties to do their bidding, another indwelling will besides his own,
compelling his reluctant soul to perform their service. Every passion,
every vice, had its especial demon; lust, impiety, blasphemy, vainglory,
pride were not the man himself, but a foreign power working within him.
The slightest act, sometimes no act at all, surrendered the soul to the
irresistible indwelling agent. In Gregory’s _Dialogues_[k] a woman eats
a lettuce without making the sign of the cross; she is possessed by a
devil, who had been swallowed in the unexorcised lettuce. Another woman
is possessed for admitting her husband’s embraces the night before the
dedication of an oratory.
MARTYRS AND RELICS
Happily there existed, and existed almost at the command of the clergy, a
counterworking power to this fatal diabolic influence, in the perpetual
presence of the saints, more especially in hallowed places, and about
their own relics. These relics were the treasure with which the clergy,
above all the bishops of Rome, who possessed those of St. Peter and St.
Paul with countless others, ruled the mind; for by these they controlled
and kept in awe, they repaired the evils wrought by this whole world of
evil spirits. Happy were the churches, monasteries, whose foundations
were hallowed and secured by these sacred talismans. To doubt their
presence in these dedicated shrines, in the scenes of their martyrdom,
obstinately to require the satisfaction of the senses as to their
presence, was an impious want of faith; belief, in proportion to the
doubtfulness of the miracle, was the more meritorious. Kings and queens
bowed in awe before the possessors and dispensers of these wonder-working
treasures.
Relics had now attained a self-defensive power; profane hands which
touched them withered; and men who endeavoured to remove them were
struck dead. Such was the declaration of Gregory himself, to one who had
petitioned for the head or some part of the body of St. Paul. It was an
awful thing even to approach to worship them. Men who had merely touched
the bones of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Lawrence, though with the
pious design of changing their position or placing the scattered bones
together, had fallen dead, in one case to the number of ten. The utmost
that the church of Rome could bestow would be a cloth which had been
permitted to touch them; and even such cloths had been known to bleed.
If, indeed, the chains of St. Paul would yield any of their precious iron
to the file, which they often refused to do, this, he writes, he would
transmit to the empress; and he consoles her for the smallness of the
gift by the miraculous power which it will inherently possess.
Gregory doled out such gifts with pious parsimony. A nail which contained
the minutest filings from the chains of St. Peter was an inestimable
present to a patrician, or an ex-consul, or a barbaric king. Sometimes
they were inserted in a small cross; in one instance with fragments of
the gridiron on which St. Lawrence was roasted. One of the golden nails
of the chains of St. Peter had tempted the avarice of a profane, no
doubt a heathen or Arian, Lombard; he took out his knife to sever it
off; the awe-struck knife sprang up and cut his sacrilegious throat. The
Lombard king Authari and his attendants were witnesses of the miracle,
and stood in terror, not daring to lift the fearful nail from the ground.
A Catholic was fortunately found, by whom the nail permitted itself to
be touched; and this peerless gift, so avouched, Gregory sends to a
distinguished civil officer.
SANCTITY OF THE CLERGY
That sanctity which thus dwelt in the relics of the saints, was naturally
gathered, as far as possible, around their own persons by the clergy,
hallowed as they were and set apart by their ordination from the common
race of man; and if the hierarchy had only wielded this power for
self-protection, if they had but arrayed themselves in this defensive awe
against the insults and cruelties of barbarians, such as the Lombards are
described, it would be stern censure which would condemn even manifest
imposture. We might excuse the embellishment, even the invention of the
noble story of the bishop Sanctulus, who offered his life for that of a
captive deacon, before whom the Lombard executioner, when he lifted up
his sword to behead him, felt his arm stiffen, and could not move it till
he had solemnly sworn never to raise that sword against the life of a
Christian. But this conservative respect for the sanctity of their order
darkens too frequently into pride and inhumanity; the awful inviolability
of their persons becomes a jealous resentment against even unintentional
irreverence. A demoniac accused the holy bishop Fortunatus of refusing
him the rights of hospitality; a poor peasant receives the possessed into
his house, and is punished for this inferential disrespect to the bishop
by seeing his child cast into the fire and burned before his eyes. A
poor fellow with a monkey and cymbals is struck dead for unintentionally
interrupting a bishop Boniface in prayer.
The sacred edifices, the churches, especially, approachable to all, were
yet approachable not without profound awe; in them met everything which
could deepen that awe; within were the relics of the tutelar saint, the
mysteries, and the presence of the Redeemer, of God himself; beneath were
the remains of the faithful dead.
Burial in churches had now begun; it was a special privilege. Gregory
dwells on the advantage of being thus constantly suggested to the prayers
of friends and relatives for the repose of the soul. But that which was
a blessing to the holy was but more perilous to the unabsolved and the
wicked. The sacred soil refused to receive them; the martyrs appeared
and commanded the fetid corpses to be cast out of their precincts. They
were seized by devils, who did not fear to carry off their own even from
those holy places. But oblations were still effective after death. The
consecrated host has begun to possess in itself wonder-working powers.
A child is cast forth from his grave, and is only persuaded to rest in
quiet by a piece of the consecrated bread being placed upon his breast.
Two noble women, who had been excommunicated for talking scandal, were
nevertheless buried in the church; but every time the mass was offered,
their spirits were seen to rise from their tombs and glide out of the
church. It was only after an oblation had been “immolated” for them that
they slept in peace.
STATE AFTER DEATH
The mystery of the state after death began to cease to be a mystery.
The subtile and invisible soul gradually materialised itself to the
keen sight of the devout. A hermit declared that he had seen Theodoric,
the Ostrogothic king, at the instant of death, with loose garments and
sandals, led between Symmachus the patrician and John the pope, and
plunged into the burning crater of Lipari. Benedict, while waking, beheld
a bright and dazzling light, in which he distinctly saw the soul of
Germanus, bishop of Capua, ascend to heaven in an orb of fire, borne by
angels.
Hell was by no means the inexorable dwelling which restored not its
inhabitants. Men were transported thither for a short time, and returned
to reveal its secrets to the shuddering world. Gregory’s fourth book
is entirely filled with legends of departing and of departed spirits,
several of which revisit the light of day. On the locality of hell
Gregory is modest, and declines to make any peremptory decision. On
purgatory, too, he is dubious, though his final conclusion appears to
be that there is a purgatorial fire which may purify the soul from very
slight sins. Some centuries must elapse before those awful realms have
formed themselves into that dreary and regular topography which Dante
partly created out of his own sublime imagination, partly combined from
all the accumulated legends.
The most singular of these earlier journeys into the future world are
the adventures of a certain Stephen, the first part of which Gregory
declares he had heard more than once from his own mouth, and which he
relates, apparently intending to be implicitly believed. Stephen had
to all appearance died in Constantinople, but, as the embalmer could
not be found, he was left unburied the whole night. During that time he
went down into hell, where he saw many things which he had not before
believed. But when he came before the Judge, the Judge said, “I did not
send for this man, but for Stephen the smith.” Gregory’s friend Stephen
was too happy to get back, and on his return found his neighbour Stephen
the smith dead. But Stephen learned not wisdom from his escape. He died
of the plague in Rome, and with him appeared to die a soldier, who
returned to reveal more of these fearful secrets of the other world, and
the fate of Stephen. The soldier passed a bridge, beneath it flowed a
river, from which rose vapours, dark, dismal, and noisome. Beyond the
bridge (the imagination could but go back to the old Elysian fields)
spread beautiful, flowery, and fragrant meadows, peopled by spirits
clothed in white. In these were many mansions, vast and full of light.
Above all rose a palace of golden bricks; to whom it belonged he could
not read. On the bridge he recognised Stephen, whose foot slipped as he
endeavoured to pass. His lower limbs were immediately seized by frightful
forms, who strove to drag him to the fetid dwellings below. But white
and beautiful beings caught his arms, and there was a long struggle. The
soldier did not see the issue of the conflict.
Such were among the stories avouched by the highest ecclesiastical
authority, and commended it might seem by the uninquiring faith of
the ruling intellect of his age--such among the first elements of
that universal popular religion which was the Christianity of ages.
This religion gradually moulded together all which arose out of the
natural instincts of man, the undying reminiscences of all the older
religions, the Jewish, the pagan, and the Teutonic, with the few and
indistinct glimpses of the invisible world and the future state of being
in the New Testament, into a vast system, more sublime perhaps for its
indefiniteness, which, being necessary in that condition of mankind,
could not but grow up out of the kindled imagination and religious faith
of Christendom. And such religion the historian who should presume to
condemn as a vast plan of fraud, or a philosopher who should venture to
disdain as a fabric of folly only deserving to be forgotten, would be
equally unjust, equally blind to its real uses, assuredly ignorant of its
importance and its significance in the history of man. For on this, the
popular Christianity, turns the whole history of man for centuries.
It is at once the cause and the consequence of the sacerdotal dominion
over mankind; the groundwork of authority at which the world trembled;
which founded and overthrew kingdoms, bound together or set in
antagonistic array nations, classes, ranks, orders of society. Of this,
the parent, when the time arrived, of poetry, of art, the Christian
historian must watch the growth and mark the gradations by which it
gathered into itself the whole activity of the human mind, and quickened
that activity till at length the mind outgrew that which had been so long
almost its sole occupation. It endured till faith, with the schoolmen,
led into the fathomless depths of metaphysics, began to aspire after
higher truths; with the reformers, attempting to refine religion to its
primary spiritual simplicity, gradually dropped, or left but to the
humblest and most ignorant, at least to the more imaginative and less
practical part of mankind, this even yet prolific legendary Christianity,
which had been the accessory and supplementary Bible, the authoritative
and accepted, though often unwritten, Gospel of centuries.[b]
GREGORY’S SUCCESSORS
[Sidenote: [604-649 A.D.]]
Gregory left the papal chair far more securely settled on the lofty
eminence where it had been placed than it was when he ascended it. But
Sabinian, who succeeded him, expressed little gratitude for the service
he had thus performed; indignant at finding the treasury exhausted of
its gold, he accused him of having ruined the see by his liberality;
and would have proceeded, but for the menaces of both the clergy and
the people, publicly to burn his writings. He did not live long after
this attempt; and his sudden death was ascribed to a blow on the head
inflicted by the angry shade of the departed saint. A truer cause,
however, may be found, perhaps, in the fact that he had made himself
hated by the populace, by withdrawing the accustomed alms, that he
might heal, as he pretended, the injuries inflicted by the liberality
of Gregory; a mode of proceeding so little relished by his flock, that,
whatever share they might have in his death, they conveyed his breathless
body with contempt out of the city.
It was during the pontificate of Boniface III, who resided as Gregory’s
legate at the court of Constantinople, and owed his elevation to
the emperor, that the Roman pontiff was first dignified with the
much-disputed title of universal bishop. For this honour Boniface was
indebted to the enmity existing between Phocas and the patriarch of his
imperial city. He lived to enjoy his triumph only a few months; and
several of his successors seem to have contented themselves with the
duties of their station, without entering into direct collision with any
rival in authority. It is, however, a singular circumstance, that to
the attempts of Boniface IV, who obtained the papal dignity immediately
after the pontiff just named, to bring back the separatists from Rome
to her communion, a resistance was made by the celebrated Irish apostle
Columbanus, breathing much of the freedom and intelligence of later days.
Honorius, who succeeded to the papacy after the two unimportant
pontificates of Deusdedit (Deodatus or Adeodatus I) and Boniface V,
made a vain attempt to influence the Lombards to restore their king,
Adalwald (Adalvaldus), whom they had deposed as a madman, and elected in
his place an Arian named Ariwald (Ariovaldus). But the most conspicuous
circumstance in his career was his agreement with Sergius, the patriarch
of Constantinople, in establishing the celebrated edict by which it was
intended to put an end to the monothelite controversy,[87] and render the
renewal of it a crime against the laws of the empire. Yet Honorius, in
the Sixth General Council, was solemnly anathematised, and classed with
the known and most violent supporters of the monothelite heresy.
The death of this pontiff was followed by the pillage of the palace
of the Lateran--an outrage which had its origin with the emperor, and
was committed by his own officers. Severinus was then placed in the
papal chair, but his pontificate was not marked by any important event.
The same observation applies to those of his successors, John IV and
Theodore. Theodore was succeeded by Martin I, the earliest act of whose
pontificate was the calling of a council to condemn the principles of the
monothelites, and the late acts of the emperors. The assembly held its
first session October 5th, 649; in the fifth and last, which was held on
the 31st of October, twenty articles were drawn up against the heresy in
question, and its authors, Theodorus, Cyrus, Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paul,
together with all such as should embrace their opinions, were formally
anathematised.
The Roman pontiff was by this proceeding brought into immediate
collision with the emperor; and the power of the greatest potentate of
the church was thus measured with that of the highest in the state. In
this respect the issue of the controversy deserves particular note.
Martin was a zealous and active churchman, learned and conscientious,
strongly impressed with a sense of the importance of unity, and disposed
to exercise the authority he possessed to the utmost in its favour. No
sooner had the council given its decision, than he despatched letters
to all orders of the clergy, acquainting them with the event and
with the acts it had passed. But the information which the emperor
Constans received of these proceedings filled him with the most violent
indignation; and he at once resolved to punish the contempt with which
his edict, and that of his predecessor, had been treated. He communicated
his wishes to Calliopas, exarch of Italy, who soon after made the pontiff
a prisoner and conveyed him to the island of Naxos. For three months he
was kept nearly continually on board a ship, and carried from one place
to the other, without being allowed even the commonest necessaries of
life. At Naxos he remained twelve months in captivity; and was then
taken to Constantinople, being exposed, during his passage thither,
to a treatment which would have been cruel to a condemned malefactor.
On his arrival, fresh indignities and barbarities awaited him. He was
cast into a miserable prison, in which he lay apparently forgotten for
more than three months, and when carried before the tribunal of justice
was examined like a common criminal. The part he had taken in the late
events, so far as they strictly pertained to religion, was not considered
even by his fiercest opponents as involving a guilt sufficient to justify
their severities. He was, therefore, arraigned as an enemy of the state.
Twenty witnesses, of whom the greater part were soldiers, and who are
said to have been bribed for the occasion, appeared as his accusers.
[Sidenote: [649-682 A.D.]]
This mockery of a trial being concluded, the pontiff was carried to an
open terrace, where, exposed at once to the gaze of the emperor and
the populace, the base servants of the court insulted him in so gross
a manner that even the multitude pitied his fate. His outward mantle
having been torn off, the officers took him, and stripping off the best
of his habits, left only his tunic remaining, which they next rent down
on each side, from top to bottom. An iron collar was then fastened
round his neck, and he was led from the palace through the midst of
the city, chained to one of the keepers of the prison, and preceded by
another bearing the sword with which he was to be executed. As they
dragged him along, his lacerated feet stained the pavement with blood;
and he presented an appearance of humiliation and misery which might
well humble the spirits of the haughtiest churchmen of either Rome or
Constantinople. But his sufferings did not terminate here. Instead of
being executed he was sent into the Chersonesus where he lingered through
four months of the severest hardship, then expired. He was succeeded
as pope by Eugenius, indebted for his elevation to the influence of
the imperial court and his too ready tolerance of its reigning errors.
He was consequently regarded at Rome with equal suspicion and dislike.
Vitalian, the successor of Eugenius, had the merit of being a strict
disciplinarian, and of sending Theodore to England as archbishop of
Canterbury. At his death, Adeodatus (Deodatus II) was elected. It was in
the pontificate of his successor Domnus that the church of Ravenna became
permanently incorporated with that of Rome.
Agatho, the next pope, was not less conspicuous for the devoutness of
his character; and the story which is told of his curing by a kiss some
leprous person whom he accidentally met, indicates not merely the growing
superstition of the age, but the influence which the pontiff’s piety had
made upon the minds of the people. At his request it was that the emperor
Constantine Pogonatus assembled the Sixth General Council; and it is
somewhat singular to find that one of the main objects which his legates
laboured at obtaining was a reduction of the sum usually paid by the
newly elected pontiff into the imperial treasury. For this indulgence,
Agatho willingly confirmed the ancient law, that no pope should be
ordained till his election had been formally recognised and confirmed at
Constantinople. The harmony which thus existed between the emperor and
Agatho was happily continued through the pontificate of Leo II, in whose
favour the monarch decreed that the new archbishop of Ravenna should
receive his ordination at the hands of the pope. He possessed sufficient
interest at the court of the emperor to obtain the important privilege
for the Roman pontiffs, of being confirmed in their authority by the
exarch of Ravenna, instead of having to make the long and difficult
journey to Constantinople.
[Sidenote: [682-701 A.D.]]
The pontificate of John V was as unimportant as it was short; he was
succeeded by Conon. Next, Sergius occupied the papal chair to the
beginning of the eighth century; but, at the commencement of his
pontificate, he saw himself opposed by two powerful rivals, and the
palace of the Lateran was for some time besieged with open force by the
partisans of these pretenders to the papacy. The contest was continued
for a considerable period. Sergius, though supported by imperial
influence, had to endure a seven years’ exile before he could possess
himself of the dignity; and on his refusal to recognise the canons of
the council _in trullo_,[88] was assailed by Justinian II with all the
weapons of imperial authority. The conflict was thus renewed, which had
so long disturbed the peace of Christendom; and another starting-point
given, from which the two great candidates for universal and unlimited
power were to begin the race. It is evident that the pontiff had not
yet acquired strength sufficient to oppose his rival with certainty of
success. At the council of Toledo, held in the year 688, the archbishop
of that city obtained a resolution in favour of his opinions, which
not simply established his creed in opposition to that of the pontiff,
but was couched in terms of haughty defiance and rebuke. The contest,
therefore, was as yet unattended by palpable prognostics of the final
triumph of the papacy.
[Illustration: ST. WULFRAN, BISHOP OF SENS, WHO DIED IN 720 A.D.
(From a miniature in the Bibliothèque du Havre)]
The troubles which the church had suffered from the continual motions
of half-barbarian hordes were many and severe, but they produced an
equivalent advantage. Amid all the struggles to which churchmen were
urged by ambition, they displayed, as a body, some of the noblest
instances of charity, of care for the poor and distressed, which the
world had seen. Pressed by the frequent prospect of immediate ruin,
they simultaneously acquired the virtues of resignation and the skill
of politicians. It was to them the people owed their preservation when
threatened on the one side by foreign enemies, and on the other by the
tyranny of their rulers; and till they themselves became oppressors,
popular liberty found its best champions among the heads of the church.
But when the progress of Christianity itself is considered--that is,
the very interests for which the church, with all its attendant powers,
was called into existence--doubt and dissatisfaction are almost the
invariable result of the inquiry. In Rome, piety was shocked by the open
contests which repeatedly took place by candidates for the papal dignity,
and by the little less disgraceful plots with which the contending
parties prepared for the onset. The provinces, perpetually appealed to on
the subject of obedience to the supreme pontiff, saw their own pastors at
one time yielding with submissive complacence to his decrees, at another
resisting them both openly and in secret.
[Sidenote: [701-731 A.D.]]
Sergius was succeeded by John VI (701), in whose pontificate Campania was
invaded by the Lombards, under Gisulf, duke of Benevento. His successor,
John VII (705), is noted only for having been guilty of the weakness of
returning the canons of the council _in trullo_ to the emperor Justinian,
without a single alteration. In his pontificate, moreover, the king of
the Lombards restored the lands of which he had despoiled the church,
and the deed which contained the grant was written in letters of gold.
Sisinius was the next pontiff; but he died a few days after his election,
and left the see to Constantine, a native of Syria, who retained it
about seven years. He was summoned by Justinian to the capital of the
East; but the object which the emperor had in view is unknown, and the
only result of his journey seems to have been the restoration of Felix,
the archbishop of Ravenna, to his diocese and honours. That unfortunate
prelate had made an effort to recover the independence possessed by the
former bishops of his see; but, though aided by the warlike masters of
the district, his attempt failed; and the emperor sending a body of
troops from Sicily, the walls of Ravenna were beaten down, and Felix,
loaded with chains, was carried a prisoner to Constantinople. There he
had to endure the punishment inflicted on the basest criminals. His eyes
were put out, and he was banished to the inhospitable shores of Pontus--a
punishment, it is said, which was regarded at Rome as the infliction of
divine justice.
Notwithstanding the want of positive evidence as to the express object of
Constantine’s journey, it is usually believed to have been occasioned by
the emperor’s unceasing anxiety to secure the co-operation of the Roman
hierarchy in the establishment of the late decrees. It is also argued,
and with seeming reason, that his attendance on the imperial commands is
a proof of the still unavoidable subjection which the pontiffs had to
endure; while his failing to oppose the canons so objectionable to his
church affords a similar proof of his weakness and his fears.
[Sidenote: [715-741 A.D.]]
Gregory II, by whom he was succeeded (715), pursued a bolder line of
conduct.[89] The part which he took in opposition to Leo the Isaurian
has been already stated; and his determined attack on the Lombards, who
made themselves masters of one of the Neapolitan fortresses, indicated
the spirit which, in later times, placed Christian prelates at the head
of mail-clad armies. Gregory was in all respects the firm defender and
zealous advocate of papal authority. At one moment engaged in open
hostilities with the emperor, he was at another employed in directing
the labours of missionaries and founding monasteries. Germany, at his
direction, was traversed by the ardent and pious Boniface; and in Italy
the rule of St. Benedict became, under his patronage, the universal canon
of monastic institutions.
The pontificate of Gregory II lasted sixteen years, and he was succeeded
by a priest of the same name, whom the people elected by some sudden
impulse, while engaged in the obsequies of the former. Gregory III
(731-741) carried the principles which had actuated his predecessor to
a far greater extent. Unable to withdraw the emperor Leo, either by
persuasion or threats, from the vigorous persecution of iconoclasm,
he proceeded to the daring measure of excommunicating the sovereign,
and then made known to the celebrated Charles Martel his readiness to
proclaim him consul of Rome, on condition that he would enable him to
support his separation from the dominion of the empire. Leo resented the
conduct of the pontiff, by depriving him of part of his revenues and
rejecting his legates. But the step which Gregory had taken led directly
to the establishment of the papacy on the basis of temporal power and
grandeur. A new career, new motives to exertion, were opened to the
politicians of the church; and it was no longer with rival prelates the
bishops of Rome were to contend, but with states and princes. The prizes
for which they were henceforth to strive were to be tributary crowns and
sceptres--the triumphs they were to celebrate, not those of truth over
heresy, but of arbitrary superstition over the free-will, the natural
sentiments, and the evangelical knowledge of Christian nations.[g]
That reign of terror known as the struggle of the iconoclasts has been
alluded to already in the history of the Byzantine Empire. It may also be
summed up here with its consequences.
DRAPER ON THE ORIGIN OF ICONOCLASM
Three causes gave rise to iconoclasm, or the revolt against
image-worship; first, the remonstrances and derision of the Mohammedans;
second, the good sense of a great sovereign, Leo the Isaurian, who
had risen by his merit from obscurity, and had become the founder of
a new dynasty at Constantinople; third, the detected inability of
these miracle-working idols and fetiches to protect their worshippers
or themselves against an unbelieving enemy. Moreover, an impression
was gradually making its way among the more intelligent classes that
religion ought to free itself from such superstitions. So important
were the consequences of Leo’s actions, that some have been disposed
to assign to his reign the first attempt at making policy depend on
theology; and to this period they therefore refer the commencement of
the Byzantine Empire. Through one hundred and twenty years, six emperors
devoted themselves to this reformation. But it was premature. They were
overpowered by the populace and the monks, by the bishops of Rome, and by
a superstitious and wicked woman.
It had been a favourite argument against the pagans how little their gods
could do for them when the hour of calamity came, when their statues
and images were insulted and destroyed; and hence how vain was such
worship, how imbecile such gods. When Africa and Asia, full of relics
and crosses, pictures and images, fell before the Mohammedans, those
conquerors retaliated the same logic with no little effect. There was
hardly one of the fallen towns that had not some idol for its protector.
Remembering the stern objurgations of the prophet against this deadly
sin, prohibited at once by the commandment of God and repudiated by the
reason of man, the Saracen caliphs had ordered all the Syrian images to
be destroyed. Amid the derision of the Arab soldiery and the tears of the
terror-stricken worshippers, these orders were remorselessly carried into
effect, except in some cases where the temptation of an enormous ransom
induced the avengers of the unity of God to swerve from their duty. Thus
the piece of linen cloth on which it was feigned that our Saviour had
impressed his countenance, and which was the palladium of Edessa, was
carried off by the victors at the capture of that town, and subsequently
sold to Constantinople at the profitable price of twelve thousand pounds
of silver. This picture, and also some other celebrated ones, it was
said, possessed the property of multiplying themselves by contact with
other surfaces, as in modern times we multiply photographs. Such were the
celebrated images “made without hands.”
[Sidenote: [726 A.D.]]