THE CHURCH IN ITALY, 461-590
[Sidenote: The end of the Empire in the West, 476.]
The death of S. Leo took place but a few years before the Roman Empire
in the West became extinguished, and political interests entirely
submerged those of religion in the years that followed it. Dimly,
beneath the noise of the barbarian triumph, we discern the survival in
Rome of the Church's powers and claims; but it is not till the rise of
another pope of mighty genius that they claim any consideration as
important. In 461 died S. Leo; in 476 Romulus Augustulus, the last of
the continuous line of Western Caesars, surrendered his sceptre to the
Herul Odowakar. The barbarian governed with the aid of Roman
statesmen: he fixed his seat of rule at Ravenna rather than at Rome: he
showed consideration to the saintly Epiphanius, Bishop of Pavia:
heretic though he was, he desired to keep well with the Catholic
bishops of Rome. After him came a greater man, Theodoric the Goth,
whose capture of Ravenna, March 5th, 493, was followed by the
assassination of Odowakar. [Sidenote: Theodoric the Goth, 493.]
Theodoric, also an Arian, became sole ruler of Italy. He too was
served by Roman officials, and his administration was modelled on that
of the Caesars. A special interest attaches to his {30} dealings with
the Church. The king, indeed, Arian though he was, looked on the
Catholic Church with no unfriendly eye. His great minister,
Cassiodorus, was orthodox: and it is in his writings, which enshrine
the policy of his master, that we must search for the relations between
Church and State in the days before Belisarius had won back Ravenna and
Italy to the allegiance of the Roman Caesar.
The letters of Cassiodorus supply, if not a complete account, at least
very valuable illustrations, of the position assumed by the East Gothic
power under Theodoric and his successors in regard to the Church. The
favour shown by the Ostrogoth sovereign to Cassiodorus, a staunch
Catholic, yet senator, consul, patrician, quaestor, and praetorian
praefect, is in itself an illustration of the absence of bitter Arian
feeling. [Sidenote: His relation with the Catholic Church.] This
impression is deepened by a perusal of the letters which Cassiodorus
wrote in the name of his sovereign. The subjects in which the Church
is most frequently related to the State are jurisdiction and property.
In the latter there seems a clear desire on the part of the kings to
give security and to act even with generosity to all religious bodies,
Catholic as well as Arian. Church property was frequently, if not
always, freed from taxation.[1] The principle which dictated the whole
policy of Theodoric is to be seen in a letter to Adila, senator and
comes.[2] "Although we will not that any should suffer any wrong whom
it belongs to our religious obligation to protect, since the free
tranquillity of the subjects is the glory of the ruler; yet especially
do we desire that all churches {31} should be free from any injury,
since while they are in peace the mercy of God is bestowed on us."
Therefore he orders all protection to be given to the churches: yet
answer is to be made in the law courts to any suit against them. For,
as he says in another letter, "if false claims may not be tolerated
against men, how much less against God." Again, "If we are willing to
enrich the Church by our own liberality, _a fortiori_ will we not allow
it to be despoiled of the gifts received from pious princes in the
past."
It was on such liberality that the material power of the Church was
slowly strengthening itself. Similarly, as in the East, clerical
privilege was beginning to be allowed in the law courts: the Church was
acquiring the right to judge all cases in which her officers were
concerned. Theodoric's successors bettered his instructions.
Athalaric allowed to the Roman pope the jurisdiction over all suits
affecting the Roman clergy.
[Sidenote: Weakness of the Church.]
But this picture of toleration and privilege which we obtain from the
official letters of Cassiodorus, cannot be regarded as a complete
description of the attitude of the East Gothic rule towards the
Catholic Church. Pope after pope was the humble slave of the Gothic
ruler. They were sent to Constantinople as his envoys, and though they
stood firm for the Catholic faith and in rejection of all compromise
with regard to the doctrine of Chalcedon, they were entirely impotent
in Italy itself. Catholic Italy was at the feet of the Arian Goth.
The cruel imprisonment of Pope John, used as a political tool in 525
and flung away when he proved ineffective, gave a new martyr to the
Roman calendar; and, in spite of {32} the absence of direct evidence,
it is difficult to regard the executions of Symmachus and of Boethius
as entirely unconnected with religions questions. Both were Catholics;
both, to use Mr. Hodgkin's words,[3] "have been surrounded by a halo of
fictitious sanctity as martyrs to the cause of Christian orthodoxy."
The father-in-law, "lest, through grief for the loss of his son-in-law,
he should attempt anything against his kingdom," Theodoric "caused to
be accused and ordered him to be slain." [4] Boethius, who wrote the
most famous work of the Early Middle Age, _The Consolation of
Philosophy_, a book which became the delight of Christian scholars, of
monks and kings, was translated by Alfred the West Saxon, and formed
the foundation of very much of the Christian thought of many succeeding
generations, met a horrible death in 526 on a charge of corresponding
with the orthodox Emperor Justin. No doubt the main reason for the
butchery was political; but it is impossible in this age wholly to
separate religion from politics; especially when we read, in almost
immediate conjunction with the story of the murder of these men, that
Theodoric ordered that on a certain day the Arians should take
possession of all the Catholic basilicas. It was not until the Gothic
power had finally fallen, and Narses had reestablished the imperial
power, that the life and property of Catholics were absolutely safe.
The death of Theodoric (August 30, 526) was followed by the downfall of
his power. Within ten years all Italy was won back to the Roman and
Catholic Empire ruling from the East.
{33}
[Sidenote: The imperial restoration, 554.]
With the restoration of the imperial power the Church came to the front
more prominently. So long as Justinian reigned the popes were kept in
subjection; but ecclesiastics generally were admitted to a large share
in judicial and political power. The emperors looked for their
strongest political support in the Catholic party. Suppression of
Arianism became a political necessity at Ravenna. Justinian gave to
Agnellus the churches of the Arians. [Sidenote: The Pragmatic
Sanction.] In 554 the emperor issued his solemn Pragmatic Sanction for
the government of Italy. Of this, Section XII. gives a power to the
bishops which shows the intimate connection between State and Church.
"Moreover we order that fit and proper persons, able to administer the
local government, be chosen as _iudices_ of the provinces by the
bishops and chief persons of each province from the inhabitants of the
province itself." This is important, of course, as allowing popular
elections, but far more important in its recognition of the position of
the clerical estate. Justinian's new administration of Italy was to be
military; but hardly less was it to be ecclesiastical. Here we have,
says Mr. Hodgkin,[5]--whose words I quote because I can find none
better to express what seems to me to be the significance of this
act--"a pathetic confession of the emperor's own inability to cope with
the corruption and servility of his civil servants. He seems to have
perceived that in the great quaking bog of servility and dishonesty by
which he felt himself to be surrounded, his only sure standing-ground
was to be found in the spiritual estate, the order of men who wielded a
power {34} not of this world, and who, if true to their sacred mission,
had nothing to fear and little to hope from the corrupt minions of the
court." This is significant in regard to the rise of the power of the
popes in the Western capital of the Empire and in the whole of Italy.
It was by the good deeds of the clergy, and by the need of them, that
they came forward before long as the masters of the country.
This rule of the Pragmatic Sanction was not an isolated instance; at
every point the bishop was placed _en rapport_ with the State, with the
provincials, and with the exarch himself.[6] In jurisdiction, in
advice, from the moment when he assisted at a new governor's
installation, the bishop was at the side of the lay officer, to
complain and even, if need be, to control.
One power still remained to the emperor himself (in the seventh century
it was transferred to the exarch)--that of confirming the election of
the pope. Narses seated Pelagius on the papal throne; but when one as
mighty as the "eunuch general" arose in Gregory the Great, the power of
the exarchate passed, slowly but surely, into the hands of the papacy.
The changes of rulers in Italy, the policies of the falling Goths and
of the rising Roman Empire, found their completion in the effects of
the Lombard invasion. But before this there were thirty years of
growth for the Church, and the growth was due very largely to a new
force, though for a while it remained below the surface. It was the
power of the monastic life, realised anew by the genius and holiness of
S. Benedict of Nursia. {35} [Sidenote: The work of S. Benedict.] Born
about 480, of noble parentage, he gave himself from early years to
serve God "in the desert." At about the age of fifteen he is spoken of
by his biographer, the great S. Gregory, in words which might form the
motto of his life, as "sapienter indoctus." First, a solitary at
Subiaco; then the unwilling abbat of a neighbouring monastery, whose
monks endeavoured to kill him; then again living "by himself in the
sight of Him who seeth all things"; at last, in 529, he founded in
Campania the monastery of Monte Cassino, the mother of all the revived
monasticism of the Middle Age.
[Sidenote: His rule.]
The monastery of Monte Cassino became a pattern of the religious life.
S. Benedict was a wise and statesmanlike ruler, to whom men came with
confidence from every rank and every race, to be his disciples, or to
place their boys under him for instruction. The rule which he drew up
was as potent in the ecclesiastical world as was the code of Justinian
in the civil. It had its bases in the root ideas of obedience,
simplicity, and labour. "Never to depart from the governance of God"
was his primary maxim to his monks; and a monastery was to be a "school
of the Lord's service" and a "workshop of the spiritual art." The
beginning of all was to be prayer. "Inprimis ut quidquid agendum
inchoas bonum, a Deo perfici instantissima oratione deposcas." And
though absolute power was left, without appeal, in the hands of the
abbat, and the rule of the whole house was to be "nullus in monasterio
proprii sequatur cordis voluntatem," yet great individual liberty was
left to each monk in the direction of his own religious {36} life.
Everyone, he knew, had "his own gift of God"--some could fast more than
others; some could spend more time in silent prayer and meditation; and
none could do any good, he knew, however strict their outer rule,
without daily enlightenment from God. There was place in his scheme
for those whose work was chiefly manual, those who reclaimed
uncultivated lands and turned the wilderness into a garden of the Lord,
and for those who spent long hours in contemplation and prayer. The
public solemn singing of offices was no more characteristic of his rule
than was the following of the hermits in pure prayer.
One who would be admitted to the monastery must take oath before the
whole community that he intended constantly to remain firm in his
profession, to live a life of conversion to God, and to obey those set
over him, but the last only "according to the rule." True monks were
his followers to count themselves only if they lived by the labours of
their hands. Idleness, said Benedict, is the enemy of the soul. The
life of the monks was ascetic, but without the extreme rigour of the
earlier "religious"--hermits and coenobites. The rule required
austerities, and gave strict injunction as to food at all times, and
especially in Lent; but it did not encourage voluntary austerities
beyond the rule, and it admitted many relaxations for the old, the
infirm, or those whose labours were especially hard.
Where all depended so much on a superior it was of especial importance
that he should be wisely chosen and should rule wisely. In three
things he was to be pre-eminent--exhortation, example, and prayer; and
prayer, says the saint, is the greatest of these; for {37} although
there be much virtue in exhortation and example, yet prayer is that
which promotes grace and efficacy alike in deed and word. He was to
recognise no difference of social rank. Good deeds and obedience were
to be the only ways to his favour. Only if exceptional merit required
promotion was there to be any breach of the proper order in which each
should hold his place, "since, whether slaves or free, we are all one
in Christ, and, under the same Lord, wear all of us the same badge of
service."
In a cell hard by the monastery dwelt Benedict's sister, S.
Scholastica, whose religious life he directed, but whom he rarely saw,
and who became a pattern to nuns as he to monks.
[Sidenote: Its wide influence.]
The influence of Benedict was, even in his own lifetime, extraordinary.
There were times when it might almost be said that all Italy looked to
him for guidance; and there is no more striking scene in the history of
the decaying Gothic power than when the cruel Totila, whose end he
foresaw, and the secrets of whose heart lay open to his gaze, visited
him in his monastery and heard the words of truth from his lips. When,
fortified by the Body and Blood of the Lord, he passed away with hands
still uplifted in prayer, he had created a power which did more than
any other to make the Church predominant in Italy. The rule, the
definite organisations, of monasticism came to the world from Italy and
from Benedict. Though the Benedictines were never actively papal
agents, yet indirectly, by their training and by their influence on the
whole nature of medieval religion, they formed a strong support for the
growing power of the Roman see.
{38}
But Benedict was not the only leader, though he was the greatest, in
the monastic revival of the sixth century. With another great name his
work may be placed to some extent in contrast.
[Sidenote: Scholarship and learning.]
S. Benedict was no advocate of exclusively ecclesiastical study. He
adapted the ancient literatures to the purposes of Christian education.
It is true that the main subjects of study for his monks were the Holy
Scriptures, and the chief object the edification of the individual by
meditation and of the people by preaching; but the monks learnt to
write verse correctly and prose in what had claims to be considered a
style. Yet what he himself did in that direction was little indeed.
Perhaps the most that can be said is that he left the way open to his
successors. And of these the greatest was Cassiodorus.
[Sidenote: Cassiodorus.]
Cassiodorus, the statesman, the orthodox adviser and friend of the
Arian Theodoric, lived to become a Christian teacher and a monk. The
friend of Pope Agapetus, he endeavoured with his sanction in 535 to set
up a school in Rome which should give to Christians "a liberal
education." The pope's death, a year later, prevented the scheme being
carried out. But a few years later, in the monastery of Vivarium near
Squillace, he set himself to found a religious house which should
preserve the ancient culture. Based on a sound knowledge of grammar,
on a collation and correction of texts, on a study of ancient models in
prose and verse, he would raise an education through "the arts and
disciplines of liberal letters," for, he said, "by the study of secular
literature our minds are trained to understand the Scriptures {39}
themselves." That was the supreme end at Squillace, as it was at Monte
Cassino; and though Cassiodorus looked at letters differently from
Benedict, his work, too, was important in founding a tradition for
Italian monasticism.
[Sidenote: Weakness of the papacy under Pelagius, 555-60.]
While monasticism was transforming Italy and placing Catholicism on a
firm basis in the Western lands of the Empire, the power of the papal
see, when Rome was reconquered by the imperial forces from
Constantinople, seemed to sink to the lowest depths. The papacy under
Vigilius (537-55) and Pelagius (555-60) was the servant of the
Byzantine Caesars. The history of the controversies in which each pope
was engaged, the scandal of their elections, there is no need to relate
here. Suffice it to say that the decisions of the Fifth General
Council were in no way the work of either, but were eventually accepted
by both. The self-contradictions of Vigilius are pitiable; and the
acceptance of Pelagius by the Romans was only won by his rejecting a
formal statement of his predecessor.
Consecrated only by two bishops[7] on Easter Day, 556, he began a
pontificate which was from the first disputed and even despised. The
Archbishop of Milan and the patriarch of Aquileia would not communicate
with him. In Gaul he was received with suspicion, and he was obliged
to write to King Childebert, submitting to him a profession of his
faith.[8] It is clear that the Gallican Church no more than the Lombard
regarded {40} the pope as _ipso facto_ orthodox or the guardian of
orthodoxy. Even this letter of Pelagius was not regarded as
satisfactory. It was long before the Churches entered into communion
with him; and even to the last, the northern sees of Italy refused. He
ruled, unquietly enough, for four years; and died, leaving a memory
free at least from simony, and honoured as a lover of the poor.
Under him, as under Vigilius, the papacy had been compelled to submit
to the judgment of the East. "The Church of Rome," says Mgr. Duchesne,
"was humiliated." [9]
The lives of these two popes cover the most important period in the
ecclesiastical history of the sixth century. After the death of
Pelagius I., and up to the accession of Gregory the Great in 590, the
interest of Italian history is political rather than ecclesiastical.
The emperors tried to rule, through their exarchs at Ravenna, from
Constantinople. The papacy grew quietly in power. Then came the
Lombards and a new era began.
[1] So _Var._, i. 26, ed. Mommsen, p. 28.
[2] ii. 29, p. 63.
[3] _Italy and her Invaders_, vol. iii. p. 516.
[4] _Anonymus Valesii_.
[5] _Italy and her Invaders_, vol. vi. p. 528.
[6] Instances are collected by M. Diehl, _Études sur l'administration
byzantine dans l'exarchat de Ravenne_, p. 320.
[7] Et dum nou essent episcopi qui cum ordinarent, inventi sunt duo
episcopi, Johannes de Perusia et Bonus de Ferentino, et Andreas
presbiter de Hostis, et ordinaverunt eum.--_Liber Pontificalis_, i. 303.
[8] Migne, Patr. Lat., tom. lxix. p. 402.
[9] _Revue des Questions Historiques_, Oct. 1884, p. 439.
{41}