CONTROVERSY AND THE CATHOLICISM OF SPAIN
[Sidenote: Pelagian controversy of sixth century.]
Controversies which belong to this period are those connected with
semi-Pelagianism and with Adoptianism. Faustus, Bishop of Riez, who
died almost at the end of the fifth century, held views which were
opposed to those of S. Augustine as well as to those of Pelagius. His
writings were attacked by many, among them by Caesarius, Bishop of
Arles from 501 to 542, who caused a synod at Orange in 529 to condemn
semi-Pelagian opinions, in a statement which declared that sufficient
grace is given to all the baptized (an expression which had an
important history centuries later). The writings of Faustus were the
subject of much discussion also at Constantinople, and they were
condemned by several of the popes.
Of a wholly different kind was the heresy originating in the East, and
probably revived through the controversy of the Three Chapters, which
came into prominence in the eighth century in Spain. It has been
thought that the exigencies of anti-Muhammadan controversy had
something to do with the importance which the question now assumed.
The Spanish Church had a long record, in the Councils of Toledo, of
orthodox and {73} strenuous adherence to the Christian faith; but it
showed also a strongly nationalistic spirit, and it was natural that
much should be developed, through antagonism to Muhammadanism and Arian
influences, which would fall into danger of extreme reaction on the one
side or of unwise concession on the other. "Spanish Christianity," it
has been said in a phrase which has become classical, "was a perpetual
crusade." In Spain the Christian contest against sin and unbelief
became more often, or more constantly, than elsewhere an actual
physical struggle against those who distorted or denied the faith of
the Church and those who trampled it under foot. This is, of course,
most true of the ages which followed the Moorish invasions, of the long
strife between Christians and Moors, of the times and the thoughts
which gave birth to the immortal literature of the peninsula, to
Calderon and Cervantes, to Lope de Vega and S. Teresa of Jesus. But it
is also true, though in a less degree, of the earlier times--of those
which extended from the introduction of Christianity--from the
missionary visit, it may be, of S. Paul himself--down to the
destruction of the monarchy of the Wisigoths in 711. Spain was in 589
won to Catholicism by the conversion of its king Reccared. But this
was the end of a long and critical period, for from the acceptance of
Arianism by Remismond in 466 the country was under the rule of princes
who were pledged to that error.
The Wisigoths identified their heresy with their nationality. The
general decadence of the Empire spread to Spain. The social system was
in a state of dissolution. The canons of the Councils show a {74}
picture of life which is appalling in its corruption, but at the same
time are evidence of the earnest efforts of the Church for amendment.
[Sidenote: The conversion of Spain.] They show how Christianity had
penetrated into the country districts, and how eager were the bishops
of the sixth century to do their spiritual duty far and wide. Side by
side with the canons of Church Councils is the great Fuero Jusgo (in
process of compilation from the fifth to the eighth century) in
witnessing to the efforts for a better state of things. During the
rule of the West Goths, persecution of Catholics had been frequent, but
when Amalric married Hlothild, daughter of Chlodowech, promising her
tolerance of her religion, a way was opened for a new life to
orthodoxy. But Amalric broke his promise, and an invasion of Spain by
the Franks followed. In the reign of the Arian Theudis (531-48) there
was still more decisive intervention. Childebert and Chlothochar
invaded Spain and besieged Saragossa, but were driven back; and it was
not till Athanagild called in the armies of Justinian that the
confusion and division of Spanish life; between orthodox and heretic,
Roman and Goth, was healed in the slightest degree. The year 560
witnessed the conversion of King Mir by Martin of Braga, and three
years later, and again in 572, Councils at Braga witnessed to the
Catholic faith of the Church. But it was an era of fightings and
fears. The Roman armies of the Eastern Empire held the cities of the
coast long after Athanagild had come to be recognised as king of all
the Goths in Spain, but gradually unity was springing up under the rule
of that able chieftain. He died in 568, having married his daughters,
Brunichild and Galswintha, to {75} the Frankish kings, Sigebert and
Chilperich. His successor Leovigild established a sway over all the
Wisigothic possessions and ruled from Nîmes to Seville. The wedding of
Brunichild, though sung by Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers,
was but the beginning of crime and of sorrows; yet it led indirectly to
the conversion of Spain. Brunichild's daughter Ingunthis married
Leovigild's son Hermenigild. She was bitterly persecuted as a Catholic
when she came to Spain, but she clung to her faith with the devotion of
a martyr, and she won over her husband. [Sidenote: Hermenigild.] At
Seville Hermenigild was for some time acting as king, under his father,
and when he was threatened on his conversion with the loss of all he
had he took up arms. After a long contest he was subdued, and he
underwent a long persecution ending eventually in death when he refused
to receive communion at the hands of an Arian bishop on Easter Day,
585.[1] Ingunthis escaped to Constantinople. Then till 587 Arianism
reigned supreme in Spain, and John of Biclaro, Catholic bishop of
Gerona, writes as one crying in a wilderness. But Catholicism in Spain
was scotched, not killed, and when Reccared (586-601) called Arian and
Catholic bishop alike before him, and after two years definitely
accepted orthodoxy under the influence of his uncle Leander, Archbishop
of Seville, it was not long before the whole of Council of Spain
accepted his decision and followed his example. [Sidenote: Council of
Toledo, 589.] This was in 587, and an {76} inscription shows that the
cathedral church of Toledo was then consecrated in the Catholic faith.
With the Council of Toledo (third synod of Toledo), 589,[2] which
accepted the first four General Councils and the Procession of the Holy
Ghost from the Father and the Son, Spain returned to the unity of the
faith. From Reccared's reign, too, dates a civilisation distinctly
traceable to Constantinople and a recognition of absolute equality
between the different races in the peninsula. And to that golden age
belong also the great saint and preacher, Leander, who died in 603, and
S. Isidore of Seville, the encyclopaedic writer, who died thirty-three
years later. S. Leander had at Constantinople come to know Gregory the
Great. He was the chief theologian of Spain in his age, and his words
welcomed and ratified the conversion. Thus the modern history of Spain
and her most Catholic kings begins. The importance of the period
culminates in the compilation, almost final, of the great Wisigothic
Code, the Fuero Jusgo, at once civil and ecclesiastical, the result of
a union between Church and State even more perfect than that
represented in the English Witenagemot.
The concentration of Spanish interests on theological questions led
before long to new developments, but meanwhile it helped the happy
tendency to unity which Recceswinth (652-72) confirmed by allowing the
intermarriage which had long been forbidden--Recceswinth, whose
splendid gold crown, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, still remains
amongst the most striking memorials of the Christian art of the seventh
century. Wamba, his successor, established his supremacy in {77}
Septimania by the capture of Nîmes from a traitorous vicegerent, and
lived to show the sincerity with which the Wisigoths had accepted the
idea of the sanctity of vows to God. During an illness, when he was
supposed to be incapable of recovery and remained in a stupor, he
received the tonsure that he might die as a monk: when he recovered he
refused to return to the world and abdicated the throne. His
successors were equally strict, it would seem, in obedience to the
Church's laws, often unintelligently interpreted.
[Sidenote: Persecution of the Jews.]
To these days, too, belongs one of the first and darkest blots on the
popular Christianity of the Middle Age--the persecution of Jews. The
Jews of Spain had long been restless under a government which was so
strongly ecclesiastical in its sympathies: persecuting laws oppressed
them, and they could hardly even in secret practise their religion.
Plots were constant and natural, and at last it is said that the Jews
incited the Saracens, who had overthrown the imperial power in Africa,
to cross the sea and strip from the weak Wisigoths of Spain the last
remains of their power. In 695 a Council at Toledo (the sixteenth)
determined when the plot was discovered wholly to destroy the Judaic
faith in their land. It was ordered that all grown-up Jews should be
made slaves, and all children brought up as Christians. This was the
very year of the storming of Carthage.[3] It is not to be wondered at
that the Jews gave every help they could to the infidels who, before
long, attacked the kingdom of the Wisigoths. Within twenty years
Spain, up to the very mountains of the {78} Basque land and of the
Asturias, was conquered by the followers of Muhammad, and silence fell
upon the country which had appeared to be the home of an abiding Church.
The splendid edifice which had seemed to be reared on the solid
foundations of religion and law was shattered by the repeated blows of
the Arab invasion. Why was this? The chroniclers gave answer without
hesitation--"Peccatis exigentibus, victi sunt Christiani." The Goths
(as they proudly called themselves) "have so offended Thee, O Lord, by
their pride, that they deserved a fall by the sword of the Saracen."
It was, in truth, as the great Sancho of Navarre declared in his
charter of foundation to the abbey of Albelda, "Our ancestors sinned
without scruple; they daily transgressed the commandments of the Lord,
and so to punish them as they had deserved and to make them turn to
Him, the Most Just of Judges delivered them to a barbarous people." In
truth, the mass of the land had never been converted to Catholic
Christianity at all, and a heretical society was powerless against
Moslem sincerity and swords. Only in the north was Catholicism
supreme, and thence came in later days the reconquest. But Catholics
lived on all over Spain under their conquerors in comparative peace.
[Sidenote: The Adoptianist heresy.]
The Church survived. Persecution made its life strong and vigorous,
and that life found outlet in new varieties of theological expression.
Elipandus, Archbishop of Toledo, within seventy years of the Saracen
conquest, became known outside his own land, with Felix, bishop of the
northern see of Urgel, for his advocacy of the statement that {79}
Christ's Sonship was that of adoption. Asserting the two Natures and
the two Wills of the Lord, the Adoptianists regarded Christ as only in
His divine nature truly the Son of God. Eager to assert the full
Humanity and to rebut the Muhammadan charges of idolatry, the Spanish
theologians taught that "one and the same Person was in two aspects a
Son, in virtue of His relation to two different natures," and that "the
Divine Son of God, begotten from all eternity of the Father, not by
adoption but by birth, not by grace but by nature--that He, when made
of a woman, made under the law, was Son of God, not by origin but by
adoption, not by nature but by grace." [4] It was an attempt to carry
further the decisions adopted at Chalcedon and to account for the
origin of the two Natures, their completeness in distinction, and their
union together.
[Sidenote: Its condemnation.]
Adoptianism was condemned at Regensburg in 792, and at Frankfort in
794, and, under the influence of Alcuin, Felix made submission at
Aachen in 799. Elipandus, safe among the Saracens, held out in his
opinions. It would seem that the discussion represented the
eighth-century expression of the age-long conflict between logic and
mystery, the desire for exact definition, and the sense of something
beyond human understanding in what belongs to the nature of God, and to
the divine action in the Incarnation, the union of God and man.
[Sidenote: Adoptianism in the East.]
Adoptianism had in the East a greater success and a longer history than
in the West. In Syria and Armenia vast numbers joined the sect
founded, or revived, by one {80} Constantine in the middle of the
seventh century. He lived near Samosata, and probably inherited the
teaching of the earlier heretic, Paul of that place. The sect came to
be called Paulicians. They rejected the real divinity of Christ and
placed themselves in opposition to very much else which belonged to the
earliest Christian tradition, as in their rejection of the Old
Testament and the perpetual virginity of the Lord's Mother. Armenia
became the headquarters of a large and prosperous sect, towards which
emperors alternately were persecuting or favourable. Nicephorus I.
(802-11) was friendly to it, but his successor put it down with
relentless savagery; and after it had led to a formidable rebellion,
its votaries were finally suppressed by the generals of Basil the
Macedonian, 871. But its tenets lingered on in Thrace, whither it had
been transported when some of its disciples were expropriated by
Constantine V., till the eighteenth century, and still later in Armenia
itself. The authoritative book of the Armenian Paulicians, the _Key of
Truth_, has been thought to have been completed by one Smbat, minister
of Chosroes of Persia, whose date is 800-50,[5] but the history of
those days is certainly very confused and may have been distorted.
The intervention of Charles the Great in this controversy is but one
illustration of the importance of theological questions in the outlook
of the reviver of the Empire in the Catholic West. Other theological
doctrines had a like interest in his view and in that of his house; and
in some of them also Spain was concerned. At Toledo, in 589, Reccared,
when he accepted the Catholic creed, had inserted his belief in {81}
the double procession of the Holy Ghost. This was again discussed in
767 at Gentilly, and at Aachen in 809.
[Sidenote: The "Veni Creator."]
Alcuin, as in the Adoptianist controversy, played a great part in
stating the view which the West was coming generally to accept. Leo
III. was consulted, and advised that no addition should be made to the
Creed for fear of widening the breach with the East. It would seem
that the great hymn, "Veni Creator Spiritus," is the expression of this
doctrine by the ninth century, and is the work of Rabanus Maurus, a
monk of the famous house of Fulda.
[Sidenote: The "Quicunque Vult."]
While this sums up in devotional form the Christian thought as to one
of the mysteries of faith, the hymn of a character more distinctly
credal, called "Quicunque vult," enshrines it in another aspect. The
"Quicunque" has, indeed, a much earlier history. In 633 the Fourth
Council of Toledo quoted many of its clauses. Leodgar, Bishop of Autun
(663-78), directed his clergy to learn it by heart; and it became a not
uncommon profession of faith to be made by a bishop at his
consecration. At the end of the eighth century it seems to have been
widely recited in church. But it certainly goes back very much
earlier. Caesarius, Bishop of Arles (501-43), the opponent of
semi-Pelagianism, has been proved to have used the creed continually:
it was quoted also by his rival, Avitus, Bishop of Vienne (490-523),
and it is probable that it represents the teaching of the great abbey
of Lerins in the controversies of the beginning of the sixth century.
It was decisively a Western creed: it {82} never came into the offices
of the orthodox Church of the East. In the West it became a popular
means of instruction and a popular confession of the joy of Christian
faith. It was sung in procession, recited in the services, meditated
on by the clergy. It formed a model of orthodox expression of belief
in days of confusion and controversy.
[1] This story is discredited by a recent writer, Mr. Dudden, _S.
Gregory the Great_, i. 407 (following F. Görres), but I see no reason
to doubt that S. Gregory was rightly informed, and I accept what Dr.
Hodgkin (_Eng. Hist. Rev._, ii. 216) states as the facts.
[2] Mansi, _Concilia_, ix. 977-1010.
[3] See below, p. 109.
[4] See B. L. Ottley, _Doctrine of the Incarnation_, ii. 152-4.
[5] See F. C. Conybeare, _The Key of Truth_, p. 67.
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