THE CHURCH AND THE MONOTHELITE CONTROVERSY, 628-725
The years of peace that succeeded the death of Justinian ended with the
triumph of the Empire over barbarian foes. Christian philosophy had
seemed to be quiescent, but there were questions which thoughtful men
must have seen would soon come up for solution as the inevitable result
of the Monophysite controversy. Thought in the active Eastern minds
could not stand still; and the West too, as the barbarians were
conquered, assimilated, and converted by the Church, began to enter
keenly into the theology of the East. In Gaul and Britain, as well as
at Milan and at Rome, there arose critics and historians who could
carry on the work of Leo the Great and of the line of chroniclers who
had told in Greek the story of the Church's life. A word at first as
to the general interest of the period.
[Sidenote: The East in the seventh century.]
With the victory of Heraclius over the Persians in 628, it might seem
that heresy would be driven from its home in the distant East, that
Nestorianism would die out, and that Sergius I., Patriarch of
Constantinople (610-38), would be able to win back the Monophysites to
the unity of the Church. But this happy result was {84} prevented by
the spread of the Muhammadan conquest, beginning even before the death
of the Prophet in 632, and by the rise of a new heresy--the
Monothelitism which gave to the two Natures of our Lord but a single
will. As the Mussulman arms spread the faith of Islam, the Jacobite
Church of Syria seemed almost to welcome it as a refuge from the
dominance of orthodoxy. In Egypt the Coptic (Monophysite) patriarch
entered Alexandria in triumph with the Muslim force when the Orthodox
patriarch fled with the imperial troops. The Melkite (Orthodox) body
was, however, not wholly unprotected by the conquerors, and at
Jerusalem it was allowed to remain in possession, though at Antioch
there was for long no Orthodox patriarch at all. Of the Monothelite
heresy--condemned at the Sixth General Council, 681--we may for the
moment defer to speak, except to note that in the political
disturbances that swept over the Lebanon the heresy took root there,
under one John Maron, and founded the division, religious and
political, of the Maronites, which still endures.
[Sidenote: Missionary work.]
But while the Church was thus suffering in various ways, the Byzantine
missionary energy was far from exhausted. Heraclius sought to convert
the barbarian tribes far and near, the Croats and Serbs, the Bulgarians
and Slavs, and the Church of Constantinople appointed an official to
inspect the districts on the frontiers and to examine candidates for
baptism. Equally he sought to reunite the Armenians to the Orthodox
Church; but after interviews and theological discussions the opponents
of the Greeks triumphed, and the catholicos Nerses {85} III. in 645
anathematised the Council of Chalcedon--a declaration which, after a
momentary reunion, was renewed early in the eighth century. The
Armenian Church thus remained formally Monophysite. While the orthodox
emperors were thus unsuccessful in reuniting the separated Churches,
the patriarchate of Constantinople was winning a strength within which
she had lost without; the area of her confined jurisdiction was
straitly ruled, and 356 bishoprics towards the end of the seventh
century acknowledged the patriarchal throne. The emperors and the
Church alike recognised no supremacy of Rome--a fact which was
emphasised by the decree of 666 which declared Ravenna free from papal
jurisdiction, and in the condemnation of Honorius by the Sixth General
Council. [Sidenote: The Trullian Council, 691.] So, again, the Council
at Constantinople called _in Trullo_ (691), directed canon after canon
against the customs and claims of the Roman Church. This independence
was emphasised by the compilation of a _Syntagma_, or collection of
canons, parallel to the much later collection in the West. These
canons, it may be remarked in passing, throw most interesting light on
the customs of the Greek Church--on clerical marriage, for example,
which was allowed to be dissolved only by the clergy of the recently
converted barbarous tribes, among whom a return to celibate life might
sometimes be advisable.
So much for the general characteristics of the period 628-725. We may
now turn to the critical point of theology on which the ecclesiastical
history of the time turned.
Monophysitism was not dead in spite of Chalcedon {86} or
Constantinople. [Sidenote: The Aphthartodocetic controversy.] The
Fourth and Fifth General Council had still left points of debate for
those within as well as those without the Church. In the form which it
was asserted that Justinian had himself come to accept, it asserted the
Lord's Body to be incapable of sin or corruption, and only subject to
suffering by the voluntary exercise of His divine power. While the
accusations against Justinian in John of Nikiu and Nicetius of Trier
are contradictory to each other, and make it clear that he did not
accept the opinion of Julian of Halicarnassus, they may serve to
illustrate the confusion of thought with which these subjects were
handled. The followers of Julian, whose view has here been summarised,
were nicknamed by those of the famous monk Severus (Monophysite
patriarch of Antioch in 513), "Aphthartodocetes" or "Phantasiasts."
Those who followed Severus, while they were prepared to recognise two
natures in Christ, yet dwelt strongly on their union, and especially on
the "one energy" of the Lord's will. From this a further step was to
be taken. There were some who believed in the transformation of the
human nature into the Divine, and who came to be called _Aktistetes_,
and, in a still further extreme, _Adiaphorites_, when they denied any
distinction between the Godhead and manhood in Christ. The error at
the root of all these contentions seems to have been the dwelling upon
the physical rather than the spiritual effects of the Divine power
revealed in the incarnation of the Son of God. Theologians arose to
controvert it and to develop the theological decisions of the Council;
chief among them was Leontius of Byzantium, a philosophic apologist of
real {87} eminence, whose work was taken up later and completed by John
of Damascus.
[Sidenote: The Emperor Heraclius as a theologian.]
It is not to be wondered at that a great soldier, filled with a deep
sense of the necessity of uniting the Empire against its foes, should
be led to accept a theological development which seemed to offer the
hope of a reconciliation. From 622, under the advice of Sergius, as a
Patriarch of Constantinople, a basis of reunion was sought in the
formula that though the Lord had two Natures He had yet only "one
theandric energy." The emperor Heraclius turned unwisely from the army
to the Church, which, like many able military men, he thought might be
coerced or led into opinions which seemed to him to be common sense.
For a time it appeared that he would succeed: three patriarchs of
Constantinople, one of Antioch, one of Alexandria, one of Rome
(Honorius I.), were in agreement, if a little tepidly, favourable to
the phrase. Honorius definitely stated that he confessed "_one_ WILL
of our Lord Jesus Christ." [1] [Sidenote: The Ecthesis, 638.] Only
Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem (634), held out. In 638 the emperor
issued the Ecthesis,[2] or Confession of Faith, drawn up by the
patriarch Sergius. It professed adherence to orthodox definitions, and
continued, "Wherefore, following the Holy Fathers in all things, and in
this, we confess one Will of our Lord Jesus Christ, the very God, so
that never was there a separate Will of His Body animated {88} by the
intellect, nor one of contrary motion natural to itself, but one which
operated when and how and to what purpose He who is God the Word
willed." This statement was repudiated by Rome, and in 649 condemned
in a synod at the Lateran under Martin I., who ended his days in exile
for disobeying the imperial power. The quarrel became one between Rome
and Constantinople, at a time when the popes had recovered their
orthodoxy and the patriarchs were subservient to impetuous emperors.
[Sidenote: The Type, 648.] In 648 the _Type_ issued from New Rome as an
attempt at pacification; but the Old Rome rejected it, with anathemas.
In 680 a synod, under Pope Agatho, at which S. Wilfrith of Ripon was
present and signed for the north part of Britain, rejected as heresy
the doctrine of the two wills, and local councils (as at Hatfield six
months later) agreed with the rejection.
[Sidenote: Sixth General Council, 681.]
All this led on to the summoning of the Sixth General Council at
Constantinople, which sat from November, 680, to September, 681. The
temporary schism between Rome and Constantinople was healed. Agatho's
letter condemning the doctrine of the two wills was accepted; anathema
was laid upon those, dead or alive, who had accepted the heresy, and
among them Pope Honorius I., a condemnation repeated by many a pope
after him. The Council declared that the Lord possesses two wills,
"for just as the Flesh is, and is said to be, the Flesh of the Word, so
also His human will is, and is said to be, proper [natural] to the
Word." And also, "just as His holy and spotless ensouled flesh was
taken into God yet not annihilated, so His human will though taken into
God was not annihilated." Again, as so often in {89} the days of
Justinian, the words of S. Leo were appropriated for a definition of
the orthodox belief. The Council was attended by 289 bishops, the
emperor occupying the position which had been common since Nicaea,
while on his right were the bishops of the East, on his left those of
the West. Rightly was the doctrine of one will condemned as contrary
to the Chalcedonian assertion of the Lord's perfect Humanity; and the
condemnation was readily accepted by the Church. Only in Syria, among
the Maronites (followers of John Maro), did Monothelitism linger on for
centuries, till they became absorbed in the Latin Church.
[Sidenote: The Monothelite controversy.]
The chief opponent of Monothelitism was Maximus, whose _Disputation
with Pyrrhus_ remains the most important survival of the controversy.
It is a subtle and rational exposition of the orthodox doctrine. The
original phrase, _theandric energy_, from which the Ecthesis of
Heraclius started, seems to have been drawn from the unknown Platonist
who came to be called Dionysius the Areopagite, and whose writings had
a continued influence in the Middle Age. But to all reasonable
thinkers the main question was decided. The truth of Christ's human
nature was an essential verity of the faith, and to deny His human will
would make His nature incomplete, and His goodness in any true sense
impossible. The difficulty would arise again when Luther and Calvin
carried further the dispute concerning the nature of the human will,
but as regards her Lord the Church had come to a decision based upon
her knowledge of His divine life on earth.
The Council _in Trullo_ (named from the {90} dome-shaped place of
meeting), 691, called also _Quini-sextan_, summoned by Justinian II.
(685-711), was not Oecumenical, and was disciplinary rather than
dogmatic. It condemned many Roman practices, and asserted definitely
that the patriarchal throne of Constantinople should enjoy the same
privileges as that of Old Rome, should in all ecclesiastical matters be
entitled to the same pre-eminence, and should rank as second after it.
The _Liber Pontificalis_, the Roman Church history of the time, states
that the pope's legates gave assent to the decrees, which is unlikely.
But this one was no more than the repetition of many previous
statements, as emphatic in the sixth as in the seventh century. The
position was simply that claimed by the patriarch John when he signed
the formula of Catholic faith drawn up and proposed by Pope Hormisdas.
[Sidenote: Repudiation of Roman claims.] He insisted on prefixing a
repudiation of the Roman claim to supremacy over Christendom. "I
hold," he declared, "the most holy Churches of the Elder and the New
Rome to be one. I define the See of the Apostle Peter and this of the
Imperial City to be one See." By this it is clear that he designed to
assert both the unity of the Church--which, as it has always seemed to
the East, was threatened by the demand of the Roman obedience--and the
equality of the two great churches of the Old and the New Rome.
Justinian I. spoke of Constantinople as "head of all the churches"
("omnium ecclesiarum caput"), but it is clear that he did not regard
this position as conferring any supreme or exclusive jurisdiction. It
was a title of honour which he would use of other patriarchates; and
that he did not consider the power {91} of the patriarchates as
unalterable is seen by his attempted creation of the new jurisdiction
of his own city Justiniana Prima (Tauresium), a few miles south of
Sofia, over a large district. To the archbishop whom he here created
he gave authority to "hold the place of the apostolic throne" within
his province.[3]
[Sidenote: Independent attitude of Constantinople.]
This position, then, of the Byzantine patriarchate, as independent of
the other patriarchates, and equal to that of the older Rome, but
occupying in point of honour a secondary position, was recognised by
Church and State alike; and it was this that the Council _in Trullo_
reaffirmed. In another point it was divergent from Rome--that of the
marriage of the clergy. Subdeacons, deacons, and priests were
forbidden to marry, but those married before ordination were equally
forbidden, under pain of excommunication, to separate from their wives.
An attempt of the mad emperor Justinian II. to enforce the acceptance
of the decrees by Pope Sergius I. was a complete failure. Popes were
becoming much stronger in Italy than was the distant Caesar.
Rome was becoming independent of emperor and of exarch alike. In 711
the pope Constantine visited Constantinople as an honoured guest, where
he was treated with diplomatic politeness, and where, possibly after
they had undergone modification, he signed the {92} decrees of the
Trullian Council. On this point the papal biographer is silent, but he
asserts with enthusiasm the reverence of the emperor for the pope and
the latter's regret when the bloody tyrant met the reward of his crimes
a few weeks later. With this the ecclesiastical interest of Eastern
history is for a time in the background.
[1] This is spoken of by a recent Roman Catholic writer as "la
déplorable réponse de Honorius, ce monument de bonne foi surprise et de
naïveté confiante." It does not support the notion of papal
infallibility.
[2] Given in Baronius, A.D. 689.
[3] See Procopius, _De Aedif._, iv. 1 (ed. Bonn., pp. 266, 267); and
_Novellae_, xi. (de privilegiis archiepiscopi primae Justinianae) and
cxxxi. (de ecclesiasticis canonibus et privilegiis), cap. 3. It is no
alteration of patriarchal powers, but rather the assertion of them.
Still patriarchal jurisdictions are not regarded as unalterable--as is
clear from the creation of the modern national churches of the Balkan
lands.
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