I give the main contents of this letter thus addressed to the whole world

to announce the decision of the Council by Pope Martin. It expresses in

every line, supported by constant quotations of Scripture, the solicitude

of the Pope for the maintenance of the doctrine concerning the Person of

the Lord which had been held from the beginning. “Our predecessors, the

Pontiffs of Catholic memory, have not ceased to admonish the innovators to

recede from this their heresy. Bishops from various provinces, and, what

is more, general synods, have not only by their own writings called upon

them to amend their heresy, but conjure our Apostolic See to exercise its

regular authority, and not to suffer to the end this innovation to make a

prey of the churches. Meeting, therefore, in this Roman most Christian

city, we have confirmed by our sentence the holy Fathers; we have

anathematised the heretics with their most depraved doctrines, the impious

Ecthesis and the most impious Typus, in order that all you who dwell over

the whole earth, recognising that these things have been piously done by

us for the safeguard of the Catholic Church, may carry them out together

with us.” “The Lord says, every kingdom divided against itself shall not

stand, and every sentence, every law divided against itself shall not

stand; and if the Typus destroys the Ecthesis, and the Ecthesis destroys

the Typus, the one asserting that our Lord has one will and operation, the

other denying it, then both are divided; and how shall the heresy stand,

being shown to be invalid and empty by itself, rather than destroyed by

us?” This, the never-ending refutation of heresy, runs through the whole

letter, and against it is set “the manifestation of God through apostles,

prophets, doctors, and the five Universal Councils, whose decrees are the

law of the Catholic Church”. “Behold the Judge stands before the door

joyfully promising crowns to those who suffer for His sake.”

Thus the Lateran Council of 649, presided over by Pope Martin, who directs

all the proceedings, who informs the emperor of the condemnation of the

Typus, composed by this emperor’s own patriarch, and issued by himself as

a law, who addresses an encyclical letter to all bishops and their people,

summing up its acts, who writes to various provinces, and in particular to

the eastern patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem, appointing his vicar

over them, gives us in full detail a picture of the discipline existing in

the Church just at the middle of the seventh century. As to doctrine, the

Lateran Council stands precisely on that set forth two hundred years

before at the Council of Chalcedon by the great authority of St. Leo. In

condemning the Monothelite heresy, espoused by two emperors and three

successive patriarchs of Constantinople, it alleges the tradition of the

Fathers from the beginning, and the doctrinal decrees of the five

Councils, then accepted as General. During these five centuries the East

has been agitated almost without ceasing by the efforts of the Eutychean

heresy and its last progeny, the Monothelite, to overthrow the true faith

concerning the Incarnation, on which the whole economy of human salvation

rests. The eastern patriarchates have utterly failed to secure the

occupants of the sees of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and

Constantinople, from the prevailing error. Cyrus, patriarch of Alexandria,

and Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, are the chief patrons of this

error. After them, Pyrrhus, and then Paul, are using the utmost power of

the emperor from their seat in the capital to impose it by force: and the

ecumenical patriarch especially is using it as a lever against the Roman

Primacy, and in drawing up decrees of doctrine fathered by the imperial

power is practically denying the Roman Primacy to be the guardian of the

Christian faith, and striving to transfer that guardianship to himself,

always under the wing of the emperor. Had the Popes yielded to the

Ecthesis or the Typus, both the faith of the Church would have been

altered, and its government transferred from Old Rome to Roma Nova. St.

Martin, as the first act of his pontificate, plays this most remarkable

part of summoning a Council which defeats this double aggression. And the

moment at which it is done may be marked as that in which the temporal

weakness of Rome touches its lowest point. The subsequent treatment of the

Pope, which I have now to mention, is an incontestable proof how entirely

he was exposed to the machinations, the violence, and the despotic tyranny

of his enemies, especially to the malevolent union of emperor and

patriarch. Yet it is to be observed that neither emperor nor patriarch

even affects to deny the authority of St. Peter’s successor; what they

attempt to do is to control and subject him in the exercise of it.

History is silent as to events in Rome from the end of the Council of 649

to 653. What the exarch Olympius, by special command of the emperor

Constans II. did while it was being held, has been narrated above.

Olympius was dead, but another exarch, Theodore Kalliopas, was sent from

Constantinople to execute the work in which Olympius had failed. On the

15th June, 653, Kalliopas came to Rome. Concerning his purpose, Pope

Martin himself wrote to his friend Theodorus in these words:(43) “Your

charity has desired to know how I was carried away from the See of the

Apostle, St. Peter, like a solitary sparrow from the house-top. I am

surprised at your question since Our Lord foretold of evil times to His

own disciples: for ‘there shall be then great tribulation, such as hath

not been from the beginning of the world until now; and unless those days

had been shortened, no flesh should be saved. But he who perseveres unto

the end shall be saved.’ Therefore that you may know how I was removed and

carried off from the city of Rome, you shall hear no false report. Through

the whole time I knew what was preparing. And taking with me all my

clergy, I remained by myself in the church of our Saviour, named after

Constantine, which was the first built and endowed in all the world by

that emperor of blessed memory, beside the bishop’s palace. There we all

stayed by ourselves from Saturday, when Kalliopas entered the city with

the army of Ravenna, and the chamberlain Theodorus. I sent them some of

the clergy to meet him, whom he received in the palace,(44) and thought I

was with them. But, finding I was not, he mentioned it to the chief

clergy. Because it was our purpose to do him homage,(45) but on the next

day, which was Sunday, we would present ourselves and salute him, as on

that day we could not. On Sunday he sent men to that church, suspecting

that there was a great multitude there, being Sunday, and he reported

that, being very tired with his journey, he could not come that day, but

we should certainly meet the next day, ‘and we will do homage to your

Holiness’. Now I myself had been very sick from October to that 16th of

June. On Monday then he sent at dawn his chartular and certain attendants,

and said, ‘You have prepared arms and you have armed men inside, and you

have heaped up a quantity of stones for resistance. This is not necessary;

do not allow any such thing.’ I heard this myself, and to remove their

suspicions, thought it necessary to send them all over the episcopal

palace, that, if they saw arms or stones, they might themselves give

evidence. They went and found nothing, upon which I suggested to them that

they had always acted thus, and proceeded against us by intrigue and false

accusation, as when, at the coming of the infamous Olympius, they said

that I might have repelled him by arms. Now I was lying in my bed before

the altar of the church, and scarcely half-an-hour later the army came

with them into the church. All were covered, bearing lances and swords,

shields, and bows ready bent; and they did things there which are not to

be uttered. For, as when the winter wind blows violently, the leaves fall

from the trees, the candles of the church were struck down, and resounded

in their fall upon the pavement. And the clash of arms sounded like a

horrible thunder in the church, together with the vast number of broken

candles. Upon this their sudden inroad, order was issued by Kalliopas to

the priests and deacons who surrounded me, that I had, in violation of

rule and law, taken undue possession of the bishop’s office, and was not

worthy to be in the Apostolic See, but was by all means to be sent to this

imperial city, and a bishop elected in my stead. This has not yet been

done, and I trust will never be done; since, in the absence of the

pontiff, the archdeacon, the archpriest, and the first notary take his

place. I have already told you the acts which had been doing concerning

the faith. But, as we were not prepared for resistance, I thought it

better to die ten times over than that anyone’s blood should be shed in

vain. And this was done without risk to anyone, after many evils

displeasing to God had been effected. So I gave myself up at once to be

taken before the emperor without resistance. I must admit that some of the

clergy cried out to me not to do this, but I did not listen, lest murders

should instantly take place. But I said to them: Let some of the clergy

necessary to me, bishops, priests, and deacons, and, indeed, such as I

choose, come with me. Kalliopas answered: By all means let such as will

come. We use compulsion on no one. I answered, My clergy are in my own

hands. Some of the priests cried out: We live and we die with him. Then

Kalliopas himself and these who were with him began saying, Come with us

to the palace. I did not refuse, but on that same Monday went out with

them to the palace. On Tuesday all the clergy came to me, and many had

prepared to sail with me, and had already put their baggage on board; some

others also, both clergy and laity, were hastening to join us. On that

same night then, preceding Thursday, the 19th June, about the sixth hour,

they carried me from the palace, thrusting back all who were with me in

the palace, and without even things necessary for my journey and for me

when here, and they took me from the city with only six pages and a single

drinking vessel. We were put on board a bark, and about four hours after

dawn reached Porto. As soon as we left Rome the gates were closed, and

kept closed that no one might go out and reach us at Porto before we

sailed thence. Thus we were compelled to leave at Porto all the goods of

those who had put them on board, and the same day we departed. On the 1st

July we came to Miseno, where was the ship, that is, my prison. Now I met

with no compassion, not in Miseno only but also in Calabria; nor in

Calabria only, which is subject to the great city of the Romans, but in

many islands in which we were detained for our sins as long as three

months, save only in the island of Naxus, for there we spent a year, I was

allowed to take two or three baths, and was a guest in a house. And now

for seven and forty days I have not been allowed to wash in warm or cold

water. I am sick and cold through and through; for both on board and on

land to the present hour my stomach has allowed me no rest. When in my

hunger I am about to take something, my whole body is so shaken that I

cannot take anything to strengthen nature. I have an utter disgust against

what I have. But I believe in the power of God, who beholds all things,

for when I am relieved from this present life all my persecutors will be

called to account, so that at least they may be drawn to repent, and so

converted from their iniquity. God preserve you my very dear son.”

The allusion above concerning the things done as to the faith is explained

in a former letter to the same friend, wherein he says: “When I left the

Lateran Church, where armed men had shut me in, they cried out in the

presence of the exarch, Whoever says or believes that Martin has changed

or will change one iota of the faith, let him be anathema. And whoever

remain not in their orthodox faith to death, let them be anathema. When

Kalliopas heard this he began to excuse himself that there was no other

faith than what we held, and that he had no other. And I would have you

know, most dear brother, concerning the faith, and likewise those

calumnies which they are putting out against the truth, that by the help

of your prayers, and those of all faithful Christians who are with you,

whether living or dying, I will defend the faith of our salvation, and as

St. Paul teaches, ‘to me to live is Christ, and to die gain’. But as to

those false accusations which heretics are newly making, casting aside the

truth of Christ our God, what truth can they speak to men who resist God’s

truth? Therefore, I make answer to you, dearest brother, by Him Who will

judge this world by fire, and render to every one according to his work, I

never sent letters to the Saracens, nor how they should understand a

certain tome, nor ever sent money, except some alms to servants of God

going thither, to whom we gave a little for their needs, by no means for

the Saracens. And as to our Lady, the glorious ever-virgin Mary, who

brought forth Jesus Christ our God and Lord, whom all holy and Catholic

fathers call the Mother of God, inasmuch as she bore the God-man, unjust

men have borne false witness against me—rather against their own souls.

Whoever does not honour and worship her who is blessed above every

creature and human nature save Him who was born of her, the venerable

ever-virgin Mother of our Lord, let him be anathema both in this world and

in the next. But men who seek occasion throw up scandals for the offence

of many. God preserve you, most loving son.”

In addition to these letters of the Pope himself, we also possess from the

hand of a contemporary(46) “a narration of the deeds done cruelly and

without respect of God by the adversaries of truth to the apostolic

confessor and martyr Martin, Pope of Rome”. Concerning this the writer

says: “Some incidents I learnt from others; of very many I was an

eye-witness”. He speaks with horror of the swords drawn against the Pope

as he lay sick on his couch in the Lateran Basilica; how the preacher of

truth was torn from his apostolic throne by the powerful of this world who

were worthy of such a ministry; how he was carried off secretly in a small

vessel; how, as his ship touched at various places, the bishops and

faithful brought him gifts, which the brutal guards laid their hands upon,

abusing those who brought them, and saying: If you love him you are

enemies of the State. “When at last that blessed man reached Byzantium on

the 17th September, the guards left him from morning until the tenth hour

lying in his couch on the ship, a spectacle to angels and men. For a

number of men came to him—wolfish from their manners I should call them—as

I conjecture hired to do against the holy Pope things which should not be

mentioned to Christians. Now I remained on the shore walking up and down

the whole day, mourning over him whom I saw in such a state; and hearing

what some heathens said against him, I was ready to expire with grief.

About sunset a certain scribe named Sadoleva came with many warders. They

took him from the ship and carried him in a portable chair to the

guardhouse, Prandiaria, and shut him up under strict charge that no one in

the city should know that he was kept in guard. Thus the holy apostolical

remained without exchanging a word with anyone for ninety-three days. On

the ninety-third day they took him early out of guard and put him in the

fiscal’s cell. They had summoned the whole Senate to meet. They had him

brought in upon his chair, for he was ill from what he had suffered on

board and the long imprisonment. The fiscal, who presided with the other

chief persons, eyed him from a distance, and bade him rise from his couch.

Some attendant said he could not stand. The fiscal called out in a fury,

and some one of the warders, Let him stand up, though he be supported on

both sides. This was done. Then the fiscal said: Speak, wretch, what harm

has the emperor done thee? Has he taken anything? Has he oppressed thee?

But he held his peace. Then the fiscal said to him with imperious voice:

Answerest thou nothing? Now shall thy accusers come in. Then many accusers

were brought in against him. But they were all sons of falsehood, and

disciples of those who killed our Lord Jesus Christ. But they contradicted

the holy man, as they had been told; for their words were arranged and

prepared. Now some of them tried to speak the truth, but those who

directed this conflict got disturbed, and began to threaten them violently

until they were induced to say what told for the death of this just man.

When the Pope looked at them as they entered to bear witness, he said with

a smile: Are these the witnesses? That is the rule. Some of these had been

with Olympius. They were sworn on the Gospels, and so bore witness. The

first of all the accusers was Dorotheus, patrician of Sicily. He swore

that if Martin had fifty heads he ought not to live, since he alone

subverted and destroyed all the West, and was in fact in the counsel of

Olympius, and an enemy who slew the emperor and the Roman civilisation.

When that just man saw them coming in and swearing unsparingly, out of

compassion to their souls he said to those who presided: For God sake do

not make them swear, but let them say what they please on their simple

word; and yourselves, do what pleases you. Why should they lose their

souls by swearing? One witness came in and said that the Pope had

conspired with Olympius, and tampered with soldiers to make them take an

oath. When he was asked if this was true, he answered: If you will hear

the truth, I will tell you. And he began to speak: ‘When the Typus was

made and sent to Rome by the emperor—’ At these words he was stopped, and

Troilus cried out: Do not introduce before us matters of faith; you are

now on trial for treason, since we are both Romans, and Christian, and

orthodox. Would to God, said the Pope; but on that day of tremendous

judgment you will find me a witness in this also. As the witnesses were

accusing, Troilus, the prefect, said to him: What a man art thou to have

seen and heard the attempts of Olympius against the emperor, yet not to

have forbidden him, but to have consented with him. To whom the Pope

instantly replied: Lord Troilus, tell us when George, as you know and we

have heard, who had been a monk, and was become a magistrate, entered into

this city from the camp, and said and did such and such things, where were

you and those with you to offer no resistance, though he harangued you and

banished from the palace such as he chose? And again, when Valentine, at

the emperor’s command, put on the purple and sat by his side, where had

you gone? Were you not here? Why did you not forbid him to meddle with

things not belonging to him? Did you not all take part with him? How was I

to stand against such a man who wielded the whole force of Italy? Did I

make him exarch? I entreat you by the Lord to do quickly what is your

pleasure to do with me. For God knows that you bestow on me the greatest

of gifts by whatever death you kill me. The fiscal enquired of one of the

officers, Sagoleva: Are there many more witnesses? There are many, my

lord, he said. But the presidents, being foiled by the holy man standing

before them, because the Holy Spirit supported him, said it was

sufficient. A certain Innocentius was turning into Greek the Pope’s words,

and the fiscal, feeling them like fiery darts shot upon them, turned to

Innocentius in a fury: Why do you translate his words? Repeat them not.

And rising with his assessors he went in to report to the emperor what he

chose. But they led the holy apostolic man, seated in his chair, away from

the cell of judgment—I should rather say from the hall of Caiphas—and put

him in the middle of a court opposite the imperial stable, where all the

people used to meet and await the entry of the fiscal. The guards

surrounded him, and it was a sight striking awe into the crowd. Presently

they placed him in the open, that the emperor might look at him from his

dining-couch, and see what followed. Now there was a great multitude of

people crowded together as far as the hippodrome. So they placed the most

reverend man in the middle of that open space in presence of the whole

Senate, propped up on both sides. Suddenly there was a great press, and

the fiscal issuing from the emperor, with the doors of the dining-room

opened, ordered all the people to make way for him. And, coming up to the

holy Martin, the Apostolicus said to him: See how God has led thee and

delivered thee into our hands. What hope hadst thou in struggling against

the emperor? Thou hast deserted God, and God has deserted thee. And the

fiscal calling on one of the warders standing by ordered him instantly to

take away the mantle of the chief pastor of all Christians, who had

confirmed the orthodox confession of the holy Fathers and Councils, that

is, the Faith, and had canonically and in council put under anathema the

authors of the new error, the new heretics, with their impious doctrines.

So when the warder had torn away his mantle and the straps of his sandals,

the fiscal delivered him over to the prefect of the city, saying: Take

him, my lord prefect, and immediately cut him in pieces. At the same time

he bade all who were present anathematise him, which they did, but only

about twenty souls. But all who saw this deed, and knew that there is a

God in heaven who beheld what was being done, went away disturbed, with

eyes cast down and in great sorrow.

“Then the executioners taking him, stripped off the pallium of the

sacerdotal stole, and rending the sides of his garment, which was woven

from the top throughout, put iron chains upon his holy neck, and dragging

his whole body violently, did not allow him to rest a moment and recover

himself, but led him from the palace, making a show of him and

dishonouring him through the midst of the city to the pretorium. And the

sword was borne before him. Now, that blessed one was in great and

unspeakable pain. He was utterly worn out and without strength, ready to

expire from the pressure of sufferings and his emaciation. Nevertheless,

rejoicing in hope, he was comforted in the Lord, and the greater the

affliction and violence with which he was dragged along, the more that

Just One followed with serene countenance and unbroken spirit. He had but

one garment, which was rent from top to bottom, and no girdle; but he was

girded with faith and the grace of the Lord. You might see a man so full

of God subject to such disgrace that his flesh might be seen naked. When

the people saw many things which happened they groaned and sobbed. But a

few of those ministers of Satan rejoiced and mocked, and shaking their

heads, as is written, they said, Where is his God, and where is his faith,

and where is his teaching? And when he had come to the pretorium in this

dishonour, and surrounded by the executioners with drawn swords, they cast

him into a prison with murderers, and about an hour later carried him

thence to the guard-house of Diomedes, in the court of the prefect. But

they drew him in his fetters with such haste and force that his legs and

thighs were torn, and blood shed in ascending the stairs of the

guard-house, which were very ragged, rough and steep. Now the blessed one

was very nigh to escape the tortures of the present life by expiring

before the sword came when he had no strength to mount the steps with the

men dragging him. When at last they got him somehow into the guard-house,

after many falls and risings again, they put him on a bench clothed in

fetters. For when he was delivered by Caiphas, that is, the prefect, to

Pilate(47) to be crucified, immediately when the executioners were

stripping him, he suffered greatly from the cold, for it was a bitter

season. They put on him the heaviest iron fetters, and there was no man of

his own to help him, save one young cleric, who stayed with him in

custody, and stood weeping over his master, like Peter. The chief warder

also was fastened to him, it being the custom that a criminal condemned to

the sword should be bound to the chief warder.

“Now, there were two women, a mother and a daughter, who kept the keys of

the guard-house. These witnessed the unendurable suffering of that holy

man (for besides all his other punishments he was shivering with cold) and

out of compassion sought to show some mercy to him and to cover him, but

did not venture because of the warder who was bound to him. For they

thought that the order for his execution would come at once. But after

some hours when some soldiers below had summoned the chief warder he went

down, and one of these women, touched with pity, came, and folding in her

arms the champion of Christ and apostolic father, carried him and rested

him on her own bed, carefully covering him and wrapping him. Now he

remained to the evening without uttering a word. But in the evening

Gregorius, the eunuch, prefect of the chamberlains, sent his majordomo

with a little food to refresh him, saying, Faint not in your tribulations;

we trust in God you will not die. The blessed one groaned at this increase

of his troubles. Immediately they took off his fetters.

“The next day the emperor went to the patriarchal palace to visit the

patriarch Paul, for he was near death. The emperor told him all that had

been done to the holy man. But Paul groaned, and turning his face to the

wall he said: Woe is me, this also has been done to multiply the judgments

upon me. The emperor asked why he said this. He replied: Is it not

miserable, my Lord, that pontiffs should suffer such things. Then he

earnestly adjured the emperor that the past sufferings were sufficient,

and that he should bear no more. When this was heard by that apostolical

man, who did not receive what he was expecting, he was not pleased with

that promise, but was made quite sad, for he was longing to finish a good

fight, and to depart unto Him Whom he desired.

“The patriarch Paul died, and Pyrrhus who had been patriarch before him

was trying to recover his seat, but the retractation which he had offered

to the Pope Theodorus was brought up against him. The emperor sent an

officer, an assistant of the fiscal, to examine Pope Martin about it.

Demosthenes entering said to the Pope: See in what great glory you were,

and to what you have reduced yourself. Nobody did this to you, but you did

it to yourself. The Pope made no answer except, Glory and thanksgiving for

all things to the sole immortal King. His majesty, said Demosthenes, has

instructed you thus: inform us of what passed in the case of the

expatriarch Pyrrhus here, and at Rome afterwards. Why did he go to Rome?

Was it by order, or of his own accord? The Pope answered, Of his own

accord. Demosthenes said, How did he draw up that paper? Under any one’s

compulsion? The Pope replied, Under none but of himself. Demosthenes said:

When Pyrrhus came to Rome, how did Pope Theodorus, your predecessor,

receive him? as a bishop? The Pope replied with tranquillity, And why not?

Before Pyrrhus came to Rome, blessed Theodorus wrote hither, that is to

Paul, who had acted unfittingly, and invaded another’s see. When

afterwards Pyrrhus came to Rome, to the threshold of St. Peter, how should

not my predecessor receive and honour him as a bishop? Demosthenes said,

That is most true. But where did he get what was most needful for his

support? The Pope said, Clearly from the Roman patriarchal palace. The

assistant remarked: What sort of bread was given to him? The Pope said, My

Lords, do you not know the Roman Church? For I tell you whoever in however

poor a plight comes hither to lodge, all things for his need are given

him, and St. Peter sends away none who come without his gifts; the best

bread and various wines are given both to him and to his attendants. If

this is done in the case of the abject, when one comes in the honour of a

bishop, what treatment should he receive? Demosthenes said, We have been

informed that Pyrrhus was forced to make that statement at Rome, that he

bore wooden fetters, and suffered much. The Pope replied, Nothing of the

kind was done. For unless some are kept in their place by fear, they

cannot speak out the truth. There are many at Constantinople who were then

at Rome, and know what took place there. The patricius Plato survives, who

was then exarch, and who directed some of his men then to Pyrrhus at Rome.

Ask him if I speak falsely about this. But why enquire further? I am in

your hands. Do with me what you will. As God allows, it is in your power.

If you cut me to pieces, as when you delivered me to the prefect, you

ordered, I do not communicate with the Church of Constantinople. I am

here: examine me, and try, and you will find by experience the grace of

God and of His faithful servants. Again Pyrrhus was mentioned, who had

been so often anathematised, and stripped of the sacred honour.

Demosthenes and his assistant were astonished at the tranquil Pope’s

boldness and constancy for Christ unto death. For this his chalice of

passion was ordained. The attendants also were amazed: they made a copy of

all which the blessed man had said and retired.

“Now the most reverend Pope passed in that same guard-house of Diomedes

eighty-five days after the first ninety-three, that is, in all one hundred

and seventy-eight days. Then Sagoleva the scribe came, saying, I am

commanded to take you hence, and to remove you to my house, and after two

days to conduct you whither the fiscal shall command. The Pope asked

whither he was to be taken; the other refused to say. Then the holy man

asked that he might be allowed to remain in the same guard-house until he

was banished, and might be taken direct from it, which also was refused

him. But about sunset the venerable Pope said to those who were in the

prison: Approach, brethren, and let us take leave; behold he is at hand

who will take me hence. And as he said this they each drank of the

chalice. And rising with serene countenance, with much firmness and

thanksgiving he said to one of those present dear to him: Sir, my brother,

come and give me the kiss of peace. Now the heart of that brother, as he

told me himself at that very time, was, I conceive, such as the heart of

that disciple who watched his Lord upon the cross. And as he was giving

the kiss of peace to the most holy Pope, through the depth of their

affection they shed a flood of tears. But all present broke into a

terrible lamentation. The blessed man distressed at this, besought them

not to do so, looking at them undisturbed. And placing his venerable hands

upon his head, said with a smile: Sir, my brother, this is good, this is

seasonable—should you act thus? Is it for our peace? Rather you should

rejoice over me now. To whom the brother with deep contrition answered:

Servant of Christ, God knows. I rejoice in the glory with which Christ our

God has deigned that you should suffer all these things for His Name’s

sake; but I am sad for the perdition of all. Then all paying him their

respects retired. So the scribe coming forth at once took him away and

brought him to his own house. It was said then that he was banished to

Cherson, and a few days afterwards we learnt that the holy Apostolical man

had been carried thither in a vessel secretly.

“Upon his arrival he wrote a letter after a few days to a most dear friend

in Byzantium, one of those who loved him for the Lord’s sake and for his

right faith. And this our father was in banishment and great tribulation,

and on account of his many and severe bodily sicknesses, and the every way

defective supply of that country, where nothing was to be found,

particularly bread, which they knew by name, but not in fact, asked for

certain things to be sent him. Thus he wrote, attesting upon oath that a

small bark touched there, carrying a little wheat in exchange for salt,

and they were scarcely able to get a bushel of wheat for four coins, and

that with much entreaty. That holy soul wrote that he was suffering

various distresses there, not only from his own body, but through the

oppression of those who ruled there, under direction from the lord in

Byzantium, so that he was dying miserably. I then, your humble and sinning

servant, beseech you, Fathers honourable in God, since I have declared to

you what I myself saw and most carefully heard from others, that is, the

trials pressing on our most blessed Pope for his right confession in

Christ our Lord, and for his anathema uttered upon the new heretics. Short

as is my account out of many things, but the best I could send you, do you

for your part set forth these things to those who have zeal for God’s

worship, and beseech them to imitate him, and to maintain the traditions

of the holy fathers, as he has done, and to hold no communion with those

of an opposite mind. Entreat also for me, your unworthy servant, the

writer, that, together with him and with you, I may find mercy from Christ

our Lord for ever. Amen.”

We possess two letters written by the Pope from the Crimea to his friend

in Byzantium, which would seem to be the letters referred to by the writer

I have just quoted. In them the Pope declares the extreme need of

necessaries for life, in which he suffers. In the first he says, “If St.

Peter thus supports strangers at Rome, what shall we say of ourselves, who

are his proper servants, and at least for a time ministered to him, and

are in such a banishment and affliction”. In the second his words are

still more pressing: “I am astonished at the inattention and want of

compassion of all who once belonged to me, of my friends and relations who

are so utterly forgetful of my misery and care not to know, as I find by

experience, whether I am or am not upon the earth. Much more still do I

wonder at those who are of the most holy Church of the Apostle Peter,

since they have taken such pains for their own body and member—that is,

for their affection to us—that we may be without solicitude. For if the

Church of St. Peter possess not gold, at least, by the grace of God, it is

not without wheat and wine and other necessaries whereby at least to show

a moderate care of us. What fear has fallen upon men that they should not

do the commands of God? Have I appeared such an enemy to the whole fulness

of the Church, and an adversary to them? But may God, who wishes all men

to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth by the intercession

of St. Peter, establish their hearts in the orthodox faith, and confirm

them against every heretic and person adversary to our Church, and

maintain them unshaken, especially the pastor who is now declared to rule

them, so that failing, declining, surrendering no whit of the things which

they have writtenly professed in the sight of our Lord and his holy

Angels, they may, together with my humility, receive the crown of justice

belonging to the orthodox faith from the hand of our Lord and Saviour

Jesus Christ. As for this my poor body, the Lord Himself will care as it

pleases Him to order, whether for sorrows without end or for moderate

relief. For the Lord is at hand, and for what am I solicitous? I hope in

His mercy that He will not long delay to finish my course, as He has

appointed.”(48)

The “present pastor,” whom Pope Martin thus seems to recognise was Pope

Eugenius, elected at Rome in his lifetime, through dread, it is said, of

the clergy there that the Emperor Constans II. would force upon them some

Monothelite of his own to sit in the See of Peter.

The last scene is thus described, as appended to the foregoing narrative:—

“The most holy thrice blessed Apostolical, Martin the Pope, a true

confessor and martyr of Christ our God, died in his banishment in the

Crimea, according to his own petition to our Lord God, offered to Him with

tears at the moment that he disembarked and trod that land—that is, that

in it he might finish his life, fighting the good fight, finishing his

course of martyrdom, keeping the good faith, on the 16th September, the

day on which in the year’s course the most precious and blessed memory is

kept of the martyr Euphemia, guardian of the orthodox faith.(49) He was

buried about a stadium outside the walls of the city of Cherson, in the

Church of Our Lady, the most chaste, immaculate, most excellent of all

creatures, the fullest of grace, the maker and giver of joy, the

ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of God. By the intercessions of which Virgin and

confessor may Christ our true God and Saviour, who came forth from her for

the human race in a manner ineffable and without seed, guard and protect

us, and all faithful hearers, and all the people whom He has acquired unto

sincere faith and practice, in peace and charity, and all justice to the

end.”

So Pope Martin I. gave up his life for the faith of Christ and for the

independence of the Church, and no less for that guardianship of both

which is vested in the Holy See. For he was thus treated because he held a

Council at the Lateran expressly condemning an imperial document of the

reigning sovereign called a Typus, and as Pope placed it under anathema,

and published his Encyclical “to the whole sacred plenitude of the

Church”. And he was condemned as a traitor, exactly repeating the passion

of his Lord, as he sat in the seat of him to whom our Lord said, Follow

thou Me. And further, he followed his great predecessor, Pope Clement I.,

the personal friend both of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the third

successor of St. Peter, dying in the Crimea, where St. Clement died by

command of the great heathen emperor Trajan, as St. Martin died by command

of Constans II., a successor of Constantine, and by his office as

“Christian prince and Roman Emperor” the first son and defender of the

Church.

CHAPTER III. HERACLIUS BETRAYS THE FAITH, AND CUTS HIS EMPIRE IN TWO.

We left the emperor Heraclius carrying back the true Cross in triumph to

Jerusalem from its captivity under the Persian fire-worshipper, whose

empire he had wounded to death. This was in the year 629, in the

pontificate of Honorius, and in that act the emperor seated at Byzantium,

on the throne of Constantine, at the head of the empire which was the

proper creation of Constantine, seemed to have made himself the champion

of the faith which is embodied in the Cross. Had Heraclius then died it

would have been with a halo not only of human but of Christian glory

surrounding his head. But he survived during twelve years in which his

inertness, considered by some to be unexplained, suffered the eastern

empire to undergo irreparable losses. These, moreover, came from a foe of

whose mere existence he was indeed conscious, but of whom he had no fear

at the time of that triumphal entry into Jerusalem. An obscure Arabian

raider was striving to gain a mastery among some savage tribes in that

little known peninsula. The lord of the golden city, seated as queen of

Europe and Asia on broad-flowing Hellespont, would hardly deign to cast

his eyes upon an incursion of southern robbers, made on an empire which

for three hundred years had been watching war-clouds big with tempests

from the north, or matching itself with difficulty against the restored

Sassanid kingdom. This at last was beaten down. Might not Constantinople

hail in security the return of an emperor who had conquered Persia? But

we, looking back over the ages, may think that the act of Heraclius

replacing the Cross in the Holy City and in the church which Constantine

had built over the sepulchre of Christ may be called with much truth the

last act of the real Cæsarean empire, inasmuch as during the twelve

succeeding years it lost for ever its greatest provinces to the very foe

whose advent as a conqueror Heraclius had not even suspected.

We have now to follow briefly one of the greatest revolutions which has

ever occurred in human affairs. It is a revolution which not merely sets

up one kingdom instead of another, or alters the persons of individual

rulers; but which changes human society to its very depths, provides a

different standard of morals, and, so far as it succeeds, but only so far,

reverses the course of Christian civilisation, and undoes in certain

countries the greatest conquests which the Christian Church had obtained

for the good of the human race. Not States only are changed, but fathers

and mothers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters: in fine, Græco-Roman

heathenism has disappeared, but instead of it arises a religion borne on

the shoulders of a temporal rule, and a legislation compared with which in

certain respects that old heathenism was pure and benignant. The

revolution reaches in fact man’s belief in the nature of God Himself: and

a change of belief in the nature of God involves a change in all His

relations to His moral creatures, and in their relations to each other.

The creature in all action reproduces what it holds concerning the

Creator. The religion of self-sacrifice springs from a God who sacrifices

Himself: the religion of self-indulgence from a God from whose worship

sacrifice has been expunged.

It(50) appears that even before the triumphal entry of Heraclius into

Jerusalem with the recovered cross he had met in the Persian campaigns, in

622 or 623, with a certain bishop named Cyrus, then holding the see of

Phasis, in Armenia. But Cyrus himself had for years before been in

communication with Sergius, the powerful patriarch of Constantinople, the

guide and inspirer of the emperor. Sergius had held the see of the capital

since the year 610, in which the accession of Heraclius took place. It had

been all along his dream to reconcile the various monophysite sects which

troubled his master’s empire. In the political point of view such a

reconciliation could not but appear very important. In Egypt alone the

Monophysites numbered about six millions, against three hundred thousand

orthodox.(51) How deeply their national feeling was mixed up with their

heresy is shown by the name of Melchites or Royalists, which they gave to

their opponents. The patriarch Sergius and the emperor Heraclius fell upon

the device of gaining the heretical party, not only in Egypt, but in the

Eastern empire generally, to at least an outward union with the orthodox

by introducing the formula “One Operation” as a theological expression for

the acts of our Lord. St. John of Damascus(52) describes in his treatise

on heresies the 99th as that of the Monothelites “who derived their origin

from Cyrus of Alexandria, and their strength from Sergius of

Constantinople. These men maintained two Natures in Christ, and one

Person, but assert one Will and one Operation, by which they destroy the

duality of natures, and strongly adhere to the doctrines of Apollinarius.”

Now Sergius, uniting great ability and strong character to his position as

bishop of the capital city and minister of the Emperor Heraclius,

dominated his mind. Heraclius exerted himself greatly to disseminate the

formulary of these two patriarchs. His purpose was that of drawing

together his own distracted empire. This purpose of Heraclius is carried

back so far at least as the year 628. Nay, at the beginning of his

campaign against the Persians he recommended it. How much more when by the

peace of the year 628 he recovered the provinces which had been taken from

him.(53) It would seem that the faltering of Heraclius in the faith, which

he was willing to subject to a deceptive compromise the doctrine of the

incarnation itself, was coincident in time with the opening of the

Mohammedan era, the hegira or flight of Mohammed from Mecca, which marks

his assumption of the claim to propagate by force a conquering religion.

That claim was in a few years to cost Heraclius the half of his empire. It

is certain that about the year 630 he promoted Cyrus to be patriarch of

Alexandria. He also put a certain Athanasius of like doctrine into the see

of Antioch, and thus three patriarchal sees at once were in favour of the

heresy. And Sergius wrote to Pope Honorius commending it as a wonderful

mode of restoring unity to the Church in the East.

Cyrus drew up nine heads of doctrine, by which he thought that he had

reconciled the Theodosians and other powerful sects in Egypt. His

announcement was received with exceeding joy by Sergius at Constantinople.

Sergius wrote to Pope Honorius describing the action of Cyrus in these

words: “Certain dogmatic heads were agreed upon between the two sides, in

consequence of which those who but yesterday were parted into divisions

and acknowledged the wicked Dioscorus and Severus as their ancestors, were

united to the one most holy Catholic Church, and all the people of

Alexandria, beloved by Christ, and besides this we may say all Egypt and

Thebais and Libya, and the other dioceses of the Egyptian province, became

one flock of Christ our true God. They who were until then to be seen an

innumerable multitude of divided heresies, now, by the good pleasure of

God and the zeal well-pleasing to Him of the most holy prelate of

Alexandria, have all become one, with one voice and unity of spirit,

confessing the true doctrines of the Church.”(54)

Such was the picture set before Pope Honorius by the patriarch Sergius,

then in the height of his credit as bishop of the imperial city and prime

minister of the emperor, in the year 633, when Abu Bekr was elected the

first of the chalifs to carry on the power of Mohammed, who had died a few

months before. A few years after this supposed reunion of all, these same

Egyptians welcomed submission to Omar, the second chalif and successor of

Abu Bekr, as lord of Egypt, who would, as they thought, be more favourable

to them than Heraclius.

And the successor of St. Peter was deceived into believing that the

picture drawn by Sergius was a true statement.

But before the union described in such terms by Sergius had been

completed, a man had come to Alexandria, who was to protest in the face of

the whole world against this compromise to which the Catholic faith was

being subjected. This was Sophronius, a monk of high repute, to whom the

patriarch Cyrus showed the articles of union, while they were as yet

unpublished. Sophronius threw himself at the patriarch’s feet, and

conjured him most earnestly not to announce them from the pulpit, as they

manifestly expressed the heresy of Apollinaris. Sophronius did not succeed

with Cyrus, but carried a letter from him to Sergius at Constantinople, to

whom it would seem that Cyrus directed him as the chief supporter and

exponent of the doctrine which Sophronius rejected.

All that Sophronius was able to obtain from Sergius was that both

expressions concerning the action of our Lord, as God-man, that is, the

One Operation, or the Two Operations, should be equally avoided.

Sophronius on his return to Jerusalem, was elected patriarch, and as such,

presently issued his synodical letter. This is almost the most important

document(55) in the whole Monothelite struggle: a great theological

treatise, which embraces the Trinity and the Incarnation, and fully sets

forth the doctrine of the Two Operations in Christ. Copies of it were sent

to all the patriarchs. The copy sent to Sergius has come down to us among

the acts of the 7th session of the 6th council. Out of the copy in the

acts I will here quote some few of the very words in which the great

champion of the faith states the doctrine. It is that which St. Leo

defined at the Council of Chalcedon, for which Pope S. Martin offered his

life in sacrifice, for which the Popes preceding and following him

suffered trials and persecutions without end, which four successive

patriarchs of Constantinople endeavoured to overthrow, and for their

incessant quarrels over which, three eastern patriarchates, with their

bishoprics, were delivered over as a prey to the hordes of the false

prophet.

Sophronius(56) addressing his colleagues began with regretting that he was

advanced to the pontifical throne from a very humble state against his

will. Begging his fathers and brethren to support him, he noted that it

was an apostolic custom throughout the world that they who were thus

advanced, should attest their faith to the colleagues preceding them.

After this introduction, Sophronius threw his words into the form of a

creed, in which the first part dwelt upon the Trinity. He then, at greater

length, set forth his belief in the Incarnation. How God the Son, taking

pity upon the fall of man, by His own will, and the will of His Father,

and the divine good pleasure of the Spirit, being of the infinite nature,

incapable of circumscription and of local passage, entered the virginal

womb, resplendent in its purity, of Mary the holy, the God-minded, the

free from every contamination of body, of soul, and of mind;(57) the

fleshless took flesh, the formless, in His divine substance, took our

form; the eternal God becomes in truth man. He, who is in the bosom of the

eternal Father is bosomed in a mother’s womb. He who is without time

receives a beginning in time. Then, passing to the point in question, he

went on: Christ is One and Two, One in Person, Two in Natures and their

natural attributes. On this account, One and the same Christ and Son, and

Only-begotten is found undivided in both natures. He worked physically the

works of each nature according to the essential quality or natural

property which belonged to each. This He could not have done, had He

possessed, as One only Person, so One only Nature, not compounded. For

then, the One and the Same would not have completely done the works of

each Nature. For when has Godhead without body worked naturally the works

of the body? or, when has a body without Godhead worked works which

substantially belong to the Godhead? But Emmanuel, being One, and in this

Oneness both, that is, God and Man, did, in truth, the works of each

Nature; being One and the Same, as God He did the divine, as Man the human

works. Being One and the Same, He works and He speaks the divine and the

human.(58) Not one wrought miracles, and another did human works, and

suffered pains, as Nestorius meant, but one and the same Christ and Son

wrought the divine and the human according to each, as St. Cyril taught.

In each of the Two Natures He had the two powers unmingled, but undivided.

As He is eternal God, He wrought the miracles; as He was Man in the last

times, He wrought the inferior and human works.

The answer to the Synodical letter of Sophronius, made by Sergius at

Constantinople, was not to receive it, but to draw up his own Ecthesis,

and prevail on the emperor Heraclius to stamp it with the imperial

signature, and proclaim it as the faith of his empire. Before the Ecthesis

was brought to Rome in December, 638, Pope Honorius had died in the

preceding October. Sophronius had commissioned the chief bishop of his

patriarchate, Stephen of Dor, as we have already seen, to carry his appeal

to Honorius, in the See of Peter. And now it is time to turn to those

events which were in the meanwhile happening in the eastern empire.

In the three hundred years from Constantine to his twenty-second

successor, Heraclius, the empire which he had set up in the fairest city

of the world had developed into a double despotism. It is difficult to say

whether that despotism pressed more severely on the religious or on the

civil well-being of its subjects. As to each, it is requisite to say

something. The gravity of the events which took place within ten years

demands it; while in their permanent effect that gravity most of all

consists. The immediate result was most rapid and unexpected, yet a long

train of action during the three hundred years preceding had led straight

up to it, and a period of four times three hundred years has since

witnessed its evolution.

Let us take first this pressure of despotism on religion. In speaking of

Constantine I noted that there were in him two very distinct periods of

his rule after he became a Christian. The first precedes his acquisition

of the whole empire in 323; the second follows in the fourteen years from

that time to his death. But in this second period the change, which dates

from the moment at which he becomes sole emperor, is yet gradual. At the

first General Council, in 325, the calling of which is agreed to by the

Pope and the eastern patriarchs, but springs from himself, he acknowledges

both in word and conduct that the Christian Church is the kingdom of

Christ, and that its government lies in the hands of those who receive a

divine consecration thereto from Christ. They are the witnesses of His

doctrine, which they maintain and promulgate in virtue of that

consecration. Upon this doctrine their judgment is final. Constantine

never in thought submitted to any power but the Catholic Church. The

thought of warring sects was abhorrent equally to the soldier, the

conqueror, and the legislator. Yet before his reign closed, at the age of

sixty-three, he had been seduced in his conduct from this high tone of

action by the counsels of the Court bishop, Eusebius; he had restored

Arius and persecuted Athanasius. He had selected the bishops who were to

attend local councils, while he stretched the powers of such local

councils beyond their competence. He had in fact advanced with his

imperial sword into the Church’s Council Chamber, and claimed to be a

judge of her doctrine. And his kingdom was forthwith divided(59) among

three sons, none of whom as rulers at all represented their fathers

majesty, while one, Constantius, became after not many years the sole

ruler, and as such propagated the heresy of the day, and practised

encroachment on the doctrinal independence of the Church. Constantius was

cut off in his forty-fourth year, receiving clinical baptism from the

hands of an Arian on his death-bed. In twenty years after his death the

imperial power passes through two new families, and when a third is called

in to support a falling empire, Theodosius has fifteen years given to him

in which to save the empire from imminent destruction and the eastern

Church from heresy. The victory of that Arian heresy during fifty years

had so deranged that eastern episcopate, that no one but a saint and

champion of the faith, such as St. Basil,(60) could venture to describe

its condition. From the death of Theodosius, in 395, the eastern empire

passed through fifteen successors to Heraclius, and in that succession

there are ten changes of family. One daughter of an emperor, who was

himself a successful insurgent, conferred the empire twice, both times on

the most worthless of men, as much marked for their civil misgovernment as

for persecution of the Church. But with every step in the succession it

may be noted that the original independence of the Church, as recognised

by Constantine and by his successors down to the Emperor Leo I. in a long

series of imperial laws,(61) fell more and more into the background. Each

general who by slaughtering his predecessor mounted the eastern throne

assumed at once the bearing of the lord of the world: with the purple

boots he put on the imperial pride. The Roman Primacy was indeed

acknowledged by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and no less by the

Emperor Marcian, the husband of the Theodosian heiress. But twenty-five

years after that Council the western Emperor was abolished. From that

moment the sole Roman Emperor was seated at Byzantium. At once an eastern

schism was set up by the Bishop of the Capital. Rome was in the possession

of Teuton Arians, who impaired the freedom of the Papal election, and made

the imperial confirmation of it a custom. And when at last an honest

general, who had entered the army as an Illyrian peasant, and risen from

the ranks to the throne, had discountenanced the schism, condemned four

successive bishops of his own capital, and acknowledged in amplest terms

that the Pope’s power was supreme, and also that it consisted in descent

from St. Peter, the eastern emperor forbore, indeed, to deny the Primacy,

but his endeavour was to control its action by making the spiritual

subject to the civil power. This was the outcome of Justinian’s long reign

from 527, to 565. And the fatal conquest of Italy and Rome, making the one

to be a captive province, and the other to be the garrisoned city, but not

even the capital of a captive province, aided Justinian in acts to undo

the reverence which in words he testified to the successor of St. Peter.

In eighty-five years, from 553 to 638, the occupant of the eastern throne

had advanced from holding a Council at Constantinople without the Pope’s

consent, to presenting at Rome a doctrinal decree for his signature. A few

years afterwards, when the Pope called a Council, and condemned the

decrees of two emperors as heresy, and three successive bishops of

Constantinople as the heretics who supported it, the grandson of

Heraclius, Constans II., tried the Pope as guilty of high treason before

the Senate of Byzantium, and crowned him with martyrdom in exile. Step

from Pope Vigilius a captive guarded at Constantinople in 553, to Pope

Martin sentenced there as a traitor in 655, and dying in the Crimea a

martyr. That step will mark the advance of eastern despotism and the peril

of the Church’s independence.

But it may be said that from the time Nestorius is deposed as guilty of

heresy made by himself from the see of the capital in 431, to the

publication of the imperial Ecthesis as a rule of faith in 638, the

eastern patriarchates have been swaying backwards and forwards between the

two opposing heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches: Syria is the parent of

one: Egypt of the other. Through these two centuries the bishop of

Byzantium has pursued under the emperor’s never-failing patronage a

uniform course of self-aggrandisement. In this he was greatly helped by

the extinction of the western emperor, when his master at Constantinople

became the sole representative of the Roman name—that Christian king and

Roman prince to whose honour so many Popes from Felix III. onward so

vainly appealed. That very prince became step by step their most dangerous

enemy. The first act immediately upon the extinction of the western

emperor—who was the natural defender of the Holy See—was that a Byzantine

bishop, Acacius, set himself up as the leader of the whole eastern

episcopate. Pope Gelasius told the bishop of the day that he had no rank

in the episcopate except that he was bishop of the capital: that a royal

residence could not make an apostolic See. The new family of Justinian,

ascending the eastern throne, was compelled by the internal state of the

east, to acknowledge the Roman Primacy. Justinian never broke from that

acknowledgment, but he termed his own bishop ecumenical patriarch in his

laws: and every Byzantine bishop clung to the title given by an absolute

sovereign. In the time of Pope Gregory the Great, a hundred years after

the decree of Pope Gelasius, recording the pre-eminent rank and order of

the three original Petrine Sees, of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, the

Byzantine bishop is allowed to be a patriarch, Alexandria and Antioch have

fallen under him. They themselves have been throughout all the intervening

time the seats of violent party spirit, the spirit of the two conflicting

heresies, striving for masterdom, disturbing succession in the sees, and

ready by any obsequious act to get on their side the bishop of the

capital, who dispenses the smiles of the emperor. Against all primitive

order that bishop is found to consecrate his subordinate patriarchs at

Alexandria and Antioch: to put down one and to raise another. When his

usurpation was fresh and still incomplete, the patriarch Theophilus could

persecute St. Chrysostom for the wrong done to Alexandria; but the

patriarch Cyrus, made for his subserviency to Heraclius and Sergius to sit

in the seat of St. Athanasius, addresses Sergius as “My Lord,(62) the

thrice-blessed Father of fathers, the ecumenical patriarch, Sergius, the

least of his servants,” and his acts are as humble as his words.

It is clear that the eastern patriarchal system had fallen from intrinsic

corruption before the joint operation of Byzantine despotism and the

ambition of the bishop of the capital, who bought every accession to his

own power and influence by acting in ecclesiastical matters as the

instrument of the imperial will. This fall was complete before the events

which mark the last ten years of the reign of Heraclius as a time of

unequalled and irretrievable disaster both to the Church and to the State.

Yet something must still be added to portray that civil condition of the

State which led on to this disaster. In all this time the city of the

emperor’s residence had been exhausting of their wealth—by the terrible

severity of the imperial taxation—the provinces subject to it. Egypt and

Syria lived under a perpetual oppression no less than Italy and Rome.

Every distinction, every favour, which Antioch, when Queen of the east,

may have brought to Syria, had long migrated to the banks of the

Bosphorus. All the national feeling of Egypt was aggrieved by the ruler

who treated the dower of Cleopatra—the imperial gem of Augustus—as a

storehouse to be plundered at pleasure. And the national spirit was

intensified to fever heat by the hatred of Byzantium on the part of the

Eutychean population, forming the vast majority in the whole country.

Thus the wide eastern empire instead of worshipping in union of heart and

gladness of spirit that transcendent mystery in which is throned the

grandeur and the mercy of the Christian dispensation, instead of falling

in prostrate adoration before that vision of condescending love which the

angels desire to look into, broke itself into endless conflicts in

disputing about it, until the mystery of grace became a rancorous jarring

of ambitious rivals. During more than 200 years this suicidal conflict was

engaged in ruining the resources of a vast dominion, which in the hands of

a Constantine or a Theodosius, with the spirit of a St. Leo to guide them,

would have been impregnable to every enemy. Had emperor and people been

faithful to the Council of Chalcedon, and to the authority which they

admitted to be based on a divine promise made to St. Peter, neither the

disunited hordes of the North, nor the far inferior savages of the South,

nor even the impact of the great Sassanide empire would have availed to

overcome the Roman power. This last and greatest enemy Heraclius had

subdued. He went forth in the name of the Crucified One whom Chosroes had

called upon him to disavow, and won the fight. Yet even as he was carrying

back the Cross and entering the Holy City in triumph, Heraclius had become

a traitor to him whom he was professing to honour. He had already

conceived, under an evil influence and by the inspiration of the patriarch

at his right hand, a compromise of doctrine which he thought would induce

the rebellious Egyptian people to return to his allegiance. He hoped also

that the same compromise would exorcise the Nestorian spirit at Antioch.

They who did not agree were to be drawn into an appearance of agreement by

an ambiguous formula. And the See of the Apostle Peter, last and greatest

witness of the true doctrine, was to be forced into accepting the deceit,

and ratifying it for the old truth by submitting to an imperial decree,

which, independent of the heresy contained in it, was a violation of the

Church’s liberty.

The fifty years which run from 628 to 678 contain the various acts of one

prolonged attempt by the Byzantine emperors to enforce their religious

despotism on the Pope in the shape of the Monothelite heresy. The two

standard-bearers of the heresy are two patriarchs, Sergius at

Constantinople, and Cyrus at Alexandria. Precisely at this time the

Mohammedan power appears upon the scene. While Heraclius is brooding over

the compromise of Sergius for reuniting an empire dislocated by heresy,

Mohammed is purposing the foundation of an empire resting on material

force. While Heraclius is assuming the right to define the doctrine of the

Church in virtue of his imperial power, Mohammed is constructing a claim

to prophetic rank from which imperial power itself shall emanate. The

Mohammedan claim is the exact antithesis of the Byzantine usurpation: the

rise of a false prophet punishes the attempt among Christians to rule the

spiritual by the civil power.

Upon the death of Mohammed in 632, his companions took counsel together

and elected Abu Bekr to carry on the dominion based upon religion which

Mohammed had invented. They gave him the title of “Chalif of God’s

Apostle”. As the vicar of the new prophet, he was to exert the absolute

power which belonged to the prophet’s office, and of which the civil

sovereignty was an offshoot. This power was rooted in the belief that

Mohammed had been sent by God. The quality therefore of every act

exercised by the first chalif, and by every successor, depended on the

truth of such a mission.

By the choice of Abu Bekr, father of Aischa, the favourite wife of

Mohammed, it was resolved that the succession to the chalifate should be

elective, not hereditary. The most stirring principle of the new power was

that everyone who died for its extension, which was called the Holy War,

should pass at once to paradise. Paradise had been drawn by Mohammed after

his own sensual imagination to suit the taste of a most sensual people.

The empire sought by Mohammed and his followers was to be imposed by

force. Abu Bekr stirred up the sons of the desert to this Holy War,

proclaiming that he who fought for God’s cause should have 700 good works

counted for each step, 700 honours allotted to him, and 700 sins forgiven.

Abu Bekr held the chalifate but two years, dying in 634 at the age of 63

years. But at the very time of his death the pearl of Syria, Damascus,

fell into the hands of his generals, Amrou and Khaled. From Medina the

city of the prophet, and the seat of the chalif, he had sent forth three

armies. Moseilama, a prophet who competed with Mohammed, was destroyed,

the discontented tribes in Arabia itself were reduced to obedience. The

Persian provinces on the Euphrates were attacked. The Roman empire itself

was summoned to accept the new religion, or to become tributary.

Upon the death of Abu Bekr, the chief associates of Mohammed around him

proclaimed Omar as chalif, and entitled him Chalif, and Prince of the

Faithful. In the ten years of his chalifate, from 634 to 644, Omar made

the Mohammedan empire. He had exerted great influence over Mohammed

himself; he had been most powerful with Abu Bekr, who pointed him out for

a successor. The man who had been of violent temper and bloody battles,

now sedulously practised the administration of justice. He gave much, and

used little for himself. He wore a patched dress, and fed on barley bread

and water; he prayed and preached, and ate and slept upon the steps of the

mosque among the pilgrims. There he received the messengers of kings. The

severe chalif, a sworn foe to all effeminacy, strove to train a rude host

to war. Arts he proscribed, even those of house and ship-building. When

the great city of Modain, or Ctesiphon, was taken, he commanded the

library of the Persian kings to be thrown into the Tigris. When some of

his soldiers had put on silken garments which they had looted in Syria, he

rubbed their faces in the mud and tore their garments in pieces. Such was

the man under whom half-armed nomad tribes broke the armies of Heraclius,

and took one after another the cities of Syria.

But on the side of the emperor were divided counsels, distrust, rankling

enmities; Nestorian and Eutychean heretics hating each other, and still

more the sovereign under whom they should have fought as well for a common

country as for a common faith. The fate of Syria was decided in a terrible

battle on the banks of the Hieromax, or Yarmuk. There, the Saracen

generals, Obeidah and Khaled, “The sword of God,” utterly defeated the

Greek army of 80,000 men.(63) Obeidah wrote to the chalif Omar: “In the

name of the most merciful God, I must make thee to know that I encamped on

the Yarmuk, and Manuel was near us with a force such as the Moslem never

had a greater. But God struck down that host, and gave us the victory out

of His overflowing grace and goodness. God has given to 4030 Moslim the

honour of martyrdom. All that fled into the desert and mountains we have

put down; have beset all roads and passes; God has made us lords of their

lands and riches and children. Written after the victory from Damaskus

where I am, and await thy command for the division of the booty. Farewell,

and the blessing and grace of God be over thee and all Moslim.”

After this, city upon city surrendered in affright. In the winter of 636,

Obeidah lay before Jerusalem, from which Heraclius took away the Holy

Cross with himself to Constantinople. At Antioch, in his dismay, he asked

the question why those miserable half naked barbarians, the Arabs, not to

be compared with the Romans in armour, or art of war, beat them in the

field. A veteran answered him that the wrath of God was on the Romans, who

despised His commands, were guilty of every excess, allowed themselves

intolerable oppression and violence.

We do not read that Heraclius made an attempt to relieve Jerusalem, which

yet was besieged during a year. Obeidah wrote to the patriarch and the

inhabitants: “Salutation and blessing to all those who walk in the right

way. We invite you to confess that there is only one God, and Mohammed is

His Prophet. If you will not make this confession, then resolve to make

your city tributary to the chalif. If you delay to do this, I will set my

people upon you, who all love death more than you love wine and swine

flesh. Hope not that I will draw away hence, until, if God please, I have

killed all your warriors, and made slaves of your children.”

The patriarch Sophronius negotiated without hope of earthly aid, and

Obeidah, to save the Holy City, the cradle of prophets, from being

desecrated by blood-shedding, yielded to the Christian wish that the

chalif in person should be asked to receive the keys of the city, and

regulate the conditions of surrender. And in 637 Chalif Omar came from

Medina. As the Commander of the Faithful entered the city, he rode on a

camel, clothed like the poorest Bedouin, and carrying on the same rough

beast a sack of dates, rice, and bruised wheat or maize, also a

water-skin, and a large wooden platter, on which he took his food with his

companions. The terms of capitulation which he granted to the patriarch

remained for long a standard to the Moslem in the like cases. First of all

was the poll tax imposed by the Koran. The inhabitants to be protected and

secured in life and property; their churches not to be pulled down, nor

used by any but themselves. The Christians duly to pay tribute; to build

no new churches either in the city or country; not to prevent Moslim by

night or day from entering the churches. Their doors to be always open to

travellers. The Christian to whom a traveller comes, shall entertain him

three days gratis. Christians shall say nothing against the Koran. Shall

prevent no one becoming Moslem. Shall show honour to Moslim. Shall not

wear garments, or shoes, or turbans, like theirs. Shall not divide their

hair like them. Shall not bear surnames like them. Shall not ride on

saddles. Shall bear no arms, nor Arabic writing on their seals, nor give

away wine, nor sell it. They shall wear the same kind of dress everywhere,

and that with a girdle. They may have no slave who has served a Moslem. No

crosses on the churches; nor ring bells, but only strike them.

The chalif Omar caused himself to be led into all the holy places in the

garb of a pilgrim by the patriarch Sophronius, even to the church of the

Resurrection. There he placed himself on the floor, and the patriarch was

most anxious lest he should practise his own acts of devotion there. With

breaking heart the patriarch quoted to those around him the words of

Daniel, “The abomination of desolation in the temple”.

Twelve hundred and fifty years have borne witness to the truth of that

sorrowful word, and still, “the desolation continues even to the end,”(64)

and the soldier of the false prophet keeps order among Christians before

the sepulchre of their Lord.

Hardly could the chalif Omar be induced to put off his rough garment long

enough for it to be washed, and to take another. But when the time of

Moslem prayer came, he would not say it in the church, lest the Moslim

should seize a church in which their chalif had prayed, but he went to the

steps of the eastern portion of Constantine’s church and prayed there. He

resolved to build a mosque on the spot where Jacob had seen in vision the

ladder, or on which the temple of Solomon stood. He gave a hand himself to

sweep away the rubbish from it. The structure, built in haste, disappeared

suddenly. Theophanes relates that Omar was much confused at the

disappearance of his new mosque. Some Jewish teachers came to him and said

that the structure would only remain if the cross on Mount Calvary, not

that on the Mount of Olives, were removed. Omar did what these men

suggested. Some of his fanatics, in spite of the compact, broke all the

public crosses, destroyed holy images, attacked various churches and

chapels. He gave a special writing to protect the church at Bethlehem

wherein he had prayed, but the Moslim afterwards took possession of this

church and of the portico at Jerusalem, and made them mosques.

Omar returned to Medina. His armies received command to take Ctesiphon,

Aleppo, Antioch. In the summer of 638, Heraclius retired from Antioch to

Constantinople, and as he left, says Abulfeda, cried out, “Farewell,

Syria, farewell for ever”. When Antioch in August, 638, surrendered,

Mesopotamia as well as Syria fell into the hands of Omar, and all Roman

land up to the Taurus belonged to the chalif, no imperial force could meet

him any longer in the field. Egypt and Persia were open to him.

It was the year when Heraclius published the Ecthesis at Rome. In three

years more came the doom of Egypt. Amrou was one of the most valiant and

able among the generals of Omar. He asked for leave to attack Egypt, and

meanwhile marched to its borders. When the chalif’s answer came, he first

passed the borders, and then opened it. He found written, “If this letter

reaches thee before thou treadest the soil of Egypt, go back; if thou art

already on it, go forward”. Amrou went on. Battles he fought, especially

at Babylon, near Cairo. But the Copts throughout helped him, and the Greek

forces were beaten.(65) Amrou had travelled as a merchant in Egypt, and

knew the dispositions of its inhabitants, and that the vast majority were

so fervent in the Eutychean heresy that they were inclined to look with

favour on the new Mohammedan unity of the Godhead, rather than to defend

their country against the Saracenic invasion for the good of the hated

Melchites, and their emperor at Constantinople. Omar sent Amrou a

reinforcement of 12,000 men, and the Copts, being monophysites, made peace

with the Arabs, and promised the tribute of a moderate poll tax of two

drachmas, from which old men, women, and children, were exempt. There are

said to have been six millions to pay this tax.

To Mukankas, a Copt, the governor under Heraclius, his spies reported the

life of the Arabs in the camp of Amrou. “We were among men to whom death

is dearer than life; who trouble themselves little about earthly greatness

or worldly enjoyments. They sit on the ground, and eat kneeling; their

commander is in no way distinguished from the rest. Especially they do not

distinguish between great and little, nor between masters and slaves. When

the time of prayer comes, no one remains behind. Each washes himself and

prays with the deepest devotion.” To the reproaches of Heraclius his

governor, Mukankas, answered: “It is true the foe is not near so numerous

as we are, but one Mussulman outweighs a hundred of us. They yearn after

martyrdom, since it leads to paradise, but we hang upon life and its joys,

and fear death.” The Copts in general accepted the terms made by Mukankas;

the Greeks did not. At length Amrou, after four engagements, in which the

Copts assisted him with provisions and the building of bridges, advanced

upon Alexandria, whither the Greeks had retired.

Alexandria is said to have been besieged during fourteen months, and to

have cost the lives of 23,000 Arabs. It was never cut off by sea from

assistance. The Arabs had neither besieging engines nor a fleet. But

Heraclius, who was dying of dropsy, instead of sending a fleet to save the

last hold which he had upon Egypt, sent a bishop to make terms with Amrou

for his retirement. “Bishop,” said the Saracen leader, “do you see that

obelisk? When you have swallowed it I will retire from Alexandria.” The

city fell in 640, and since Omar had the library of the Persian monarchs

at Ctesiphon thrown into the Tigris, there is no reason to doubt the fact

recorded that he fed the 4000 baths of Alexandria during six months with

the treasures of Greek literature. An uninterrupted peace since the

destruction of the Serapeium, 240 years before, had allowed that city in

the world which was most devoted to literature and the richest in commerce

ample time to collect the greatest of libraries. The double destruction

suits exactly the character given to Chalif Omar by Arab historians.

Amrou was not allowed, by Omar’s prudence, to live as governor of Egypt at

Alexandria. Fostat—that is, the Tent—where he had dwelt during his siege

of Babylon, developed from being the seat of his government to the present

Cairo. But to the west Amrou extended the Saracen dominion over Barca and

Tripolis.

Omar reigned ten years, a Chalif at whose words of rebuke his strongest

commanders quailed, and he ruled a kingdom which he stretched in these ten

years from Tripolis to the Indus; from the Caspian Sea to the Cataracts of

the Nile. He destroyed the Sassanide empire; and the sword of Mohammed,

wielded by his second chalif, cut in two the empire of Heraclius. With the

loss of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, the successor of Constantine was

reduced to shelter himself behind the walls of Byzantium from the Saracen

host, which perpetually plundered his provinces from the Bosphorus to

Mount Taurus. During the Roman dominion of many hundred years that vast

territory had been in climate, as Herodotus a thousand years before had

said of it, the garden of the earth. It had, further, been studded with

cities rich in monuments of Greek civilisation. Afterwards these came to

be ruled by bishops, many of whom descended from the preaching of St.

Peter and St. Paul. Now all this territory lived in anguish at the thought

of Moslem incursion. Only the invention of the Greek fire, kept a secret,

saved Byzantium itself from suffering in the latter half of the seventh

century the doom which fell upon it in the fifteenth.

Chalif Omar had pressed his captive provinces with heavy tributes. A

Christian artisan, who was made to pay four drachmas a day for taxes in

Kufa, journeyed to Medina to plead for remission before Omar in person. It

was refused. He followed the chalif to the Mosque, and dealt him, as he

prayed, a deadly blow. Omar died, having named, when mortally wounded, the

six eldest companions of the prophet to choose his successor.

Heraclius died at Constantinople in 641. The chalif Omar reigned from the

death of Abu Bekr, in August, 634, to November, 644. Before him had died

the most cruel of Arabian commanders, Khaled.(66) He who buried alive

captive enemies murmured on his sick-bed, “I have been in so many battles,

and received so many wounds, that there is scarcely a whole place in my

body; and now I must die on a bed as an ass dies on his straw”. Jezdeberg,

the last of the Sassanide princes, was hopelessly beaten, and in 651

closed, under Mussulman extinction, the dynasty which since 226 had

renewed the battle of Persia for empire with its old rival Rome. The great

city of Madain or Ctesiphon was destroyed, and Mohammed, the chalif’s

governor in Persia planted Kufa as a military city on the right bank of

the Euphrates, three days journey from Bagdad. Omar learnt that his

governor Mohammed had built himself a stately palace over against the

chief mosque at Kufa. This he had adorned with a magnificent gateway taken

from the palace of Chosroes at Ctesiphon. In wrath Omar wrote: “the kings

of Persia have gone down from their palaces to hell: the Prophet rose from

the dust of the earth to heaven. I have ordered the bearer of these lines

to burn down thy palace at once, lest thou miss the way of the Prophet for

that of the corrupt Persian.” The palace was burnt. Omar knew how to

destroy, and they record of his ten years that thirty-six thousand cities,

villages, or castles were taken and wasted, and fourteen thousand

Christian churches burnt or changed into mosques. History, I believe, has

not recorded how many thousand Christian women were delivered over as a

prey to the Arabian savages, to whom he promised paradise as a reward for

dying in battle against the unbelievers. This was the Mohammedan

martyrdom. Omar sought to impress a holy character upon the savage deeds

which the hordes marshalled by him to victory or martyrdom practised

without scruple. In setting up the colossal kingdom which he founded

during the ten years of his chalifate he covered the earth with heaps of

slain in the name of the most merciful God. He is said to have established

judges in the chief cities of his empire, who should administer justice

according to the written or traditional precepts of Mohammed. He had great

care for the security of all the lands subject to him. “If,” he said, “a

shepherd on the banks of the Euphrates or the Tigris have one of his sheep

stolen, I fear that I shall one day have to give an account for it.”(67)

He is praised by Mussulmen for his great qualities as sovereign. But he

cared less to spread Islam from Arabia over all the world than to enrich

Arabia at the cost of all the world. Foreign nations were to be put in

chains, but not ennobled and bettered. They were to encounter not

preachers, but tax-gatherers. His rulers might inflict any oppressions on

those who were not Mussulmen, provided they sent the fruits of their

oppression to him at Medina. At the same time he fed on barley bread, and

had but one cloak for the summer and another for the winter, both well

darned. But let us turn to his family life. Little of it is known, but

that he had seven marriages—three in Mecca, four after the exit to Medina,

one of them being with a daughter of Ali—and that he had two slave

concubines who bore him children. Two other wives he tried to get. A

daughter of Otba refused him because he kept his wives jealously shut up.

But Asma, a daughter of Abu Bekr, disliked the barley bread and camel’s

flesh of his household. He sought her in vain by the help of Aischa. Not

obtaining her, he turned to Amm Kolthum, a daughter of Ali and Fatima, and

granddaughter of Mohammed. Ali said to him, “My daughter is too young to

marry”. Omar would not believe it, upon which Ali sent his daughter to him

in a single vestment. Omar drew back her veil, and wished to draw her to

him. But she escaped, and fled to her father, and told him of Omar’s

conduct. Ali then said to him, “If thou wert not chalif, I would tear out

thine eyes”. But Omar sought her again before comrades of the highest

rank, grounding his proposal on what Mohammed had once said: “Every

relationship and connection ceases at the Day of Judgment, except one

contracted with me”. Ali went home, and said to his daughter: “Go back to

Omar”. She rejoined: “Wilt thou send me again to this old voluptuary?” Ali

replied, “He is thy husband”.(68)

But though in the last years of Omar Ali became his father-in-law, no

friendly relation seems ever to have existed between them. Ali had been

the first in all Mohammed’s battles; by Omar he was made neither commander

nor governor. But in Mussulman remembrance Omar stands as the greatest of

their rulers, because of the vast power and extension to which under him

Islam attained.

Let us see what Omar in his chalifate did to Constantine’s empire and the

Christian faith.

When in 610 Heraclius was drawn from his father’s governorship of Northern

Africa to end the cruelties of Phocas, the great mass of the eastern

empire still stood, threatened indeed by Avar Chagans on the north, and by

the restless Persian empire on the east. But the whole coast of Northern

Africa, Egypt and Syria, the realm from Antioch to the end of the Euxine

on the east, and to Stamboul on the west, as well as the great country

south of the Danube, stretching from the Euxine to the Adriatic and down

to the south of the Morea, each of which last would make by itself a noble

monarchy, remained intact, and if the eastern despot held his head a

little lower than Justinian’s head had been held, it needed still but a

Constantine or a Theodosius to breathe conquering force as well as

maintaining power into that vast body which still called itself Roman.

Instead of a true life and a royal will directing that life it had nothing

but Greek arts wielded by Oriental despotism. In ten years the sons of the

desert, half clothed and fed on barley bread, invoking the God of

Mohammed, discomfited the disciplined hosts of the Lord of the world, and

carried into dishonour and apostacy the women and children of great

provinces. Egypt since the battle of Actium had been the most

carefully-guarded province of Augustus and the emperors who came after

him. It ceased at once and for ever to be Roman. Not only was there a

change in the civil power, but its six millions of Monophysites preferred

the crescent under Amrou, as Omar’s lieutenant, to the cross enthroned

with Heraclius at Constantinople. Antioch ceased to be Roman, and with it

Syria and Mesopotamia. Beyond these the vast regions of Persia fell into

the hands of Omar, and were ruled for the present from an Arab city

Medina, unknown till then beyond Arabian limits. The outposts of Omar were

at Mount Taurus, looking thence with desire over the vast historic region

sprinkled with stately cities up to the banks of the Bosphorus. These

immense regions were lost suddenly but they were also lost permanently. In

ten years they were forfeited by possessors who had held them for seven

hundred, and after twelve centuries and a half they remain in the hands of

the false religion which took them by force and keeps them against

recovery by Christians.

Wonderful besides the suddenness of the stroke was the inadequacy of the

instrument to the effect produced, the blindness of the time before the

coming revolution. Neither St. Gregory among the saints one generation

only before it came, nor Heraclius returning a conqueror over the Great

King within ten years of the Saracenic catastrophe, anticipated that there

were southern hordes extreme in ignorance, devoid of art, and without

political sense or experience, but lying in the hand of Providence to take

possession of lands with ancient culture and a thousand years of civilised

history. St. Gregory indeed had witnessed himself such ruin, and followed

two centuries of such disasters, which had stripped Italy of her crown of

cities, that he thought the world itself was coming to an end. But the

establishment of a great southern empire, founded by vagrant tribes till

then known only as robbers, never presented itself to his mind. That they

would go forth and conquer with a new war-cry, directed especially against

the Cross of Christ, was as little in his thoughts.

By the year of Omar’s death there was a new empire ruled by a man from an

unknown Arabian town, in the name of a man who had died twelve years

before, and claimed to be a prophet, the special herald of one God. In the

belief thus set up, it was no other than this God who had invested not the

prophet only, but the chalifs who came after him with supreme power, not

civil only, but religious, and supreme simply because it was religious,

and exercised in the name of this new God. And the empire so set up

included already the vast dominions of the Great King, and fully one half

of the empire which Justinian had left.

But greater yet was the difference which separated this empire from all

that had preceded it. Omar ruled with absolute power as chalif of

Mohammed, whose right to power of any kind, civil or religious, lay only

in his office of prophet. The Roman emperor ruled because he was lord of a

subject-confederacy of nations, which the Roman arm and the Roman mind

had, bit by bit, subdued and wrought together, and which, when so

constituted, had been deposited entire by secular warranty in his single

hand. But Mohammed ruled, and after him the chalifs, because he was “the

Apostle of God,” by a divine commission, whole and entire, from which

civil and religious authority equally emanated, but in which the religious

was the root of the civil. Such was the power which the companions of

Mohammed in the first election of Abu Bekr, launched upon the world, and

which, as second chalif, Omar received. And in the spirit of this, he

ruled the huge empire of conquest, which stretched from the African

Tripolis to the end of Persia, and from the southernmost point of Egypt to

the Cilician Taurus, engulphing Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. No

portion of this power did Omar wield without assuming to represent the

person who made himself, or was made by others, his followers, the last

and highest of the prophets; who was willing indeed to acknowledge Jesus,

the Son of Mary, in the number of prophets, but only on the condition that

the prophetical list was closed in himself, that it pointed to himself,

and was crowned in himself. The Mohammedan war-cry, to die for which was

to be a martyr, “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet,”

was at once the denial of the Christian Trinity, and of Christ’s

Redeemership. All those who bore it, fought for it, died for it,

proclaimed an absolute hostility to the Christian faith, and a definite

substitution of another faith for it, and another person on whom that

faith rested. This was the empire personified in Omar; and this, in the

ten years from 634 to 644, seized upon the southern half of what had been

the inheritance bequeathed by Constantine to his successors. The new realm

was ruled by Omar with singleness of purpose and unbending resolution to

make the Mohammedan standard victorious over the cross, to dethrone Christ

for Mohammed.

Was the blow to the empire equally a blow to the Church? The severance of

provinces so vast, so populous, so rich in natural productions, from

Heraclius, was in itself depriving the lord of the world of legs and arms;

but more dangerous than any material privation was the setting up an

empire with a definite creed, in which religious conquest was by far the

most powerful ingredient. The war-cry, “There is no God but God, and

Mohammed is his prophet,” meant the earth and all that is in it, its

fruits, and above all, its women, belong entirely to the followers of

Mohammed. They who do not either become his, or pay tribute to him, have

no rights. Their children become slaves, their wives and daughters

captive. These begin to be the absolute possession of the Mohammedan

conqueror; if he dies in battle, rewards of martyrdom, so won, for his

successors: if he lives, adornments of his life, which he pleases God by

accepting.

As to the treatment of Christian countries, Omar, in the capture of

Jerusalem, had supplied a rule and standard which for the present was

followed at least in profession. Christians were not treated as idolaters:

they were taken into covenant. We are told that the tribute was so

moderate that the first Egyptians and Syrians who accepted it, thought

that they had made a favourable transfer of themselves from Byzantine to

Mohammedan lordship.(69) The Byzantine had perpetually interfered with

their religious convictions, and domineered over their ecclesiastical

appointments. Mohammedans, in the disdain of superior power resting on

their exclusive possession of truth, kept entirely aloof. Once their own

lordship established and acknowledged, they allowed their subjects a

certain freedom of action within the lines of Omar’s covenant. It is

probable that they began by so doing, nor is it easy to account for the

rapid and continued submission of provinces, such as Syria and Egypt,

without the willingness of their inhabitants to accept the change be taken

into account. But it is certain that the Christian religion drooped more

and more under the shadow of Mohammedan domination.

Antioch fell under it in 637. From that time forth, the so-called

patriarch began often to live at Byzantium. The patriarchate, which, down

to the heresies of the third and fourth centuries, had probably, in

Christian population, in learning, in the distinction which its bishops

enjoyed each in their own city, been the most flourishing portion of the

Church, began to decline. The deposition of St. Eustathius, in 330, cost

its capital a schism of nearly a hundred years. The partisanship of its

patriarch with its countryman, Nestorius, prejudiced both its rank and its

unity. What proportion of its once eleven provinces and 161 bishops

belonged to it at the time of the Mohammedan invasion might be difficult

to ascertain. But how great and wide its circuit was is shown by the

instance of Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, which, though an undistinguished

see, contained in it no less than eight hundred parishes,(70) and was

under Hierapolis, as seat of the Metropolitan.

After 638, the Antiochene patriarch never more lifted his diminished head

as the holder of one of the three great Petrine Sees, whom St. Innocent I.

and St. Gregory I. had acknowledged with themselves as representatives of

St. Peter.

In all this, we behold the consummation of a fearful history, and I will

take the words of one who witnessed the northern wandering of the nations

to illustrate, rather perhaps, to account for, the much more terrible

wandering of the nations in the south. It was more than two hundred and

forty years before this new kingdom arose that St. Jerome, from his

solitude at Bethlehem, addressed a friend. It was in the year immediately

succeeding the death of the great Theodosius. His rapid view of the

generation which had just passed will inspire many thoughts. He is

consoling the bishop, Heliodorus, for the loss of his nephew, the priest,

Nepotian, a dear friend of his own: “and why,” he says, “am I trying to

heal a wound which time and thought, as I believe, have already soothed?

Why do I not rather bring before you the miseries of royalty so near to

us? Our time has such calamities that it were well not so much to mourn

one on whom this light has ceased to shine as to congratulate the escape

from such misfortunes. Constantius, the patron of the Arian heresy, in the

midst of preparing for the enemy’s onset, and rushing to the fight, dies

in the village of Mopsis, and, in great sorrow, left his empire a prey to

his foe. Julian, betrayer of his own life, and slaughterer of an army that

was Christian, acknowledged in Media the power of that Christ whom he had

first denied in Gaul. Striving to extend the Roman frontiers, he lost what

they had already gained. Jovian had but a taste of imperial power, and

died suffocated by charcoal fumes: an instance to all men of what human

dominion is. Valentinian laid waste his own native land, and, leaving it

unavenged, broke a blood-vessel and died. His brother, Valens, in the war

with the Goths, was defeated in Thrace, and found a tomb on the spot of

his death. Gratian, betrayed by his own army, and not received by the

cities which he approached, suffered the mockery of enemies: and thy

walls, O Lyons, bear the impression of the blood-stained hand. The young

Valentinian, scarcely beyond boyhood, after flight, after banishment,

after recovering the empire with great blood-shedding, was slain near the

city, guilty of his brother’s death: and his lifeless body suffered the

ignominy of the halter. Then there was Procopius, and Maximus, and

Eugenius, who, when they were in power, struck their opponents with

terror. All stood captives before their conquerors: and suffered that

utmost misery of those once powerful: to be reduced to slavery, and then

slaughtered.

“Some one may say, this is the lot of kings, and lightnings strike high

summits. Pass to private ranks, and only within the last two years. Let us

take but the different ends of three lately Consuls. Abundantius is in

poverty and exile at Pityuns. The head of Ruffinus was carried on a pike

to Constantinople; his right hand was cut off, and, to mark his insatiable

greed, taken begging from door to door. Timavius, hurled suddenly from the

loftiest ranks, thinks it an escape to live nameless at Assa. It is not

the calamities of the miserable which I relate, but the frailty of man’s

condition. It strikes with horror to follow out the ruins of our times. It

is more than twenty years since Roman blood is shed daily between

Constantinople and the Julian Alps. In Scythia, Thrace, Macedonia,

Dardania, Dacia, Thessaly, Achaia, Epirus, Dalmatia, and all the

Pannonias, Goth and Sarmatian, Quade, Alan, and Hun, Vandals and

Marcomans, waste, drag away, and plunder. How many matrons, how many

consecrated virgins, how many free and noble persons, have fallen a prey

to these brutes! Bishops captured; priests and the various ranks of clergy

slain; churches ruined; horses stabled at Christ’s altars; relics of

martyrs dug up. Mourning and death in every shape on all sides. The Roman

world falls in pieces, but our stiff neck is not bent. What spirit, think

you, have Corinthians, Athenians, Lacedæmonians, Arcadians, and all

Greece, in the gripe of barbarians? I have named few cities which were not

formerly strong powers. The East seemed free from these scourges: bad

tidings only terrified it. When lo! last year, from the farthest heights

of Caucasus, wolves, not of Arabia, but of the North, were let loose upon

us. They overran at once great provinces. How many monasteries were

captured! How many rivers changed into human blood! Antioch was besieged,

and the cities which the Halys, Cydnus, Orontes, Euphrates traverse.

Crowds of captives carried away. Arabia, Phœnicia, Palestine, Egypt,

trembling with fright. Had I a hundred tongues and mouths, and a voice of

iron, I could not enumerate all the tortures suffered. I did not propose

to write a history; but in few words to lament our miseries; otherwise,

adequately to set forth these things. Thucydides and Sallust would both be

mute.” The whole period of two hundred and forty years, between the time

when St. Jerome, as a spectator, wrote thus, and the time of the

Mohammedan inroad, is expressed in the words which follow. “It is long

since we felt that we are offending God, but we do not appease Him. It is

by our own sins that the barbarians prevail. It is by our own vices that

the Roman army is conquered. And, as if this was not enough for our

losses, our civil wars have consumed almost more than the edge of the

enemy’s sword. Unhappy we who are so displeasing to God that His wrath

breaks forth on us through the fury of savages. The greatness of the

reality surpasses language: all words are less than the truth.”

For, indeed, the time was come, through the extraordinary wickedness of

two hundred years, when the very sanctuaries from which St. Jerome was

writing, the sanctuaries of the birth and death of Christ, Bethlehem and

Calvary, were to fall, not by a sudden inroad, but a permanent occupation

into the hands of His chief enemies. The time was also come when the see

of the great confessor whose name we identify with the battle of faith

against the world, the see of Athanasius himself, the Pope of the East,

the next in hierarchical order to the Universal Pope, was to fall, and to

fall for ever, from its high estate. “Almost from the death of Athanasius

began the spiritual declension of his see and Church.”—“Pride is not made

for man; not for an individual bishop, however great, nor for an episcopal

dynasty. Sins against the law of love are punished by the loss of faith.

The line of Athanasius was fierce and tyrannical, and it fell into the

Monophysite heresy. There it remains to this day. A prerogative of

infallibility in doctrine, which it had not, could alone have saved the

see of Alexandria from the operation of this law.”(71)

During the ten years of Omar’s chalifate the great patriarchates of

Alexandria and Antioch, and the smaller patriarchate of Jerusalem, which

contained the places of pilgrimage dear to every Christian heart, visited

by the faithful from all lands, not only the birth-place in Bethlehem, not

only Nazareth consecrated by the angel’s announcing of that birth, and by

the secret life of the divine Boyhood and Manhood, but—

The sepulchre in stubborn Jewry

Of the world’s ransom, Blessed Mary’s Son.(72)

fell together into bondage under the special enemy of the Cross. In this

bondage the hierarchies of the three patriarchates, as distinct wholes,

almost disappear from history. It is well to consider here the condition

in which they had been even from the time of the Arian heresy.(73) The

declension of Antioch had been of as long standing as the declension of

Alexandria. At the end of the fourth century St. Chrysostom bore witness

to its hundred thousand Christians. But in the course of the fifth the

great third see of the Church lost much of its reputation and power.

Partly it fell into weak hands, as John I., from 428 to 441, who held but

a poor position in the Nestorian conflict, while Domnus II. took part in

the robber council of 447. Then, at Chalcedon, the elevation of Jerusalem

to a patriarchate took from its jurisdiction the three Palestines. But

especially the encroachments of the see of Byzantium told upon it. The

bishops of the royal city claimed to consecrate the already-named

patriarchs. Anatolius ordained Maximus, who was substituted for Domnus II.

when deposed in spite of his subservience to Dioscorus. In this he

disregarded the rights of the bishops of the Antiochene patriarchate, and

the Byzantine bishops forthwith turned that precedent into a right.

Maximus was followed by Basilius, Acacius, and Martyrius. The Monophysite

Peter Fullo formed such a party against the last that he resigned in

despair. This usurper resisted the Emperor Zeno’s condemnation to

banishment, and put himself, first secretly, then openly, as patriarch

against Julian. He so persecuted the Catholics, that Julian died of

sorrow. The Emperor Zeno banished the heretical Peter Fullo to Pityuns. He

was succeeded by the equally heretical John II., Kodonatus. But this

patriarch was deposed in three months by the exertion of the bishops. The

Monophysites already prevailed. They murdered in the sacred place itself

the new Catholic patriarch, Stephen II., and threw his mangled body into

the Orontes. The emperor punished the crime, and Acacius, Bishop of

Constantinople, put in his place Stephen III. Pope Simplicius censured

this violation of the canons, and prohibited it for the future, which did

not prevent Acacius renewing his encroachments when, after the death of

Stephen in 482, he consecrated Colendion. Colendion was afterwards

banished by the Emperor Zeno, and had to yield to the old heresiarch,

Peter Fullo, who kept his patriarchate to his death in 488, and was

succeeded by the equally heretical Palladius. Almost all Syria rose

against the Catholic patriarch Flavian; the monk Severus got hold of the

patriarchate, and kept it for six years. He fled in 519, under the Emperor

Justin I., to Egypt. His successors, Paul II., who resigned in 521 through

fear of an accusation, and Euphrasius of Jerusalem, could no longer secure

superiority to the Catholics. Patriarch Ephrem followed from 526 to 545.

He held a Synod against Origenism. Patriarch Domnus III. took part in the

Fifth Council in 553. He was followed by the distinguished Anastasius I.,

and after St. Gregory I. by Anastasius II. The See remained a long time

vacant. Those who then followed, Athanasius, Macedonius, and Macarius,

were Monothelites. The two latter from the time the Saracens took Antioch,

in 637, resided in Constantinople for safety. After George, who is said to

have subscribed the Trullan Council in 692, the See was vacant forty

years, and the patriarchs had often to endure extortions, ill-treatment,

and banishment.

How well Alexandria had prepared itself for the Mohammedan captivity may

be seen by the following facts. Under the violent Dioscorus the see of St.

Mark not only declined from its distinction when ruled by St. Cyril, but

threw the whole of Egypt into wild confusion by espousing the Monophysite

error. The Catholic patriarch, Proterius, was murdered in 457: and the

heretical Timotheus Ailouros set up by his party instead. He, though

condemned by the emperor, Leo I., to banishment, maintained himself

stubbornly against the Catholic patriarch, Solophakialos. After his death,

Peter Mongus was able to expel the Catholic, John Talaia: and then, from

490 to 538, Alexandria had a succession of five Monophysite patriarchs.

Under Justinian, from 538, during forty years, we find four Catholic

patriarchs. So, again, in Eulogius, the friend of St. Gregory, and John

the alms-giver. But during this time the Monophysites also had their

patriarchal succession, and that even from different sects of the heresy.

The end of it was that the bitterest enmity arose between the Melchite or

Royalist, and the Monophysite party. The former, being a small minority,

held by favour of the Byzantine emperor and his troops in Egypt the

possession of authority. The Copts, being a great majority, considered

themselves oppressed, and welcomed as deliverers, in 638, the conquering

Arabs. The Melchite party sunk so low that their patriarchal place was

vacant during eighty years, and the number of their bishops greatly sank.

After 750, the Christian inhabitants of Egypt were more and more exposed

to Mohammedan brutality. Sharp laws against them were issued:

distinguishing marks and clothes prescribed.

And here not only is the fall of the three patriarchates under conquerors

who strive to destroy the Christian faith to be noted as following upon

two centuries of incessant heresy, but another divine judgment also. No

sooner have the three patriarchs lost their original position, the two

elder as second and third bishops of the whole Church in virtue of their

descent from Peter, and taken definitively a position subordinate to the

upstart at Byzantium, who in the last decade of the fifth century, in the

time of Pope Gelasius, was proclaimed in his Council at Rome no patriarch

at all, than they fall under a domination which is not merely infidel but

antichristian. The aim of the chalifate is to supplant Christ by Mohammed.

The patriarchs, who accepted as superior one who rose above them simply

because he was bishop of the imperial residence, had from that time

forward to live under a despot who reigned in the name of the false

prophet. From being subjects of the Greek Basileus, who, by means of the

bishop exalted by him in successive generations, strove to hamper in the

exercise of his office the successor of St. Peter, even to the point of

making him subject to the guidance of the Byzantine crown in spiritual

matters, which was the meaning of the Ecthesis of Heraclius, they passed

to be subjects of the Mohammedan chalif, who claimed the supremacy of both

powers in the name of the falsehood just invented.

In the diminished territory of Byzantium, which during the rest of the

century after Heraclius could but just keep the Mohammedan conqueror

outside its walls, the bishop of the royal residence became in fact the

sole patriarch. Sergius and Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, the first four of

those so exalted, were branded as heretics by the Sixth Council. Those who

still bore the names of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem appeared at

times, or were deemed to appear, at a Byzantine Council, but the hundred

bishops of the Alexandrine, and the hundred and sixty bishops of the

Antiochene waned and wasted more and more with every generation miserably

spent under the absolute rule of the Prophet’s chalif, who had for

Christians only two modes of treatment, the one a noxious patronage of

their heresy, if such prevailed; the other, persecution of their faith, if

they were faithful and zealous.

From the accession of St. Athanasius to the See of Alexandria in 328 to

the placing Cyrus in that See by Heraclius in 628, exactly three centuries

elapse. In this time the great revolution begun by Constantine, when he

took for his counsellor the court-bishop Eusebius, has full space to work

itself out. His own son, Constantius, “patron of the Arian heresy,” in St.

Jerome’s words, inaugurates in full force the attempt of the Byzantine

monarchs to extend their temporal power over the spiritual. Valens so

persecutes the eastern Church that when Theodosius is called in to save

the empire, he finds the eastern episcopate in the state of ruin described

by St. Basil. Unfortunately, he saw no better means of restoring it, when,

in 381, he invited the bishops of his empire to anxious deliberation, than

by laying the first stone of the Byzantine bishop’s exaltation. An eastern

Council, at his prompting, strives to make that bishop the second bishop

of the whole Church on a false foundation, because Constantinople is Nova

Roma. Every Byzantine monarch adds his stone to the Byzantine bishop’s

pillar of pride. St. Leo exposes and censures the assumption. Pope

Gelasius does not reckon him among the patriarchs. Justinian enacts him to

be ecumenical patriarch, which St. Gregory pronounces to be a title of

diabolical pride: being, in fact, the building of spiritual power on

temporal lordship. In thirty years after St. Gregory, the act of pride

denounced by him receives its full interpretation. The patriarch Sergius

attempts to mould the doctrine of the Church under the authority of

Constantine’s successor: and Constantine’s empire is cut in half by the

chalif of the man who claims all temporal power on the pretence that he

has been invested by God with spiritual power. And two conflicting

heresies, the Nestorian and Eutychean, the latter making its last

development in the Monothelite, have severed the eastern empire into

rivalities so bitter, that the Christians of the several parties hate each

other more than they hate the new Mohammedan pretender. The episcopate,

seen in all its glory and grandeur when first assembled by Constantine in

325, sinks ingloriously under the successors, in Alexandria and Antioch,

of the very prelates who maintained the faith at Nicæa: sinks before

Mohammed, who is seen to complete the work of Arius. The successor of St.

Peter has done his utmost during two hundred years to preserve the eastern

sees of Peter: and in them the whole ecclesiastical constitution formed

for herself by the Church in the ten generations preceding Constantine:

but Alexandria and Antioch have no prerogative of infallibility: they

perish by their own folly: heresy pollutes their sees for generations, and

at last the false prophet’s chalif alternately blights them with the

favour which he shows to their heresy, or wastes them with the oppression

which he has always ready for the faith. As to the great eastern

patriarchate, from its capture by the Saracens in 638, its host of

bishops, at the head of Hellenic cities descending from Alexander’s

empire, becomes, sooner or later, the prey of the Moslem. From the capture

of Alexandria, Egypt becomes Monophysite under what the Copts fancy to be

protection from the chalif, with the ultimate result that the country of

the desert Fathers becomes the heart of the religion denying Christ: and,

with Omar’s entry into Jerusalem, upon his rough camel, with his wooden

platter and his bag of barley, begin the 1260 years of the Holy City’s

treading down by the Gentiles.

Thus the southern wandering of the nations came upon the northern. When it

came, three hundred years of such times as St. Jerome saw and described

had already spread over the earth, sufferings too great for words,

changes, as he says, such as neither Thucydides nor Sallust could express.

But the southern wandering was much more rapid in time, and in effect far

more complete. The ten years of Omar’s chalifate had changed the whole

aspect of the world, had shifted the centre of political power. It had

been at Constantinople: it was shifted to Medina. From Constantine to

Heraclius the empire had taken and enrolled in its armies unnumbered men

of Teuton race. Alaric had been a Roman general: Stilicho and Aetius,

saviours of Rome. This race had also fed the Church with converts of more

stalwart nature than the enfeebled races who needed the infusion of

northern blood even to till their fields, as well as to guard their

frontiers, or to guide their polity. But the southern wandering gave no

soldiers to the empire, and no converts to the Church. There would be no

greater contrast than the two races from which these two great movements

came. The northern barbarian, with all his wildness, could take the

impress of the Church. He had in his woods and marshes, in his

transmigrations and encampments, kept, in no small degree, the original

tradition of the human race. Already Tacitus had noted his regard for

woman as the companion of his life, for the sanctity of marriage, for

monogamy, in the practical guarding of which he put to shame the

degenerate Roman, and still more corrupted Greek. The heroic courage,

natural to him, was an omen of the point which, as Christian martyr, he

might reach. The self-government shown in the original habits of the tribe

was a soil whereon princes and bishops might sit in council to form

governments in which “liberty and empire,” unknown to Byzantine, might

dwell together. These qualities were elements of the social, the

political, even the ecclesiastical life. Far otherwise was the Saracen

type. Savage, rude and ignorant, with no tincture of art or learning: with

habits of unlimited polygamy: with leanings to unmitigated despotism: with

no regard to human life. In courage only was the southern a match for the

northern barbarian. The outcome of his whole character as to the rest was

different: and the religion invented for him was but the barest

development of his natural temperament.

At the death of Chalif Omar, this new antichristian power had taken from

the empire of Heraclius every yard of land formerly under its dominion

from Tarsus to Tripoli: and stood in most threatening attitude over

against all which remained to it: indeed, to the whole Christian name.

Mohammed was its watchword against Christ. The northern wandering had no

such counter watchword. It respected Roman laws and customs when it seized

on Roman lands. It had understanding enough, not only as shown in its

princes, Ataulph and Theodorich, but in a race of officers surpassing not

only Roman courage, but Roman fidelity in the civil and military

administration, to venerate as unapproachable by any wisdom of its own,

the political fabric of which, in so many lands, it confiscated the

resources.

But Omar’s treatment of Greek learning in the library of Alexandria was

the expression of his whole mind towards Christian civilisation. And

Omar’s powerful hand had not only maimed Byzantium, but absorbed Persia.

All this had been done since Heraclius carried back the Cross in triumph

to Jerusalem. The Persian had kept it in its shrine during its captivity

with the seals untouched. The Saracen scorned all which it represented.

The contest of those whom Heraclius would leave in his place was to be

with the Saracens, Omar, Osman, and Ali.

After the Chalif Omar was mortally wounded in the mosque at Medina, he at

first named Abd Errahman for his successor, who declined the chalifate.

Whereupon Omar named six of Mohammed’s companions, together with the same

Abd Errahman to choose a new chalif. They were engaged during three days

in heated contest, since each of the six wished to become the chalif, and

were at last induced with great difficulty by Abd Errahman to accept one

of their number named by him. Thus Osman, at the age of seventy, was

chosen as successor of Omar. His chalifate lasted from November, 644, to

June, 656: during the whole of which, eleven years and a-half, the Saracen

realm was disturbed by internal struggles. Yet external wars continued.

Governors, appointed by Osman, were decried, but they did many successful

deeds of arms.(74) In North Africa, the boundaries of the realm were

extended on from Tripolis as far as Kairawan. In Persia, a governor,

afterwards removed, gained a province. The whole of Persia, which had been

overrun rather than subdued under Omar, was finally conquered under Osman.

An attempt of the Greeks to recover Alexandria and Egypt succeeded for a

moment, but was frustrated by the aid given to the Moslim by the

Monophysite Copts. Parts of Armenia and Asia Minor were taken, and the

island of Cyprus. The Moslim carried their conquering arms to the Oxus,

and slew, in his retreat from a lost battle, the last heir of the kings of

Persia.

In 656, the discontents produced by Osman’s favour of his own family

culminated in an insurrection at Medina, in which the dwelling of the

chalif, after a siege of several weeks, was at last broken open, and the

third Commander of the Faithful, also, like Ali, a son-in-law of Mohammed,

was slain by the eldest son of Abu Bekr, the first chalif. A week after

his death, the third chalif, Osman, was succeeded by Ali, the fourth,

widower of Mohammed’s favourite daughter, Fatima. But the six and a-half

years of Ali’s chalifate were occupied with a violent struggle between him

and Muawiah, cousin of Osman, and governor of Syria.(75) There had ever

been enmity between the family of Haschim, from which Mohammed descended,

and the family of Abd Schems, from which Osman and Muawiah descended. In

the course of the struggle Egypt fell away from Ali to Muawiah; and, in

660, Medina and Mecca paid him homage. Ali’s power, then, was seated only

in Irak and Persia. Civil war pressed so heavily on Islam that three men

resolved to rid it in one day of Ali, Muawiah, and Amrou, as the causers

of all the trouble. Ali was to be assassinated in the mosque of Kufa;

Muawiah in that of Damascus; Amrou in that of Fostat, to terminate a war

carried on, not only in the field, but by mutual imprecations from the

pulpit. But of the three, Ali alone was mortally wounded, Muawiah escaped

with a light wound, and Amrou’s representative was killed instead of him.

Ali died, three days after, on the 24th January, 661. He is said to have

surpassed not only Muawiah, but Abu Bekr and Omar in abhorrence of all

falsehood, in love of justice, in valour and eloquence. In simplicity of

life and generosity, Ali resembled his two predecessors: but, like them

also, the severity which he practised by no means included moral

restraint. He died at sixty-three; after Fatima’s death, and, therefore,

in the latter half of his life, he contracted six or eight marriages,

besides maintaining nineteen slave women, with whom also, after the custom

of that time, he lived.

So the second, third, and fourth chalifs—Omar, Osman, and Ali—perished by

assassination within seventeen years of each other, in 644, 656, and 661.

Let us turn to see what has been doing at Constantinople in these

seventeen years. We have already seen how Omar, in his ten years, had

built up an empire from the spoils of Byzantium and Persia, which, during

the civil wars of his two successors, was yet increased. The seat of its

sovereign power was transferred from Medina to Damascus as soon as Muawiah

was acknowledged as chalif, in the year 661. But during the four chalifs,

from the death of Mohammed in 632 to 660, the immense Mohammedan realm was

governed from Medina.