_By Joseph McCabe_
Peter Abélard
St. Augustine and His Age
A Candid History of the Jesuits
Crises in the History of the Papacy
Crises
in the
History of the Papacy
A Study of
Twenty Famous Popes whose Careers and
whose Influence Were Important in the
Development of the Church and
in the History of the World
By
Joseph McCabe
Author of "Peter Abélard," "Life of Saint Augustine," etc.
G.P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1916
Copyright, 1916
BY
JOSEPH McCABE
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PREFACE
Probably no religious institution in the world has had so remarkable
a history, and assuredly none has attracted so large and varied a
literature, as the Papacy. The successive dynasties of the priests
of ancient Egypt were, by comparison, parochial in their power and
ephemeral in their duration. The priests of Buddha, rising to an
autocracy in the isolation of Thibet or mingling with the crowd in
the more genial atmosphere of China or cherishing severe mysticisms
in Japan, offer no analogy to the Papacy's consistent growth and
homogeneous dominion. The religious leaders of the Jews, scattered
through the world, yet hardened in their type by centuries of
persecution, may surpass it in conservative antiquity, but they do
not remotely approach it in power and in historical importance. It
influences the history of Europe more conspicuously than emperors have
ever done, stretches a more than imperial power over lands beyond the
most fevered dreams of Alexander or Cæsar, and may well seem to have
made "Eternal Rome" something more than the idle boast of a patriot.
Yet this conservative endurance has not been favoured by such a
stability of environment as has sheltered the lamas of Thibet or the
secular priests of the old Chinese religion. The Papacy has lived
through fifteen centuries of portentous change, though it seemed in
each phase to have connected itself indissolubly with the dominant
institutions and ideas of that phase. The Popes have witnessed, and
have survived, three mighty transformations of the face of Europe. They
had hardly issued from their early obscurity and lodged themselves in
the fabric of the old Roman civilization when this fell into ruins; but
they held firmly, amidst the ruins, the sceptre they had inherited. One
by one the stately institutions of the older world--the schools, the
law-courts, the guilds of craftsmen, the military system, the municipal
forms and commercial routes--disappeared in the flood of barbarism
which poured over Europe, but this institution, which seemed the least
firmly established, was hardly shaken and was quickly accepted by the
strange new world. A new polity was created, partly under the direction
of the Popes, and it was so entirely saturated by their influence that
religion gave it its most characteristic name. Then Christendom, as it
was called, passed in turn through a critical development, culminating
in the Reformation; and the Papacy begot a Counter-Reformation and
secured millions beyond the seas to replace the millions it had lost.
The third and last convulsion began with the work of Voltaire and
Rousseau and Mirabeau, and has grievously shaken the political theory
with which the Papacy was allied and the older religious views which
it had stereotyped. Yet today it has some 35,000,000 followers in the
three greatest Protestant countries, the lands of Luther, of Henry
VIII., and of the Puritan Fathers.
It must seem a futile design to attempt to tell, with any intelligent
satisfaction, within the limits of a small volume the extraordinary
story of this institution. No serious historian now tries to command
more than a section of the record of the Papacy, and he usually
finds a dozen volumes required for the adequate presentment of that
section. Yet there is something to be said for such a sketch as I
propose to give. If we take four of the more important recent histories
of the Papacy--those of Father Grisar, Dr. Mann, Dr. Pastor, and Dr.
Creighton--we find that the joint thirty volumes do not cover the
whole period of Papal history even to the sixteenth century; and the
careful student will not omit to include in his reading the still
valuable volumes of Milman and of Dr. Langer. In other words, he must
study more than fifty volumes if he would have an incomplete account
of the development of the Papacy up to the time of the Reformation,
and more than that number if he would follow accurately the fortunes
of the Papacy since the days of Paul III. The history of the Papacy is
very largely the history of Europe, and this voluminous expansion is
inevitable. On the other hand, the general student of the history of
Europe and the general reader who seeks intellectual pleasure in "the
storied page" are not only repelled by such an array of tomes, but
they have no interest in a vast proportion of the matter which it is
incumbent on the ecclesiastical historian to record. One wants a view
of the Papacy in the essential lines of its development, and they are
usually lost, or not easily recognized, in the conscientiously full
chronicles. Is it possible to give a useful and informing account of
the _essential_ history of the Papacy in a small volume?
The rare attempts to do this that have been made have failed from
one or other of two causes: they have either been written with a
controversial aim and therefore have given only the higher lights
or darker shades of the picture, or they have been mere summaries
of the larger works, mingling what is relevant and what is not
relevant from the developmental point of view. The design which
occurs to me is to write a study of the Papacy by taking a score of
the outstanding Popes--which means, in effect, a score of the more
significant or critical stages in the development of the Papacy--and
giving an adequate account of the work and personality of each.
The evolution of the Papacy has not, like the evolution of life in
general, been continuous. It has had periods of stagnation and moments
of rapid progress or decay. Of the first hundred Popes, scarcely a
dozen contributed materially to the making of the Papacy: the others
maintained or marred the work of the great Popes. It is the same with
the environment of the Papacy, which has influenced its fortunes
as profoundly as changes of environment have affected the advance
of terrestrial life. There have been long drowsy summers closed by
something like ice ages; there have been convulsions and strange
invasions, stimulating advance by their stem and exacting pressure. I
propose to select these more significant periods or personalities of
Papal history, and trust that the resultant view of the Papacy will
have interest and usefulness. The periods which lie between the various
Pontificates which I select will be compressed into a brief account of
their essential characters and more prominent representatives, so that
the work will form a continuous study of the Papacy.
In the selection of a score of Popes out of more than two hundred and
fifty there is room for difference of judgment. The principle on which
I have proceeded is plain from the general aim I have indicated. The
story of the Papacy may fitly be divided into two parts: a period of
making and a period of unmaking. Taking the terms somewhat liberally,
one may say that the first period reaches from the second to the
fourteenth century, and that the subsequent centuries have witnessed an
increasing loss of authority, especially in the catastrophic movements
(from the Papal point of view) of the sixteenth and the nineteenth
centuries. A selection of significant Popes must, therefore, include
the great makers of the Papacy, the men whose vice or incompetence
brought destructive criticism upon it, and the men who have, with
varying fortune, sought to defend it against the inroads of that
criticism during the last four centuries. One must make a selection
neither of good Popes nor bad Popes, but of the Popes who, in either
direction, chiefly influenced the fortunes of the institution; and,
in order that no important phase may be omitted, a few men of no very
pronounced personality must be included.
Regarded from this point of view, the history of the Papacy may be
compressed within limits which rather accentuate than obscure its
interest, and, at the same time, a very ample account may be given
of some of its more instructive phases. The first phase, before the
Bishop of Rome became a Pope, in the distinctive sense of the word, is
best illustrated by taking the bishopric of Callistus at the beginning
of the third century. The Roman bishopric was then one of several
"apostolic Sees," rarely claiming authority over other bishoprics, and
still more rarely finding such a claim acknowledged: thrown somewhat
into the shade by the vastly greater strength of the Eastern churches,
yet having an immense and as yet undeveloped resource in the tradition,
which was now generally accepted, that it had been founded by the two
princes of the apostles. There was, however, in three hundred years, no
Roman bishop sufficiently endowed to develop this resource, and the
fourth century still found the Roman See so little elevated that its
African neighbours disdainfully rejected its claim of authority. Then
the far-reaching change which followed the conversion of Constantine
bestowed on it a material splendour and a secular authority which
gave it a distinctive place in Christendom, and a study of the life
of Bishop Damasus shows us the extension of its prestige and the
exploitation of its tradition; while the founding of a rival imperial
city in the East and the obliteration of all other apostolic Sees
withdrew half of Christendom from Roman influence before its ecumenic
claim was fully developed.
The fall of the western Roman Empire enfeebles the once powerful and
independent provincial bishops and gives a more spiritual outlook to
the successors of Peter who sit among the ruins of Rome. The life
of Leo the Great illustrates this concentration on religious power
amidst the autumnal decay of the more material power and of the wealth
which had inflated and secularized some of his predecessors. The
life of Gregory the Great marks the culmination of this development.
The material world seems to be nearing dissolution and the old Roman
spirit of organization, which is strong in Gregory I., is directed
to the creation of a moral and religious dictatorship. There are
still flickers of independence in remote bishoprics, and the East is
irrecoverably removed, but the disordered state of Christendom cries
for a master. Europe is young again, with a vicious impulsive youth,
and the rod of Rome falls healthily on its shoulders; and the paralysis
of civic government and land-tenure in Italy inevitably casts secular
functions and large possessions upon the one effective power that
survives. An elementary royalty begins to attach to the Papacy: the
function of ultimate tribunal in that violent world is imposed on it
almost by public needs: and, though Gregory is personally disdainful of
culture, the Church, and the monastic refuges it consecrates, preserve
for a wiser age to come some proportion of the wisdom of the dead age.
With Hadrian I. a new phase opens. The possession and administration
of "patrimonies," or bequeathed estates, give place to the definite
political control of whole provinces, under the protection of a
powerful and conveniently remote King of the Franks. In the ninth
century, Nicholas I. consolidates and extends the new power, both as
temporal and spiritual ruler. The vice and violence of Europe still
justify or promote the growth of a great spiritual autocracy, and the
illiteracy of Europe--for culture has touched its lowest depth--permits
the imposition on it (in the "False Decretals," etc.) of an impressive
and fictitious version of the bases of Papal claims. Then Rome, which
has hitherto had singularly few unworthy men in the chair of Peter,
becomes gradually degraded to the level of its age, and the Papacy
passes into the darkness of the Age of Iron: which is fitly illustrated
by the Pontificate of John X. Gregory VII. shows its restoration to
spiritual ideals and the union of monastic severity with the Papal
tradition; and this steady creation of a machinery for dominating the
vice and violence of Europe is perfected in the extraordinary work of
Innocent III., who would, for its moral correction, make Europe the
United States of the Church and treat its greatest monarchs as satraps
of the Papacy.
After Innocent, the Papacy degenerates. A renewed school-life, the
influence of the Moors, the evolution of civic life and prosperity,
and the rise of powerful kingdoms stimulate the intelligence of
Europe, while the political connexions in which the temporal power
entangles the Papacy lead to a degeneration which cannot escape the
more alert mind of the laity. During a long exile at Avignon the
Papal court learns soft ways and corrupt devices--illustrated by the
life of John XXII.--and the Great Schism which follows the return to
Rome causes a moral paralysis which permits the Pontificate of an
unscrupulous adventurer like John XXIII. The prosperous sensuality
of the new Europe infects an immense proportion of the clergy: war,
luxury, and display entail a vast expenditure, and the more thoughtful
clergy and laity deplore the increasing sale by the Popes of sacred
offices and spiritual privileges. The body of lay scholars and lawyers
grows larger and more critical, while the Papal Court sinks lower
and lower. The Papacy is fiercely criticized throughout Europe, and
the resentment of its moral complexion leads to a discussion of the
bases of its power. The earlier forgeries are discovered and the
true story of its human growth is dimly apprehended. The successive
Pontificates of Alexander VI., Julius II., and Leo X. exhibit this
dramatic development: a flat defiance by the Papal Court of the
increasing moral sentiment and critical intelligence of Europe. Men
are still so dominated by religious tradition that, apart from an
occasional heresy, they generally think only of "reform" and reforming
councils. When Luther strikes a deeper note of rebellion, the echo is
portentous, and neither reform, nor violence, nor persuasion succeeds
in averting the disruption of Christendom. In Paul III., we have the
last representative of the Papacy of the Renaissance wavering between
the grim menace of Germany and the unpleasantness of reform. In Sixtus
V. and Benedict XIV. we study two of the great efforts of the new
Papacy to preserve the remaining half of its territory. In Pius VII.,
Pius IX., and Leo XIII. we see the Papacy meeting the successive waves
of the modern revolution.
* * * * *
In composing this sketch of Papal history, or, rather, study of its
critical phases, I have gratefully used the larger modern histories
to which I have referred. Dr. Ludwig Pastor's _History of the Popes
from the Close of the Middle Ages_[1] is, for the period it covers
(1300-1550), the most valuable of all Papal histories. The Catholic
author is not less courageous than scholarly, even if we must recognize
some inevitable bias of affection, and he has enriched our knowledge by
a most judicious and candid use of unpublished documents in the Secret
Archives of the Vatican. Dr. H.K. Mann's _Lives of the Popes in the
Middle Ages_,[2] which covers the ground from Gregory I. to Innocent
III., is based upon an ample knowledge of the original authorities, but
is much less candid and reliable, and seems to be intended only for
controversial purposes. Dr. Creighton's learned and judicious _History
of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome_[3] must be
corrected at times by the documents in Pastor. Father H. Grisar's
incomplete _History of Rome and the Popes in the Middle Ages_[4] is
a learned and moderate partisan study of the Papacy in the first
four centuries. The older works of Dr. J. Langer,[5] Dean Milman,[6]
Gregorovius,[7] and Ranke are by no means superfluous to the student,
though more recent research or judgment often corrects them. Less
extensive works will be noted in the course of each chapter, and I
owe much to industrious older authorities like Baronius, Tillemont,
Raynaldus, Mansi, etc. I have, however, had the original authorities
before me throughout. The earlier chapters are, indeed, based almost
entirely on the Latin or Greek sources, and, in the later chapters,
at every point which seemed to inspire differences of judgment I
have carefully weighed the original texts. For the later mediæval
period, however, Creighton, Pastor, and Gregorovius have so generously
strengthened their works with quotations and references that, except
at a few points, I may direct the reader to their more comprehensive
studies. The narrow limits which are imposed by the particular purpose
of this work forbid either the constant quoting of passages or the
design of enlarging on some of the remarkable scenes to which it at
times refers. The severe condensation, after the first few chapters,
has entailed a labour only second to that of research, and I can only
trust that the abundance of fact will afford some compensation for the
lack of elegance. Happily the earlier controversial method of writing
Papal history has so far yielded to candid research that the points in
dispute--as far as fact is concerned--are comparatively few. Where they
occur--where grave and accepted historians of any school dissent--the
evidence is more liberally put before the reader.
J.M.
Christmas, 1915.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: English trans., 1891, etc.]
[Footnote 2: Ten vols., 1902-1914.]
[Footnote 3: Six vols., 2d ed., 1897.]
[Footnote 4: English trans., 1911, etc.]
[Footnote 5: _Geschichte der römischen Kirche_, 1881, etc.]
[Footnote 6: _History of Latin Christianity._]
[Footnote 7: _The City of Rome in the Middle Ages_, English trans.,
1900, etc.]
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface iii
CHAPTER
I.--St. Callistus and the Early Struggle 1
II.--St. Damasus and the Triumph 19
III.--Leo the Great, the Last Pope of Imperial Rome 38
IV.--Gregory the Great, the First Mediæval Pope 55
V.--Hadrian I. and the Temporal Power 78
VI.--Nicholas I. and the False Decretals 101
VII.--John X. and the Iron Century 124
VIII.--Hildebrand 141
IX.--Innocent III.: The Papal Zenith 171
X.--John XXII.: The Court at Avignon 202
XI.--John XXIII. and the Great Schism 221
XII.--Alexander VI.: The Borgia-Pope 240
XIII.--Julius II.: The Fighting Pope 267
XIV.--Leo X. and the Dance of Death 285
XV.--Paul III. and the Counter-Reformation 310
XVI.--Sixtus V. and the New Church 330
XVII.--Benedict XIV.: The Scholar-Pope 351
XVIII.--Pius VII. and the Revolution 368
XIX.--Pius IX. 391
XX.--Leo XIII. 414
List of the Popes 443
Index 451
Crises in the History of the Papacy
Crises in the History of The Papacy
CHAPTER I
ST. CALLISTUS AND THE EARLY STRUGGLE
At the close of the second century after the birth of Christ the
Christian community at Rome still saw no human prospect of that
spiritual mastery of the world which they trusted some day to attain.
They lived, for the most part, in the Transtiberina, the last and least
reputable section of the great city, beyond the shelter of its walls.
In that squalid and crowded district between the Janiculus and the
Tiber dwelt the fishers and tanners and other poor workers; and the
Jews, and others who shunned the light, found refuge among their lowly
tenements. Near that early ghetto, from which they had issued, most of
the Christians lingered. Still they were a small community, and still
the might of Rome bade them crouch trembling at the gates, lost among
the tombs and gardens of the Vatican or the dense poverty at the foot
of the Janiculus. Across the river they would see, above the fringe
of wharves and warehouses, the spreading line of the Roman people's
palaces, from the Theatre of Pompey to the Great Circus: perhaps
they would hear the roar of the lions which might at any time taste
Christian flesh. Beyond these was the seething popular quarter of the
Velabrum, sending up to heaven at night a confused murmur and a blaze
of light at which the Christians would cross themselves; and on either
side of the Velabrum, the stern guardians of its superstition, were the
hills which bore the gold-roofed temple of Jupiter and the marble city
of the Cæsars. More than one hundred and fifty years had passed since
the death of Christ, yet his followers waited without the gates, little
heeded by the million citizens of Rome.
The old gods were dying, it is true. In many a cool _atrium_ there
must have been some such discussion about the successor of Jupiter
as has been finely imagined by Anatole France; but assuredly not the
weirdest of the Syrian visionaries who abounded would have said that,
in a few centuries, those neglected fields beside the Neronian Circus
at the foot of the Vatican would become the centre of the world, and
that men and women would come from the farthest limits of the Empire to
kiss the bones of those obscure Christians. Men talked of the progress
of the cult of Mithra, which spread even to distant Eboracum, or the
success of the priests of Isis or of Cybele, but few thought about the
priests of Christ. Earlier in the century, Pliny had written to court
to say that he had found, spreading over his province, a sect named the
Christians, whose beliefs seemed to him "an immoderate superstition";
though they had, he said, under pressure, abandoned their God in
crowds; and he had little doubt that he would extinguish the sect. Few
even of the Christians can have imagined that within two centuries
their cross would be raised above the proudest monuments of Rome, and
that the eagles of Jove and the rams of Mithra would lie in the dust.
Toward the end of the second century the Roman Christians can hardly
have numbered twenty thousand. Dr. Döllinger estimates their number
at fifty thousand, but the letter of Bishop Cornelius, on which he
relies, belongs to a later date and is not accurately quoted by him.[8]
The Bishop says that, in his time, the Roman Church had forty-four
priests, fourteen deacons and subdeacons, and ninety-four clerics in
minor orders. The crowd of acolytes and exorcists must not be regarded
in a modern sense; most of them would never be priests. At that time,
there was not a single public chapel in Rome and it would be an
anachronism to regard each of the thirty or forty priests of Rome as a
rector in charge of more than a thousand souls. The Christians gathered
stealthily in the houses of their better-endowed brethren to receive
the sacred elements from poor glass vessels, and Tertullian blushes to
learn that they are found among the panders and gamblers who have to
bribe the officials to overlook their illegal ways.[9] The fact that
they supported fifteen hundred poor, sick, and widows need not surprise
us when we remember what an age of parasitism it was. At least a fourth
of the citizens of Rome lived on free rations and had free medical
service. There were, in fine, thirty years of development between the
time of Cornelius and the time of Callistus.[10]
Yet, it was nearly a century and a half, tradition said, since Peter
and Paul had baptized crowds on the banks of the Tiber. One cannot
today add anything to the discussion of that tradition and I will very
briefly state the evidence. The First Epistle of Peter--which is not
undisputed--says[11]: "The Church that is in Babylon saluteth you,"
and Babylon is very plausibly understood to mean Rome. Next, about the
year 96, Clement of Rome, writing to the Corinthians, speaks vaguely
of a "martyrdom" of Peter and Paul, and seems to imply that it took
place at Rome.[12] About the middle of the following century, we find
it believed in remote parts of the Church--by Papias in Hierapolis and
Dionysius at Corinth--that Peter had preached the Gospel at Rome.[13]
Ignatius of Antioch also seems to imply that Peter and Paul founded
the Roman community.[14] Irenæus and Tertullian and later writers know
even more about it--the later the writer, the more he knows--but the
historian must hesitate to use their works. There is a respectable
early tradition that Peter and Paul preached the Gospel at Rome and
suffered there some kind of martyrdom, during or after the Neronian
persecution. Peter is not called "bishop" of Rome by any writer earlier
than the third century, and the belief that he ruled the Roman Church
for twenty-five years seems to be merely the outcome of some fanciful
calculations of Anti-Pope Hippolytus.
Of the earlier bishops, Linus and Anacletus (or Anencletus), we know
only the names.[15] Then a faint light is thrown on the metropolitan
Church by the letter of Clement, its third Bishop. We find an ordered
community, with bishop, priests, and deacons; perhaps we conceive it
more accurately if we say, with overseer, elders, and servants. Then
the mists thicken again and a line of undistinguished names is all that
we can discern until the consecration of Bishop Victor in the year 189.
One would like to know more about Bishop Victor. He seems to have been
the first Pope, in the familiar sense of the word. "Pope" was, we
know, a common title of bishops until the sixth century, but Victor
is one of the makers of a distinctive Papacy. We shall, presently,
find Tertullian speaking, with his heaviest irony, of "the bishop of
bishops, the supreme pontiff," and, although he is probably referring
to Callistus, he is echoing the words of some other bishop. History
points to Victor, who peremptorily cut off the Eastern churches from
communion because they would not celebrate Easter when he did. They
were not much concerned, but Victor's premature assertion of leadership
marks the beginning of the Papacy.
The Roman Church was wealthier than those of the East, or had a few
wealthy members in the city. It sent sums of money to more needy
communities and received flattering requests for advice. It was,
however, singularly lacking in intellectual distinction, and it
produced no scholar to refute the subtle Gnostics and fiery Montanists
who came to it. The waves of heresy which raged over the East broke
harmlessly on the Italian shore of Christendom. One must not imagine
that it was isolated from the East by difference of tongue. Until the
end of the third century, it was wholly Greek: more isolated from Rome
than from Corinth. Nor is it less inaccurate to say that the Latins
were more interested in administration than in speculation. There is
little trace of organization until the days of Callistus. One is more
disposed to conceive the Roman Church shivering in poverty amid the
wealth and culture of the metropolis. The disdainful language of the
intellectuals and the wonderful success of Stoicism in the second
century excluded it from the educated world; while its secrecy, its
stern abstinence from games and festivals, its scorn of the gods, and
the shadow of deadly illegality which brooded over it, made it less
successful in appealing to the people than the other Eastern religions.
If, however, the Roman See made little impression in Rome, it made some
progress in the Church. As the fragments of Papias and Dionysius show,
Christians were saying, far away in the East, that it had been founded
by Peter; and the Gospels plainly made Peter the chief of the apostles.
The Roman See did not yet speak of having inherited the primacy of
Peter, and it had very little share in the prestige of Rome. It must
rise higher in the eyes of men, and at the end of the second century it
was rising. Marcia, the robust ex-slave who shared the brutal pleasures
of Commodus and was mistress of his harem of three hundred concubines,
had a grateful recollection of earlier Christian kindness, and she
secured peace and favour for the Church. Here it is that, for the first
time, a clear light falls upon the Christian community at Rome and upon
its bishops.
In the year 217 (or 218), Bishop Callistus succeeded Bishop Zephyrin,
who had followed Victor. From the fourth century he has been counted
one of the greatest of the early Popes. Two of the historic cemeteries
bore his name, and there were a Church of St. Callistus (or Calixtus,
as the Latins sometimes misspell it) and a Square of St. Callistus
in the Trastevere district. Martyrologies honoured him as a witness
to the faith, and (probably from the seventh century) the _Acta_ of
his martyrdom, including a most impressive account of his virtues
and miracles, might be consulted in the archives of Sta. Maria in
Trastevere. From these materials, Moretti composed an eloquent
biography of the saint, and even the Bollandists, more discreetly,
and with disturbing hints that Christian scholars were saying naughty
things about the _Acta S. Callisti_, set their learned seal upon his
diploma of sanctity and martyrdom.
Contemporary with Callistus, the saint and martyr, was Hippolytus, the
scholar and saint and martyr. They were the two shining jewels of the
Roman Church. The many works of Hippolytus had strangely disappeared,
and tradition was not even sure of which town he had been Bishop; but
there was evidence enough to connect him with the Roman Church and to
justify the claim that he was the Origen of the West. When, in 1551,
a broken marble statue of Hippolytus was discovered at Rome, it was
devoutly restored and set up in the Lateran Museum. And just three
hundred years afterwards, in 1851, there was given to the world a
lost work of the saintly scholar, from which it is plain that he was
the first Anti-Pope, and that the Pope whom he opposed and reviled
was Callistus. The first book of this work, the _Refutation of all
Heresies_ (sometimes called the _Philosophoumena_), had long been
known; the manuscript copy of Books IV. to X. was found in a monastery
on Mount Athos in 1842. Now that the true character of Hippolytus is
known, some doubt has been cast upon his scholarship, but it was
considerable for his age and environment. He was one of the very few
scholars of the Roman Church during several centuries, and one chapter
of his work throws an interesting light on the person of Callistus and
on a remarkable phase of the development of the Papacy.
The controversy about the authorship of the book and about the charges
against Callistus has brought to bear upon that period all the
available light; and the modern student will probably find the truth
somewhere between the extremes held by the contending historians of
the nineteenth century.[16] De Rossi himself, indeed, while pretending
to support, entirely discredits the arguments with which Döllinger, in
his years of orthodoxy, sought to defend the impeccability of the Popes
and to prove the moral obliquity of all who opposed them. The Italian
archæologist, it is true, imputes to Hippolytus a malice which goes ill
with _his_ reputation for sanctity, but perhaps we shall be able to
extricate ourselves from this painful dilemma without grave detriment
to the character of either saint.
Callistus was, in the days of Commodus, a slave of the Christian
Carpophorus, according to the _Liber Pontificalis_.[17] He was the
son of a certain Domitius who lived in the Transtiberina. The master
entrusted the slave with money to open a bank, and the faithful put
their savings into it, but it became known after a time that Callistus
had--to quote the text literally--"brought all the money to naught
and was in difficulties." He fled to the Port of Rome, whence, after
leaping into the sea in despair, he was brought back to the house of
Carpophorus and put in the _pistrinum_, the domestic mill in which
slaves expiated their crimes. The faithful, prompted by Callistus,
begged his release on the ground that he had money on loan and could
repay. He had no money, however, and he could think of nothing better
than to make a disturbance in the synagogue on the Sabbath, for which
the Jews took him before the Prefect Fuscianus[18] and described him as
a Christian. He was scourged and was sent to the silver or iron mines
of Sardinia--the Siberia of the Empire--from which few returned. But,
shortly afterwards, Marcia obtained the release of the Christians, and
although Bishop Victor had not included the name of Callistus in the
list, Callistus persuaded the eunuch to insert it. Victor, however,
reflecting on the hostility of his victims, sent him to live, on a
pension provided by the Church, at Antium.
This narrative has been subjected to the most meticulous criticism,
as if it were something novel or important to accuse a Pope of having
committed certain indiscretions in his youth. It suffices to say that,
while Döllinger is, in the end, reduced to claiming that Hippolytus
was probably not in Rome at the time, the more learned De Rossi is
so impressed by the minuteness and (as far as it can be checked) the
accuracy of the account that he believes Hippolytus to have been a
deacon of the Church at the time and so to have had official knowledge
of the facts. The single point of any importance is open to a humane
interpretation. Did or did not Callistus embezzle the money? If he did,
how came he to be elected bishop? If he did not, how comes his sainted
rival to call him, as he does, a fraud and impostor? We may remember
that financial troubles of this kind are peculiarly open to opposite
interpretations. Hippolytus, Victor, and Carpophorus, it seems, took
the less charitable view; but it would not be unnatural for others to
persuade themselves, or be persuaded by Callistus, that he was merely
the victim of circumstances.
Victor died in 198 and was succeeded by Zephyrin, "an ignorant and
illiterate man," says Hippolytus. Callistus, who had ceased to be a
slave when he was sentenced to penal servitude, was recalled to Rome
and, apparently, made first deacon (now called archdeacon) of the
Church. He was put in charge of a cemetery in the Appian Way which the
community had just secured, and this cemetery bears his name to this
day. Hippolytus, who was indignant, charges Callistus with ambition,
and says that Zephyrin was avaricious and open to bribes; which we may
humanely construe to mean that the able administration of Callistus
enabled the Bishop to live in some comfort. Nor need we despair of
finding a genial interpretation of his further charge, that the deacon
induced Zephyrin to meddle with questions of dogma, and then, behind
the Bishop's back, diplomatically sympathized with both the contending
parties. The truth is that the Latins were sorely puzzled by the
subtleties with which the Greeks were slowly and fiercely shaping the
dogma that the Father and Son were one nature, yet two persons, and
both Zephyrin and Callistus stumbled.
Callistus is further described as assisting Zephyrin in the "coercion,"
or, as others translate, the "organization" of the clergy, and this
point is of greater interest. As far as one can construe the barbarous
Latin of the _Liber Pontificalis_, Zephyrin decreed that the priests
were not to consecrate the communion for the people. The sacred
elements were to be brought to them, on glass patens, from the altar
at which the bishop said mass. Probably this is the "coercion" to
which Hippolytus refers, as the aim was, plainly, to emphasize the
subordination of the clergy. I would further venture to suggest,
against the learned Father Grisar, that this was also the occasion when
the sphere of the Roman bishop was divided into twenty-five _tituli_
(or parishes). The _Liber Pontificalis_ describes how Urban I., the
successor of Callistus, substituted silver for glass vessels at the
altar, and expressly speaks of "twenty-five patens."
We must conclude that Callistus was able as well as persuasive, and
we are not surprised to learn that, when Zephyrin died in 217 (or,
according to another account, 218) he was chosen Bishop. It was
customary, until long afterwards, to choose the bishop from the body of
deacons, but Hippolytus and his friends were indignant at the election
of the ex-slave, and a schism occurred. Hippolytus had the support of
the minority of precisians and correct believers: Callistus was the
favourite of the majority. Epithets of which the modern mind can hardly
appreciate the gravity were hurled from camp to camp. "Patripassian,"
thundered Hippolytus; "Ditheist" retorted Callistus. It is quite clear
that the scholar set up a rival See at Rome. He says that Callistus,
when he was elected, "thought" that he had attained his ambition, and
this must mean that he claimed himself to be the true Bishop of Rome.
Later tradition, concealing the ugly schism, left the bishopric of
Hippolytus in the air, or placed it at the Port of Rome, twenty miles
away. But this picture of daily combats implies that both bishops were
in Rome, and the little flock was rent and agitated by the first Papal
schism.
The dogmatic issue between the rivals cannot profitably be discussed
here. The Church was then in an early phase of the great Trinitarian
controversy, and, under Victor and Zephyrin, the Roman clergy had
favoured the simpler, or unitarian, view. Sabellius, who has given his
name to one form of unitarianism, was in Rome and was supported by the
deacon Callistus: indeed, his rival says that it was Callistus who
seduced Sabellius. However that may be, Callistus shrewdly perceived
he could not meet his learned opponent on that ground. He disowned
Sabellius, and soon lost himself in a maze of technical theology into
which I will not venture to follow him. To theologians I leave also the
discussion of the charge that Callistus favoured the rebaptizing of
converted heretics.
It is the charges of a practical or disciplinary nature which best
illustrate the character of Callistus and make his Pontificate a
milestone in the history of the Papacy. When we have made every
possible allowance for exaggeration, they show that Callistus infused a
remarkable spirit of liberalism into the Christian discipline and made
smooth for the tender feet of the Romans the rough ways of his Church.
The first charge is that Callistus admitted grave sinners to communion,
if they did penance. The ancient discipline is well known. Those who
committed one "mortal" sin after baptism could never again be admitted
to communion. They were the pariahs of the community, bearing in the
eyes of all the ineffaceable brand of their sin. There was as yet no
central power to define mortal sins, but sins of the flesh were, beyond
doubt, in that category, and, as such were not uncommon at Rome, a
rigorous insistence on the old discipline hampered the growth of the
Church. Callistus, with princely liberality, abolished it. "I hear,"
says Tertullian, "that an edict has gone forth. The supreme Pontiff,
that is to say, the Bishop of Bishops, announces: I will absolve
even those who are guilty of adultery and fornication, if they do
penance."[19] So the narrow gates were opened a little wider to the
warm-blooded Romans, and the Church grew.
But, while modern sentiment will genially applaud this act of the first
liberal Pope, the fifth charge in the indictment, which I take up next,
seems graver. The Greek text of Hippolytus is here particularly corrupt
and ambiguous, but the translation given by the Rev. J.M. Macmahon in
the _Ante-Nicene Library_ is generally faithful:
For even also he permitted females, if they were unwedded and burned
with passion at an age at all events unbecoming [more probably, at a
seasonable age], or [and] if they were not disposed to overturn their
dignity through a legal marriage, that they might have whomsoever they
would choose as a bedfellow, whether a slave or free [freedman], and
that they, though not legally married, might consider such an one as a
husband.[20]
The Bishop goes on to describe in technical language, which need not be
reproduced here, how the practice of abortion spread among Christian
ladies as a result of this license.
The apparent gravity of the charge has, however, so far disappeared
since the days of Döllinger that we are now asked to admire the bold
and exalted charity of Callistus. He is, of course, referring to the
Roman law which forbade the widow or daughter of a senator, under
pain of losing her dignity of _clarissima_, to marry a free-born man
of lower condition; a slave or freedman she could not validly marry.
There cannot have been very many ladies of senatorial rank in the
Church at that time, seeing that, seventy years after the conversion
of Constantine, St. Augustine found "nearly the whole of the nobility"
still pagan.[21] There were, however, some, as the inscriptions in
the Catacombs show, and their position was painful. They must either
mate with a Christian slave or freedman, and be regarded by the law
and their neighbours as living in concubinage: or marry a free-born
Christian of low degree and thus forfeit their rank: or devote their
virginity or their widowhood to God. The Church was concerned that they
should not marry pagan senators, who would scoff at their superstitions
and would dissipate their fortunes. Callistus told them that he would
recognize as valid in conscience unions with slaves or freedmen
which the State did not countenance. The number of ladies to whom
the license extended must have been small, and Hippolytus evidently
exaggerates the occasional scandals which followed. The impartial
historian, however, will hardly regard the action of Callistus as a
humanitarian protest against caste-distinctions. Such distinctions were
maintained by the Church for centuries afterwards in its legislation
about the clergy, and, on the other hand, the measure was profitable to
the Church. In practice, indeed, these secret marriages would easily
lead to disorder. A Christian lady would, if she were to keep her union
secret, merely choose a "husband" among her slaves or freedmen, and
would be tempted to use illicit means when her "marriage" threatened to
be exposed too plainly to pagan eyes.
The other charges against Callistus show a general policy of
liberality. He decreed that a bishop who was convicted of mortal sin
was not necessarily to be deposed: he permitted men who had been twice
or thrice married to become deacons or priests: he directed that "men
in orders" must not be disturbed if they married. Some writers think
that, in the latter case, he was referring only to men in minor orders,
but that would not have been a daring innovation. Hippolytus, in fact,
makes his policy and his character clearer by telling us, indignantly,
how Callistus searched the Scriptures for proof that the Church must
be wide enough to embrace both saints and sinners. There had been
clean and unclean animals in the ark: Christ had said that the tares
must grow up with the wheat: and so on. His reputation for liberality
spread so far in the Church that, while Tertullian grumbled in Africa,
a quaint Syrian charlatan named Alcibiades was attracted from the East
to Rome. He brought a mystic work, given to him by two angels of the
imposing height of ninety-six miles each, and he proclaimed that his
new form of baptism absolved even from certain gross sins which he very
freely and suggestively described.
The Church grew during these years of peace, of able organization, and
of humanization. Callistus "made a _basilica_ beyond the Tiber"--the
_Liber Pontificalis_ says--and there is an interesting passage in the
_Historia Augusta_ which seems to refer to this first Christian chapel
at Rome. The biographer of Alexander Severus says (c. xliii.) that the
Emperor wished to give the Christians the right to have public chapels,
but his officials protested that "the temples would be deserted--all
Rome would become Christian." This is obviously a piece of later
Christian fiction. In a more plausible paragraph, however, Lampridius
tells us that the Christians occupied a "public place," to which the
innkeepers laid claim, and the Emperor decided that "it was better
for God to be worshipped there in some form than for the innkeepers
to have it." It is probable enough that this inn is the _taverna
meritoria_ (wine shop and restaurant) referred to by Dio Cassius[22]:
among the portents which accompanied the struggles of Octavian a
stream of oil had burst forth in this hostel in the Transtiberina.
We know from Orosius[23] that the Christians claimed the occurrence
in later years as a presage of the coming of Christ. The age, if not
the disputed ownership, of the place suggests a dilapidated, if not
deserted, building; and if we may in one detail trust that interesting
romance, the _Acta S. Callisti_, we have a picture of the Christians of
the third century meeting at last, under their enterprising Bishop,
in the upper or dining room of this humble old inn in the despised
Transtiberina. This was the high-water mark of a century and a half of
progress.
Only one other act is authentically recorded of the brief rule of
Bishop Callistus: he directed his people to fast on three Sabbaths in
the year. This may seem inconsistent with his genial policy, but we
must remember that rigorists abounded at Rome and demanded sterner
ways. Callistus, apparently, merely sanctioned some slight traditional
observance and thus virtually relieved the faithful of others.
It may be fascinating to conjecture what so enterprising a Pope would
have done with the ecclesiastical system if he had lived long enough,
but Callistus died, according to the best authorities, in the year 222,
four or five years after his consecration. He did not die a martyr. In
opening his account of the career of Callistus, the rival Bishop says:
"This man suffered martyrdom when Fuscianus was Prefect, and this was
the sort of martyrdom he suffered." It is inconceivable that Hippolytus
should use such language in Rome after the death of Callistus if the
Pope had really suffered for the faith. No Christian was executed at
Rome under Alexander Severus. We must suppose that after his death, if
not during his life, Callistus was applauded as a martyr because of his
banishment to Sardinia, and probably this gave rise to the legend of
his martyrdom, which first appears, as a bald statement, in the fourth
century. The _Acta S. Callisti_ may be traced to about the seventh
century, and may be a pious contribution to the rejoicing of the
faithful at the transfer of his bones to Sta. Maria in Trastevere.[24]
The recklessness with which the writer describes the gentle and
friendly Alexander Severus as a truculent enemy of the Christians was
noted even by mediæval historians, and the narrative is now regarded
as, in the words of Döllinger, "a piece of fiction from beginning to
end." Yet Father Grisar[25] describes Callistus as a martyr.
Hippolytus maintained his little schism under Urban I. and Pontianus,
while the orthodox community prospered in the sun of imperial favour.
Then the grim Maximinus succeeded Alexander on the throne, and the
clouds gather again over Christendom. We just discern Pope and
Anti-Pope, Pontianus and Hippolytus, passing together to the deadly
mines of Sardinia. Later legend generously reconciled the rivals and
gave to both of them the martyr's crown; but the authority is late and
worthless. In whatever manner he ended his career, Rome was too proud
of its one scholar to darken his memory, and the names of Hippolytus
and Callistus shone together in ecclesiastical literature until that
fateful discovery among the dusty parchments of the monks of Mount
Athos.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: It is preserved in Eusebius, _Ecclesiastical History_,
vi., 43.]
[Footnote 9: _De Fuga a Persecutione_, xiii.]
[Footnote 10: The number of interments in the Catacombs cannot very
well be regarded as evidence. Archæologists differ by millions in
estimating the number, and the populous Church after Constantine still
buried in the Catacombs, at least until the Pontificate of Damasus.]
[Footnote 11: V., 13.]
[Footnote 12: _Epistle_, v.]
[Footnote 13: See Eusebius, ii., 15, and iii., 40, for the words of
Papias, and ii., 25, for the testimony of Dionysius.]
[Footnote 14: _Letter to Romans_, iv.]
[Footnote 15: Even the names and order are given differently in early
writers. I follow, as is now usual, the order given by Epiphanius
(xxvii., 6) and Irenæus.]
[Footnote 16: Bunsen's four-volume _Hippolytus and his Age_ (1852) was
sharply attacked by Döllinger (_Hippolytus and Callistus_, English
translation, 1876) and more judiciously handled by G.B. de Rossi in his
_Bulletino di Archeologia Cristiana_ (1866, pp. 1-33). Milman (_History
of Latin Christianity_, vol. i.) and Ch. Wordsworth (_St. Hippolytus
and the Church of Rome_, 1853) supported Bunsen. The work itself is
translated in _The Ante-Nicene Library_, vol. vi.]
[Footnote 17: This anonymous catalogue of the Popes, which I must often
quote, is a quaint mixture of accurate archives and inaccurate rumours.
The first part seems to have been written in the sixth century, and
it was continued as a semi-official record. See the Introduction to
Duchesne's edition.]
[Footnote 18: Fuscianus was Prefect between the years 186 and 189, so
that we have an approximate date of these events.]
[Footnote 19: _De Pudicitia_, i. Döllinger, on no apparent ground,
and against all probability, refers this to Zephyrin, and some older
writers think that the indignant Puritan is quoting an African bishop.
We must agree with De Rossi that Tertullian has Callistus in mind,
especially when we find Hippolytus saying that he was "the first" to do
this. An earlier attempt of an Eastern bishop might easily have escaped
Hippolytus.]
[Footnote 20: Vol. vi., p. 346. This is a fair, if inelegant, rendering
of the Greek text given by Duncker and Schneidewin in their edition
of the _Refutation_, and it corresponds with the Latin translation
given by those editors and with De Rossi. Döllinger is alone in his
interpretation.]
[Footnote 21: _Confessions_, viii., 2.]
[Footnote 22: XLVIII.]
[Footnote 23: VI., 18.]
[Footnote 24: Neither this church nor the Basilica S. Callisti can
have been the original meeting-place, though the latter may have been
founded on it.]
[Footnote 25: _History of Rome and the Popes in the Early Middle Ages_,
i,. 313.]