JUSTINIAN.
The submission of the eastern empire and episcopate to Pope Hormisdas, in
519, is a memorable incident in the history of the Church. A large and
marked part in it was taken by the man who for thirty-eight years was to
rule the eastern empire, to expel the Goths from Italy, thus recovering the
original seat of Roman power, and the Vandals from Africa, and so once more
attach the great southern provinces, for so many ages the granary of Rome
and Italy itself, to the existing Byzantine realm. Before, however, this
was done, when, after the death of Theodorick, the Gothic kingdom still
subsisted under his grandson Athalarick and his daughter Amalasunta, the
emperor Justinian addressed to Pope John II., in the year 533, a letter
from which I quote as follows. I preface that this letter was carried to
the Pope by two imperial legates, the bishops Hypatius and Demetrius. It
begins:[115] "Rendering honour to the Apostolic See and to your Holiness,
whom we ever have revered, and do revere, as is befitting a father, we
hasten to bring to the knowledge of your Holiness everything which
concerns the state of the churches. For the existing unity of your
Apostolic See, and the present undisturbed state of God's holy churches,
has always been a thing which we have earnestly sought to maintain. And so
we lost no time in subjecting and uniting all bishops of the whole eastern
region[116] to the See of your Holiness. We have now, therefore, held it
necessary that the points mooted, though they are clear and beyond doubt,
and have been ever firmly maintained and proclaimed by all bishops
according to the teaching of your Apostolic See, should be brought to the
knowledge of your Holiness. For we do not allow that anything concerning
the state of the churches, clear and undoubted though it be, when once
mooted, should not be made known to your Holiness, who is the head of all
the holy churches. For, as we said, in all things we hasten to increase the
honour and authority of your See." He then proceeds to recite a creed which
carefully condemns the errors of Nestorius on the one side, and Eutyches on
the other, and acknowledges "the holy and glorious Virgin Mary to be
properly and truly Mother of God". At the beginning of this creed he
introduces the words: "All bishops of the holy and apostolic Church, and
the most reverend archimandrites of the sacred monasteries, following your
Holiness, and maintaining that state and unity of God's holy churches which
they have from the Apostolic See of your Holiness, changing no wit of that
ecclesiastical state which has held and holds now, confess with one
consent," &c. And he concludes with the words: "All bishops, therefore,
following the doctrine of your Apostolic See, so believe, confess, and
preach: for which we have hastened to bring this to the knowledge of your
Holiness, by the bishops Hypatius and Demetrius; and we beg your fatherly
affection, that by letters addressed to us, and to the bishop and
patriarch, your brother, of this imperial city (since he on the same
occasion wrote to your Holiness, being earnest in all things to follow the
Apostolic See), you would make known to us that your Holiness receives all
who make the above true confession. For so the love of all to you and the
authority of your See will increase, and the unity of the holy churches
with you will be preserved unbroken, when all bishops learn through you the
sincere doctrine of your Holiness in what has been reported to you. But we
beseech your Holiness to pray for us, and obtain for us the guardianship of
God."
Pope John II. acknowledges this letter to "his most gracious son, Justinian
Augustus". He highly celebrates the praises of "the most Christian prince,"
that "in your zeal for faith and charity, instructed in the Church's
discipline, you preserve reverence to the See of Rome, and subject all
things to it, and bring them to its unity, to the author of which, the
first Apostle, the Lord's words were addressed, 'Feed My sheep': which both
the rules of the Fathers and the statutes of emperors declare to be the
head of all churches, and the reverential words of your Piety attest". The
Pope adds: "Your imperial words, brought by the bishops Hypatius and
Demetrius, which have been agreed to by our brethren and fellow-bishops,
being agreeable to apostolic doctrine, we by our authority confirm". "This,
then, is your true faith; this all Fathers of blessed memory and prelates
of the Roman Church, whom in all things we follow, this the Apostolic See
has to this time preached and maintained unshaken." "And we beseech our God
and Saviour Jesus Christ to preserve you long and peacefully in this true
religion and unity, and veneration of the Apostolic See, whose principate
you, as most Christian and pious, preserve in all things."
In the same year, 533, in which Justinian addressed to the Pope this
remarkable recognition of the Roman Primacy, specifying that everything
which concerns the whole Church should be brought before the Pope, though
it might be already certain and in accordance with established usage, he
gave his approval to that collection of laws called in Latin the _Digest_
and in Greek the _Pandects_, which he had commissioned Tribonian and other
great lawyers to draw up. Seventeen commissioners, having power given to
them to alter, omit, and correct, selected by his command, out of nearly
two thousand volumes, what they considered serviceable in the imperial laws
and the decisions of great lawyers. It is a vast repertory of judicial
cases in which Roman lawyers seek to apply the general rules of law and
natural equity. It was the first attempt since the Twelve Tables to
construct an independent centre of right as a whole,[117] and it was
confirmed by the authority of the emperor on the 16th December, 533.
As in the whole course of the fifth century, so no less in the sixth, it is
necessary to bear in mind the close interweaving of political with
ecclesiastical facts. The force and bearing of the one only become
intelligible when the others are weighed. In 519, under Pope Hormisdas, the
schism of Acacius had collapsed, and the most emphatic acknowledgment of
all which the Popes had claimed in the contest with him, and with the
emperors Zeno and Anastasius, who favoured him, had taken place. Pope
Hormisdas had been succeeded in 523 by Pope John I. Compelled by the king
Theodorick to undertake an embassy to the emperor Justin, received at
Byzantium with the highest honour as first Bishop of the Church, being also
the first Pope who had visited the eastern capital, and crowned with gifts
for the churches at Rome, he returned only to die in the dungeon of the
Arian prince at Ravenna, in 526. In three months Theodorick had followed to
the tomb his three victims--Symmachus, Boethius, and Pope John I. His death
had well-nigh broken up the league of Teutonic Arian rulers against the
Catholic faith, of which he had been the soul during the thirty-three years
of his reign. Justinian had been taken by his uncle Justin as partner of
his empire in April, 527, and crowned, together with his wife Theodora, on
Easter Day. Four months later he succeeded his uncle in the sole power. At
the death of Theodorick, the innate weakness of the Gothic kingdom in
Italy, which had been veiled by the personal ability of the sovereign, came
to full light. The utter incompatibility between the savage Goth and the
cultured Roman showed itself in the rejection of the queen Amalasunta, in
the depriving her of her son, and his subsequent corruption and premature
death, its result. It was shown also in the retirement of Cassiodorus from
the place of counsellor and minister of the Gothic king. Upon the death of
Pope John I., in 526, Theodorick had exercised his power in urging the
Romans to select Felix for pope. For this permanent injury had been
inflicted upon the liberty of the papal election by the foreign occupation
of Italy. It began under Odoacer in 483, when the temporal ruler, being a
foreigner and an Arian, for the first time sought to mix himself with the
election. Twenty years after, under Pope Symmachus, the attempt of Odoacer
had been condemned. But what the Herule and the Gothic ruler, both Arians,
had begun, the Byzantine emperor, when he recovered possession of Rome,
carried on, and the original freedom of election was subjected to the
control of the eastern emperor for hundreds of years.
Pope Felix sat until 530, and was then succeeded by Bonifacius II., the son
of a Goth; not, however, without a temporary schism, occasioned by the
attempt of King Athalarick to exert the arbitrary power used by his
grandfather Theodorick in the election. Pope John II. followed in 532. In
this Pope's time Cassiodorus was made Praetorian prefect by King
Athalarick, and wrote to the Pope as a son to his father: "Be careful to
remind me what I am to do. I wish to deal rightly, though I am blamed. A
sheep which desires to hear the voice of his shepherd is not so easily led
astray; and if he has one who warns continually at his side, can scarcely
be criminal. I am, indeed, judge in the palace, but shall not therefore
cease to be your disciple. For we execute this office well when we do not
in the least depart from your injunctions. Since, then, I wish to be guided
by your counsels and supported by your prayers, you must show your hand
when there is anything in me otherwise than would be desired. That chair
which is the wonder of the whole world should carefully protect its own,
since, though it is given to the whole world, yet it admits in you a
special local love."[118]
The Pope, to whom the Praetorian prefect of Athalarick, the temporal
sovereign, addressed this language, is John II., to whom Justinian, from
Byzantium, spoke as a son, and whose primacy he acknowledged in terms so
ample, before he became, by the conquest of Belisarius, the temporal lord
of Rome; the year, also, before he reconquered Northern Africa by the sword
of the same great general.
Justinian, with not less precision than former emperors, acknowledged all
his life long the primacy of the Roman See. We need not exclude political
motives from this acknowledgment, but we must allow to him the fullest
conviction as to its legitimate authority. If now and then, under the
impulse of passion or despotic humour, he seemed to disregard its rights,
he soon strove again to obtain the Pope's assent to his measures. In his
edict to his own patriarch Epiphanius, he declared expressly that he held
himself bound accurately to inform the Pope, as head of all bishops,
concerning the circumstances of his realm, especially since the Roman
Church by its decisions in faith had overthrown the heresies which arose in
the East.[119] The imperial theologian was very unwilling to give up the
initiative in the determination of ecclesiastical questions; nevertheless,
he acknowledged in the Bishop of Old Rome the superior judge without whose
confirmation his own steps remained devoid of force and effect.[120]
The man who was born an Illyrian peasant, who was the leading spirit during
the nine years' reign of another Illyrian peasant, his uncle, who succeeded
him in 527, and ruled the greatest kingdom of the earth during thirty-eight
years; to whom the bitter Vandal in Africa and the nobler Goth in Italy
yielded up their equally ill-gotten prey; who became the great legislator
of the Roman world, by the commission given to his chief lawyers to select
and, after correction, tabulate the laws of the emperors his predecessors;
to whom, in consequence, the actual nations of Europe owe what was to them
the fountain of universal right, demands a somewhat detailed account of his
character, his purposes, and his actions. When the prince of the poets of
Christendom, the only poet who has spoken in the name and with the voice of
Christendom, meets his spirit under the guidance of Beatrice, the emperor
utters words the truth of which all must feel:
"Caesar I was and am Justinian,
Moved by the will of that Prime Love I feel
I clear'd the encumbered laws from vain excess".[121]
It is in this character that Justinian lives for all history, and his name
stands out among all Byzantine sovereigns with a lustre of its own. I have
therefore first quoted the most definite words of the great legislator,
spontaneously acknowledging the right of St. Peter's successor to know and
to judge of all that concerns the Church's doctrine and practice. The
acknowledgment of this right is the more to be marked because, when it was
made by the eastern emperor, that successor was not his own subject. That
he was the head of all the churches of the world, that he was so by descent
from Peter, that in virtue of this headship and descent he had a right of
supervision over everything which belonged to the Church in all the
world--this is what Justinian avows, and this, moreover, is equally what
the Pope claimed then as he claims now.
Justinian ascended the eastern throne in August, 527, at about the age of
forty-five. He would therefore have been born in 482. He was of somewhat
more than middle height, of regular features, dark colour, of ample chest,
serene and agreeable aspect. Through the care of his uncle he had had a
good education, and had early learned to read and write. He was skilled in
jurisprudence, architecture, music, and, moreover, in theology. His
personal piety was remarkable. When he became emperor he bestowed all his
private goods on churches, and ruled his house like a monastery. In Lent,
his life approached that of a hermit in severity. He ate no bread; drank
only water; for his nourishment he contented himself every other day with a
portion of wild herbs, seasoned with salt and vinegar. We have sure
testimony respecting his fasts and mortifications, since he has taken pains
in his last laws, the _Novels_, to inform the world of them.[122]
His uncle Justin had died at the age of seventy-seven, after reigning nine
years. His accession had marked a sort of resurrection in eastern affairs.
Instead of three emperors, Basiliscus, Zeno, and Anastasius, alike
ignominious in their government, unsound in their faith, infamous in their
life, and remorselessly tyrannical in their treatment both of Church and
State, Justin had crowned an honourable life as a general in the imperial
service with a creditable reign, in which his fidelity to the Catholic
faith was remarkable. The moment of Justinian's succession was coeval with
great changes in the West. By the death of Theodorick, who in his last
year had begun the work of active Arian persecution, the great kingdom
which he had maintained for a generation seemed on the point of
dissolution, through the intrinsic inaptitude for government which his
Gothic subjects at once betrayed when let loose from the master's powerful
hand. In Africa, moreover, a succession of cruel Vandal persecutors, almost
equal to their original, Genseric, had shaken their tenure of the country.
At the same time, the Frankish kingdom, strengthened greatly by the
conversion of Clovis, was growing in power and extent--a growth not
interrupted by his early death in 511, at the age of forty-five.[123]
Such was the state of things when Justinian directed the great power which
the revenues of the eastern empire enabled him to wield, towards the
restoration of that empire, first in Africa, and then in Italy. Later in
the same year, 533, in which he addressed to John II. the explicit
acknowledgment of his supreme authority with which I began, he despatched
his great general Belisarius with 16,000 chosen troops, 6000 of them
cavalry, to Carthage. The Vandal ruler Gelimer offered but a feeble and
utterly ineffectual resistance. He surrendered himself at Carthage to
Belisarius, by the end of the year, and was brought to Constantinople.
There Justinian received Belisarius in what was like one of Rome's hundred
triumphs, except that the conqueror marched on foot. The booty of the
Vandal kings was borne before him, in which were conspicuous the precious
things which Genseric had carried away from Rome--the vessels of the temple
of Jerusalem. When the captive king was brought into the circus, and saw
before him the emperor and countless rows of spectators, he is said to have
shed no tears, but to have uttered the words of the preacher: "Vanity of
vanities, all is vanity". But his head did not fall under the axe of the
lictors, as in the ancient Roman triumphs. He received in Dalmatia a great
property, and lived there in abundance with his family. The other captives
were enrolled in the Roman army, and Justinian and Theodora heaped presents
upon the daughters of Hilderich, and all the descendants of that princess
Eudocia, great-granddaughter of the great Theodosius, who had been obliged
to espouse the son of Genseric in her captivity at Carthage.
Then Justinian divided North Africa into seven provinces--Tingitana,
Mauritanea, Numidia, Carthage, Byzacene, Tripolis, and Sardinia, which
last, having belonged to the Vandals, was put into the prefecture of
Africa. This received a Praetorian prefect and proconsular governors, who
were charged to maintain the land, and show to the inhabitants the
difference between civilised Roman government and Vandal cruelty. Justinian
restored many cities, and erected many great buildings, especially
churches, of which five in Leptis alone.[124]
An early result of Justinian's reconquest of Africa was that the bishops
met in plenary council, under the presidency of the primate of Carthage,
Reparatus, successor of Boniface. After a hundred years of Vandal
oppression, 217 bishops assembled in the Basilica of Faustus, at Carthage,
named Justiniana in honour of the emperor--the church which Hunnerich had
taken from the Catholics, in which many bodies of martyrs were buried. To
their intercession the council ascribed their deliverance from persecution.
After reading the Nicene decrees, they discussed the question whether Arian
priests who had become Catholics should be received in their dignity or
only to lay communion. All the members of the council inclined to the
latter judgment. They, however, would come to no decision, but with one
voice determined to consult Pope John II. They addressed a letter to him by
the hands of two bishops and a deacon, in which they say: "We considered it
agreeable to charity that no one should disclose our judgment until first
the custom or determination of the Roman Church should be made known to us:
honouring herein with due obedience the authority of your Blessedness,
being such a Pontiff as the holy See of Peter deserved to have, worthy of
veneration, full of affection, speaking the truth without falsehood, doing
nothing with arrogance. Therefore the free charity of the whole brotherhood
thought that your counsel should be asked. And we beg that your mind, the
organ of the Holy Spirit,[125] may answer us kindly and truly."[126]
When the African deputies reached Rome, Pope John II. was already dead.
But his successor Agapetus answered the questions of the council, attaching
also the ancient canons which decided thereupon, to the effect that at
whatever age a person had been infected by the Arian pestilence, if he
became afterwards a Catholic he should not retain any rank, but that
converted Arian priests might receive support from the Church fund. Pope
Agapetus wrote expressing his intense joy at the recovery of their country:
"For, since the Church is everywhere one body, your sorrow was our
affliction. And we acknowledge your most sincere charity in that, as became
wise and learned men, you did not forget the Apostolic Principate; but, in
order to resolve that question, sought approach to that See to which the
power of the keys is given".[127]
This council also sent an embassy to Justinian, beseeching him to restore
the possessions and rights of the Church in Africa which the Vandals had
taken away--a request which the emperor granted in an edict to his
Praetorian prefect Salomo. And Agapetus expressly restored to the primate
of Carthage any rights as metropolitan which the enemy had taken away.[128]
Thus the terrible persecution inaugurated by Genseric when the Vandal host
lay around the deathbed of St. Augustine at Hippo in 430 came to an end. In
the interval, the African church had suffered every extremity of barbarian
cruelty from the Arian invaders. At the end, the primate of Carthage, at
the head of all the bishops of the several provinces, is found referring to
the Pope, a subject of the Arian Theodatus, for guidance in the treatment
of Arian priests and bishops who submitted to the Church. The Pope, on his
side, acknowledges all the rights of the primate of Carthage which existed
before the invasion. As to civil rights of property, the Byzantine
conqueror restores the possessions of the Church which had been taken away
by the Vandals.
By the restoration of the African province to the Roman empire and the
Catholic faith Justinian won great renown. His accession had been welcomed
with joy by the Catholic people. Full of great designs, he aimed at the
extension of his realm, and endeavoured to advance the Christian cause by
missions to countries as yet without the faith. Greatness and majesty are
shown in all his creations.[129] In the year following the African
reconquest Pope Agapetus wrote to him, praising his solicitude in
maintaining the unity of the Church, and identifying the advance of his
empire with the increase of religion.[130] The Pope adds that the emperor
desired the profession of faith which he had sent to his predecessor Pope
John II., and which had been confirmed by him, to be confirmed also by
himself, for which "we praise you: we assent, not because we admit in
laymen an authority to preach, but because, since the zeal of your faith is
in accordance with the rules of our fathers, we confirm and give it force".
It is to be remembered that Pope Agapetus, elected in 535, was the subject
of the Gothic king Theodatus, and as such was sent by him, under threats of
death, in the winter of this year, on an embassy to Justinian. The purpose
of Theodatus was to support his tottering throne by the intercession of the
Pope. He had murdered at the lake of Bolsena the daughter and heiress of
Theodorick, Amalasunta, who had made him king upon the untimely death of
her son Athalarick in 534. He was secretly proposing to cede the Gothic
kingdom of Italy to Justinian for a pension of 1200 pounds of gold. Thus
Agapetus was sent to Constantinople in the winter of 535, as Pope John I.
had been sent by Theodorick ten years before. He entered that city on the
20th February, 536; he died on the 22nd April following. In these two
months the Pope, the subject of Theodatus, did great things. A certain
Anthimus, a secret friend of the Monophysite heresy, had been brought, by
the favour of the like-minded empress Theodora, from the see of Trebisond
and put into that of Constantinople, having been able to impose himself
upon the emperor as orthodox. Agapetus was received with the greatest
honour, being only the second Pope who had visited Byzantium. He could not
negotiate a peace for Theodatus; but archimandrites, priests, and monks
besought him to proceed against Anthimus as an interloper and teacher of
error. Agapetus refused his communion to the new patriarch, required of him
a written confession of faith, and return to his bishopric, which he had
deserted contrary to the canons. The emperor, believing in the orthodoxy of
his patriarch, took part at first against the Pope, and strove to overcome
him both with threats and with presents. But Justinian, undeceived as to
the orthodoxy of Anthimus, gave him up, and Pope Agapetus pronounced
judgment of deposition upon him, and on the 13th March, 536, consecrated
Mennas, who had been duly elected, to be bishop of Constantinople. He first
required of him a written confession "to carry to Rome, to St. Peter".[131]
Soon after this the Pope died suddenly. The whole population at
Constantinople attended his funeral. Never, it was said, had the mourning
for a bishop or an emperor drawn together such a concourse of people. His
body was carried back to Rome in triumph and buried in St. Peter's.
Pope Agapetus was succeeded in 536 by Pope Silverius, chosen under the
influence of the Gothic king Theodatus. He was the last Pope so chosen; and
the moment of his election is coincident with events destined to change
permanently the material condition both of Rome and Italy.
Justinian had accomplished, with singular ease and rapidity, the first half
of his design. This was the reunion of North Africa to his empire, and the
restoration in it of the Catholic faith. The second part of his design was
to accomplish the same double result for Rome and for Italy. He sent
Belisarius, after the victory at Carthage, into Sicily, where Syracuse and
Palermo were taken; and in the summer of 536 the great commander entered
Italy, captured Naples, and advanced towards Rome on the Appian Road. So
the Gothic war began. Theodatus was in Rome. The Gothic army in the Pontine
marshes became aware of his incompetence and his secret treating with
Justinian, deposed him, and elected Vitiges to be their king in his stead,
by whose orders the fugitive was slain in his flight on the Flaminian Road.
But Vitiges hastened to Ravenna, where he espoused the unwilling Matasunta,
daughter of Amalasuntha, granddaughter of Theodorick. Four thousand Goths
alone remained to cover Rome. Belisarius appeared before it. A deputation,
supported by Pope Silverius, brought him the keys of the city. The garrison
was too weak to defend it, and on the 9th December, 536, Belisarius took
possession of Rome, at the head of the imperial troops, who had nothing
Roman in them except the name. It was sixty years since Odoacer had caused
the senate to declare a western emperor needless, and Rome, as to temporal
rule, had fallen, first under the Herule, then under the Goth. The Romans
welcomed Belisarius as a deliverer from the double yoke of the northern
intruder and the Arian heretic.
For however Theodorick recognised, after the fury of the conflict with his
brother-Teuton, the Herule Odoacer, was over, the necessity of ruling with
justice over Goth and Italian, however prosperous as to the maintenance of
peace and internal order the great kingdom stretching from Illyricum to
Southern Gaul had been, whatever support he had given to the maintenance of
Roman law, custom, and institutions, there was not a Roman, from Symmachus
and Boethius in the senate to the meanest inhabitant of Trastevere, who
would not loathe the occupation of Rome and Italy by the Gothic invasion.
The Goths were a people of remarkable courage and extraordinary force of
body. But the feeling with which Italians and, above all, Romans would
regard them as masters of their country and confiscators of its soil, can
only be expressed by what the English would feel if a swarm of Zulus were
to take possession of England. So, when Belisarius entered Rome, the Romans
looked for their being replaced under the direct and lawful government of
one who should be in deed and in truth a Roman prince, as Pope Felix had
called the recreant Zeno, that is, the head of law, the supreme judge, the
defender of the Church. This was what they looked for. I am about to
mention what they found.
The empress Theodora had tried with all her wiles to set a Monophysite
prelate on the Byzantine See.[132] Pope Agapetus had frustrated her plans
by deposing Anthimus and consecrating Mennas in his place. But Theodora had
not given up her intrigues, and she strove to involve in her net the Roman
See itself. In the train of Agapetus at Constantinople was the ambitious
deacon Vigilius. She sought to win him by promising him the Roman See. She
offered him a great sum of money, and all her powerful support in attaining
the papal dignity, if he would bind himself thereupon to abrogate the
Council of Chalcedon, to enter into communion with Anthimus and Severus,
and help them to recover the sees of Constantinople and Antioch. Vigilius
agreed, and Theodora worked for the interests of her favourite by means of
Antonina, wife of Belisarius. In the meantime, Silverius, as we have seen,
had been chosen Pope in Rome, and Theodatus had exercised in his favour the
influence which the Teuton rulers, whether styled Patricius or King, had
claimed in the papal election since Odoacer. The empress invited the new
Pope to come to Constantinople, or at least to restore her dear Anthimus.
Silverius refused decidedly, though he was in the most dangerous position
between the Greeks and the Ostrogoths, and even his personal liberty was in
danger from Belisarius.
Pope Silverius continued to refuse submission to the wishes of the empress.
The great commander sat in the Pincian palace in March, 537, scarcely three
months after he had taken possession of Rome.[133] There he abased himself
to carry out the commands of two shameless women, Theodora and Antonina. He
caused Pope Silverius to be brought before him on a charge of writing
treasonable letters to Vitiges. The Pope had taken refuge at Santa Sabina
on the Aventine. When brought before Belisarius, he found him sitting at
the feet of Antonina, who reclined on a couch. The attending clergy had
been left behind the first and second curtains. The Pope and the deacon
Vigilius entered alone. "Lord Pope Silverius," said Antonina, "what have we
done to thee and the Romans that thou wouldst deliver us into the hands of
the Goths?" While she was heaping reproaches upon him, John, a sub-deacon
of the first region, entered, took the pallium from his shoulders, and led
him into another room, where he was stript of his episcopal vestments, the
dress of a monk was put upon him, and his deposition was announced to the
clergy. He was then banished to Patara in Lycia. All these intrigues had
been unknown to Justinian. Afterwards, the bishop[134] of Patara went to
him, and invoked before the emperor the judgment of God, saying there were
many kings in this world, but not one set over the Church of the whole
world, as was that bishop who had been expelled from his see. Justinian,
hearing this, ordered Silverius to be taken back to Rome, and a true
judgment of his case to be made. But then the Pope fell entirely into the
hands of his rival Vigilius, who in the meantime had, by the help of
Belisarius, got possession of the pontificate. Vigilius caused him to be
deported to the island of Palmaria. There it is only known that he died in
great misery, but with the crown of martyrdom.
This was the first act of that dominion, lasting more than two hundred
years, in which the Byzantine sovereigns were lords of Rome, as part of a
reconquered province, and claimed to confirm the Papal elections, a claim
set up by the Herule Odoacer, continued by Theodorick, inherited by
Justinian.
When Belisarius occupied Rome he had only 5000 soldiers at his command.
Vitiges, the new Gothic king, had gone to Ravenna, and made peace with the
Franks by surrendering to them the southern provinces of France, held by
Theodorick. He then levied the whole fighting force of the Goths, and, in
March, 537, advanced from Umbria upon Rome at the head of 150,000 men.
Belisarius, in the three months, had done his best to repair the walls, the
towers, and the gates of the city. He had also laid up provisions. He dug
trenches round the least defended spots, and had constructed great machines
which shot bolts strong enough to nail an armoured man to a tree. Vitiges
approached from the Anio, and made a desperate attempt to storm the city at
once. Having failed in this, through the great courage and skill of
Belisarius, and being unable, even with his vast host, to surround the
city, he set up six fortified camps from the Flaminian Gate to that of
Proeneste, and a seventh in the Neronian fields on the other side of the
river, the plain which stretches from the Vatican to the Milvian bridge.
The Goth cut off the fourteen aqueducts which supplied Rome with water.
Those greatest monuments of imperial magnificence from that time have
stretched their broken arches across the Campagna, the admiration and
sorrow of every beholder in so many generations. What five hundred years
of empire had done, the Goth, in his fury to recover the land which he had
usurped, was able to ruin. The besiegers went on wasting the Campagna, and
preventing the entrance of provisions into the city. Amid the increasing
want, and the fear of worse, Vitiges in vain tried to seduce the Romans to
revolt. Finding that Belisarius would not capitulate, he constructed great
wooden towers, loftier than the walls, upon wheels, from which fifty men to
each should direct battering-rams. Belisarius opposed him with like
weapons. On the nineteenth day, the Goths poured out from their seven camps
for a general storm. In a tremendous conflict, Belisarius beat back the
invaders by counter sallies at the gates assailed. But at one point they
all but succeeded. The Mausoleum of Hadrian formed part of the defence.
Procopius, the eye-witness of this famous siege, and its narrator, says of
it: "The tomb of the Roman emperor Hadrian lies outside the Aurelian Gate,
a stone's-throw from the walls--a work of marvellous splendour. For it
consists of huge blocks of Parian marble, fastened to each other without
jointing from inside. It has four equal sides, each of them in length a
stone's-cast. Its height exceeds that of the city walls. Upon it stand
wonderful statues of men and horses." This is all that Procopius says. Up
to this moment, full four centuries after the death of Hadrian, all the
glories of Grecian art, which that imperial traveller over the world, from
Newcastle to the cataracts of the Nile, could collect, had shone through
the Roman sky on the monument, splendid as a palace and strong as a castle.
On this fatal day of Rome's direst need they were hurled down upon the
advancing Goth, whom the narrow streets had enabled to approach with
scaling ladders. Statues of emperors, gods, and heroes hailed upon the
northern giants; the works of Polycletus and Praxiteles were used for
common stones upon invaders who despised art as well as letters; and a
thousand years afterwards, when the building was finally formed into a
castle, in digging the trenches the fragments of the Sleeping Faun were
found, which had crushed some inglorious barbarian and saved Rome from
capture.
But the storming, repulsed at every gate, cost Vitiges the flower of his
host. Thirty thousand are said to have fallen, that being the number which
Procopius records as derived from Gothic officers themselves; and greater,
he says, was the number of wounded, when the deadly bolts from the machines
of Belisarius mowed down their encumbered masses in flight.
The result of this great conflict was to weaken the Goths, to encourage the
Romans, to make Belisarius confident of success. The siege lasted after
this nearly a year. The extremity of hunger and misery was endured in the
city. The supply of water was reduced to the cisterns and springs and the
river. Vitiges at length occupied Porto, and cut off Rome from the sea. But
the Goths also suffered terribly both from famine and from summer heat. The
end of all was that, after a siege of a year and nine days, in which the
Goths had fought 69 battles, Vitiges, in March, 538, drew off his
diminished troops. One morning, Belisarius, from his Pincian palace, saw
one-half of the remaining Goths on the other side of the Milvian bridge,
and he forthwith ordered a sally upon their rear-guard. Vitiges left
perhaps the half of his great host mouldering in the wasted, pestilent,
deserted Campagna. He left also a city impoverished in numbers, full of
sickness and misery. He had destroyed all the villas and dwellings of the
Campagna; the churches of the Martyrs lay in heaps of ruins: from the Porta
Salara to the Porta Nomentana hardly one stone upon another seems to have
remained. Also Vitiges had ordered the senators whom he had left at Ravenna
to be put to death. Only, during this siege, the basilicas of Rome's patron
saints, which lay outside the walls, received no damage and were respected
by the Goths.[135]
After this the storm of war drew off to the North. It continued with
changing fortune in the provinces of Tuscany, Aemilia, the plain of the Po,
the coasts of the Hadriatic. On the one side Franks and Burgundians took
part; on the other side the soldiers of Belisarius were made up of all
races from the East: not without skill in fight, but without discipline,
under rival and quarrelling commanders. They pressed grievously on the land
which they were sent to deliver. But the Goths grew weaker: they never
recovered their losses before Rome. At last Belisarius got hold of
Ravenna--not by capture, but after long negotiations, on both sides
deceptive. Belisarius made the Goths believe that he would set himself at
their head, and construct a new western empire. Vitiges, whether he trusted
him or not, came to terms with him. Belisarius proclaimed Justinian
emperor. The German realm seemed broken to pieces: only Verona, Pavia, and
a portion of Liguria held out. A small part only of the army still carried
the national banner. Then the conqueror, in 539, was recalled to Byzantium,
to conduct the war against Persia. He left Italy almost subdued, and
carried with him the captive king of the Goths, Vitiges, as in former years
he had carried Gelimer, the captive king of the Vandals. This was in 539,
thirteen years after Theodorick's death.
The first act of that fearful drama, the Gothic war, was over. But as soon
as Belisarius disappeared, the Goths began to recover themselves. The
generals of Justinian lived on plunder. In Totila arose a new Gothic
leader, the bravest of the brave. At the end of the year 541 he marched out
of Verona with only five thousand men, defeated the incapable and disunited
Grecian captains, took city after city, passed the Apennines, passed near
Rome, without assailing it. In this career of victory the Gothic king once
approached that Campanian hill on which the great benefactor of the West,
St. Benedict, was laying the foundations of the coenobitic life. In the
first instance, Totila tried to deceive the Saint. He dressed up a high
officer as king, and sent him, with three of his chief counts in
attendance, to personate himself. When Benedict saw the Gothic train
approaching he was seated, and as soon as they were within earshot, he
cried out to the warrior pretending to be king: "Son, lay aside that dress
which is not thine". The Goth fell to the ground in dismay, and returned to
report his discomfiture to Totila, who then came himself. But when he saw
Benedict seated at a distance he prostrated himself, and though Benedict
thrice bade him arise, he continued prostrate. The Saint then came to him,
raised him up, upbraided him with the acts which he had committed, and
revealed to him the future concerning himself: "Many evils thou doest; many
hast thou done. Put a curb at length on thine iniquity. Rome, indeed, thou
shalt enter; the sea thou shalt pass. Nine years thou shalt reign; in the
tenth thou shalt die."[136] The king was awe-struck. The savage in him
was quelled by the speaker's sanctity. From this time forth he altered
his conduct, and became more humane. In the capture of Naples shortly
afterwards he showed by his merciful treatment the effect which the
presence of St. Benedict had produced on him, as well as in the following
years of his life. This interview took place in the year 542.
But Totila[137] so advanced in power that, in spite of Byzantine intrigue
and jealousy, Belisarius, having happily concluded the Persian war, was
sent back to the supreme command in Italy. He landed in Ravenna, but
without army, war-material, or money. In the summer of 545, Totila, having
subdued the land all about Rome, laid siege to Rome itself. Belisarius
occupied Porto, and Totila set up his camp eight miles from Rome,
commanding the Tiber, and turning the siege into the closest blockade. In
vain Belisarius attempted to burst the Gothic bar of the river and
introduce provisions to Rome. In vain embassies were sent to Constantinople
for help. The most frightful distress ensued at Rome. At length, after
about eighteen months, certain Isaurian soldiers of the Greek garrison gave
up the Porta Asinaria, and on the night of the 17th December, 546, Totila
took the ill-defended city. When he entered, it was almost without
inhabitants. Those whom the sword, famine, and pestilence had not yet taken
were in flight or hiding. Patricians crept about in the garb of slaves. The
number of victims at this capture was small. The desolation and misery seem
to have worked not only on Totila, but also on his army. The plunder, which
a captured city could not escape, was generally bloodless; but many houses
were burnt in the Trasteverine quarter. As Theodorick had offered his
prayers at the tomb of the Apostles, so Totila went from the Lateran to St.
Peter's. What a change had the forty-six years brought about. To the
miserable remnant of the senate Totila upbraided the ingratitude which had
been shown for Gothic benefits under Theodorick. He accepted, however, the
intercession of the deacon Pelagius, and protected not only the female sex
in general, but especially the noble Rusticiana, widow of Boethius and
daughter of Symmachus. Amalasunta had restored their property to her sons,
the younger Boethius and Symmachus; but the war seems to have consumed
everything. She was now a beggar, and the wild host of Totila wished to put
her to death for having, as she was charged, maimed statues of Theodorick.
But the king rescued her from their fury.
In the first impulse of wrath Totila had threatened to level Rome with the
ground. Belisarius, lying sick at Porto, had addressed to him a letter,
entreating him to spare the greatest and noblest of cities. He did,
however, throw down a considerable part of the walls, and when he marched
to Lucania against the Greeks, took with him the chief citizens, and made
the rest of the inhabitants migrate to Campania. He left a desert behind
him. If we could trust the exaggerated reports of Greek historians, Rome
remained forty days without inhabitants, tenanted only by beasts.
So ended the second act of the Gothic tragedy.
But as Vitiges had quitted Rome, so Totila deserted it, and in the spring
of 547 it was entered again by Belisarius. In less than a month he restored
as well as he could the part of the walls demolished, called back the
inhabitants lingering in the neighbourhood, and prepared for a new attack.
It was not long in coming. Scarcely had the gaps in the walls been filled
up by stones piled in disorder and the trenches cleared, when the Gothic
king reappeared. Thrice was his assault repulsed; then he gave up the
attempt, broke down the bridges over the Anio behind him, and went to
Tibur, which he took by treachery of the inhabitants, who were at strife
with the Isaurian garrison. Totila massacred the citizens, the bishop, and
the clergy; got possession of the upper course of the Tiber, and cut off
the Romans from Tuscany. But then Belisarius was enabled to give greater
care to repairing the city's defences. The state in which several gates
remain to this day still show his hand. He restored Trajan's aqueduct,
which fed the mills on the right bank. But in the winter of 547 the great
captain was drawn away from Rome to carry on a miserable petty war with
insufficient force in the south of Italy, and was finally recalled to
Constantinople. So ended the third act of Rome's fall.
But Totila hastened from place to place, from victory to victory. After
scouring the South and then Umbria at the beginning of 549, he stood the
third time before Rome. A strong Byzantine garrison in the city had
provided magazines, and the wide spaces within the walls had been sown with
wheat. His first attack failed; but treachery opened to him the Ostian
gate, and its famished defenders soon surrendered the mausoleum of Hadrian.
The conqueror, in this fourth capture of the city, acted mildly. He called
back the yet absent inhabitants, amongst them many of the senators who had
been sent into Campania. How had the nobles of Rome melted away! Vitiges
had ordered those kept in Ravenna as hostages to be slain. Some had then
escaped to Liguria. The distrust of the Greeks as well as of the Goths
threatened them. Cethegus, chief of the senate, had been compelled to
leave before the first siege of Totila. Now Totila did not succeed in
coming to terms with Justinian. The Greek army received a new commander in
the eunuch Narses, who had served before under Belisarius. In him skill,
energy, court favour, and the command of considerable forces were united.
Before the end of 549, Totila left Rome. Almost all Italy save Ravenna was
in his hands. He dealt generously with the people, whilst the Byzantine
officials, exhausting the land with their exactions, added to the
sufferings of war.
And now we reach the fifth act of the drama in which Rome was humbled to
the very dust. Totila, for more than two years and a half, carried on an
unceasing struggle over land and sea--Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, which he
subdued, and beyond the Hadriatic, to the opposite coasts. Though generally
victorious, he was more like the leader in an old Gothic raid than a king
who ruled and defended a great realm. At last, in the spring of 552, Narses
advanced from Ravenna with a great force to a decisive battle for Rome.
Totila advanced from Rome into Tuscany to meet him. At Taginas, on the
longest day, the conflict which decided the fate of the Gothic kingdom took
place. All that summer day the battle lasted. The Gothic king, a true
knight in royal armour, on a splendid steed, marshalled and led his host.
When night had come his cavalry was overthrown, his footmen broken. The
spear of a Gepid had wounded him mortally. He was taken from the field,
died in the night, was hastily buried. But his grave was disclosed to the
Greeks. They left him where he lay; only his blood-stained mantle and
diadem set with precious stones were carried to Constantinople. Six
thousand of his bravest warriors lay on the field of battle. Yet when the
remains of the host collected themselves in Upper Italy they elected Teia
in Pavia for head of the yet unconquered race.
But Narses, having captured the strong places in Middle Italy, advanced
upon Rome. The Gothic garrison was too weak to defend the wide circuits of
the walls. Parts were soon taken. Presently Hadrian's tomb, which Totila
had surrounded with fresh walls, alone held out. But it soon fell, and
hapless Rome was captured for the fifth time in the reign of Justinian. It
was a day of doom for the still remaining noble families. Goths and Greeks
alike turned against them. In Campania and in Sicily many distinguished
Romans had waited for better times. Now not only the flying Goths cut down
all who fell into their hands, but the barbarian troops in the army of
Narses, at their entrance into Rome, followed the example. Then, again,
three hundred youths of the noblest families, who had been kept as hostages
at Pavia, were all executed by Teia. The western consulate ended in 534,
Flavius Theodorus Paulinus being the last. It continued seven years longer
in the East, where to Flavius Basilius, consul in 541, no successor was
given. When Justinian abolished this dignity it had lasted 1050 years, with
few interruptions. Though for more than half this time it had been a mere
title of honour, yet the consuls gave their name to the year, and served
still, it may be, to mark to the world the unity of the Roman empire.
From Rome the conqueror Narses turned his steps southwards to Cumae, that
he might seize the treasure of the Goths, which was guarded by the new king
Teia's brother Aligern. This brought Teia himself by a rapid march down the
Hadriatic coast, and crossing Italy obliquely, he appeared at the foot of
Vesuvius. There, in the spring of 553, Teia fought a last and desperate
battle over the grave of sunken cities, in view of the Gulf of Naples. At
the head of a small host, he fought from early morn to noon. It was like a
battle of Homeric warriors. Then he could no longer support the weight of
twelve lances in his shield, and, calling to his armour-bearer for a fresh
shield, he fell transfixed by a lance. The next day the remnant of the
army, save a thousand who fought their way through and reached Pavia,
accepted terms from Narses, to leave Italy and fight no more against the
emperor.
But Italy was far yet from tranquillity. Teia had incited the Alemans and
the Franks to break into Italy. The two brothers, Leuthar and Bucelin, led
a raid of 70,000 men, who ravaged Central and Southern Italy down to the
Straits of Sicily. One of these barbarians carried back his spoil-laden
troops to the Po, where pestilence consumed him and his horde. The host of
the other brother, Bucelin, when it had reached Capua, was overthrown on
the Vulturnus by Narses, with a slaughter as utter as that which Marius
inflicted on the Cimbri. Scarcely five are said to have escaped. So, in
the spring of 555, after twenty years of destruction, ended the Gothic
war.[138]
The reconquest of North Africa from the Vandals cost Justinian a few months
of uninterrupted victory. The reconquest of Italy from the Goths cost
twenty years of suffering to both sides, leaving, indeed, Justinian master
but of a ruined Italy, master also of Rome, but after five successive
captures; its senate reduced to a shadow, its patricians all but destroyed,
its population shrunk, it is supposed, when Narses took possession of it in
552, to between thirty and forty thousand impoverished inhabitants. But the
greatest change remains to be recorded. The Pope had indeed been delivered
from Arian sovereigns, who held the country under military occupation, but
exercised their civil rule with leniency and consideration, bearing, no
doubt, in mind that they were, at least in theory, vice-gerents of an
over-lord who ruled at Constantinople what was still the greatest empire of
the world. What Pope Gelasius truly called "hostile domination" had been
tempered during three-and-thirty years by the personal qualities of one who
was at once powerful in arms and wise in statesmanship. Rome, in the time
of Theodorick and Athalarick, had been maintained, its senate respected,
the Pope treated with deference. A stranger entering Rome in 535, at the
beginning of the Gothic war, would still have seen the greatest and
grandest city of the world, standing in general with its buildings
unimpaired. In 552, the Pope, instead of a distant over-lord, to whom he
could appeal as Roman prince, had received an immediate master, who ruled
Rome by a governor with a permanent garrison, and who understood his rule
at Rome to be the same as his rule at Byzantium. The same as to its
absolute power; but with this difference, that while Byzantium was the seat
of his imperial dignity, in which every interest touched his personal
credit, and its bishop was to be supported as the chief officer of his
court and the chief councillor of his administration, the Rome he took from
the Goths was simply a provincial town of a recovered province, once indeed
illustrious, but now ruined and very troublesome. A provincial town because
the seat of Byzantine power in Italy was henceforth not at Rome but at
Ravenna, while the sovereign of Italy no longer held his court within
Italy, at Ravenna or at Verona, as Theodorick and Athalarick, but at
Constantinople. Mature reflection upon the civil condition made for the
Pope by the result of the Gothic war will, I think, show that no severer
test of the foundation of his spiritual authority could be applied than
what this great event brought in its train. Nor must we omit to note that
this test was brought about not only by the operation of political causes,
but by actors who had not the intention of producing such a result. The
suffering of Rome, in particular, during this war at the hands of Vitiges,
Belisarius, Totila, Teia, Narses, is indescribable. It is hard to say
whether defender or assailant did it most injury; but it is true to say
that the one and the other were equally merciless in their purpose to
retain it as a prey or to recover it as a conquest. Vitiges, besides
pressing the people cooped up in its walls with a terrible famine during
his siege of a year, broke down its aqueducts and ruined every building on
that part of the Campagna which he scoured. Totila, in like manner, after
famishing the inhabitants, when he took Rome, broke down a good part of its
walls, and at his second capture, in 546, the city is described as having
been absolutely deserted. In the last struggle, Teia slew without pity the
three hundred hostages of Rome's noblest blood who had been sent to Pavia,
thereby almost destroying its patricians. These were the parting tokens of
Gothic affection for Italy. Then Belisarius, attempting to relieve Rome
with inadequate forces, which was all that the penury of Justinian allowed
him, was the means of prolonging the famine, while he did not save the city
from capture. Lastly, Narses, sent to finish the war, enrolled in Dalmatia
an army of adventurers. Huns, Lombards, Herules, Gepids, Greeks, and even
Persians, in figure, language, arms, and customs utterly dissimilar, fought
for him under the imperial standard, greedy for the treasures of Italy.
Narses took Rome in 552, and governed it as imperial prefect for fifteen
years at the head of a Greek garrison, until he was recalled in 567. That
occupation of Narses in 552 is the date of Rome's extinction as the old
secular imperial city. The year after his recal came the worst plague of
all, and the most enduring. The Lombards did but repeat for the subjection
of Italy to a fresh northern invasion what Narses had done to deliver it
from Theodorick's older one in the preceding century.
Now let us see the nature of the test which this course of events, the work
of Goth and Greek alike--inflicting great misery and danger on the clergy
and the Pope, as upon their people--applied to the papal authority itself.
A more emphatic attestation of that authority than the confession given in
519 to Pope Hormisdas by the whole Greek episcopate, and by the emperor at
the head of his court, could hardly be drawn up. It settled for ever the
question of right, and estopped Byzantium, whether in the person of Caesar
or of patriarch, from denial of the Pope's universal pastorship, as derived
from St. Peter. We have seen that not only did Justinian, when the leading
spirit in his uncle's freshly-acquired succession to the eastern empire, do
his utmost to bring about this confession, but that in the first years of
his reign his letter to Pope John II. reaffirmed it; and his treatment of
Pope Agapetus when he appeared at Constantinople, not only as Pope, but in
the character of ambassador from the Gothic king Theodatus, exhibited that
belief in action. But now a state of things quite unknown before had
ensued. Hitherto Rome had been the capital, of which even Constantine's
Nova Roma was but the pale imitation. But the five times captured,
desolate, impoverished Rome which came back under Narses to Justinian's
sway, came back not as a capital, but as a captive governed by an exarch.
Was the bishop of a city with its senate extinct, its patriciate destroyed,
and with forty thousand returned refugees for its inhabitants, still the
bearer of Peter's keys--still the Rock on which the City of God rested? Had
there been one particle of truth in that 28th canon which a certain party
attempted to pass at the Council of Chalcedon, and which St. Leo
peremptorily annulled, a negative answer to this must now have followed.
That canon asserted "that the Fathers justly gave its prerogatives to the
see of the elder Rome because that was the imperial city". Rome had ceased
to be the imperial city. Did the loss of its bishop's prerogatives follow?
Did they pass to Byzantium because it was become the imperial city, because
the sole emperor dwelt there? Thus, about a hundred years after the repulse
of the ambitious exaltation sought by Anatolius, its rejection by the
provident wisdom and resolute courage of St. Leo was more than justified by
the course of events. St. Leo's action was based upon the constitution of
the Church, and therefore did not need to be justified by events. But the
Divine Providence superadded this justification, and that under
circumstances which had had no parallel in the preceding five hundred
years.
For when Belisarius, submitting himself to carry out the orders of an
imperious mistress, deposed, as we have seen, the legitimate Pope Silverius
by force in March, 537, Vigilius, in virtue of the same force, was
consecrated a few days after to succeed him. The exact time of the death
which Pope Silverius suffered in Palmaria is not known. But Vigilius is not
recognised as lawful Pope until after his death, probably in 540. He then
ascended St. Peter's seat with a blot upon him such as no pontiff had
suffered before. And this pontificate lasted about fifteen years, and was
full of such humiliation as St. Peter had never suffered before in his
successors.
We are not acquainted with the detail of events at Rome in those terrible
years, but we learn that, as Pope John I. was sent to Constantinople as a
subject by Theodorick, and Pope Agapetus again as a subject by Theodatus,
so Vigilius was urged by Justinian to go thither, and that after many
delays he obeyed the emperor very unwillingly.
But it is requisite here to give a short summary of what Justinian had been
doing in the affairs of the eastern Church from the time that Pope
Agapetus, having consecrated Mennas to be bishop of Constantinople, died
there in 536. After the Pope's death, Mennas proceeded to hold in May and
June of that year a synod in which he declared Anthimus to be entirely
deposed from the episcopal dignity, and condemned Severus and other leaders
of the Monophysites. In this synod Mennas presided, and the two Roman
deacons, Vigilius and Pelagius, who had been the legates of Pope Agapetus,
but whose powers had expired at his death, sat next to him, but only as
Italian bishops. How little the patriarch Mennas could there represent the
Church's independence is shown by his words to the bishops in the fourth
session: "Your charity knows that nothing of what is mooted in the Church
should take place contrary to the decision and order of our emperor,
zealous for the faith," while of their relation to the Pope he said: "You
know that we follow and obey the Apostolic See; those who are in communion
with it we hold in communion; those whom it condemns we also condemn".[139]
Justinian, irritated by the boldness of the Monophysites, added the
sanction of law to the decrees of this council, which deposed men who had
occupied patriarchal sees. He used these words: "In the present law we are
doing an act not unusual to the empire. For as often as an episcopal decree
has deposed from their sacerdotal seats those unworthy of the priesthood,
such as Nestorius, Eutyches, Arius, Macedonius, and Eunomius, and others in
wickedness not inferior to them, so often the empire has agreed with the
authority of the bishops. Thus the divine and the human concurred in one
righteous judgment, as we know was done in the case of Anthimus of late,
who was deposed from the see of this imperial city by Agapetus, of holy and
renowned memory, bishop of Old Rome."[140]
In the intrigue of Theodora with Vigilius, Mennas took no part. He took
counsel with the emperor how to maintain the Catholic faith in Alexandria
against the heretical patriarch Theodosius. By the emperor's direction,
ordering him to expel Theodosius, Mennas, in 537 or 538, consecrated Paul,
a monk of Tabenna, to be patriarch of Alexandria. The act would appear to
have been done in the presence of Pelagius, then nuncio in Constantinople,
without reclamation on his part, or of the nuncios who represented Antioch
and Jerusalem. Mennas in this repeated the conduct of Anatolius and Acacius
in former times, who were censured, the one by St. Leo, the other by Pope
Simplicius. By this event the four eastern patriarchs seemed to agree to
accept the first four councils, and the unity of the Church to be quite
restored, from which Alexandria had until then stood aloof; but the
patriarch Paul came afterwards in suspicion of heresy and had to give way
to Zoilus. Mennas was on the best terms with the emperor; he might easily
have used the deposition of Silverius and the unlawful exaltation of
Vigilius in 537 for increase of his own influence, had not a feeling of
duty or love of peace held him back. But Vigilius also, when he came to be
acknowledged, had come to realise his position and its responsibility. He
was far from fulfilling the unlawful promises made to Theodora, and from
favouring the Monophysites. The empress found that she had thrown away her
money and failed in her intrigue. In letters[141] to the emperor and to
Mennas, in 540, Vigilius declared his close adherence to the acts of his
predecessors, St. Leo in particular, and to the decrees in faith of the
four General Councils, while he confirmed the acts of the council held by
Mennas against Severus and the other Monophysite leaders.
In the meantime new dissensions threatened to agitate the whole eastern
realm.[142] The partisans of Origen in Palestine and the neighbouring
countries rose. At their head stood Theodore Askidas, archbishop of
Caesarea in Cappadocia, and Domitian, metropolitan of Ancyra, who had
obtained, by favour of Justinian, these important sees. Ephrem, patriarch
of Antioch about 540, condemned Origenism in a synod. Pelagius, being papal
nuncio at Constantinople, had, together with Ephrem, patriarch of Antioch,
condemned the patriarch Paul of Alexandria at Gaza. Deputies from Peter,
patriarch of Jerusalem, and the orthodox monks journeyed with Pelagius to
Constantinople, to present to the emperor an accusation against the
Origenists. Pelagius had much influence with Justinian, and he and Mennas
procured for the petitioners access to the emperor. They asked him to issue
a solemn condemnation of Origen's errors. The emperor listened willingly,
and issued in the form of a treatise to Mennas a still extant censure of
Origen and his writings. He called upon the patriarchs to hold synods upon
them. Mennas, in 543, held one in the capital, which issued fifteen
anathemas against Origen.[143] Theodore Askidas and Domitian, by submitting
to the imperial edict and the condemnation of Origen, kept their places and
secured afresh their influence, which the monks of Palestine, who were not
Origenistic, felt severely. They even managed, in the interest of their
party, to turn the attention of the dogmatising emperor to another
question, and moved him to issue, in 544, the edict upon the Three
Chapters. He thought he was bringing back the Monophysites to orthodoxy. He
was really casting a new ferment into the existing agitation.
At first the patriarch Mennas was very displeased with this edict censuring
in the so-called Three Chapters Theodoret, Ibas, and Theodore of Mopsuestia
as Nestorians. He considered the credit of the Council of Chalcedon to be
therein impeached, and declared that he would only subscribe to it after
the Pope had subscribed. Afterwards, being more strongly pressed, he
subscribed unwillingly, but with the reservation, confirmed to him even
upon oath, that if the Bishop of Rome refused his assent his signature
should be returned to him, and his subscription be regarded as withdrawn.
The other eastern patriarchs also at first resisted, but finished by
complying with the imperial threats, as particularly Ephrem of Antioch.
Most of the bishops, accustomed to slavish subjection to their patriarchs,
followed their example, and Mennas had to urge the bishops under him by
every means to comply. However, many bishops complained of this pressure to
the papal legate Stephen, who pronounced against the edict, which seemed
indirectly to impeach the authority of the Fourth Council. He even refused
communion with Mennas because he had broken his first promise and given his
assent before the Pope had decided upon it. Through the whole West the
writings of Theodore, Theodoret, and Ibas were little known, but the
decrees of Chalcedon were zealously maintained. The edict was refused,
especially in Northern Africa. It was censured by the bishop Portian in a
writing addressed to the emperor, and by the learned deacon Ferrandus.
Means had been taken by fraud and force to win the whole East to consent to
the edict.[144] Mennas, patriarch of Constantinople; Ephrem, patriarch of
Antioch; Peter, patriarch of Jerusalem, crouched before the tyranny of
Justinian; and so also Zoilus of Alexandria, though he promised Vigilius
that he would not sign the edict, afterwards subscribed it.[145] At this
point Justinian sought before everything to get the assent of the Pope, and
he sent for Vigilius to Constantinople. He claimed the presence of Vigilius
as his subject in virtue of the conquest of Belisarius: he meant to use
this authority of Vigilius as Pope for his own purpose. Vigilius foresaw
the difficulties into which he would fall. At length he left Rome in 544,
before Totila began the second siege. He lingered in Sicily a year, in 546;
he then travelled through Greece and Illyricum. At last he entered
Byzantium on the 25th January, 547, and was welcomed with the most
brilliant reception. Justinian humbly besought his blessing, and embraced
him with tears. But this good understanding did not last long. Vigilius
approved the conduct of his legates and refused his communion to Mennas,
who, in signing the formula of Hormisdas, had bound himself to follow the
Roman See, and had broken his special promise. Vigilius withdrew it also
from the bishops who had subscribed the imperial edict. He and the bishops
attending him saw in this edict a scheme to help the Acephali, upon whom
Vigilius repeated his anathema. But Mennas feared the emperor much more
than he feared the Pope, whose name he now removed from commemoration at
the Mass. Vigilius, like the westerns in general, considered the edict to
be useless and dangerous, as giving a pretext for seeming to abrogate the
Council of Chalcedon, and also as a claim on the part of the emperor to the
highest authority in Church matters. Justinian tried repeatedly his
personal influence with the Pope, that also of bishops and officers of
State. He even had him watched for a length of time and cut off from all
approach, so that the Pope exclaimed, "If you have made me a prisoner, you
cannot imprison the holy Apostle Peter". Yet the intercourse of Vigilius
with eastern bishops soon convinced him that they were generally agreed
with the emperor; that a prolonged resistance on his part would produce a
new division between Greeks and Latins; that considerable grounds existed
for the condemnation of the Three Chapters, with which, hitherto, he had
not been well acquainted. So he allowed the subject to be further
considered, held out a prospect of agreeing with the emperor, and
readmitted Mennas to his communion, who restored the Pope's name in the
liturgy. This reconciliation took place on the feast of the Princes of the
Apostles, 29th June, 547.