Constantinople, seventy of whom had not signed the imperial edict, issued,
on the 11th April, 548, his _Judgment_, directed to Mennas, of which all
but fragments are lost. In it he most strongly maintained the authority of
the four General Councils, especially of the fourth; put under anathema the
godless writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and also his person; the letter
said to be written by Ibas to Maris, which Justinian had marked as
supposititious, and the writings of Theodoret, which impugned orthodoxy and
the twelve anathemas of Cyril. It was his purpose to quiet excitement,
satisfying the Greeks by a specific condemnation of the Three Chapters, and
the Latins by maintaining the rank of the Council of Chalcedon. And he
required that therewith the strife should cease. But neither side accepted
the condition. The westerns, especially Dacius, archbishop of Milan, and
Facundus, bishop of Hermiane, vehemently attacked his _Judgment_. So did
many African monks. Even two Roman deacons, the Pope's own nephew Rusticus,
and Sebastianus, though they began by supporting the _Judgment_, became
very violent against the Pope, spread the most injurious reports against
him, and disregarded his warnings. He deposed and excommunicated them.
False reports were spread that, against the Council of Chalcedon, the Pope
had condemned the persons of Theodoret and Ibas, and had gone against the
decrees of his predecessors. The Pope, after the death of the empress
Theodora, on the 28th June, 548, had continued by the emperor's wish at
Constantinople, especially since Totila had retaken Rome in 549. He had
gone to Thessalonica and returned; he tried in several letters to the
bishops of Scythia and Gaul to correct their misconceptions. These,
however, prevailed with the bishops of Illyria, Dalmatia, and Africa, who
in 549 and 550 separated themselves from the communion of Vigilius. A thing
not heard of before now occurred. The Roman Bishop stood with the Greek
bishops on one side, the Latin bishops on the other, and the bewilderment
increased from day to day.
In the summer of 550 the Pope and the emperor came to an agreement that a
General Council should be held at which the western bishops should be
present, until which all dispute about the Three Chapters, and any fresh
step on the subject, should be forbidden, and in the meantime the Pope's
_Judgment_ should be returned to him. That took place at once, and
preparations were made for the council. In June a council held at
Mopsuestia by direction of the emperor declared that from the time of human
memory the name of its former bishop, Theodore, had been erased from
commemoration, and the name of St. Cyril put in. But the western bishops
avoided answering the invitation to the council. The Illyrian did not come
at all; the African sent as deputies Reparatus, the primate of Carthage,
Firmus of Numidia, and two Byzacene bishops. These were besieged both with
threats and presents; two were induced to sign the imperial edict; the
other two were banished, Reparatus under charge of a political crime. While
the western bishops showed still less inclination to appear, the court
broke its agreement with Vigilius. A new writing against the Three Chapters
was read in the palace before several bishops, and subscribed by them.
Theodore Askidas, the chief contriver, and his companions, excused
themselves to the Pope, who called them to account, and begged pardon, but
spread the writing still more, set the emperor against Vigilius, and
induced him to publish, in 551, a further edict under the name of a
confession of faith. It contained, together with a detailed exposition of
doctrine upon the Trinity and Incarnation, thirteen anathemas, with the
refutation of different objections made by the defenders of the Three
Chapters; for instance, that the letter of Ibas had been approved at
Chalcedon, the condemnation of dead men forbidden, and Theodore of
Mopsuestia been praised by orthodox Fathers.
The restoration of peace was thus made much more difficult, and the promise
given to the Pope broken. The Pope protected himself against this violation
of the agreement, by which nothing was to be done in the matter before the
intended council, and considered himself released from his engagements. He
saw herein the arbitrary interference of a despotic ruler anticipating the
council's decision, which put in question the Church's whole right of
authority, and much increased the danger of a schism. In an assembly of
Greek and Latin bishops held in the Placidia palace, where he resided, he
desired them to request the emperor to withdraw the proposed edict, and to
wait for a general consideration of the subject, and especially for the
sentence of the Latin bishops. If this was not granted, to refuse their
subscription to the edict. Moreover, the See of Peter would excommunicate
them. Dacius, also, archbishop of Milan, spoke in this sense. But the
protest was disregarded, and Theodore Askidas, who had formed part of the
assembly, went with the bishops of his party to the Church in which the
edict was posted up, held solemn service there, struck out of the diptychs
the patriarch Zoilus of Alexandria, who declined to condemn the Three
Chapters, and proclaimed at once Apollinaris for his successor, with the
consent of the weak Mennas, and in contempt of the Pope's authority. Not
only now were the Three Chapters in question, but the whole right and
independence of the Church's authority. Vigilius, having long warned the
vain court-bishop Theodore Askidas, always a non-resident in his diocese,
and having now been witness of a violence so unprecedented, put him under
excommunication.
At this resistance Justinian was greatly embittered, and was inclined to
imprison the Pope and his attendants. The Pope took refuge in the Church of
St. Peter, by the palace of Hormisdas. He repeated with greater force his
former declaration, entirely deprived Theodore Askidas, and put Mennas and
his companions under ban, until they made satisfaction, on the 14th August,
551. At least the sentence was kept ready for publication. He was attended
by eleven Italian and two African bishops. The emperor sent the praetor
with soldiers to remove him by force. Vigilius clung to the altar, so that
it was nearly pulled down with him. His imprisonment was prevented by the
crowd which burst in, indignant at the ill-treatment offered to the
Church's first bishop, and by the disgust of the soldiers at the gaol-work
put upon them. The emperor, seeming to repent his hastiness, sent high
officers of State to assure the Pope of personal security, at first with
the threat to have him removed by force if he was not content with this;
then he empowered the officers to swear that no ill should befal him. The
Pope thereon returned to the palace of Placidia. But there, in spite of
oaths, he was watched, deprived of his true servants, surrounded with paid
spies, attacked with every sort of intrigue, even his handwriting forged.
Then, seeing his palace entirely surrounded by suspicious persons, he
risked, on the 23rd December, 551, a flight across the Bosphorus to the
Church of St. Euphemia in Chalcedon, in which the Fourth Council had been
held. Here, in January, 552, he published his decree against Theodore and
Mennas, and was for a long time sick. When the emperor, with the offer of
another oath, sent high officials to invite him to return to the capital,
he replied that he needed no fresh oaths if the emperor had only the will
to restore to the Church the peace which she enjoyed under his uncle
Justin. He desired the emperor to avoid communion with those who lay under
his ban. In his Encyclical of the 5th February, 552, he made known to all
the Church what had passed, and expressed his belief and his wishes. Even
in his humiliation the successor of Peter inspired a great veneration.
They tried to approach him. He soon received a writing from Theodore
Askidas, Mennas, Andrew, archbishop of Ephesus, and other bishops, in which
they declared their adherence to the decrees of the four General Councils
which had been made in agreement with the legates of the Apostolic See, as
well as to the papal letters. They consented also to the withdrawal of all
that had been written on the Three Chapters, and besought the Pope to
pardon as well their intercourse with those who lay under his ban as the
offences committed against him, in which also they claimed to have had no
part. So things were brought to the condition in which they were before the
appearance of the last imperial edict. Vigilius now returned from Chalcedon
to Constantinople.
Mennas, who died in August, 552, was succeeded by Eutychius. He addressed
himself to the Pope on the 6th January, 553, whose name had been restored
by Mennas to the first place in the diptychs. Eutychius presented his
confession of faith. He also proposed that a decision, in respect of the
Three Chapters in accordance with the four General Councils, should be made
in a meeting of bishops under the Pope's presidency. Apollinaris of
Alexandria, Domnus of Antioch, Elias of Thessalonica, and other bishops
subscribed this request. The Pope, in his reply of the 8th January, praised
their zeal, and accepted the proposition of a council which he had before
approved. Negotiations then began about its management. Here the emperor
resisted the Pope's proposals in many points. He would not have the council
held in Italy or Sicily, as the Pope desired, nor carry out his own
proposal to summon such western bishops as the Pope named. He proposed
further that an equal number of bishops should be consulted on both sides;
hinting, moreover, that an equal number should be drawn from each
patriarchate, while Vigilius meant an equal number from the East and the
West, which he thought necessary to bring about a successful result. At
last the emperor caused the council actually to meet on the 5th May, 553,
under the presidency of Eutychius, with 151 bishops, among whom only six
from Africa represented the West, against the Pope's will, in the
secretarium of the chief church of Constantinople. First was read an
imperial writing of much detail, which entered into the previous
negotiations with Vigilius; then the correspondence between Eutychius and
the Pope. It was resolved to invite him again. Vigilius refused to take
part in the council, first on account of the excessive number of eastern
bishops and the absence of most western; then of the disregard shown to his
wishes. Further, he sought to preserve himself from compulsion, and
maintain his decision in freedom. He had reason to fear the infringement of
his dignity. Moreover, no one of his predecessors had taken personally a
part in eastern councils, and Pope Celestine had forbidden his legates to
enter into discussion with bishops, and appear as a party. The Pope
maintained his refusal not only to the high officers of the emperor, but to
an embassy from the council, at the head of which stood three eastern
patriarchs. This he did, being the emperor's subject; being also in the
power of an emperor who was able to appear to the eastern bishops almost
the head of the Church, and to sway them as he pleased. The Pope would only
declare himself ready to give his judgment apart. An account of this
unsuccessful invitation was given in the council's second session of the
8th May. The western bishops still in the capital were invited to attend,
but several declined, because the Pope took no part. At the third session,
of the 9th May, after reading the former protocols, a confession of faith
entirely agreeing with the imperial document communicated four days before
was drawn up, and a special treatment of the Three Chapters ordered for
another day. At the fourth session, seventy-one heretical or offensive
propositions of Theodore of Mopsuestia were read and condemned. In the
fifth, the opposition made to him by St. Cyril and others was considered,
as well as the question whether it is allowable to anathematise after their
death men who have died in the Church's communion. This was affirmed
according to previous examples, and testimony from Augustine, Cyril, and
others. Theodoret's writings against Cyril were also anathematised. In the
sixth session, the same was done with the letter of Ibas. In the seventh
session, several documents sent by the emperor were read, specially letters
of Pope Vigilius up to 550, and a letter from the emperor Justin to his
prefect Hypatius, in 520, forbidding that a feast to Theodore or to
Theodoret should any longer be kept in the city of Cyrus. The imperial
commissioner informed the council, likewise, that the Pope had sent by the
sub-deacon Servusdei a letter to the emperor, which the emperor had not
received, and therefore not communicated to the council. The longer Latin
text of the acts also says that the emperor had commanded the Pope's name
to be erased from the diptychs, without prejudice, however, to communion
with the Apostolic See, which the council accepted. It held its last
sitting on the 2nd June, 553, and issued fourteen anathemas in accordance
with the thirteen of Justinian. There were then present 165 bishops.
The document brought to the emperor by the sub-deacon in the Pope's name,
but rejected, must be what has come down to us as the Constitution of the
14th May. It had the subscription of Vigilius, of sixteen bishops--nine
Italian, three Asiatic, two Illyrian, and two African--with three Roman
clergy. It decidedly rejected sixty propositions drawn from the writings of
Theodore; anathematised five errors as to the Person of Christ; forbade the
condemnation of Theodore's person, and of the two other Chapters. If this
document was really drawn up by Vigilius, who had persisted during almost
six years, as the emperor admitted, in condemning the Three Chapters, it
must be explained by the Pope finding his especial difficulty in the manner
of terminating the matter, so that the western bishops should be entirely
satisfied that the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon remained inviolate;
that he purposed only to condemn errors, but spare persons; that he wished
to set his refusal against the pressure of the changeable emperor and the
blind submission of the Grecian bishops, without surrendering any point of
faith. Many irregularities appeared in what preceded the council and took
place in it. Justinian's conduct was dishonouring to the Church, and he
used force to get the decrees of the Council accepted. At last Vigilius,
who seems with other bishops to have been banished, gave way to the
pressure, and issued a decided condemnation of the Three Chapters, in a
writing to Eutychius of 8th December, 553; and in a Constitution dated 23rd
February, 554, he made no mention of the council, but gave his own decision
in accordance with it, and independent of it, as he had before intended.
Only by degrees the council held by Eutychius obtained the name of the
Fifth General Council.
In August, 554, the Pope was again on good terms with the emperor, who
issued at his request the Pragmatic Sanction for Italy. Then Vigilius set
out to return to Rome, but died on his way at Syracuse in the beginning of
555. He had spent seven years in the Greek capital, in a position more
difficult than had ever before occurred; ignorant himself of the language;
struggling to his utmost to meet the dangers which assaulted the Church
from every side. Now one and now another seemed to threaten the greater
evil. He never wavered in the question of faith itself, but often as to
what it was opportune to do: as whether it was advisable or necessary to
condemn persons and writings which the Council of Chalcedon had spared:
whether to issue a judgment which would be looked upon by the Monophysites
as a triumph of their cause: which for the same reason would be utterly
detested by most westerns, as a supposed surrender of the Council of
Chalcedon; which, instead of closing the old divisions, might create new.
Subsequent times showed the correctness of his solicitude.[146]
The patriarch Eutychius who presided at this council by the emperor's
order, without the Pope, was held in great consideration by Justinian, and
was consulted in his most important affairs. When Justinian had restored
with the greatest splendour the still existing Church of Santa Sophia,
Eutychius consecrated it in his presence on the 24th December, 563.
Justinian then allotted to the service of the cathedral 60 priests, 100
deacons, 90 sub-deacons, 110 lectors, 120 singers, 100 ostiarii, and 40
deaconesses, a number which much increased between Justinian and Heraclius.
Justinian in his last years was minded to sanction by a formal decree a
special doctrine which, after long resisting the Eutycheans, he had taken
from them. It was that the Body of Christ was from the beginning
incorruptible, and incapable of any change. He willed that all his bishops
should set their hands to this decree. Eutychius was one of the first to
resist. On the 22nd January, 565, he was taken by force from his cathedral
to a monastery; he refused to appear before a resident council called by
the emperor, which deposed him, and appointed a successor. He was banished
to Amasea, where he died, twelve years afterwards, in the monastery which
he had formerly governed.[147]
But Justinian had become again, by the conquest of Narses, lord of Rome and
Italy, and as such, in the year 554, issued at the request of Vigilius his
Pragmatic Sanction. In Italy the struggle was at an end; the land was a
desert. Flourishing cities had become heaps of smoking ruins. Milan had
been destroyed. Three hundred thousand are said to have perished there.
Before the recal of Belisarius, fifty thousand had died of hunger in the
march of Ancona. Such facts give a notion of Rome's condition. In 554,
Narses returned, and his victorious host entered, laden with booty, crowned
with laurels. It was his task to maintain a regular government, which he
did with the title of Patricius and Commander.[148] The Pragmatic Sanction
was intended to establish a new political order of things in Italy, which
was reunited to the empire. The two supreme officials of the Italian
province were the Exarch and the Prefect. The title of Exarch then came up,
and continued to the end of the Greek dominion in Italy. He united in
himself the military and civil authority; but for the exercise of the
latter the Prefect stood at his side as the first civil officer. Obedience
to the whole body of legislation, as codified by Justinian's order, was
enacted. For the rest the provisions of Constantine were followed. The
administration of justice was in the hands of provincial judges, whom the
bishops and the nobility chose from the ranks of the latter. It was then
the bishops began to take part in the courts of justice of their own
cities, as well in the choice and nomination of the officers as in their
supervision.[149] The words Roman commonwealth, Roman emperor, Roman army,
were heard again. But no word was said of restoring a western emperor. Rome
retained only an ideal precedence; Constantinople was the seat of empire.
Rome received a permanent garrison, and had to share with Ravenna, where
the heads of the Italian government soon permanently resided. Justinian's
constitution found existing the mere shadow of a senate. The prefect of the
city governed at Rome. There is mention made of a salary given to
professors of Grammar and Rhetoric,[150] to physicians and lawyers; but it
is doubtful whether this ever came into effect. The Gothic war[151] seems
to have destroyed the great public libraries of Rome, the Palatine and
Ulpian, as well as the private libraries of princely palaces, such as
Boethius and Symmachus possessed. And in all Italy the war of extermination
between Goths and Greeks swallowed up the costly treasures of ancient
literature, save such remnant as the Benedictine monasteries were able to
collect and preserve.[152] No building of Justinian's in Rome is known.
All his work of this kind was given to Ravenna. From this time forth every
new building in Rome is due to the Popes.
Small reason had the Popes to rejoice that the rule of an orthodox emperor
had followed at Rome that of an Arian king. Three months after the death of
Vigilius at Syracuse Justinian caused the deacon Pelagius to be elected: he
had difficulty in obtaining his recognition until he had cleared himself by
oath in St. Peter's of an accusation that he had hastened his predecessor's
death. The confirmation of the Pope's election remained with the emperor.
This permanent fetter came upon the Popes from the interference of Odoacer
the Herule in 484. After Justinian's death, the Romans sent an embassy to
his successor complaining that their lot had been more endurable under the
dominion of barbarians than under the Greeks.
When Narses,[153] re-entering Rome, celebrated a triple triumph over the
expulsion of barbarians from Italy, the reunion of the empire, and the
Church's victory over the Arians, a contemporary historian writes that the
mind of man had not power enough to conceive so many reverses of fortune,
such destruction of cities, such a flight of men, such a murdering of
peoples, much less to describe them in words. Italy was strewn with ruins
and dead bodies from the Alps to Tarentum. Famine and pestilence, following
on the steps of war, had reduced whole districts to desolation. Procopius
compares the reckoning of losses to that of reckoning the sands of the
sea. A sober estimate computes that one-third of the population perished,
and the ancient form of life in Rome and in all Italy was extinct for ever.
But before we make an estimate of Justinian's whole action and character
and their result, a subject on which we have scarcely touched has to be
carefully weighed.
What was the relation between the Two Powers conceived in the mind of
Justinian, expressed in his legislation, carried out in his conduct,
whether to the Roman Primate or the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch,
Jerusalem, and Constantinople in his own eastern empire, or to the whole
Church when assembled in council, as at Constantinople in 553? Was he
merely carrying on as emperor a relation which he had inherited from so
many predecessors, beginning with Constantine, or did he by his own laws
and conduct alter an equilibrium before existing, and impair a definite and
lawful union by transgressing the boundaries which made it the co-operation
of Two Powers.
If we look back just a hundred years before his _Digest_ appeared, we find,
in the great deed[154] in which the emperors Theodosius II. and Valentinian
III. convoked the Council of Ephesus, the charge which they considered to
be laid upon the imperial power to maintain that union of the natural and
the spiritual government on which, as on a joint foundation, the Roman
State, in the judgment of its rulers, was itself built. Some of the words
they use are: "We are the ministers of Providence for the advancement of
the commonwealth, while, inasmuch as we represent the whole body of our
subjects, we protect them at once in a right belief and in a civil polity
corresponding with it".
This first and all-embracing principle of protecting all and every power
which existed in the commonwealth, and maintaining it in due position, was
most firmly held by Justinian. As to his own imperial authority and the
basis on which it rested, he says: "Ever bearing in mind whatever regards
the advantage and the honour of the commonwealth which God has entrusted to
our hands, we seek to bring it to effect".[155] As to the Two Powers
themselves, he recognises them thus: "The greatest gifts of God to men
bestowed by the divine mercy are the priesthood and the empire; the former
ministering in divine things, the latter presiding over human things, and
exerting its diligence therein. Both, proceeding from one and the same
principle, are the ornament of human life. Therefore nothing will be so
great a care to emperors as the upright conduct of bishops, for, indeed,
bishops are ever supplicating God for emperors. But if what concerns them
be entirely blameless and full of confidence in God, and if the imperial
power rightly and duly adorn the commonwealth entrusted to it, an admirable
agreement will ensue, conferring on the human race all that is for its
good. We then bear the greatest solicitude for the genuine divine doctrine,
and for the upright conduct of bishops, which we trust, when that doctrine
is maintained, because through it we shall obtain the greatest gifts from
God,[156] shall be secure in the possession of those which we have, and
shall acquire those which have not yet come. But all will be done well and
fittingly if the beginning from which it springs be becoming and dear to
God. And this we are confident will be, provided the observance of the holy
canons be maintained, such as the Apostles, so justly praised and
worshipped, those eye-witnesses and ministers of God the Word, have
delivered down to us, and the holy Fathers have maintained and carried
out."[157] And he proceeds to give the force of civil law to the canons
concerning the election of bishops and other matters.
In another law he says, "Be it therefore enacted[158] that the force of law
be given to the holy canons of the Church which have been set forth or
confirmed by the four holy Councils; that is, by the 318 holy Fathers in
the Nicene, by the 150 in that of Constantinople, by the first of Ephesus,
in which Nestorius was condemned, and by Chalcedon, when Eutyches, together
with Nestorius, was put under anathema. For we accept the decrees of these
four synods as the Holy Scriptures, and observe their canons as laws.
"And, therefore, be it enacted according to their definitions that the most
holy Pope of Old Rome is the first of all bishops, and that the most
blessed archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, holds the second place
after the holy Apostolic See of Old Rome, but takes precedence of all other
bishops."
In the laws just quoted we see three of the most important principles which
run through the acts of Justinian. The first is, that the emperor, having
the whole commonwealth committed to him by God, is the guardian both of
human and divine things in it, which together make up the whole
commonwealth; the second is, that there are Two Powers, the human and the
divine, both derived from God. The third is, that while the emperor is the
direct head of all human things, he guards divine things by accepting the
decrees of General Councils as the Holy Scriptures, and by giving to the
canons of the Church as descending from the Apostles, "the eye-witnesses
and ministers of God the Word," the force of law.
If in these laws we find Church and State greet each other as friends, and
offer each other a mutual support, because both aim at one object, and what
the holiness of the Church required, advanced no less the peace, the
security, and the welfare of the State, so a complete concurrence between
them might be shown in all other respects.[159] The State recognised and
honoured the whole constitution of the Church as it had been drawn in its
first lineaments by the author of the Christian religion, as in perfect
sequence it had formed itself out of the Church's inmost life, and that in
force and purity, because it had been free from the pressure of external
laws. The proper position of the Roman bishop as supreme head of the whole
Church, the relation of the patriarchs to each other, their privileges over
the metropolitans, the close connection of these with their several
bishops, were never for a moment unrecognised, because so clear a
consciousness of these showed itself in the whole Catholic world, that no
change was possible without a general scandal. Thus the laws of Church and
State kept pace with each other, when it could not but happen that the ties
between patriarch and metropolitan, between metropolitan and bishop, became
more stringent, as external increase was followed by decline in inward life
and the fervour of faith. Thus the regular course was that the metropolitan
examined the election of the bishop by the clergy and people, consecrated
him, introduced him to the direction of his charge, and by the _litterae
formatae_ gave him his place in the fabric of the Church. So the
metropolitan was consecrated by his patriarch, in whose own election all
the bishops of the province, but especially the metropolitans, took part.
The metropolitan summoned his bishops, the patriarchs their metropolitans,
to the yearly synods. The bishops did not vote without their metropolitan;
they took counsel with him, sometimes intrusted him with their votes.[160]
General laws of the Church, and also imperial edicts, were transmitted
first to the patriarchs, and from them to the metropolitans, and from these
to the bishops. Bishops might not leave their diocese without permission of
the metropolitan, nor the metropolitan without that of the patriarch.[161]
In like manner, we find in Justinian's laws the relation of the bishop to
his diocese, and especially to his clergy, recognised as we find it
presented by the Church from the beginning, and as the lapse of time had
more and more drawn it out. The law's recognition secured it from all
attack. The idea that without the bishop there is neither altar, sacrifice,
nor sacrament had become, through the spirit of unity which rules the
Church, a fact visible to all. The more heresies and divisions exerted
their destroying and dissolving power, while the Church went on expanding
in bulk, every divine service in private houses was forbidden. Since such
assemblies attacked as well the peace and security of the State as the
unity of belief, the governors of provinces, as well as the bishops, had
most carefully to guard against such acts. Neither in city nor country
could a church, a monastery, or an oratory be raised without the bishop's
permission. This was made known to all by his consecrating the appointed
place in solemn procession, with prayer and singing, by elevation of the
cross. Without this such building was considered a place where errors
lurked and deserters took refuge.[162] In this concurrent action of the
laws of Church and State respecting the relation of the bishop to the whole
Church and to his own clergy, we never miss the perfect union between the
two even as to the smallest particulars. The conclusion is plain that the
secular power did not intend to act here on the ground of its own
supremacy, or as an exercise of its own majesty. Not only did it issue no
new regulations whereby any fresh order should be in the smallest degree
introduced: it raised to the condition of its own laws the canons which had
long obtained force in the Church, whose binding power was accepted by
everyone who respected the Church, as lying in themselves and in the
authority from which they proceeded. These it took simply and without
addition, and by so taking recognised in them the double character. So, if
they were transgressed, a double penalty ensued. The Church's punitive
power is contained in its legislative, the recognition of which is an
acknowledgment of the former. This the State, not only tacitly but
expressly, recognised. And by taking the Church's laws, it not only did not
obliterate the character and dignity of that authority, from which they had
issued, but it did not change the penalty, nor consider it from another
point of view. It remained what it had always been, and from its nature
must be, an ecclesiastical punishment. The State only lent its arm, when
that was necessary, for its execution. With this, however, it was not
content. The Church's life entered too deeply into the secular life. Those
who were to carry on the one and sanctify the other stood in the closest
connection with the whole State. So it made the canons its own proper laws,
and thus attached temporal penalties to their transgression. So we find
everywhere the addition that each violation would carry with it not only
the divine judgment and arm the Church's hand to punish, but likewise draw
down upon it the prescribed penalties from the imperial majesty.
But so far the empire was maintaining by its secular authority the proper
laws and institutions of the Church. Justinian went far beyond this.[163]
His legislation associated the bishop with the count in the government of
cities and provinces. It gave up to him exclusively the superintendence of
morality and the protection of moral interests, the control of public works
and of prisons. It bestowed on him a large jurisdiction--even more, put
under his supervision the conduct of public functionaries in their
administration, and conferred on him a preponderating influence on their
election. In a word, it by degrees displaced the centre of gravity in
political life by investing the episcopate with a large portion of temporal
attributions.
To give in detail what is here summed up would involve too large a space. A
few specimens must suffice. The bishop in his own spiritual office would
have a great regard for widows and orphans.[164] Parents when dying felt
secure in recommending children to their protection against the avarice of
secular judges. Hence the custom had arisen that bishops had to watch over
the execution of wills, especially such as were made for benevolent
purposes. They could in case of need call in the assistance of the
governor. Their higher intelligence and disinterested character were in
such general credit that they had no little influence in the drawing up of
wills. But the State under Justinian was so far from regarding: this with
jealousy, that he ordered, if a traveller should die without a will in an
inn, the bishop of the place should take possession of the property, either
to hand it over to the rightful heirs, or to employ it for pious purposes.
If the innkeeper were found guilty of embezzlement, he was to pay thrice
the sum to the bishop, who could apply it as he wished. No custom,
privilege, or statute was allowed to have force against this. Those who
opposed it were made incapable of testing. Down to the sixth century[165]
we find no law of the Church touching the testamentary dispositions of
Christians. Justinian is the first of whom we know that he entrusted the
execution of wills specially to the supervision of bishops. That he did
this shows the great trust which he placed in their uprightness.
It was to be expected that bishops should have a special care for the city
which was their see.[166] Various laws of Justinian gave them here
privileges in which we cannot fail to see the foundation of the later
extension of episcopal authority and influence over the whole sphere of
secular life. With their clergy and with the chief persons in the city,
they took special part in the election of _defensors_ and of the other city
officers; so also in the appointment of provincial administrators. It was
their duty to protect subjects against oppressions from soldiers and
exaction of provision, as well as against all excessive claim of taxes and
unlawful gifts to imperial officers. A governor on assuming the province
was bound to assemble the bishop, the clergy, and the chief people of the
capital, that he might lay before them the imperial nomination, and the
extent of the duties which he was to fulfil. Thus they were enabled to
judge on each occasion whether the representative of the emperor was
fulfilling his charge. Magistrates, before entering on office, had to take
the prescribed oath before the metropolitan and the chief citizens. The
oath itself was an act made before God, and as such under cognisance of the
bishop. But special regulations enjoined him to watch over the whole
conduct and each particular act of the governor. If general complaints were
made of injustice, he was to inform the emperor. If only an individual had
suffered wrongs, the bishop was judge between both parties. If sentence was
given against the accused, and he refused to make satisfaction, the matter
came before the emperor in the last resort. The emperor, if the bishop had
decided according to right, condemned his governor to death, because he who
should have been the protector of others against wrong had himself
committed wrong. If a governor was deposed for maladministration, he was
not to quit the province before fifty days, and he could be accused before
the bishop for every unjust transaction. Even if he was removed or
transferred to another charge, and had left behind him a lawful substitute,
the same proceeding took place before the bishop. On this account civil
orders also were sent to the bishops to be publicly considered by them, and
kept among the church documents, their fulfilment supervised, and
violations reported to the emperor. But, to complete this picture, it must
be remarked that this supervision was not one-sided. The emperor sent even
his ecclesiastical regulations not only through the patriarch of
Constantinople to the metropolitans, but through the Praetorian prefect to
the governors of provinces. He directed them to support the bishops in
their execution, but he likewise enjoined them to report neglect of them to
the emperor. Especially they were to watch the execution of imperial
decrees upon Church discipline, and monasteries in particular. The rules,
so often repeated because so frequently broken, respecting the
inalienability of Church property, were to be specially watched, and also
the celebration, as prescribed, of yearly synods. But the civil magistrates
were only recommended to keep a supervision, which did not extend to the
right of official exhortation; far less that they were allowed in any
ecclesiastical matter, in which the bishop might be at all in fault, to act
upon their own authority, or receive an accusation against him from
whomsoever and for whatsoever it might be. But the bishop could act in his
quality of judge between a party and the governor himself, if the party
had called upon him. Especially, Justinian allowed bishops a decisive
influence upon legal proceedings in certain branches. The inspection of
forbidden games, public buildings, roads, and bridges, the distribution of
corn, was under them. They were to examine the competence of a security.
The curators of insane persons took oath before them to fulfil their duty.
If a father had named none, the bishop took part in the choice of them; the
act was deposited among the church documents. If the children of an insane
father wished to marry, the bishop had to determine the dowry and the
nuptial donation. In the absence of the proper judge, the bishop of the
city could receive complaints from those who had to make a legal demand on
another, or to protect themselves from a pledge falling overdue. The proofs
of a wrong account could, in the accountant's absence, be made before the
bishop, and had legal force. If the ground-lord would not receive the
ground-rent, the feoffee should consign it at Constantinople to the
Praetorian prefect or the patriarch, in the provinces to the governor, or
in his absence to the bishop of the city where the ground-lord who refused
to receive it had his domicile. Whoever found no hearing, either in a civil
or criminal matter, before the judge of the province, was directed to go to
the bishop, who could either call the judge to him, or go in person to the
judge, to invite him to do justice to the complainant according to the
strict law, in order that the bishop might not be obliged to carry the
refusal of justice by appeal to the imperial court.[167] If the judge was
not moved by this, the bishop gave the complainant a statement of the whole
case for the emperor, and the delinquent had to fear severe penalties, not
alone because he had been untrue to his office, but because he did not
allow himself, even at the demand of the bishop, to do what, without it,
lay in the circle of his duties. But this referring to the bishop was not
arbitrary--that is, not one which it lay in the will of the complainant to
use or not, but necessary, so that anyone who appealed to the imperial
court without this endeavour incurred, whether his complaint was founded or
not, the same punishment as the judge who refused to give a decision at the
bishop's request. Even if the complainant only suspected the judge, he was
bound to apply to the bishop to join the judge in examining the matter, and
to bring it to a strict legal issue. In the face of such honourable
confidence which was placed in the bishops, and which was also justified in
general by a happy result, we ought not to be surprised if either the
emperor himself or inferior magistrates committed to them the termination
of entangled processes, in which they exercised just such a jurisdiction as
may either in general be exercised by delegates, or was committed to them
for the special occasion.
The emperor[168] in his legislation left no part of the Church's
discipline unregarded. His purpose was in all respects to make the State
Christian; and he considered no part of divine and human things, whether it
were dogma or conduct,--which, together, made up the Church's
life,--withdrawn from his care and guardianship. Observances which had
begun in custom, and gradually been drawn out definitely and enacted in
canons, he took into his _Digest_, not with the intention of giving them
greater inward force or stronger grounds as duties, but to show the unity
of his own effort with that of the Church. He willingly put the imperial
stamp on her salutary regulations. He showed his readiness to help her with
external force wherever the inviolable sanctity of her laws seemed to be
threatened by the opposition of individuals. In this he recognised the
unchangeable order which is so deeply rooted in the nature both of Church
and State, that order which is the greatest security for the wellbeing and
prosperity of both. And the Church in the course of her long life had
hitherto almost universally maintained this order; always, at least, in
principle. If it was anywhere transgressed, it was either because the
secular power was acting under special commission and approval of the
Church, or, if that power acted without such approval, it met with open
contradiction whereby not only the illegality of the particular action was
marked, but the principle of the Church's freedom and independence was
preserved.
There is a passage in the address of the eastern bishops to Tarasius,
patriarch of Constantinople, quoted in the Second Nicene Council of
789,[169] the Seventh General, which cites the words of Justinian given
above in one of his laws. The bishops say in their own character--and they
are bishops who describe themselves "as sitting in darkness and the shadow
of death, that is, of the Arabian impiety"--"It is the priesthood which
sanctifies the empire and forms its basis; it is the empire which
strengthens and supports the priesthood. Concerning these, a wise king,
most blessed among holy princes, said: The greatest gift of God to men is
the priestly and the imperial power, the one ordering and administering
divine things, the other ruling human things by upright laws."
If we considered the principles of Justinian alone as exhibited in his
legislation, without regard to his conduct, we might, like the eastern
bishops, take these words as the motto of his reign and the key to his acts
as legislator. Indeed, it may be said that this legislation cannot be
understood except by presupposing throughout the cordiality of the alliance
between the Two Powers. In the election and the lives of bishops, in the
discipline of religious houses, in the strict observance of the celibate
life which has been assumed with full consent of the will by clergy and by
monks, the emperor is as strict in his laws as the Church in her canons.
The ruler of the State, who makes laws with a single word of his own mouth,
who commands all the armies of the State, who bestows all its offices, who
is, in truth, the autocrat, the impersonated commonwealth, shows not a
particle of jealousy towards the Church as Church. He enjoins the strict
observance of her canons in the fullest conviction that the end which she
aims at as Church is the end which he also desires as emperor; that the
good life of her bishops and priests is essential for the good of society
in general; that the perfect orthodoxy of her creed is the dearest
possession, the pillar and safeguard, of his own government. Heresy and
schism are, in his sight, the greatest crimes against the State, as they
are the greatest sins against the Church and against God. In the course of
the two hundred years from Constantine to Justinian the Roman State, as
understood by the Illyrian peasant who ruled it for thirty-eight years, had
intertwined itself as closely with the Catholic Church as ever it had with
Cicero's "immortal gods" in the time of Augustus, or Trajan, or Decius. It
was the special pride and glory of Justinian to maintain intact this
alliance as the palladium of the empire. And, therefore, his legislation
touched every part of the ecclesiastical government, every dogma of the
Church's creed, and only on account of this alliance did the Church
acquiesce in such a legislation. I suppose that no greater contradiction
can ever be conceived than that which exists between the mind of Justinian
and the mind which now, and for a long time, has directed the nations of
Europe, so far as their governments are concerned in their attitude towards
the Church of God. In Europe are nations which are nurtured upon heresy and
schism, whether as the basis of the original rebellion which severed them
from the communion of the Church or as the outcome of "Free-thought" in
their subsequent evolution through centuries of speculation unbridled by
spiritual authority; nations, again, bisected by pure infidelity, or
struggling with the joint forces of heresy and infidelity which strive to
overthrow constitutions originally Catholic in all their structure. In one
empire alone the attitude of Constantine and Justinian towards the Church
is still maintained. It is that wherein the emperor rules with an amplitude
of authority such as Constantine and Justinian held, whose successor he
claims to be; where, also, an imperial aide-de-camp, booted and spurred,
sits at the council board of a synod called holy, and is by far the most
important member of it, for nothing can pass without his sanction--a synod
which rules the bishops, being itself nothing but a ministry of the State,
drawing, like the council of the empire, its jurisdiction from the emperor.
Justinian was a true successor of the great Theodosius in so far as he
upheld orthodoxy, and endeavoured to unite all his subjects in one belief
and one centre of unity. The greatest of the Roman emperors had for their
first and chief motive, in upholding this first principle of imperial
policy, the conviction that thus only they could hope to maintain the peace
and security of the empire. Schism in the Church betokened rebellion in the
State. In the fourth century heresy had driven the empire to the very brink
of destruction. Besides this, all the populations converted from heathendom
were accustomed to see a complete harmony between religion and the State,
which appeared almost blent into one. Again, we must not forget that at
this time the Christian religion had been lately accepted distinctly as a
divine institution, and that it embraced the whole man with a plenitude of
power which the indifference and division of our own times hardly allow us
to conceive. Those who would realise this grasp of the Christian faith,
transforming and exalting the whole being, may reach a faint perception of
it by reading the great Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries--St.
Basil, St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and St. Leo.
They were not in danger of taking the moral corruption of an effete
civilisation for the Christian faith. Again, the emperors, living in the
midst of this immense intellectual and moral power--for instance, Justinian
himself practising in a court the austerities of a monastery--recognised
the confession of the same faith as the strongest band which united
subjects with their prince. They thought that those who were not united
with them in belief could not serve them with perfect love and fidelity.
And, lastly, they hoped that their own zeal in maintaining the Church's
unity unimpaired would make them worthier of the divine favour, and give
success to all their undertakings. Let us take the words of Theodosius, one
of the greatest and best among them, to his colleague the younger
Valentinian, who up to the time of his mother Justina's death had been
unjust to the Catholic cause and favoured the Arian heresy: "The imperial
dignity is supported, not by arms, but by the justice of the cause.
Emperors who feared God have won victories without armies, have subdued
enemies and made them tributary, and have escaped all dangers. So
Constantine the Great overcame the tyrant Licinius in a sea-fight. So thy
father (the first Valentinian) succeeded in protecting his realm from its
enemies, won mighty victories, and destroyed many barbarians. On the
contrary, thy uncle Valens polluted churches by the murder of saints and
the banishing of priests. Hence by guidance of Divine Providence he was
besieged by the Goths, and found his death in the flames. It is true that
he who has not unjustly expelled thee does not worship Christ aright. But
thy perverse belief has given this opportunity to Maximus. If we do not
return to Christ, how can we call upon His aid in the struggle?" The
following emperors were of the same judgment: so that they attached to each
decree which concerned ecclesiastical matters the motive of meriting
thereby God's approval, since they not only took pains to please Him, but
also led their subjects to do so. We employ, says Justinian, every care
upon the holy churches, because we believe that our empire will be
maintained, and the commonwealth protected by the favour of God, but
likewise to save our own souls and the souls of all our subjects.
Justinian likewise would have a keen remembrance of the degradation from
which his uncle had restored the empire. None knew better than he how the
ignoble reigns of the usurper Basiliscus, of Zeno, and of Anastasius, by
perpetual tampering with heresy and ruthless persecution of the orthodox,
had well-nigh broken that empire to pieces. Had he not thrown all his
energy, as the leading spirit of his uncle's realm, into that great
submission to Pope Hormisdas which rendered its beginning illustrious?
Nevertheless a dark blot lies upon the name and memory of Justinian. He was
not only successor of the great Theodosius in his ardent zeal for the
Church's doctrine and unity, but likewise of Constantine, when he sullied
his greatness and risked all the success of his former life by falling into
the hands of the Nicomedian Eusebius.
The vast event by which the Christian Church had become a ruling power in
the commonwealth had affected from that time forth the whole being of
Church and State. Christian emperors had come to see in bishops the Fathers
and Princes of such a Church, consecrated by God to that office, not
appointed by men.[170] As such they had honoured them, committed to their
wisdom and guidance the salvation of their own souls, and the weal itself
of the commonwealth; not hindered them in the performance of their duties,
not hampered them by restrictive laws. Rather they had protected them by
external force from hindrance when invited thus to show their protection as
heads of the State. Circumstances led them on to a more immediate entrance
into the Church's special domain, and the things which happened in that
domain led to this their entrance. It kept even pace with the developments
and disturbances caused by heresy therein.
Christ had committed to the whole episcopate, under the guidance of the
Holy Spirit, the task of spreading the seed of Christian doctrine over the
earth, of watching its growth, of eradicating the false seed sown in
night-time by the enemy. In proportion as the empire's head took part in
this work, his influence on the episcopate could not but increase. If his
participation was confined within its due limits, if the temporal ruler
hedged the Church round from irruption of external power, if he rooted the
tares out of her field only to clear her enclosure, his relation to the
bishops remained merely external. But if he went on himself to lay down the
limit of the Church's domain, or even if he only took an active part in
such limitation; if he made himself the judge what was wheat and what was
tares, in so doing he had won an influence on the bishops which did not
belong to him. Then Church and State ran a danger of seeing their
respective limits confused. Thus the relation of the bishops to the ruler
of the State became then, and remains always, an unfailing standard of the
Church's freedom and independence.
Now, striking and peremptory as the eastern submission to Pope Hormisdas
was, in which Justinian, then a man of thirty-six, had taken large part;
clear and unambiguous as in his legislation appears the recognition of the
Two Powers, sacerdotal and imperial, which make together the joint
foundation of the State, and are a necessity of its wellbeing; distinct,
likewise, as is the imperial proclamation of the Pope as the first of all
bishops in his laws, his letters, confirmed by his reception of the Popes
Agapetus and Vigilius in his own capital city; frank and unembarrassed as
his acknowledgment of St. Peter's successors, yet, when he had reached the
mature age of seventy, and was lord by conquest of Rome reduced to absolute
impotence, and of Italy as a subject province, his treatment of the first
bishop, in the person of Vigilius, was a contradiction of his own laws as
to the two domains of divine and human things. He passed beyond the limits
which marked the boundaries of the two powers. He made himself the supreme
judge of doctrine. He convoked a General Council without the Pope's assent;
he terminated it without his sanction; he treated the Pope as a prisoner
for resisting such action. It is true that St. Peter's successor--and this
with a stain upon him which no successor of St. Peter had worn before
him--escaped with St. Peter's life in him unimpaired; but so far as the
action of Justinian went it was unfilial, inconsistent with his own laws,
perilous in the extreme to the Church, dishonouring to the whole
episcopate. The divine protection guarded Vigilius--that Vigilius whom an
imperious woman had put upon the seat of a lawful living Pope--from
sacrifice of the authority to which, on the martyrdom of his predecessor,
he succeeded. He died at Syracuse, and St. Peter lived after him
undiminished in the great St. Gregory. The names mean the same, the one in
Latin, the other in Greek; but no successor ever took on himself the
blighted name of Vigilius, while many of the greatest among the Popes have
chosen for themselves the name of Gregory, and one at least of the sixteen
has equalled the glory of the first.
In judging the conduct of Justinian, both in treatment of persons and in
dealing with doctrine, we cannot fail to see that the imperial duty of
protection passed into the imperial lust for mastery. If his treatment of
Vigilius, whom he acknowledged in the clearest terms as Pope, was
scandalous and cruel, still worse, if possible, was the assumption of a
right to interpret and to define the Church's doctrine for the Church. The
usurper Basiliscus had been the first to issue an imperial decree on
doctrine. This was in favour of heresy. He was followed in this by the
legitimate emperors Zeno and Anastasius, also in favour of heresy. On the
contrary,[171] the edicts of Justinian were generally in conformity with
the decisions of the Church: generally occasioned by bishops, often drawn
up by them. But in the council called by him at Constantinople in 553, he
issued decrees on doctrines which only the Church could decide. In doing
this he infringed her liberty as grossly as the three whose unlawful act he
was imitating. The whole effect of his reign was that State despotism in
Church matters lowered the dignity of the spiritual power. The dependence
of his bishops on the court became greater and greater. The emperor's will
became law in the things of the Church. He persecuted Vigilius: he deposed
his own patriarch Eutychius. His example, as that of the most distinguished
Byzantine monarch, told with great force upon his successors, for the
persecution of future Popes and the deposition of future patriarchs.
The Italy which he had won at the cost of its ruin as to temporal wellbeing
was, after his death in 565, speedily lost as to its greater portion, and
the Romans[172] of the East did little more for it. The Rome which he had
reduced almost to a solitude, and ruled through a prefect with absolute
power, escaped in the end from the most cruel and heartless despotism
inflicted by a distant master on a province at once plundered and
neglected. His own eastern provinces suffered terribly from barbarian
inroads, and the end of the thirty-seven years' domination, which had
seemed a resurrection at the beginning, showed the mighty eastern empire
from day to day declining, the western bishops under the action of the Pope
more and more exerting an independence which the East could not prevent,
the patriarch of Constantinople more and more advancing as the agent of the
imperial will in dealing with eastern bishops. What the See of St. Peter
was at the end of the sixth century it remains to see in the pontificate of
the first Gregory, who shares with the first Leo the double title of Great
and Saint.
NOTES:
[115] Mansi, viii. 795-99.
[116] This refers to the reunion of a great portion of the eastern Church,
which had fallen a prey to the most manifold errors since the Council of
Chalcedon.--Riffel, p. 543.
[117] Savigny, _Geschichte des roemischen Rechts im Mittelalter_, 1834, i.
36. Quoted by Rump, ix. 72.
[118] _Ep._ xi. 2: Sedes illa toto orbe mirabilis licet generalis mundo sit
praedita.
[119] _Nov._ cxxxi. c. 2: thespizomen ton hagiotaton tes presbyteras Rhomes
papan proton einai panton ton hiereon.... te gnome kai orthe krisei tou
ekeinou sebasmiou thronou katergethesan. _Nov._ ix. init.: Pontificatus
apicem apud eam (Romam anteriorem) esse nemo est qui dubitet.--Photius, p.
156.
[120] Translated from Photius, p. 156.
[121] "Cesare fui e son Giustiniano,
Che, per voler del primo amor ch'io sento,
Dentro alle leggi trassi il troppo e il vano."
--_Paradiso_, vi. 10.
[122] This paragraph translated from Rump, ix. 70.
[123] Rump, viii. 487.
[124] Account from Rump, ix. 172-4, compressed.
[125] Respondeat mens illa Sancto Spiritui serviens.
[126] Mansi, viii. 808.
[127] Mansi, viii. 849.
[128] See Baronius, A.D. 535, sec. 40; Hefele, ii. 736-8; Rump, ix. 174-6;
_Novell._ xxxix. _De Africana Ecclesia._
[129] Photius, i. 153-4: words of Hergenroether, who quotes eastern
historians, who call him megaloprepesteros anakton ton proteron ...
megalourgos krator.
[130] Mansi, viii. 846.
[131] Photius, i. 160-2; Rump, ix. 181.
[132] Photius, i. 163. The words which concern the conduct of Vigilius are
taken from Cardinal Hergenroether. Baronius, A.D. 538, sec. 5, gives from
Anastasius the words of the empress, and the Pope's answer, and the
following narrative.
[133] Gregorovius, i. 372. See Liberatus, _Breviarium_, ch. xxii.
[134] Liberatus, _Breviarium_.
[135] Reumont, ii. 49.
[136] St. Gregory, _Dialogues_, ii. 14, 18.
[137] The following drawn from Reumont's narrative, ii. 50-6.
[138] The narrative drawn from Reumont, ii. 56-7; Gregorovius, i. 448-9.
[139] Mansi, viii. 969; Photius, i. 163.
[140] Mansi, viii. 1149.
[141] Mansi, ix. 35-40.
[142] Narrative drawn from Photius, i. 165-6, down to "Ferrandus," p. 232,
below.
[143] Mansi, ix. 487-537.
[144] Hefele, ii. 790.
[145] Hergenroether, _K.G._, i. 344-5; Photius, i. 166.
[146] Translated from Hergenroether's _K.G._, i., pp. 345-351, from p. 232,
above, "at this point Justinian sought," &c., with reference also to the
life of Photius.
[147] Hergenroether, Photius, i. 174; Rump, _K.G._, ix. 283.
[148] See Reumont, ii. 58-62; Gregorovius, i. 453-9.
[149] Reumont, 60.
[150] Gregorovius, 455.
[151] _Ibid._, 456.
[152] Reumont, 61.
[153] Gregorovius, 450-2.
[154] See vol. v. 281.
[155] _Constitutio_, lxxxii. 667.
[156] Honestatem quam illis obtenentibus credimus.
[157] _Constitutio_, vi. 48.
[158] 119. _De ecclesiasticis titulis_, p. 940. _Sancimus_. This word in
Roman law in the time of Justinian is equivalent to the English formula,
"Be it enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, by and with the
advice and consent of the Lords spiritual and temporal and the Commons in
Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same". There lies in
these two formulae, expressing the supreme legislative authority, a
comparison between the constitution of the lower Roman empire and the
medieval constitutions established everywhere by the influence of the
Church under guidance of the Popes.
[159] Riffel, 611-12, translated.
[160] See Justinian, _Gloss._ v., directed to the patriarch of
Constantinople, Epiphanius. _Epilogus_, p 48: Haec igitur omnia sanctissimi
patriarchae sub se constitutis Deo amabilibus metropolitis manifesta
faciant, at illi subjectis sibi Deo amabilibus episcopis declarent, et illi
monasteriis Dei sub sua ordinatione constitutis cognita faciant, quatenus
per omnia Domini cultura maneat undique in eos incorrupta.
[161] Riffel, p. 615, translated.
[162] Riffel, p. 617.
[163] Kurth, ii. 35.
[164] See Riffel, p. 624.
[165] Riffel, p. 625.
[166] _Ibid._, pp. 629-35.
[167] See St. Gregory, _Epis._, x. 51 (vol. ii. 1080), where he writes to
the ex-consul Leontius, in Sicily, who had beaten with rods the ex-prefect
Libertinus: "Si mihi constare potuisset quia justas causas de suis
rationibus haberent, et prius per epistolas vos pulsare habui; et si
auditus minime fuissem, serenissimo Domino Imperatori suggererem".
[168] Riffel, p. 635.
[169] Mansi, xii. 1130.
[170] Riffel, 562.
[171] Photius, p. 155.
[172] Photius, 173.