in the liturgy of the Church; on the other hand, we can satisfy
ourselves that nothing is left to conjecture or hypothesis; the most
searching criticism only affirms the truths of tradition. M. Paul
Allard, a distinguished writer, has expressed this in a very happy
manner in his work, “Subterranean Rome.” “For two centuries,” he says,
“the soil of Rome has been searched and dug up with indefatigable
ardour, in the hope of discovering the source of the first Christian
institutions, the very origin of the Church, catacombs have been thrown
open to the day, thousands of inscriptions have been laid bare, and
rare and precious paintings have been copied, or are still to be seen.
From these subterranean labours, which have left nothing to conjecture,
the history of the origin of Christianity has emerged, complete and
renovated, but differing in nothing from that which tradition has
handed down to us, and which, confirmed as to a great number of points,
has been shaken in none.”
THE POPES.
Influence of the Papacy in the Reformation of Early
Society.--St. Leo the Great.--Origin of the Temporal
Power of the Popes.--Gregory the Great.--The Iconoclastic
Emperors.--Stephen III. delivered by France.--Charlemagne
crowned Emperor of the West.--Photius.--The Diet of
Worms.--Gregory VII.; his Plan for a Christian Republic.--Urban
II.--The Crusades.--Calixtus II.; Termination of the Dispute
as to Investiture.--Innocent III.--Struggle of Boniface VIII.
against Philippe le Bel.--The great Western Schism.--Council of
Florence.--Battle of Lepanto.--Council of Trent.
During the Middle Ages the popes exercised an appreciable influence
upon society, personifying as they did the Christian element which was
destined to regenerate the old world. “A doctrine emanating from Asia
was not to subjugate, but to convert Europe, to associate political and
religious truth, and, by the force of conscience against idolatry, and
of resignation against tyranny, to restore the human race in all its
dignity under the one true God. With the power of the sword sprung up
that of opinion, which, independent of its rival, sustained the cause
of progress in its struggle against this same power of the sword, and
prevented it from being overthrown. The Church, representing the people
and opening the way to the emancipation of all who were weighed down
by conquest and by force, was unable to destroy servitude, legalised
violence, and rapine at one blow, but it encountered them with a
reproving doctrine and a condemning God.
“Nero and Domitian soon found themselves face to face with Peter and
Linus;--the first, armed masters of the world, having upon their side
legality, which is so different from justice, representatives of
the old world which cried out in the circus, ‘To the lions with the
Christians!’--the latter, poor, weak, misunderstood, and calumniated,
propagating the kingdom of God by authority, education, ceremonies, and
example; declaring that unto Cæsar should be rendered the things which
are Cæsar’s, but nothing more, neither worship nor the sacrifice of
one’s sentiments and convictions.”--(Cantù.)
[Illustration: Fig. 202.--The Jewish Religion assisting at
the death of Jesus Christ. The figure has a bandage over the
eyes, the Decalogue is falling from its hands, and its spear is
broken to pieces.--Sculpture in Strasburg Cathedral (Thirteenth
Century).--From a Photograph by Charles de Winter, of Strasburg.]
This struggle, begun by St. Peter, the first Bishop of Rome, and first
pope, and continued by his successor St. Linus, went on for three
centuries. Nevertheless the popes, unchecked by persecutions, had
effected the moral conquest of the Roman world,--even the palace of
the Cæsars was full of Christians when their legal existence became
recognised by Constantine. The seat of the empire was transferred
to Byzantium; the luxury and effeminacy of the East enervated the
degenerated race of the Cæsars, while under the influence of the
Bishops of Rome, officially recognised at that date as the sovereign
pontiffs of the Christians, the West continued to advance rapidly in
the path of modern civilisation.
[Illustration: Fig. 203.--The Christian Religion assisting at
the death of Jesus Christ. Crowned and triumphant, the figure
holds in one hand the standard of the cross, and in the other
the chalice of the eucharist.--Sculpture in Strasburg Cathedral
(Thirteenth Century).--From a Photograph by Charles de Winter, of
Strasburg.]
The emperors, converted to Christianity, ere long became the opponents
of the popes; “laying aside the sword of defence for disputations on
theology.” Their weakness handed the West over to the Germanic races;
primitive society, whose organization still remained heathen, despite
the change in religious belief, was swallowed up by the invasion of
these Northerners, whose institutions facilitated the triumph of
the ideas of political liberty and equality, the germ of which was
deposited in the Gospel.
[Illustration: Fig. 204.--The spiritual and the temporal powers
dependent upon Jesus Christ, who is handing to St. Peter the keys
and to Constantine the standard surmounted by the cross.--Mosaic
of the Tenth Century in the Basilica of St. John of Lateran, at
Rome.]
The papacy of the Middle Ages was first made illustrious by Leo I.,
surnamed the Great. Called to be Bishop of Rome by the people and the
clergy in 440, when twenty years of age, he rendered the greatest
possible services to civilisation during the twenty-two years of his
reign. His preachings, his writings, his decrees, aimed chiefly at
the education of his clergy and his flock, at the maintenance of the
Nicene Creed (Fig. 206), the moral improvement of the clergy, and the
upholding of discipline. He fought the heretics with equal energy and
authority; he continued the struggle of orthodoxy against the errors
which attacked the dogma of the Incarnation, which is the basis of
Christianity, and upheld with vigilant perseverance the primitive
doctrine of the Church, so clearly defined and proclaimed during the
reign of one of his predecessors at the Council of Ephesus in 431. He
was, above all things, a skilful diplomatist and a great politician.
He firmly maintained the apostolic pre-eminence of Rome over
Constantinople--a pre-eminence which was, moreover, recognised by the
Council of Chalcedon.
[Illustration: Fig. 205.--St. Peter.--Fac-simile of a Wood
Engraving of the Old Masters, by Hans Baldung, otherwise Grum
(1470–1550), in the National Library, Paris.]
[Illustration: Fig. 206.--A Council held in the ninth or tenth
century to commemorate the second Council of Nice.--From
a Miniature of a _menologium_ in the Vatican Library
(Manuscript of the Tenth Century).]
The empire, like the Church, needed such a man as St. Leo in its days
of adversity. The invasion of the barbarians was triumphant in the
West, and nearly all of the conquerors were either Arians, who denied
the divinity of Christ, or idolaters. Leo triumphed over all these
calamities. Rome had already been ravished by Alaric in 410, but even
he respected the churches in which the population had fled for refuge.
Attila, at the head of seven hundred thousand men, marched on Rome for
the purpose of devastating it with fire and sword; resistance seemed
out of the question, and the Emperor was preparing to escape. Amidst
the universal panic, Pope Leo, accompanied by a consul, went out to
meet the dreaded chieftain, and induced him to turn back.
Some years later, Genseric poured his vandals into Italy, and again
Leo boldly presented himself before his fierce assailant, and made him
renounce his intention of burning the city and slaying the inhabitants.
Thus did circumstances lead the way for the temporal power of the
popes in Rome, of which they eventually became the sole guardians and
defenders.
But the genius of Leo served only to defer the downfall of the Western
Empire, which was doomed to disappear fifteen years after his death.
His successors continued to protect Italy, so far as in them lay,
against the horrors of war; and Pope Agapetus, though weighed down
by years, undertook the perilous mission of going to Constantinople
to make peace between the Emperor of the East and the King of the
Visigoths. A few years afterwards, Pope Pelagius I. had the courage to
seek an interview with Totila, and so preserve Rome from massacre and
dishonour. Pelagius II., who kept within bounds the Lombards, at that
time masters of Italy, was succeeded by Gregory I., surnamed Gregory
the Great, one of the most illustrious of the Roman pontiffs.
Gregory, whose father was a Roman senator, and whose mother
was canonised, was prætor or chief magistrate of Rome, and his
administration had gained for him great popularity when, by his
father’s death, he inherited a large fortune. This enabled him to found
seven monasteries, and, having distributed the remainder of his money
amongst the poor, he became a monk in the Abbey of St. Andrew, which
he had founded previous to his entering the priesthood. Chosen as pope
on September 3, 590, he, in spite of his resistance to the clergy, the
senators, and the people, immediately made his profession of faith in
the customary manner. He converted the Lombards, who were professed
Arians, and even idolaters. This was no small triumph, for it meant the
peaceful subjection, or rather the alliance of a warlike people, whose
close neighbourhood to Rome had been a constant cause of alarm. It
was especially in his relations with the court of Constantinople that
Gregory displayed all the loftiness of his character. While he bridled
the ambition of the Lombards, so as to preserve for the emperors of
the East their Italian possessions (Fig. 207), he defended with equal
energy and tact the independence of the Church and the interests of
the Italians against the unjust pretensions of the Byzantine Court.
He rendered more distinct the rôle of the papacy in the Middle Ages,
which was to uphold the purity of dogma as opposed to heresy against
the theological pretensions of emperors, to protect also the Catholic
population, vanquished and often persecuted by new masters, whether
pagan or heretic; and, lastly, to convey the tidings of the Gospel to
the most remote nations of the earth.
[Illustration: Fig. 207.--St Michael the Archangel, Minister
of God, offering to a Byzantine Emperor the globe surmounted
by the cross, the symbol of the imperial power.--A leaf of an
ivory dyptic or tablet of the Sixth Century, preserved in the
British Museum.--From a copy by M. J. Labarte. The second leaf of
this dyptic being lost, the Greek inscription, which signifies,
“Receive this object, and learning the cause,” is incomplete, and
its meaning enigmatical.]
To this great pope appertains the glory of having converted England
by means of the missionaries whom he sent thither. “There is nothing
grander in the history of Europe,” said Bossuet, “than the entry of
St. Augustine into Kent with forty of his companions, who, preceded by
the cross and image of the Great King our Lord Jesus Christ, prayed
fervently for the conversion of England. St. Gregory, who had sent
them forth, edified them by truly apostolic letters, and constrained
St. Augustine to tremble with amazement at the numerous miracles
which God wrought through him. Bertha, a French princess, brought her
husband, King Ethelbert, over to Christianity. The kings of France
and Queen Brunehild supported this new mission. The French bishops
entered cordially into this good work, and, by order of the pope,
they consecrated St. Augustine. The support which St. Gregory gave to
the new bishop bore abundant fruit, and the Anglican Church was thus
formed.”[13]
Amidst these important engagements, the activity of Gregory found time
to superintend the relief of the poor and the education of the young.
He built schools and hospitals in Rome, and increased the splendour
of the church services by a judicious and well-conceived reform of
sacred music. M. F. Clement, in his history of religious music, says,
“St. Gregory, not content with regulating the antiphon for every
service throughout the year, also founded a school of singing at Rome,
and personally superintended the teaching there. While other masters
were entrusted with the task of giving lessons in one division of the
school, at St. Peter’s in the Vatican, he directed another section of
St. John of Lateran. We read in the life of this pontiff, written by
John the Deacon, that, compelled by his infirmities to lie at full
length upon a couch, he still taught the children singing, and that the
staff which he used for beating time is still preserved.”
A century after his death, two popes of the same name who succeeded
each other, Gregory II. and Gregory III., recalled to mind the virtues,
and above all the firmness of their glorious predecessor. They had
to struggle against the extraordinary pretensions of the emperors
of the East, who declared themselves iconoclasts--that is, breakers
of images. Alleging certain abuses, brought about by the ignorance
of some unenlightened Christians, Leo the Isaurian published in 726
an edict commanding the destruction of the images--the crucifixes
and the statues--throughout the whole empire. Neither the clergy nor
their flocks had ever seen any sign of idolatry in the worship of
these images, which were venerated as sacred symbols and respected
like family portraits. The Patriarch of Constantinople, refusing to
obey this edict, was banished. This new heresy was severely rebuked
by Gregory II., and after him by Gregory III. The latter replied to
the emperor, who had requested him to convoke a council, in these
noble words, “You have written asking us to assemble an œcumenical
council; it would be futile, as you alone persecute the images; cease
these evil deeds, and the world will be at peace, and scandals will
come to an end. Do you not see that your crusade against the images is
an act of revolt against the Church and of presumption? The churches
were enjoying a period of profound tranquillity when you excited this
tempest of disputes; put an end to the schism, and then there will be
no need of a council.” This apostolic firmness excited the wrath of
Leo, who dispatched against Rome a fleet of vessels carrying a large
body of troops, but they were lost in the Adriatic.
Trasmund, Duke of Spoleto, and the Duke of Benevento, having risen in
revolt against Luitprand, King of the Lombards, took refuge in Rome.
Gregory received them very cordially, and refused to deliver them up
to their redoubtable suzerain. Luitprand at once marched upon Rome,
and Gregory demanded help from Charles Martel--which, however, he
declined to give; and the good pope died just in time to be saved from
witnessing the sack of the Eternal City (741).
Zachariah, a Greek by birth, accepted the succession left vacant by
Gregory III. under such critical circumstances; but he negotiated so
skilfully with Luitprand, that the king not only gave back to the
pontifical domain four towns which he had already seized, but further
added, as an irrevocable gift, the territories of the Sabines, Narnia,
Ossimo, and Ancona, and consented to evacuate the exarchy of Ravenna,
occupied by his troops. Zacharias enjoyed an equal amount of credit
with the Emperor Constantinus Copronymus, who granted him, in the
interest of the Roman Church, concessions which were more than could
have been expected from an irritated suzerain. All the sovereigns of
his time seemed anxious to have recourse to his advice. Charlemagne,
son of Charles Martel, and Rachis, King of the Lombards, went to Rome
for the purpose of seeing him, and he invited both of them to enter the
monastery of Monte-Cassino.
Stephen III., elected by acclamation to succeed Zachariah (752), was
carried from the public square to the Lateran Church upon the shoulders
of his supporters; and this custom has since been adhered to in cases
where the election has been unanimous.
He had concluded peace for forty years with Astolfo, King of the
Lombards, but that ambitious monarch failed to keep his engagements,
as, a short time afterwards, he drove the exarch Eutychius out of
Ravenna, and then, claiming for himself all the rights of the emperor,
he aspired to become master of Rome (753). This unjust warfare was
fortunately carried on so slowly that the sovereign-pontiff had time to
go to France and intercede with King Pepin for help against Astolfo.
The French army was sent over the Alps, and Astolfo had to submit,
and to hand over Ravenna to the people, and surrender the hostages.
Stephen returned to Rome, accompanied by Prince Jérôme, the brother
of Pepin; but in the following year Astolfo again took up arms, and
Pepin, who had again crossed the Alps, this time compelled him to
abandon definitely the exarchate of twenty-two towns, together with the
territories attached to them, which he made over absolutely to St.
Peter and his successors. This, with the Duchy of Rome, constituted the
temporal dominion of the Church.
A few years later Adrian I., who had avoided falling into the political
snares laid for him by Didier, appealed to Charlemagne for his
intervention, and the latter, crossing the Alps, laid siege to Pavia,
the capital of the Lombard kings, took Didier prisoner, and sent him to
the monastery of Corbie. Not content with delivering Rome, Charlemagne,
during the two visits which he paid to that city, during and after the
war, confirmed the gift solemnly made by his father of the territories
which were to be inalienably annexed to the Holy See; and, at the same
time, he added the coast of Genoa, Corsica, Mantua, Venetia, Istria,
the duchies of Spoleto, Benevento, and the entire exarchate over its
thirty towns.
Adrian had the consolation of seeing the heresies of the iconoclasts
condemned by the second Nicene Council; and the Empress Irene and her
son Constantine submitted to the decision.
Adrian died in 795. His successor, Leo III., sent to the great Emperor
of the Franks the standard of the city of Rome, and the keys of the
Confession of St. Peter, as to the protector of the Eternal City. The
emperor responded to this homage by the gift of immense treasure which
he had taken from the enemy, and the pope devoted the greater part of
it to the decorating of the Lateran Palace, and various churches.
[Illustration: Fig. 208.--Byzantine Dalmatic, said to have
belonged to Leo III., but probably dating from the Twelfth
Century, preserved in the Treasury of St. Peter’s at Rome. Upon
this garment, which is of dark-blue silk, are several designs
embroidered in gold and colours. The most remarkable is one
upon the front representing Christ in his glory. Seated upon a
rainbow, with his feet upon two circles of fire and the right
hand stretched out, he holds in his left the New Testament, which
is open at the following passage: “Come unto me, ye chosen of
my Father.” Above his head is seen the cross with the crowns of
thorns. Around him is a choir of angels, the Virgin, the saints,
David and Solomon, the bishops and the religious orders; below,
to the right and to the left, St. John the Baptist, and Abraham
receiving the souls of the just; above, on the two shoulders,
Jesus is giving the Holy Communion to the Apostles, the wine
being administered on one side and the bread on the other.]
A conspiracy, which Leo III. only escaped by climbing the walls of
Rome and by taking refuge with the Duke of Spoleto, who had marched
to his succour, gave him an opportunity for going to see Charlemagne
at Paderborn, who promised to come himself into Italy to confound
the enemies of the holy father; in the meanwhile he dispatched
commissioners to Rome, who reinstated the pope in his pontifical
city (November 30, 799). Charlemagne came to Rome in the following
year, when, convoking an assembly of the people, he declared the
object of his visit and summoned the accusers of the pope to appear
before his tribunal. As they did not dare to put in an appearance, he
declared that the holy father should be allowed to justify himself
on oath. Then in the great cathedral of St. Peter, in the presence
of a vast concourse of people, Leo, with his hand upon the books of
the Evangelists, cried out, “I know nothing of the crimes with which
the Romans have charged me.” His declaration was received with shouts
of applause that rung through, the vaults of the sacred edifice.
Charlemagne, who had returned to St. Peter’s on Christmas Day, for
the service, knelt before the altar. The pope, upstanding before
him, placed upon his forehead a golden crown studded with jewels and
proclaimed him emperor, thus giving him a real supremacy over all the
Christian princes and people of the West. (Figs. 208 and 209.)
[Illustration: Fig. 209.--The Coronation of an Emperor by the
Pope, the Sovereign being represented by Maximilian I.--From “Des
Sainctes Ceremonies,” a Manuscript of the Sixteenth Century, in
M. Ruggieri’s Collection.]
The popes who were contemporary with the successors of Charlemagne,
though not of special note, governed the Church with wise moderation;
and as they were all patrons of the Fine Arts, Rome is indebted to them
for some of her chief embellishments. Leo IV., in 847, was compelled
to make Rome secure from an attack by the Saracens, who were always
making incursions up to its very walls. For this purpose he constructed
around the church of St. Peter a regular town--the Leonine city--which
he fortified with high towers. He also fortified the places near Rome,
and founded a new city, called Leopolis, which he surrounded with
ramparts. Rome thus being out of danger, he imitated the example of his
predecessors by ornamenting the churches, to which he gave paintings
and other works of art of the value of 5,971 silver marks. The fabulous
story of Pope Joan--who was said to have been elected pope, and to have
concealed her sex, though she was shortly after expelled, after some
great scandal--is placed by historians between Leo IV. and Benedict
III.; but the falsity of the story is manifest, for there was no
interregnum between the death of Leo, upon July 17th, 855, and the
election of Benedict.
Nicholas I. (858–867), anathematized Photius, the usurping Patriarch
of Constantinople. The empire having fallen to Michael III., a child
of three years old, his mother Theodora, assisted by his uncle Bardas,
carried on the government in his name. When this prince grew up,
Bardas ousted Theodora, and, in order to maintain himself in power,
pandered to the passions of his nephew. Michael gave himself up to
such scandalous excesses that the Patriarch Ignatius excluded him from
the church, and excommunicated Bardas. In six days, Photius, a layman
who could be depended upon to do as he was told, was made patriarch in
the room of Ignatius. This was the prelude to the separation of the
Greek Church. Photius added heresy to his revolt against the pope, by
asserting that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father only, and not
from the Son. Nicholas’ successor, Adrian II., appointed his legates
to preside at the council which deposed the Patriarch Photius. He
also upheld the sentence of his predecessor against Lothair, whom he
compelled to renounce his adulterous union with Valdrade. When that
prince came before him to partake of the sacrament, the pope said in a
loud tone of voice, as he presented the host, “If thou hast given up
thy adultery, if thou hast broken off all connection with Valdrade, may
this sacrament comfort thee! But if thy heart is still perverse, it
will be for thy punishment.” This lofty firmness of speech was all the
more praiseworthy because the pope, in thus maintaining the rights of
morality, had to defy and admonish a prince who had delivered Rome from
the Saracens. No one can tell whether the doubt expressed by Adrian, as
to the sincerity of Lothair’s conversion, was well grounded or not; but
it is at least certain that the latter died forty days afterwards, and
that his death appeared to be a judgment from Heaven.