Chapter V: Old Rome and New Rome (1)

The seizure of Pope St. Martin in his Lateran Church by the exarch of Ravenna, Kalliopas, under order from the Emperor Constans II., his secret deportation to Constantinople, his trial before the Senate as guilty of high treason, his condemnation to death, and subsequent death in the Crimea from hardship or starvation, with the election of Pope Eugenius during his lifetime by the Roman clergy through dread of a Monothelite being forced upon them by the Byzantine; all this marks probably the lowest point of civil depression and helplessness to which the Papacy was ever reduced in those momentous three centuries which run from Genseric to Aistulf, from 455 to 755. The emperor who committed acts so mean, perfidious, and cruel was reigning over an empire already cut in two by the sword of Mohammed’s chalif. How little he had heeded the chastisement we learn from an incident in the trial of the great eastern confessor, St. Maximus, which I have already recorded, but to which I recur that I may exhibit the full insolence of the eastern despot, as well as his blindness. Theodosius, the consul, coming straight out from the emperor’s cabinet, with the condemnation of Maximus in his hand, addressed him in these words:(111) “Learn, Sir Abbot, that when we get a little relief from this rout of heathens (that is, of the Saracens who had stripped Constans of Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and North Africa as far as Kairowan), by the Holy Trinity we will bring you to terms, and your Pope, who is now lifted up, and all the talkers there, and the rest of your disciples; and we will _cook_ you all, each in his own place, as Martin has been cooked”.

These words were spoken on the 14th December, 656.(112) The Pope Eugenius was the Pope alluded to in them, and it is inferred from them that he rejected those terms of union which the emperor was seeking to impose and which the nuntios were willing to accept. The martyrdom of St. Martin had taken place on the 16th September of the preceding year, 655.

It was the providence of God that the chalif himself never allowed the sworn protector of the Church who sat on the eastern throne to execute this threat. Rather he was all through this century in dread lest the Mohammedan, having fixed his throne at Damascus, should advance it to Constantinople. It was again the providence of God that Constantinople itself should not fall during this time of its utmost weakness, and so open the whole of northern Europe to Mohammedan domination. The city of Constantine was then the material rampart which stopped the impetuous current of Saracen invasion to the north. The chalif Muawiah, who reigned over the immense Saracen empire from 661 to 680, was strong enough continually to beat the Emperor, to ravage his Asiatic territory, to advance towards his capital, but he was never able to take it. The advance of the seat of the Saracenic empire from the remote Medina to the near and beautiful Damascus, the paradise of eastern cities, dwelling in its perpetual garden among ever-flowing waters of Abana and Pharpar, was itself a sign how the empire had fallen. A religion founded on the denial of the Christian faith, of which it was, moreover, the special rival, had full possession of the once Roman and Christian East. Muawiah became chalif on the death of Ali in 661. He had conducted the civil war against Ali, which distracted for five years the Saracen power, with the forces of Syria, as its governor; and when he became supreme made it the capital of his empire.

Constans II., having crowned with martyrdom the greatest confessor of the West, Pope Martin, and the greatest confessor of the East, St. Maximus, resolved in the year 662, to visit the West. The tyranny of Constans in regard to the Pope was not completed even by his treatment of St Martin. When he had condemned this Pope, but before he had caused his death he is supposed to have compelled the Roman clergy to elect another Pope. This was Eugenius, who was recognised in the year 654 for Pope, while St. Martin was yet alive.(113) Whether the urgency and threats of the imperial ministers overcame at length the constancy of the clergy, or whether, as is more probable, they feared to see some heretic sent by the emperor to occupy the throne of St. Peter, they elected Eugenius, by birth a Roman, a person of great goodness and holy life, who held the See two years and eight months. The synodical letter of Peter, the fourth Monothelite patriarch of Constantinople in succession was sent to him, but being obscure in its expressions about our Lord, was sent back with indignity.(114) It would seem that the exceeding danger of the time caused the election and consecration of Pope Eugenius in the lifetime of St. Martin, to pass for legitimate. Eugenius died in 657, and was succeeded by Pope Vitalian, after a vacancy of a month and 29 days.

Pope Eugenius had not acknowledged either of the patriarchs Paulus or Peter by writing to them, but Vitalian sent his nuntios to Constans to announce his accession to the papacy by his synodical letter. Constans received them graciously, acknowledged the privileges of the Roman Church, and sent by them to St. Peter at Rome a copy of the gospels bound in golden covers and studded with diamonds. Vitalian, says Anastasius, preserved in all respects the ecclesiastical rule and vigour.

Constans had a brother named Theodosius, whom he forced to become a deacon, and he had repeatedly received from his hands the chalice of the Lord’s Blood. Afterwards he caused him to be murdered. He was said to have often dreamt of his victim, offering him a chalice full of blood, with the words: “Brother, drink”. The stings of conscience and the hatred of the people for his cruelty and his protection of heresy, were supposed to drive him from his capital.

The book of the Popes under its notice of the life of Vitalian says:(115) “In his time the emperor came from the royal city by coast to Athens, thence to Tarentum, Beneventum, and Naples. At Rome he arrived on the 5th July. The Apostolical went out with his clergy to the sixth milestone from the city to receive him. The same day the emperor went to pray at St. Peter’s, and offered his gift. On Saturday he went to St. Mary’s and also offered his gift. On Sunday he went in procession with his army to St. Peter’s. All went out with wax candles to meet him, and he offered on the altar a golden woven pall, and Mass was celebrated. Again on Saturday the emperor came to the Lateran, took a bath, and dined in the Julian basilica. On Sunday there was a station at St. Peter’s, and after celebration of Mass the emperor and the pontiff took leave of each other. Twelve days he remained in the Roman city. Every bronze statue which ornamented the city he took down, nay, and he unroofed of its brazen tiles the Church of Blessed Mary at the Martyrs, and sent all things which he had taken to the royal city. Then on Monday he left Rome and returned to Naples. Then he went by land to Rhegium and entered Sicily. He lived in the city of Syracuse, and caused much affliction to the people, the inhabitants or proprietors of Calabria, Sicily, Africa, and Sardinia, by his exactions during many years such as had never been.(116) He separated even wives from their husbands, and sons from their fathers, and they suffered many other unheard of things, so that a man had not hope of life. They took even the sacred vessels and ornaments of God’s holy churches, and left nothing.”

The visit of Constans to Rome casts a strong light upon the condition of things in a century concerning which we are singularly destitute of detailed information.

When Constans landed with a certain force at Tarentum, he found the Lombards in possession of the duchy of Beneventum. A legend said that their king Autharis after a bold march through the Peninsula to the Straits of Messina, had spurred his horse into the sea and exclaimed, “This shall be the Lombard boundary”. But his successors had never made good the words of Autharis. Naples and Amalfi, Sorrentum, Gaeta, and Tarentum had imperial governors. Alboin however made a duchy of Beneventum which then included the ancient Samnium and Apulia, and portions of Campania and Lucania. It was a stronghold of Lombard robbers in southern Italy. Constans tried to expel the young duke Romuald. But he failed, and hearing that King Grimoald was approaching to aid his son, he went to Naples, left at Formiæ, the present Mola di Gaeta, 20,000 men, and marched on Rome by the Appian Way.

Pope Vitalian went out to meet him as legitimate Roman emperor. It was true that ten years before he had seized Pope St. Martin in his church, and carried him off by stealth to trial, suffering, and ultimate martyrdom in the Crimea. It was true likewise that while holding St. Martin in prison, he had repeated the evil deed committed by Justinian’s empress Theodora, a hundred and sixteen years before, and compelled the Roman clergy under threat of worse things to elect a new Pope while the Pope was living, though in this case the elected was himself blameless and excellent. It is true, also, that later still he had treated the great confessor Maximus with equal cruelty. But these crimes did not prevent his being the actual emperor to whom loyal submission was due from the great throne of justice in the earth. It would seem also by the mode in which Constans had received the nuntios who bore Pope Vitalian’s synodical letter, announcing his accession, and by the superb present which he sent back in acknowledgement, that somehow a better spirit prevailed at the moment towards the Pope. We are met indeed by the fact that the Monothelite patriarch Peter held the see of Constantinople for twelve years from the death of the re-established Pyrrhus in 654, to his own death in 666, being the fourth heretic in succession from Sergius in the see of the royal city. Constans approached Rome at the head of an army. He made his offerings as emperor to the three great churches of Rome, the Lateran, St. Peter’s and St. Mary Major. The Pope was completely at his mercy. He lodged in the imperial palace on the Palatine, which, however great its desolation, was able at least to receive him. In his twelve days sojourn he laid his hands upon every bronze statue which he thought worth plundering: and he stripped of its costly roof the church which his predecessor sixty years before had given to the Pope, dedicated to the Mother of God and all Martyrs.

Such a visit accompanied by such acts give a lively picture of the regard entertained by a Byzantine emperor for the city which gave him his title. It sums up the hundred and ten years of abject servitude into which all Italy had fallen since the capture of the city by Narses under Justinian. We have the contemptuous despot, the long-suffering Pope, the half-ruined powerless city. Three hundred and six years had passed since the degenerate son of Constantine, when he came to Rome in 357, was amazed at the beauty of its great buildings, the forum of Trajan, the theatre of Pompey, the unequalled Flavian amphitheatre. But in Constans the memories of Rome were dead: he robbed the last relic of its grandeur, Agrippa’s pantheon, nor was he ready to reverence the protection of the Blessed Virgin over the Church dedicated to her by the Pope on receiving it as the gift of a preceding emperor. These last spoils he had embarked for his royal city, but they were detained at Syracuse, and on its capture shortly afterwards by the Saracens fell into their hands.

But before this event the life and misdeeds of the emperor Constans II. had come to a sudden end. He was living in Ortygia, the sole remaining quarter of that once princely city, wherein Achradyna, Tyche, Neapolis, and Epipolæ lay desolate. He had entered his bath one day, and received in it a blow on his head by his attendant, whether a slave, or a conspirator. His courtiers when they at length came in found him dead. The Greek chronologist Theophanes alleges as a reason for this event that after his murder of his brother he became greatly hated at Constantinople, both for his persecution of Pope Martin and Maximus, “that most wise confessor, whose tongue he cut out, and whose hands he cut off, and condemned many of the orthodox with tortures, banishments, and confiscations, because they would not submit to his heresy”. In his dread he had wished to transfer his residence to the West, but this his counsellors prevented. His treatment of the Sicilians was so bad that some in despair went to settle at Damascus, though it had become the capital of the chalif.

So lived and so died the grandson of Heraclius, Constans II., “Roman emperor and Christian prince”(117) from 642 to 668, in the times when the chalifs of Mohammed, Omar, Osman, Ali, and Muawiah carved the Saracen realm out of the empire which Heraclius had possessed, and out of the kingdom of the “Great King,” whom Heraclius, when bearing the standard of the cross had brought low. If Heraclius treated Syria and Egypt as Constans treated Rome and Italy, is not the wonder diminished that in the ten years of Omar the structure of Roman power which had lasted seven centuries was overthrown, and those provinces had received a Mohammedan instead of a Byzantine master? Muawiah at Damascus cherished the Syria which at Antioch the lord on the Bosphorus had ground down with taxes. The Rome also which Constans, when he had been welcomed as its emperor, left stripped of its last ornaments was regarded with veneration by the farthest isle of the West, which it was winning at once to civilised and to Christian life. An English authority tells us that five years after the visit of Constans, Pope Vitalian, in the twelfth year of his pontificate, on the 26th March, 668, consecrated a monk of Tarsus, then living at Rome, learned both in secular and divine literature, speaking both Greek and Latin, of holy life, and venerable in age, being sixty-six years old. Thus Theodore was sent to be Archbishop of Canterbury. He was received in his passage through France by the Archbishop of Arles, and the bishop of Paris. He reached his see in the following year, 669, and sat in it full twenty-one years.(118) St. Bede’s account of him says that he went over the whole island, wheresoever there were English, was received by all most cordially, and obeyed, when he gave them a right order of life, and the canonical celebration of Easter, which he spread abroad. St. Bede adds that he was the first among the archbishops whom the whole Church of the English consented to obey. His friend Adrian, who had recommended him to the Pope, and accompanied him from Rome, attended him in England: they had a large number of disciples, whom they instructed not only in theology, but in music, astronomy, and arithmetic. St. Bede wrote forty years after the death of Theodore, and says, “Even at this day there survive persons taught by them, who know the Greek and Latin languages as well as their own. Nor from the time the English came to Britain were there ever happier times, since, possessing kings most valiant and at the same time Christian, they were a terror to all barbarous nations; and the vows of all men tended to the joys of the heavenly kingdom but newly revealed to them; and all who wished to be instructed in the sacred lessons had masters ready to teach them.”

Constans was succeeded by his son Constantine IV. after he had put down in Sicily a short-lived rebellion. He did not imitate his father’s violent deeds: he did not wish to maintain by force the Typus, which was still in legal existence. Pope Vitalian had done him service in his struggle with the usurper, and made use of his favourable sentiments to proceed with more decision against the Monothelites.

The Monothelite patriarch Peter had died in 666, two years before Constans. The three following patriarchs, Thomas II., John V., and Constantine, inclined to orthodoxy. They occupied together only nine years, from 667 to 676. The Sixth Council left their names in the diptychs. Yet so great was the power which the Monothelites possessed in the capital that Constantine Pogonatus, though not a Monothelite, and much wishing to be reconciled with the Roman Church, thought it dangerous at the beginning of his government to alter the state of things; and the Typus, as law imposed by the State, was not abrogated. The next patriarch, Theodore, in 670 was again Monothelite, and he was, though moderate himself, induced by Makarius, patriarch of Antioch, to erase from the diptychs the names of all the Popes since Honorius.

Pope Vitalian, after an admirable pontificate of fourteen years and a half, had died in 672, and was succeeded by the Roman, Adeodatus, who sat four years, and he by Pope Donus, also a Roman, in 676. Donus died in 678, and was followed by Agatho, a Sicilian of Palermo.

During seven years, which end in 678, the Emperor Constantine was fighting a battle of life or death with the Saracen chalif Muawiah for Constantinople itself. Every year during several months the Saracen fleet was in the waters of the Bosphorus. They had taken the city of Cyzikus and wintered there, renewing the contest in the spring. During seven years they continued to do this. Had they taken the city the whole Christian empire in the East would have fallen. It is hard to limit the ruin which would have ensued to the Christian Church. But in weighing the events of this century the extreme peril in which the Church lay through the furious outburst of the Saracens should not be forgotten. On this occasion the Greek fire is said to have been first used. By it, as water would not extinguish it, many ships and their crews were destroyed. After this conflict of seven years, the Saracens having lost a great multitude of men, at last retired, owning that they were defeated. Their fleet in retiring met with a great tempest, and in a battle also which took place with three imperial commanders the Saracens lost 30,000 men. Muawiah, the chalif, treated for peace with the emperor, and it was concluded on glorious terms for the empire. This victory led the northern Avars also to treat the emperor with deference.(119)

Thus the emperor was enabled to execute his wish for the restoration of communion with the West. He addressed a letter to Pope Donus on the 12th August, 678, requesting him to send commissioners to Constantinople to make arrangements for a Council to be held there. Pope Donus had died in 678 and this letter was received by his successor, Agatho. He desired the whole West on this occasion to be called to council, and for that purpose caused particular synods to be held everywhere. During this year Theodore, the patriarch of Constantinople, was deposed, it is not known on what grounds, but he was indisposed to union with the West. In his stead George was chosen, who at first was on the Monothelite side, but, instructed by the testimonies of the Fathers and the synods at Rome, which were read in the Sixth Council, he attached himself strongly to the orthodox.

Pope Agatho, waiting for many bishops, among them English, to come to Rome, only held in March, 680, his synod of 125 bishops in preparation for the Council to be held in Constantinople, and to name legates to attend it. This was a great Council of the western patriarchate, which had been preceded by smaller Councils in the several provinces, as, for instance, Milan. Agatho and the council sent two letters to the emperor, which developed the creed of the Church according to the Lateran Council of 649, and signified its acceptance as necessary to all believers. The priests Theodore and George, the deacon John, and the sub-deacon Constantine were appointed legates for the Roman Church; the Bishops Abundantius of Paterno, John of Porto, and John of Reggio as deputies for the Council; and the priest Theodore to represent Ravenna. Agatho described these commissioners, not as learned theologians, for the confusion of the times made such very rare. His words run, “How can perfect knowledge of the Scriptures be found in men who live in the midst of heathens and get their support by manual labour with the greatest difficulty? but we maintain whatever has been defined by our apostolic predecessors and the Five Councils in simplicity of heart as the unambiguous faith descending from our fathers”.(120)

Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, had been invited by the Pope to attend his Council at Rome, but was unable to come. In the preceding year, 679, St. Wilfrid, Bishop of York, was heard at the Lateran on his appeal in a Council of 16 bishops and restored to his see.(121)

The legates were honourably received in the capital and lodged in the Placidia Palace. After their arrival on the 10th September, 680, the emperor invited the patriarch George, of Constantinople, and through him Makarius, of Antioch, to call to council the metropolitans subject to them. At first the court had not thought of the sees of Alexandria and Jerusalem, which were under Saracen domination. But before the Council entered on deliberation two regular priests, Peter and George, were found, the first to represent Alexandria, the last to stand in the place of Theodore, vicar of the patriarchate of Jerusalem. It would seem that it was as well through this representation of the other sees, as also because of what Pope Agatho had done, that the Council which now met, though it had not been the original purpose of the emperor, from its beginning was marked as ecumenical, and afterwards took rank as the Sixth of these with the Five preceding.

The Council was held from the 7th November, 680, to the 16th September, 681, in the hall called the Dome of the Imperial Palace, under the presidency of the papal legates and the imperial presidency of honour. The Emperor, with many officers of State, was present at the first eleven sessions, and with them directed the external order of business; but both he and they were carefully distinguished from the members of the Council, whose numbers did not at first reach a hundred, but afterwards rose to 174.

In the first session, the 7th September, the Roman deputies, in an address to the emperor, desired that those who represented the Byzantine Church would declare the origin of the innovation which had existed in it for more than forty years. Macarius and his associates appealed to the earlier General Councils and to the Fathers. Thereupon the acts of the Council of Ephesus were read. There was found in them nothing in favour of the Monothelites, for the words of Cyril, that the will of Christ was almighty, could only be referred to His divine nature. In the second session, on the 10th November, the acts of the Council of Chalcedon were read, which were entirely unfavourable to the heresy. Macarius in vain attempted to insist on the words “theandric operation” without determining their meaning. On the reading the acts of the Fifth Council, at the third sitting, the 13th November, the writing of Mennas to Vigilius and two alleged letters of the latter were admitted to be spurious. The Monothelites could show nothing for themselves out of the General Councils. They had now to seek proof from the writings of the Fathers. They begged for time, and, on the proposition of George of Constantinople, the letters of Agatho and the Roman Council were ordered to be read, which occupied the fourth session, on the 15th November. In the fifth and sixth sessions, of the 7th December, 680, and the 12th February, 681, Macarius proposed passages from the writings of Fathers in behalf of his doctrine, but it was shown that they were mostly falsified or imperfectly quoted or indecisive. At the seventh session, 13th February, 681, the Roman collection of passages from the Fathers in support of the doctrine of Two Wills and Two Operations was read against the others. George and Macarius received copies of them. While Macarius remained obstinate, George was convinced of the correctness of the doctrine set forth in the papal letters, and on the 17th February he gave in a confession to the Roman legates in which the Two Wills and the Two Operations were expressly acknowledged. When, then, the emperor at the eighth session, on the 7th March, questioned the bishops on their accession to the letters of Agatho, not only George of Constantinople admitted this, who requested and obtained from the emperor the reinsertion of Pope Vitalian into the diptychs of his Church, but also Theodore of Ephesus, Sisinnius of Heraklea, Domitius of Prusias, and other bishops, mostly in the jurisdiction of Byzantium, five also from that of Antioch. On the contrary, Macarius put in a confession directed against “the godless heresy” of Maximus. The examination of the patristic passages put in by him began, which was continued in the following session of March 8, wherein Macarius took no more part. He and his pupil Stephen were deposed as falsifiers of the faith and teachers of error. At the tenth session, the 18th March, the testimonies put in by the Roman legates were, after collation with the manuscripts of the patriarchal archives, found correct, and a confession agreeing with the declaration of Agatho was delivered by Theodore, Bishop of Melitene, and others. As the close of the eleventh session, the 20th March, in which at the instance of the representative from Jerusalem, the letter of St. Sophronius to Sergius, and, at the instance of the Roman legates, four passages of Macarius and his pupil Stephen were read, the emperor announced that as he was prevented from further attendance at the sessions by state business, four officials of rank would henceforth represent him. But, besides, the chief matter was already settled. Old and New Rome were again united in belief.

At the twelfth sitting on the 22nd March a number of writings were read which Macarius had transmitted to the emperor, but the emperor sent on to the Council unread. Among them were contained the letters of Sergius to Cyrus and Honorius, and the answer of the latter. These documents were collated with the manuscripts of the patriarchal archive, and found to agree. Thereupon in the thirteenth session, on the 28th March, condemnation was passed upon the heads and favourers of Monothelitism, on Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus of Alexandria, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul, Peter of Constantinople (the three patriarchs next following, of whom nothing heretical was found, were spared), as likewise upon “Honorius of Rome, who followed Sergius and confirmed his teaching”. The synodal letter of Sophronius was acknowledged as orthodox. In the fourteenth session, on the 5th April, at which also the newly-elected Catholic patriarch of Antioch, Theophanes, was present, the falsifications in the Fifth Council, the writing ascribed to Mennas and the two suppositious letters of Vigilius, were laid under anathema. On the octave of Easter, the 14th April, John, bishop of Porto, celebrated Mass in the emperor’s presence at Sancta Sophia according to the Latin rite. The monk and priest Polychronius, who already in the fourteenth session had been accused by Domitius, bishop of Prusias, as a deceiver of the people, was brought before the Council at its fifteenth session on the 26th April. He desired in confirmation of the Monothelite doctrine to raise up a dead man. He was allowed to try in order to undeceive the people. He laid his confession of faith upon a dead body which was brought in, and whispered for two hours long into his ears, of course without effect. As he was not shaken in his attachment to the heresy, he was deprived of his rank as priest, and excommunicated. In the sixteenth session, which was held, after a long interval, on the 9th August, a Syrian priest, Constantine of Apamea, wished to get the doctrine recognised that there were in Christ two operations belonging to the Natures, but only one personal Will of the Word: that besides this Christ had once indeed also a natural human Will, but that He laid aside this at the crucifixion together with flesh and blood. The Council condemned this doctrine as savouring of Manichean and Apollinarian heresy, issued anathema against those whom it condemned, and resolved to publish a confession of faith, which was considered at the seventeenth session of the 11th September, and solemnly proclaimed at the closing session on the 16th September, in presence of the emperor. In this, after agreement declared with the five preceding General Councils, it was proclaimed that there are to be received in Christ Two Natural Operations and Two Natural Wills undivided, inseparable, unchangeable, and unmixed, which are not contrary to each other, since the human will follows the divine and is subject to it, is indeed deified and exalted, but not removed or extinguished. Neither of the Two Natures can be without operation or without will. The Council thanked the emperor in a special address for his labours to bring about the peace of the Church, requested that five accredited copies of the decree of faith should be provided for the five patriarchal sees, and in a special letter to the Pope besought the confirmation of their decrees by him.(122) Besides this very brief summary of the eighteen sessions of the Sixth Council, it is requisite to take notice of certain documents which were either presented to the Council by the legates, as their commission from the Pope, or proceeded from the Council or the emperor at its conclusion.

Pope Agatho had committed to his legates a long letter to the emperor. One passage from it may shew how plainly he set forth the authority of the Apostolic See and its inerrancy in matters of faith. He lays down the doctrine which opposes the Monothelite heresy, not as a matter for discussion, but as absolutely determined. “St. Peter,” he says, “received the charge to feed the spiritual sheep of the Church by a triple commendation from the Redeemer of all Himself. By his help this apostolical Church of his never turned aside from the way of truth to any error. The whole Catholic Church and General Councils followed in all things his authority as that of the chief of the apostles. This is the true rule of faith, which in prosperity and adversity the spiritual mother of your empire, the Apostolic Church of Christ, has kept unswervingly, which, by the grace of Almighty God, will be proved never to have erred from the path of apostolic tradition. It has never yielded to the corruption of heretical novelties, but as from the beginning of the Christian faith it has received from its authors the chief apostles, it has continued spotless according to the divine promise of the Lord our Saviour Himself, which He spoke to the chief of His disciples in the gospel: ‘Peter, behold Satan has sought to sift you, but I have prayed for thee,’ etc. Let your clemency consider how the Lord and Saviour of all, whose the faith is, who promised that the faith of Peter should not fail, charged him to confirm his brethren, which it is known to all that the apostolic pontiffs, my predecessors, have ever confidently done.”

A more peremptory assertion cannot be made than this, and it is made by a Pope to an emperor, on the occasion of calling a General Council. It is carried by his legates, as ambassadors carry the commission of their sovereign. The answer(123) which the Council sent at its conclusion to the Pope shows how it was received. It ascribes to the Pope in fullest terms the position which he claimed, beginning in these words: “Greatest diseases require the greatest remedies, as you, most Blessed, know; and therefore Christ our God, whose power created, whose wisdom provides all things, has appointed your Holiness as a skilled physician to meet the contagion of heresy by the force of true belief, and to impart the vigour of health to the members of the Church. We then, having read through the letters of a true confession sent by your paternal Blessedness to the most gracious emperor, leave to you what is to be done; to you who hold the first see of the universal Church, standing on the firm rock of faith. We recognise your letters as written from the supreme head of the apostles. By them we have cast out the heretical sect which has lately set up its manifold error. According to the sentence previously passed upon them, we have cast out Theodore, bishop of Pharan, Sergius, Honorius, Cyrus, Paul, Pyrrhus, and Peter. We have sent what we have done, and these things will be learned from those who represented you, Theodore and George, priests; John, deacon; and Constantine, sub-deacon. They state accurately the doctrine which they have approved, which we beseech your paternal Holiness to set your seal upon by your honoured rescript.”

Is it possible to accept in more express terms the authority claimed by the Pope in his letter to the emperor, including that descent from Peter, to whom the promise made by our Lord is made the source and the guarantee of the authority? Is it possible more fully to acknowledge his right to confirm, in their own words, “to set his seal” on their proceedings?

But the Council also congratulated the emperor on the work over which as sovereign he had presided. Its success they attribute to the Pope in these words: “The highest of all,(124) the first apostle fought with us; for we had for our supporter, who by his writing set forth the mystery of theology, his imitator and the successor of his chair. The city of Rome the elder presented to you a confession dictated by God, and caused the daylight of belief to rise from the West. Paper and ink it seemed, but Peter spoke by Agatho.”

This address is signed first by the three legates, Theodore, George and John, “holding the place of most Blessed Agatho, universal Pope of the City of Rome,” next by “George, by the mercy of God bishop of Constantinople, New Rome”—thirdly by Peter, a priest, holding the place of the Apostolic See of Alexandria; fourthly by Theophanes,(125) by the mercy of God bishop of Antioch, Theopolis; fifthly by George, the priest, representing Theodore, not bishop but representing the See of Jerusalem.

Thus these two patriarchates could only shew two priests to record their agreement.

The emperor issued an edict(126) in which he set forth a most carefully drawn creed. He also addressed a letter(127) to Pope Leo, who had succeeded Agatho. He mentions how the legates of the Pope had been received, how every authority of Scripture and the preceding Councils had been carefully examined; “moreover we beheld as it were with the eyes of our mind the chief of the apostolic choir, the Peter of the first see, setting forth the mystery of the whole dispensation, and addressing us in the words of Christ: Thou art Christ the Son of the living God. For his sacred letter portrayed to us the whole Christ, which we joyfully and sincerely received and folded him in our arms as Peter himself. God has done glorious things and preserved to us the faith entire. How should He not in that rock in which He founded the Church Himself, and foretold that the gates of hell, the snares of heretics, should not prevail against it? Act therefore as a man and be firm, gird thyself with the sword of the word, and sharpen it with divine zeal. Be the firm champion of the right faith; study to cut short every heretical talk or attempt as of old Peter struck off with the sword the sense of Jewish hearing, prefiguring the deafness of the legal and servile synagogue. The condition of the whole Roman polity is tranquillised with the tranquillity of the faith. We exhort therefore your most sacred headship(128) to send at once your nuntio to our royal city, that he may dwell here and in all emergent matters, dogmatic, canonical, or simply ecclesiastical may express the person of your Holiness.

“Farewell in the Lord, most blessed, and pray the more earnestly for our realm.”

We have, therefore, on this great occasion a complete concurrence of three authorities; of the Pope in addressing an eastern emperor in prospect of a General Council, of that Council itself answering this address of the Pope; of the emperor in his letter to the Pope by his legates returning to him from the Council; and it is to be noted that the Pope does not assert the nature of his authority as descending by a divine grant to Peter and exercised in virtue of it during six centuries with any greater emphasis than the emperor and the Council acknowledge it.

In the meantime Pope Agatho had died on the 10th January, 681. The see remained vacant eighteen months, during which the Council ended. Leo II. was consecrated the 17th August, 682, and his short pontificate ended the 3rd July, 683. To him the letter of the emperor was carried, and he discharged the office of confirming this Council, as St. Leo had confirmed that of Chalcedon, and of bringing it to the knowledge of the West.

The letter to the emperor, in which Leo II. confirms the Sixth Council, is a document extending over nearly six folio columns.(129) It shows throughout the Pope’s great anxiety for the exact maintenance of the faith, and how severe had been the struggle with the heresy which had been upheld by two emperors and by four successive patriarchs of the imperial city. The Pope draws out in it a creed of the utmost minuteness in regard of the contested doctrine, the Person of our Lord in His Two Natures. He repeats his acknowledgment of the Five preceding General Councils as handing down one continuous doctrine from the beginning, and joins with them the Council just held as witness of the same doctrine; and he likewise joins the heretics during several hundred years from Arius, in one anathema, which closes with the inventors of this new error—that is, “Theodore, Bishop of Pharan, Cyrus of Alexandria, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul, and Peter, who lurked like thieves in the See of Constantinople rather than sat as guides;(130) nay, and also Honorius, who did not set himself to hallow this Apostolic Church by the teaching of the apostolic tradition, but allowed it, being spotless, to be stained by a profane betrayal”. These words, by which St. Leo expressed how far he assented to the condemnation of Honorius by the Council, have a light thrown upon them by the words which he used in making known the condemnation of the Monothelites to the Spanish bishops, when among the condemned he included Honorius, “who did not extinguish the flame of heretical doctrine when it first arose, as was the office of the apostolic authority, but by neglecting fostered it”.(131) And, again, in announcing the confirmation of the Council to the Spanish king, Erwig, he says of Honorius, “who allowed the spotless rule of the apostolic tradition, which he had received from his predecessors, to be stained”.(132)

It may be noted that St. Leo II. does not enter into the matter contained in the letters of Honorius; does not express agreement with words which passed in the Council that “they were opposed to apostolic belief, to the declarations of Councils, and of all the approved fathers,” that “they agreed with the false doctrines of heretics”; he does not repeat the reproach that Honorius, by proof of his letter to Sergius, agreed in all respects with his meaning, and confirmed his godless doctrines. “Be it sufficient for us to know that if the name of Pope Honorius appeared in those sentences it certainly was not because he really taught or held the Monothelite heresy, but solely because with too great allowance he did not rebuke it, nor set himself to strangle it at its beginning, insomuch as undoubtedly that manner of action had given great encouragement to the favourers of those errors.”(133) I quote two further judgments of the present day, that “the letters of Honorius contain nothing heretical,” and that “in fact no error of faith whatever is found in those letters of Honorius”.(134) The anathema which lies on the memory of Honorius, who lived in renown and was buried in honour in St. Peter’s, is a warning given by the Holy See itself to everyone who sits in that chair to weigh well both words and conduct, and guard both from the slightest negligence in matters of doctrine. Honorius died before the Exposition of Sergius was published or presented for his acceptance. Had he lived to judge of it those who study the history of the time succeeding down to the Sixth Council cannot doubt that he would have censured it as his successors censured it.

The Sixth Council closes a crisis of danger to the faith of the Church than which no greater is to be found in all history. The years from 638, in which Honorius died, to 682, in which his successor St. Leo II. approved the doctrinal decision of the Council, and further, allowed the conduct of a predecessor to be condemned, are occupied by ten successors of Honorius, every one of whom with the utmost zeal condemned the heresy which was supported by two emperors, wielding absolute power, and by four successive patriarchs of Constantinople, besides patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch. All these put ecclesiastical authority at the service of these emperors to carry out their will. Heraclius and Constans II. were not theologians, and it required theological skill to construct concerning the Person of our Lord a heresy which could present itself to the fastidious Greek mind, clothed in proper expressions of a language lending itself with unsurpassable accuracy to every variation of thought. Cyrus, made for his first suggestions, by the grateful monarch, patriarch of Alexandria, was so good as to provide Heraclius with doctrinal decrees intended to make the disloyal sects of Egypt believe that they could express their own false doctrine in words which might pass for an assent to the Council of Chalcedon and the doctrine of St. Leo. When the patriarch Sophronius denounced the error and appealed to Rome and Pope Honorius in words which after twelve hundred years sound like a trumpet’s call, Sergius being patriarch of Constantinople, the bosom friend and most trusted counsellor of Heraclius, holding the see of the Golden City for eight and twenty years, living and dying, too, in the greatest renown as an orthodox bishop, approached Pope Honorius with insidious language, totally disguising the real state of things in the East. He wished the Pope to believe that Cyrus of Alexandria was winning the proud and tumultuous sects of Egypt to Catholic union with the doctrine of St. Leo, which Honorius held with the utmost fidelity. Not only did he write letters, but he constructed a document to which he induced the emperor to set the imperial seal and require it to be signed by all bishops, and especially by the bishop of Rome. The document was intended to introduce that heresy formulated by Cyrus, which Sophronius exposed and refuted. Pope Honorius died in October 638, and never saw this document. Sergius got it passed by his Council at Constantinople, but died himself in December of the same year. Pope Severinus was elected to succeed Honorius before the end of the year 638, but his consecration was delayed by Greek intrigues for nineteen months, in the hope of obtaining his assent to the document drawn up by Sergius. This was found to be hopeless. The exarch then contented himself with plundering the Lateran treasury. Pope Severinus was at length consecrated, and sat for two months and six days, in which time however he condemned the Ecthesis. He was succeeded by two Popes, John IV. and Theodore, who behaved with the same decision and fortitude. But a new emperor had succeeded, after a frightful revolution, at twelve years of age; and a new patriarch of Constantinople was ready to draw up a new document for the heresy. It was met by another Pope, whose first act was to call a great Council at the Lateran, to condemn the heresy under anathema, and the two documents, of which the first was fathered by Heraclius, and the second by Constans II. For this act of courage St. Martin four years afterwards was stolen from Rome, judged at Constantinople as a traitor by the senate, and sent a prisoner to die of famine, as is believed, in the Crimea. The emperor, having Rome in full possession, used such means that Eugenius was put into the see while St. Martin was still living as a condemned criminal. But Eugenius could not be compelled to accept the heresy of the Byzantine monarch and patriarch. There follow five Popes, Vitalian, Adeodatus, Donus, Agatho, and Leo II. At length, when Constans had perished miserably in his bath at Syracuse, his son Constantine broke the line of heretical emperors. But he found in truth the heresy so embedded in his capital that he was obliged to act with great caution. After repulsing a Mohammedan attack upon his capital which lasted seven years, and was overcome only by the aid of the Greek fire, when if the city had been taken the Greek empire would have ended, and the patriarch of Constantinople have shared the lot of his brethren at Alexandria and Antioch, the emperor was enabled to invite Pope Donus to hold a Council at Constantinople which should terminate this long struggle. It was a struggle in which the whole West followed the Pope, but much of the East was in favour of the heresy. Pope Agatho had succeeded Donus; he accepted the request of the emperor, he had Councils held through the West, and a full patriarchal Council at Rome. So he appeared by his legates at Constantinople, and was welcomed with the words, “Peter has spoken by Agatho,” as 230 years before they cried, “Peter has spoken by Leo”. But Agatho also died before the Council had finished its work, and the tenth successor of Honorius, Leo II., during his short pontificate of ten months, set his seal upon the Council, and endured to censure a predecessor for neglect of his office, and for allowing by that neglect a heresy to obtain a temporary success. Ten Popes in succession, one of them actually martyred, all of them vassals of absolute sovereigns, had during all this interval of forty years alone prevented the heresy being forced upon the Church. Four patriarchs of Constantinople in succession had fostered it; and four were together condemned. They were condemned, not for negligence in allowing others to spread the heresy, but as its originators; as advisers and mouthpiece of emperors, all whose power had been bent by them to extort approval of it from Popes, who in their civil position were helpless subjects in a “servile” province, but in their religious character were successors of St. Peter.

Now at the time the western emperor ceased to exist seven Popes succeeding St. Leo defended his doctrine against two emperors, Zeno and Anastasius, and foiled all the efforts of Acacius to use the eastern jealousy and the pride of the royal city, and exalt his see above the control of St. Peter’s successor, until the seventh Pope, Hormisdas, then a subject of the Arian Gothic king, Theodorich, compelled the eastern emperor, the patriarch, the bishops, and the court, to confess his supreme authority, as successor of St. Peter. Seven Popes then stood neither hesitating nor fluctuating: over against them in that time stood seven bishops of Constantinople, one originator of the whole schism, others yielding to the emperor’s will even against their own wishes. It was a contest of 44 years with an oriental despotism, waged by Popes the subjects of Arian Goths. They alone maintained the faith of the Church, as embodied in the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon, and saved the East.

Now, again, there has been a struggle for 44 years, in which ten Popes, subjects of the eastern emperor, and liable as such to be summoned by him to his capital, where one of them was indeed condemned to death, stood likewise as one man. They dwelt in a Rome no longer recognised as the head of the empire. Of this whole seventh century the special historian of the city says that for Rome it was “the most frightful, the most devastating of all”.(135) Civil power was not in their hands. Their election itself had to be confirmed by the exarch as representing the emperor, or by the emperor himself. The first of the ten, Pope Severinus, had to wait nineteen months for it, after which he sat two months. The last of the ten, St. Leo II., began to sit eighteen months after the death of his predecessor, St. Agatho, and then only sat ten months. During the whole of this period, from the death of Honorius in 638, to the ratification of the Sixth Council in 682, the yielding of any one of these ten Popes would have carried with it the subjection of the whole church to the Monothelite error. They saved the East, they saved the Royal City, the seat of all power, in spite of its four patriarchs condemned as heretics. That Heraclius and Constans did not destroy the faith in the seventh century is as much their work and merit as that Zeno and Anastasius did not destroy it in the fifth. Perhaps the test which by the force of circumstances was applied to the Popes from the time Rome was governed from Constantinople as a captive city in the second half of the sixth and the whole of the seventh century was even more severe than that applied to them in the fifth. Their condition was more helpless, inasmuch as the Byzantine subjection was heavier than the Arian Gothic control, while the pillaged Italy of the exarchs was wretched, and the prosperous realm of Theodoric guarded jealously the last remains of imperial grandeur. He at least was a king in Italian Ravenna and Verona, and Rome was both great and dear to him. But Justinian and those who followed him were task-masters on the Bosphorus, who placed a tax-collector at Ravenna to wring out the last drop of Italy’s blood, and plunder, as occasion served, the treasury of the Church in the Pope’s Lateran Patriarcheion.

In what consisted the power by which twenty-nine Popes from Pelagius I. in 555, to Gregory II. in 715 bore so fearful a strain? Solely in one thing: in the belief that the throne of St. Peter had been fixed at Rome, and that St. Peter had received by a direct gift from Christ, and his successor had inherited, the charge to feed and govern the universal Church. The five times captured Rome lived on in this belief, and was become the city of the Popes. The eye of a conqueror, legislator and ruler, had chosen with a wisdom which all posterity has acknowledged the fairest and the strongest of cities for the seat of his power. He made it a royal residence; he could not make it an apostolic see. When at length his city fell, the empire fell with it. In the day of its pride it sought to trample on the elder Rome by the privileges of new Rome. The second of these attempts was foiled by the ten successors of Pope Honorius.