Chapter I: Origin and Rise of the Papacy (1)

[Sidenote: [42-842 A.D.]]

Like almost all the great works of nature and of human power in the material world and in the world of man, the papacy grew up in silence and obscurity. The names of the earlier bishops of Rome are known only by barren lists, by spurious decrees and epistles inscribed, centuries later, with their names; by their collision with the teachers of heretical opinions, almost all of whom found their way to Rome; by martyrdoms ascribed with the same lavish reverence to those who lived under the mildest of the Roman emperors, as well as those under the most merciless persecutors. Yet the mythic or imaginative spirit of early Christianity has either respected, or was not tempted to indulge its creative fertility by the primitive annals of Rome. After the embellishment, if not the invention, of St. Peter’s pontificate, his conflict with Simon Magus in the presence of the emperor, and the circumstance of his martyrdom, it was content with raising the successive bishops to the rank of martyrs without any peculiar richness or fullness of legend.

The dimness and obscurity which veiled the growing church, no doubt threw its modest concealment over the person of the bishop. He was but one man, with no recognised function, in the vast and tumultuous population. He had his unmarked dwelling, perhaps in the distant Transteverine region, or in the then lowly and unfrequented Vatican. By the vulgar, he was beheld as a Jew, or as belonging to one of those countless eastern religions, which, from the commencement of the empire, had been flowing, each with its strange rites and mysteries, into Rome. The emperor, the imperial family, the court favourites, the military commanders, the consulars, the senators, the patricians by birth, wealth, or favour, the pontiffs, the great lawyers, even those who ministered to the public pleasures, the distinguished mimes or gladiators, when they appeared in the streets, commanded more public attention than the Christian bishop, except when sought out for persecution by some politic or fanatic emperor. Slowly, and at long intervals, did the bishop of Rome emerge to dangerous eminence.

Christianity itself might seem, even from the first, to have disdained obscurity--to have sprung up or to have been forced into terrible notoriety in the Neronian persecution and the subsequent martyrdom of one at least, according to the vulgar tradition, of its two great apostles. What caprice of cruelty directed the attention of Nero to the Christians, and made him suppose them victims important enough to glut the popular indignation at the burning of Rome, it is impossible to determine. The cause and extent of the Domitian persecution is equally obscure. The son of Vespasian was not likely to be merciful to any connected with the fanatic Jews. Its known victims were of the imperial family, against whom some crime was necessary, and an accusation of Christianity served the end.

At the commencement of the second century, under Trajan, persecution against the Christians is raging in the East. That, however, was a local or rather Asiatic persecution, arising out of the vigilant and not groundless apprehension of the sullen and brooding preparation for insurrection among the whole Jewish race (with whom Roman terror and hatred still confounded the Christians), which broke out in the bloody massacres of Cyrene and Cyprus, and in the final rebellion during the reign of Hadrian, under Barchochebas (Bar Koziba). But while Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, is carried to Rome to suffer martyrdom, the Roman community is in peace, and not without influence. Ignatius entreats his Roman brethren not to interfere with injurious kindness between himself and his glorious death.

The wealth of the Roman community, and their lavish Christian use of their wealth, by contributing to the wants of foreign churches, at all periods, especially in times of danger and disaster (an ancient usage which lasted till the time of Eusebius), testifies at once to their flourishing condition, to their constant communication with more distant parts of the empire, and thus incidentally, perhaps, to the class, the middle or mercantile class, which formed the greater part of the believers.

But the history of Latin Christianity has not begun. For some considerable (it cannot but be an undefinable) part of the first three centuries, the church of Rome, and most, if not all the churches of the West, were, if we may so speak, Greek religious colonies. Their language was Greek, their organisation Greek, their writers Greek, their Scriptures Greek; and many vestiges and traditions show that their ritual, their liturgy, was Greek. Through Greek the communication of the churches of Rome and of the West was constantly kept up with the East; and through Greek every heresiarch, or his disciples, having found his way to Rome, propagated with more or less success his peculiar doctrines. Pope Leo I (440-461) was the first celebrated Latin preacher, and his brief and emphatic sermons read like the first essays of a rude and untried eloquence, rather than the finished compositions which would imply a long study and cultivation of pulpit oratory. Compare them with Chrysostom.

[Sidenote: [42-312 A.D.]]

Africa, not Rome, gave birth to Latin Christianity. Tertullian was the first Latin writer, at least the first who commanded the public ear; and there is strong ground for supposing that, since Tertullian quotes the sacred writings perpetually and copiously, the earliest of those many Latin versions, noticed by Augustine, and on which Jerome grounded his Vulgate, were African. Cyprian kept up the tradition of ecclesiastical Latin. Arnobius, too, was an African.

Thus the Roman church was but one of the confederation of Greek religious republics, founded by Christianity. As of apostolic origin, still more as the church of the capital of the world, it was, of course, of paramount dignity and importance. It is difficult to exaggerate the height at which Rome, before the foundation of Constantinople, stood above the other cities of the earth; the centre of commerce, the centre of affairs, the centre of empire. The Christians, like the rest of mankind, were constantly ebbing and flowing out of Rome and into Rome. The church of the capital could not but assume something of the dignity of the capital; it was constantly receiving, as it were, the homage of all the foreign Christians, who, from interest, business, ambition, curiosity, either visited or took up their residence in the Eternal City.

But if Rome, or the church of Rome, was thus the centre of the more peaceful influences of Christianity, and of the hopes and fears of the Christian world, it was no less inevitably the chosen battle-field of her civil wars; and Christianity has ever more faithfully recorded her dissensions than her conquests. In Rome every feud which distracted the infant community reached its height; nowhere do the judaising tenets seem to have been more obstinate, or to have held so long and stubborn a conflict with more full and genuine Christianity. In Rome every heresy, almost every heresiarch, found welcome reception. All new opinions, all attempts to harmonise Christianity with the tenets of the Greek philosophers, with the oriental religions, the cosmogonies, the theophanies, and mysteries of the East, were boldly agitated, either by the authors of the gnostic systems or by their disciples. Valentinus the Alexandrian was himself in Rome, so also was Marcion of Sinope. The Phrygian Montanus, with his prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla, if not present, had their sect, a powerful sect, in Rome and in Africa. In Rome their convert, for a time at least, was the pope; in Africa, Tertullian. Somewhat later, the precursors of the great Trinitarian controversy came from all quarters. Praxeas, an Asiatic; Theodotus, a Byzantine; Artemon, an Asiatic; Noetus, a Smyrniote, at least his disciples the deacon Epigenes and Cleomenes, taught at Rome. Sabellius, from Ptolemais in Cyrene, appeared in person; his opinions took their full development in Rome. Not only do all these controversies betray the inexhaustible fertility of the Greek or eastern imagination, not only were they all drawn from Greek or oriental doctrines, but they must have been still agitated, discussed, ramified into their parts and divisions, through the versatile and subtile Greek. They were all strangers and foreigners; not one of all these systems originated in Rome, in Italy, or in Africa. On all these opinions the bishop of Rome was almost compelled to sit in judgment; he must receive or reject, authorise or condemn; he was a proselyte, whom it would be the ambition of all to gain.

Thus, down to the conversion of Constantine, the biography of the Roman bishops, and the history of the Roman episcopate, are one; the acts and peculiar character of the pontiffs, the influence and fortunes of the see, excepting in the doubtful and occasional gleams of light which have brought out Victor, Zephyrinus, Calixtus, Cornelius, Stephen, into more distinct personality, are involved in a dim and vague twilight. On the establishment of Christianity, as the religion if not of the empire, of the emperor, the bishop of Rome rises at once to the rank of a great accredited functionary; the bishops gradually, though still slowly, assume the life of individual character. The bishop is the first Christian in the first city of the world, and that city is legally Christian. The supreme pontificate of heathenism might still linger from ancient usage among the numerous titles of the emperor; but so long as Constantine was in Rome, the bishop of Rome, the head of the emperor’s religion, became in public estimation the equal, in authority and influence immeasurably the superior, to all of sacerdotal rank. The schisms and factions of Christianity now become affairs of state. As long as Rome is the imperial residence, an appeal to the emperor is an appeal to the bishop of Rome. It was the slow and imperceptible accumulation of wealth, the unmarked ascent to power and sovereignty, which enabled the papacy to endure for centuries.

[Sidenote: [312-395 A.D.]]

The obscurity of the bishops of Rome was not in this alone their strength. The earlier pontiffs (Clement is hardly an exception) were men who of themselves commanded no great authority, and awoke no jealousy. Rome had no Origen, no Athanasius, no Ambrose, no Augustine, no Jerome. The power of the hierarchy was established by other master-minds; by the Carthaginian Cyprian, by the Italian Ambrose, the prelate of political weight as well as of austere piety, by the eloquent Chrysostom. The names of none of the popes, down to Leo and Gregory the Great, appear among the distinguished writers of Christendom. This more cautious and retired dignity was no less favourable to their earlier power, than to their later claim of infallibility. If more stirring and ambitious men, they might have betrayed to the civil power the secret of their aspiring hopes; if they had been voluminous writers, in the more speculative times, before the Christian creed had assumed its definite and coherent form, it might have been more difficult to assert their unimpeachable orthodoxy.

The removal of the seat of empire to Constantinople consummated the separation of Greek and Latin Christianity; one took the dominion of the East, the other of the West. Greek Christianity has now another centre in the new capital; and the new capital has entered into those close relations with the great cities of the East, which had before belonged exclusively to Rome. Alexandria has become the granary of Constantinople; her Christianity and her commerce, instead of floating along the Mediterranean to Italy, pour up the Ægean to the city on the Bosporus. The Syrian capitals, Antioch, Jerusalem, the cities of Asia Minor and Bithynia, Ephesus, Nicæa, Nicomedia, own another mistress. The tide of Greek trade has ebbed away from the West, and found a nearer mart; political and religious ambition and adventure crowd to the new eastern court. That court becomes the chosen scene of Christian controversy; the emperor is the proselyte to gain whom contending parties employ argument, influence, intrigue.

That which was begun by the foundation of Constantinople, was completed by the partition of the empire between the sons of Constantine. There are now two Roman worlds, a Greek, and a Latin. In one respect, Rome lost in dignity, she was no longer the sole metropolis of the empire; the East no longer treated her with the deference of a subject. On the other hand, she was the uncontested, unrivalled head of her own hemisphere; she had no rival in those provinces, which yet held her allegiance, either as to civil or religious supremacy. The separation of the empire was not more complete between the sons of Constantine or Theodosius, than between Greek and Latin Christianity.[b]

[Sidenote: [42-395 A.D.]]

The advance of Christianity involved an emancipation of religion from all political elements, and this was inevitably followed by the establishment of a distinct ecclesiastical body, with a constitution peculiar to itself. In this separation of the church from the state consists, perhaps, the most important and most effectually influential peculiarity of Christian times. The spiritual and temporal powers may come into close contact--they may remain in the most intimate communion; but a perfect coalition can only take place occasionally, and for short periods of time. In their reciprocal relations and position with regard to each other, has since then been involved one of the most important questions presented by all history.

(From an old woodcut)]

It was nevertheless imperative on the ecclesiastical body to form their constitution on the model of that of the empire; and accordingly the hierarchy of the bishops, metropolitan patriarchs, was formed in close correspondence with the degradations of the civil power. No long time had elapsed before the bishops of Rome acquired the supremacy. It is, indeed, a vain pretence to assert that this supremacy was universally acknowledged by East and West, even in the first century, or, indeed, at any time; but it is equally certain that they quickly gained a pre-eminence, raising them far above all other ecclesiastical dignitaries. Many causes concurred to secure them this position; for if the relative importance of each provincial capital secured to its bishop a corresponding weight and dignity, how much more certainly would this result take place as regarded the ancient capital of the empire--that city whence the whole had derived its name? Rome was, besides, one of the most illustrious seats of the apostles; here had the greater number of the martyrs shed their blood. The bishops of Rome had displayed the most undaunted firmness throughout the different persecutions, and had sometimes been scarcely installed in their sacred office before they followed their predecessor in the path of that martyrdom by which his seat had been vacated. In addition to all this, the emperors now found it advisable to favour the advancement of a great patriarchal authority. In a law that became decisive for the predominance of Rome as well as of Christianity, Theodosius the Great commands that all nations claiming the protection of his grace should receive the faith as propounded by St. Peter to the Romans. Valentinian also forbade the bishops, whether of Gaul or of other provinces, to depart from the received customs of the church without the sanction of that venerable man, the pope of the Holy City. Thenceforth the power of the Roman bishops advanced beneath the protection of the emperor himself. But in this political connection lay also a restrictive force; had there been but one emperor, a universal primacy might also have established itself; but this was prevented by the partition of the empire. The emperors of the East were too eagerly tenacious of their ecclesiastical rights to make it possible that they should promote the extension of power desired by the western patriarchs in their dominions. In this respect also the constitution of the church presents the closest resemblance to that of the empire.

THE PAPACY IN CONNECTION WITH THE FRANKISH EMPIRE

[Sidenote: [312-754 A.D.]]

Scarcely was this great change completed, the Christian religion established, and the church founded, when new events of great importance took place; the Roman Empire, so long conquering and paramount, was now to see itself assailed by its neighbours; in its turn it was invaded and overcome.

Amidst the general convulsion that ensued, Christianity itself received a violent shock. In their terror, the Romans bethought themselves once more of the Etruscan mysteries, the Athenians hoped to be saved by Achilles and Minerva, the Carthaginians offered prayers to the genius Cœlestis; but these were only temporary waverings, for even whilst the empire was shattered in the western provinces, the church remained firm and undisturbed throughout all. But she fell, as was inevitable, into many embarrassments, and found herself in an entirely altered condition. A pagan people took possession of Britain; Arian kings seized the greater part of the remaining West; while the Lombards, long attached to Arianism, and as neighbours most dangerous and hostile, established a powerful sovereignty before the very gates of Rome.

The Roman bishops meanwhile, beset on all sides, exerted themselves with all the prudence and pertinacity which have remained their peculiar attributes to regain the mastery--at least in their ancient patriarchal diocese; but a new and still heavier calamity now assailed them. The Arabs--not conquerors merely, as were the Germans, but men inspired even to fanaticism by an arrogant and dogmatising creed, in direct opposition to the Christian faith--now poured themselves over the West as they had previously done over the East. After repeated attacks, they gained possession of Africa; one battle made them masters of Spain, their general Musa boasting that he would march into Italy by the passes of the Pyrenees and across the Alps, and cause the name of Mohammed to be proclaimed from the Vatican.

This position was all the more perilous for the western portion of Roman Christendom, from the fact that the iconoclastic dissensions were at that time raging with the most deadly animosity on both sides. The emperor of Constantinople had adopted the opposite party to that favoured by the pope of Rome; nay, the life of the latter was more than once in danger from the emperor’s machinations. The Lombards did not fail to perceive the advantages derivable to themselves from these dissensions; their king Aistulf took possession of provinces that till then had always acknowledged the dominion of the emperor, and again advancing towards Rome, he summoned that city also to surrender, demanding payment of tribute with vehement threats.

The Roman see was at this moment in no condition to help itself, even against the Lombards, still less could it hope to contend with the Arabs, who were beginning to extend their sovereignty over the Mediterranean, and were threatening all Christendom with a war of extermination.

But now the faith was no longer confined within the limits of the Roman Empire. Christianity, in accordance with its original destiny, had long overpassed these limits; more especially had it taken deep root among the German tribes of the West; nay, a Christian power had already arisen among these tribes, and towards this the pope had but to stretch forth his hands, when he was sure to find the most effectual succour and earnest allies against all his enemies.

[Sidenote: [496-715 A.D.]]

Among all the Germanic nations, the Franks alone had become Catholic from their first rise in the provinces of the Roman Empire. This acknowledgment of the Roman see had secured important advantages to the Frankish nation. In the Catholic subjects of their Arian enemies, the western Goths and Burgundians, the Franks found natural allies. We read so much of the miracles by which Clovis was favoured--how St. Martin showed him the ford over the Vienne by means of a hind, how St. Hilary preceded his armies in a column of fire--that we shall not greatly err if we conclude these legends to shadow forth the material succours afforded by the natives to those who shared their creed, and for whom, according to Gregory of Tours,[i] they desired victory “with eager inclination.” But this attachment to Catholicism, thus confirmed from the beginning by consequences so important, was afterwards renewed and powerfully strengthened by a very peculiar influence arising from a totally different quarter.

It chanced that certain Anglo-Saxons, being exposed for sale in the slave market of Rome, attracted the attention of Pope Gregory the Great; he at once resolved that Christianity should be preached to the nation whence these beautiful captives had been taken. Never, perhaps, was resolution adopted by any pope whence results more important ensued; together with the doctrines of Christianity, a veneration for Rome and for the holy see, such as had never before existed in any nation, found place among the Germanic Britons. The Anglo-Saxons began to make pilgrimages to Rome; they sent their youth thither to be educated, and King Offa established the tax called “St. Peter’s penny” for the relief of pilgrims and the education of the clergy. The higher orders proceeded to Rome, in the hope that, dying there, a more ready acceptance would be accorded to them by the saints in heaven. The Anglo-Saxons appear to have transferred to Rome and the Christian saints the old Teutonic superstition, by which the gods were described as nearer to some spots of earth than to others, and more readily to be propitiated in places thus favoured.

But besides all this, results of higher importance still ensued when the Anglo-Saxons transplanted their modes of thought to the mainland, and imbued the whole empire of the Franks with their own opinion. Boniface (originally Winfrid or Winfrith), the apostle of the Germans, was an Anglo-Saxon; this missionary, largely sharing in the veneration professed by his nation for St. Peter and his successors, had from the beginning voluntarily pledged himself to abide faithfully by all the regulations of the Roman see; to this promise he most religiously adhered. On all the German churches founded by him was imposed an extraordinary obligation to obedience. Every bishop was required expressly to promise that his whole life should be passed in unlimited obedience to the Romish church, to St. Peter and his representative. Nor did he confine this rule to the Germans only. The Gallican bishops had hitherto maintained a certain independence of Rome; Boniface, who had more than once presided in their synods, availed himself of these occasions to impress his own views on this western portion of the Frankish church; thenceforward the Gallic archbishops received their pallium from Rome, and thus did the devoted submission of the Anglo-Saxons extend itself over the whole realm of the Franks.

The empire had now become the central point for all the German tribes of the West. The fact that the reigning family, the Merovingian race, had brought about its own destruction by its murderous atrocities had not affected the strength of the empire. Another family, that of Pepin of Heristal, had risen to supreme power--men of great energy, exalted force of character, and indomitable vigour. While other realms were sinking together into one common ruin, and the world seemed about to become the prey of the Moslem, it was this race, the house of Pepin of Heristal, afterwards called the Carlovingian, by which the first and effectual resistance was offered to the Mohammedan conquerors.

[Sidenote: [395-715 A.D.]]

The religious development then in progress was also equally favoured by the house of Pepin; we find it early maintaining the best understanding with Rome, and it was under the special protection of Charles Martel and Pepin le Bref that Boniface proceeded in his apostolic labours. Let us consider the temporal condition of the papal power. On the one side the East Roman Empire, weakened, fallen into ruin, incapable of supporting Christendom against Islamism, or of defending its own domains in Italy against the Lombards, yet continuing to claim supremacy even in spiritual affairs. On the other hand, we have the German nations full of the most vigorous life; victorious over the Moslem, attached with all the fresh ardour and trusting enthusiasm of youth to that authority of whose protecting and restricting influences they still felt the need, and filled with an unlimited and most freely rendered devotion.

Already Gregory II perceived the advantages he had gained; full of a proud self-consciousness, he writes thus to that iconoclast emperor, Leo the Isaurian: “All the lands of the West have their eyes directed towards our humility; by them are we considered as a God upon earth.” His successors became ever more and more impressed with the conviction that it was needful to separate themselves from a power (that of the Roman Empire) by which many duties were imposed on them, but which could offer them no protection in return. They could not safely permit a succession to the mere name and empire to fetter them, but turned themselves rather towards those from whom help and aid might also be expected. Thus they entered into strict alliance with those great captains of the West, the Frankish monarchs; this became closer and closer from year to year, procured important advantages to both parties, and eventually exercised the most active influence on the destinies of the world.[c]

With the division of the empire in the year 395, the question of the Roman precedence of Constantinople was left for a time in abeyance; but in the West the authority of the bishop of Rome became more and more firmly established. In the following century the general conditions under which he was called upon to act became so materially modified as to constitute a new period in the history of our subject.

The characters of the men who filled the papal chair during this century, most of them of exemplary life, some of commanding genius, would alone suffice to constitute it a memorable era. “Upon the mind of Innocent I,” says Milman,[b] “seems first distinctly to have dawned the vast conception of Rome’s universal ecclesiastical supremacy.” Innocent I (402-417) seems indeed to have been the first of the popes who ventured to repudiate those political conceptions which threatened to circumscribe the extending influence of his office. Innocent was succeeded by Zosimus (417-418) and Boniface (418-422). The former, whose pontificate lasted only twenty-one months, exhibits a noteworthy exception to the traditions of his see, in the disposition he at one time showed to temporise with Pelagianism, and even to set aside in its favour the decrees of his predecessor. The pontificate of Boniface is notable as having been preceded by a contested election which afforded the emperor Honorius an opportunity for the exercise of his intervention, thereby establishing a precedent for imperial interference on like occasions. At the instance of Boniface himself, Honorius enacted an ordinance designed to avert the scandals incident to such contests. By the new provisions, all canvassing for the vacant chair was strictly prohibited; in the event of a disputed election both candidates were to be deemed ineligible. The successor of Boniface was Celestine I (422-432). The evidence afforded by the events of his pontificate is somewhat conflicting in character. On the one hand, we find the churches of Africa putting forward their latest recorded protest against the Roman pretensions, adducing the sixth canon of the Council of Nicæa in support of their protest; on the other hand, the success with which Celestine intervened in Illyricum, and again in connection with the sees of Narbonne and Vienne, proves that the papal jurisdiction was being accepted with increasing deference in other parts of the empire.

[Sidenote: [418-461 A.D.]]

Barbaric invasion, although resulting in the overthrow of many of the institutions of civilisation, and in widespread suffering and social deterioration, served but to enhance the influence and importance of the Roman see. The apparent fulfilment of prophecy, pagan as well as Christian, when the city was taken and sacked by Alaric (410), seemed to complete the effacement of the temporal power in Rome. Neither the western emperors nor the Gothic conquerors held their court in the ancient capital, where the pope was now at once the most important and conspicuous authority. In the African provinces, the demoralisation occasioned by the fierce controversies and dissensions concerning Pelagianism and Donatism compelled the Catholic communities to exchange their former attitude of haughty independence for one of suppliant appeal, and to solicit the intervention and counsel which they had before rejected. Such was the aspect of affairs in the West when Leo the Great (440-461), by some regarded as the true founder of the mediæval popedom, succeeded to the primacy. A citizen of Rome by birth, he exemplified in his own character many of the ancient Roman virtues--a tenacious adherence to tradition in matters of religious belief, an indomitable resolution in the assertion of the prerogatives of his office, and the austere practice of the recognised duties of social life. This rigid maintenance of orthodoxy had been instilled into him (or at least confirmed) by the exhortations of Augustine, with whom he had become personally acquainted when on a mission to the African province; and before his election to the papal office the celebrated Cassian had conceived so high an opinion of his virtues and abilities as to dedicate to him his treatise on the Incarnation. Regarded, indeed, simply as the able antagonist of the Manichæan and Eutychian heresies, and as the first author of the collect, Leo would fill no unimportant place in the annals of Latin Christendom; but his influence on church history in other respects is of a far deeper and more potent kind. In none was it followed by more important results than by the success with which he established the theory that all bishops who, in questions of importance, demurred to the decision of their metropolitan should be entitled to appeal to Rome. He obtained the recognition of this principle not only in Illyricum, as his predecessor Innocent had done, but also in Gaul; and the circumstances under which he did so in the latter province constitute the whole proceedings a memorable episode in church history.

[Sidenote: [461-532 A.D.]]

The chief obstacle to the recognition of the supremacy of the Roman pontiff was now to be found in the revival of Arianism, which, professed alike by the Goth and the Vandal, represented the dominant faith in the chief cities of northern Italy, as well as in Africa, Spain, and southern Gaul. But the rivalry thus generated only increased the disposition of the Catholic party to exalt the prerogatives of their head, and the attitude of Rome towards other churches continued to be more and more one of unquestionable superiority. In the year 483 Pope Felix II (or III)[84] ventured upon an unprecedented measure in citing Acacius, the patriarch of Constantinople, to Rome, to answer certain allegations preferred against him by John, patriarch of Alexandria, whom he designated as “_frater et coepiscopus noster_” (Thiel,[j] _Epistolæ_, p. 239). On Acacius’ refusing to recognise the legality of the letter of citation, he was excommunicated by Felix. The successor of Felix, Gelasius I (492-496), refused to notify, as was customary, his election to the patriarch of Constantinople, and by his refusal implicitly put forward a fresh assumption, viz., that communion with Rome implied subjection to Rome. Throughout the pontificate of Gelasius the primacy of the Roman see was the burden of his numerous letters to other churches, and he appears also to have been the first of the pontiffs to enunciate the view that the authority which he represented was not controllable by the canons of synods, whether past or present. In Italy these assumptions were unhesitatingly accepted. The Palmary synod, as it was termed, convened in Rome during the pontificate of Symmachus (498-514), formally disavowed its own right to sit in judgment on his administrative acts. Ennodius, bishop of Pavia, (_circa_ 510), declared that the Roman pontiff was to be judged by God alone, and was not amenable to any earthly potentate or tribunal. It is thus evident that the doctrine of papal infallibility, though not yet formulated, was already virtually recognised.

During the Gothic rule in Italy (493-553), its representatives manifested the utmost tolerance in relation to religious questions, and showed little disposition to impose any restraints on the policy of the popes, although each monarch, by virtue of his title of “king of the Romans,” claimed the right to veto any election to the papal chair. In the year 483, when Odoacer sent his first lieutenant, Basilius, from Ravenna to Rome, the latter was invested with the titles _eminentissimus_ and _sublimis_. The pope accordingly appeared as politically the subject of his Arian overlord. The advantage thus gained by the temporal power appears to have been the result of its intervention, which Simplicius (468-483) had himself solicited, in the elections to the papal office, and one of the principal acts of the Palmary synod (above referred to) was to repudiate the chief measures of Basilius, which had been especially directed against the abuses that prevailed on such occasions, and more particularly against bribery by alienation of the church lands. The assertion of this authority on the part of the civil power was declared by the synod to be irregular and uncanonical, and was accordingly set aside as not binding on the church. The fierce contests and shameless bribery which now accompanied almost every election were felt, however, to be so grave a scandal that the synod itself deemed it expedient to adopt the ordinance issued by Basilius, and to issue it as one of its own enactments. In order more effectually to guard against such abuses, Boniface II, in the year 530, obtained from a synod specially convened for the purpose the power of appointing his own successor, and nominated one Vigilius--the same who ten years later actually succeeded to the office. But a second synod, having decided that such a concession was contrary to the traditions of episcopal succession, annulled the grant, and Boniface himself committed the former decree to the flames. At his death, however, the recurrence of the old abuses in a yet more flagrant form induced the senate to obtain from the court of Ravenna a measure of reform of a more comprehensive character, and designed to check not only the simoniacal practices within the church itself, but also the extortion of the court officials.

(From a woodcut in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris)]

[Sidenote: [526-590 A.D.]]

In the year 526 Dionysius Exiguus, a monk in Rome, undertook the labour of preparing a new collection of the canons of the councils, and, finding his production favourably received, proceeded also to compile a like collection of the papal letters or decretals, from the earliest extant down to those of Anastasius II in his own day. The letters of the popes were thus placed on a level with the rescripts of the emperors, and in conjunction with the canons formed the basis of the canon law, which afterwards assumed such importance in connection with the history of the church. The negative value of the collection formed by Dionysius may be said, however, almost to equal that of its actual contents; for, from the simple fact that it does not contain those yet earlier decretals subsequently put forth by the pseudo-Isidorus, it affords the most convincing disproof of their genuineness.

The substitution of the rule of the Greek emperors for that of the Gothic monarchs was inimical in almost every respect to the independence and reputation of the popedom. For a short interval before Justinian landed in Italy, Agapetus (535-536), appearing as the emissary of Theodotus to the Eastern court, assumed a bearing which inspired the emperor himself with respect, and his influence was sufficiently potent to procure the deposition of one patriarch of the Eastern capital and to decide the election of another. But, after Belisarius entered Rome and the city had been reduced to subjection, the pontiff was seen to be the mere vassal of the emperor, and not only of the emperor but of the courtesan on the imperial throne. The deposition of Silverius (536-540), and his mysterious fate at Pandataria, together with the elevation of Vigilius (540-555), the nominee of the abandoned Theodora and her pliant slave, completed the degradation of the Roman see. Each successive pope was now little more than a puppet which moved at the pleasure of the Eastern court, and the _apocrisiarius_ or deputy whom he maintained at that court was generally (as in the case of Pelagius I, Gregory I, Sabinian, Boniface III, Martin) his own successor--an honour purchased, it can hardly be doubted, by systematic compliance with the imperial wishes. In the career and fate of Vigilius the papal office was dishonoured as it had never been before, at once by the signal unworthiness of its bearer and by the indignities heaped upon him by the savage malice of his foes. So sinister, indeed, had become the relations between the Roman bishop and the eastern court that Pelagius I (555-560) is said to have besought Narses to send him to prison rather than to Constantinople.

In the year 568 the Lombards invaded Italy. Like the Goths they became converts to Arianism; but they were also far less civilised, and looked with little respect on Roman institutions and Roman habits of thought, while their arrogance, faithlessness, and cruelty gained for them the special detestation of the Roman see. Their conquests did not extend over all Italy. Ravenna and the Pentapolis, Venice, Rome, and its duchy (as the surrounding district was then termed), Naples, Calabria, and Sicily, remained subject to the empire. In the peninsula the pope was, after the exarch of Ravenna, the most powerful potentate, and the presence of a common foe caused the relations between himself and the empire to assume a more amicable character. The emperor, indeed, continued to control the elections and to enforce the payment of tribute for the territory protected by the imperial arms; but on the other hand the pontiff exercised a definite authority with the Roman duchy and claimed to have a voice in the appointment of the civil officers who administered the local government. From the time of Constantine the Great the church had possessed the right of acquiring landed property by bequests, and the Roman see had thus become greatly enriched. Some of its possessions lay far beyond the confines of Italy.[f]

GREGORY THE GREAT (590-604 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [42-590 A.D.]]

The papal monarchy thus rose insensibly upon the episcopal aristocracy. From the first, the word of the successor of St. Peter as bishop of the Eternal City had a high degree of authority. The title of “pope,” attributed in theory to every bishop, was finally reserved for him of Rome alone, a change already manifest under Leo the Great, but not completely brought about until the time of Gregory VII. The bishop of Rome had possessed since the days of the Roman Empire valuable property in the capital and throughout Italy. He had even acquired some across the Alps, for example, in the province of Arles, where he charged the bishop of that city with administering it. Besides this he occupied in Rome itself, that is to say in the most famous city in the world, that great estate which had been assigned to the bishops by the municipal régime in the last days of the empire.

St. Leo (440-461) gave much prestige to his office by the great rôle he played in public affairs and his successful intercession with Attila. He obtained from Valentinian III a decree in which the emperor invited “the entire church to recognise its head in order that peace might forever be preserved”; and at the same period we see him restoring a Gallican bishop to the see from which he had been driven, and transferring the metropolitan seat from Arles to Vienne.

Under the Ostrogoths the church of Rome, treated elsewhere with leniency, could make no progress. But when their power had fallen (553) and Rome came once more under the authority of the emperor of Constantinople, the great distance of her new master opened up a brighter future. The Lombard invasion brought into the church’s territory a large number of refugees, and the Roman population recovered some of its old energy in the double hatred for barbarians and Arians. As for the exarch whom the eastern emperor had charged with the government of his Italian provinces and invested with direct authority over the dukes and military counts of Naples, Rome, Genoa, etc., this official could scarcely make his authority felt in the western half of Italy, relegated as he was to Ravenna, and separated from Rome by the Lombard dominion which included Spoleto.

[Sidenote: [590-604 A.D.]]

It was at this juncture favourable, though dangerous in some respects, that Gregory I appeared (590-604). Descended from the noble Anicia family, Gregory added to distinction of birth every advantage of body and mind. While under thirty he was prefect of Rome, but at the end of several months he abandoned honours and thoughts of worldly things, and sought the retirement of the cloister. But his reputation did not permit him the obscurity he desired. Sent to Constantinople about 570 as secretary and later as apocrisiary (a sort of grand almoner) by Pope Pelagius II, he rendered valuable service to the holy see in its relations with the empire and in its struggles with the Lombards. In 590 the clergy, the senate, and the people raised him with one voice to the supreme pontificate, as successor to Pelagius; but as all elections had to be confirmed by the emperor at Constantinople, Gregory wrote in supplication that his might not be sanctioned. The letter was intercepted, and Maurice’s orders of ratification soon arrived. Gregory hid; he was discovered and brought back to Rome.

Pope in spite of himself, he used all his talent and power to fortify the papacy,[85] propagate Christianity, and improve the discipline and organisation of the church. Although he pleaded that the episcopacy, and especially his own, “was the office of a shepherd of souls and not of a temporal prince,” he did not neglect the temporal power of the holy see. It happened, since the emperor was so little in touch with Italian affairs, that the soldiers charged with defending Rome against the Lombards had received no pay. Gregory paid them, took upon himself the work of defence, and armed the clerics. When Agilulf, whose aggression had provoked these preparations, was compelled to withdraw, Gregory treated with him in the name of Rome, in spite of protests from the exarch.

Feeling thus strengthened in his position, he undertook to propagate Christianity and orthodoxy both within and without the limits of the ancient Roman Empire. Within its boundaries there were still some pagans in Sicily, Sardinia, even at Terracina (Tarracina) at the very gates of Rome, and doubtless also in some parts of Gaul, since there exists a decree of Childebert’s dated 554, with the title _For the Abolition of the Remainder of Idolatry_. There were Arians very close to Rome, the Lombards. By the intervention of Queen Theudelinda, Gregory succeeded in having the heir to the Lombard throne, Adalwald, raised in Catholicism. Since 587 the Visigoths in Spain under Recared had been converted.

As for Great Britain, it was still entirely pagan, and Gregory sent thither the monk Augustine and forty Roman missionaries (596). They landed on the island of Thanet, and going from there sought Ethelbert, king of Kent, who permitted them to preach their doctrines at Canterbury. From this point Christianity spread rapidly towards the north and west, until by 627 it was firmly established in Northumberland. St. Augustine, archbishop of Canterbury, had been named primate of England by Gregory the Great, with whom he kept up a constant correspondence that is still in existence.

Ireland, “the isle of saints,” had already been converted, and now monks were leaving it to win over the barbarians. At this period St. Columban, the monk who denounced Brunehild’s crimes with such boldness, set out to preach the Gospel to the mountaineers of Helvetia, and founded in their midst abbeys surrounded by fertile fields. After him St. Rupert travelled far into Bavaria and established the diocese of Salzburg.

Thus Christianity spread its spirit of proselytism, and St. Gregory fostered it greatly by the mild precepts he inculcated in his missionaries, and the skill with which he facilitated the transition from pagan to Catholic. He wrote to St. Augustine: “You must take care not to destroy the pagans’ temples, but only their idols; use holy water in washing out the edifice, build altars and deposit relics in them. If their temples are well built, so much the better; for it is important that these same ones pass from the cult of demons to that of the true God. When the nation sees its ancient places of worship remain, it will be more disposed to visit them through habit and to worship the true God.”

At home Gregory laboured with success to co-ordinate the powers of the church, in making recognised above everything that of the holy see. We find him bestowing the title of vicar of the Gauls upon the bishop of Arles, to correspond with Augustine archbishop of Canterbury, with the archbishop of Seville for Spain, and him of Thessalonica for Greece; and finally sending secret legates to Constantinople. In his pastoral which he wrote on the occasion of his election, and which became a general regulation throughout the West, he prescribed the bishops their duties according to the decision of several councils. To bind the hierarchy together he sought to prevent the encroachments of one bishop upon another. “I have given you Britain to direct spiritually,” he wrote to the ambitious Augustine, “and not Gaul.” He favoured the monasteries, looked with vigilance after their discipline, and reformed church singing, substituting for the Ambrosian chant, “which,” according to a contemporary, “was like the distant sound of a chariot rolling over the stones,” that Gregorian chant which bears his own name.[d]

The darkest stain on the name of Gregory is his cruel and unchristian triumph in the fall of the emperor Maurice--his base and adulatory praise of Phocas, the most odious and sanguinary tyrant who had ever seized the throne of Constantinople. It is the worst homage to religion to vindicate or even to excuse the crimes of religious men; and the apologetic palliation, or even the extenuation of their misdeeds rarely succeeds in removing, often strengthens, the unfavourable impression.

Gregory was spared the pain and shame of witnessing the utter falsehood of his pious vaticinations as to the glorious and holy reign of Phocas. In the second year of the tyrant’s reign he closed the thirteen important years of his pontificate. The ungrateful Romans paid but tardy honours to his memory. His death (March 10th, 604) was followed by a famine, which the starving multitude attributed to his wasteful dilapidation of the patrimony of the church--that patrimony which had been so carefully administered and so religiously devoted to their use. Nothing can give a baser notion of their degradation than their actions. They proceeded to wreak their vengeance on the library of Gregory, and were only deterred from their barbarous ravages by the interposition of Peter the faithful archdeacon. Peter had been interlocutor of Gregory in the wild legends contained in the _Dialogues_.[k] The archdeacon now assured the populace of Rome that he had often seen the Holy Ghost in the visible shape of a dove hovering over the head of Gregory as he wrote. Gregory’s successor therefore hesitated, and demanded that Peter should confirm his pious fiction or fancy by an oath. He ascended the pulpit, but before he had concluded his solemn oath he fell dead. That which to a hostile audience might have been a manifest judgment against perjury, was received as a divine testimony to his truth. The Roman church has constantly permitted Gregory to be represented with the Holy Ghost, as a dove, floating over his head.

The historian of Christianity is arrested by certain characters and certain epochs, which stand as landmarks between the close of one age of religion and the commencement of another. Such a character is Gregory the Great; such an epoch his pontificate, the termination of the sixth century. Gregory, not from his station alone, but by the acknowledgment of the admiring world, was intellectually, as well as spiritually, the great model of his age. He was proficient in all the arts and sciences cultivated at that time; the vast volumes of his writings show his indefatigable powers; their popularity and their authority, his ability to clothe those thoughts and those reasonings in language which would awaken and command the general mind.

His epoch was that of the final Christianisation of the world, not in outward worship alone, not in its establishment as the imperial religion, the rise of the church upon the ruin of the temple, and the recognition of the hierarchy as an indispensable rank in the social system, but in its full possession of the whole mind of man, in letters, arts as far as arts were cultivated, habits, usages, modes of thought, and in popular superstition.

Not only was heathenism, but, excepting in the laws and municipal institutions, Romanity itself absolutely extinct. The reign of Theodoric had been an attempt to fuse together Roman, Teutonic, and Christian usages. Cassiodorus, though half a monk, aspired to be a Roman statesman, Boethius to be a heathen philosopher. The influence of the Roman schools of rhetoric is betrayed even in the writers of Gaul, such as Sidonius Apollinaris; there is an attempt to preserve some lingering cadence of Roman poetry in the Christian versifiers of that age. At the close of the sixth century all this has expired; ecclesiastical Latin is the only language of letters, or rather letters themselves are become purely ecclesiastical. The fable of Gregory’s destruction of the Palatine library is now rejected as injurious to his fame; but probably the Palatine library, if it existed, would have been so utterly neglected that Gregory would hardly have condescended to fear its influence. His aversion to such studies is not that of dread or hatred, but of religious contempt; profane letters are a disgrace to a Christian bishop; the truly religious spirit would loathe them of itself.

What, then, was this Christianity by which Gregory ruled the world? Not merely the speculative and dogmatic theology, but the popular, vital, active Christianity, which was working in the heart of man; the dominant motive of his actions, as far as they were affected by religion; the principal element of his hopes and fears as regards the invisible world and that future life which had now become part of his conscious belief.

CHRISTIAN MYTHOLOGY

The history of Christianity cannot be understood without pausing at stated periods to survey the progress and development of this Christian mythology, which, gradually growing up and springing as it did from natural and universal instincts, took a more perfect and systematic form, and at length, at the height of the Middle Ages, was as much a part of Latin Christianity as the primal truths of the Gospel. This growth, which had long before begun, had reached a kind of adolescence in the age of Gregory, to expand into full maturity during succeeding ages. Already the creeds of the church formed but a small portion of Christian belief. The highest and most speculative questions of theology, especially in Alexandria and Constantinople, had become watchwords of strife and faction, had stirred the passions of the lowest orders; the two natures, or the single or double will in Christ, had agitated the workshop of the artisan and the seats in the circus. Christ assumed gradually more and more of the awfulness, the immateriality, the incomprehensibleness, of the Deity, and men sought out beings more akin to themselves, more open, it might seem, to human sympathies. Believers delighted in those ceremonials to which they might have recourse with less timidity; the shrines and the relics of martyrs might deign to receive the homage of those who were too profane to tread the holier ground. Already the worship of these lower objects of homage begins to intercept that to the higher; the popular mind is filling with images either not suggested at all, or suggested but very dimly by the sacred writings; legends of saints are supplanting, or rivalling at least, in their general respect and attention, the narratives of the Bible.

Of all these forms of worship, the most captivating, and captivating to the most amiable weaknesses of the human mind, was the devotion to the Virgin Mary. The worship of the Virgin had first arisen in the East; and this worship, already more than initiate, contributed, no doubt, to the passionate violence with which the Nestorian controversy was agitated, while that controversy, with its favourable issue to those who might seem most zealous for the Virgin’s glory, gave a strong impulse to the worship. The denial of the title “the mother of God,” by Nestorius, was that which sounded most offensive to the general ear; it was the intelligible odious point in his heresy. The worship of the Virgin now appears in the East as an integral part of Christianity. Among Justinian’s splendid edifices arose many churches dedicated to the mother of God. The feast of the Annunciation is already celebrated under Justin and Justinian. Heraclius has images of the Virgin on his masts when he sails to Constantinople to overthrow Phocas. Before the end of the century the Virgin is become the tutelar deity of Constantinople, which is saved by her intercession from the Saracens.

WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN