"If he say, 'For this purpose I have invited the Pope to a council, that if there be any doubt, it may be removed,' answer, 'We thank God, and your piety, that you are so minded, that all may receive what was ordered by the fathers. For then may there be a true and holy unity among the churches of Christ, if, by God's help, you choose to preserve what your predecessors Marcian and Leo maintained.' If he say, 'What mean you by that?' answer, 'That the Council of Chalcedon, and the letters of Pope St. Leo, written against the heretics Nestorius, and Eutyches, and Dioscorus, may be entirely kept'. If he say, 'We received and we hold the Council of Chalcedon, and the letters of Pope Leo,' do you then return thanks, kiss his breast, and say, 'Now we know that God is gracious to you, when you hasten to do this, for that is the Catholic faith which the Apostles preached, without which no one can be orthodox. All bishops must hold to this and preach it.'

"If he say, 'The bishops are orthodox; they do not depart from the constitutions of the fathers,' answer, 'If the constitutions of the fathers are kept, and what was decreed in the Council of Chalcedon is in no respect broken, how is there such discord in the churches of your land? Why do not the bishops of the East agree?' If he say, 'The bishops were quiet; there was no disunion among them. The holy Pope's predecessor stirred up their minds with his letters, and made this confusion;' answer, 'The letters of Symmachus, of holy memory, are in our hands. If, besides, what your piety says, that is, "I follow the Council of Chalcedon, I receive the letters of Pope Leo," they contain nothing except the exhortation to maintain this, how is it true that confusion has been produced by them? But if that is contained in the letters which both your Father hopes and your piety agrees to, what has he done? What is there in him blameworthy?' add your prayers and tears, entreat him, 'Let your imperial majesty consider God; put before your eyes his future judgment. The holy fathers who made these rules followed the faith of the blessed Apostle, on which the Church of Christ is built.'

"If the emperor say, 'I receive the Council of Chalcedon, and I embrace the letters of Pope Leo, enter then into communion with me,' answer, 'In what order is that to take place? We do not avoid your piety, so declaring, since we know that you fear God, and rejoice that you are pleased to keep the constitutions of the fathers. We therefore confidently entreat you that the Church may return through you to unity. Let all the bishops learn your will, and that you keep the Council of Chalcedon, and the letters of Pope Leo, and the apostolical constitutions.' If he say, 'In what order is that to take place?' recur again, humbly, to entreaties, saying, 'Your Father has written to all the bishops. Join, herewith, your mandates to the effect that you maintain what the Apostolic See proclaims, and then let the orthodox not be separated from the unity of the Apostolic See, and the opponents will be made known. After that, your Father is even prepared, if need be, to be present himself, and, preserving the constitutions of the fathers, to deny nothing which is expedient for the Church's integrity.'

"If the emperor say, 'Well, in the meantime accept the bishop of my city,' again beseech humbly, 'Imperial majesty, we have come with God's help in the hope of support on your part to make peace and restore tranquillity in your city. There is question here about two persons. The matter runs its proper course. First, let all the bishops be so ordered as to form one Catholic communion; next, the cause of those persons, or of any others who may be at a distance from their churches, can be specially considered.' If the emperor say, 'You are speaking of Macedonius; I see your subtlety. He is a heretic; he cannot possibly be recalled,' answer, 'Imperial majesty, we name no one personally; we speak rather in favour of your mind and opinion, that inquiry may be made, and, if he is heretical, a juridical sentence passed, that he may not be said to be unjustly deposed, being reputed orthodox'.

"If the emperor should say, 'The bishop of this city consents to the Council of Chalcedon and the letters of Pope Leo,' answer, 'If he do so it will help him the more when his cause is examined; and since you have allowed your servant Vitalian to treat with the Pope, if he hoped for a good result on these matters, so let it be'. If the emperor say, 'Should my city remain without a bishop, is it your desire that where I am there should be no bishop?' reply, 'We said before there was a question about two persons in this city. As to the canons, we have already suggested that to break the canons is to sin against religion. There are many remedies by which your piety may not remain without communion, and the full judicial form may be preserved.' If he say, 'What are those forms?' reply, 'Not newly invented by us. The question as to other bishops may be suspended, and meanwhile a person who agrees with the confession of your piety and with the constitutions of the Apostolic See until the issue of the trial may hold the place of the bishop of Constantinople, if by God's help the bishops are willing to be in accordance with the Apostolic See. You have in the records of the Church the terms of the profession which they have to make.'

"But if petitions be presented to you against other Catholic bishops, especially against those who shamelessly anathematise the Council of Chalcedon, and do not receive the letters of Pope St. Leo, take those petitions, but reserve the cause to the judgment of the Apostolic See, that you may give them a hope of being heard, and yet reserve the authority due to us. If, however, the emperor promise to do everything if we will grant our presence, urge in every way that his mandate first be sent to the bishops through the provinces, which one of you shall accompany, so that all may know that he keeps the Council of Chalcedon and the letters of Pope St. Leo. Then write to us that we prepare to come.

"It is, moreover, the custom to present all bishops to the emperor through the bishop of Constantinople. If their skilful management so devise in recognising your legation that you see the emperor in the company of Timotheus, who appears now to govern the church of Constantinople, if you learn before your presentation that this is so contrived, say, 'The Father of your piety has so commanded and enjoined us that we should see your majesty without any bishop'. So remain until this custom be altered.

"If an absolute refusal be given, or if it is so contrived that before you have an audience you are suddenly put with Timotheus, say, 'Let your piety grant us a private audience to set forth the causes for which we have been sent'. If he say, 'Speak before him,' answer, 'We do no offence, but our legation also contains his person, and he cannot be present at our communications'. And on no account enter into anything in his presence; but when he has gone out produce the text of your mission."

The exact conditions which the legates carried to the emperor were these: "The Council of Chalcedon and the letters of Pope St. Leo to be kept. The emperor, in token of his agreement, to send an imperial letter to all the bishops signifying that he so believes and will so maintain. The bishops also to express their agreement in Church in presence of the Christian people that they embrace the holy faith of Chalcedon and the letters of Pope St. Leo, which he wrote against the heretics, Nestorius, Eutyches, and Dioscorus, also against their followers, Timotheus Ailouros, Peter, or those similarly guilty, likewise anathematising Acacius, formerly bishop of Constantinople, and also Peter of Antioch, with their associates. Writing thus with their own hand in presence of chosen men of repute, they will follow the formulary which we have issued by our notary.

"Those who have been banished in the Church's cause are to be recalled for the hearing of the Apostolic See, that a trial and true examination may be held. Their cause to be reserved entire.

"If any holding communion with the sacred Apostolic See, preaching and following the Catholic faith, have been driven away, or kept in banishment, these, it is just, to be first of all recalled.

"Moreover, the injunction we have laid upon the legates, that if memorials be presented to them against bishops who have persecuted Catholics, their judgment be reserved to the Apostolic See, that in their case the constitutions of the fathers be maintained, by which all may be edified."

Anastasius[96] tried again the old arts. He made a bid of everything to gain the legates. He seemed ready to accept everything save the demand regarding Acacius, which he was bound to reject on account of the Byzantine people. Both to the legates on their return to Rome, and to two officers of his court whom he sent to Rome, he gave honourable letters for the Pope, whom he invited to be present at the projected council, and endeavoured to satisfy fully by an orthodox profession of faith wherein he expressly recognised the Council of Chalcedon. One only point, he said, whatever might be his personal feeling, he could not concede, that regarding Acacius, since otherwise the living would be driven out of the Church for the dead, and great disturbances and blood-shedding would be inevitable. He left it to the Pope's consideration. He also wrote to the Roman senate to use its influence for the restoration of peace to the Church, as well with the Pope as with king Theodorick, "to whom," said the emperor, "the power and charge of governing you have been committed". It may be added that Theodorick favoured, as far as he could, the restoration of peace.

Pope Hormisdas, in his answer, praised the zeal made show of by the emperor, and wished that his deeds would correspond to his words. He could not contain his astonishment that the promised embassy was so long in coming, and that the emperor instead of sending bishops to him, sent two laymen of his court, in whom he soon recognised Monophysites, who tried to gain him in their favour. In a letter to St. Avitus and the bishops of his province, he discloses the judgment which he had formed. "As to the Greeks, they speak peace with their mouth, but carry it not in their hearts; their words are just, not their actions; they pretend to wish what their deeds deny; what they professed, they neglect; and pursue the conduct which they condemned."[97] Still he resolved to send a new embassy to Constantinople in 517, at the head of which he put the bishops Ennodius and Peregrinus. He gave them letters to the emperor, the patriarch Timotheus, the clergy and people of Constantinople.

Anastasius had endeavoured to delay the whole thing, and to deceive the orthodox until he found himself strong again, and was no longer in danger from Vitalian. To bribe the people, he gave the church of Constantinople seventy pounds' weight of gold for masses for the dead. With regard to the treatment of Acacius, he had the majority on his side, who were not easily brought to condemn him. Here, also, he had a pretext to break off impending agreements. When his wife Ariadne died, he showed himself still less inclined to peace. She had been devoted to Macedonius, and often interceded for the orthodox. As soon as he thought himself quite secure, he not only altered his behaviour and language to the Roman See, but, in the words of the Greek historian, about 200 bishops who had come to Heraclea from various parts had to separate without doing anything, "having been deluded by the lawless emperor and Timotheus, bishop of Constantinople".[98] The Pope's legates he tried to corrupt; when that did not succeed, he dismissed them in disgrace, and sent the Pope an insolent letter, in which he said he desisted from any requests to him, as reason forbade to throw away prayers on those who would listen to nothing, and while he might submit to injuries, he would not endure commands. Thereupon broke out a great persecution against Catholics, which the Archimandrites of the second Syria report to Hormisdas.

In a supplication signed by more than two hundred, they address him:[99] "Most blessed Father, we beseech you, arise; have compassion on the mangled body, for you are the head of all. Come to save us. Imitate our Lord, who came from heaven on earth to seek out the strayed sheep. Remember Peter, prince of the Apostles, whose See you adorn, and Paul, the vessel of election, for they went about enlightening the earth. The flock goes out to meet you, the true shepherd and teacher, to whom the care of all the sheep is committed, as the Lord says, 'My sheep hear My voice'. Most holy, despise us not, who are daily wounded by wild beasts." All that the Roman See had gained was that the orthodox bishops and many conspicuous easterns attached themselves to it, and the formulary binding them to obedience to the decisions of the Roman See found very many subscribers. The empire was in the greatest confusion when Anastasius died suddenly in the year 518, hated by the majority of his people, as perjured, heretical, and rapacious. Just before him died the heretical patriarchs, John II. of Alexandria and Timotheus of Constantinople.

Then suddenly,[100] as in the third century the Illyrian emperors saved the dissolving empire, another peasant, who in long and honourable service had risen to the rank of general, and was respected by all men as a virtuous man and a good Catholic, was called to take up that eastern crown of Constantine, which Zeno and Anastasius had soiled with the iniquities and perfidies of forty years.

At Bederiana, on the borders of Thrace and Illyria, there had lived three young men, Zimarchus, Ditybiotus, and Justin. Under pressure of misfortune they deserted the plough, and sought a livelihood elsewhere. They started on foot, their clothes packed on their backs, no money in their purses, with a loaf in their knapsacks. They came to Byzantium and enlisted. Twenty years of age and well grown, they attracted the notice of the emperor Leo I.: he enrolled them among his life-guards. Justin served as captain in the Isaurian war. For some unknown fault he was condemned to death by his general, and the next day was to be executed. The general, says Procopius, was changed by a vision which he saw that night. Under Anastasius, Justin rose to the rank of senator, patrician, and commander of the imperial guard. On the death of Anastasius, the eunuch Amantius, who was lord chamberlain, and had been up to that time all powerful, sent for Justin, and gave him great sums of money to get the voice of the soldiers and the people, for a creature of his own, named Theocritus, in whose name he intended to rule. Justin distributed the money in his own name, and on the 9th July was proclaimed emperor by army and people. He was sixty-eight years old, and, if Procopius may be believed, could not even write his own name, at least in Latin. But he was of long experience, and admirable in the management of affairs. His wife was named Lupicina, of barbarian birth. Justin, in the first year of his service, had bought her as a slave, and married her. When he became emperor he crowned her as empress, and with the applause of the people gave her the name of Euphemia. He had a nephew born at Tauresium, a village of Dardania, near Bederiana. He was called Uprauda in his own land; his father was Istock, his mother Vigleniza. The Romans changed these Teuton names to Justinian, Sabbatius, and Vigilantia. Uprauda, the Upright, was the future emperor Justinian.

The accession of Justin was received with universal joy; and the new emperor at once sent a high officer, Gratus, count of the sacred consistory, to announce it to Pope Hormisdas, with a letter in which he said that "John, who had succeeded as bishop of Constantinople, and the other bishops assembled there from various regions, having written to your Holiness for the unity of the churches, have earnestly besought us also to address our imperial letters to your Beatitude. We entreat you, then, to assist the desires of these most reverend prelates, and by your prayers to render favourable the divine majesty to us and the commonwealth, the government of which has been entrusted to us by God."[101]

The count Justinian also wrote to Pope Hormisdas that "the divine mercy, regarding the sorrows of the human race, had at length brought about this time of desire. Thus I am free to write to your apostolate, our Lord, the emperor, desiring to restore the churches to unity. A great part has been already done. It only requires to obtain the consent of your Beatitude respecting the name of Acacius. For this reason his majesty has sent to you my most particular friend Gratus, a man of the highest rank, that you might condescend to come to Constantinople for the restoration of concord, or at least hasten to send bishops hither, for the whole world in our parts is impatient for the restoration of unity."[102]

The result was that Pope Hormisdas held a council at Rome in 518, at which all that had been done by his predecessors, the Popes Simplicius, Felix, Gelasius, and Symmachus, was carefully reviewed, and all present decreed that the eastern Church should be received into communion with the Apostolic See, if they condemned the schismatic Acacius, entirely effacing his name, and also expunged from the diptychs Euphemius and Macedonius, as involved in the same guilt of schism. And a pontifical legation was then named to carry out the desire of the council, and they bore with them an instruction, from which they might not depart by a hair's-breadth.[103]

The Pope wrote letters to the emperor, to the empress, to the count Justinian, especially to the bishop of Constantinople, recommending his legates, and exhorting the bishop to complete the work which was begun by condemning Acacius and his followers; also to the archdeacon Theodosius and the clergy of Constantinople.[104] He points out especially that he wants nothing new, or unusual, or improper, for Christian antiquity had ever avoided those who had associated with persons condemned; whoever teaches what Rome teaches, must also condemn what Rome condemns; whoever honours what the Pope honours, must likewise detest what he detests. A perfect peace admits of no division. The worship of one and the same God can only hold its truth in the unity of confession which embodies the belief.

The papal legates were received honourably on their journey, and found the bishops in general disposed to sign the formulary issued by the Pope. In March, 519, they came to Constantinople, where they found the greatest readiness. The patriarch John took the formulary, and gave it the form of a letter, which seemed to him more honourable than a formulary such as those who had fallen would sign. He prefixed to the document which the Pope required to be subscribed the following preface:

"Brother most dear in Christ, when I received the letters of your Holiness, by the noble count Gratus, and now by the bishops Germanus and John, the deacons Felix and Dioscorus, the priest Blandus, I rejoiced at the spiritual charity of your Holiness, in bringing back the unity of God's most sacred churches, according to the ancient tradition of the fathers, and in hastening to reject those who tear to pieces Christ's reasonable flock. Be then assured that, as I have written to you, I am in all things one with you in the truth. All those rejected by you as heretics I also reject for the love of peace. For I accept as one the most holy churches of God, yours of elder, and this of new Rome; yours the See of the Apostle Peter, and this of the imperial city, I define to be one. I assent to all the acts of the four holy councils—that is, of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon—done for the confirmation of the faith and the state of the Church, and suffer nothing of their good judgments to be shaken; but I know that those who have endeavoured to disturb a single iota of their decrees have fallen from the holy, universal, and apostolical Church; and using plainly your own right words, I declare by this present writing,"[105] &c.

This is the preface given to his letter by the patriarch John; he then adds the formulary issued by the Pope from his council in Rome as the terms of restored communion between the East and West.

"The first condition of salvation is to maintain the rule of a right faith, and to deviate no whit from the tradition of the fathers; because the decree of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be passed over, in which He says, 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church '. These words are proved by their effect in deed, because the Catholic religion is ever kept inviolate in the Apostolic See. Desiring, therefore, not to fall from this faith, and following in all thing the constitutions of the fathers, we anathematise all heresies, but especially the heretic Nestorius, formerly bishop of Constantinople, condemned in the Council of Ephesus by Coelestine, Pope of Rome, and the venerable Cyril, bishop of Alexandria; and together with him we anathematise Eutyches and Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria, condemned in the holy Council of Chalcedon, which we follow and embrace with veneration, which followed the holy Nicene Council, and set forth the apostolic faith. To these we join Timotheus the parricide, surnamed Ailouros, and anathematise him, condemning in like manner Peter of Alexandria, his disciple and follower in all things; so also we anathematise Acacius, formerly bishop of Constantinople, who became their accomplice and follower, and those who persevere in communion and participation with them; for whoever embraces the communion of condemned persons shares their judgment. In like manner we condemn and anathematise Peter of Antioch, with all his followers. Hence we approve and embrace all the letters of St. Leo, Pope of Rome, which he wrote in the right faith. Therefore, as aforesaid, following in all things the Apostolic See, we preach all which it has decreed; and therefore I trust to be with you in that one communion which the Apostolic See proclaims, in which the solidity of the Christian religion rests entire and perfect,[106] promising that these who in future are severed from the communion of the Catholic Church, that is, who do not in all things agree with the Apostolic See, shall not have their names recited in the sacred mysteries. But if I attempt in aught to vary from this my profession, I declare that by my own condemnation I partake with those whom I have condemned. I have subscribed with my own hand to this profession, and directed it in writing to thee, Hormisdas, my holy and most blessed brother, and Pope of Great Rome, by the above-named venerable bishops, Germanus and John, the deacons Felix and Dioscorus, the priest Blandus."

The names of Acacius, Fravita, Euphemius, and Timotheus, four bishops of Constantinople, also of the emperors Zeno and Anastasius, who reigned from 474 to 518 (if we include a few months of Basiliscus), were erased from the diptychs in the presence of the legates. After that, at the instance of the emperor, the other bishops, the abbots, and the senate had signed the formulary, a solemn service was celebrated, to the great joy of the people, in the Cathedral on Easter eve, the 24th March, to mark the act of reconciliation, and not the least disturbance took place. The official narration[107] of the five legates to Pope Hormisdas records the enthusiasm with which they were received at Constantinople. "From the palace we went to the church with the vast crowd. No one can believe the exultation of the people, nor doubt that the Divine Hand was there, bestowing such unity on the world. We signify to you that in our presence the name of the anathematised prevaricator, Acacius, was struck out of the diptychs, as likewise that of the other bishops who followed him in communion. So also the names of Anastasius and Zeno. By your prayers peace was restored to the minds of Christians: there is one soul, one joy, in the whole Church; only the enemy of the human race, crushed by the power of your prayer, is in mourning."

The emperor Justin wrote to Pope Hormisdas:

"Most religious Father, know that what we have so long earnestly sought to effect is done. John, the bishop of New Rome, together with his clergy, agrees with you. The formulary which you ordered, which is in agreement with the council of the most holy Fathers, has been subscribed by him. In accordance with that formulary, the mention at the divine mysteries of the prevaricator Acacius, formerly bishop of this city, has been forbidden for the future, as well as of the other bishops who either first came against the apostolic constitutions, or became successors of their error, and remained unrepentant to death. And since all our realm is to be admonished to imitate the example of the imperial city, we have directed everywhere our princely commands, so great is our desire to restore the peace of the Catholic faith to our commonwealth, to gain for my subjects the divine protection. For those whom the same realm contains, the same worship enlightens, what greater blessing can they have than to venerate with one mind laws of no human origin, but proceeding from the Divine Spirit? Let your Holiness pray that the divine gift of unity, so long laboured for by us, may be perpetually preserved."[108]

Thus history tells us that, in the year 484, Acacius, bishop of Constantinople, being condemned by Pope Felix, answered by striking the name of Pope Felix out of the diptychs, and that, in the year 519, the name of Acacius was erased from the diptychs in his own church; that his own successor not only gave up his memory, but, together with 2500 bishops,[109] signed a formulary which attributes to the Roman See the words of our Lord to St. Peter, which declares "that the Catholic religion is ever kept inviolate in the Apostolic See," "in which the solidity of the Christian religion rests entire and perfect," and which lays down the rule that whoever does not live and die in the communion of the Roman See has no claim to commemoration in the Church.

Let us now shortly review the facts which have passed under our notice since St. Leo returned from his interview with the pirate Genseric in the year 455.

In that fatal year the Theodosian house became extinct in the West so far as government was concerned. Valentinian's miserable widow, daughter of the eastern, wife of the western, emperor, during a short two months the prey of her husband's murderer, became with her daughters the captive of the Vandal freebooter, and saw the elder compelled to marry his son Hunnerich, the future persecutor of the Church. Twenty years succeed in which emperors are enthroned and pass like shadows, until the Herule general Odoacer, commanding for the time the Teuton mercenaries, deposes the last imperial phantom, Romulus Augustulus, and rules Rome and Italy with the title of Patricius. The western emperor is suppressed.

In 457, the Theodosian house becomes extinct in the East by the death of the emperor Marcian, before whom the heiress of the empire, St. Pulcheria, granddaughter of the great Thedosius, had died in 453. He was succeeded by Leo, a soldier of fortune, but an orthodox emperor, who supported St. Leo. The emperor Leo reigned until 474, and after a few months, in which his child grandson, Leo II., nominally reigned, the eastern crown was taken by Zeno and held till 491, with the exception of twenty months in which Basiliscus, a successful insurgent, was in possession. As Zeno had reigned in virtue of being husband of the princess Ariadne, daughter of Leo I., so Anastasius, in 491, in the words of the Greek chronicle, "succeeded to his wife and the empire," and he reigned twenty-seven years, to 518.

During this whole period, from the death of the emperor Leo I. in 474 to that of the emperor Anastasius in 518, the political state of the East and West was most perilous to the Church. In the East, the three sovereigns, Zeno, Basiliscus, and Anastasius, were unsound in their belief, treacherous in their action, scandalous in their life. The Popes addressed with honour, as the vice-gerents of divine power, men whom, as to their personal character, they must have loathed. Their government, moreover, was disastrous to their subjects—a tissue of insurrections, barbaric invasion, and devastation; at home, civil corruption of every kind.

In the West, Teuton conquerors had taken possession of the Roman empire. The Herule Odoacer had been put to death in 493 by the Ostrogoth Theodorick, who, like Odoacer before him, reigned with cognisance and approbation of the eastern emperor for thirty-three years. Both Odoacer and Theodorick were Arians; so also Genseric and his son Hunnerich, who ruled the former Roman provinces in Africa; so the Visigoths in southern France and Spain; so the Burgundians at Lyons. One conquering race only, that of the Franks, was not Arian, but pagan, until the conversion of Clovis, in 496, gave to the West one sovereign, Catholic and friendly to the Pope. We have seen in what terms Pope Anastasius welcomed his baptism. The population in the old Roman provinces which remained faithful to the Catholic religion was a portion of the old proprietors, such as had not been dispossessed by the successive confiscations and redistributions of land under the victorious northern invaders, and the poor, whether dwelling in cities or cultivating the soil. And these looked up everywhere to their several bishops for support and encouragement under every sort of trial. All men were sorted under two divisions in the vast regions for which Stilicho had fought and conquered in vain: the one division was Arian and Teuton, the other Catholic and Roman. And as the several Catholic people looked to their bishops, so all these bishops looked to the Pope; and St. Avitus expressed every bishop's strongest conviction when he said, writing in the name of them all, "In the case of other bishops, if there be any lapse it may be restored; but if the Pope of Rome is endangered, not one bishop, but the episcopate itself will seem to be shaken".

When the western emperor was suppressed the Pope became locally subject for about fourteen years to the Arian Odoacer, and then for a full generation to the Arian Theodorick. The latter soon found, by a calculation of interest, that the only way to rule Italy and the adjoining territories which his conquering arms had attached to Italy was by maintaining civil justice and equality among all his subjects. He took two of the noblest Romans, Boethius and Cassiodorus, for his friends and counsellors, and in the letters of the latter, from about the year 500 to the end of Theodorick's reign, we possess most valuable information as to the way in which Theodorick governed. Odoacer would seem likewise, during the years of his government until he was shut up in Ravenna, to have followed a like policy. But that the position of the Pope under Odoacer and Theodorick was one of great difficulty and delicacy no one can doubt. Gelasius speaks of his having had to resist Odoacer "by God's help, when he enjoined things not to be done".[110] And in 526 Pope John I. paid with his life, in the dungeon of Ravenna, the penalty for not having satisfied the Arian exactions of Theodorick in the eastern embassy imposed upon him.

I mention these things very summarily, having already given them with more or less detail, but I must needs recur to them because, in weighing the transactions which the schism of Acacius brought about, it is essential to bear in mind throughout the embarrassed and subject political situation in which all the Popes concerned with that schism found themselves.

Within seven years after the western emperor had been suppressed, and the overlordship of the East been acknowledged by the Roman senate as well as the Teuton conqueror, what happened?

A bishop of Constantinople, as able and popular as he was unscrupulous, had established a mental domination over the eastern emperor Zeno. He reigned in the utmost sacerdotal pomp at Constantinople; he beheld Old Rome sunk legally to the mere rank of a municipal city, and the See of St. Peter in it subject to an Arian of barbaric blood. He thought the time was come for the bishop of the imperial city to emancipate himself from the control of the Lateran Patriarcheium. Having gained great renown by his defence of the Council of Chalcedon against the usurper Basiliscus, having denounced at Rome the misdeeds and the heresy of the Eutychean who was elected by that party at Alexandria, and having so been high in the trust of Pope Simplicius, he turned against both Pope and Council. He set up two heretics as patriarchs—Peter the Stammerer, the very man he had denounced, at Alexandria, and Peter the Fuller at Antioch. He composed a doctrinal statement, called the "Form of Union," which, by the emperor's edict, was imposed on the eastern bishops. It was a scarcely-veiled Eutychean document. He called to his aid all the jealousy which Nova Roma felt for her elder sister, all the pride which she felt for the exaltation of her own bishop. If he succeeded in maintaining his own nominees in the two original patriarchates of the East, he succeeded at the same time in subjecting them to his own see. He crowned that series of encroachments which had advanced step by step since the 150 bishops of the purely eastern council held at Constantinople just a hundred years before set the exaltation of the imperial city on a false foundation. In fact, if this his enterprise succeeded, he obtained the realisation of the 28th canon, which Anatolius attempted to pass at Chalcedon, and which Pope Leo had overthrown. But most of all, both in the government of the Church and in the supreme magisterium, the determination of the Church's true doctrine, he deposed the successor of St. Peter, and but one single step remained, to which all his conduct implied the intention to proceed. For the logical basis of that conduct was the assertion that, as the bishop of Rome had been supreme when, and because, Rome was the capital of the empire, so when Constantinople had succeeded Rome as capital, her bishop also succeeded to the spiritual rights of the Primacy.

We may sum up the attempt of Acacius in a single word: the denial that the Pope had succeeded to the universal Pastorship of St. Peter.

This, then, was the point at issue, and when the western emperor was suppressed, and the overlordship of the eastern emperor acknowledged, the Pope was deprived of all temporal support, and left to meet the attack of Acacius in the naked power of his apostolate. From the year 483, when the deeds of Acacius led to his excommunication, followed by the schism, to its termination in 519, the Popes, being subjects of Arian sovereigns, who were likewise of barbaric descent, braved the whole civil power of the eastern emperors, as well as the whole ecclesiastical influence of the bishops of Constantinople. Not only were Zeno and Anastasius unorthodox, but likewise they were bent on increasing the influence of that bishop whom they nominated and controlled. The sovereigns of the East had been able, even by a simple practice of Byzantine etiquette, to put their own bishop in a position of determining influence over the whole eastern episcopate. For we learn from the instruction of Pope Hormisdas to his legates that it was the custom for every bishop to be presented to the emperor by the bishop of Constantinople. The Pope most strictly enjoins his legates not to submit to this. The effect of such a rule upon the eastern bishops who frequented the court of an absolute sovereign exhibits another cause of that perpetual growth which accrues to the bishop of the imperial city.

Every human power, every conjunction of circumstances, seemed to be against the Popes in this struggle. While the East was thus in hostile hands, under emperors who were either secretly or avowedly heretical, the West was under Arian domination. Italy was ruled from 493 to 526 by a man of great ability. Few rulers have surpassed Theodorick either in success as a warrior or in political skill. He had, further, enlaced the contemporary rulers in the various countries of the West in ties of relationship with himself. He had married Andefleda, sister of Clovis; he gave Theudigotha, one of his own daughters by a concubine, to Alaric of Toulouse, king of the Visigoths, and another, Ostrogotha, to Sigismund, king of the Burgundians, at Lyons. Even before he had conquered Odoacer, in 493, he was in strict alliance with the king of the Vandals in Africa, to whom he gave his sister Amalafrieda to wife, and her daughter Amalaberga to the king of the Thuringians. He solicited the royal title in 496 by an embassy to Anastasius, and the result of that embassy was that the chief man in it, Faustus, patrician and senator, when he returned to Rome, contrived to raise a schism in the clergy itself against Pope Symmachus. This schism was the greatest difficulty which the Pope in all this period encountered. Theodorick in political talent and warlike genius reminds historians of Charlemagne: but instead of having that monarch's faith, he was an Arian. His equal treatment of Arian and Catholic was a carefully thought-out policy; nor did he scruple at the very end of his career to sacrifice even the very life of the Pope to his political schemes. He favoured the senate of Rome in its corporate capacity; he favoured individual senators, but always as instruments of his own absolute rule, the key to which was to unite the use of the Roman mind in administration with the Gothic arm in action. When the end of the schism came, he had married his only child Amalasunta, the heiress of his kingdom, to Eutharic, who in the first year of the emperor Justin was consul of Rome with that prince, and nominated by him.

On what, then, did the Pope rely? On one thing only—that in the inmost conscience of the Church, in East and West, he was recognised as St. Peter's successor; that upon everyone who sat in the Apostolic See had descended the mighty inheritance, the charge which no man could execute except he were empowered by divine command and sustained by divine support. For as it required God to utter the words, "Upon this rock I will build My Church"; "If thou lovest Me, feed My sheep"; "Confirm thy brethren "; so it no less required God to enable any man to fulfil that charge. But how when it comes to a succession of men? How many families can show a continuous succession of three temporal rulers equally great? Can any family show four such? Can anyone calculate the power which maintains such a succession through centuries?

Here, after four full centuries, in that one belief the seven next successors of St. Leo—Hilarus, Simplicius, Felix, Gelasius, Anastasius, Symmachus, and Hormisdas—stood as one man. Their counsels did not vary. Their resolve was one. Their course was straight. In Leo's time the earth reeled beneath the tread of Attila, the city groaned beneath Genseric's hoof. And now three heretics—despots, and ignoble despots, if ever such there were—filled the sole imperial throne. Arians, closely connected by family ties and identical interests, divided the West among them. The seven Popes sat on at the Lateran in the palace which Constantine had given them, and said Mass in the church which he had built for them. Three of his degenerate successors tried every art against them and failed. During twenty years of this time, from 476 to 496, no ruler small or great acknowledged the Catholic faith. The East was Eutychean, the West Arian. At length St. Remigius baptised the Frankish chief as first-born of the Teuton race in the Catholic faith of the Holy Trinity, and the Pope at Rome gave utterance as a father to his joy. The end was that the schism was terminated on the part of the bishop, the heir of the seat and the ambition of Acacius, by the prince, by his nobles, among them the legislator who was to be Justinian, and by 2500 bishops throughout the East, acknowledging in distinct terms that one unique authority on which the Popes had rested throughout the contest. They declared solemnly, in celebrating the holiest mystery of the Christian faith, that the word of the Lord cannot be passed over, saying, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church". They added that the course of five hundred years had exemplified the fact "that the solidity of the Christian religion rests entire and perfect in the Apostolic See". The rebellion of Acacius in 483 drew forth this confession from his successor, John II., in 519.

The seven successors of St. Leo stood as one man. No variation in their language or their conduct can be found. Not so the seven successors of Anatolius at Constantinople. That bishop, who had seen himself foiled by the vigour and sagacity of St. Leo at the Council of Chalcedon, lived afterwards on good terms with him, and died in 458, in his lifetime. He was succeeded by Gennadius, who, during the thirteen years of his episcopate, was faithful both to the creed which St. Leo had preserved and to the dignity of the Apostolic See. He was followed by Acacius, who occupied the see from 471 to 489. There was some quality in Acacius which gained the favour of princes. He had charmed at once the old emperor Leo I.; but Zeno, whose influence first made him bishop, afterwards followed all his teaching. He had also gained a renown for orthodoxy by refusing the attempt of Basiliscus to make the imperial will a rule of Church doctrine. It was when his stronger mind had mastered Zeno that he began the desperate attempt against the doctrine and discipline of the Apostolic See which has been our chief subject. But when he died in 489, his successor Fravita at once renounced the position which he had taken up by asking the recognition of Pope Felix and restoring his name in the diptychs. It is true that in his conduct he was double-dealing, and, while he sought for the Pope's recognition, parleyed with the heretical patriarch of Alexandria. But he died in three months, and was succeeded by Euphemius, who likewise repudiated the act of Acacius, and earnestly sought reconciliation with the Pope, while he was unwilling to fulfil the condition of it—that he should erase the name of Acacius from the diptychs. The six years' episcopate of Euphemius was one long contest with the treachery and persecution of the emperor Anastasius, who at last, by help of the resident council, was able to depose him. He placed Macedonius in his stead, who again sought to be reconciled with the Pope, but only would not pay the price of renouncing the person, as he fully renounced the conduct, of Acacius. During fifteen years, from 496 to 511, as Euphemius had resisted the covert heresy of Anastasius, so did Macedonius, and, like him, he fell at last before the enmity of the emperor. Upon the deposition of Macedonius, the emperor obtained the election of Timotheus, who during seven years was his docile instrument. When he died in 518, the bishop John was elected, whose great desire was the restoration of unity, with the maintenance of the faith of Chalcedon. By side of the seven Popes succeeding St. Leo put the seven bishops of the emperor's city. We find two—the first and the last—Gennadius and John, blameless. The second, Acacius, author of all the evil in a schism of thirty-five years. The third, the fourth, and the fifth shrink from the deed of Acacius; and two of them are deposed by the emperor, while his people respect and cherish their memory. The sixth is a mere tool of the emperor.

Four eastern emperors occupy the sixty years from Marcian to Justin. Three of them are of the very worst which even Byzantium can show. Their reply to the appeal of the Pope to "the Christian prince and Roman emperor" was to betray the faith and sacrifice Rome to Arian occupation.

But when we turn from the bishops and emperors of the eastern capital to the seats of the ancient patriarchs, to the Alexandria of Athanasius and Cyril, to the Antioch of Ignatius, Chrysostom, and Eustathius, no words can express the division, the scandals, the excesses, which the Eutychean spirit, striving to overthrow the Council of Chalcedon, showed during those sixty years. With this spirit Acacius played to stir up the eastern jealousy against the Apostolic See of the West, and he found a most willing coadjutor in the eastern emperor, the more so because that See was no longer locally situated in his domain. The chance of Acacius lay throughout in the pride of that monarch who was become the sole inheritor of the Roman name, as Pope Felix reminded him, and who would fain see Nova Roma the centre of ecclesiastical rule, as it was become the head of the diminished empire. Anastasius, after Zeno, was still more swayed by these motives than his predecessor.

But here we touch the completeness of the success which followed the trust placed in their apostolate by the seven immediate successors of St. Leo. In proportion as Rome became in the temporal order a mere municipal city, the sacerdotal authority of its bishop came out into clearer light. Three times in the fifth century Rome was mercilessly sacked—in 410, in 455, in 472. Its senators were carried into slavery, its population diminished. The finishing stroke of its ignominy may be said to be the deposition, by a barbarian condottiere, of the poor boy whose name, repeating in connection the founder of the city with the founder of the empire, seemed to mock the mortal throes of the great mother. But this lessening of the secular city, so far from lessening the authority of the spiritual power, reveals to all men, believers or unbelievers, that the pontificate, whose seat is locally in the city, has a life not derived from the city. Rome's temporal fall exhibits in full the intangible spiritual character of the pontificate. If St. Peter had to any seemed to rule because he was seated on the pedestal of the Caesarean empire, when that empire fell the Apostle alone remained to whom Christ gave the charge, whom He invested with the "great mantle".[111] The bishop of the city in which an Arian Ostrogoth ruled supreme as to temporal things was acknowledged by the head of the empire, from whom the Ostrogoth derived his title, as the person in whom our Lord's word—the creative word which founds an empire as it makes a world—was accomplished, had been during five hundred years accomplished, would be for ever accomplished.[112]

The malice of Acacius largely led to this result. His attack was the prelude to the sifting of the Pope's prerogative during thirty-five years: its sifting by a rival at Constantinople, by the eastern bishops, by the eastern emperor, who had now also become the sole Roman emperor; and the sifting was followed by a full acknowledgment. Nothing but this hostile conduct would have afforded so indubitable a proof of the thing impugned. While the ancient patriarchates which had formed the substructure of the triple dais on which the Apostolic See rested were falling into irretrievable confusion, while the new State-made patriarch at Constantinople was trying to nominate and, if he could, to consecrate his elders and superiors at Alexandria and Antioch, who descended from Peter, the essential prerogative of the Apostolic See itself came forth into full light. The bishops at Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and every other city in the world would be great or small in influence according to the greatness or smallness of their city. If the city fell altogether, the see would fall. Its life was tied to the city. But it was not so with that pontificate on which the Church was built. There and there only the living power was given by Christ to a man: not local, nor limited, nor transitory. This was the great truth which the Acacian schism helped to establish in the minds of men, and which was proclaimed in that Nova Roma where Acacius had refused the judgment of Pope Felix, and had tried to put himself on an equality. As a result, in the terms of union which have been above recited, the action of Acacius has had the honour to condemn the rebellion of Photius three hundred years before it arose, and every other rebellion which has imitated that of Photius.

Nor must it be forgotten that it was the constancy of the Popes in these sixty years which alone prevented the prevailing of Eutychean doctrine in the East. Blent with that doctrine was the attempt of three emperors to substitute themselves as judges of doctrine for the Apostolic See and the bishops in union with it. At the moment when John Talaia[113] was expelled from Alexandria, the Monophysite heresy, espoused by Acacius and imposed by Zeno, would have triumphed, save for the Popes Simplicius and Felix. And it would have triumphed while the instrument of its triumph, the Henotikon, would have inflicted a deadly blow upon the government of the Church by taking away the independence of her teaching office. This struggle continued during the reign of Zeno; and Anastasius, as soon as he became emperor, used all the absolute power which he possessed to enforce the reception of the same document. Even Euphemius and Macedonius were obliged to sign it, and the sacrifice which they made in suffering deposition does not deliver their character of bishops from the stain of this weakness. We see in this period the first stadium traversed by the Greek Church in that descending course which, in another century, brought it to the ruin wrought by Mahomet.

On the other hand, the seven Popes kept the position of St. Leo—rather, they more than kept it, because, under outward circumstances so greatly altered for the worse, they both maintained his doctrine and justified his conduct. They insisted through the darkest times, under pressure of the greatest calamities, deprived of all temporal aid, that the person of Acacius should be solemnly removed from recognition as a bishop by the Church. They insisted, and it was done. The act of Acacius, if allowed to pass, would have carried into actual life the assertion of the canon which St. Leo had rejected: that the privileges of the Roman See were derived from the grant of the Fathers to Rome because it was the capital. The expunging of his name from the diptychs, with the solemn asseveration that the rank of the Holy See was derived from the gift of Christ, and that the Church's solidity as a fabric consisted in it, and equally the maintenance of the Catholic religion, established the contradictory of that 28th canon, and enforced for ever the subordination of the see which Acacius sought to exalt. At the same time it pointed out the distinction between the See of Peter and all other sees: the distinction that in the case of every other bishop the spiritual life of the bishop, as a ruler, is local and attached to his see. But the See of Peter is the generator of the episcopate, because of Peter ever living in his successor.

It may also be remarked that it is this overflowing life of Peter which invests titular bishops with the names of dead sees. Thus they sit as members of a General Council, verifying to the letter St. Cyprian's adage, that the episcopate is one, of which a part is held by each without division of the whole.

The submission of Constantinople in its bishop, its clergy, its emperor, its nobles, attested by the subscription of 2500 bishops throughout the East, is an event to which there can hardly be found a parallel. The submission was made to Pope Hormisdas when he was himself, as his predecessors for forty-three years had been, subject to an Arian ruler.[114] If there be in all history an act which can be called in a special sense an act of the undivided Church, it is this. It was made more than three hundred years before the schism of Photius. If the confession contained in this submission does not exhibit the mind of the Church, what form of words, what consent of will, can ever be shown to convey it? If those who subscribed this confession subscribed a falsehood, why pretend any longer to attribute authority to the Church? But it must be added, if their confession was the truth, why not obey it?

It is to be noted that this period of sixty years is full of events which caused the greatest suffering to the Popes, were unceasingly deplored by them, and resisted to the utmost of their power. The temporal condition of themselves, of the bishops, of their people in Italy, Africa, France, Spain, Illyricum, Britain, was most sad. The most vehement of persecutions desolated Africa. Again, there was the suppression of the western emperor, with the consequent subjection of the Apostolic See to the temporal government of the most hateful of heresies: the Oriental despotism of Zeno and Anastasius, continued for forty-four years, mixed with another heresy, and tending to destroy both faith and independence in the bishops subject to it. The Popes, as Romans, felt with the keenest sympathy the political degradation of Rome. Can any appeal be more touching than that which they made, and made in vain, to the "Christian king and Roman prince"? Out of all these things, whose natural consequences tended to extinguish their principate, came forth the most magnificent attestation to it which is to be found in the first five hundred years of the Christian religion.

NOTES:

[70] Epist. i.; Labbe, v. 406.

[71] Mansi, viii. 193.

[72] Epistola Aviti episcopi Viennensis ad Clodoveum regem Francorum.—Mansi, viii. 175.

[73] See for this narrative the German Roehrbacher, viii. 486; Civilta, 1855, art. 9, pp. 152-3; Hefele, ii. 607; Photius, i. 136.

[74] Photius, i. 137. Der Einfluss des roemischen Stuhles war doch mehr durch die Erneuerung des laurentianischen Schisma als durch die Macht der arianischen Ostgothen auf laengere Zeit gelaehmt.

[75] Ep. vi.; Mansi, viii. 213-217.

[76] Qualiscunque praesulis apostolici debes vocem patienter audire.

[77] I.e., Manicheans placed the seat of evil in matter, and Eutycheans denied the materiality of the Lord's body. The Pope alludes to the Emperor's Eutychean doctrine.

[78] Catholici principes quidem semper apostolicos praesules institutos suis literis praevenerunt, et illam confessionem fidemque praecipuam, tanquam boni filii, quaesierunt debitae pietatis affectu, cui noscis ipsius Domini Salvatoris ore curam totius Ecclesiae delegatam.

[79] Ubi te, rerum humanarum princeps, qualiscunque Sedis Apostolicae vicarius contestari mea voce non desino.

[80] Ad eam sua protinus scripta miserunt ut se docerent ejus esse consortes.—Mansi, viii. 217.

[81] See Hefele, ii. 607 and 209.

[82] "Intuitu misericordiae," says Anastasius.

[83] Hefele, ii. 216.

[84] Mansi, viii. 247-252; Hefele, ii. 623-5.

[85] Acts of the Synodus Palmaris.—Mansi, viii. 247-251.

[86] Hefele, ii. 624.

[87] Mansi, viii. 293-5. Ep. xxxi. Migne, vol. lix, 248.

[88] Hefele, ii. 625-30; Roehrbacher, viii. 463.

[89] Mansi, viii. 284, The libellus apologeticus, pp. 274-290.

[90] Replicabo, uni dictum, Tu es Petrus, &c., et rursus sanctorum voce pontificum dignitatem ejus sedis factam toto orbe venerabilem, dum illi quicquid fidelium est ubique submittitur, dum totius corporis caput esse designatur.—Mansi, viii. 284.

[91] The narrative from Photius, i. 134.

[92] Ephrem, v. 9759.

[93] Ecclesia orientalis ad Symmachum episcopum Romanum.—Mansi, viii. 221-6.

[94] In qua fortitudinem Ecclesiae suae constituit. Epistola Anastasii ad Hormesdam pontificem.—Mansi, viii. 384.

[95] Mansi, viii. 389-393.

[96] Photius, i. 143-5, translated.

[97] Ep. x. ad Avitum Viennensem. Mansi, viii. 410.

[98] Theophanes, p. 248.

[99] Mansi, viii. 425.

[100] German Roehrbacher, viii. 532, book 43, 81, mostly followed.

[101] Mansi, viii. 435.

[102] Mansi, viii. 438.

[103] Mansi, viii. 441. Indiculus quem acceperunt legati Apostolicae Sedis. It much resembles the former one, given to the legates sent to Anastasius.

[104] Photius, i. 148.

[105] Mansi, viii. 451.

[106] In qua est integra Christianae religionis et perfecta soliditas.

[107] Suggestio Germani et Joannis episcoporum, Felicis et Dioscori diaconorum, et Blandi presbyteri.—Mansi, viii. 453.

[108] Sacra imperatoris Justini ad Hormisdam.—Mansi, viii. 456.

[109] Photius, i. 149, who refers to the Deacon Rusticus, Disputatio contra Acephalos.

[110] Mansi, viii. 60.

[111] Il granto manto, Dante.

[112] Quia in sede Apostolia inviolabilis semper Catholica custoditur religio.

[113] Hergenroether, K.G., i. 333.

[114] See Photius, i. 149.



CHAPTER IV.

JUSTINIAN.

The submission of the eastern empire and episcopate to Pope Hormisdas, in 519, is a memorable incident in the history of the Church. A large and marked part in it was taken by the man who for thirty-eight years was to rule the eastern empire, to expel the Goths from Italy, thus recovering the original seat of Roman power, and the Vandals from Africa, and so once more attach the great southern provinces, for so many ages the granary of Rome and Italy itself, to the existing Byzantine realm. Before, however, this was done, when, after the death of Theodorick, the Gothic kingdom still subsisted under his grandson Athalarick and his daughter Amalasunta, the emperor Justinian addressed to Pope John II., in the year 533, a letter from which I quote as follows. I preface that this letter was carried to the Pope by two imperial legates, the bishops Hypatius and Demetrius. It begins:[115] "Rendering honour to the Apostolic See and to your Holiness, whom we ever have revered, and do revere, as is befitting a father, we hasten to bring to the knowledge of your Holiness everything which concerns the state of the churches. For the existing unity of your Apostolic See, and the present undisturbed state of God's holy churches, has always been a thing which we have earnestly sought to maintain. And so we lost no time in subjecting and uniting all bishops of the whole eastern region[116] to the See of your Holiness. We have now, therefore, held it necessary that the points mooted, though they are clear and beyond doubt, and have been ever firmly maintained and proclaimed by all bishops according to the teaching of your Apostolic See, should be brought to the knowledge of your Holiness. For we do not allow that anything concerning the state of the churches, clear and undoubted though it be, when once mooted, should not be made known to your Holiness, who is the head of all the holy churches. For, as we said, in all things we hasten to increase the honour and authority of your See." He then proceeds to recite a creed which carefully condemns the errors of Nestorius on the one side, and Eutyches on the other, and acknowledges "the holy and glorious Virgin Mary to be properly and truly Mother of God". At the beginning of this creed he introduces the words: "All bishops of the holy and apostolic Church, and the most reverend archimandrites of the sacred monasteries, following your Holiness, and maintaining that state and unity of God's holy churches which they have from the Apostolic See of your Holiness, changing no wit of that ecclesiastical state which has held and holds now, confess with one consent," &c. And he concludes with the words: "All bishops, therefore, following the doctrine of your Apostolic See, so believe, confess, and preach: for which we have hastened to bring this to the knowledge of your Holiness, by the bishops Hypatius and Demetrius; and we beg your fatherly affection, that by letters addressed to us, and to the bishop and patriarch, your brother, of this imperial city (since he on the same occasion wrote to your Holiness, being earnest in all things to follow the Apostolic See), you would make known to us that your Holiness receives all who make the above true confession. For so the love of all to you and the authority of your See will increase, and the unity of the holy churches with you will be preserved unbroken, when all bishops learn through you the sincere doctrine of your Holiness in what has been reported to you. But we beseech your Holiness to pray for us, and obtain for us the guardianship of God."

Pope John II. acknowledges this letter to "his most gracious son, Justinian Augustus". He highly celebrates the praises of "the most Christian prince," that "in your zeal for faith and charity, instructed in the Church's discipline, you preserve reverence to the See of Rome, and subject all things to it, and bring them to its unity, to the author of which, the first Apostle, the Lord's words were addressed, 'Feed My sheep': which both the rules of the Fathers and the statutes of emperors declare to be the head of all churches, and the reverential words of your Piety attest". The Pope adds: "Your imperial words, brought by the bishops Hypatius and Demetrius, which have been agreed to by our brethren and fellow-bishops, being agreeable to apostolic doctrine, we by our authority confirm". "This, then, is your true faith; this all Fathers of blessed memory and prelates of the Roman Church, whom in all things we follow, this the Apostolic See has to this time preached and maintained unshaken." "And we beseech our God and Saviour Jesus Christ to preserve you long and peacefully in this true religion and unity, and veneration of the Apostolic See, whose principate you, as most Christian and pious, preserve in all things."

In the same year, 533, in which Justinian addressed to the Pope this remarkable recognition of the Roman Primacy, specifying that everything which concerns the whole Church should be brought before the Pope, though it might be already certain and in accordance with established usage, he gave his approval to that collection of laws called in Latin the Digest and in Greek the Pandects, which he had commissioned Tribonian and other great lawyers to draw up. Seventeen commissioners, having power given to them to alter, omit, and correct, selected by his command, out of nearly two thousand volumes, what they considered serviceable in the imperial laws and the decisions of great lawyers. It is a vast repertory of judicial cases in which Roman lawyers seek to apply the general rules of law and natural equity. It was the first attempt since the Twelve Tables to construct an independent centre of right as a whole,[117] and it was confirmed by the authority of the emperor on the 16th December, 533.

As in the whole course of the fifth century, so no less in the sixth, it is necessary to bear in mind the close interweaving of political with ecclesiastical facts. The force and bearing of the one only become intelligible when the others are weighed. In 519, under Pope Hormisdas, the schism of Acacius had collapsed, and the most emphatic acknowledgment of all which the Popes had claimed in the contest with him, and with the emperors Zeno and Anastasius, who favoured him, had taken place. Pope Hormisdas had been succeeded in 523 by Pope John I. Compelled by the king Theodorick to undertake an embassy to the emperor Justin, received at Byzantium with the highest honour as first Bishop of the Church, being also the first Pope who had visited the eastern capital, and crowned with gifts for the churches at Rome, he returned only to die in the dungeon of the Arian prince at Ravenna, in 526. In three months Theodorick had followed to the tomb his three victims—Symmachus, Boethius, and Pope John I. His death had well-nigh broken up the league of Teutonic Arian rulers against the Catholic faith, of which he had been the soul during the thirty-three years of his reign. Justinian had been taken by his uncle Justin as partner of his empire in April, 527, and crowned, together with his wife Theodora, on Easter Day. Four months later he succeeded his uncle in the sole power. At the death of Theodorick, the innate weakness of the Gothic kingdom in Italy, which had been veiled by the personal ability of the sovereign, came to full light. The utter incompatibility between the savage Goth and the cultured Roman showed itself in the rejection of the queen Amalasunta, in the depriving her of her son, and his subsequent corruption and premature death, its result. It was shown also in the retirement of Cassiodorus from the place of counsellor and minister of the Gothic king. Upon the death of Pope John I., in 526, Theodorick had exercised his power in urging the Romans to select Felix for pope. For this permanent injury had been inflicted upon the liberty of the papal election by the foreign occupation of Italy. It began under Odoacer in 483, when the temporal ruler, being a foreigner and an Arian, for the first time sought to mix himself with the election. Twenty years after, under Pope Symmachus, the attempt of Odoacer had been condemned. But what the Herule and the Gothic ruler, both Arians, had begun, the Byzantine emperor, when he recovered possession of Rome, carried on, and the original freedom of election was subjected to the control of the eastern emperor for hundreds of years.

Pope Felix sat until 530, and was then succeeded by Bonifacius II., the son of a Goth; not, however, without a temporary schism, occasioned by the attempt of King Athalarick to exert the arbitrary power used by his grandfather Theodorick in the election. Pope John II. followed in 532. In this Pope's time Cassiodorus was made Praetorian prefect by King Athalarick, and wrote to the Pope as a son to his father: "Be careful to remind me what I am to do. I wish to deal rightly, though I am blamed. A sheep which desires to hear the voice of his shepherd is not so easily led astray; and if he has one who warns continually at his side, can scarcely be criminal. I am, indeed, judge in the palace, but shall not therefore cease to be your disciple. For we execute this office well when we do not in the least depart from your injunctions. Since, then, I wish to be guided by your counsels and supported by your prayers, you must show your hand when there is anything in me otherwise than would be desired. That chair which is the wonder of the whole world should carefully protect its own, since, though it is given to the whole world, yet it admits in you a special local love."[118]

The Pope, to whom the Praetorian prefect of Athalarick, the temporal sovereign, addressed this language, is John II., to whom Justinian, from Byzantium, spoke as a son, and whose primacy he acknowledged in terms so ample, before he became, by the conquest of Belisarius, the temporal lord of Rome; the year, also, before he reconquered Northern Africa by the sword of the same great general.

Justinian, with not less precision than former emperors, acknowledged all his life long the primacy of the Roman See. We need not exclude political motives from this acknowledgment, but we must allow to him the fullest conviction as to its legitimate authority. If now and then, under the impulse of passion or despotic humour, he seemed to disregard its rights, he soon strove again to obtain the Pope's assent to his measures. In his edict to his own patriarch Epiphanius, he declared expressly that he held himself bound accurately to inform the Pope, as head of all bishops, concerning the circumstances of his realm, especially since the Roman Church by its decisions in faith had overthrown the heresies which arose in the East.[119] The imperial theologian was very unwilling to give up the initiative in the determination of ecclesiastical questions; nevertheless, he acknowledged in the Bishop of Old Rome the superior judge without whose confirmation his own steps remained devoid of force and effect.[120]

The man who was born an Illyrian peasant, who was the leading spirit during the nine years' reign of another Illyrian peasant, his uncle, who succeeded him in 527, and ruled the greatest kingdom of the earth during thirty-eight years; to whom the bitter Vandal in Africa and the nobler Goth in Italy yielded up their equally ill-gotten prey; who became the great legislator of the Roman world, by the commission given to his chief lawyers to select and, after correction, tabulate the laws of the emperors his predecessors; to whom, in consequence, the actual nations of Europe owe what was to them the fountain of universal right, demands a somewhat detailed account of his character, his purposes, and his actions. When the prince of the poets of Christendom, the only poet who has spoken in the name and with the voice of Christendom, meets his spirit under the guidance of Beatrice, the emperor utters words the truth of which all must feel:

"Caesar I was and am Justinian, Moved by the will of that Prime Love I feel I clear'd the encumbered laws from vain excess".[121]

It is in this character that Justinian lives for all history, and his name stands out among all Byzantine sovereigns with a lustre of its own. I have therefore first quoted the most definite words of the great legislator, spontaneously acknowledging the right of St. Peter's successor to know and to judge of all that concerns the Church's doctrine and practice. The acknowledgment of this right is the more to be marked because, when it was made by the eastern emperor, that successor was not his own subject. That he was the head of all the churches of the world, that he was so by descent from Peter, that in virtue of this headship and descent he had a right of supervision over everything which belonged to the Church in all the world—this is what Justinian avows, and this, moreover, is equally what the Pope claimed then as he claims now.

Justinian ascended the eastern throne in August, 527, at about the age of forty-five. He would therefore have been born in 482. He was of somewhat more than middle height, of regular features, dark colour, of ample chest, serene and agreeable aspect. Through the care of his uncle he had had a good education, and had early learned to read and write. He was skilled in jurisprudence, architecture, music, and, moreover, in theology. His personal piety was remarkable. When he became emperor he bestowed all his private goods on churches, and ruled his house like a monastery. In Lent, his life approached that of a hermit in severity. He ate no bread; drank only water; for his nourishment he contented himself every other day with a portion of wild herbs, seasoned with salt and vinegar. We have sure testimony respecting his fasts and mortifications, since he has taken pains in his last laws, the Novels, to inform the world of them.[122]

His uncle Justin had died at the age of seventy-seven, after reigning nine years. His accession had marked a sort of resurrection in eastern affairs. Instead of three emperors, Basiliscus, Zeno, and Anastasius, alike ignominious in their government, unsound in their faith, infamous in their life, and remorselessly tyrannical in their treatment both of Church and State, Justin had crowned an honourable life as a general in the imperial service with a creditable reign, in which his fidelity to the Catholic faith was remarkable. The moment of Justinian's succession was coeval with great changes in the West. By the death of Theodorick, who in his last year had begun the work of active Arian persecution, the great kingdom which he had maintained for a generation seemed on the point of dissolution, through the intrinsic inaptitude for government which his Gothic subjects at once betrayed when let loose from the master's powerful hand. In Africa, moreover, a succession of cruel Vandal persecutors, almost equal to their original, Genseric, had shaken their tenure of the country. At the same time, the Frankish kingdom, strengthened greatly by the conversion of Clovis, was growing in power and extent—a growth not interrupted by his early death in 511, at the age of forty-five.[123]

Such was the state of things when Justinian directed the great power which the revenues of the eastern empire enabled him to wield, towards the restoration of that empire, first in Africa, and then in Italy. Later in the same year, 533, in which he addressed to John II. the explicit acknowledgment of his supreme authority with which I began, he despatched his great general Belisarius with 16,000 chosen troops, 6000 of them cavalry, to Carthage. The Vandal ruler Gelimer offered but a feeble and utterly ineffectual resistance. He surrendered himself at Carthage to Belisarius, by the end of the year, and was brought to Constantinople. There Justinian received Belisarius in what was like one of Rome's hundred triumphs, except that the conqueror marched on foot. The booty of the Vandal kings was borne before him, in which were conspicuous the precious things which Genseric had carried away from Rome—the vessels of the temple of Jerusalem. When the captive king was brought into the circus, and saw before him the emperor and countless rows of spectators, he is said to have shed no tears, but to have uttered the words of the preacher: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity". But his head did not fall under the axe of the lictors, as in the ancient Roman triumphs. He received in Dalmatia a great property, and lived there in abundance with his family. The other captives were enrolled in the Roman army, and Justinian and Theodora heaped presents upon the daughters of Hilderich, and all the descendants of that princess Eudocia, great-granddaughter of the great Theodosius, who had been obliged to espouse the son of Genseric in her captivity at Carthage.

Then Justinian divided North Africa into seven provinces—Tingitana, Mauritanea, Numidia, Carthage, Byzacene, Tripolis, and Sardinia, which last, having belonged to the Vandals, was put into the prefecture of Africa. This received a Praetorian prefect and proconsular governors, who were charged to maintain the land, and show to the inhabitants the difference between civilised Roman government and Vandal cruelty. Justinian restored many cities, and erected many great buildings, especially churches, of which five in Leptis alone.[124]

An early result of Justinian's reconquest of Africa was that the bishops met in plenary council, under the presidency of the primate of Carthage, Reparatus, successor of Boniface. After a hundred years of Vandal oppression, 217 bishops assembled in the Basilica of Faustus, at Carthage, named Justiniana in honour of the emperor—the church which Hunnerich had taken from the Catholics, in which many bodies of martyrs were buried. To their intercession the council ascribed their deliverance from persecution. After reading the Nicene decrees, they discussed the question whether Arian priests who had become Catholics should be received in their dignity or only to lay communion. All the members of the council inclined to the latter judgment. They, however, would come to no decision, but with one voice determined to consult Pope John II. They addressed a letter to him by the hands of two bishops and a deacon, in which they say: "We considered it agreeable to charity that no one should disclose our judgment until first the custom or determination of the Roman Church should be made known to us: honouring herein with due obedience the authority of your Blessedness, being such a Pontiff as the holy See of Peter deserved to have, worthy of veneration, full of affection, speaking the truth without falsehood, doing nothing with arrogance. Therefore the free charity of the whole brotherhood thought that your counsel should be asked. And we beg that your mind, the organ of the Holy Spirit,[125] may answer us kindly and truly."[126]

When the African deputies reached Rome, Pope John II. was already dead. But his successor Agapetus answered the questions of the council, attaching also the ancient canons which decided thereupon, to the effect that at whatever age a person had been infected by the Arian pestilence, if he became afterwards a Catholic he should not retain any rank, but that converted Arian priests might receive support from the Church fund. Pope Agapetus wrote expressing his intense joy at the recovery of their country: "For, since the Church is everywhere one body, your sorrow was our affliction. And we acknowledge your most sincere charity in that, as became wise and learned men, you did not forget the Apostolic Principate; but, in order to resolve that question, sought approach to that See to which the power of the keys is given".[127]

This council also sent an embassy to Justinian, beseeching him to restore the possessions and rights of the Church in Africa which the Vandals had taken away—a request which the emperor granted in an edict to his Praetorian prefect Salomo. And Agapetus expressly restored to the primate of Carthage any rights as metropolitan which the enemy had taken away.[128]

Thus the terrible persecution inaugurated by Genseric when the Vandal host lay around the deathbed of St. Augustine at Hippo in 430 came to an end. In the interval, the African church had suffered every extremity of barbarian cruelty from the Arian invaders. At the end, the primate of Carthage, at the head of all the bishops of the several provinces, is found referring to the Pope, a subject of the Arian Theodatus, for guidance in the treatment of Arian priests and bishops who submitted to the Church. The Pope, on his side, acknowledges all the rights of the primate of Carthage which existed before the invasion. As to civil rights of property, the Byzantine conqueror restores the possessions of the Church which had been taken away by the Vandals.

By the restoration of the African province to the Roman empire and the Catholic faith Justinian won great renown. His accession had been welcomed with joy by the Catholic people. Full of great designs, he aimed at the extension of his realm, and endeavoured to advance the Christian cause by missions to countries as yet without the faith. Greatness and majesty are shown in all his creations.[129] In the year following the African reconquest Pope Agapetus wrote to him, praising his solicitude in maintaining the unity of the Church, and identifying the advance of his empire with the increase of religion.[130] The Pope adds that the emperor desired the profession of faith which he had sent to his predecessor Pope John II., and which had been confirmed by him, to be confirmed also by himself, for which "we praise you: we assent, not because we admit in laymen an authority to preach, but because, since the zeal of your faith is in accordance with the rules of our fathers, we confirm and give it force".

It is to be remembered that Pope Agapetus, elected in 535, was the subject of the Gothic king Theodatus, and as such was sent by him, under threats of death, in the winter of this year, on an embassy to Justinian. The purpose of Theodatus was to support his tottering throne by the intercession of the Pope. He had murdered at the lake of Bolsena the daughter and heiress of Theodorick, Amalasunta, who had made him king upon the untimely death of her son Athalarick in 534. He was secretly proposing to cede the Gothic kingdom of Italy to Justinian for a pension of 1200 pounds of gold. Thus Agapetus was sent to Constantinople in the winter of 535, as Pope John I. had been sent by Theodorick ten years before. He entered that city on the 20th February, 536; he died on the 22nd April following. In these two months the Pope, the subject of Theodatus, did great things. A certain Anthimus, a secret friend of the Monophysite heresy, had been brought, by the favour of the like-minded empress Theodora, from the see of Trebisond and put into that of Constantinople, having been able to impose himself upon the emperor as orthodox. Agapetus was received with the greatest honour, being only the second Pope who had visited Byzantium. He could not negotiate a peace for Theodatus; but archimandrites, priests, and monks besought him to proceed against Anthimus as an interloper and teacher of error. Agapetus refused his communion to the new patriarch, required of him a written confession of faith, and return to his bishopric, which he had deserted contrary to the canons. The emperor, believing in the orthodoxy of his patriarch, took part at first against the Pope, and strove to overcome him both with threats and with presents. But Justinian, undeceived as to the orthodoxy of Anthimus, gave him up, and Pope Agapetus pronounced judgment of deposition upon him, and on the 13th March, 536, consecrated Mennas, who had been duly elected, to be bishop of Constantinople. He first required of him a written confession "to carry to Rome, to St. Peter".[131]

Soon after this the Pope died suddenly. The whole population at Constantinople attended his funeral. Never, it was said, had the mourning for a bishop or an emperor drawn together such a concourse of people. His body was carried back to Rome in triumph and buried in St. Peter's.

Pope Agapetus was succeeded in 536 by Pope Silverius, chosen under the influence of the Gothic king Theodatus. He was the last Pope so chosen; and the moment of his election is coincident with events destined to change permanently the material condition both of Rome and Italy.

Justinian had accomplished, with singular ease and rapidity, the first half of his design. This was the reunion of North Africa to his empire, and the restoration in it of the Catholic faith. The second part of his design was to accomplish the same double result for Rome and for Italy. He sent Belisarius, after the victory at Carthage, into Sicily, where Syracuse and Palermo were taken; and in the summer of 536 the great commander entered Italy, captured Naples, and advanced towards Rome on the Appian Road. So the Gothic war began. Theodatus was in Rome. The Gothic army in the Pontine marshes became aware of his incompetence and his secret treating with Justinian, deposed him, and elected Vitiges to be their king in his stead, by whose orders the fugitive was slain in his flight on the Flaminian Road. But Vitiges hastened to Ravenna, where he espoused the unwilling Matasunta, daughter of Amalasuntha, granddaughter of Theodorick. Four thousand Goths alone remained to cover Rome. Belisarius appeared before it. A deputation, supported by Pope Silverius, brought him the keys of the city. The garrison was too weak to defend it, and on the 9th December, 536, Belisarius took possession of Rome, at the head of the imperial troops, who had nothing Roman in them except the name. It was sixty years since Odoacer had caused the senate to declare a western emperor needless, and Rome, as to temporal rule, had fallen, first under the Herule, then under the Goth. The Romans welcomed Belisarius as a deliverer from the double yoke of the northern intruder and the Arian heretic.

For however Theodorick recognised, after the fury of the conflict with his brother-Teuton, the Herule Odoacer, was over, the necessity of ruling with justice over Goth and Italian, however prosperous as to the maintenance of peace and internal order the great kingdom stretching from Illyricum to Southern Gaul had been, whatever support he had given to the maintenance of Roman law, custom, and institutions, there was not a Roman, from Symmachus and Boethius in the senate to the meanest inhabitant of Trastevere, who would not loathe the occupation of Rome and Italy by the Gothic invasion. The Goths were a people of remarkable courage and extraordinary force of body. But the feeling with which Italians and, above all, Romans would regard them as masters of their country and confiscators of its soil, can only be expressed by what the English would feel if a swarm of Zulus were to take possession of England. So, when Belisarius entered Rome, the Romans looked for their being replaced under the direct and lawful government of one who should be in deed and in truth a Roman prince, as Pope Felix had called the recreant Zeno, that is, the head of law, the supreme judge, the defender of the Church. This was what they looked for. I am about to mention what they found.

The empress Theodora had tried with all her wiles to set a Monophysite prelate on the Byzantine See.[132] Pope Agapetus had frustrated her plans by deposing Anthimus and consecrating Mennas in his place. But Theodora had not given up her intrigues, and she strove to involve in her net the Roman See itself. In the train of Agapetus at Constantinople was the ambitious deacon Vigilius. She sought to win him by promising him the Roman See. She offered him a great sum of money, and all her powerful support in attaining the papal dignity, if he would bind himself thereupon to abrogate the Council of Chalcedon, to enter into communion with Anthimus and Severus, and help them to recover the sees of Constantinople and Antioch. Vigilius agreed, and Theodora worked for the interests of her favourite by means of Antonina, wife of Belisarius. In the meantime, Silverius, as we have seen, had been chosen Pope in Rome, and Theodatus had exercised in his favour the influence which the Teuton rulers, whether styled Patricius or King, had claimed in the papal election since Odoacer. The empress invited the new Pope to come to Constantinople, or at least to restore her dear Anthimus. Silverius refused decidedly, though he was in the most dangerous position between the Greeks and the Ostrogoths, and even his personal liberty was in danger from Belisarius.