The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I

CHAPTER III
PETER STOOD UP

Seven days after the death of Gelasius, Anastasius, a Roman, ascended the apostolic throne, which he held from November, 496, to November, 498. We have two letters from him extant, both important. In that addressed upon his own accession, which he sent to the emperor Anastasius by the hands of Germanus, bishop of Capua, and Cresconius, bishop of Trent, on occasion of Theodorick's embassy for the purpose of obtaining the title of king, he strove to preserve the "Roman prince" from the Eutychean heresy.

"I announce to you the beginning of my pontificate, and consider it a token of the divine favour that I bear the same as your own august name. This is an assurance that, like as your own name is pre-eminent among all the nations in the world, so by my humble ministry the See of St. Peter, as always, may hold the Principate assigned to it by the Lord God in the whole Church. We therefore discharge a delegated office in the name of Christ."⁷⁰ After beseeching the emperor that the name of Acacius should be effaced, in which he is carrying out the judgment of his predecessor, Pope Felix, he mentions the full instructions given to his legates, in order that the emperor might plainly see how, in that matter, the sentence of the Apostolic See had not proceeded from pride, but rather had been extorted by zeal for God as the result of certain crimes. "This we declare to you, in virtue of our apostolic office, through special love for your empire, that, as is fitting, and the Holy Spirit orders, obedience be yielded to our warning, that every blessing may follow your government. Let not your piety despise my frequent suggestion, having before your eyes the words of our Lord, 'He who hears you, hears Me: and he who despises you, despises Me: and he who despises Me, despises Him who sent Me'. In which the Apostle agrees with our Saviour, saying, 'He who despises these things, despises not man but God, who has given us His Holy Spirit'. Your breast is the sanctuary of public happiness, that through your excellency, whom God has ordered to rule on earth as His Vicar, not the resistance of hard pride be offered to the evangelic and apostolic commands, but an obedience which carries safety with it."

The Pope, then, standing alone in the world, and locally the subject of Theodorick the Goth, makes the position of the Roman emperor in the world, and the Pope in the Church, parallel to each other. Both are divine legations. The Pope, speaking on divine things, claims obedience as uttering the will of the Holy Spirit, which Pope Anastasius asserts, just as Pope Clement I., five hundred years before, had asserted it, in the first pastoral letter which we possess. He, living on sufferance in Rome, asserts it to the despotic ruler of an immense empire, throned at Constantinople, in reference to a bishop of Constantinople, whose name he requires the emperor to erase from the sacred records of the Church as a condition of communion with the Apostolic See.

This letter was directed to the East, the other belongs to the West, and records an event which was to affect the whole temporal order of things in that vast mass of territories already occupied by the northern tribes. On Christmas day of the year 496, that is, one month after the accession of Pope Anastasius, the haughty Sicambrian bent his head to receive the holy oil from St. Remigius, to worship that which he had burnt, and to burn that which he had worshipped. Clovis, chief of the Franks, and a number of his warriors with him, were baptised in the name of the most holy Trinity, never having been subject to the Arian heresy. Upon that event, the Holy See no longer stood alone, and the ring of Arian heresy surrounding it was broken for ever. The words of the Pope are these:

"Glorious son, we rejoice that your beginning in the Christian faith coincides with ours in the pontificate. For the See of Peter, on such an occasion, cannot but rejoice when it beholds the fulness of the nations come together to it with rapid pace, and time after time the net be filled, which the same Fisherman of men and blessed Doorkeeper of the heavenly Jerusalem was bidden to cast into the deep. This we have wished to signify to your serenity by the priest Eumerius, that, when you hear of the joy of the father in your good works, you may fulfil our rejoicing, and be our crown, and mother Church may exult at the proficiency of so great a king, whom she has just borne to God. Therefore, O glorious and illustrious son, rejoice your mother, and be to her as a pillar of iron. For the charity of many waxes cold, and by the craftiness of evil men our bark is tossed in furious waves, and lashed by their foaming waters. But we hope in hope against hope, and praise the Lord, who has delivered thee from the power of darkness, and made provision for the Church in so great a prince, who may be her defender, and put on the helmet of salvation against all the efforts of the infected. Go on, therefore, beloved and glorious son, that Almighty God may follow with heavenly protection your serenity and your realm, and command His angels to guard you in all your ways and to give you victory over your enemies round about you."⁷¹

Towards the end of the sixth century, the Gallic bishop, St. Gregory of Tours, notes how wonderfully prosperity followed the kingdom which became Catholic, and contrasts it with the rapid decline and perishing away of the Arian kingdoms. And, indeed, this letter of the Pope may be termed a divine charter, commemorating the birthday of the great nation, which led the way, through all the nations of the West, for their restoration to the Catholic faith, and the expulsion of the Arian poison. No one has recorded, and no one knows, the details of that conversion, by which the Church, in the course of the sixth century, recovered the terrible disasters which she had suffered in the fifth; a conversion by which the sturdy sons of the North, from heretics, became faithful children, and by which she added the Teuton race, in all its new-born vigour and devotion, to those sons of the South, whose conversion Constantine crowned with his own. St. Gregory of Tours calls Clovis the new Constantine, and in very deed his conversion was the herald of a second triumph to the Church of God, which equals, some may think surpasses even, the grandeur of the first.

It was fitting that the See of Peter should sound the note, which was its prelude, by the mouth of Anastasius, as the pastoral staff of St. Gregory was extended over its conclusion.

Scarcely less remarkable than the words of Pope Anastasius were those addressed to the new convert by a bishop, the temporal subject of the Burgundian prince, Gundobald, an Arian, that is, by St. Avitus of Vienna, grandson of the emperor of that name. Before the baptismal waters were dry on the forehead of the Frankish king, he wrote to him in these words:⁷²

"The followers of all sorts of schisms, different in their opinions, various in their multitude, sought, by pretending to the Christian name, to blunt the keenness of your choice. But, while we entrust our several conditions to eternity, and reserve for the future examination what each conceives to be right in his own case, a bright flash of the truth has descended on the present. For a divine provision has supplied a judge for our own time. In making choice for yourself, you have given a decision for all. Your faith is our victory. In this case most men, in their search for the true religion, when they consult priests, or are moved by the suggestion of companions, are wont to allege the custom of their family, and the rite which has descended to them from their fathers. Thus making a show of modesty, which is injurious to salvation, they keep a useless reverence for parents in maintaining unbelief, but confess themselves ignorant what to choose. Away with the excuse of such hurtful modesty, after the miracle of such a deed as yours. Content only with the nobility of your ancient race, you have resolved that all which could crown with glory such a rank should spring from your personal merit. If they did great things, you willed to do greater. Your answer to that nobility of your ancestors was to show your temporal kingdom; you set before your posterity a kingdom in heaven. Let Greece exult in having a prince of our law; not that it any longer deserves to enjoy alone so great a gift, since the rest of the world has its own lustre. For now in the western parts shines in a new king a sunbeam which is not new. The birthday of our Redeemer fitly marked its bright rising. You were regenerated to salvation from the water on the same day on which the world received for its redemption the birth of the Lord of heaven. Let the Lord's birthday be yours also: you were born to Christ when Christ was born to the world. Then you consecrated your soul to God, your life to those around you, your fame to those coming after you.

"What shall I say of that most glorious solemnity of your regeneration? I was not able to be present in body: I did not fail to share in your joy. For the divine goodness added to these regions the pleasure that the message of your sublime humility reached us before your baptism. Thus that sacred night found us in security about you. Together we contemplated that scene, when the assembled prelates, in the eagerness of their holy service, steeped the royal limbs in the waters of life; when the head, before which nations tremble, bowed itself to the servants of God; when the helmet of sacred unction clothed the flowing locks which had grown under the helmet of war; when, putting aside the breastplate for a time, spotless limbs shone in the white robe. O most highly favoured of kings, that consecrated robe will add strength hereafter to your arms, and sanctity will confirm what good fortune has hitherto bestowed. Did I think that anything could escape your knowledge or observation, I would add to my praises a word of exhortation. Can I preach to one now complete in faith, that faith which he recognised before his completion? Or humility to one who has long shown us devotion, which now his profession claims as a debt? Or mercy to one whom a captive people, just set free by you, proclaims by its rejoicing to the world, and by its tears to God. In one thing I should wish an advance. This is, since through you God will make your nation all His own, that you would, from the good treasure of your heart, provide the seeds of faith to the nations beyond you, lying still in their natural ignorance, uncorrupted by the germs of false doctrine. Have no shame, no reluctance, to take the side of God, who has so exalted your side, even by embassies directed to that purpose… You are, as it were, the common sun, in whose rays all delight; the nearest the most, but somewhat also those further off… Your happiness touches us also; when you fight, we conquer."

It is easy to look back on the course of a thousand years, and see how marvellously these words, uttered by St. Avitus at the moment Clovis was baptised, were fulfilled in his people. "Your happiness touches us also; when you fight, we conquer." So spoke a Catholic bishop at the side, and from the court, of an Arian king, and thus he expressed the work of the Catholic bishops throughout Gaul in the sixth century then beginning. An apostate from the Catholic faith has said of them that they built up France as bees build a hive; but he omitted to say that they were able and willing to do this because they had a queen-bee at Rome, who, scattered as they were in various transitory kingdoms under heretical sovereigns, gave unity to all their efforts, and planted in their hearts the assurance of one undying kingdom. We shall have presently to quote other words of St. Avitus, speaking, as he says, in the name of all his brethren to the senators of Rome: "If the Pope of the city is called into question, not one bishop, but the episcopate, will seem to be shaken". But that, which he here foresaw, explains in truth a process, of which we do not possess a detailed history, but which resulted, by the time of St. Gregory, in the triumph of the Catholic faith over that most fearful heresy which had contaminated the whole Teuton race of conquerors at the time of their conquest. The glory of this triumph is divided between St. Peter's See and the Catholic bishops in the several countries, working each in union with it. So was formed the hive, not only of France, but of Christ; the hive which nurtured all the nations of the future Europe.

When Faustus,⁷³ the ambassador sent by Theodorick to Anastasius to obtain for him the royal title, returned to Rome in 498, he found Pope Anastasius dead. The deacon Symmachus was chosen for his successor, and his pontificate lasted more than fifteen years. But Faustus had hoped to gain the approval of Pope Anastasius to the Henotikon set up by the emperor Zeno at the instance of Acacius, and forced by the emperor Anastasius on his eastern bishops, and specially on three successive bishops of Constantinople – Fravita, Euphemius, and Macedonius – who took the place of the second, when he had been expelled by the emperor. Faustus, who was chief of the senate, with a view to gain to the emperor's side the Pope to be elected in succession to Anastasius, brought from the East the old Byzantine hand; that is to say, he bore gifts for those who could be corrupted, threats for those who could be frightened, and deceit for all. So freighted he managed to bring about a schism in the papal election, and the candidate whom he favoured, Laurentius, was set up by a smaller but powerful party against the election of Symmachus. Thus disunion was introduced among the Roman clergy, which brought about, during the five succeeding years, many councils at Rome, and embarrassed the action of the Pope more than the Arian government of Theodorick.⁷⁴ The difficulty of the times was such that, instead of holding a synod of bishops at Rome to determine which election was valid, the two candidates, Symmachus and Laurentius, went to Ravenna, and submitted that point to the decision of the king Theodorick, Arian as he was. That decision was that he who was first ordained, or who had the majority for him, should be recognised as Pope; Symmachus fulfilled both conditions, and his election was acknowledged.

Symmachus, in the first year of his pontificate, 499, addressed to the Roman emperor, in his Grecian capital, a renowned letter, termed "his defence" against imperial calumnies. This letter alone would be sufficient to exhibit the whole position of the Pope in regard to the eastern emperor at the close of the fifth century. Space allows me to quote only a part of it.

The emperor of Constantinople was very wroth at the frustration of his plan to get influence over the Pope by the appointment of Laurentius, and reproached Pope Symmachus with moving the Roman senate against him. The Pope replied:⁷⁵

"If, O emperor, I had to speak before outside kings, ignorant altogether of God, in defence of the Catholic faith, I would, even with the threat of death before me, dwell upon its truth and its accord with reason. Woe to me if I did not preach the gospel. It is better to incur loss of the present life than to be punished with eternal damnation. But if you are the Roman emperor, you are bound kindly to receive the embassies of even barbarian peoples. If you are a Christian prince, you are bound to hear patiently the voice of the apostolic prelate, whatever his personal desert.⁷⁶ I must confess that I cannot pass over, either on your account or on my own, the point whether you issue with a religious mind against me the insults which you utter in presence of the divine judgment. Not on my own account, when I remember the Lord's promise, 'When they persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you, for justice' sake, rejoice'. Not on your account, because I wish not a result to my own glory, which would weigh heavily upon you. And being trained in the doctrine of the Lord and the Apostles, I am anxious to meet your maledictions with blessing, your insults with honour, your hatred with charity. But I would beg you to reflect whether He who says, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,' will not exact the more from you for my forbearance… I wish, then, that the insults, which you think proper to bestow on my person, while they are glorious to me, may not press upon you. To my Lord it was said by some: 'Thou hast a devil; a man that is a glutton, born of fornication'. Am I to grieve over such things? Divine and human laws present the condition to him who utters them: 'In the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall stand'. O emperor, what will you do in the divine judgment? Because you are emperor, do you think there is no judgment of God? I pass over that it becomes not an emperor to be an accuser. Again, both by divine and human laws, no one can be at once accuser and judge. Will you plead before another judge? Will you stand by him as accuser? You say I am a Manichean. Am I an Eutychean, or do I defend Eutycheans, whose madness is the chief support⁷⁷ to the Manichean error? Rome is my witness, and our records bear testimony, whether I have in any way deviated from the Catholic faith, which, coming out of paganism, I received in the See of the Apostle St. Peter… Is it because I will offer no acceptance to Eutycheans? Such reproaches do not wound me, but they are a plain proof that you wished to prevent my advancement, which St. Peter by his intervention has imposed. Or, because you are emperor, do you struggle against the power of Peter? And you, who accept the Alexandrian Peter, do you strive to tread under foot St. Peter the Apostle in the person of his successor, whoever he may be? Should I be well elected if I favoured the Eutycheans? if I held communion with the party of Acacius? Your motive in putting forward such things is obvious. Now, let us compare the rank of the emperor with that of the pontiff. Between them the difference is as great as the charge of human and divine things. You, emperor, receive baptism from the pontiff, accept sacraments, request prayers, hope for blessing, beg for penitence. In a word, you administer things human, he dispenses to you things divine. If, then, I do not put his rank superior, it is at least equal. And do not think that in mundane pomp you are before him, for 'the weakness of God is stronger than men'. Consider, then, what becomes you. But when you assume the accuser's part, by divine and human law you stand on the same level with me; in which, if I lose the highest rank, as you desire, if I be convicted by your accusation, you will equally lose your rank if you fail to convict me. Let the world judge between us, in the sight of God and His angels; let us be a spectacle for every age, in which either the priest shall exhibit a good life, or the emperor a religious modesty. For the human race is ruled in chief by these two offices, so that in neither of them should there be anything to offend God, especially because each of these ranks would appear to be perpetual, and the human race has a common interest in both.

"Allow me, emperor, to say, Remember that you are a man in order to use a power granted you by God. For though these things pass first under the judgment of man, they must go on to the divine examination. You may say, It is written, 'Let every soul be subject to higher powers'. We accept human powers in their proper place until they set up their wills against God. But if all power be from God, more then that which is given to things divine. Acknowledge God in us and we will acknowledge God in thee. But if you do not acknowledge God, you cannot use a privilege derived from Him whose rights you despise. You say that conspiring with the senate I have excommunicated you. In that I have my part; but I am following fearlessly what my predecessors have done reasonably. You say the Roman senate has ill-treated you. If we treat you ill in persuading you to quit heretics, do you treat us well who would throw us into their communion? What, you say, is the conduct of Acacius to me? Nothing if you leave him. If you do not leave him it touches you. Let us both leave the dead. This is what we beg, that you have nothing to do with what Acacius did. Making your own what Acacius did, you accuse us of objections. We avoid what Acacius did; do you avoid it also. Then we shall both be clear of him. Thus relinquishing his actions you may be joined with our cause, and be associated with our communion without Acacius. It has always been the custom of Catholic princes⁷⁸ to be the first to address the apostolic prelates upon their accession, and they have sought, as good sons, with the due affection of piety, that chief confession and faith to which you know that the care of the whole Church has been committed by the voice of the Saviour Himself. But since public circumstances may have caused you to omit this, I have not delayed to address you first, lest I should be thought to consider more my own private honour than solicitude for the whole flock of the Lord.

"You say that we have divulged your compelling by force those who had long kept themselves apart from the contagion of heresy to yield to its detestable communion. In this, O chief⁷⁹ of human powers, I, as successor, however unmerited, in the Apostolic See, cease not to remind you that whatever may be your material power in the world, you are but a man. Review all those who, from the beginning of the Christian belief, have attempted with various purpose to persecute or afflict the Catholic faith. See how those who used such violence have failed, and the orthodox truth prevailed through the very means by which it was thought to be overthrown. And as it grew under its oppressors, so it is found to have crushed them. I wonder if even human sense, especially in one who claims to be called Christian, fails to see that among these oppressors must be counted those who assault Christian confession and communion with various superstitions. What matters it whether it be a heathen or a so-called Christian who attempts to infringe the genuine tradition of the apostolic rule? Who is so blind that in countries where every heresy has free licence to exhibit its opinions he should deem the liberty of Catholic communion alone should be subverted by those who think themselves religious?"

"All Catholic princes," the Pope repeats, "either at their own accession, or on knowing the accession of a new prelate to the Apostolic See, immediately addressed their letters to it, to show that they were in union with it. Those who have not done so declare themselves aliens from it. Your own writings would justify us in so considering you if we did not from your assault and hostility avoid you, whether as enemy or judge … but the accomplice of error must persecute him who is its enemy."

Let this letter from beginning to end be considered as written by a Pope just after his election, the validity of which had been disputed by another candidate whom the emperor had favoured – by a Pope living actually under the unlimited power of an Arian sovereign, who was in possession of Italy, and who ruled in right of a conqueror, though he used his power generally with moderation and equity; further, that it was addressed to one who had become the sole Roman emperor, the over-lord of the king, who had just besought of him the royal title; that it required him to cast aside his patronage of Eutychean heretics; to rescind from the public records of the Church the name of that bishop who had composed the document called the Henotikon, the very document which the emperor was compelling his eastern bishops to accept and promulgate as the confession of the Christian faith. And let the frankness with which the Pope appeals to the universally admitted authority of St. Peter's See be at the same time considered, with the official statement that the emperors were wont immediately to acknowledge the accession of a Pope⁸⁰ and attest their communion with him.

What was the answer which the eastern emperor made to this letter? He did not answer by denying anything which the Pope claimed as belonging to his see, but by rekindling the internal schism which had been laid to sleep by the recognition of Pope Symmachus. Before sending this letter, the Pope had held a council of seventy-two bishops in St. Peter's on March 1, 499, which made important regulations to prevent cabal and disturbance at papal elections such as had just taken place. This council had been subscribed by Laurentius himself,⁸¹ and the Pope in compassion⁸² had given him the bishopric of Nocera. Now the emperor Anastasius, reproved for his misdeeds and misbelief by Pope Symmachus in the letter above quoted, caused his agents, the patrician Faustus and the senator Probinus, to bring grievous accusations against Symmachus and to set up once more Laurentius as anti-pope.⁸³ In their passionate enmity they did not scruple to bring their charge against Pope Symmachus before the heretical king Theodorick. The result of this attempt was that Rome, during several years at least, from 502 to 506, was filled with confusion and the most embittered party contentions. Theodorick was induced to send a bishop as visitor of the Roman Church, and again to summon a council of bishops from the various provinces of Italy to consider the charges brought against the Pope. During the year 501 four such councils were held in Rome, of which it may be sufficient to quote the last, the Synodus Palmaris.⁸⁴ Its acts say that they were by command of king Theodorick to pass judgment on certain charges made against Pope Symmachus. That the bishops of the Ligurian, Æmilian, and Venetian provinces, visiting the king at Ravenna on their way, told him that the Pope himself ought to summon the council, "knowing that in the first place the merit or principate of the Apostle Peter, and then the authority of venerable councils following out the commandment of the Lord, had delivered to his see a singular power in the churches, and no instance could be produced in which the bishop of that see in a similar case had been subjected to the judgment of his inferiors". To which king Theodorick replied that the Pope himself had by letter signified his wish to convene the council. Then the Synodus Palmaris, passing over a narration of what had taken place in the preceding councils, came to this conclusion: "Calling God to witness, we decree that Pope Symmachus, bishop of the Apostolic See, who has been charged with such and such offences, is, as regards all human judgment, clear and free (because for the reasons above alleged all has been left to the divine judgment); that in all the churches belonging to his see he should give the divine mysteries to the Christian people, inasmuch as we recognise that for the above-named causes he cannot be bound by the charges of those who attack him. Wherefore, in virtue of the royal command, which gives us this power, we restore all that belongs to ecclesiastical right within the sacred city of Rome, or without it, and reserving the whole cause to the judgment of God, we exhort all to receive from him the holy communion. If anyone, which we do not suppose, either does not accept this, or thinks that it can be reconsidered, he will render an account of his contempt to the divine judgment. Concerning his clergy, who, contrary to rule, left their bishop and made a schism, we decree that upon their making satisfaction to their bishop, they may be pardoned and be glad to be restored to their offices. But if any of the clergy, after this our order, presume to celebrate mass in any holy place in the Roman Church without leave of Pope Symmachus, let him be punished as schismatic."⁸⁵

This was signed by seventy-six bishops, of whom Laurentius of Milan and Peter of Ravenna stood at the head; and the two metropolitans accompany their subscription with the words, "in which we have committed the whole cause to the judgment of God".⁸⁶

When this document reached Gaul, the bishops there, being unable to hold a council through the division of the country under different princes, commissioned St. Avitus, bishop of Vienne, to write in his name and their own, and we have from him the following letter addressed to Faustus and Symmachus, senators of Rome:⁸⁷

"It would have been desirable that we should, in person, visit the city which the whole world venerates, for the consideration of duties which affect us both as men and as Christians. But as the state of things has long made that impossible, we could wish at least to have had the security that your great body should learn from a report of the assembled bishops of Gaul the entreaties called forth by a common cause. But since the separation of our country into different governments deprives us also of that our desire, I must first entreat that your most illustrious Order may not take offence at what I write as coming from one person. For, urged not only by letters, but charges from all my Gallic brethren, I have undertaken to be the organ of communicating to you what we all ask of you. Whilst we were all in a state of great anxiety and fear in the cause of the Roman Church, feeling that our own state was imperilled when our head was attacked, inasmuch as a single incrimination would have struck us all down without the odium which attaches to the oppression of a multitude, if it had overturned the condition of our chief, a copy of the episcopal decree was brought to us in our anxiety from Italy, which the bishops of Italy, assembled at Rome, had issued in the case of Pope Symmachus. This constitution is made respectable by the assent of a large and reverend council: yet our mind is, that the holy Pope Symmachus, if accused to the world, had a claim rather to the support than to the judgment of his brethren the bishops. For as our Ruler in heaven bids us be subject to earthly powers, foretelling that we shall stand before kings and princes in every accusation, so is it difficult to understand with what reason, or by what law, the superior is to be judged by his inferiors. The Apostle's command is well known, that an accusation against an elder should not be received. How, then, is it lawful to incriminate the Principate of the whole Church? The venerable council itself providing against this in its laudable constitution, has reserved to the divine judgment a cause which, I may be permitted to say, it had somewhat rashly taken up; mentioning, however, that the charges objected to the Pope had in no respect been proved, either to itself or to king Theodorick. In face of all which, I, myself a Roman senator, and a Christian bishop, adjure you (so may the God you worship grant prosperity to your times, and your own dignity maintain the honour of the Roman name to the universe in this collapsing world), that the state of the Church be not less in your eyes than that of the commonwealth; that the power which God has given to you may be also for our good; and that you have not less love in your Church for the See of Peter, than in your city for the crown of the world. If, in your wisdom, you consider the matter to its bottom, you will see that not only the cause carried on at Rome is concerned. 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. You well know how we are steering the bark of faith amid storms of heresies, whose winds roar around us. If with us you fear such dangers, you must needs protect your pilot by sharing his labour. If the sailors turn against their captain, how will they escape? The shepherd of the Lord's sheepcot will give an account of his pastorship; it is not for the flock to alarm its own pastor, but for the judge. Restore, then, to us if it be not already restored, concord in our chief."