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

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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 region116 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 Prætorian 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 Prætorian 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:

"Cæsar I was and am Justinian,Moved by the will of that Prime Love I feelI 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 Prætorian 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 Prætorian 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.

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