BOOK IV.

FROM THE ELECTION OF GREGORY THE GREAT TO THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE,

A.D. 590-814

 

CHAPTER II.

MAHOMET.—THE MONOTHELITE CONTROVERSY.

A.D. 610-718.

 

Phocas, after having earned universal detestation during a reign of eight years, was dethroned and put to death in 610, by Heraclius, son of the exarch of Africa. The new emperor found himself involved in a formidable war with Chosroes II, king of Persia. Chosroes had formerly been driven from his kingdom, had found a refuge within the empire, and had been restored by the arms of Maurice. On receiving the announcement that Phocas had ascended the throne, he declared himself the avenger of his benefactor; he invaded the empire, repeatedly defeated the usurper’s disorderly troops, and had advanced as far as Antioch, which fell into his hands, immediately after the elevation of Heraclius. The war for which the murder of Maurice had been the pretext, did not end on the fall of his murderer. Chosroes overran Syria and Palestine; with one division of his force he conquered Egypt, and carried devastation as far as Tripoli, while another advanced to Chalcedon, and for ten years presented to the people of Constantinople the insulting and alarming spectacle of a hostile camp on the opposite shore of the Bosphorus.

Between the Avars on the European side and the Persians on the east, Heraclius was reduced to extreme distress. He had resolved to return to Africa, which had recovered much of its old prosperity, and was then the most flourishing province of the empire; but the patriarch of Constantinople obliged him to swear that he would not forsake those who had received him as their sovereign. At length, after having in vain attempted to appease Chosroes by offering to become his tributary, the emperor resolved on the almost desperate enterprise of carrying the war into the enemy's country. He raised a large sum of money by loans—borrowing the plate and other wealth of churches on a promise of repayment with interest. With this money he levied an army, and, having secured the forbearance of the Avars, he boldly made his way into the heart of Persia. In six brilliant campaigns he recovered the provinces which had been lost. Chosroes fled before him, and in 628 was deposed and put to death by his own son Siroes, who was glad to make peace with the Romans.

The war had on each side been one of religion. Chosroes was aided in his attack on Jerusalem by 26,000 Jews, collected from all quarters. On the capture of the city he destroyed churches, defiled the holy places, plundered the treasures amassed from the offerings of pilgrims during three centuries, and carried off into Persia the patriarch Zacharias, with the relic which was venerated as the true cross. It is said that 90,000 Christians were slain on this occasion, and that many of these were bought by the Jews for the purpose of butchering them. A great number of Christians, however, found safety by flying into Egypt, and were received with extraordinary kindness by John, patriarch of Alexandria, whose charities earned for him the title of “the Almsgiver”. Heraclius, in his turn, retaliated on the religion of Persia by destroying its temples (especially that at Thebarmes, the birthplace of Zoroaster), and quenching the sacred fire. He restored the cross with great triumph to Jerusalem, and the event was commemorated by a new festival—the “Exaltation of the Cross”. And the edict of Hadrian against the Jews was renewed—forbidding them to approach within three miles of their holy city.

While Chosroes was warring against the religion of the empire, a more formidable and more lasting scourge of Christendom had arisen in Arabia. The prevailing religion of that country is said to have been founded on a belief in the unity of God; but this belief was darkened and practically superseded by a worship of the heavenly bodies, of angels and of idols, of trees and rocks and stones. The ancient sanctuary of the nation, the Caaba, or holy house of Mecca, contained a number of images answering to that of the days in the year. Other religions also existed in Arabia. Judaism had become the faith of some tribes; orthodox Christian missionaries had made converts; and members of various sects, such as Gnostics, Manichaeans, Nestorians, and Monophysites, had found in that country a refuge from the unfriendly laws of the empires .Thus there were abundant materials within the reach of any one who might undertake to become the founder of a new religious system.

Mahomet was born at Mecca in 570 or the following year. His temper was naturally mystical and enthusiastic; he was subject from an early age to fits, which were supposed to proceed from an influence of evil spirits; and in the course of his mental conflicts he was often reduced to a state of melancholy depression which suggested the thought of suicide. He appears to have become possessed with a ruling idea of the Divine unity, and with a vehement indignation against idolatry. Every year, according to a custom which was not uncommon among his countrymen, he withdrew to a cave in a mountain, and spent some time in religious solitude; and in his lonely musings, his mind, rendered visionary by his peculiar disease, was gradually wrought up to a belief that he was especially called by God to be an instrument for the propagation of the true faith, and was favoured with revelations from heaven. The Koran, in which his oracles are preserved, has much in common with both the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures; but it would seem that Mahomet was not acquainted with either the Old or the New Testament—that he rather drew his materials, more or less directly, from such sources as Talmudical legends, apocryphal Gospels, and other heretical writings, mixed with the old traditions of Syria and Arabia. His own account of the work was, that its contents were written from eternity on the “preserved table” which stands before the throne of God; that a copy was brought down to the lowest heaven by the angel Gabriel (whom Mahomet seems to have gradually identified with the Holy Spirit), and that the sections of it were revealed according as circumstances required. The charge of inconsistency between the different parts was guarded against by the convenient principle that a later revelation abrogated so much of the earlier revelation as disagreed with it. By way of proof that he had net forged these oracles, which are always uttered in the name of God himself, Mahomet repeatedly insists on the contrast between his own illiteracy and the perfection of the book, both as to purity of style and as to substance; he challenges objectors to produce any work either of men or of genii which can be compared with it. The portions of the Koran were noted down as they proceeded from the prophet's mouth; and after his death they were collected into one body, although without any regard to the order in which they had been delivered.

The religion thus announced was styled Islam—a word which means submission or resignation to the will of God. Its single doctrine was declared to be, that “There is no God but the true God, and Mahomet is his apostle”; but under this principle was comprehended belief in six points— (1) in God; (2) in his angels; (3) in his scriptures; (4) in his prophets; (5) in the resurrection and the day of judgment; (6) in God's absolute decree and predetermination both of good and evil. With these were combined four practical duties—(1) prayer, with its preliminary washings and lustrations; (2) alms; (3) fasting; (4) the pilgrimage to Mecca, which was said to be so essential that any one who died without performing it might as well die a Jew or a Christian. Judaism and Christianity were regarded as true, although imperfect, religions. Their holy books were acknowledged, and it would seem that Mahomet's original intention was rather to connect his religion with the elder systems than to represent it as superseding them. Jesus was regarded as the greatest of all former prophets, but, although his birth was represented as miraculous, the belief in his Godhead was declared to be an error; he was said to be a mere man, and his death was explained away, either on the docetic principle, or by the supposition that another person suffered in his stead. Mahomet asserted that he himself had been foretold in Scripture, but that the prophecies had been falsified by those who had the custody of them; yet he and his followers claimed some passages of the extant Scriptures in his favour, such as the promise of the Paraclete, and the parable in which the labourers are spoken of as called at various times of the day — the final call being to the religion of Islam.

The conception of the Divine majesty in the Koran is sublime; the mercy of God is dwelt on in a very impressive manner. But the absence of anything like the Christian doctrine of the incarnation places an impassable gulf between the Creator and his creatures; there is no idea of redemption, of mediation, of adoption to sonship with God, of restoration to his image. The Divine omnipotence is represented as arbitrary, and as requiring an abject submission to its will. The duty of loving their brethren in the faith is strongly inculcated on the disciples of Islam; but their love is not to extend beyond this brotherhood; and the broad declarations which had held forth the hope of salvation, not only to Jews and Christians, but to Sabians, and to “whoever believeth in God and in the last day, and doeth that which is right”, were abrogated by later oracles, which denounced perdition against all but the followers of Islam. In other respects the new religion was unquestionably a great improvement on that which Mahomet found established among his countrymen, and, while it elevated their belief above the superstitious and idolatrous system to which they had been accustomed, it benefited society by substituting a measure of justice for rude violence, and by abolishing the custom of putting female infants to death. The general tone of its morality is rather austere than (as it has sometimes been styled) licentious instead of being condemned for his sanction of polygamy, Mahomet rather deserves credit for having limited the license which had before prevailed in this respect, although he retained an extreme and practically very mischievous facility of divorce; but it is one of the most damning traits in his character, that he declared himself to be exempt from the restrictions which he imposed on his disciples, and that he claimed for his laxity the sanction of pretended revelations.

On the merits of that enigmatical character it would be bold to give any confident opinion. The religious enmity by which it was formerly misrepresented appears to have little effect in our own time; we need rather to be on our guard against too favourable judgments, the offspring of a reaction against former prejudices, or of an affectation of novelty and paradox which in some cases appears to be not only deliberate but almost avowed. The latest and most complete evidence seems to prove that Mahomet was at first an honest enthusiast; as to the more doubtful part of his career, I must confess myself unable to enter into the views of his admirers; but I will not venture to judge whether he was guilty of conscious imposture, or was blindly carried along by the intoxication of the power which he had acquired and by the lust of extending it.

Mahomet had reached the age of forty before (in obedience, as he professed, to a heavenly vision) he announced himself as a prophet. At first he made proselytes slowly among his friends and near relations; he then by degrees attempted to publish his opinions in a wider circle. But his pretensions were disbelieved; he and his followers were persecuted by the Koreish, the tribe which was dominant in Mecca and had possession of the Caaba; and in 622 (the year in which Heraclius made his first campaign against the Persians) he fled to Yatreb (Medina), where he had already contrived to form a party, and was received as a prince and a prophet. This flight (Hegira) is regarded as the great era in the prophet’s life, and is the foundation of the Mahometan chronology. Hitherto he had endeavoured to spread his doctrines by persuasion only; but now that he was possessed of force, he was charged by revelation to use it for the propagation of the faith. His oracles became fierce and sanguinary. From leading his little bands of followers to attack caravans of merchants, he went on, as his strength increased, to more considerable enterprises; and in 630 he gained possession of Mecca, cleansed the Caaba of its idols, erected it into the great sanctuary of Islam, and united all the tribes of Arabia under his own dominion and in the profession of his religion.

When his power had become considerable, Mahomet sent envoys to the emperor, to the king of Persia, and to other neighbouring princes, declaring his mission as “the apostle of God”, and requiring them to submit to the faith of Islam. Heraclius is said to have received the communication with respect; the Persian king contemptuously tore the letter in pieces; and Mahomet, on hearing of the act, exclaimed, “It is thus that God will tear from him his kingdom, and reject his supplications”.

The duty of fighting for Islam (for arms and not argument were to be the means for the conversion of all who should refuse to believe on a simple announcement of the faith) was binding on all its professors, except the sick and the feeble, the lame, the blind, and the poor; and, lest the believers should at any time rest satisfied with their conquests, Mahomet is said to have declared that wars for the propagation of the truth were not to cease until the coming of Antichrist. The fanaticism of the warriors was urged on by the inducements of rapine and of lust; for the limit which the Koran prescribed as to the number of concubines did not apply to captives or slaves. They were raised above regard for life by the conviction that they were doing God’s will, by the belief of an absolute and irresistible predestination, and by the insurance of bliss in paradise—a bliss which to the sensual offered unlimited gratifications with unlimited powers of enjoyment, while the martyrs and those who should die in the wars of the faith were moreover to be admitted to the transcendent and ineffable felicity of holding the face of God at morning and at evening. Thus animated, the Moslem armies went forth with an enthusiasm which nothing could check. Their immense sacrifices of life in bloody battles and in long sieges were repaired by an unfailing succession of warriors. Before the death of Mahomet, which took place at Medina in 632, Kaled, “the Sword of God”, had carried his arms into Syria. The energy of Heraclius was consumed by disease; Syria and Egypt, which he had reconquered from Chosroes, were again wrested from the empire by the new enemy. In 637 Jerusalem fell into the hands of the caliph Omar, who built a mosque on the site of the temple; and within a few years Persia, Khorasan, and part of Asia Minor were subdued. The internal quarrels of the prophet's followers suspended the progress of conquest only for a time. For years they threatened Constantinople itself, although their attempts were unsuccessful, and ended in the caliph’s submitting to tribute; and before the end of the century they took Carthage and became masters of the African provinces (A.D. 698).

The progress of the Mahometan arms was favoured by the exhaustion of the empire and of Persia in the course of their recent wars. In Syria and Egypt the greater part of the inhabitants were Nestorians or Monophysites, depressed by the imperial laws, and ready to welcome the enemies of the Byzantine court as deliverers. And the conquerors, although indifferent to the distinctions of Christian parties for their own sake, were glad to encourage and to profit by this feeling. While they drove out the Greek orthodox from Egypt, and kept down the Melchites, they favoured the sects which were opposed to Rome and to Constantinople. While war was waged without mercy against idolaters, the “people of the book”—Jews and Christians—as professors of true, although defective, religions, were allowed to live as tributaries in the conquered lands. But the oppressions to which they were subjected, the advantages offered to converts, and perhaps the perplexity of controversies as to Christian doctrine, drew many away from the gospel to profess the faith of Islam.

About the same time when Mahomet began his public career, a controversy arose which continued for nearly a century to agitate the church.

Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, who is said to have been a Syrian, and connected by family with the Jacobite sect, had met with a letter ascribed to his predecessor Mennas, in which the Saviour was said to have “one will, and one life-giving operation”. Struck with the expression, he consulted Theodore, bishop of Pharan in Arabia, a man of whom nothing is known except in connexion with this controversy, but who, from the reference thus made to him, may be supposed to have enjoyed an eminent character for learning, and to have been as yet unsuspected of any error in doctrine; and as Theodore approved the words, the patriarch adopted them, and had some correspondence with other persons on the subject. The doctrine thus started, which was afterwards known as Monothelism is summed up in some words from another of Theodore’s writings—that “in the incarnation of our Saviour there is but one operation, whereof the framer and author is God the Word; and of this the manhood is the instrument, so that, whatsoever may be said of Him, whether as God or as man, it is all the operation of the Godhead of the Word”. In opposition to this, it was contended that the faculty of willing is inherent in each of our Lord's natures, although, as his person is one, the two wills act in the same direction—the human will being exercised in accordance with the Divine.

Heraclius, in the course of his Persian wars, saw cause to regret the policy by which the Nestorians had been alienated from the empire, and to desire that the evils which were likely to result from the schism of the monophysites might be averted. With a view to a reconciliation, he conferred with some of their leaders—as Paul, the chief of the party in Armenia, and Athanasius, the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch, to whom it is said that he offered the catholic throne of that city on condition of accepting the council of Chalcedon. The monophysites had gradually become less averse from the substance of that council’s doctrine; and Heraclius was led to hope that the schism might be healed if the catholics would grant that, although our Lord had two natures, yet He had only one will and operation. When in Lazica, in the year 626, the emperor related the course of his negotiations to Cyrus, bishop of Phasis, who, as the question was new to him, wrote to ask the opinion of Sergius. He was told by the patriarch in reply that the church had pronounced no decision on the point; that Cyril of Alexandria and other approved fathers had spoken of one life-giving operation of Christ, our very God; that Mennas had used similar expressions; that he was mistaken in supposing Leo the Great to have taught two operations, and that Sergius was not aware of any other authority for so speaking. Cyrus was convinced by this letter. Through the emperor’s favour, he was soon after promoted to the patriarchate of Alexandria, and in 633 he effected the reunion of the Theodosians, a monophysite sect, with the church, by means of a compromise which was embodied in nine articles. In the seventh of these it was said that our Lord “wrought the acts appertaining both to God and to man by one theandric (i.e. divinely-human) operation”—an expression for which the authority of the writings ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite was alleged. The monophysites regarded the terms of union as matter of triumph. “It is not we”, they said, “who have gone over to the council of Chalcedon; it is the council that has come over to us”.

Sophronius, a learned monk, who was then at Alexandria, was greatly alarmed at seeing the articles. He uttered a loud cry, threw himself at the patriarch’s feet, and, with a profusion of tears, implored him, by the Saviour’s passion, not to sanction such Apollinarian doctrines. Cyrus proposed to refer the matter to Sergius, and the monk, furnished with a letter to the patriarch of Constantinople, proceeded to the imperial city. Although himself a monothelite, Sergius did not consider agreement in his opinion necessary as a condition of orthodoxy. In conversation with Sophronius, he dwelt on the importance of regaining the monophysites throughout the Egyptian patriarchate; he asked the monk to produce any express authority for speaking of two operations in Christ; and, as Sophronius could not do this, the patriarch obtained from him a promise to let the question rest. Sergius then wrote to Cyrus, desiring him to forbid all discussion on the subject, lest the late union of parties should be endangered.

In the following year, Sophronius became patriarch of Jerusalem. He seems to have felt that he was thus released from his promise—that the silence which might have been proper in a humble monk would be treachery to the faith in the occupant of a patriarchal throne.. On hearing of his elevation, Sergius took the alarm, and without waiting for the formal announcement of it, wrote to Honorius of Rome, detailing the previous history of the question. The pope, in his answer, echoed the opinions of his correspondent; he not only agreed with him as to the expediency of enforcing silence, but in a personal profession of monothelism:— “We confess”, he says, “one will of our Lord Jesus Christ, forasmuch as it is evident that that which was assumed by the Godhead was our nature, not the sin which is in it—our nature as it was created before sin, not as it was corrupted by transgression”. After discussing St. Paul’s words as to the will of the flesh and the will of the mind, he concludes that the Saviour had not the fleshly will; and he spoke of the question of two operations as a trifle fit only for grammarians. Sophronius in his enthronistic letter set forth very fully, and with great ability, the doctrine of the incarnation, with special reference to the controversy which had arisen. He admits the word theandric, but applies it to the joint action of both natures in the Divinely-human Person—an application different from that in which it had been used by Sergius and his partisans. Honorius obtained from the envoys who conveyed this letter to Rome a promise that their master would give up speaking of two wills, if Cyrus would cease to speak of one will; but the controversy was not to be so easily appeased.

The siege and capture of Jerusalem by the Arabs may be supposed to have soon after engrossed the attention of Sophronius; and he did not long survive. But before his death he led Stephen, bishop of Dor, the first of his suffragans, to Calvary, and there in the most solemn manner charged him, by the thoughts of the crucifixion and of the last judgment, to repair to Rome, and never to rest until he should have obtained a condemnation of the monothelistic doctrine.

The distractions of the church continued, and in 639 Heraclius, unwarned by the ill success of his predecessors in such measures, put forth, at the suggestion of Sergius, an edict composed by the patriarch, which bore the title of Ecthesis, or Exposition of the faith. After stating the doctrines of the Trinity and of the incarnation, this edict proceeded to settle the controversy by forbidding the discussion of the question as to one or two operations. All operation suitable either to God or to man (it was said) proceeds from the same one incarnate Word. To speak of a single operation, although the phrase had been used by certain fathers, caused trouble to some; to speak of two operations was an expression unsupported by any authority of approved teachers, and gave offence to many, as suggesting the idea of two opposite wills. The impious Nestorius himself, although he divided the person of the Saviour, had not spoken of two wills; one will was to be confessed, agreeably to the doctrine of the holy fathers, forasmuch as the Saviour’s manhood never produced any motion contrary to the inclination of his Godhead. Even if the Ecthesis had not in its substance been thus evidently partial to the monothelites, no satisfactory result could have been reasonably expected from a document which aimed at putting an end to differences by concealing them, or from a policy which, in silencing both parties, was galling to the more zealous, while it necessarily favoured the more subservient.

The Ecthesis was approved by councils at Constantinople under Sergius and his successor Pyrrhus, and at Alexandria under Cyrus. The patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem, suffering under the oppression of the Arabs, were in no condition to oppose it. But Honorius of Rome was dead : his successor, Severinus (whose pontificate lasted only two months, and was chiefly remarkable for the plunder of the papal treasures by the exarch of Ravenna), appears to have rejected the new formulary; and the next pope, John IV, with a council, certainly did so. Heraclius hereupon wrote to John, disowning the authorship of the Ecthesis; it had, he said, been drawn up by Sergius some years before, and he had only consented to issue it at the patriarch's urgent entreaty.

Heraclius died in February 641, leaving the empire jointly to Constantine, son of his first marriage, and Heracleonas, the offspring of his second marriage with his niece Martina. Constantine survived his father little more than three months, and Martina then attempted to rule in the name of her son; but the senate, backed by the army and by the inhabitants of the capital, deposed her and Heracleonas, as guilty of the death of Constantine, whose son, Constans II, was then set on the throne. On this revolution, the patriarch Pyrrhus, who was regarded as an accomplice of Martina, thought it expedient to abandon his dignity, and sought a refuge in Africa. There he met with Maximus, a man of noble Byzantine family, who, after having been a secretary of state under Heraclius, had embraced the monastic profession, and became the ablest controversialist in opposition to monothelism. In 645, a disputation was held between the two, in the presence of Gregory, governor of the province, with many bishops and other eminent persons. Pyrrhus started with the proposition that, as the Saviour’s person is one, He could have but one will; to which Maximus replied that, as He is both God and man, each of His natures must have its own proper will. The discussion was long, and was carried on with much acuteness; but, in addition to the superiority of his cause, Maximus had evidently the advantage in ability and in dialectic skill. At length Pyrrhus avowed himself convinced, and he accompanied Maximus to Rome, where the pope, Theodore, admitted him to communion, and treated him as patriarch of Constantinople. But Pyrrhus soon after went to Ravenna, and there (probably under the influence of the exarch, and in the hope of recovering his see) retracted his late professions. On hearing of this relapse, Theodore held a council, at which Pyrrhus was condemned and excommunicated; and in order to give all solemnity to the sentence, the pope subscribed it in the wine of the eucharistic cup, and laid it on the tomb of St. Peter.

Both John IV and Theodore had urged the successive emperors to withdraw the Ecthesis, which was still placarded by authority. In 648 Constans put forth a new formulary, which was intended to supersede the Ecthesis, and is known by the name of the Type (or Model) of faith. The tone of this document (which was drawn up by the patriarch Paul) is less theological than that of the Ecthesis, and more resembles that of an ordinary imperial decree. While, like the earlier edict, it forbade the discussion of the controversy and the use of the obnoxious terms on both sides, it did so without betraying an inclination to either party and it enacted severe punishments against all who should break the rule of silence.

Paul had carried on some unsatisfactory correspondence with Rome on the subject of the controversy, when at length Theodore, with a council, declared him excommunicate. On being informed of the sentence, the patriarch overthrew the altar of the papal chapel at Constantinople; he forbade the Roman envoys to celebrate the Eucharist, treated them with harshness, and persecuted their partisans. At this stage of the proceedings it was that the Type appeared; but notwithstanding the publication of it, the controversy raged more and more fiercely. Maximus was unceasing and indefatigable in his exertions to stir up opposition to the monothelite doctrines; and Rome was beset by applications from African councils, from Greece, and from other quarters, to act in defence of the faith.

In July 649 Theodore was succeeded by Martin, and in October of the same year the new pope held a synod, which, from having met in the basilica of Constant—the great patriarchal church adjoining the Lateran palace,—is known as the first Lateran council. It was attended by a hundred and five bishops, among whom was the archbishop of Ravenna. In the course of five sessions the history of the controversy was discussed, and the chief documents of it were examined. Stephen of Dor presented a memorial, praying that the errors of monothelism might be rejected, and stating the charge which the patriarch Sophronius had laid on him with regard to it. Passages from the writings of the leading monothelites were confronted with extracts from catholic fathers, and were paralleled with the language of notorious heretics. The Type of Constans was said to place truth and error on the same level, to “destroy the righteous with the wicked”; to leave Christ without will and operation, and therefore without substance and nature. The council declared that there are in the Saviour two natural wills and operations, the Divine and the human,—“the same one Lord Jesus Christ willing and working our salvation both as God and as man”. Among the contents of the twenty canons which were passed, the doctrine of two united wills and of two operations was laid down, and an anathema was uttered against all who should deny it. The expression “one theandric operation” was denounced, and anathemas were decreed against Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus of Alexandria, and Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paul of Constantinople, with the “most impious Ecthesis” and the “most impious Type”, which Sergius and Paul respectively had persuaded Heraclius and the reigning emperor to issue Martin followed up this council by announcing its decisions to the emperor, to the patriarchs, to the bishops of Africa, and to other important persons both in the east and in the west. The pope’s language throughout these letters is in a tone of extreme denunciation, although he may perhaps have thought to guard himself against the emperor’s resentment by professions of great reverence for his person, and by referring the Ecthesis and the Type to Sergius and Paul as their authors.

While the council was sitting, the exarch Olympius arrived at Rome, with instructions to enforce the signature of the Type, and if possible, to carry off the pope to Constantinople. He did not, however, execute his commission, probably because he meditated a revolt, and was willing to pay court to the papal party; and he was soon after killed in Sicily, on an expedition against the Saracens. Martin, notwithstanding the fresh provocation which he had given to the court, appears to have been left in peace for three years and a half, until a new exarch, Theodore Calliopas, appeared, who seized him and despatched him towards the eastern capital. The tedious journey lasted from the 19th of June 653 to the 17th of September in the following year. The pope was treated without any consideration for his office, his age, or the weakness of his health. Although his conductors often landed for recreation, he was never allowed to leave the vessel except at Naxos, where he remained a year on shore, but debarred from such comfort as he might have received from the visits or from the presents of his friends.

On reaching Constantinople he lay for a day on the deck, exposed to the mockery of the spectators who crowded the quay; and he was then removed to a prison, where he was confined six months. During this time he was subjected to repeated examinations, which, however, did not relate to charges of erroneous doctrine, but to political offences, such as an alleged connexion with Olympius, and even with the Saracens. He was treated with extreme cruelty; he was paraded about the streets as a criminal sentenced to death, and would probably have been executed but for the intercession of the patriarch Paul, who was then dying, and, on receiving a visit from the emperor, expressed his fear lest this unworthy usage of a bishop opposed to him might tell against him at the judgment-day. Martin, who had borne his trials with much dignity and courage, was then banished to Cherson, where he lingered for a time in want of the necessaries of life. Two letters are extant in which he pathetically complains of the neglect in which he was left by his flock, and by the many who had formerly partaken of his bounty. In this exile he died, in September 655.

Maximus, the most learned and most persevering opponent of monothelism, was carried to Constantinople with two disciples in the same year with Martin. The three were kept in prison until after the banishment of the pope, and were then brought to examination. Against Maximus also an attempt was made to establish a political crime by the charge of a connexion with Gregory, governor of Africa, who had revolted. But the accusations were chiefly of a theological or ecclesiastical kind. Among other things, it was imputed to him that he had offended against the imperial privileges by denying that the emperor possessed the priesthood; by uttering an anathema against the Type, which was construed into anathematizing the emperor himself; and by denying that the imperial confirmation gave validity to canons. To these heads he answered, that the emperor could not be a priest, inasmuch as he did not administer the sacraments, and was spoken of as a layman in the offices of the church; that his anathema against the Type applied only to the false doctrine which it contained; and that, if councils became valid by the emperor's confirmation, it would be necessary to receive the Arian councils to which such sanction had been given.

“Are you alone to be saved”, it was asked, “and are all others to perish?”

“God forbid”, he answered, “that I should condemn any one, or should claim salvation for myself only! But I would rather die than have on my conscience the misery of erring in any way as to the faith”.

Maximus and his companions were inflexible in their opinions, although kindness as well as severity was employed in order to influence them, and although they were pressed by the authority of the new pope Eugenius, who had complied with the wishes of the court. They were sent into exile at Bizya in Thrace; and, after having been there subjected to great severities, were again carried to Constantinople, where they underwent a fresh examination. Their invincible constancy was punished by the loss of their tongues and of their right hands; they were banished to Lazica; and after a time they were separated, for the purpose of adding to their sufferings. Maximus sank under the cruel treatment which he received in August 662; one of his disciples (who both bore the name of Anastasius) is said, notwithstanding his mutilations, to have still effectively served the faith, both by speech and by active correspondence, until his death in 666.

Constans II, by whose authority these barbarities were sanctioned, had put his own brother to death, and by this and other acts had provoked the detestation of his eastern subjects. Yielding to the general feeling, he withdrew from Constantinople in the year 663, and visited Rome, where he was received with great honour by the bishop, Vitalian. After having stripped off the brazen roof of the Pantheon (which had been a church since the reign of Phocas), and having plundered it and other churches of their precious ornaments, the emperor passed into Sicily, where he indulged his tyranny and vices without control, until in 668 he was murdered in a bath at Syracuse. The fate of pope Martin had disposed his successors, Eugenius and Vitalian, to peaceful courses, and the controversy smouldered until Adeodatus, the successor of Vitalian, again broke off communion with Constantinople; whereupon the patriarchs Theodore of Constantinople and Macarius of Antioch excited a commotion by attempting to strike out of their diptychs the name of Vitalian, the only recent pope who had been commemorated in them.

The son and successor of Constans, Constantine IV, who is styled Pogonatus (the Bearded), was distressed by the divisions of the church, and resolved to attempt a remedy. He therefore wrote to Donus, bishop of Rome, desiring him to send some delegates to Constantinople for the purpose of conferring on the subjects in dispute. Before this letter arrived at Rome, Donus had been succeeded by Agatho, who on receiving it assembled a council. Among the hundred and twenty-five prelates  attended, were Lombard primate Mansuetus of Milan, two Frankish bishops, and Wilfrid of York; the rest were subjects of the empire. Monothelism was condemned, and two prelates with a deacon were sent to Constantinople as representatives of the pope, bearing with them a letter to the emperor, which was intended to serve a like purpose with Leo’s famous epistle to Flavian in the Eutychian controversy; while the council was represented by three bishops, with other clerks and monks. The pope in his letter expresses regret that the unquiet circumstances of Italy prevented the possibility of deep theological study, and professes to rely not on the learning of his deputies, but on their faithfulness to the doctrine of earlier councils and fathers.

Constantine now determined, instead of the conference which had been intended, to summon an ecumenical synod—by which term, however, it would seem that he meant nothing more than one which should represent the whole empire; for no subjects of other governments were present. This assembly—which is reckoned as the sixth general council, and third council of Constantinople—met in a room of the palace, which from its domed roof was styled Trullus. The sessions were eighteen in number, and lasted from the 7th of November 680 to the 16th of December in the following year. The emperor presided in person at the first eleven sessions and at the last; in his absence, the presidential chair was unoccupied. At the earlier meetings the number of bishops was small; but it gradually rose to nearly two hundred. Among them were the patriarch of Constantinople and Macarius of Antioch (whose dignity, in consequence of the Saracen conquest of his province, was little better than titular); while the sees of Alexandria and Jerusalem were represented by two presbyters. Twelve high officers of the empire and some monks were also present.

The proceedings were conducted with a decency and an impartiality of which there had been little example in former assemblies of the kind, and the emperor sustained his part in a very creditable manner. The principal documents of the controversy were read, and extracts from the writings of the monothelites were compared with passages intended to refute or to support them, or to prove their identity in substance with heresies which had been already condemned. At the eighth session the patriarch of Constantinople professed his adhesion to the views of Agatho and the Roman synod, and the bishops of his patriarchate followed the example. But Macarius of Antioch still maintained the doctrine of a single theandric will and operation—that as the mind moves the body, so in Christ the divine will directed the humanity. He produced a collection of authorities in favour of his opinion; but the council, after examining these, pronounced them to be spurious or garbled, or, where genuine, to be misapplied,—as when words which had really been used to express the relations of the Divine Persons in the Trinity were transferred to the relations of the Saviour’s Godhead and manhood. As the Syrian patriarch persisted in his opinion, declaring that he could not abandon it even on pain of being cut in pieces and cast into the sea, he was deposed and excommunicated, with a disciple named Stephen; and, while the emperor was hailed as a new Constantine the Great, a new Theodosius, a new Marcian, anathemas were loudly uttered against Macarius, as a second Apollinaris and Dioscorus. The fifteenth session was marked by a singular incident. An aged monk named Polychronius presented a confession of faith, and undertook to prove its correctness by raising a dead man to life. He said that he had seen a vision, in which a person of dazzling brightness and of terrible majesty had told him that whosoever did not confess a single will and theandric operation was not to be acknowledged as a Christian. The synod adjourned to the court of a public bath, and a corpse was brought in on a bier. Polychronius laid his creed on the dead man’s breast, and for a long time whispered into his ears; no miracle, however, followed. The multitude, who had been admitted to witness this strange experiment, shouted out anathemas against Polychronius as a deceiver and a new Simon; but his confidence in his opinions was unshaken by his failure, and the synod found it necessary to depose him.

The faith on the subject in dispute was at length defined. The monothelites were condemned as holding a heresy akin to those of Apollinaris, Severus, and Themistius; as destroying the perfection of our Lord’s humanity by denying it a will and an operation. The doctrine of the incarnation was laid down according to the earlier decisions of the church; and to this it was added,—“We in like manner, agreeably to the teaching of the holy fathers, declare that in Him there are two natural wills and two natural operations, without division, change, separation, or confusion. And these two natural wills are not contrary, as impious heretics pretend; but the human follows the divine and almighty will, not resisting or opposing it, but rather being subject to it; for, according to the most wise Athanasius, it was needful that the will of his flesh should be moved, but that it should be subjected to his divine will. As his flesh, although deified, was not destroyed by his Godhead, so too his human will, although deified, was not destroyed”. An anathema was pronounced against the chief leaders of the monothelites. The name of Honorius had been unnoticed by the Roman councils—a fact which significantly proves that, while desirous to spare his memory, they did not approve of the part which he had taken in the controversy. John IV, in his letter to Constantine, the son of Heraclius, had endeavoured to clear his predecessor by the plea that he had only meant to deny the existence of two contrary wills in the Saviour, “forasmuch as in his humanity the will was not corrupted as it is in ours”; and Maximus, in his conference with Pyrrhus, had been unwilling to give the monothelites the benefit of a Roman bishop’s authority. But the general council, after examining the letters of Honorius, declared that “in all things he had followed the opinions of Sergius and had sanctioned his impious doctrines”; and the monothelite pope was included in its anathema.

The decisions of the council were confirmed by the emperor, and severe penalties were enacted against all who should contravene them. Pope Agatho died in January 682, while his legates were still at Constantinople; but his successor, Leo II, zealously exerted himself to procure the reception of the council by the churches of the west. In letters to the emperor, to the Spanish bishops, and to others, Leo expressed his approval of the condemnation of Honorius, on the ground that that pope, instead of purifying the apostolic church by the doctrine of apostolical tradition, had yielded its spotless- ness to be defiled by profane betrayal of the faith.

The last two general councils, unlike those of earlier times, had confined themselves to matters of faith, and had not passed any canons relating to other subjects. In order to supply this defect, Justinian II, who in 685 succeeded his father Constantine Pogonatus, assembled a new synod, which is known by the name of Trullan, from having been held in the same domed hall with the general council, and by that of Quinisext, as being supplementary to the fifth and sixth councils. Its hundred and two canons were subscribed by the emperor and by the four eastern patriarchs; and immediately after the imperial signature, a space was left for that of Sergius, bishop of Rome. It does not appear whether Sergius had been invited to send special deputies to the council; his two ordinary representatives at Constantinople subscribed, and Basil, metropolitan of Gortyna in Crete, professed to sign as representing the “whole synod of the Roman church”. But among the canons were six which offended the pope, as inconsistent with the rights or the usages of his church. The 2nd, in enumerating the earlier canons which were exclusively to be observed, sanctioned eighty-five under the name of apostolical, whereas Rome admitted only fifty; and it omitted many synods which were of authority in the west, together with the whole body of papal decretals. The 13th allowed those of the clergy who had married before their ordination as subdeacons to retain their wives. The 36th renewed the decrees of the second and fourth, general councils as to the privileges of the see of Constantinople. The 55th ordered that the “apostolical” canon which forbade fasting on any Saturday except; Easter-eve should be extended to Rome, where all the Saturdays of Lent had until then been fast-days. The 67th forbade the eating of blood. The 82nd prescribed that the Saviour should be represented in his human form, and not under the symbolical figure of a lamb. In contradicting Roman usages, the 13th and 55th canons expressly stated that they were such, and required the Roman church to abandon them; it would seem, indeed, as if the eastern! bishops were bent, as at Chalcedon, on moderating the triumph of Rome in the late doctrinal question by legislating on other matters in a manner which would be unpalatable to the pope; and the reception of these canons by the east only, where they were quoted as the work of the sixth general council, was the first manifest step towards the separation of the Greek and Latin churches.

On receiving the canons, Sergius declared that he would rather die than consent to them. The protospathary Zacharias was commissioned to seize him and send him to Constantinople. But a rising of the people, and even of the soldiery, who looked more to the bishop of Rome than to their distant imperial master, compelled Zacharias in abject terror to seek the protection of his intended prisoner. About the same time, the vices of Justinian, the exorbitant taxation which was required to feed his expenses, and the cruelties which were committed in his name by his ministers, the eunuch Stephen and the monk Theodosius, provoked a revolt, by which a general named Leontius was raised to the throne. From regard for the memory of Constantine Pogonatus, Leontius spared the life of Justinian; but the deposed emperor’s nose was cut off (a mutilation which had become common in the east), and he was banished to the inhospitable Chersonese.

Leontius, after a reign of three years, was put down by Tiberius Apsimar, and was committed to a monastery. The Chersonites, in fear that the schemes which Justinian was undisguisedly forming for the recovery of his throne might draw on them the suspicion and anger of the new emperor, resolved to put the exile to death or to send him to Constantinople; but the design became known to him, and he sought a refuge among the Khazars of the Ukraine, where he married a sister of the reigning prince. Even among these remote barbarians, however, he found that he was in danger from the negotiations of Apsimar; and his desperation urged him to attempt the execution of the design which he had seemed to have abandoned. While crossing the Euxine in a violent storm, his companions exhorted him, as a means of obtaining deliverance, to promise that, if restored to the empire, he would forgive his enemies. “May the Lord drown me here”, he replied, “if I spare one of them!”, and when his daring enterprise had been crowned with success, the vow was terribly fulfilled. Leontius was brought forth from his monastery; he and Apsimar were laid prostrate in the circus, and, as the emperor looked on the games, his feet pressed the necks of his fallen rivals, while the multitude shouted the words of the 91st Psalm—“Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder”. The two were then dragged about the streets of the city, and at length were beheaded. All who had taken part in the expulsion of Justinian were mercilessly punished; many of them were tied up in sacks and were cast into the sea. The patriarch Callinicus, who had been driven by the tyrant’s oppression to favour the rebellion of Leontius, was deprived of his eyes and nose, and was banished to Rome. For some unknown reason, Felix, archbishop of Ravenna, was blinded, deposed, and sent into exile in Pontus; and Constantine of Rome—the last of seven Greek refugees from the Mahometan conquests who successively filled the see—might well have trembled when in 710 he was summoned to Constantinople. Perhaps Justinian may have required the pope’s presence with a view of enforcing the Trullan council on the west; perhaps he may have meant to secure his own authority in Italy against a repetition of such scenes as that which had taken place in the pontificate of Sergius. But Constantine’s ready and courageous obedience appears to have disarmed the tyrant. Justinian received the pope as an equal; it is even said that, at the first meeting, he fell down and kissed his feet; and Constantine returned home with a confirmation of all the privileges of his church. It has been conjectured that these favours were not obtained without the pope’s consenting to the canons of the quinisext council in so far as they were not directly contrary to the Roman traditions.

Justinian’s abuse of his recovered power excited his subjects to a fresh rebellion, which began by an outbreak of the Chersonites, on whom he had intended to avenge by an exemplary cruelty the treachery which they had meditated against him during his exile. In 711 he was again dethroned and was put to death. His young son Tiberius, who had been crowned as Augustus, fled to the church of the Blachernae, hung the relics which were regarded as most sacred around his neck, and clasped the altar with one hand and the cross with the other; but a leader of the insurgents pursued him into the sanctuary, plucked the cross from him, transferred the relics to his own neck, and dragged the boy to the door of the church, where he was immediately slain. Thus ended the dynasty of Heraclius, about a hundred years after the accession of its founder.

The revolution raised to the throne an adventurer named Bardanes, who on his accession took the name of Philippicus. Bardanes was of a monothelite family, and his early impressions in favour of the heresy had been confirmed by the lessons of Stephen, the associate of Macarius of Antioch. It is said that, many years before, he had been told by a hermit that he was one day to be emperor; and that he had vowed, if the prophecy should be fulfilled, to abrogate the sixth general council. He refused to enter the palace of Constantinople until a picture of the council should have been removed; he publicly burnt the original copy of its acts, ordered the names of Honorius, Sergius, and the others whom it had condemned, to be inserted in the diptychs, ejected the orthodox patriarch Cyrus, and required the bishops to subscribe a monothelite creed. The order was generally obeyed in the east, but at Rome it met with different treatment. Pope Constantine refused to receive it; the people would not allow the emperor to be named in the mass, nor his portrait to be admitted into a church, where instead of it they hung up a representation of the sixth council; and, on the arrival of a newly-appointed commander from Constantinople, an outbreak took place, which was only suppressed by the pope's interposition on the side of authority. Philippicus, after a reign of a year and a half, during which he had given himself up to extravagance and debauchery, was deposed and blinded. His successor, Anastasius, was a catholic; and John, who had been intruded into the patriarchate of Constantinople on the deprivation of Cyrus, now sued for the communion of Rome, professing that he had always been orthodox at heart, and that his compliance with the late heretical government had arisen from a wish to prevent the appointment of a real monothelite. The pope’s answer is not known; but in 715 John was deprived, and Germanus, bishop of Cyzicum, was appointed to the patriarchal chair. Anastasius was dethroned in 716 by Theodosius III, and Theodosius, in the following year, by Leo the Isaurian, whose reign witnessed the commencement of a new and important controversy.

The readiness with which the formulary of Philippicus was received by the eastern bishops and clergy may be regarded not only as a token of their subserviency, but also as indicating that the monothelite party at that time possessed considerable strength. The public profession of monothelism, however, soon became extinct, its only avowed adherents being the Maronite community in Syria. A monastery, dedicated to a saint named Maron, stood between Apamea and Emesa as early as the sixth century; and in the end of the seventh it was under the government of another Maron, who died in 701. The name of Maronites, which originally belonged to the members of this monastery, was gradually extended to all the inhabitants of the district of Lebanon, a population chiefly composed of refugees from the Saracen conquests. Among these the monothelite opinions were held; and, while the other Christian communities of Syria had each its political attachment—the Jacobites being connected with the Mahometan conquerors, and the Catholics (or Melchites) with the emperor—the Maronites preserved their independence, together with their peculiar doctrines, under the successors of Maron, who Styled themselves patriarchs of Antioch. Thus the community continued until, in the age of the crusades, they submitted to the Latin patriarch of Antioch, and conformed to the Roman church, which in later times has been indebted to the Maronites for many learned men.

 

 

 

CHAPTER III.

The Western Church, from the Death of Gregory the Great to the Pontificate of Gregory the Second.

A.D. 604-715.