ITALY AND HER INVADERS.
BOOK V
.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE SORROWS OF VIGILIUS.
Before we sit as spectators to watch the last act of the drama of
Imperial Restoration in Italy, we must study for a short time one of the most
perplexed and entangled passages in Papal History, that which relates to the
Pontificate of Vigilius. The story is made difficult partly by the fact that it
is a battle-ground for the champions and the opponents of the doctrine of Papal
Infallibility, a doctrine which a secular historian may claim the privilege of
passing by in silence, refusing to be drawn by the course of his narrative into
the attitude either of a denier or of a maintainer of its truth. But the
character of Pope Vigilius himself, and the bitter theological controversies in
which he was involved, and in which it was his fate to please neither of the
two contending parties, cause the contemporary notices of his life to be
obscure and contradictory beyond the ordinary quality even of ecclesiastical
history.
Let us briefly recapitulate what has been already said concerning the
early career of this Pontiff. That he belonged to one of the great official
families of Rome is proved by the fact that the Senator Reparatus was his brother. Throughout his life we may perceive some indications that his
natural sympathies were with the aristocracy and the Court, and that some of
his difficulties arose from a vain attempt to reconcile these aristocratic
instincts with the bold part which a Pope in the Sixth Century was expected to
play on behalf of the people and the popular enthusiasm of the lesser clergy.
His unsuccessful attempt to obtain the first place in the Roman Church by the
mere nomination of Pope Boniface II (an attempt which perhaps indicates the
disposition of the Roman nobles to make the Papacy the exclusive possession of
their own order) left Vigilius in the humiliating position of a defeated
intriguer. Henceforward he probably knew that he had no chance of obtaining the
Pontificate by a fair vote of the clergy and people of Rome. The influence
which, as an ecclesiastic, member of a great Roman family, he still possessed,
and which was sufficient to obtain for him the important position of Nuncio
(Apocrisiarius) at the Court of Constantinople, must therefore be used in a
different and less open manner. In his official intercourse with the great
personages of that Court he had abundant opportunity for observing how the
heart of Theodora was set on the restoration of the Monophysites to high places
in the Church, and how seldom that upon which Theodora had set her heart failed
to be granted in the end by her Imperial consort.
Hence came those secret negotiations with the Empress which have been
already referred to, and which led to the downfall of the unhappy Silverius. We
view with some distrust the circumstantial statements of historians as to
conversations and correspondence which must necessarily have been known to
extremely few persons; but, according to these statements, the terms of the
bargain were that Theodora should address a letter to Belisarius directing him
to make Vigilius Pope, and should also present to the new Pontiff 700 lbs.
weight of gold. Vigilius on his part undertook to overthrow the authority of
the Council of Chalcedon, and to write to Theodosius, Anthimus, and Severus,
the Monophysite Patriarchs of Alexandria, Constantinople, and Antioch,
acknowledging them as brethren in the faith.
Armed with this letter from the all-powerful Theodora, Vigilius sailed
for Rome and sought an interview with Belisarius. Handing him the Empress's
mandate he promised the General 200 lbs. weight of gold as the price of his
assistance in procuring the coveted dignity. The result of this interview was,
if we are to believe the biographers, the accusation against Silverius, the
summons to the Pontiff to appear in the Pincian Palace, Antonina's insolent demeanour, the pallium stripped from off the Pope's
shoulders, and the coarse monastic garb hung round them in its stead.
This deposition of a Pope by the authority of the Emperor was a
high-handed, probably an unpopular act; but there is no reason to doubt that it
was acquiesced in by the clergy and people of Rome, and that Vigilius was
regarded as his lawful successor. The accusation against Silverius was a
political one. Not heterodoxy in doctrine, but a treacherous scheme for opening
the gates of the City to the Goths, was the charge on account of which he met
with such rough handling in the Pincian Palace; and
of such an offence the Emperor or his deputy seems to have been considered a
competent judge. The deposition of Silverius comes therefore under the same
category with the deposition of the Byzantine Patriarchs, Euphemius and
Macedonius; and is chiefly noteworthy as showing how dangerous to the
independence of the Papacy was that Imperial authority which the Popes had with
so light a heart brought back into the circle of Italian politics.
When the new Pope was firmly seated in his throne, the two authors of
his elevation naturally called upon him to fulfil his share of the compact with
each of them. Avarice made him unwilling to perform one of his promises; the
loyalty to Chalcedon which seemed to nestle in the folds of the Papal pallium,
indisposed him to perform the other. As we have seen, he pleaded to Belisarius
that unless Silverius were surrendered to him he could not pay the promised
purchase-money. Whether, upon the surrender and death of his predecessor, the
two hundredweight of gold were transferred from the vaults of St. Peter's to
the head-quarters of Belisarius, history does not inform us; but the Pope does
seem to have attempted, in a half-hearted clandestine way, to fulfil his
contract with Theodora. As for over-throwing the Council of Chalcedon, that was
absurdly impossible; but he did write a letter addressed “To my Lords and dear
Brethren in the love of Christ our Savior, the Bishops Theodosius, Anthimus,
and Severus”. In this letter he said, “I know that your Holinesses have already
heard the report of my faith; nevertheless, to meet the wishes of my glorious
daughter, the Patrician Antonina, I write these presents to assure you that the
same faith which you hold I hold likewise, and have ever held. I know that your
Brotherhood will gladly receive these things which I write. At the same time it
is necessary that this letter should not be read by any one, but rather that
your Wisdom should still profess to regard me as chief among your opponents,
that I may the more easily carry through to the end the things which I now
undertake. Pray God for me, my dear Brethren in Christ”. To this letter was
appended a confession of faith which, if not actually Monophysite, went, in the
opinion of his contemporaries, perilously near to the edge of that heresy.
For a time this secret recognition of her partisans may have satisfied
Theodora, but as the years went on and still Anthimus remained in exile and
apparently under the ban of St. Peter, she pressed for a public fulfilment of
the bargain by virtue of which Vigilius had become Pope. But Vigilius was now
firm in his seat and could assume the attitude of unbending orthodoxy. The
letter which he now sent was of this purport. “Be it far from me, Lady Augusta,
that I should do this thing. Aforetime I spoke
wrongly and foolishly: but now will I in no wise consent to recall a man that
is an heretic and under anathema. And if it be said that I am an unworthy Vicar
of the blessed Apostle Peter, yet what can be said against my holy predecessors
Agapetus and Silverius, who condemned Anthimus?”.
The anger of Theodora against her rebellious accomplice was quickened,
and apparently justified, by the accusations which reached Constantinople,
preferred by the Roman commonalty against their haughty and passionate Pope. It
was not only the old charge of procuring the deposition and conniving at the
death of Silverius that was now brought up against him. Other strange charges
were made, which at least seem to indicate the violent temper of the
aristocratic Pontiff. “We submit to your Piety”, said the Roman messengers,
“that Vigilius is a homicide. He was seized with such fury that he gave a blow
on the face to his notary, who shortly after fell at his feet and expired. Also
upon some offence committed by a widow's son he caused him to be arrested at
night by his nephew Vigilius, son of the Consul Asterius, and beaten with rods
till he died”.
“On the receipt of these tidings” says the Papal
biographer, “the Augusta [Theodora] sent Anthemius the Scribe to Rome with her
orders and with special commission, saying: Only if he is in the Basilica of
St. Peter refrain from arresting him. For if you shall find Vigilius in the
Lateran or in the Palace [adjoining it], or in any church, at once put him on
ship-board and bring him hither to us. If you do not do this, by Him who liveth for ever I will have you flayed alive. Then
Anthemius the Scribe, coming to Rome, found him in the church of St. Cecilia on
the 10th of the Kalends of December [22 November, 545J It was then his birthday,
and he was distributing presents to the people: but Anthemius, arresting him,
took him down to the Tiber and placed him on board ship. The common people
followed him, begging in a loud voice that they might receive his prayers. When
he had uttered his prayers all the people answered Amen, and the ship moved
off. But when the Romans saw that the ship which bore Vigilius was really on
her way, then they began to throw sticks, stones, and potsherds, and to shout:
Hunger go with you: mortality be with you. You have wrought evil for the
Romans: may you find evil wherever you go”. Nevertheless, some men who loved
him followed him forth from the church.
In this picture of a haughty and unpopular Pope, crouched to by the mob
so long as he is still on shore, and the receiver of their missiles and their
taunts as soon as his ship is under way, there is something which looks like
the handiwork of a contemporary. Yet it is not very easy to fit in the details
here given with what we know, of the life of Vigilius. He was certainly not
taken straight to Constantinople and at once exposed to the wrath of Theodora.
On the contrary, he seems to have spent the following year in Sicily, not in
close custody, but an honoured and important guest. From thence, as we have
already seen, in the early part of 546 he dispatched a number of corn-ships to
Rome, a charitable return for the muttered execrations of the crowd (which
perhaps had not reached the ears of his Holiness)—“May hunger go with you and
death overtake you”.
This mysterious residence of a year in Sicily was ended by an
invitation, not from Theodora, but from Justinian, in obedience to which
Vigilius sailed for Constantinople, arriving at that city on the 25th January,
547. The petition previously urged by Theodora for the recognition of Anthimus
seems now to have been tacitly dropped. The whole efforts, both of the Imperial
pair and of all who were like-minded with them in the East, were now devoted to
procuring the Pope's assent to the condemnation of the Three Chapters.
The theological controversy which is labelled by this strangely-chosen
name is one of the paltriest and least edifying that even the creed-spinners of
the Eastern Church ever originated. Gladly would a modern historian leave it
undisturbed in the dust which, for a thousand years and more, has gathered over
it. But this cannot be. Even as Monophysitism, by
loosening the hold of the Empire on Syria and Egypt, prepared the path of the
Companions of Mohammed, so the schism of the Three Chapters loosened the hold
of the Empire an recovered Italy, and made smooth the path of the invading
Lombards. As the student of the Thirty Years' War in Germany must compel
himself to listen to the disputes between the Lutheran and the Reformed
Churches; as the student of the history of Holland must have patience with the
squabbles of Calvinists and Remonstrants; as the
student of our own Civil War must for the time look upon Prelacy and Presbytery
as opposing principles for whose victory or defeat the universe stands
expectant; so must we, at any rate for a few pages, watch narrowly the
theological sword-play between Emperor and Pope beside the graves of Theodore
of Mopsuestia, Theodore and Ibas.
In the whispered conversations of Arsaces and Artabanes we caught a
glimpse of the Emperor as he appeared at this time to his subjects, a
grey-bearded theologian, sitting in the library of his palace till far on into
the night, conversing with monks and bishops, and endlessly turning over with
them the rolls of the Christian Scriptures or the Fathers' comments upon them.
In these theological conferences Justinian discovered, or was taught to
recognize, three defects in the proceedings of the venerated Council of
Chalcedon.
1. Theodore,
Bishop of Mopsuestia, was the teacher of Nestorius,
and one of the strongest maintainers of the doctrine that the divine Logos,
distinct from the human personality of Christ, dwelt therein as Jehovah dwelt
in his temple at Jerusalem. This doctrine had been emphatically condemned at
the successive Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451): but Theodore
himself, whose death happened three years before the former Council, had been
allowed to sleep quietly in his tomb and had hitherto escaped anathema. This
omission Justinian now proposed to remedy. Theodore had been dead for more than
a century, but his name must now be struck out of the diptychs, and his person
and writings visited with the unsparing anathema of the Church.
2. Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus in
Syria (with whom we have already made some acquaintance as an ecclesiastical
historian), was a friend and fellow-pupil of Nestorius, and therefore in the
charitable judgment of the orthodox could easily be accused of sharing his
heresy. Modern enquirers, however, incline to the conclusion that he was no
Nestorian, but a man, clearer-sighted than some of his contemporaries, who
began, earlier than they, the contest against the arrogant Monophysitism of the Alexandrian Church. However in this contest he had published treatises
sharply attacking both Cyril, who was accounted orthodox, and the Council of
Ephesus, to whose authority the whole Church bowed. Justinian did not seek for
an anathema on the person of Theodoret, who after
years of excommunication had been replaced in his bishopric by the Council of
Chalcedon; but he claimed that these special writings against Cyril and against
the Third Council should be branded as heretical, a claim which was legitimate
according to the ecclesiastical ideas of the day, but which opened an endless
vista of future disputation if there was to be practically no ‘Statute of
limitations' in theological controversy.
3. Ibas of Edessa was, like the two last-named prelates, a
Syrian bishop, and belonged to the school of Theodore of Mopsuestia.
He, like Theodoret, had been deposed from his see
during the short interval between the Third and Fourth Councils in which the
Monophysites virtually reigned supreme in the Church; and like Theodoret, he had been reinstated by the Council of
Chalcedon. The chief offence now alleged against him was a letter written by
him to a certain Maris, Bishop of Hardaschir in
Persia, in which he described the acts of the Council of Ephesus in a tone of
violent hostility and denounced Cyril as a heretic. Although Ibas himself, even at this period of his life, does not
seem to have fully accepted the teaching of Nestorius, and afterwards at the
Council of Chalcedon joined in the anathema against that theologian, there can
be no doubt that some of the expressions used in this letter wore a Nestorian colour,
and that if Cyril was to be venerated as a saint, it was hard to defend the
orthodoxy of Ibas. What rendered the affair
peculiarly difficult, and should have made Justinian peculiarly unwilling to
disinter it from the oblivion in which it was entombed, was that the Council of
Chalcedon itself, the venerable Fourth Synod, had listened to the reading of
this semi-Nestorian epistle and allowed it to be entered upon its minutes
without manifesting its disapproval; nay, that the Papal Legates had expressly
declared, ‘after the reading of this letter we pronounce Ibas orthodox, and give judgment that he be restored to his see'
These, then, were the three points in which the lawyer-like intellect of
Justinian had detected imperfection in the proceedings of the Council of
Chalcedon, and in which he considered that a tacit reversal of the action of
that Council might be made, in order to conciliate the prejudices of the
Monophysites. The object which he had in view, and which was that which Zeno
and Anastasius had sought to obtain, was a desirable one. The deep and
increasing alienation of the Monophysites of Egypt and Syria was, in the existing
condition of the Church's relations to the State, a real danger to the Empire,
a danger the full extent of which was manifested in the following century, when
the hosts of Omar and Amru invaded those two
provinces. But the expedient devised by Justinian, though not devoid of
cleverness, was too small and subtle to succeed. The stern Monophysites of
Alexandria were not to be drawn back into union with Constantinople by the
excitement of hunting three heretics who had been dead for a century. And, on
the other hand, Italy, Africa, and Gaul felt that when the Sacred Council of
Chalcedon was touched the Ark of God was in danger. By whatever external
professions of respect the insult might be veiled, the new ecclesiastical
legislation was an insult to the authority of Chalcedon and was resented
accordingly.
The attempt to procure the condemnation of the persons or the writings
of these three Syrian theologians occupied the best energies of Justinian
during ten years of his reign, and perhaps somewhat consoled him for the loss
of the Monophysite partner of his throne, who died when he was but half-way
through the battle. It was probably towards the end of 543, or early in 544,
that ‘Imperator Caesar Philochristus, Justinianus, Alamannicus, Gotthicus, Francicus, Gennanicus, Anticus, Alanicus, Vandalicus, Africanus,
the pious, the fortunate, the renowned, the victorious, the triumphant, the
ever-venerable, the august' issued in the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Ghost his edict to the whole body of the Catholic and Apostolic
Church. This edict is lost, but from a second edict which was published about
eight years later, and which was probably a somewhat expanded edition of the
first, we may form a conjecture as to its contents. This latter edict (which
with its Latin translation fills fifty large octavo pages) begins by an
elaborate statement of Christian doctrine according to the Creed of Nicaea. In
ten short sections or ‘chapters' the errors of the Arians, the Apollinarians,
the Eutychians, and the Nestorians are stamped with the Imperial anathema. Then
come the celebrated Three Chapters, of which for the next century the world was
to hear more than enough. In the eleventh chapter, Theodore of Mopsuestia, his person, his writings, his defenders are all
anathematized. In the twelfth the same stigma is affixed to the writings of Theodoret on behalf of Nestorius and against Cyril and the
Council of Ephesus. In the thirteenth, everyone who defends the impious epistle
of Ibas to the Persian heretic Maris, everyone who
says that that epistle or any part of it is sound, everyone who refuses to
anathematize it, is himself declared to be anathema. Then follows a long
argument vainly endeavouring to prove that this ‘impious epistle' met with no
approval at the Council of Chalcedon. The question whether it be right to
anathematize Theodore after his death is discussed, and decided in the
affirmative on the authority of St. Augustine, and also on the ground that if
the Church might not condemn heretics after their death, neither might she
liberate after death those who, like St. Chrysostom, have passed away loaded
with an unjust anathema. At length the Imperial theologian concludes with an
appeal for reunion to the Monophysite sectaries: “If therefore, after this true
confession of faith and condemnation of the heretics, any one shall separate
himself from the holy Church of God for the sake of words and syllables and
quibbles about phrases, as if religion consisted in names and modes of speech
and not in deeds, such an one will have to answer for his love of schism, and
for those who have been or shall be hereafter deceived by him, to the great God
and our Savior Jesus Christ in the Day of Judgment. Amen”
Throughout the whole of this long edict is heard a tone of calm
superiority which reveals the presence of the ecclesiastical legislator who
deems that he is settling once and for ever the controversies that have
distracted the Church. It does not need the repetition of the titles of
Justinian to assure us that we are listening to the same mouth which gave forth
the Codex and the Institutiones. But beside this, we
may perhaps discern a spirit of rivalry with Pope Leo and an endeavour to
imitate the style of the majestic Tome which had been accepted by all
Christendom as the true definition of the faith with regard to the union of the
two natures in Christ. If it was the hope of the Emperor that he might go down
to posterity as the successful competitor of that great Pontiff, he has been
signally disappointed. True, he did with infinite labour and difficulty
persuade a General Council to ratify his censures against the three Syrians,
but the prevalent feeling even of his own age was probably that he was meddling
with matters beyond his range, as it must have been the earnest desire of his
successors that he would have left the Three Chapters in oblivion.
The edict thus prepared in the Imperial cabinet was laid before the
Patriarchs of the East. Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria all at
length signed, some after much hesitation, and the first only on condition that
if Rome did not agree his assent should be accounted as withdrawn. Once having
signed, however, they were led by an instinct of self-preservation to compel
their suffragan bishops to the same course, and thus it came to pass that
before long, probably before the end of 544, all the dioceses of the East had
condemned the Three Chapters. Not so, however, in the West. Everywhere, in
Gaul, in Illyricum, in Italy, but pre-eminently in the province which had
Carthage for its capital, a spirit of jealous alarm for the honour of the
Fourth Council was aroused by the Imperial edict. Datius of Milan (the prelate
whom we have seen actively promoting the restoration of his province to the
obedience of Justinian) stoutly refused in Constantinople itself to append his
signature to the edict, and returned to the West in order to arouse in the Pope
the same spirit of opposition. The forced departure of Vigilius himself from
Rome was perhaps really owing to this controversy; and according to one
well-informed writer, the populace of Rome, instead of shouting out ‘Hunger and
mortality go with thee!' really exclaimed, ‘Do not condemn the Three
Chapters!'; and the Bishops of Africa, Sardinia, and Illyricum accosted him on
his journey with a similar request. However this may be, it is evident that the
increasing opposition of the Western Bishops to the Imperial theology made
Justinian even more anxious to have the successor of St. Peter close to his own
residence and amenable to his own powers of persuasion or terror. Vigilius
received an imperative summons to Constantinople, set sail from Sicily, and
arrived at the capital on the 25th of January, 547.
The Pope was received in that city, which he already knew so well, with
every outward demonstration of respect. His first acts, however, seemed to show
that the shouts of the Roman populace, ‘Condemn not the Three Chapters!' were
still ringing in his ears. He condemned Mennas, the
Patriarch of Constantinople and all the other Bishops who had subscribed the
Edict, to exclusion for four months from the Communion of the Church: and this
ecclesiastical courtesy was repaid by Mennas with a
sentence of precisely the same length upon the Bishop of Old Rome. According to
Pope Gregory the Great, Vigilius at this time also laid his anathema on the
Empress Theodora.
This mood of stern antagonism to the Court did not last for many months.
Justinian seems to have tried both flattery and menaces to shake the decision
of the Pontiff: and if the menaces of imprisonment and hardship elicited only
the spirited reply, “You may keep me in captivity, but the blessed Apostle
Peter will never be your captive”. On the other hand the invitations to the
Imperial Palace, the visits from great personages in the state, the entreaties
that he would not disturb the harmony of anathema which existed everywhere but
where his power prevailed, were more successful. Vigilius renewed friendly
relations with the Patriarch Mennas. He summoned the
Western Bishops who were in Constantinople to a series of conferences, in which
he discussed with them the possibility of gratifying the wishes of the Emperor.
At length, on the 11th of April 548, he published to the world the solemn Judicatum, in which, summing up as judge the result of
these episcopal conferences, he declared that, acting in obedience to the
Apostolic command, “Prove all things: hold fast that which is good”, he had
examined the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and
finding many things in them contrary to the faith, he anathematized him and all
his defenders. Similarly did he anathematize those writings of Theodoret in which he attacked the propositions of St.
Cyril. Also the impious epistle said to have been written by Ibas to Maris the Persian. But in all this, as Vigilius
with fourfold emphasis asserted, no disrespect was intended to the Council of
Chalcedon, and anathema was pronounced on any one who should seek to impair its
eternal and unshaken authority.
This saving clause was not sufficient to induce the Bishops of the West
to acquiesce in the Judicatum. All men who were
undazzled by splendour and unterrified by the frowns of the Court could see
that the new anathemas did deal a heavy blow at the authority and reputation of
the Fourth Council. Even in Constantinople itself Datius of Milan, hitherto the
trusty ally of the Pope, expressed his profound dissatisfaction with the Judicatum. It is true that Rusticus, a deacon and nephew of
Vigilius, who was tarrying with his uncle at the capital, at first expressed
unbounded enthusiasm on behalf of the Judicatum,
busied himself in transmitting copies of it through the Empire, and declared
that not only ought the name of Theodore of Mopsuestia to be anathematized, but his very bones dug up and cast out of holy ground. So
too a young and restless ecclesiastic named Sebastian. Sebastian (also a deacon
of the Roman Church), at first hailed the Judicatum as a direct message from Heaven. Soon, however, they were carried away with the
tide of Western feeling, everywhere ebbing away from Vigilius and his new
friends. They sent letters to Sicily, to Italy, to Africa, declaring that the
Pope had betrayed the Council of Chalcedon; letters which, coming from Roman
deacons and men of his immediate retinue, did infinite harm to the Papal cause.
Vigilius, either in petulance or in selfdefense,
retaliated by deposing them and six of their ‘fellow-conspirators' from their
various offices in the Church.
These repressive measures could not silence the voice of real alarm and
indignation in the Western Churches. Facundus, the African Bishop to whom we
owe the fullest account of this tedious controversy, had been present at
Constantinople through all the conferences which led up to the Judicatum, and had done his utmost to prevent its being
issued. Returning now to his native province he gave such an account of the
recent proceedings of the Pope that the Bishops assembled in Council resorted
to the extreme measure of formally excommunicating the occupant of the Chair of
St. Peter.
Vigilius saw that he had strained the allegiance of his Western
suffragans too far, and with hesitation and awkwardness began to retreat. He
asked Justinian's permission to withdraw the Judicatum,
and the Emperor, who began to perceive that he and the Pope alone could not
carry the whole Church with them, consented. It was decided that a General
Council should be convened, and in order that the matter should be left open
for that Council's decision, the Pope's Judicatum was
to be considered as withdrawn. In private, however, the Pope had to swear to
the Emperor that he would do his utmost to secure the condemnation of the Three
Chapters, would enter into no secret compact with their defenders, and would
disclose to the Emperor the name of anyone who should seek to draw him into any
plots, on behalf of the Chapters or against the State. Justinian on his part
swore that he would keep this engagement secret, and would not visit with the
penalty of death the persons whom Vigilius under his compact might be compelled
to denounce.
The proposed Council now occupied the minds of all the great dignitaries
of Church and State at Constantinople. But as the months passed over, it became
more and more clear that the Council would not heal the schism which Justinian
had with so light a heart created. He was using his power with a heavy hand
against his theological opponents, extruding Bishops their sees, especially in
Africa, with a harshness which would have seemed more to befit an Arian Vandal
than an Orthodox Emperor: but neither from Africa nor Illyria, from Italy nor
Gaul would the Bishops come to do his bidding in Council by condemning the
Three Chapters. The Eastern Bishops, more subservient and less fanatically
Chalcedonian, were willing to do all that the Emperor required of them. Now
then, if Vigilius was to fulfil his oath to the Emperor, he must take his place
at the head of these Eastern Bishops, and formally anathematize the Chapters
which his own clergy and well-nigh all the Bishops of the West were
passionately defending.
The situation was a cruel one, and might well make Vigilius curse the
day when he began to intrigue for the Chair of St Peter. As if to complicate
matters still further, the Emperor, without waiting for the assembling of the
Council, put forth a second edict containing his authoritative definition of
the essentials of the Christian faith, and anathematizing the Three Chapters.
An assembly of all the Eastern and Western prelates who were at that time to be
found in Constantinople was convened in the palace of Placidia, where the Pope
was then dwelling. The professional jealousy of all the Bishops seems to have
been aroused, and not even Theodore Bishop of Caesarea, the Emperor's chief
adviser and right hand in all that concerned the condemnation of the Chapters,
durst oppose the unanimous voice of the assembly, expressed by Datius of Milan
and Vigilius of Rome, that an ecclesiastic who should celebrate mass in any of
the churches where the Emperor's edict was publicly exhibited was a traitor to
the brotherhood of the Church.
Notwithstanding this solemn prohibition, Theodore before many days were
over solemnly celebrated mass in one of the contaminated churches, and
prevailed upon Zoilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, who had been hitherto
considered somewhat of a Papal partisan, to be present likewise. Indignant at
this open act of disobedience to the successor of St. Peter, Vigilius, with the
concurrence of Datius and twelve other Western Bishops, chiefly from Italian
cities, published a solemn sentence of degradation from every ecclesiastical
function against Theodore of Caesarea; and waxing bolder at the sound of their
own voices, included in it also Mennas, Patriarch of
Constantinople.
This daring blow, struck under the very eyes of the Emperor against his
chief religious adviser and the ecclesiastical head of his own city, so
exasperated Justinian that Vigilius and Datius found it necessary to fly for
their lives to the asylum of the great basilicas. Vigilius chose for his place
of refuge the Basilica of St. Peter, rightly judging that the sanctity of that
place would be more efficacious than any other for the successor of the
Apostle. Justinian however, who seems to have been in a state of frenzy at the
insults offered to his vanity as a theologian and to his power as an Emperor,
sent the Praetor to arrest him in the Basilica itself. This Praetor, the head
of the City police, ‘to whom' as the adherents of Vigilius indignantly
asserted, ‘thieves and murderers rightly belonged' came with a large number of
soldiers bearing naked swords and bows ready strung in their hands. When he
beheld them Vigilius fled to the altar, and clung to the columns on which it
was supported. The deacons and other ecclesiastics who surrounded the Pope were
first dragged away by the hair of their heads, and then the soldiers seized
Vigilius himself, some by the legs, some by the hair, and some by the beard,
and endeavoured to pull him from the altar. Still, however, with convulsive
grasp the Pope clung to the pillars, and still the soldiers strove to drag his
tall and portly form away from the place of refuge. In the scuffle the pillars
of the altar were broken, and the altar itself was only prevented by the
interposed hands of the ecclesiastics from falling on the Pope's head and
ending his Pontificate and his sorrows at one blow.
The sight of a chief of police and his satellites grasping the successor
of St. Peter by the legs and trying to drag him forth from the shelter of St.
Peters own basilica was too much for the religious feelings of the people of
Constantinople. Loud and menacing murmurs arose from the spectators who had
crowded into the church. Even some of the soldiers audibly expressed their
disapproval of the work upon which they were engaged: and soon the Praetor with
his retinue vanished from the sacred building, leaving Vigilius still under its
safeguard.
The Emperor now tried another method. A deputation of the most important
personages of postulate the Empire was sent to argue calmly with Vigilius Pope.
and persuade him to abandon an attitude of needless hostility and distrust. The
persons who composed this deputation are all of them interesting to us for
other reasons. First and foremost was Belisarius (now probably in the
forty-sixth year of his age), the instrument by whom Vigilius had been raised
to the Papacy. With him came his fellow-patrician Cethegus,
the exile from Rome, formerly Princeps of the Roman Senate, a man once accused
of treachery to the Emperor, but now apparently restored to full Imperial favour.
The other envoys were Justin the son of the lately-deceased Germanus, who had
been Consul eleven years previously, and who now held the high office of Master
of the Household; Peter, once the bold ambassador to Theodahad, now Patrician
and Master of the Offices; and Marcellinus the Quaestor, apparently the same
literary courtier of Justinian who under the title of Marcellinus Comes has, by
his useful Chronicle, filled so many gaps in our knowledge of the history of
the fifth and sixth centuries. This deputation was instructed to invite the
Pope to come forth from his asylum on receiving a solemn oath for his personal
safety, and to inform him that, if he would not accept these terms, measures
should again be taken for his forcible removal. After some little bargaining as
to the forms of the oath, Vigilius consented to these conditions. The
memorandum containing the terms of agreement was laid upon a cross containing a
fragment of the true wood of the Cross of Calvary, above the keys of St. Peter,
and upon the iron grating which fenced in the altar of the Apostle. When all
these arrangements had been made, to give greater efficacy to the compact the
five noblemen took their ‘corporal oath' for the safety of the Pontiff, and
Vigilius, emerging from his hiding-place, returned to the palace of Placidia.
Notwithstanding all this solemn swearing, the situation of the Pope
after his return became daily more intolerable. His servants and the
ecclesiastics who remained faithful to him were publicly insulted; every
entrance to the palace was blocked by armed men; he had reason to think that a
violent attack was about to be made upon his person. After making a vain appeal
to the Imperial envoys whose plighted oath was thus being violated, he quitted
the palace again by night two days before Christmas-day. The shouts of the
men-at-arms penetrated even into his bedchamber, and only this urgent terror,
as he himself says, could have impelled him to the hardships and dangers of a
nocturnal expedition. He fled this time, not to his old asylum at St. Peter's,
but across the Bosporus to Chalcedon. There, in the renowned sanctuary of St
Euphemia, in the very church where, just one century before, the great Council
of the Six Hundred and Thirty Fathers had been held, the hunted Pope, the
champion of that Council's authority, took refuge.
In such a place it would have been dangerous for the Emperor to repeat
the scenes of violence which had profaned the basilica of St. Peter. After a
month's interval he sent the same five noblemen who had composed the previous
deputation, with an offer of new and perhaps more stringent oaths of protection
if the Pope would again return to his palace. The answer of Vigilius was firm
and dignified: “For no private or pecuniary reason have I sought shelter in
this church, but solely in order to avert the scandal to the Church which was
being perpetrated before all the world. If the Emperor is determined to restore
peace to the Church, as she enjoyed it in the days of his uncle and pious
predecessor, I need no oaths, but come forth from my asylum at once. If this be
not his intention, oaths are also needless, for I shall not leave the basilica
of St. Euphemia”.
The Pope now proceeded, or threatened to proceed, to publish the
excommunication of Theodore and Mennas, which had
before been privately served upon them. On his part the Emperor sent by the
hands of Peter the Referendarius a letter which
Vigilius alleges to have been so full of insults and misstatements, that he is
certain it can never have been written by the Emperor. This, however, is of
course only a figure of speech to enable him to criticize it without open
disrespect. There can be no doubt that it was Justinian's own composition, and
we can easily imagine its purport—an unsparing exposure of the past
vacillations, intrigues, and broken promises of the Roman Pontiff.
To this document and to the Emperors proposals for peace Vigilius
replied by a long letter, the ‘Encyclica', containing
his account of the controversies of the past year, and offering, upon receiving
proper oaths for their safety, to send Datius of Milan and certain other of the
ecclesiastics who shared his seclusion, to treat, with full powers from him,
for the restoration of the peace of the Church. It is from this Encyclica that we derive the greater part of our
information as to the embittered strife between Pope and Emperor.
That strife which for the past six months had assumed an acute type and
had seemed likely to end in bloodshed, now relapsed into its tedious chronic
condition. Death removed some of the combatants from the scene. Datius of Milan
died in June; two months afterwards, Mennas of
Constantinople. It was clear that Justinian had succeeded in tying a knot which
only a Fifth General Council could untie, and to that Council, which at length
on the fifth of May, 553, assembled in Constantinople, all eyes, at least the
eyes of all Oriental Christians, were now directed. The Western prelates still
kept aloof. It was one thing to summon them to Constantinople, and another
thing to induce them to visit a capital where the venerable Datius, and
Vigilius successor of St. Peter, had been treated with such discourtesy and had
encountered so much actual peril.
The Emperor naturally desired that the presidency of the Council should
be vested in the Bishop of Old Rome; and Eutychius the new Patriarch of
Constantinople, a man apparently of gentler disposition than Mennas, voluntarily offered to concede the first place to
Vigilius. The Pope,' however, did not choose to preside in a Council composed
almost entirely of Eastern Bishops. For the matter in debate he perhaps cared
little, but he rightly dreaded again placing himself in opposition to the
general voice of the Western Church. There were long negotiations between Pope
and Emperor as to the composition of the Council. Vigilius proposed that four Easterns and four Westerns should meet and that their
decision should be accepted as final. Justinian was willing to concede that
four Bishops from each of the three Eastern Patriarchates should meet Vigilius
and three of the Bishops in his obedience; but this the Pope would not accept.
Thus the negotiations broke down: and in truth a small committee of the kind
indicated by these proposals would have been a poor substitute for the great
ecclesiastical Parliaments which had met at Nicaea and Chalcedon.
Eventually when the Council, consisting of one hundred and thirty-nine
Bishops from the East and six from the West, met in the Metropolitan Church of
Constantinople, the throne prepared for Vigilius was vacant Some sittings were
spent in fruitless endeavours to induce the Pope to join the assembled
Prelates, Belisarius and Cethegus being again vainly
sent by the Emperor on this errand: and then the Council, under the presidency
of Eutychius, proceeded to its main business. There was little discussion,
apparently no opposition. The bishops had, probably, each already condemned the
Three Chapters in their individual capacity, and now shouted ‘Anathema to
Theodore; long life to the Emperor' with edifying unanimity.
When Vigilius was invited to join the Council he replied with a demand
for a delay of twenty days to enable him to prepare a written statement of his
Judgment on the Three Chapters. The Emperor answered, with some justice, that
it was not his individual sentence, but his voice and vote at the Council that
was required; but the Pope persisted in his project, and by the 14th of May had
drawn up a document called the Constitutum,
containing his own judgment and that of nineteen Bishops of the West and
deacons of Rome concerning the matters in dispute. In this document, while
examining at great length the writings and severely condemning the errors of
Theodore of Mopsuestia, and while reiterating his own
profession of faith, so as to show that he himself was utterly untainted with
Nestorianism, Vigilius condemned all the proceedings of those who were now
agitating for the condemnation of the Three Chapters; grounding his opposition
chiefly on the familiar arguments of the impropriety of anathematizing the
dead, and the fact that, as far as Theodore and Ibas were concerned, the cause had been already decided in their favour at
Chalcedon. He concluded in the tone of an autocrat of the Church, forbidding
any person who held any ecclesiastical dignity whatever to put forth any
opinion concerning the Three Chapters contrary to this Constitutum,
or to raise any further question concerning them. Any action which might be
taken by such ecclesiastical persons in opposition to this decree was declared
beforehand to be made null and void “by the authority of the Apostolic See over
which by the grace of God we preside”.
The members of the Fifth Council, at whom of course this Constitutum was chiefly aimed, went on their way
disregarding it; and at their seventh and last sitting, after completing all
their other anathemas, struck the name of Vigilius out of the diptychs. This
was done at the express and urgent entreaty of Justinian. Thus had the nephew
of Justin, the mainstay of that Imperial house whose great glory it had once
been to bring about the reconciliation with the Roman See, himself imitated the
audacious act of Acacius, by excommunicating the successor of St. Peter.
Sentence of banishment was passed on all the opposers of the Fifth
Council, and in this banishment Vigilius, already in a certain sense an exile,
had doubly to share. He was conveyed to the little island of Proconnesus, near the western end of the Sea of Marmora,
closely guarded, and given to understand that so long as he refused to accept
the authority of the Fifth Council, he had no hope of revisiting Rome. Not only
so, but the Emperor appears to have determined to order a new election to the
Papal Chair, superseding Vigilius by a more pliable pontiff as Theodora had
superseded Silverius by Vigilius. Under these hard blows, with the prospect of
yet harder to come, and with his health undermined by that cruel disease the
agony of which has crushed the strongest hearts, the spirit of Vigilius gave
way. After six months of banishment he wrote a letter to the Patriarch of
Constantinople, in which he lamented the misunderstandings which, by the
instigation of the Devil, had arisen between himself and his brother bishops
dwelling in the Royal City. Christ, the true Light of the World, had now
removed all darkness from the writers mind and recalled the whole Church to
peace. Following the noble example of St. Augustine, who feared not in his
Retractationes to own the mistakes in his previous writings, Vigilius would now
acknowledge that, having with renewed care examined the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, he found therein many things both
blasphemous and absurd which he was now ready unhesitatingly to condemn. With
equal clearness could he anathematize all that Theodoret had written against the true faith, against the Council of Ephesus, and the
twelve chapters of Cyril. Lastly, he anathematized the letter, full of profane
blasphemies, which Ibas was said to have written to
the Persian heretic Maris. No point was left uncovered. The Pope had
surrendered to his enemies at discretion.
Two months later, Vigilius addressed, probably to the Bishops of the
West, a long Constitutum, in which, going over all
the weary controversy, he in fact retracted whatsoever he had previously
advanced as to the impropriety of condemning the Three Chapters. The only
novelty in the document, and a perilous one, was a long piece of special
pleading (which seems to have convinced no one either in its own or succeeding
ages) on behalf of the proposition that the so-called letter of Ibas was never written by that ecclesiastic.
After this complete capitulation the Pope was suffered to return to
Italy. Great events had meanwhile been happening there, events which made his
return at this time eminently opportune. The Roman clergy had petitioned for
his restoration, to which step Justinian may perhaps have given somewhat of the
character of an act of amnesty; though indeed the Emperor had so completely
vanquished the Pope, that no reason for quarrel any longer existed between
them.
But Vigilius was not after all to see again the Church of the Lateran,
for the sake of the first place in which he had done so many misdeeds and
endured so many hardships. His health, which had been failing ever since his
flight to Chalcedon, and which had no doubt suffered from his banishment to Proconnesus, now became rapidly worse. He could proceed no
further on his way than to Sicily, and died there on the 7th January, 555. He
was succeeded, after a vacancy of a little more than three months, by the deacon
Pelagius, who had served under Vigilius at Constantinople through all the
recent controversy, and had shared his hardships and his perils.
As far as Emperor and Pope were concerned, thus closed the controversy
of the Three Chapters. Justinian had undoubtedly gathered all the laurels that
could reward such a petty and ignoble contest. He, the amateur theologian,
after a struggle as long as the siege of Troy, had imposed his definition of
the right faith on all the four Christian patriarchates, and had bound those
who believe in the infallibility of General Councils to accept it henceforward
as an essential article of the Christian creed that the soul of Theodore of Mopsuestia suffers eternal torment. As a statesman his
success was not perhaps equally brilliant. He did not by his maneuvers secure the loyalty of a single disaffected
Monophysite; and he raised up a generation of bitter schismatics in Italy who
were to persist for a century and a half, preferring even the rule of the
savage Lombard to communion with the Church which anathematized the Three
Chapters. As a guide and counsellor of the Church the half-heathen Constantine
certainly presents a fairer record than the highly-trained controversialist
Justinian.
The unhappy Vigilius, in the course of this controversy, had to drink
the cup of humiliation to the dregs. Deeply offending both parties, he has
found champions in neither; and in consequence posterity has been perhaps
unduly severe upon his memory. Travelling as he did at least four times from
one point to the diametrically opposite point of the theological compass, he
deeply injured the credit of the Roman See, which now passed through half a
century of obscurity till the arising of the first and greatest Gregory. He
must certainly be held to have been an unsuccessful general of the forces of
the Papacy, but there is no proof that he was a coward, and his censors have
perhaps hardly enough considered whether at his particular point in the
campaign success was possible. For six years he had to dwell at the seat of the
rival Patriarch, daily beholding the majesty of the Emperor and begirt by evidences of his power. To resist the commands of
this omnipotent Caesar, from a modest dwelling within a mile or two of his
palace, was a task which required much more hardihood than merely hurling
spiritual thunderbolts from the Lateran or the Vatican at some unseen and
unknown Frederick or Henry on the other side of the Alps.
Then the theological battle-field was ill-chosen for the interests of
the Papacy. To say nothing of the dismal unreality of the controversy (though
Vigilius was probably acute enough to perceive and to be disheartened by this
unreality), there can be no doubt that the pedantic, lawyer-like mind of
Justinian had detected a flaw in the proceedings of the Council of Chalcedon.
His determination to publish his discovery to an admiring world placed Vigilius
in a pitiable dilemma, one from which even a Leo or a Hormisdas would have
found a difficulty in escaping. If he defended the Three Chapters he was looked
upon as tainted with Nestorianism and false to the Council of Ephesus. If he
condemned them he seemed to be dallying with the Monophysites and disloyal to
the Council of Chalcedon. Certainly to adopt both courses alternately, and to
do this twice over, was about as disastrous a policy as he could possibly have
adopted. But even as to this vacillation the harshness of our censure would be
abated if we grasped fully the enormous difficulty of his position. He, like
Justinian, was striving, and could not but strive, for an unattainable object.
The Emperor was compelled to struggle for the restoration of the old boundaries
of the Roman Empire. The Pope was bound to wrestle for the preservation of the
unity of the Christian Church. A decree against which they were powerless to
contend had gone forth that the East and the West should be parted asunder,
politically, religiously, and intellectually. But they knew not this; and the
luckless Vigilius, labouring to prevent the Eastern and Western Churches from
being rent asunder by this miserable question about the damnation of Theodore,
was like a man who, standing on shipboard, reaches out his hand to a friend
standing on the pier, and not unclasping it quickly enough, is swept from his
place by the motion of the vessel and fells headlong into the sea.
But assuredly the wonderful political instinct of the Roman Church was
at fault when she allied herself with Constantinople against Ravenna. Already
have two Popes—Silverius and Vigilius—found the little finger of Justinian
thicker than the loins of Theodoric.
