BOOK INTRODUCTORY.

VI

ACCESSION OF PHOCAS

 

In the November of the year 601 a political change took place at Constantinople, in connection with which Gregory appears in a less favorable light than during any other part of his career. Seditions in the army, which was now an important power in the state, aggravated by vacillating attempts of the Emperor Mauricius to enforce discipline, led to the elevation of Phocas, who was but a common centurion, but a favorite with the soldiery stationed on the Danube. Against this upstart the reigning emperor found no sufficient support among his subjects in Constantinople. It is a sign of the degraded state of things in the imperial city, that the two influential parties there, on whom the emperors depended, were those into which the partisans of the games of the circus were divided; designated from the colors which they wore as the Blues and the Greens. Neither Blues nor Greens proving an efficient support, Mauricius had to succumb to his ignoble rival, and, endeavouring with his wife and children to escape to the Asiatic shore, was compelled by opposing winds to take refuge in a church near Chalcedon. Phocas entered Constantinople, was accepted as emperor, and anointed, with his wife Leontia, by Cyriacus, the patriarch. He is represented by all the historians of the period in very black colours; as illiterate, sensual, passionate, and cruel. His very personal appearance—his diminutive and deformed stature, his close shaggy eyebrows, his red hair, his beardless chin, his cheek disfigured by a scar, which grew black when he was in a rage—is spoken of as a fit emblem of his low and savage character. His acts after his accession were in accordance with the picture: five sons of the deposed emperor(the eldest, Theodosius, had been sent to solicit aid from Persia) were murdered in succession before their father's eyes, and then the Emperor himself; their bodies were thrown into the sea, their heads exposed at Constantinople till putrefaction began, and then buried. On witnessing the death of each of his sons, the old father, who was not devoid of piety, is said to have exclaimed, "Thou art just, O Lord, and Thy judgments are right," and to have prevented the pious fraud of a nurse who would have substituted her own infant for one of his. Afterwards the eldest son, Theodosius (who had been associated with his father in the empire when only four years old) was intercepted in his flight to Persia, and beheaded at Nice. The Empress Constantina and her three daughters, who had taken refuge in the church of St. Sophia at Constantinople, where the Patriarch had pledged his oath for their safety, were dragged from sanctuary, on the discovery of a conspiracy in their favour, and beheaded, the Empress having been previously tortured. A host of meaner victims are recorded to have been executed with savage cruelty; scourged to death, their eyes pierced, their hands and feet amputated, their tongues torn out. Leontia, the tyrant's wife, is described as a worthy match for such a husband.

Now it does not follow that Gregory was cognizant of all the atrocities above described, or of the character of the usurper and his wife, when he hailed their elevation in the terms to be now alluded to. But, being usually so well informed of what was going on in various parts of the world, he must, we conceive, have known something of what Phocas was, and at any rate of his treatment of the old emperor and his sons; and, in any case, his exultation on the death of Mauricius, whose fate called for so much sympathy, and the way in which he vilifies him whom he had so lately honoured, cannot but leave on our minds a painful impression of unseemliness.

The new emperor sent, according to custom, images of himself and of his consort to Rome, which, together with the news of his accession, were received by the populace with acclamations of joy. Mauricius had become unpopular there, owing, it may be supposed, to his provoking conduct, and the exactions of his officers, in connection with the Lombard invasions.

LETTER TO PHOCAS.

Gregory wrote thus to Phocas: “Glory to God in the highest, who, according as it is written, changes times and transfers kingdoms. In the incomprehensible dispensation of Almighty God there are vicissitudes in human life; and sometimes, when the sins of many are to be visited, one is raised up through whose hardness the necks of his subjects may be depressed under the yoke of tribulation; as we have experienced in our prolonged affliction. But sometimes, when the merciful God is pleased to refresh the hearts of many mourners, He advances one to supreme power, through the bowels of whose compassion He pours the grace of His exultation into the minds of all; in which abundance of exultation we believe that we shall be speedily confirmed, while we rejoice that the Benignity of your Piety has been raised to the imperial throne. Let the heavens rejoice, and the earth be glad! and may the people of the whole republic, grievously afflicted hitherto, grow cheerful on account of your benignant acts”. After this exaggerated preface, Phocas is exhorted to fulfill such glowing hopes by the justice and moderation of his rule; and among other excellent maxims he is reminded of one. which, however good in theory, was not always, it is to be feared, consistent with fact;—that there is this difference between the kings of the nations and the emperors of the republic, that the former are lords of slaves, but the latter lords of free men.

Again, the new emperor having complained that there was no representative of the Pope at his court according to ancient custom, Gregory wrote saying, “We are pleased to think, with joy and great thanksgiving, what praises we owe to Almighty God, that, the yoke of sadness removed, we have arrived at times of liberty under the imperial piety of your Benignity. For, as to your Serenity not finding a deacon of the Apostolic See according to ancient custom at your court, this is due, not to our negligence, but the most grave necessity. For during the late hard times all the ministers of this our church were afraid to reside in the imperial palace, and we could not impose on any of them the perilous office. But since they have learnt how, through the grace of God, your Clemency has ascended the throne, they, who feared before, are in haste to approach you under the persuasion of joy”.

 The letter concludes,—“How, for the length of thirty years, we have been oppressed by invasions of the Lombards, and perils daily around us, no words can express. But we trust in Almighty God, who will perfect the consolation which He has begun; and, having raised up pious lords over the republic, will also extinguish our cruel enemies. Therefore may the Holy Trinity preserve your life through many years, that we may long enjoy the blessings of your piety which we have tardily received”.

 He wrote also to the Empress Leontia. From what we have seen of Gregory, we might have been sure beforehand that he would not neglect to do this. It is illustrative also of his diplomatic tact, that to her, and not to the Emperor, he broaches the subject which was doubtless prominent in his mind while he thus hailed and adulated the rising suns,—viz., the claims of St. Peter’s see; with especial reference, we may suppose, to his long struggle under Mauricius against the counter-claims of Constantinople. And, in the hope of securing her interest, he bids her, in a tone he had not ventured on with the Emperor, regard the good of her own soul, appealing to the religious motives which, in this as in other cases, he counted on especially in the female mind. He addresses her thus:—“What tongue can speak, what mind can conceive, the thanks we owe to Almighty God for the serenity of your empire, in that, the hard burden so long borne having been removed from our necks, the light yoke has ensued which subjects delight to bear? Glory, therefore, be given to the Creator of all by the hymning choirs of heaven, thanks be rendered by men upon earth; since the whole republic, which has endured many wounds of woe, has found the balm of your consolation!”

After praying that the new rulers may combine justice and gentleness with zeal for the Catholic faith, and that she especially may imitate the Empress Pulcheria, who had been called a second Helena, he proceeds: “Perhaps I ought to have especially commended to your Tranquillity the Church of the blessed Apostle Peter, which has up to this time suffered from grievous hostile schemes; but because I know you love God, I ought not to ask for what of your own accord, and out of the benignity of your piety, you are ready to accomplish. For by how much the more you love the Creator by so much will you the more love the Church of him to whom it was said, ‘Thou art Peter; and upon this rock will I build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it’; and again: ‘To thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven’. Whence we doubt not with what strong love you bind yourself to Him through whom you desire to be loosed from the bonds of all your sins. May He, then, be the guardian of your empire, your protector on earth, your intercessor in heaven”.

PHOCAS AND BONIFACE III.

These addresses to Phocas and Leontia leave, as has been said, a painful impression. They constitute the main blot on the character of Gregory. Their fulsomeness may, indeed, be in some degree excused by the exaggerated style in which it was the custom to address imperial personages; and perhaps by a view, entertained on principle, of the deference due to the powers ordained of God, whom it was always the habit of Gregory to treat with great respect. And, as has been also intimated, he may not have been aware at the time how utterly unworthy of such praises these new rulers were. Further, the excessive flattery may be accounted for, though not on this plea excused, by his earnest desire to gain their support in his pending dispute with the Patriarch, which he regarded on principle as being of such great importance. This motive plainly appears in his letter to Leontia. And if this was his main object, the event proved, at any rate, his sagacity. The statement indeed made by Baronius, and since continually repeated, that Phocas formally conferred on Pope Boniface III the title of "Universal Bishop," which had been claimed by the Patriarch, is open to dispute. The old authorities do not say as much as this; and it seems most unlikely that a pope would accept a title which his great predecessor had only a few years before so strongly repudiated for himself. But it is undoubted that the new Emperor took the Pope’s part against the Patriarch Cyriacus, the latter having offended him by his protection of Constantina and her daughter, as the former had conciliated him by his flattering support; and that Boniface, who had been Gregory's representative (apocrisiarius) at the Constantinopolitan court, having become pope, an imperial decree was issued in favor of the claims of Rome.

The words of Anastasius, the biographer of the popes, with reference to this decree, are, “He (Boniface) obtained from the Emperor Phocas that the Apostolic See of St. Peter, that is, the Roman Church, should be the head of all churches, because the Church of Constantinople wrote itself the first of all churches.”

 Whatever might be the effect of this decree (the importance of which has probably been overrated), it was at any rate originally due to Gregory’s attitude towards Phocas at the time of his accession. As to his vilification of the deceased Mauricius in the letters above quoted, we may suppose it also mainly due to Gregory’s deeply felt grievance with respect to the disputed title, though it is to be remembered that, in connection also with the Lombard invasions, he had long had just cause of great complaint. Still, under the affecting circumstances, the language used was unseemly, especially as Mauricius appears to have been on the whole a fairly good emperor, not without his virtues, and as Gregory had once been accustomed to address him in language such as this:—“Since a sincere rectitude of faith shines in you, most Christian of princes, like a light sent from heaven, and since it is known to all that your Serenity embraces with all your heart the pure profession which wins the favor of God”.

 Again, in acknowledgment of money sent by the Emperor for the relief of distress at Rome:—“The accustomed piety of my lord has so shone forth in this kind relief, that the want of all the distressed has been succored by the consolation of its liberality. Wherefore we all address our tearful prayers to the Almighty, who has thus moved the heart of your Clemency, that He would preserve the empire of our lords by the constancy of His love. All alike pray with one accord that God may grant you a long and quiet reign, and that your most happy issue may long flourish in the Roman republic”.

 This last communication is assigned, in the Benedictine arrangement of St. Gregory's epistles, to the year 600 and, if this late date be right, the contrast between its tone and that of the letters to Phocas is the more glaring.

In any case it is evident that the growing dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Emperor,—apparent already, however veiled by courteous deference, in the letters about the Lombard troubles and the disputed title,— found a sudden vent, in language strangely inconsistent with some previous professions, at the very time when it was expedient to court the usurping rival, and when generosity, or even decency, might have suggested silence.

Gregory’s language on this occasion has been dwelt on at some length, as being the one great charge brought against his moral rectitude, which admirers of the splendor of his general character cannot but be anxious to palliate. After all palliations, it remains against him; but the very fact that there is only one such charge of importance is a telling one in favor of any human being; and, after all, it is not perhaps so serious a charge as has been often represented, when we remember that excessive adulation was then the conventional style of addressing emperors and empresses, without which it might be difficult to get their ear at all;—that Gregory's aims throughout were not selfish or wordly, but the advancement of what he sincerely believed to be the cause of God; and (we may add as to his reflections on Mauritius and his exultation at his overthrow) that not only had he been much provoked, but also that he had long been a martyr to gout when he wrote, a circumstance that may excuse much soreness and irritability.

It may be here remarked, with reference 1o his frequent and prolonged suffering from this disease, that it enhances our admiration of his unwearied activity. He wrote in the year 600 to Eulogius of Alexandria:—“In the last year I received your letter, but have been unable to answer it till now, owing to the excess of my illness. For nearly two years I have been confined to my bed, and afflicted with such pains from gout that I have hardly been able to rise for three hours' space on festivals to celebrate mass. I am soon compelled by excess of pain to lie down again, and seek relief by groaning. My pain is sometimes alleviated, and sometimes intense; but never so alleviated as to leave me, nor ever to intense as to kill me. Hence I am daily dying, but never die”.

GREGORY’S DEATH

 

We find him again suffering from the same chronic malady when, in 604, shortly before his death, he addressed his last letter to Theodelinda, the Lombard queen. She had sent to request him to answer a book that had been written by an abbat Secundinus against the condemnation of the three chapters. She had also informed him of the birth of her son Adaloaldus, and his baptism into the Catholic Church. On the latter event he, of course, congratulates her in his usual complimentary style, with prayers for the prosperity and growth in grace of the infant prince; but he regrets that he cannot write an immediate answer to the book because of a severe attack of gout:—“Not only”, he says, “are we unable to dictate, we cannot even rise to speak; as your messengers know, who found us weak when they came, and have left us in the utmost danger”. He promises, however, a full answer should he recover, and in the meantime sends her the decrees of the fifth council, held under Justinian, in which the three chapters had been condemned, and strongly disclaims the imputation, that the acceptance of these decrees by the popes was open to any suspicion of heresy. Further, he sends for the infant a cross containing wood of the true one, and a passage of the Gospels in a Persian case, to be worn as phylacteries; and for his sister three rings, two with hyacinths, and one with a white stone; and, lastly, he sends greetings to the king, with thanks to him for the peace that had been concluded, and entreats the queen to use her accustomed endeavors to keep him in the same mind. With this characteristic letter, which shows no failure in the writer’s mental activity, we may close our account of the career of Gregory; adding only that in this last year of his life his letters on matters of business, discipline, charity, and other subjects, were as frequent and as forcible as in any previous period. He did not recover from his illness, but died on the 12th of March in the same year (AD 604), and was buried in St. Peter's Church, in which his tomb is now to be seen under the altar of St. Andrew, to whom his monastery at Rome was dedicated.

What occurred in Rome immediately after his death is an example of the fickleness of crowds. The distress that had so long prevailed, and which Gregory had taken such pains to alleviate, had now reached its height, and a general famine had ensued. Thereupon he, the deceased pope, who had been at first hailed by all classes as their only hope, who had been throughout his reign in so many ways the guardian and benefactor of the city, who had collected and expended so much in charity while he had spent so little on himself,—was accused by the populace of having caused the famine by his lavish expenditure. They are said to have been on the point of I avenging themselves by destroying his library, had not the Archdeacon Peter stayed their fury by asserting that he had seen the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove hovering above his head as he wrote his books. Peter died suddenly in the pulpit as he was about to confirm this statement with an oath; and this was curiously enough taken as a confirmation of its truth; and so the library was spared. Hence it is that St. Gregory is represented in art with a dove above his head.

We all feel a natural desire to form an idea of the personal appearance of distinguished men who have long passed away from earth. We are enabled to do this in the case of Gregory, as far as words can present a picture, from the description by John the Deacon, his biographer, of a portrait of the saint in his monastery of St. Andrew, supposed to have been placed there by himself, and extant in the writer's time, which was the 9th century. John concludes that Gregory himself had it painted during life, from an inscription appended to it, which implies this, and from the head being surmounted, not by a "corona," but by a "tablet" (tabula), which is said to denote a person still alive. The portraits of his father and mother placed by Gregory in the same monastery have been described above, and it has been mentioned how his own features combined the characteristics of both. His figure is further described as of ordinary height, and well-made; the beard as somewhat tawny and of moderate length; round his large and round bald crown he has dark hair, decently curled and hanging under the ears; on his high forehead are two neat little curls twisting towards the right; the eyebrows are long, slender, and elevated; the pupils not large, but open, and of a yellow tinge, and the lower eyelids full; the nose is thin as it descends from the eye­brows, broader about the middle, slightly aquiline, and expanded at the nostrils; the cheeks are regular; the lips ruddy, thick, and subdivided; the chin rather prominent from the confines of the jaws; the expression of countenance is mild.

There is a little uncertainty as to the meaning of the words used in describing the complexion. They probably mean that it was swarthy and fresh, free from the unhealthy hue which it acquired before the end of life. It is added that his hands are well-formed, the fingers taper, and well adapted for writing. His dress is a chestnut-coloured “planeta” over a “dalmatic”. Now, though these articles of dress have long been confined to the officiating clergy, yet it is undoubted that, like other ecclesiastical vestments, they were originally parts of ordinary costume, worn by the laity as well as the clergy. The dalmatic was a long tunic with sleeves, the planeta an upper garment, in the form, it is said, of a circle, with a hole in the middle through which the head was passed. And it is confirmatory of the view that they had no sacred significance in the time of Gregory, that his father is described as wearing in his portrait precisely the same dress, and of the same chestnut color. It does not, however, follow that they wore at that time the costume of every-day life, since the dalmatic, at least, seems to have been retained as a tunic of ceremony for state officials, as well as for ecclesiastics, after it had passed out of ordinary use. It is still part of the coronation robes of kings both in England and elsewhere; and Gordianus may have worn both it and the planeta in his capacity of “Regionarius”. But the Pope himself is distinguished from his father by wearing also a “pallium” or “pall”, marking his ecclesiastical position. When he sent this ensign of jurisdiction to metropolitans, we find him usually directing that they were to wear it only during the celebration of mass. We may conclude, perhaps, from such directions, and from his being painted with it on, that his own supreme jurisdiction was marked by his wearing it ordinarily, or, at any rate, when he pleased. This, however, does not necessarily follow, since the portrait represents him as having a book of the Gospels in one hand, and making the sign of the cross with the other, which attitude may be meant to signify his being engaged in some sacred function, and giving a benediction. If so, it would appear that, but for the pallium, he officiated in a dress that was also worn by laymen. The form of the pallium, and the mode of wearing it at that time, is further denoted by the description of the portrait, and by another, given also by John the Deacon, of one of Gregory’s own palls, which had been preserved to the writer's day. It seems to have been simply a long narrow strip of white linen, unembroidered, worn with its middle part hanging loose over the breast, passing over the left shoulder and behind the neck; crossed over the right, and with its two ends hanging down, at the back and at the side. The biographer speaks also of other relics of the saint still preserved, and venerated on his anniversary; viz., his “phylactery” (or case for relics or amulets) of thin silver, with a bit of common cloth for hanging it round the neck; and his belt, only a thumb's breadth in width. He speaks of all these as denoting the monastic simplicity of Gregory's habits. He mentions elsewhere, as preserved in the song-school at Rome, which Gregory had built, his original Antiphonary (or book of Antiphons), the couch on which he used to recline, and the whip with which he menaced the boys when he taught them singing. Here we have, by the way, a further evidence of his personal superintendence of everything. He seems to have done nothing by deputy that he could do himself. And the mention of the couch is interesting as implying how he persevered even in this humble duty when he was too ill to sit up.