CRISTO RAUL. READING HALL THE DOORS OF WISDOM |
 |
THE HISTORY OF THE POPES |
 |
 |
 |
 |
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF POPE GREGORY I THE GREAT. A.D. 540 – 604
BOOK I. CHAPTER II.
THE WORLD OF GREGORY’S CHILDHOOD
OF Gregory’s early life no details are recorded in the
“Lives” and, in order to get a notion of its general outline, and of the
circumstances and scenes amid which it was passed, we are compelled to fall
back on secular and ecclesiastical histories like those of Procopius and the
Papal Biographer, on antiquarian information supplied by writers such as
Cassiodorus, and on the discoveries of recent archaeological research. In this
way we are able to reconstruct in some degree the history of the first fifteen years
of Gregory's life; we can estimate at least the extent to which he was affected
by the stirring events in Italy, can picture his surroundings and society in
Rome, and indicate the general course of his education and the nature of his
interests and pursuits. The question of Gregory's education will be reserved
for treatment in the following chapter. In the present I shall attempt to
describe the world of Gregory's childhood—not, indeed, the greater world of the
Roman Empire, which concerned the boy only indirectly, but his own immediate
world of Italy and the Eternal City. I shall endeavour to represent the state of Italy and its fortunes during the Second Gothic War,
the condition of Rome and Roman society, and the situation of the Church, and
particularly of the Papacy. But first it will be necessary to give a brief
account of a man and a woman, whose faces indeed our saint was never destined
to behold, but whose counsels and ambitions were, under Providence, most
instrumental in shaping the life and fortunes of him and all his countrymen. I
refer, of course, to the rulers of the Roman world, Justinian and Theodora.
The Rulers of the Roman World.
On that dimly lighted stage of the sixth century two
actors play a foremost part. They are the leading characters, in whom the
tragedy and the comedy of it centre, and around whose
plans and passions the whole world-play is built up. It is difficult for us,
looking back across the centuries, clearly to realize their personalities, to
strip them of the garb with which tradition and the prejudice of historians
have invested them, and see the true Justinian and Theodora as they appeared to
their contemporaries in the shining city on the Bosphorus. The character of the
man is particularly indistinct. He seems, as it were, to hide himself away deep
in the shadow of his own great works, and when we try to grasp his personality,
he persistently eludes our hold, and, instead of the flesh-and-blood Justinian,
we see before us only the airy domes of St. Sophia or the ponderous volumes of
the Roman law. The woman, on the other hand, has been more plainly delineated,
but the artist who sketched the portrait was an enemy; hence the colouring of the picture is the darkest, and loathsome
details are inserted, the accuracy of which cannot be relied upon. In the case
of either, then, it is hard to discern the truth, yet we must endeavour, if we can, to arrive at some idea of the
character and work of these two potentates, who governed and oppressed the
Roman world when Gregory was a boy.
First, then, Justinian. A fair, fierce-looking,
red-checked man, with long nose and shaven chin, and curly grizzled hair,
rather thin about the crown, carrying his shapely figure with a fine air of
distinction, and, although now somewhat past the prime of life, still
consciously vigorous with the strength of an iron constitution inherited from a
hardy stock of Dacian peasants;—such is our first superficial impression of the
Roman Emperor. His virtue attracted notice in a not over-virtuous age. Men
remarked upon his chastity, his temperance, his habitual self-restraint, and
admired a prince who was satisfied with an abstemious diet, and who cut short
the hours allotted to sleep in order the longer to pursue his studies.
Procopius, indeed, accuses him of deliberate, calculating cruelty; but this
charge cannot be substantiated. On the contrary, Justinian appears to have been
mild and clement, save in some few cases when his suspicions were aroused or
his fears excited; although it may be admitted that he never hesitated to
sacrifice the well-being of whole masses of his subjects when by doing so he
could serve his own ends or the general interests of the State. The man
possessed astonishing force of intellect. A musician, a poet, an architect, a
student of philosophy, theology, and law, he was acquainted with every branch
of the culture of his day. He prided himself on the universality of his
knowledge, and on his capacity for taking a prominent personal part in all
kinds of various transactions. Yet in practical matters his judgment was
oftentimes at fault, and he appears to have been deficient in decision of
character. He was a cold, crafty, unbending kind of man; a trifle inhuman,
perhaps, in his severely logical way of dealing with problems, yet human in his
numerous mistakes, human in his love of magnificence and pompous show, and,
above all, human in his passion for Theodora.
Justinian was pre-eminently the autocrat of the Roman
Empire. “Of all the princes who reigned at Constantinople”, writes Agathias,
“he was the first to show himself absolute sovereign of the Romans in fact as
well as in name”. And certainly no previous Emperor had ever enjoyed a
despotism so unfettered. Augustus shared his government with the Senate,
Constantine was compelled to reckon with the Church; but Justinian dominated
both. Politically he was absolute over a servile aristocracy; ecclesiastically
he was absolute over cringing bishops, who suffered him to lecture them and
dictate their theological opinions. “Remember”, said Caracalla once to his
grandmother, Antonia, “that I have power to do everything and over every one”.
It was just this power that Justinian not only claimed but also exercised. He
gathered all the wires into his hands, and his puppets had to dance as he
directed. Nor would he ever tolerate the least infraction of obedience, for he
himself was perfectly persuaded that "nothing was greater, nothing more
sacred, than the Imperial majesty." Like another great autocrat, Justinian
might have cried, "The world—it is I."
Absolute Justinian was, and he possessed to the full
the absolute sovereign's passion for reshaping and subduing, for moulding his environment in accordance with his will. He
was wonderfully successful. His great juristic works have modified the law of
every civilized nation. His victories in Italy, Africa, and Spain altered for a
time the geography of the Roman world, and determined the course of history.
His splendid architectural works connect his name for ever with the perfect
culmination of the new forms of Christian art. He tampered with theology, and
the decisions which he promulgated were sanctioned by the Church. In the
history of industry, of learning, of institutions, of manners, his reign is a
landmark—in the history of industry, by reason of the introduction of the silk
manufacture into Europe; in the history of learning, by reason of the abolition
of the schools at Athens, a measure which dealt a final blow to pagan thought
and philosophy, and made education definitely Christian; in the history of
institutions, through the extinction in this period of that venerable relic of
the past, the consulship; in the history of manners, by reason of the great
elaboration of social etiquette and court ceremonial which Justinian instigated
and encouraged. Few princes have been associated with so many diverse interests
and undertakings, and few have made their influence so widely felt, not only by
the men of their own age, but by many succeeding generations. Justinian
certainly was not of those whose names are writ in water.
Justinian aimed at unity. He wished for unity in the
Empire, East and West being reunited as in the days of Constantine, and welded
together under a single government. Hence came the Vandalic and Gothic wars of
reconquest. He wished for unity of government, authority being distributed
through a carefully graded official hierarchy, but depending ultimately on
himself alone. He wished, again, for unity of thought, and this he endeavoured to secure by the suppression of non-Christian
speculation through the closing of the Athenian University. Finally, he wished
for a religious unity, in which Monophysites might be reconciled with the
Orthodox, and the reunited Church of the East with the Catholics of the West.
From this last passion resulted the Fifth General Council and the persecution
of the unhappy Pope Vigilius.
Justinian was a man of great ideas, but as a practical
administrator he must be pronounced a failure. During his reign the Empire fell
into a most deplorable and ruinous condition. Externally it was girt about with
implacable enemies, who were only waiting for a favourable moment to attack. In the East the Persian wars exhausted the resources of the
State; in the West the reduction of the Goths only prepared the way for the
incursion of the Lombards. On the north an ever-increasing swarm of Huns and
Slaves and Germans gathered about the frontiers and devastated the Balkan
provinces: Justinian tried to check the inroads of these barbarians, partly by
constructing extensive lines of fortification from the Adriatic to the Black
Sea, partly by a shallow, hand-to-mouth diplomacy, which aimed at weakening his
enemies by pitting each against the other. Such measures, however, could not
establish a lasting security. They only availed for a time to delay, to some
extent, an evil which was destined to burst upon the Roman world directly the
too-ingenious Emperor was withdrawn from the scene.
Internally the condition of the Empire was not less
grave. Justinian was always in need of money, and in order to procure a
plentiful supply he encouraged an abominable system of fiscal oppression which
converted all classes of his subjects into mere miserable slaves of the
Imperial Treasury. Provinces were bled to death, flourishing cities were
impoverished, and millions of human beings were reduced to destitution. To save
expense, even the State post was partially abolished. The farmers and small
proprietors were made desperate by grinding taxes and forced labour. Many surrendered their estates to escape the
terrible exactions, many destroyed their olive yards and vineyards and
demolished their houses. Agriculture was ruined. The merchants were harassed by
heavy customs and monopolies. The grants made to the professors of the liberal
arts were withdrawn. The wretched curiales were
made to drain the cup of bitterness to the very dregs. Even the soldiers were
cheated of pay, rations, and promotion. But meanwhile the supplies came in, and
with the money scraped together with blood and tears, Justinian was enabled to
indulge to the full his lust for building, and to send general after general to
win back the allegiance of the revolted West. It is scarcely wonderful,
however, that the people, whose interests were remorselessly sacrificed to the
Emperor's vanity and avarice, should have loaded Justinian’s name with
execrations, and have told one another tremblingly that this pitiless despot
was in very truth a “demon”.
A dull, grey atmosphere envelops, as in a shroud, the
concluding years of Justinian's reign. From the banks of the Euphrates to those
of the Tagus, the world presented a dreadful spectacle of ruin and decay. A
profound gloom settled on the minds of men, and Justinian himself became
infected with the unnamed, brooding melancholy. Since he took the plague in
542, he was never quite the same. He grew weary, morose, spiritless. Trivial
matters occupied his thoughts, and he seems to have become indifferent even to
the great schemes which once so absorbed him, and to which he owed his fame.
This was the period of his studies in theology, and of the Fifth General
Council. And Procopius preserves for us a touching picture of this
once-brilliant Emperor, sitting up far into the night in the company of a few
very aged priests, poring over the sacred rolls, and laboriously constructing
arguments concerning the ultimate damnation of dead men. Thus the master of a
thousand cities shut himself up within his palace library and left the world to
its fate. Like the little Gregory in the ruinous city on the Tiber, so the
tired old Justinian in his fine new Rome on the Bosphorus learnt the sad lesson
of the vanity of things, and moodily sank beneath the oppression of the Middle
Ages.
Let us turn now to Theodora, the beautiful, beguiling
creature whom Justinian loved, and whose strange elevation to the throne
“cannot”, as Gibbon caustically remarks, “be applauded as the triumph of female
virtue”. The daughter of a Cypriot named Acacius, who had been a keeper of the
wild beasts belonging to the Green faction in the Byzantine Circus, Theodora
commenced life as a pantomimist and ballet-dancer. An account of her public
performances would not be edifying, still less would be the story of her private
amours, which became a byword in Constantinople, Alexandria, and all the cities
of the East. I am inclined to believe, however, that in this matter Procopius
has exaggerated the scandal. That Theodora united the profession of actress
with that of a courtesan is pretty evident. But her record was probably no
worse than that of modern ladies who have acquired an unenviable notoriety on
the London or Paris music-hall stage.
The woman was undoubtedly beautiful. Even her bitter
enemy acknowledges that it would be impossible for any mortal to express her
loveliness either in words or work of art. She was of medium height, with a
figure faultless in its proportions. Her complexion was marble-pale,—dead
white, but not sickly; her features were delicate and regular, her expression
keen and alert. A pair of magnificent brilliant eyes lit up her face and gave
to it a sparkling animation. A portrait of her may still be seen in the famous
contemporary mosaic in the Church of San Vitale at Ravenna. But this queenly
Theodora, bedecked with her favourite pearls, and
surrounded by the ladies of her court, has certainly less of comeliness than
might have been expected after the enthusiastic praises of Procopius. Perhaps,
however, the unnamed artist of the sixth century was not well skilled in the
delineation of feminine beauty.
Theodora’s powers of fascination must have been
exceptional.
Yet even so it is amazing that the prudent,
middle-aged Justinian should have fallen a victim to her witchlike spells.
Certainly this woman acted with consummate cleverness. To win Justinian’s
respect she retired from the public gaze, adopted a comparatively decent mode
of life, and affected an honourable poverty. Then,
with her charm, her wit, her alluring graces and attractions, she laid siege to
the heart of the austere and solemn student. Justinian was completely
captivated. He lavished upon his mistress his uncle's treasure and his own. He
caused her to be ennobled with the title of Patrician, and at last he went so
far as to form a project of uniting to himself, by the tie of legal marriage,
the most infamous woman in all Constantinople. Of course there were
difficulties. The Empress Euphemia, a highly respectable lady, would not hear
of such a match, and she persuaded her husband to refuse his sanction. But
after a while the Empress died, Justin was cajoled, the few remaining obstacles
were disposed of, and Theodora the Ballet-dancer became the wedded wife of the
most prominent and powerful personage of the age.
In 527 Justinian was elevated to the purple, and a
diadem was placed upon the head of Theodora as his independent colleague in the
sovereignty of the Empire. Never surely did actress rise to such a station.
She, whose business had been to provide amusement for the obscene, pestiferous
rabble, was now the acknowledged "mistress" of the Roman world, the
arbitress of the destinies of nations. The mob that once had shrieked with
laughter over her immodest antics, now hailed her with respectful acclamations
as she passed in state procession through the streets. The great people who
formerly had scorned her—the senators, bishops, generals, the proud officials
of the Empire—now vied with one another in paying her their court, and abased
themselves to implore her all-powerful intercession. The Emperor himself was
entirely her thrall, and remained throughout her lifetime the very model of an
indulgent husband. It was Theodora's golden hour; and we cannot wonder if we
see her sometimes rapt beyond all bounds in the exultation of her triumph.
The faults imputed to the Empress are those which
might naturally be looked for in a person whose moral principles were feeble,
and who was suddenly transplanted from a station of insignificance to one of
almost unlimited power. Theodora was luxurious and pleasure-loving. She slept
much, rising late and prolonging her midday siesta till the evening. She
appreciated the enjoyments of the bath, and spent many hours of every day in
the cultivation of her beauty. Her magnificent gilded apartments were filled with
a profusion of priceless treasures, and the whole world was ransacked to
furnish her table with rare or unseasonable delicacies. In her behaviour towards the magnates of the capital she was
slighting and capricious. The trembling senators who came to do her homage were
kept for hours confined in stuffy ante-rooms, and when at last they were
admitted to the presence, their Imperial mistress, lolling on her cushions,
received them with every mark of insult and contempt, and made them the
laughing-stock of eunuchs and serving-women. It cannot be denied that she was
vindictive and by nature cruel. Those who had really injured her she never
forgot or forgave. Beneath her glittering palace was a “Tartarus” of dungeons,
and here her wretched victims were scourged and tortured, and, buried for years
in the abysmal darkness, frequently lost their sanity and eyesight.
It would be a mistake, however, to think that Theodora
was all bad. She was certainly no Messalina. Whatever may have been the
scandals of her girlhood, her married life at least was without reproach, and
not even her worst enemy could accuse her of infidelity to Justinian. She was
religious, too, after her fashion—a Monophysite, yet genuinely, it seems,
devout. Nor was she incapable of kindly emotions and even of virtuous acts. Her
charities were widespread, and towards women in distress she showed peculiar
kindness. We see her restoring to one a husband, to another a lost lover. And
in remembrance, perhaps, of former days, she did everything in her power to
ameliorate the lot of actresses and fallen women. Five hundred of the latter
she rescued from the streets and placed in safe keeping in a monastery. And we
cannot doubt that Justinian’s legislation against disorderly houses, and the
measure which rendered it illegal to force a woman on to the stage against her
will, were alike inspired by the counsels of an Empress who had once been an
actress and a prostitute herself. Moreover, Theodora was gifted with a courage,
intelligence and political sagacity not unworthy of her station. She proved
herself a true helpmeet for Justinian. She could enter fully into his projects,
and give him real assistance by her sound advice. And, above all, when in 532
the Nika sedition broke out, and the Emperor himself new frightened and his
ministers were panic-stricken, Theodora restored confidence and steadied a
tottering throne by her intrepid words: “Empire is a fair shroud”. This woman,
clearly, was not devoid of noble qualities. Had the circumstances of her youth
been other than they were, she might have left behind her a fragrant memory and
an honoured name. But she could never entirely
overcome the disabilities of her upbringing. Hence, by most people in the
present day, Theodora, when remembered at all, is vaguely thought of merely as
a type of the nameless infamies and outrageous passions of an absolutism that
has long since gone to dust. Critical research, however, pronounces a more
charitable verdict.
Such were the rulers of the world in the year 540. It
remains to consider the condition of Italy, and to remark the way in which the
ambitious plans of the Byzantine despots affected the life and fortunes of
Roman Gregory.
(b)
The Condition of Italy and the
Second Gothic War.
It was one of Justinian's aims to re-establish the
broken unity of his Empire by the conquest of the West. This ambitious task was
commenced by the overthrow of the Vandal kingdom in Africa. But Justinian could
not stop short with this, nor would he have wished to do so, even had it been
possible. Before ever the Byzantine armies set sail for Africa, John of
Cappadocia had given a warning to the Emperor: “If Africa should be reduced, it
cannot be preserved unless Italy and Sicily be conquered in addition”. The
prince acknowledged the cogency of his minister’s argument, yet remained
unshaken in his purpose. He ordered his troops to embark, thereby pledging his honour to the destruction, not only of the kingdom of the
Vandals, but also of that of the Ostrogoths. It is improbable that Belisarius,
the commander-in-chief, was aware of the full extent of his master's ambitions.
But it is clear to us now that from the beginning Justinian was resolved to win
back the province of the Western Caesars and to reincorporate it with the
Empire.
Every student of the history of the sixth century
knows the story of the great undertaking. Justinian's ambitious schemes were
almost justified by their remarkable success. The Vandal kingdom was
overthrown; Sicily was won; and at last, after four years of war, Italy itself
was conquered, and the Gothic king Witigis with the noblest of his following
and all his treasure was carried away in triumph to Constantinople. In the year
of Gregory's birth the First Gothic War was finished. The strength of the Goths
was broken; the flower of the fighting men was cut off; their king was a
captive; their kingdom was in the hands of the Greeks; and once more the
Italian peninsula had become a province of the Empire.
Now, Justinian's first anxiety was to make his
conquests pay. No sooner, therefore, was Italy reclaimed than he handed it over
to the cruel mercies of a gang of civil servants, who were commissioned to
extort money in every way from the unfortunate provincials. At the head of the
financial administration was an abominable rogue, Alexander the Logothete,
nicknamed “the Scissors”, from his alleged proficiency in clipping gold coins
without apparently altering their shape. This man, with a retinue of scoundrels
like himself, swooped down upon the country and organized a campaign of
universal plunder. It is impossible to exaggerate the rascality of these
financial agents. Men mostly of mean condition, who by surreptitious intrigue
had wormed themselves into a place, utterly destitute of shame and scruples,
they were bent solely on accumulating fortunes for themselves, and never
hesitated to perpetrate the grossest and most scandalous frauds when they were
able to do so without danger of detection. In the case of Italy this risk was
very slight. The agents were all in collusion with one another, the scene of
their transactions was far removed from the seat of government, and it was well
known that Justinian was not disposed to be hard on the peccadillos of men who
were continually forwarding substantial sums to the Imperial Treasury.
Moreover, the oppressed Italians were unable to defend themselves, and could
only suffer in dumb anguish the outrages of their persecutors. Thus the sharks
of Alexander had it all their own way. Not content with imposing an outrageous
assessment on the fortunes of the Romans, they endeavoured to increase the profits by all manner of fraudulent devices. Sometimes they
refused to give receipts; sometimes they gave them in an invalid form.
Sometimes they disputed the validity of those which were correctly drawn up.
All Italians who had engaged in financial dealings with the Goths were ordered
to produce accounts, and when such accounts were not forthcoming, they were
compelled to refund in full. False weights and measures were used; the accounts
presented by the Imperial auditors were shamelessly falsified; and extra
exactions were enforced by terrorism and violence. Of course the greater part
of the money thus accumulated was sent to Constantinople, but much of it
remained in the hands of the nefarious agents, who fattened and grew wealthy on
the pillage of their victims.
The miseries of Italy were further augmented by the
rapacity of the Byzantine commanders and their troops. When Belisarius returned
to the East in 540, he left behind him eleven generals, to whom was entrusted
the task of completing the subjugation of the country. These generals, however,
divided by mutual jealousies and suspicions, were unable to agree upon any plan
for the reduction of the enemy, and, instead of carrying on the war, devoted
their whole attention to amassing private fortunes. They came to an
understanding with the tax-gatherers, and in concert with them arranged for the
thorough spoliation of their several districts. The common soldiers, as was
natural, followed the example of their officers. Military pay was extremely
irregular, promotion had to be purchased, and offences against discipline were
at this time punished with heavy fines. Hence the soldiers, being in need of
money, sought to provide for themselves at the expense of the conquered; and
this the officers permitted them to do so long as they themselves received a
percentage of the booty. Thus Italy was delivered into the hand of the spoiler,
and insatiable avarice stripped her bare. What the logothete left the general
took, and what the general left the common soldier carried away.
The military regulation, in accordance with which
offences against discipline might be condoned by payment of a fine, was a
further source of misery to the Italians. For, when a soldier had to fear only
a pecuniary mulct, he had the less scruple in committing offences against the
public peace. Thus the property and persons of the unfortunate provincials were
never safe. And if we would realize to the full the horror of such a situation,
we must remember that these soldiers of the Imperial armies were Romans only in
name. Even of Greeks there was but a small proportion. The bulk of the troops
consisted of a heterogeneous medley of barbarians—Moors, Huns, Persians, Gepids, Heruls—knowing not a word
of Latin, and scarcely any Greek, and wild with all the untamed passions of the
lawless savage. To the unbridled lusts and boundless avarice of these fierce
men, the miserable inhabitants of Italy were abandoned. Their sufferings can be
paralleled only by the worst of those endured in recent times by the wretched
subjects of the Turkish Government.
But in addition to all these troubles, the countrymen
of Gregory were exposed to the torments of famine and pestilence. Procopius has
left us a grim description of the country and the people in the last year of
the war. The fields, which for two years had been left uncultivated, were
silent and deserted. The inhabitants of Tuscany betook themselves to the
mountains, where they fed on the acorns which they gathered in the forests. The
dwellers in the Aemilia flocked into Picenum; but
famine followed hard at their heels, and in Picenum itself not less than fifty thousand peasants perished of starvation. The whole
of the central and northern part of Italy was transformed into a barren
wilderness. The aspect of the people themselves was shocking in the extreme.
Horribly emaciated, their flesh consumed away for want of nourishment, and
their skin dried up like leather and just clinging to their bones; their
complexions, surcharged with bile, a vivid yellow which gradually changed to
black, giving them the appearance of burnt-out torches; their eyes terrible
with a lurking look of horror or the glare of downright madness; their
digestions so ruined that many were killed by the food when at last it came;
these miserable, famine-ridden scarecrows would totter out into the country to
seek for grass or herbs wherewith they might allay the gnawing of their hunger.
Sometimes as they kneeled down and tried to pluck the herbage from the ground
their strength failed them and they collapsed. And where they fell, there they
lay and died. No one buried them. Even the carrion birds found it not
worthwhile to attack their fleshless corpses. Instances of cannibalism
occurred. Two women, who lived together in a cottage near Rimini, made a
practice of enticing wayfarers to their house, murdering them in their sleep,
and devouring their bodies. Seventeen men they so disposed of; the eighteenth
awoke at the critical moment, forced the hags to confess everything, and
afterwards killed them both. Particularly grievous were the sufferings of the
children abandoned by their desperate parents. Procopius has a curious story of
one baby, deserted by its natural mother, and adopted and suckled by a
she-goat. Other women had compassionately attempted to take charge of the
infant, but the animal frustrated all their efforts to deprive it of its nurseling.
Amid such wretchedness it was almost a relief when war
broke out once more. Belisarius had broken the power of the Goths, but he had
not destroyed it. The city of Pavia still remained in their hands, and the
incapacity and slackness of the Imperial generals allowed them time to rally
and reorganize their forces. Towards the end of 541 (after the short reigns of
Ildibad and of Eraric, a Rugian), Baduila, Ildibad's
nephew, better known to history under the name of Totila, was elected king of
the Goths, and with his accession commenced the second act of the Gothic war.
Of all the Gothic princes with whom we are acquainted,
Totila is perhaps the most amiable. A truly romantic figure, the knight-errant
of the sixth century, he wins all our sympathy as the noble-hearted champion of
a fallen cause and an oppressed people. His personal character is as attractive
as that of any popular hero of the Round Table. Chivalry, courage, purity,
generosity, conspicuously distinguished him; and to these knightly virtues were
added brilliant qualities of generalship and statecraft. He was gallant, in the
best sense, and ever ready to protect the weak and the helpless. Once one of
his guards, a brave and popular soldier, outraged the daughter of a Calabrian.
When Totila heard of it, undeterred by the entreaties and even by the menaces
of his army, he put the offender to death. In the sack of Rome he expressly
ordered that the women should be spared; and hearing that a certain patrician
lady was threatened by the soldiers, he intervened and rescued her. Even
towards his enemies he exhibited a lofty magnanimity; and when Naples
surrendered, he humanely regulated the diet of the people lest a surfeit of
food should harm them, and he supplied the surrendering garrison with horses
and a safe-conduct to the gates of Rome. The great Belisarius was not ashamed
to condescend at times to the doubtful shifts of war; but no such doings are
recorded against Totila. Only against the Sicilians was his hostility
inveterate, and these had in a special way provoked it by their treachery and
ingratitude. Further, amid his triumphs, Totila was ever anxious to make an honourable peace. Over and over again did he open
negotiations with Justinian for that end, but the pride and obstinacy of the
Emperor caused all such attempts to fail. The conflict accordingly continued;
but its incidental evils were, for the Italians at least, alleviated by the
magnanimity of the man who publicly maintained the principle that success would
only attend those who respected right and justice.
It is somewhat strange to find that, while a
semi-pagan like Procopius does ample justice to the character of Totila, a
Christian saint and bishop, as was Gregory, can find not a single word to utter
in his praise. “Perfidy”, “mad fury”, “savage cruelty”—these are the only
qualities which Gregory sees, or thinks he sees, in the noblest of the Goths.
Indeed, had our information respecting Totila been limited to the references in
the Dialogues, we should have pictured him as nothing better than a bold swashbuckling
captain, with the instincts and disposition of a furious beast. In Gregory's
excuse, however, it may be remembered that Totila was an Arian; and nothing
that an Arian could say or do would be likely to find favour with the most orthodox of Popes. Moreover, Gregory belonged to the senatorial
class, which suffered most during the Second Gothic War. Gregory would himself
be just old enough to feel and recollect the horrors of the siege of Rome in
546; and when in after-life he looked back upon those dreadful days, it is not
unnatural that he should harbour some bitterness
against the man whom he regarded as the author of all the suffering. None the
less, however, Gregory's criticisms of Totila are grossly unjust, and require
to be corrected from authorities less prejudiced.
So soon as Totila took command the fortunes of the
Goths in Italy underwent a change. After frustrating an attempt of the Roman
generals to capture Verona, the Gothic army won a brilliant victory at Faenza,
and followed this up with another in the valley of Mugello. This was the
prelude to the recovery of Central and Southern Italy. Passing Rome by for the
moment, Totila marched into the southern provinces, carrying all before him. In
543 Naples itself surrendered, and the South again acknowledged the Gothic
sovereignty. It was probably on this march to the siege of Naples that the king
paid a memorable visit to St. Benedict at Monte Cassino, and listened
awe-struck to the famous prophecy: “Much evil doest thou; much evil halt thou done; refrain thyself now from unrighteousness. Thou
shalt go over the sea; shalt enter Rome. Nine years shalt thou reign; in the
tenth thou shalt die”.
After securing the South, Totila proceeded to make
good his position in Central Italy. Fermo, Ascoli, Spoleto, Assisi fell before
his arms, and Perugia was closely invested, though it still held out. At length
he was ready for the greatest undertaking of all—the blockade of Rome.
Meanwhile, in 544, the veteran Belisarius had once
again set foot in Italy. But in the broken man who coasted round the head of
the Adriatic, and took up his quarters at Ravenna, it was difficult to
recognize the celebrated conqueror who had led away captive the successors of
Genseric and Theodoric, and had filled Constantinople with their golden spoils.
Of this early Belisarius Procopius has left us a portrait. A tall and handsome
man was he, sober and chaste and liberal; a general adored by his soldiers; a
tactician, “daring without rashness, prudent without fear, slow or rapid in
attacking the enemy according to the exigencies of the moment”; a man, however,
whose military genius was not, it seems, of the highest order, and whose
private character was warped and twisted, mainly through his inordinate,
blindly doting fondness for his evil minded wife. This woman, indeed, was the
undoing of Belisarius. All the unsavoury story of the
scandalous amour, the husband's jealousy, the unfaithful wife's revenge, may be
read by those who are curious in such matters in the pages of the Byzantine
historian. Here it is sufficient to observe that the spirit of Belisarius had
been crushed by domestic troubles, while his external fortunes had been
injuriously affected by the jealous suspicion of Justinian and the relentless
hostility of Theodora. A disgraced and humbled man, Belisarius returned to the
scene of his former triumphs to straighten out, as best he might, the tangled
skein of Italian history.
Towards the close of 545 Totila invested Rome. If, as
is probable, Gordianus and his family were shut up in the city during the
siege, their sufferings must have been acute. Rome was defended by Bessas, the
general, with a garrison of some three thousand Imperial troops. The personal
bravery of the commander is unquestioned, but, like all the rest of the
generals of the Empire, he was excessively avaricious, and did not hesitate to
turn even the famine of the people into a source of profit to himself. The corn
in the public granaries was sold to wealthy citizens for extortionate sums, and
as the pressure of starvation became more intense the market-price of
provisions rose. A quarter of wheat fetched more than £20, an ox was sold for
£30, a filthy mixture of one part flour to three parts bran cost over £5. As
time went on animal food was scarcely procurable. Even dogs, rats, and mice
were greedily devoured, and a cut from a dead horse was reckoned an exceptional
luxury. The poorer citizens were reduced to a diet of nettles, which they
cooked with care to prevent them stinging their lips and throat. Some were
forced by the pangs of hunger to consume yet more loathsome food. Heart-rending
scenes were witnessed. One Roman father, driven frantic by the piteous cries of
his children, walked calmly with his family to the nearest bridge over the
Tiber, and there, veiling his face with his mantle, flung himself headlong into
the river, in full view of his five little ones and of passers-by. The general,
gloating over his treasure, was blind to these horrors; but some civilians made
noble efforts to alleviate the distress. Rusticiana,
daughter of Symmachus and widow of Boethius, gave away her entire fortune, so
that she was herself reduced to destitution; and Pelagius, deacon of the Roman
Church, was scarcely less generous. But the liberality of a few could avail
little amidst the universal famine. At last the citizens, in desperation,
flocked in a body to the Palatine and implored the Greek governor to end their
sufferings in any way—either to feed them, or to kill them, or to permit them
to quit the city. Bessas made a callous speech, refusing absolutely to accede
to any of these requests. Later, however, their continued importunity, backed
by a substantial bribe, induced him to change his mind, and he suffered a
certain number to depart. But many of the fugitives either died of weakness on
the open road or were intercepted as they endeavoured to escape through the enemy’s lines.
The siege went on. Belisarius, in the spring of 545,
had written to Justinian urgently requesting money and troops. His messenger,
however, delayed in Constantinople, and for several months no reply was
vouchsafed to his application. When at length the tardy reinforcements arrived
in Italy, Belisarius took up a position at Portus, and from there he made a
gallant effort to convey provisions into Rome. His plan, however, was
frustrated on the point of success by the folly and disobedience of his
lieutenant Isaac, and by the failure of Bessas to co-operate on his side for
the relief of the city. Then Belisarius, bitterly chagrined, fell sick of a
fever, and the last lingering hopes of the beleaguered Romans flickered out.
Now the food was almost gone. Rich and poor alike were
compelled to support life on grass and nettles. Even the soldiers had to go
without their rations, and had scarcely strength sufficient to take their posts
upon the ramparts. All discipline was neglected. The sentries, if they would,
might slumber at their stations; the officers ceased to go the rounds. The
citizens refused to help to man the walls. Soon disaffection spread among the
demoralized troops. Four Isaurian soldiers entered into treaty with Totila, and
on December 17, 546, betrayed Rome to the besiegers. Bessas, indeed, had
received warning of the conspiracy, but, being wholly immersed in moneymaking,
had with almost incredible carelessness disregarded it, so that when the end
came it took him by surprise. Amid the wild panic and confusion he had not time
even to remove his ill-gotten treasure, but as Totila and his Goths entered the
city by the Asinarian Gate, the Roman general, with
the remainder of his troops, fled for his life through another. A few wealthy
nobles, who still had horses left to carry them, accompanied him.
The Goths poured into the city. Before them stretched
a network of empty streets, lined with deserted palaces and temples. Hardly a
creature was to be seen. In all Rome, so Procopius says, only five hundred
people remained alive, and these lurked hidden in the dark corners of the
houses or had fled for refuge to the tomb of St. Peter. Nothing but the blare
of trumpets and the shouts of the invaders broke the deathlike stillness, with
now and then the scream of some wretched Roman who was dragged from his concealment
and massacred. The number of men killed, however, was insignificant. The women,
in accordance with the king's express orders, were all spared.
While his troops were pillaging the city, Totila
marched in procession to the Basilica of St. Peter. Here he was confronted by
the Archdeacon Pelagius, bearing in his hands a copy of the Holy Gospels. The
Churchman pleaded for the lives of the Romans. “What!” cried Totila, “so
Pelagius is not now too proud to become a suppliant”. “I am a suppliant”,
replied the archdeacon; “God has made us now your subjects, and as your
subjects we should meet with your mercy”. Totila admired the man's courage, and
gave orders that the massacre should cease.
We do not know what became of Gordianus at this time.
Possibly, being a wealthy man, he was able to accompany Bessas in his hasty
flight, and get away eventually to his estate in Sicily. More probably,
however, hampered as he was by wife and children, he remained in Rome, and, as
we may suppose, together with Olybrius, Maximus, and other nobles, sought an
asylum near the body of St. Peter. His anxiety for himself and his family must
have been great, for in the first flush of his anger Totila doomed all the captured
senators to slavery. The prayers of Pelagius, however, obtained for them a
gentler treatment, and they were ultimately placed in confinement in different
fortresses in Campania, from which in the following year some of them were
rescued by the Imperialists and sent for safety to the island of Sicily.
Whether therefore Gordianus escaped with Bessas or surrendered to Totila’s mercy, the probability is that in 547 he, with
Silvia and Gregory, was residing on his property in Sicily, waiting for a time when
he could without danger resume his duties in Rome.
The events of the next two years may be passed over
lightly. The few hundred citizens who survived the siege of Rome were removed
by Totila into Campania, and the city was utterly denuded of inhabitants. A
third of the circuit of the walls was pulled down, and some houses, especially
in the Trasteverine quarter, were set on fire. It is
said that Totila was not content with this, but actually threatened to destroy
all the monumental buildings and to turn the capital of the Caesars into a
sheep-walk. But this mad project—if ever it was seriously entertained—was
happily averted, thanks to the representations of Belisarius.
The sick general roused himself to write to Totila,
pleading for the existence of the Eternal City. He urged the king to consider
that, if he was victorious in the war, Rome would be his fairest possession;
whereas, if he failed, the preservation of the place would give him a claim
upon the gratitude of the Emperor. On the other hand, the destruction of Rome
would bring upon him the abhorrence of the entire world and the execration of
posterity. The Goth, with his usual reasonableness, allowed himself to be
convinced, suspended the work of demolition, and retired into Lucania. For
forty days Rome was utterly abandoned and, desolate. Then Belisarius, with
magnificent audacity, reoccupied the city, roughly repaired the walls with any
rude materials that came to hand, dug out the ditch, and barricaded the vacant
spaces of the gates. The Romans dispersed in Campania flocked back to their
beloved home, and when Totila, by forced marches, arrived once more upon the
scene, he was unable to effect an entrance. Repelled in three assaults, the
Goths could only sullenly retire.
This was the last great feat of Belisarius in Italy.
After some months of desultory fighting in the south, during which his plans
were continually thwarted by the negligence and disobedience of his
subordinates, he begged to be recalled, and quitted Italy for ever in
September, 548. (The end of this brave but unhappy warrior may be briefly
related. Ten years later, in 558, the Kotrigur Huns,
under their king, Zabergan, crossed the Danube and
passed into Thrace. Thence one detachment marched into Greece, others ravaged
the Chersonese, and the rest took their way towards Constantinople and
penetrated to within eighteen miles of the city. In his extremity Justinian
once again called on the old general to take the field, and Belisarius marched
out on his last campaign. With only three hundred veterans and a rabble of
untrained rustics he managed to repulse the Huns, who withdrew from the city,
and were eventually bribed by the Emperor to return to their homes beyond the
Danube. The great service of Belisarius was rewarded, as usual, by ingratitude.
He was coldly received by the Emperor and the Court, and continued out of favour. In 562 he was even accused of conspiracy; his
fortune was sequestered, and for eight months he was in deep disgrace. His
innocence, it is true, was in the end established, and his honours restored to him, but he did not long survive his acquittal. In March, 565,
Belisarius died—a noble man, a brilliant soldier, and a notable example for the
warning of those who put their trust in princes).
The next year Totila recaptured Rome. The siege was
short, and unaccompanied by the horrors of the former. The Roman general,
Diogenes, had taken care to fill the granaries, and, moreover, had sown with
corn large tracts of land within the city walls. There was, therefore, no fear
of famine; though the spectacle of waving corn-fields on the site of what had
once been the most densely populated region on the surface of the globe must
have been to the Romans a melancholy token of their city's downfall. As before,
Isaurian treachery unbarred the gates, and Totila entered, a second time, in
triumph. But his policy was now entirely altered. He showed the greatest
clemency to the vanquished garrison; he made an effort to repair the buildings
of Rome; he condescended even to amuse the people by a chariot-race in the
Circus Maximus. Moreover, he issued a proclamation inviting all the exiled
Romans to return to their homes and resume their accustomed life. It is
probable that Gordianus responded to this call. Anxiety to reclaim his property
on the Caelian, as well as the necessity of resuming the official
superintendence of his Region, would hasten his return. And at this time,
perhaps, Rome was the safest place for a Roman noble. Accordingly, we may
conjecture that in 549 little Gregory—now, according to our chronology, nine
years of age—took up again his residence in the city of which he was afterwards
destined to become the Bishop and Father.
The war dragged wearily on. Totila, in 550, carried
his arms to Sicily, and disquieting rumours doubtless
reached Gordianus of the spoliation of his rich possessions in the island.
Other reports too were circulated in the Fora—that Sardinia had submitted to
the Goths, that Germanus, husband of Witigis’ widow, was coming to claim the
allegiance of both Goths and Romans, then that Germanus had perished at
Sardica, that Totila's fleet had been defeated at Sinigaglia, and the siege of Ancona had been raised, that
Artabanes had recovered Sicily for the Empire . These and other stories passed
from mouth to mouth, debated and canvassed by excited groups in the piazzas and
under the porticoes.
At last came tidings of overwhelming import. It was
reported in the city that Justinian had given commission to the eunuch Narses
to come to Italy and end the war.
It has been remarked of Justinian that he was always
particularly happy in his choice of instruments for the execution of his
designs. Tribonian the lawyer, Anthemius the
architect, John the money-getting prefect, Belisarius the soldier, were, all of
them, men peculiarly adapted for the work which they were set to do. Not less
so was Narses, the Persarmenian. A little man, with a
feeble, puny body, but an active and powerful brain, reared from his childhood
in a hot-house atmosphere of plot and court intrigue, a past master in all the
wiles and windings of diplomacy, gifted with a profound knowledge of men which
enabled him to handle difficult affairs with successful skill, Narses had
rapidly come to the front. After filling the office of Chartulary of the Imperial Bedchamber, he was promoted to the post of Grand Chamberlain,
thus becoming one of the highest officials in the Empire. By a timely service,
rendered during the sedition of the Nika, he had won the gratitude and
confidence of Justinian, and his influence with his master was powerful enough
even to loosen the strings of the Imperial purse. But with all classes his
popularity was great. The people liked him for his generosity. The troops liked
him because he secured them their arrears of pay, looked after their interests,
and was liberal in rewarding deeds of valour. The
Catholics respected a minister of rigid orthodoxy, and a general so devoted to
the Virgin Mary that he would never commence an engagement until he had
received from her a signal that the moment was auspicious. Nor even from the
military point of view was Narses unfitted to take the command against the
Goths. He possessed considerable strategic ability, as was afterwards proved in
the battles of Scheggia and Capua. Moreover, he had
spent some months in Italy during the first campaign of Belisarius; he knew the
country, therefore, had studied the Gothic methods of warfare, had established
friendly relations with most of the Imperial generals, and had shown himself to
be the one man capable of keeping them in some control. Thus, for several
reasons, there seemed to be ground for hope that the appointment of Narses
would bring this ruinous war to a favourable conclusion.
The event justified the foresight of Justinian.
Narses, with a large army, composed chiefly of barbarian mercenaries—among them
were 2500 Lombards with 3000 attendants, 3000 mounted Heruls under Philemuth, 400 Gepids under Asbad, Huns commanded by Dagistheus,
and Persians by Kobad-marched from Philippopolis to Salona, whence he followed
the coast to the confines of the province of Venetia. Here he was threatened
with opposition, both by the Franks, who detested the Lombards, and by a Gothic
force under Teias stationed at Verona. However, by advancing along the
seaboard, and using his fleet for transport across the mouths of the rivers
which barred his course, Narses arrived without any mishap at Ravenna, where,
having collected the remains of the Imperial troops, he made ready for the
great battle which was to decide the fate of Italy.
This battle took place in July, 552. The exact site of
the engagement has not been determined. Some locate it on the south of Scheggia, west of the Flaminian Way, a little to the north
of Tadino; others place it near Sassoferrato.
Narses gained a preliminary advantage by occupying, with fifty picked soldiers,
a hill which commanded the field. In the battle itself he relied chiefly on his
wings, which closed in round the impetuous Goths, and threw them into
inextricable confusion. The day was won. The Goths showed astonishing bravery,
but fled at last, leaving six thousand of their number dead upon the field.
Totila himself was mortally wounded by Asbad leader
of the Gepids, and died some twelve miles off at
Caprara. In the following month his jewelled hat and
blood-stained robe were laid at the feet of Justinian.
This battle ended, practically, the Gothic war. Narses
marched through Tuscany and entered Rome in state. The Goths, meanwhile, in
their great despair, barbarously massacred three hundred youthful hostages
(whom Totila had selected from the noblest Roman families and sent for security
beyond the Po), as well as all the Romans of distinction who yet remained in
Campania. The fact that Gordianus and his family escaped this butchery may
perhaps be regarded as a confirmation of my conjecture that he had already
returned to Rome.
The last stand of the Goths was made in the early
months of 553. Under their new king, Teias, the remnant of Totila’s army gave battle to Narses near Monte Lettere, on the
banks of the river Sarno, which empties itself into the Bay of Naples. They
fought with superb courage, but fate was against them. Teias was slain, and at
length the surviving troops were compelled to surrender on condition that they
should be permitted to leave Italy, carrying with them their families and
movable property. On their side, they engaged never again to make war upon the
Emperor in any part of his dominions. A thousand men, it is true, refused to
accept these terms, and effected their escape to Pavia, which, with certain
other towns, still held out. But one after the other these cities were reduced.
Cumae and Lucca both endured a stubborn siege, but surrendered before the end
of the year; Luna, Florence, and Pisa opened their gates on receiving the
assurance that they should be kindly treated; Verona and Brescia may have remained
in Gothic hands for many years, but even these at last submitted. The final
effort of the Goths, which resulted in the invasion of Italy by the Alamannic chiefs, Leutharis and Butelin, proved abortive. The great army of Franks and
Alamanni, once 75,000 strong, wasted by fevers and routed by Narses in the
battle of Capua, melted away over the Alps; and in 554, for the second time
during the reign of Justinian, Italy became a province of the Empire.
Thus ends the story of the Gothic dominion in Italy.
During sixty years of enlightened rule the Gothic sovereigns had laboured to secure peace and prosperity for the land they
governed. The arts and industries were encouraged; the old Roman institutions
were maintained; strict justice was administered and religious toleration
enforced; agriculture revived, wealth increased, and trade flourished. It was
the aim of Theodoric to build up a Romano-Gothic civilization in an independent
Italy, within which conquerors and conquered might live side by side in
friendship and prosperity. He desired to blend the best elements in the Gothic
and the Roman character, and so to produce a people vigorous with the hardness
of the Goth and civilized with the culture of Rome. But these elements were
uncongenial, and refused to coalesce. Theodoric was thwarted in his good
intentions, partly by the Catholic Church, which steadfastly opposed any
rapprochement between the orthodox and Arians, and partly by the degenerate
spirit of the Roman people, who were unable to rise to their opportunity, and
who rewarded Theodoric's efforts for their welfare only with ingratitude and
persistent hostility. Confronted with such obstacles, it is not surprising that
Theodoric failed to realize his ideal. The doom of Italy had, in fact, gone
forth. The Gothic dominion offered her a last chance of unity and independence,
and when that chance was withdrawn, Italy parted asunder, and through thirteen
centuries became the prey of multitudinous distracting forces. The history of
ancient Rome closed with the death of Totila, and the history of mediaeval
Italy began.
We may now take a glance at the Rome of 554—the city
in which Gregory, now fourteen years of age, was commencing his public
education.
(c) Rome in the Sixth Century.
The aspect of the "Golden City," in the days
of Gregory, was desolate and melancholy in the extreme. On all sides—along the
Via Sacra, in the Fora, throughout the Campus Martins—the eye was met by traces
of ruin and decay; vast works of wealth and industry, injured by storm and
fire, but unrepaired; magnificent basilicas with no one to do business therein;
grand lines of columns surrounding temples long closed and abandoned; triumphal
arches rising in the midst of debris; libraries, the contents of which had been
destroyed; empty palaces, with flowers and ivy crowning their mouldering walls. The baths, “so magnificent as to resemble
entire provinces”, the artificial “stagna”, the
fountains once supplied by the aqueducts, were dry and waterless. The countless
statues, which adorned the squares and public buildings, and gave to Rome a
second population of bronze and marble, were mostly mutilated or fallen from
their pedestals. The theatres were crumbling, the stadia desolate; and the
marble pavements, once pressed by the feet of throngs from every nation wader
heaven, were breaking up. The Rome of the Republic and of the Roman Emperors
was slowly perishing. The city of which Augustus had boasted that he had left
it marble—the city of which one so recent even as Cassiodorus could exclaim
that the whole of it was one great miracle—the city of parks and palaces, of
cool arcades and gold-roofed temples, had become at the time when Gregory trod
its streets little better than a cluster of dilapidated ruins. If Horace could
have risen from his tomb to stroll once more along the Sacred Way, he would
scarcely have recognized the scene of careless wanderings in the bright days of
the early Empire.
Many causes had contributed to this result, and not
the least of them was war. Within a century and a half Rome had been sacked
four times; within less than twenty years it had been five times captured by
force of arms. It is true that neither Alaric nor Genseric, neither Ricimer nor
Totila, seems to have inflicted wanton damage upon the structures of the city;
at any rate, the first three were bent solely upon plunder, and abstained from
injuring to any serious extent the edifices themselves. But although, if we
except the unexecuted project of Totila, there was no deliberate attempt at
demolition, the damage done to the Roman buildings by successive armies of
pillagers must have been considerable. Fittings were torn away, statues were
hacked about and mutilated, gilded tiles and beams, bronze doors and
decorations, were roughly removed, and the monuments thus disfigured were left
without repair until the natural process of decay completed their destruction.
A second cause was neglect. The buildings were shaken
by earthquake or injured by fire and pillage, but no one restored them. The
beautiful temples, which in past times served not only as places of worship,
but also as public museums and art galleries, were closed, and no one crossed
their thresholds. Even in the days of Jerome we read that the Capitol was
filled with mire, and all the shrines of Rome defiled with dirt and cobwebs.
And this description, rhetorical and exaggerated in Jerome's time, was sadly
accurate in the time of Gregory. According to a legend, which was believed to
be true at the end of the sixth century, the Bishop of Canosa one day spoke
with St. Benedict about the future of the Eternal City. The bishop was
apprehensive of what Totila might do, and he said to Benedict: "The city
doubtless will be destroyed by this king, so that it will never more be
inhabited." But the saint replied with a famous prophecy, "Rome shall
never be destroyed by the gentiles, but it shall be shaken by tempests,
lightnings, and earthquakes, and shall decay of itself."
A third cause of decay was the unpatriotic practice so
common amongst the Romans of erecting new buildings with materials taken from
the old. "It is well known"—so runs the edict of Majorian—"that
in several instances public buildings, in which all the ornament of the city
consisted, have been destroyed with the criminal permission of the authorities,
on the pretext that the materials were necessary for public works. The splendid
structures of ancient buildings have been overthrown, and the Great has been everywhere
destroyed in order to erect the Little. From this has arisen the abuse, that
whoever has built a private house, has, through the favour of the magistrates, presumed to appropriate the necessary materials from public
buildings; whereas all such buildings as contribute to the splendour of the city should have been restored and upheld by the loving reverence of the
citizens." Many of the Emperors enacted laws prohibiting this wholesale
spoliation, and Theodoric, the Gothic king, made a final effort to protect the
perishing monuments. But Emperors and Kings alike were unable to arrest the
mischief. The first buildings to suffer such violence were the temples, closed
since 394, and tenanted, according to popular superstition, by evil spirits.
But the secular structures soon shared the same fate; and archaeologists inform
us that they have discovered no building later than the fourth century which
was erected originally with freshly quarried material. In the light of these
facts it is somewhat curious to find Procopius belauding the Romans for their
peculiar love of their city and their anxious care for the preservation of its
historic monuments. Unfortunately for the reputation of the citizens, the
edicts of the Emperors and the discoveries of our excavators tell a different
tale.
Gregory was a witness of the passing of Old Rome. He
lived amid the relics of the past, in the great city on which was set the seal
of unmistakable decay. Let us imagine him, for once, leaving his father's house
and mounting the Via Sacra, most famous of all streets, on his way to attend a
lecture on the Capitol or to listen to a Virgil recitation in the Library of
Trajan. As he passes through the city, what kind of panorama would meet his
view ?
First, to the right of the Sacred Way, opposite the
Colosseum, on the little hill called Velia, there still was standing, with
porphyry columns and gilded tiles intact, Hadrian's lovely double temple
dedicated to Venus and Rome—the temple which had cost the uncourtly architect
his life. Beyond it, spanning the road at its highest point, rose the Arch of
Titus, from which a slight descent, lined with fine buildings, conducted the traveller to the Roman Forum. The buildings on either side
of the road were yet imposing. On the right, at the top, was the great
brick-constructed Basilica of Constantine, with its noble vaulted ceiling and
its three naves divided by gigantic pillars; next was the Church of SS. Cosmas
and Damian; beyond, the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, of which the marble
frieze, with bas-reliefs of griffins, candelabra, and festoons, is considered a
marvel of art; and, further still, one caught a glimpse of the red granite
columns of the portico built by Theodosius on the site of the once splendid
Basilica Aemilia. On the left of the Via Sacra, below the Arch of Titus, was,
first, the Portions Margaritaria, a handsome arcade
with shops of jewellers, goldsmiths, and
perfumers—shops, however, which had now for long been closed and empty. Lower
down were the buildings of Vesta—the house of the Vestal Virgins, now
transformed into citizens’ dwellings and pierced with many doors and windows,
and adjoining it the sanctuary of Vesta, closed and silent. The road ended in
the Forum, the scene of many of the most stirring events in Roman history. It
was an area of small extent, paved with slabs of travertine, crowded with
statues and surrounded with venerable buildings. The heat in summer was
stifling here, and in the old days the Romans sought for some alleviation by
spreading out shady awnings, beneath which they were able to take their part,
with comparative comfort, in the many varied phases of the Forum life—in the
legal discussions, the criminal prosecutions, the religious ceremonies and
processions, the military pageants, the public executions, and the political
banquets. In Gregory's time the Forum was no longer the scene of brilliant
spectacles or of important business transactions. It was still used, however,
as a popular meeting-place, where the wiseacres of Rome foregathered to discuss
the affairs of the city.
The buildings that surrounded the Forum were still in
fair repair, though many of them were disused and permanently shut up. On the
east side were two abandoned structures—the Temple of Castor and the retangular Temple of Julius, marking the spot where the
body of the great Caesar had been cremated. Both these buildings, however,
through long neglect, were falling into decay. On the south side of the Forum
was the vast Basilica Julia, with nave and four aisles, the site of which in
modern times recalls a chain of varied memories of Roman magistrates and the
priests of S. Maria de Foro, of mediaeval
rope-makers, of marmorarii, lime-burners,
and the guardians of the Ospedale della Consolazione. On the north side, next to the Basilica
Aemilia, was the small bronze Temple of Janus, yet containing the image of the
god. Its brass gates, closed since Rome became Christianized, had been wrenched
on their hinges in 537 by some half-pagan fanatics, and had never shut quite
tightly since. Beyond this temple stood the ancient Senate House, the elaborate
decorations of which—the gilded coffers of the vaulted roof, the marble panelling of the walls, the bas-reliefs of the pediment and
the bronze door—continued to be seen and admired long after Honorius the First
had turned the hall into the Church of St. Hadrian.
At the west end of the Forum was a confused mass of
splendid monuments—the Arch of Severus, with its sculptured episodes of Eastern
wars; the white marble Temple of Concord, praised by Pliny; the elegant Temple
of Vespasian, of which three columns are standing in the present day; the badly
restored Temple of Saturn; and the huge Tabularium.
And at the back of all, to the south, there rose in solemn majesty the
Capitoline Hill. A century and a half ago the poet Claudian had described the
scene which met the gaze of one standing on the Palatine and looking towards
the historic shrine of Jupiter Capitolinus. He spoke of the crowd of temples
blocking the sky, the highly wrought doors, the statues seemingly suspended in
mid-air, the innumerable arches, the beaked columns commemorative of great
naval victories—all alike glittering in the sunshine with brass and gold work,
till the dazzled eye shrank before the splendour of
the scene. In these hundred and fifty years, however, the ravages of decay had
been rapid and unchecked, and the view had lost somewhat of its magnificence.
Yet even in the sixth century, the buildings of the Capitol, defaced and broken
as they were, and robbed by enemies of their statues and golden tiles, must
have seemed to Gregory, as to Cassiodorus, "surpassing all other works of
human skill."
North-east of the Forum of the Republic, between the
Capitol and the Quirinal, on a site now covered by a network of insignificant
and dirty streets, there stretched, in Gregory's time, the splendid series of
the Imperial Fora, ending on the north with the superb Forum of
Trajan. This quarter, with its fine open spaces, its spreading porticoes, and
its majestic temples, has in modern times completely changed its aspect.
Excepting a portion of Trajan's work, the Fora of the Emperors
have entirely disappeared. Three Corinthian pillars of Luna marble, with their
entablature, which once adorned the Temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum of Augustus; and the two “Colonnacce” of
the Temple of Minerva in the Forum of Nerva, are the sole remains of a group of
buildings which were once the most beautiful and magnificent in Rome. In
Gregory's time, however, these piazzas were not encroached upon, and Papal
builders had not yet begun to make havoc of the impressive edifices. The
temples, indeed, were closed, and here, as everywhere, there was abundant
evidence of decay and neglect, but in its general features the scene was the
same as in the days of the Early Empire.
Of the entire series the Trajanic group of buildings was perhaps the finest. “The Forum of Trajan”, says
Cassiodorus, “however often we see it, is always wonderful”. To make room for
it, Trajan had cut away a ridge which formerly linked the Capitoline Hill with
the Quirinal, separating the Imperial Fora from the Campus Martius. The space
thus obtained was occupied by the large open area of the Forum itself, by the
bronze-roofed Basilica Ulpia, the Greek and Latin Libraries, and the Temple of
Trajan. It was further beautified by a multitude of statues of famous men
(among them those of Claudian and Sidonius Apollinaris), and by an equestrian
effigy of “the best of princes” himself. Ammianus Marcellinus has left us an
interesting account of a visit made to this “place imperial” by the Emperor
Constantius in 357. He says that when the Emperor reached the Forum, “the most
exquisite structure under the canopy of heaven and admired even by the gods
themselves”, he fell into a stupor of admiration, and, realizing the
impossibility of himself completing any work of like magnificence, he exclaimed
despairingly, in allusion to the equestrian statue, that the horse which Trajan
rode was all that he could imitate. Whereat Prince Hormisdas, who chanced to be
at his side, replied, “But the horse, your Majesty, must have a stable worthy
of him. Command, then, one to be erected as magnificent as this”.
In Gregory’s time there seems to have existed in
Trajan’s Forum a relief representing a woman supplicating the Emperor; and to
this group a story had become attached, to the effect that on one occasion
Trajan, when setting out to battle, had delayed in order to give audience to a
widow who prayed for justice. Gregory knew the story, and was touched by the
goodness of the prince. After his death in 604 a legend grew up, apparently in
the English Church, that the Pope “prayed” or “wept” so earnestly for the soul
of the Emperor, that he procured its release from the infernal torments, though
at the same time he was divinely warned never again to presume to pray for any
who had died in paganism. This legend is accepted by Paul the Deacon, but is
regarded with grave suspicion by John, and is unconditionally rejected by later
Catholic theologians.
The buildings of Trajan were intact in the sixth
century. War, however, had wrought, in one respect, irreparable damage. The
priceless treasures of Greek and Latin literature, once contained in the
libraries, had perished. Some of the fine editions of the classics, inscribed
on sheets of ivory, and enclosed in rich embroidered and jewelled cases, had been carried off as booty; the common rolls had been lost, or
destroyed by fire, or left to rot in the cupboards until they were cleared away
as rubbish. Only a few books, secreted by some careful librarian, can have
survived of one of the richest collections that any city was ever fortunate
enough to possess. But the Romans of Gregory's age had no longer thoughts for
literature, and to Gregory himself the masterpieces of the pagan writers would
have seemed but vanity.
It would be tedious to describe in detail the other
great monuments of ancient Rome which yet adorned the diminished city of the
sixth century. The buildings in the neighbourhood of
the Roman Forum and the Imperial Squares were perhaps the most venerable and
magnificent. Yet in the Campus Martius and other quarters were many others
equally interesting, and equally touched by the universal decay. There was the
Pantheon, with the colossal statues of Augustus and Agrippa under the portico,
and the neglected effigies of departed Caesars in their shrines beneath the
gilded dome. But the place was believed to be haunted; the great bronze doors
were closed; and the silence within was broken only by the patter of the rain
pouring through the opening in the cupola on to the marble floor, and by the
monotonous plash against the walls of the rising waters of Tiber. There, again,
was the Mausoleum of Augustus, described by Strabo,—a circular building of
white marble supporting a leafy garden of cypresses and evergreens. But no
gardener came any longer to keep the trees in order, and the bronze statue of
the Emperor, amid a rank and tangled growth kept solitary ward. There too was
the Poseidonion, with its exquisite bas-reliefs
representing the thirty-six provinces of the Early Roman Empire. There were the
Race-course of Flaminius; the Stadium of Domitian, much of which was still
standing in the Middle Ages; the Theatres of Marcellus and Balbus; the huge
Theatre of Pompey, which provoked the admiring exclamation of Cassiodorus, “How
is it, 0 age, that thou dost not destroy, when thou hast shaken that which is
so mighty?”; the Baths of Nero and Alexander, and of Agrippa; the monster
Thermae of Diocletian, the largest baths in Rome, the work of thousands of
Christian prisoners. Everywhere the eye was met by the melancholy magnificence
of great works sinking into unregarded ruin. The
theatres were falling in pieces, the baths were dry and waterless, the temples
were closed. In the open spaces of the city the weeds grew freely, the gardens
and pleasure-grounds were choked with rubbish, and the grass was pushing
through the broken pavements of the streets. On account of the destruction of
the aqueducts, and the consequent difficulty in procuring water, the higher and
more salubrious quarters of the city were deserted; and the vast private
palaces of the nobles—so huge that it was remarked of them, “A single house is
a city”—were empty and silent. The sumptuous shops, which had once been the
pride of the luxury-loving Romans, were mostly closed. No libraries remained,
save in a few churches. The “mighty nation of statues”, which in prodigious
numbers had once decorated the buildings and piazzas of Rome, and which even
the Christian Prudentius had characterized as “the noblest ornaments of our
fatherland”, were, many of them, broken or removed, or lay neglected at the
foot of their pedestals, with no one to restore them into place. The city, in
short, was a city of death; and Gregory might well have anticipated Montaigne's
remark, that "there is nothing left of Rome but its grave”.
The appearance of the people was in keeping with the
aspect of their city. There was no longer either wealth or talent left in Rome.
The brilliant society so vigorously depicted by writers like Jerome and
Ammianus Marcellinus, had vanished utterly. The Epicurean millionaires, the
high-born matrons surrounded with troops of sycophants and gossips, the men of
pleasure, the supple, scandal-purveying churchmen, the mercenary advocates, the
light-hearted, pampered populace;—all these were seen no more. That self-indulgent,
frivolous life had burnt quite out. Of the Romans of the sixth century,
survivors of the Gothic War, all who were swayed by pleasure or ambition, all
who cared for the splendour of the court or for the
society of the learned, or for opportunities of gaining distinction and of
making money, had taken their departure to the new Rome on the Bosphorus, or
had joined the court of the Patrician at Ravenna. The very few who remained in
Rome were for the most part little better than beggars, living miserably in
corners of the great ruinous mansions which they had no longer the means of
keeping up, or huddled together in tenements in the lower quarters of the city,
where they fell a prey to the malaria which was engendered from the swamps
caused by the destruction of the aqueducts. The whole population, estimated in
the time of Augustus at about a million, cannot in these days have exceeded
forty thousand souls. And these were all that were left in a city which,
besides innumerable public buildings, contained nearly eighteen hundred palaces
for the wealthy and more than forty-six thousand lodging-houses for those less
well-to-do.
Everything in the place was stagnant. Civil life was
hopelessly dislocated. Political activity there was none. The Senate
indeed—"the flower of the human race," in Cassiodorus' courtly
phrase—still existed in name, but the only function assigned to it, in the
Pragmatic Sanction of Justinian, was that of regulating, in conjunction with
the Pope, the weights and measures used by tradesmen. There was no commerce or
manufacture to restore prosperity. Learning had departed in the train of
wealth. Agriculture, which had revived under the rule of Theodoric, was utterly
decayed. The Campagna, which once presented the appearance of "a great
park, studded with villages, farms, lordly residences, temples, fountains, and
tombs," was now a dangerous and pestilential wilderness, and nothing but
the lines of broken aqueducts and the charred ruins of villas and
country-houses bore witness to the life that once had flourished there.
Thus, then, in the middle of the sixth century, the
Rome of the classical age seemed doomed to moulder away ingloriously, the sport of the elements, the prey of robbers, insulted by
barbarians, and wronged by her own children. Yet within this city of fading splendour another Rome was growing up. "The clearest
light of the universe" was not extinguished, as Jerome had once believed.
The Eternal City was by no means dead: it was only undergoing the agonies of
transition. The city of the Caesars was in process of becoming the city of the
Popes. Temples and palaces were fast disappearing, but churches were being
built and adorned with ever-increasing magnificence. Emperor and court had
vanished, but an ecclesiastical hierarchy had taken their place. The toga had
been exchanged for the cowl, the sceptre for the
crozier. And though Rome had long ceased to govern the world by force of arms,
she was learning to claim dominion as the divinely appointed guardian and
administrator of the Christian religion. Thus on the site of the ancient
classical city, and inheriting the ancient classical tradition, the mediaeval
Christian Rome was gradually coming into being—the Rome of the Prince of the
Apostles and the Martyrs, the Rome of churches, of monasteries, of pilgrim shrines,
of the Bishops of the Lateran.
It will be advisable to notice briefly a few of the
more important buildings of this new Rome.
Of the great patriarchial churches, the most venerable was the Basilica of Constantine, near the Asinarian Gate—"the mother and head of all the
churches of the city and of the world"—originally dedicated to the
Redeemer, but known since the sixth century as the Basilica of St. John
Lateran. It was a comparatively small building, consisting merely of a nave and
two aisles, but its decorations and ornaments were so splendid as to win for it
the name of the "Golden Basilica." Close by, in the Domus Faustae, was the episcopal palace, where, from the time of
Constantine to the migration to Avignon, the successors of St. Peter had their
residence.
On the other side of the Tiber, in the Vatican
region—a territory already filled with convents, hospitals, and churches—rose
the Basilica of St. Peter. This great church, with its spacious marble-cased
atrium, its nave and four aisles, its ninety-two columns, its semicircular
tribune glistening with mosaics, retained substantially its original form down
to the pontificate of Julius the Second. It was built traditionally by
Constantine, who, according to the Papal biographer, "erected a basilica
over the body of the blessed Peter, which he enclosed in a bronze case."
The workmanship of the edifice was bad, and the building must have seemed mean
when compared with those of a former age. The materials used were taken largely
from other structures, the walls being a patchwork of fragments, and the bases
and capitals of the pillars being dissimilar. Yet the site was hallowed by
memories of the Christian martyrs tortured to death by Nero, and by the
tradition of St. Peter's crucifixion. And, above all, the precious relic of the
Apostle's body lying in its golden vault made the Basilica of the Vatican the centre of the religious life of Rome. The tomb of the
Jewish fisherman was, as it were, the palladium of Roman greatness; it was the
one spot where a Roman could still feel that his city had not entirely lost its
claim upon the reverence of the world. Hither, for the festival on the 29th of
June, came long trains of pilgrims from far-distant lands. Hither the princes
of the earth sent costly offerings to the chief of the Apostles. Here—to take
but a few instances which the first half of the sixth century
supplies—Theodoric, though an Arian and a Goth, "worshipped with the deep
devotion of a Catholic," and presented at the altar two silver
candlesticks seventy pounds in weight. Here Clovis the Frank offered "a
royal gift adorned with precious stones," as the first fruits of his
conversion, and the earnest of the connection which was to be in after-times
between his own successors and those of the Apostle. Justin, too, sent from
Constantinople vessels of gold and silver ornamented with jewels, embroidered
cloths, and volumes of the Gospels in costly bindings set with precious stones;
and similar presents were made by Justinian shortly before the outbreak of the
Gothic War. Lastly, the veteran Belisarius, from his share of the spoils,
dedicated here a golden cross inlaid with gems, on which his victories were
enumerated; and two large candlesticks of silver gilt, which in the ninth
century still stood "before the body of St. Peter." The Vatican
Basilica, thus enriched, gradually came to represent the power of the Roman
Church and the majesty of the Roman city. And when at last Honorius the First
stripped Hadrian's finest temple of its metal tiles to adorn St. Peter's roof,
the act was but the logical conclusion of a sequence of events which had
converted Rome from a city of Emperors and soldiers and jurists into a city of
pilgrims and monks and priests.
Scarcely less rich, and certainly more beautiful than
St. Peter's, was the Basilica of St. Paul—the magnificent church completed by
Honorius on the Ostian Way, where once a chapel
marked the traditional site of the Apostle's martyrdom. It had been superbly
decorated by Galla Placidia, the sister of Honorius, under the guidance of Pope
Leo, and at this time was, perhaps, the most splendid and impressive church in
Rome. The eighty magnificent pillars, the marble casing of the walls, the
gilded ceiling, and the great arch resplendent with mosaics, must have
presented a truly dazzling spectacle for the throngs of pilgrims who came to
pay their vows at the tomb of the Doctor of the Gentiles.
By Tiber's current where the turf on the left bank is
grazed,
And Ostia's road guardeth the hallowed ground,
Our prince's favour there to
Paul a stately fane upraised,
And pranked with golden plates the circuit round.
With branching foil of metal blaze on high the
burnished beams,
The aisles are ruddy as the morning ray;
Of pillars white 'neath gilded vault a fourfold order
gleams,
And arches dyed as green as leas in May.
The Liberian Basilica on the Esquiline, and that of
St. Lawrence outside the walls on the road to Tivoli, complete the number of
the five ancient patriarchal churches of Rome. Of these the former, S. Maria
Maggiore, is interesting for the remarkable mosaics executed by Pope Sixtus the
Third, and also for the fact that it was probably the first Roman church
dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The title conferred on it is supposed to
commemorate the condemnation of Nestorius, and the triumph of the orthodox affirmation
that Mary was indeed the Mother of God. The Church of St. Lawrence, on the site
of the martyr's grave, is alleged to have been founded by Constantine, and was
rebuilt by Gregory's predecessor, Pope Pelagius the Second, who also is
believed to have brought from Constantinople relics of St. Stephen the
Protomartyr, and to have caused them to be placed in St. Lawrence's coffin.
The five basilicas above mentioned had for long been
held in peculiar and universal honour. They were not
assigned to any cardinals, but were presided over by the Bishop of Rome
himself, while the whole body of Christians dispersed throughout the world
constituted their community. By the time of Gregory, moreover, along with these
five, two other basilicas were regarded with special veneration—that of S.
Sebastian on the Appian Way, and that of S. Croce in Gerusalemme.
These, “the seven churches of Rome”, became, from the sixth century, the goal
of pilgrimages, and the central points of Catholic devotion.
Besides these seven great churches, Rome, at this
time, possessed about twenty-eight tituli, or parish churches, in
which the sacraments were regularly administered, and which were each under the
charge of a cardinal-presbyter. Some of these were of great antiquity, and, for
the interest of their associations, equalled the more
celebrated basilicas. Such was S. Pudenziana on the
Esquiline Hill, traditionally the oldest church in Rome, and built where the
house of Pudens had once given harbourage to St. Peter;
such also were S. Clemente, S. Prisca on the Aventine, and S. Prassede. In addition to these twenty-eight tituli,
there were in Rome a multitude of other buildings connected with the service of
religion—churches, chapels, shrines and oratories, hospitals, guest-houses and
convents, the number of which was steadily and incessantly on the increase.
Of the Christian places of worship in this period two
characteristics require a passing notice.
First, their architecture was basilican,
and their distinguishing quality was severe simplicity. On their exteriors
little care was bestowed—in striking contrast to the temples of antiquity.
Their interiors exhibit the same general features—a nave with two aisles
divided by stately lines of columns, a semicircular apse, and (when there
happened to be a transept) an arch in front of the apse. The vacant spaces on
arch and apse and walls were adorned with mosaics, austere and solemn in
conception, but most brilliant in effect. The introduction of such decorations
was not indeed universally acceptable, but it was becoming increasingly common,
and not a few eminent churchmen wrote or spoke in their defence.
Paulinus, for instance, upheld the practice on the ground that pictorial
representations supplied food for thought to the people in the intervals of the
services; and Gregory himself, as we shall see hereafter, supported the custom
for reasons somewhat similar. An atrium, with a fountain in the midst, enclosed
by a colonnade, usually formed the approach to these churches, and not
unfrequently almost hid them from view.
Secondly, the Roman churches were constructed to a
great extent from old materials. We have already remarked this in the case of
the Vatican Basilica; and the Vatican Basilica was no exception to the general
rule. Thus the pavement of the Basilica of St. Paul was patched with more than
nine hundred miscellaneous inscriptions, and its columns were the spoil of
ancient buildings. The Church of St. Peter ad Vincula, again, was adorned with
columns of Greek marble, taken most probably from the Baths of Trajan or of
Titus; the Church of the Holy Apostles was rebuilt by Pelagius with stones and
columns from the Baths of Constantine; the pillars of St. Sabina seem once to
have belonged to the Temple of Diana. In some few instances ancient public
buildings had been appropriated in their entirety for Christian worship. The Templum Sacrae Urbis, for
instance, had been turned into the Church of SS. Cosmas and Damian, and the
Basilica of Junius Bassus had been renamed by Pope Simplicius after St. Andrew.
The actual shrines of paganism, however, were not in Gregory's day turned to
this account. They remained barred and empty, the home of myriads of foul
crawling things, and the haunt (so it was thought) of evil spirits. However, on
May 13, 609, Boniface the Fourth dedicated the Pantheon to the Virgin Mary and
All the Martyrs, and placed in a porphyry basin under the high altar no less
than twenty-eight cart-loads of bones from the Catacombs. And this was the
commencement of a general appropriation of pagan shrines. The Temple of Janus
was dedicated to St. Dionysius; that of Antoninus and Faustina to St. Lawrence;
that of Saturn to the Saviour; and in the vestibule
of the Temple of Venus and Rome a chapel was consecrated to St. Peter. Thus did
Christianity triumph eventually over the ancient gods; but in the sixth
century, as I have said, this wholesale appropriation had not yet begun.
Such, then, was the Rome of Gregory’s childhood—a city
old and dying, yet at the same time newly born to a fresh and vigorous life, a
city of ruined temples and of gorgeous churches, a city from which all that
ministered to worldly glory seemed to have passed away, yet to which the
greater crown of spiritual dominion was on the point of being awarded.
Gregory's Rome was not the Rome of the Republic or the Rome of the Empire; it
was the Rome of the Church, of the Popes, of the Middle Ages.
I will conclude this chapter with a short account of
the situation and power of the Papacy at this time.
(d)
The Papacy in the Sixth Century.
On the 13th of August, 554, the Emperor Justinian
promulgated a document known as the Pragmatic Sanction, in which he formally
declared Italy to be reunited to his Empire, confirmed the acts of the
Ostrogothic sovereigns from Theodoric to Theodahad, and regulated the affairs
of the province in a series of legislative enactments. Of this edict we need
here notice only two sections, which are important for the light they cast on
the position of the Pope. The 19th section, “De Mensuris et Ponderibus”, runs thus : “In order that no
occasion of fraud or injury to the provinces may arise, we decree that produce
be furnished and money received according to those weights and measures which
Our Piety hath by these presents entrusted to the keeping of the most blessed
Pope and the most honourable Senate”.
Here, then, we observe that a matter of purely secular
business is committed to the Bishop of Rome, who, in this regard, is placed on
an administrative equality with the Roman Senate. But the 12th section of the
edict, dealing with the appointment of the civil governors of the Italian
provinces, is even more startling. It is thus worded: “We order, moreover, that
fit and proper persons, able to administer the local government, be chosen as
governors of the provinces by the bishops and chief persons of each province
from the inhabitants of the province itself”.
By this law churchmen were given a certain influence
and control in the Italian provincial government; hence, of course, the Pope,
who as Metropolitan and Patriarch had unbounded influence with the provincial
bishops, obtained indirectly a share in the secular government, not only of his
own city, but also of all the cities in which his provincial bishops resided.
The importance of such an enactment for the extension of the power of the
Papacy is too obvious to require enlarging on.
The Gothic War, then, in many respects, tended to the
advantage of the Pope. In the first place, as I have shown, his legal powers
were extended. And in the second place, his authority was strengthened by the
very circumstances of his environment. In a city beggared alike of rank and
wealth and learning, but devoted to religion, he found himself supreme. The
Emperor was far away at Constantinople, the Byzantine Governor held his court
in Ravenna, the Senate was a pitiless shadow. The few subordinate officials who
occupied the Palatine were not of such standing as seriously to interfere with
him. The Pope was the man of highest rank in Rome, and he represented the only
Roman institution which yet retained vitality, the only one which in an age of
universal corruption and decay continued fresh and vigorous. To the Church men
looked for maintenance and guidance, and the Pope was head of the Church. Hence
his authority, though still vague and undefined, was none the less real and
acknowledged; and as the Emperor's hold on Italy grew laxer, and the wealth and
power of the Church increased, the claims of the successor of St. Peter became
more daring and far-reaching, until at last all independent secular
jurisdiction was completely set aside.
Nevertheless, before the time of Gregory's
pontificate, the Papal power was very far from being consolidated. On the
contrary, the prestige of the Bishops of Rome had fallen low, and, at the
first, the Byzantine conquest seemed to have brought them nothing but
mortification and misfortune. A glance at the history of the time will make
this evident.
During the period of the Gothic monarchy, the Popes,
on the whole, were considerately treated, and permitted to exercise a very wide
discretion in the management of ecclesiastical affairs. But in spite of the
concessions made to them by the Arian government, they were dissatisfied. It is
pretty clear that Felix, Boniface, and John the Second, while keeping on good
terms with the Goths, yet secretly hankered after the rule of the orthodox
Emperor. Pope Agapetus also seems to have shared this sentiment. On his visit
to Constantinople, this prelate commenced, indeed, by abusing Justinian as “a
new Diocletian”, but he succeeded in persuading him to degrade from his see the
Monophysite Patriarch, Anthimus, and to appoint the orthodox Mennas in his room; and this act of compliance on the part
of the Emperor so pleased Agapetus that he too began to cherish an ideal of
reunion between the orthodox Roman Church and the orthodox Roman Emperor. The
realization of this ideal, however, was left to the succeeding Pope, Silverius,
who in 536 actually invited Belisarius to Rome, and persuaded the Romans to
deliver up their city to the Catholic Emperor's general.
But the Popes soon had good reason to regret their
Gothic masters. Silverius, in his hostility to the Arians, had overlooked the
theological caprices of Justinian and the Monophysite leanings of the
all-powerful Theodora. The Empress, who “clung to her Monophysite creed as if
it had been some new form of sensual gratification”, strongly resented the
deposition of Anthimus, and was resolved by any means to restore him to his
dignities. In 537, accordingly, she wrote abruptly to Silverius: “Delay not to
come to us, or, at least, restore Anthimus to his see”. Silverius groaned aloud
when he read the letter, and exclaimed, “Now I know that this affair will bring
about my death”. Nevertheless, putting his trust in God and St. Peter, he
replied: “Most Noble Empress, never will I do what you ask, or recall a heretic
who has been condemned in his wickedness”.
It chanced that at this time there resided at
Constantinople, as Papal representative, a certain Vigilius, an ambitious and
unscrupulous man of aristocratic parentage and sympathies. In 532 this person
had been nominated by Pope Boniface the Second as his own successor in the Holy
See; but this flagrant infringement of the elective rights of the clergy and
people had provoked such a tumult that Boniface was compelled to bum the
obnoxious decree, acknowledging it to be contrary to law. The failure of this
attempt naturally deprived Vigilius of any chance he might have had of being
elected by fair means to the coveted office. But he did not yet abandon all
hope. His influence was sufficient to procure him the post of
"apocrisiarius" or Papal ambassador, at Constantinople; and here he
settled down to watch the course of events and await his opportunity for
striking a blow for the great ecclesiastical prize. The quarrel between
Silverius and the Empress gave him the opening he desired.
Theodora and Vigilius soon came to an agreement.
Theodora, for her part, promised the Nuncio a considerable sum of money and the
bishopric of Rome; while on his side Vigilius undertook virtually to annul the
Council of Chalcedon by formally recognizing as his brethren in the faith the
Monophysite Anthimus, Theodosius patriarch of Alexandria, and Severus of
Antioch. These preliminaries completed, Vigilius set out for Italy, bearing
written orders to Belisarius to seek out a pretext for degrading Silverius, or
at least to send him speedily to Constantinople.
This commission was little to the mind of a general
who, with all his faults, was a man of honour and
integrity. He is said to have exclaimed, on reading the letter, "I will do
her bidding, but he who gains by the death of Silverius shall answer for it to
the Lord Jesus Christ." Yet Belisarius had not the courage to disobey, and
his wife Antonina, who was under obligation to the Empress, spurred him on. A
ridiculous charge of treason was accordingly trumped up against Silverius, and
a letter was manufactured in which he was represented as offering to open the Asinarian Gate to the Goths, and to deliver up the city.
Even now Belisarius made an effort to save the unhappy Pope. He sent for him to
his palace on the Pincian, and earnestly advised him
to submit to Theodora and restore Anthimus. Silverius refused to entertain the
proposal; but he took the precaution, when the interview was ended, of quitting
the Lateran, and taking sanctuary in the Church of St. Sabina on the Aventine.
Hence, after an interval, Belisarius summoned him a second time, and urged him
once again to accede to the Imperial demand. This audience, like the former,
was without result; no violence, however, was offered to the person of the
Pope, who was permitted to return in safety to his asylum. At last there came a
third summons, and Silverius rightly judged that the end was at hand.
Surrounded by his weeping clergy and friends, he went in mournful procession to
the Pincian Palace. “At the first and second veils”
his attendants were stopped, and he “passed on alone, and was seen no more”.
The Pope was taken straight to the general's cabinet, where he found Antonina
reclining on a couch, and Belisarius sitting at her feet. As soon as he
entered, the shameless woman cried out, "What have we and the Romans done
to you, Pope Silverius, that you should betray us into the hands of the
Goths?" While she was speaking, John, Subdeacon of the First Region, tore
the pallium from the Bishop's shoulders. He was then hustled into an adjoining
room, and compelled to change his vestments for a monk's frock; and meanwhile
Sixtus, subdeacon of the Sixth Region, curtly announced to the waiting clergy,
"Pope Silverius is deposed, and has become a monk." The priests fled.
The abandoned Pontiff was handed over to Vigilius, who sent him into exile at
Patara in Lycia. In the same month, by the command of Belisarius, the farce of
an election was gone through, and Vigilius was consecrated Bishop of Rome.
Curiously enough, Justinian himself seems to have been
ignorant of these transactions. At any rate, when the Bishop of Patara,
sympathizing with Silverius, made representations in his favour at Constantinople, the Emperor instantly gave orders that the exiled Pope
should be brought to trial at Rome: if innocent of the charges brought against
him, he was to be reinstated in his dignities; if guilty, he was to be allowed
his choice of any bishopric other than that of Rome. Silverius, however,
benefited little by this favour. When he arrived in
Rome he was once more delivered over to his rival, who banished him to the
Island of Palmaria, and shortly afterwards procured
his death by violence or starvation. Such was the end of Silverius.
It was now the turn of Vigilius to drink of the cup of
humiliation. After his consecration he had declared his adhesion to the Four
General Councils, his acceptance of the Tome of Leo, and his approval of the
anathema of Mennas against the Monophysites. Of
course, he dared not in the beginning fulfill the terms of his compact with
Theodora; and as time went on he found that the difficulties in the way of his
doing so increased rather than diminished. At length, when the demands of the
Empress became pressing, he wrote a secret letter to his "brethren "
Anthimus, Theodosius, and Severus, in which he declared that he held and always
had held a belief identical with theirs, but pledged them to keep the matter
secret for the present. With this letter he enclosed a confession of faith
which, according to Liberatus, was heretical and subversive of the Tome of Leo.
These documents satisfied the Empress for a time. When, however, she found that
the Pope showed no signs of taking further steps, she grew angry and impatient,
and wrote to him "to fulfill the promise you made of your own free will
concerning our father Anthimus, and recall him to his office." But the
Vigilius who made the engagement was a very different man from the Vigilius who
was called upon to execute it. As Pope he was no longer free. It was utterly
impossible for him to annul the acts of his predecessors, or tamper with the
inveterate traditions of the Apostolic See. Not the meanest of all his
suffragans would for one moment have tolerated such an outrage. So Vigilius,
having to choose between the fury of the Empress and the revolt of all the
West, accepted the former as the lesser evil, and forwarded the following reply
to his former confederate: "Far be it from me to do this thing. Aforetime I
spoke wrongly and foolishly; but now I will in no wise consent to recall a man
that is a heretic and under ban of anathema. Although I be an unworthy vicar of
the blessed Apostle Peter, yet what can be said against my holy predecessors,
Agapetus and Silverius, who condemned him?"
Theodora was not a woman one could play with. She
received the defiance in August, 545, and she instantly despatched an officer to Rome with these instructions: "If you find the Pope in the
Basilica of St. Peter, spare him; if in the Lateran, or the palace, or any
church, instantly put him on board ship and bring him hither to us. And if you
do not do thus, by Him who liveth for ever, I will
have you flayed alive."
It seems that Vigilius was unpopular with the Romans,
who accused him, among other things, of killing a notary by a blow on the face,
and of causing his own nephew to be beaten to death. Theodora's emissary,
therefore, did not apprehend any serious opposition to the arrest. On the 22nd
of November, 545, Vigilius went in state from the Lateran to the Church of S.
Caecilia in Trastevere, to assist at the patronal
festival and to give the communion to the people. While thus engaged, he was
addressed by the Byzantine officer, who requested him to accompany him to the
ship. The Pope obeyed. The people, stunned by the suddenness of the affair,
followed in large crowds, beseeching the Bishop's prayers; and when Vigilius
had offered a short petition, they all cried, "Amen." The ship then
weighed anchor. But as the Romans watched it glide away, they were suddenly
seized with a strange frenzy, and catching up any missile that came to hand,
they hurled it after their departing Bishop, shrieking, "Hunger go with
thee ! mortality go with thee! thou hast done evil to the Romans: may evil find
thee wherever thou goest!" With these ill-omened
cries ringing in his ears, the fifty-ninth bishop of Rome was escorted to
Sicily, where he seems to have remained in partial confinement for over a year.
The affair of Anthimus was now dropped, or at least
was overshadowed by the controversy of the Three Chapters. It is, indeed,
possible that Vigilius’s removal to Sicily was occasioned as much by his
refusal to subscribe to Justinian's edict of 543, as by the animus of Theodora.
And if so, his exile in Sicily was intended at once as a punishment and as a
means of persuading him to withdraw his opposition. Since, however, exile was
not sufficient to break his spirit, Vigilius was at length summoned to the Imperial
city itself. The history of this miserable controversy of the Three Chapters
will be related in the sequel; here we need only remark the loss of Papal
prestige which was its immediate result. The Pope, indeed, presented to the
world a sorry spectacle. The West was at once indignant and amazed when it
beheld its Patriarch and foremost Bishop, now clinging to the breaking pillars
of an altar, while rude soldiers, dragging at hair and beard and legs, sought
to tear him from his asylum; now sweating and trembling in his prison
bed-chamber, listening in terror to the calls of the sentries, and dreading
each moment lest they should break in and assassinate him; now furtively
squeezing his portly frame through a small hole in the palace wall when he fled
for safety to the Church of St. Euphemia. Such humiliations were little
calculated to enhance the dignity of the successor of St. Peter. Still less
conducive to respect was the irresolution exhibited by the Pope himself, whose
tergiversations, recantations, and final abject submission, made his name a
byword for his own and all succeeding generations. It was a distinct relief to
the Roman clergy when, on June 7, 555, Vigilius expired in Sicily, thus making
a vacancy for a man of stronger calibre.
Vigilius was succeeded by Pelagius, the brave
Archdeacon who had played a prominent part in the Gothic War. He had
accompanied the late Pope to Constantinople, where he succeeded in so
conciliating the favour of Justinian, that the latter
had even proposed to supersede Vigilius and elevate Pelagius to his place. This
project, indeed, had not been carried out, but when news came of Vigilius's
death, Justinian at once made known his wish that Pelagius should be elected as
his successor.
At Rome, however, Pelagius was received with grave
suspicion. It was reported that he had bought the bishopric; and a rumour—quite unfounded, it seems—had got about that he had
even been accessory to the death of his predecessor. So universally was this
story believed, that it was impossible to find three bishops willing to
consecrate him, and the ceremony was at last performed by the bishops of
Perugia and Florence, assisted by Andrew, a presbyter of Ostia. At once the
majority of the clergy, monks, and nobles withdrew from his communion.
In this crisis it was necessary for the Pope to take
immediate steps to clear himself of the charges, and to regain, if possible,
the attachment of his flock. He accordingly consulted with Narses, and the plan
which they agreed upon was eminently characteristic of the times. Already,
partly owing to the Christian regard for the solemnity of an oath, partly to
the increasing difficulty of conducting judicial investigations, partly perhaps
to the example of Teutonic nations, it was becoming more and more usual to
allow accused persons, particularly bishops, to purge themselves on oath at the
shrine of some saints. Now, the Roman saint, Pancratius, as Gregory of Tours
informs us, enjoyed a high reputation as an avenger of perjury.
To the Church of St. Pancras, therefore, on the
Janiculum just beyond the walls, the Pope and the Patrician repaired, and from
there they walked in solemn procession, chanting litanies, to the Basilica of
St. Peter. Pelagius passed up the nave and entered the ambo, where, taking the
Gospels in his hand and laying a cross upon his head, he swore before all the
people that he had done nothing to occasion or to hasten the death of his
predecessor. Then he denounced in fiery terms all those connected with the Church,
from the doorkeeper to the bishop, who attempted to gain office by bribes, and
he called on all his hearers to assist him to stamp out utterly the crime of
simony.
This ceremony of purgation (which Gregory may have
witnessed) appeased the Romans, and for the rest of his pontificate the
authority of Pelagius was established in the city. But beyond the walls the
case was different. The controversy on the Three Chapters and the acceptance of
the decrees of the Fifth Council by Vigilius and Pelagius, had occasioned a
formidable schism. In Sicily and Southern Italy, indeed, the authority of the
Pope was maintained. The bishops were not required formally to accept the obnoxious
decrees: the fact that they continued in communion with the bishop of Rome was
taken as sufficient proof of their orthodoxy. In other parts of Italy, however,
many bishops revolted, and even went to the length of striking the name of
Pelagius out of the diptychs. The bishops of Tuscia sent him a formal remonstrance; the metropolitans of Milan and Aquileia
renounced his communion; even in remote Gaul it was rumoured that Pelagius had abandoned the faith of the Council of Chalcedon, and King
Childebert applied to him for an explicit statement of his belief. To all these
criticisms and attacks Pelagius replied with dignity and vigour.
He emphatically proclaimed his assent to the decrees of the Four General
Councils and to the Tome of Leo, anathematizing all who dissented from them. He
did not require any bishop to accept explicitly the decrees of the Fifth
Council, but he dwelt with emphasis on the sin and danger of schism. He warned
bishops that by rejecting his communion they were severing themselves from the
Church of Christ, and he cordially invited all who still felt scruples to come
to Rome and discuss the matter with him personally.
Besides these arguments, Pelagius endeavoured to employ another less convincing. Narses the Governor was, as I have said, a
man of strong religious feelings, and to him the Pope appealed to crush out the
evil by forcible means. "Do not be deterred," he wrote, "by the
silly objection that the Church is persecuting ... No man is a persecutor
unless he constrains people to do what is wrong. He who punishes evil deeds or
prevents their commission is not a persecutor, but a friend ... That schism is
an evil, and that schismatics should be put down by the secular arm, we learn
both from Holy Scripture and the Fathers. But whoever is separated from the
Apostolic See is undoubtedly in schism ... Do not hesitate, therefore, to
repress such persons by your authority as governor and judge ... There are a
thousand examples and a thousand decrees which clearly prove that those who
cause division in the Holy Church should be punished by the officers of the
State, not only with exile, but also with confiscation of property and severe
imprisonment." Whether Narses ever took steps in accordance with the
Pope's wishes, we do not know. It is certain, however, that the schism
continued in Northern Italy, creating a regrettable division of strength at a
time when the closest union was absolutely necessary for the welfare of the
country.
Pelagius died in the year 560, and John the Third was
elected in his stead. But at this point we will leave for a time the
consideration of the Papacy. The strength and the weakness of its position at
this period have been pointed out. Its strength lay in the increase of its
legal jurisdiction, and the removal of the secular government to so great a
distance from Rome. Its weakness arose from the Italian schism, and Justinian's
love of interfering even in matters purely ecclesiastical. The causes of weakness,
however, were soon to be lessened or removed, while the elements of strength
were destined to be multiplied. Thus the prospects of the Papacy were hopeful.
For the Popes, as for Rome itself, a new age was about to begin.
BOOK I. CHAPTER III.GREGORY’S EDUCATION
|
||
|
|
|