Kitabı oku: «Peter's Rock in Mohammed's Flood, from St. Gregory the Great to St. Leo III», sayfa 15

So ten years after the emperor Constantine IV. in the Sixth Council and the Council itself asked from the Pope for the confirmation of its decrees, his son Justinian II. required the Pope as his subject to accept as one of five patriarchs, three of whom it may be said were nonentities, a position of subjection to himself in the spiritual domain. The place left for the Pope's signature after that of the emperor and before that of the bishop of Constantinople graphically represents the idea which Justinian II. was seeking to impose. The Pope was to sign as patriarch and first of the five, not as the successor of St. Peter, who in virtue of his Primacy “set his seal,” according to the expression of the Sixth Council, on the whole. In the Trullan canons, the Byzantine idea having evolved itself with undeviating encroachment during three centuries, appears complete. Its completeness is shewn in two things. Constantine IV. asked the Pope to confirm the Council; his son Justinian confirms it himself, and the council which he would confirm exhibits an eastern primacy seated at Constantinople. It admits not only the priority, but in a certain sense the superiority of the Roman primacy; but it would keep both the eastern and the western primacy under the imperial control. The eastern primacy would make itself the chief instrument of this control, and so practically put itself above the western.

As has been seen above, the emperors through four patriarchs of their capital tried during forty years to force the Monothelite heresy on the Popes. In like manner from the Trullan Council they tried to force the Greek discipline and the eastern primate upon the Popes. Had they succeeded the ambition of the Byzantine prelates would have reached its full success. The imperial residence on the Bosphorus would have taken the place of old Rome. The city of Constantine, fighting for very existence with the ever-advancing Mohammedan, tried this last stroke in its hour of greatest weakness.

Turning to Rome at this time we find a very rapid succession of Popes, for which we have no information enabling us to account. They are also frequently Greeks or Orientals; and here the suspicion arises that the exarch of the emperor had influenced the election in the hope that some national feeling might affect them in the administration of their office. St. Agatho, who died in January, 681, was a Sicilian of Palermo, St. Leo II., who succeeded in 682 and died 683, was likewise a Sicilian. The next, Benedict II., a Roman, sat only from June, 684, to May, 685; his successor, John V., a Syrian, of Antioch, only from July, 685, to August, 686, and Conon, a Thracian, from October, 686, to September, 687. The following election was remarkable. There were two parties among the electors – one for the archpriest Theodore, the other for the archdeacon Paschalis. Both were in the Lateran palace. Here both sides agreed to elect the priest Sergius. One of the rival candidates, Theodore, did him homage at once; the other, Paschalis, very unwillingly, and he secretly called in the exarch from Ravenna to his aid. The exarch, John Platina, came suddenly to Rome. He convinced himself that the choice of Sergius was canonical and that of the large majority, but as Paschalis had promised him a donation of a hundred pounds' weight of gold, he insisted upon being paid this sum from the Church's treasury. Sergius was obliged to submit, and thereupon was consecrated in December, 687, and sat till 701.

Pope Sergius was born at Palermo, of Syrian parentage, his father having settled there from Antioch. He had come to Rome in the time of Pope Adeodatus, had recommended himself by his ability, and had passed through the various ranks of the clergy. His eastern parentage did not prevent his offering as strenuous an opposition to the heretical suggestions of the Greek emperor as his predecessors had shewn. One and the same spirit lived in all the Popes: the will and the genius of government. The natural quality of the old Romans had been transfigured by the supernatural gift belonging to the Church. The restless spirit of Byzantium, inexhaustible in the production of new theological doctrines, which at least maintained a continuous interest on the popular mind, tried in vain all the arms of Greek sophistry and dialectic skill against the rock of Peter. They recoiled from the sturdy Roman understanding and only helped the Popes in their work of massing the western fabric of concentrated discipline.

The rank of Rome as the holy city, reverence for the head of the universal Church, veneration of the apostle Peter, had mounted higher and higher at this time in the West. If St. Peter had already enjoyed, at the period of the Gothic denomination, a worship which impressed the Greeks, his influence now had become more decided, characteristic, and world-wide. It dwelt not so much on his martyrdom, on his high rank as an apostle, but rather on his being the founder of the Roman Church and its see. The invisible saint in heaven was the possessor in title of many domains and patrimonies on earth: the theocratic king of Rome. He had begun to consider its people as his own, he counted upon its political government, which he transmitted like a celestial fief to the Popes his successors. His golden tomb at Rome in a Basilica radiant with gold had gradually become the symbol of the Church and of the salvation which the world received from this his institution. Pilgrims from the furthest lauds now streamed to venerate it. The Anglo-Saxons especially, in the glow of their first conversion, were impelled by a passionate yearning to Rome. At the moment that the East sent its pilgrims to Mecca and Medina, swarms of pious pilgrims from Gaul, Spain, and Britain descended the Alps to cast their eyes upon eternal Rome and prostrate themselves before St. Peter's tomb, which had become the sanctuary of the West.

In the year 689 the young king of Wessex, Cadwalla, excited the greatest admiration. After many battles at home, he sheathed his sword and undertook the long journey to Rome to receive baptism from Pope Sergius himself. There on Easter eve the long-haired barbarian king was seen in the white dress of the illuminated at the porphyry baptismal font of the Lateran, with the wax candle in his hand, and received the name of Peter. He lived but eight days after, and was buried in the atrium of St. Peter's, with a long inscription, still extant. It said how King Cadwalla, for the love of God, left his throne, his family, his country, all that the valour of his ancestors and his own had gained him, coming far over land and sea as a royal guest to behold Peter, and Peter's see. He died at thirty years of age, in the reign of the Lord Justinian, in the second year of the pontificate of the apostolic man, Pope Sergius.

Cadwalla's appearance at Rome was a prelude to those long centuries wherein the Teutonic West would bow before the spiritual authority of the Pope. Twenty years later two other Anglo-Saxon kings, Conrad of Mercia, and Offa of Essex, came to Rome, not to be baptised, for they were already Christians, but to change the royal robe for the monkish cowl. Their long hair was cut off and dedicated to the apostle, and after living as monks under the shadow of the Vatican, they received a grave in the atrium of the Basilica, as a pledge that they had entered the company of the saints. It was not long before Rome had a Saxon colony in the neighbourhood of the Vatican.

Sergius raised a monument to St. Leo the Great in St. Peter's itself. It was the first example, as hitherto the Popes had either been buried in the cemeteries outside the walls or in the atrium of the Basilica. But from the time that in 688 Pope Sergius had translated the body of St. Leo into the transept itself, and raised an altar over it, other very distinguished Popes received the like honour.

But Pope Sergius also received a special messenger from his lord Justinian II. He had sent the canons of the eastern Council of 692, held in his palace, to the Pope, requesting him to sign them on the line left vacant between his own signature and that of his patriarch. The Greeks were above all things anxious to obtain their acceptance by the Pope. This was refused by Pope Sergius, who forbade the acts of the Council to be published. Upon this the emperor sent a high officer to Rome, who carried off to Constantinople John, bishop of Porto, and Boniface, counsellor of the apostolic see. But he did not stop with this. He sent likewise the captain of his guards, Zacharias, with orders to seize the Pope and deport him to Constantinople. But by the mercy of God, and help of Peter, prince of the apostles, who guarded his own Church, the heart of the army of Ravenna, and also of the duchy of Pentapolis (that is the five cities, Ancona, Umana, Pesaro, Fano, and Rimini), was moved not to allow the Pontiff of the Apostolic See to go up to the royal city. And when the soldiers had assembled in a multitude from all sides, Zacharias the guardsman, in fear and trepidation lest he should be killed by the angry crowd, besought the Pope that the gates might be closed, but he himself took refuge with the Pope, and besought him with tears, that he would take pity on him and not suffer him to be killed. Now the army of Ravenna had entered by St. Peter's gate, and reached the Lateran palace in its ardour to catch sight of the Pope, who was said to have been taken away in the night, and put in a vessel. The gates of the palace, both upper and lower, had been shut. They threatened to tear them down unless they were opened. The guardsman Zacharias, in his extreme terror and despair, had crept under the Pope's bed. He had lost his senses, but the Pope comforted him, and came out and seated himself on the basilic of St. Sebastian, in the seat called “under the apostles,” where with mild words he turned away the wrath of the soldiers and people, but they would not leave the palace until with mocks and gibes they had turned the guardsman out of Rome.

So after forty years Justinian II. had repeated the worst deed of his grandfather Constans. Had Pope Sergius been taken to Constantinople the same lot awaited him there as had befallen his martyred predecessor Pope Martin. Yet in the interval the emperor's own father had acknowledged in the amplest terms the authority of St. Peter's successor. But the people of Rome as well as the emperor's own army at Ravenna and in central Italy had learnt rather to defend the Pope than to yield to an unjust outrage.

Justinian, at this time beaten in the field by Saracens and Bulgarians, was anxious to improve the beauty of his palace, by constructing a magnificent fountain and esplanade, from which he could better view the party of the Blues which he favoured. Now a church stood in the way of this enlargement, and he called upon Callinicus, who had succeeded Paul as patriarch in 693, to use the prayers customary when a church was pulled down. The patriarch replied that he had prayers for the building of churches, but none for their demolition. The emperor insisted, and Callinicus so far yielded as to use the prayer, “Glory be to God, now and for ever more, who allows and endures even this”. After which the church was pulled down.

Three years afterwards the tyranny of Justinian met with its reward. He had prepared a massacre, in which also the patriarch would have been included. The patrician Leontius, a general of merit, had been imprisoned for some years. He was set free and ordered to Greece. On his way he lamented his fate to some friends. They advised him to rise against the emperor. He presented himself at the prætorium, gained admission in the emperor's name, overpowered the officer in command, set free the prisoners under his charge, some of the best men in the city who had been confined there for six or even eight years. Leontius then with his friends marched through the streets, inviting all Christians to Sancta Sophia. He went to the patriarch who knew that he was involved in the sentence of death intended by Justinian. The patriarch accompanied Leontius to the baptistery where a great multitude had assembled and uttered these words: “This is the day which the Lord has made”. It became the signal for a general insurrection. The people rushed to the hippodrome. Thither in the morning Justinian was brought. His nose and tongue were both maimed, and he was banished to the Crimea. And Leontius reigned in his stead.

But Leontius was not fortunate in war. He had dethroned by this sudden revolution the fifth sovereign in the line of Heraclius. In three years an army which dreaded punishment because it had not saved Carthage from the Saracens rebelled against him; he was deposed by another officer, Apsimar or Tiberius II., who lasted seven years from 698 to 705. At that time the banished and maimed Justinian was enabled by help of the Bulgarians to recover possession of Constantinople. Then began the time of vengeance not only on the two usurpers, as he deemed them, who had sat between them ten years on his throne, but on all who had supported them. Leontius and Apsimar were carried in chains through all the streets. Then, as the games in the circus were proceeding and the people crowding to them, they were thrown prostrate before the emperor who was seen seated with a foot on the neck of each, while the crowd as they went by shouted, “Thou hast trodden upon the asp and the basilisk, and trampled on the lion and the dragon”. When the games were over Justinian removed his foot from the necks of his fallen rivals, and dismissed them to be beheaded. The patriarch Callinicus he deprived of sight, and banished to Rome, and put in his stead Cyrus, a monk, who had foretold his restoration. He slew a vast multitude of civilians and soldiers. He tied men up in sacks, and threw them into the sea. He invited men to a great banquet, and as they rose from it had them hung or beheaded. In the meantime, while these events took place at Constantinople, Pope Sergius had closed in honour his pontificate of thirteen years and eight months, in September, 701. The native soldiers of Italy had defended him against the attempt of Justinian, and during all his pontificate he refused to recognise the Trullan canons. He was succeeded in less than two months by another Greek, Pope John VI. At the time Tiberius Apsimar was emperor, having dethroned Leontius. He ordered his exarch Theophylact to proceed to Rome. He was supposed to come with a bad intent against the Pope. Italian troops from the provinces flocked to Rome, and the city also rose against him. The Pope again, as in the time of Pope Sergius, ordered the gates to be closed; induced the Italians to retire from Rome, and saved the exarch. Without troops himself he possessed a greater influence over the Italians than the exarch. This Pope also induced the Lombard Duke of Beneventum to retire from an attack on Campania, in which he had done much harm. Pope John from the treasury of the Church redeemed his captives. We hear nothing of the exarch giving help either to defend or to ransom the emperor's subjects.

After little more than three years John VI. was succeeded by another Greek, John VII. He was consecrated in March, 705. In the autumn of that year Justinian II. regained his throne. He sent at once two Metropolitans to Rome, to urge the Pope to accept the Trullan canons. The Pope returned the canons in silence. He did not accept the Council of 692 any more than his predecessors. He died in 707, and was followed by Sisinnius, a Syrian, who sat but 20 days, and his successor Constantine, also a Syrian, was consecrated in March, 708, the seventh Pope in succession who came from Syria or the Greek empire.

In the year 709, Justinian II. wreaked his vengeance on Ravenna, stored up during the ten years of his banishment, whether it was that their opposition with that of Pope Sergius had rankled in his mind, or that they had rejoiced at his fall, or, at any rate, that they had not been faithful to him. Now, at length, he sent the patrician Theodore, who commanded the army in Sicily, with a fleet against them. The chief people of the city, including the archbishop Felix, were enticed by the general to his ship, where they were received by twos in his tent. They were then seized, gagged, and put into confinement below. The Greeks landed, burned and plundered the city, and killed many. The chief captives were carried to Byzantium, and brought before the emperor, who sat on a throne studded with emeralds, and wore a diadem of pearls embroidered with gold. As soon as he saw them, he ordered them to execution, contenting himself with only blinding archbishop Felix, and banishing him to Pontus.

Intense was the hatred of Byzantium kindled in Italy by such deeds. It was at this time that Justinian II., by an imperial letter, summoned Pope Constantine to his capital. The Pope obeyed the command, and set sail from Porto on the 10th October, 710, accompanied by a considerable attendance. After he had left Rome, the exarch, John Rhizocapus, came, in the emperor's name, to Rome, and put to death four of the chief officers of the papal court, and “going to Ravenna, there for his most foul misdeeds perished by a most ignominious death”.

Pope Constantine passed by Naples and Sicily, and wintered at Otranto. Here he received an imperial order, requiring the magistrates to treat him wherever he went with the same honour as the emperor himself. When he reached Constantinople, the young son of the emperor, the highest nobility, the patriarch Cyrus, with the clergy, and a great multitude, came out seven miles to meet him. The Pope, wearing the dress which he wore at Rome in great ceremonies, entered the city with his train, riding the imperial horses richly caparisoned. They were taken in triumph first to the royal palace, and then to the Pope's own abode at the Placidia palace. Justinian, being at Nicæa, sent him a letter full of thanks, and begged the Pope to meet him at Nicomedia. When they met, the emperor, wearing his crown, threw himself at the Pope's feet, and kissed them. They then embraced to the great joy of the people.

It appears that the Deacon Gregory, the next successor of Pope Constantine, was attending on him, and that he answered with great ability certain questions put by the emperor. They are supposed to have referred to the Trullan canons. They were not confirmed. The later practice of the Roman Church, with regard to these canons, continued to be to suffer those only to hold, which were not contrary to the decrees of the Popes and the western discipline. On the Sunday, the Pope celebrated Mass before the emperor, who received Communion from him; besought him to pray that his sins might be forgiven, renewed all the privileges of the Roman Church, and left the Pope free, to return home. That return was delayed by the frequent sicknesses of the Pope. At length, however, he reached Gaeta in safety, where a great number of clergy and of the Roman people met him, and he entered Rome in joy in October, 711.

But the Pope had left behind him, and counselled in vain, an emperor bent on his own destruction. Justinian had conceived a furious hatred against the town of Cherson. He had sent a large fleet against it. Its chief men were taken away and cruelly tortured. The fleet itself was afterwards utterly wrecked by a tempest: upon which Justinian prepared another, under fresh commanders, who were instructed to inflict fresh cruelties. In the end the people of Cherson was driven into revolt. They proclaimed emperor Bardanes, one of the commanders of the fleet. Another officer, a chamberlain of Justinian, whom he had frightfully injured, and who expected to be killed by him, joined in the revolt. He was sent by Bardanes to seize Justinian, persuaded the soldiers to desert him, fell upon him, and, with his sword, cut off his head, which he sent at once to Bardanes, who forthwith despatched it by the same soldier to Rome. And thus the extinction of the race of Heraclius was signified to the West by the exposure of his head. His only son, Tiberius, a boy of ten, had already been slaughtered like a sheep.

Thus it was that Pope Constantine, three months after his return to Rome, received tidings that Justinian was killed, and that Philippicus Bardanes had taken his place. In these days theology had so penetrated every relation of life that every emperor, on his accession, was accustomed to send his profession of belief to the highest bishops of his empire. That of Philippicus unhappily signified to the Pope that he was a Monothelite. Thereupon Pope Constantine, in council, refused to accept his letter.

In fact, the Armenian officer who had at length put an end to the life and crimes of Justinian II., had no sooner obtained recognition as emperor, than he resolved to overthrow the Sixth Council, and establish the heresy which it had condemned. In the year and a-half, during which he reigned, he caused a council to meet at Constantinople. He deposed the patriarch Cyrus, who would not yield to his wishes: and put in his place the deacon, John, who was more submissive. This council, whose Acts were buried with the emperor, and whose numbers are not known, ordered the Monothelite heresy to be subscribed by all. Most of the bishops, with miserable cowardice, gave way to the will of the court. Among the number is said to have been even Germanus, then archbishop of Cyzicus, and afterwards, as patriarch of Constantinople, a firm defender of the faith. Only a few bishops, like Zeno of Sinope, resisted. The copy of the Acts of the Sixth Council, kept in the palace, was burnt. At Rome, the Pope's rejection of the new emperor's creed was taken up by the people with the utmost zeal. They would not receive his image in the church, nor bear the mention of his name in the Mass, nor tolerate his coin.

But, in eighteen months, his own profligate life caused him to be deposed. Two officers of high rank, one of them commanding the forces in the neighbouring provinces, determined to rid the empire of such a master. An emissary of theirs, entering on Whitsun eve suddenly by the golden gate, with a company of soldiers, gained admittance to the emperor's chamber, and carried him off unconscious from the effect of a drunken carouse on his birthday. They took him to the hippodrome, and there blinded him. On the next day, being Pentecost, the people were assembled in the great church, and Artemius, the first secretary, was crowned, and his name changed to Anastasius. On the following Saturday, he punished with blindness the two conspirators who had so treated his predecessor.

Thus Rome and the East were suddenly delivered from a revolution which had fallen upon them with equal suddenness, a fresh domination of the Monothelite heresy. All acts done by the government of the fallen Philippicus were annulled, and the Sixth Council solemnly proclaimed afresh by clergy and people at Rome. There was great rejoicing at the fall of Philippicus, and the rise of Anastasius, who sent to the Pope a letter containing his orthodox belief.

It is to be noted also that the patriarch of Constantinople, John VI., who had been put into the place of Cyrus by Philippicus, had joined in the emperor's acts against the Sixth Council, and led the council which rejected it, now wrote to Pope Constantine to excuse himself for having yielded to force. He began the letter with these words: —

“God, who has constructed the magnificence of visible things as a mark of His own Godhead and power, has specially in the formation of man, the most honoured of the sensible creation, shown His glory and wisdom, so that the prophet cried out, ‘Such knowledge is too wonderful for me’. Now, the Maker of our nature, designing the head to be over the whole body, placed in it the most important of our senses, and caused all the movement and perfection of the other limbs to spring from it, and be preserved in it. If one of these meet with loss or injury, it is not left without care, but the head shows a natural sympathy even to the extremest parts of the body, and heals the local suffering by the hand's ministry and the eye's guidance, the aid of which it does not refuse as useless. With this we can compare your own apostolical pre-eminence, counting you, according to the canons, as the head of the Christian priesthood. And so with reason we ask of you to be released from the discouragement which has fallen on the body of the Church by the pestilent exercise of tyrannical power.”

The patriarch further beseeches the Pope to pardon his fault that under this stress he had rejected the doctrine of the Sixth Council, in the words: “Since you are the disciple and the successor of him who heard from the Lord, ‘Simon, Simon, behold Satan has sought to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not: and thou when thou art converted confirm thy brethren,’ you are a debtor to supply what is needed for the correction which confirms, and also to show a sympathetic kindness”.

Pope Constantine is the fifth and also the last Pope who paid a visit to Constantinople. As these visits cast an important light upon the condition during two hundred years under which, being acknowledged as successors of St. Peter, they exercised as subjects in the civil order their supreme authority in the Church, I think it belongs to the matter now treated to refer to the facts and results of each visit. Pope John I., who sat from 523 to 525, was a subject of King Theodorich, and was summoned by him to Ravenna. There he was compelled, much against his will, to go with three senators on an embassy to the emperor Justin I. Theodorich was most indignant that the emperor had required Arians in his empire to give back their churches to the Catholics. He threatened the Pope that if this treatment was not reversed he would drown Italy in blood. So the Pope, being sick, went with the senators to Constantinople. On their arrival the whole city went out with wax lights and bannered crosses in honour of the blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul, for the Greeks testified that from the time of Constantine and St. Silvester they had never merited to receive a successor of St. Peter. Then the emperor Justin, doing honour to God, threw himself to the ground upon his face and worshipped the most blessed Pope John. Pope John and the senators besought him with many tears to accept their legation. The emperor rejoiced that he had been found worthy to see in his kingdom a successor of St. Peter and was gloriously crowned by his hands.

When they returned with success to King Theodorich at Ravenna they found that he had imprisoned the two illustrious senators, Symmachus and Boethius; he put the Pope likewise in prison, and so the bishop of the first see suffered affliction in ward, and died of want. Ninety-eight days after his death in prison the heretical King Theodorich by the will of God suddenly died.

Ten years after this, in 535, the same Book of the Popes records that Pope Agapetus, being the subject of Theodatus, King of the Goths, was sent by him on embassy to the emperor Justinian. Theodatus had put to death the Queen Amalasunta, daughter of Theodorich, who had herself given him the crown. He hoped that the Pope might save him with the emperor. The Pope was received with all distinction. But he found a heretic seated on the see of the capital, whose orthodoxy the emperor defended. And the emperor said to the Pope, “Either agree with us or I will have you banished”. The Pope replied: “Sinner that I am, I came to Constantinople to see the most Christian Emperor Justinian. I find instead a Diocletian. But I do not fear your threats. But that you may know that your bishop does not belong to the Christian religion, let him confess there to be Two Natures in Christ.” Then the Bishop Anthimus, being cited by the emperor, would never confess in answer to the question of Pope Agapetus that there are Two Natures in our Lord Jesus Christ. So the Pope prevailed. The emperor with joy submitted himself to the Holy See, and worshipped Pope Agapetus; he expelled Anthimus from his communion and banished him, and besought the Pope to consecrate Mennas in his stead. This was done. The Pope was taken ill, and died after two months at Constantinople. He was buried with a greater concourse of people than had ever attended the funeral of emperor or bishop. His body was carried back in triumph to Rome and buried at St. Peter's.

Shortly after Justinian added the direct sovereignty of conquest to that respect, whatever its extent may have been, with which Rome and the Popes regarded the sole emperor who since the abolition of the western emperor in 476 represented the Roman name, though seated on the Bosphorus. Pope Vigilius in 547 was his subject, and as such summoned by him to Constantinople, whither he went with the same reluctance as his two predecessors at the command of Theodorich and Theodatus. The emperor's purpose was to force the Pope to set his seal upon a doctrinal edict of his own. At first Justinian humbly besought his blessing, and embraced him with tears. But this soon turned to persecution, and seven years of perpetual humiliation for the Pope followed. Deceived, isolated, imprisoned, deserted, he did not surrender the faith. St. Peter in his person was not overcome, but he was discredited, and it required forty years, crowned by the wisdom and fortitude of St. Gregory, to restore the full lustre of the Holy See.

After a hundred years and a succession of fourteen Popes, St. Martin held a great Council at Rome in 649, in which he passed anathema upon the heresy of two eastern emperors, grandfather and grandson. In requital for this the grandson had him seized in his Lateran Church itself, carried secretly to Constantinople, judged by the senate there for high treason, condemned to death, and finally suffered him to die of starvation in the Crimea. As Pope John I. gained his crown of martyrdom by the first visit of a Pope to Constantinople, so Pope Martin gained the like crown by the fourth.