Kitabı oku: «Peter's Rock in Mohammed's Flood, from St. Gregory the Great to St. Leo III», sayfa 6

“Now, there were two women, a mother and a daughter, who kept the keys of the guard-house. These witnessed the unendurable suffering of that holy man (for besides all his other punishments he was shivering with cold) and out of compassion sought to show some mercy to him and to cover him, but did not venture because of the warder who was bound to him. For they thought that the order for his execution would come at once. But after some hours when some soldiers below had summoned the chief warder he went down, and one of these women, touched with pity, came, and folding in her arms the champion of Christ and apostolic father, carried him and rested him on her own bed, carefully covering him and wrapping him. Now he remained to the evening without uttering a word. But in the evening Gregorius, the eunuch, prefect of the chamberlains, sent his majordomo with a little food to refresh him, saying, Faint not in your tribulations; we trust in God you will not die. The blessed one groaned at this increase of his troubles. Immediately they took off his fetters.

“The next day the emperor went to the patriarchal palace to visit the patriarch Paul, for he was near death. The emperor told him all that had been done to the holy man. But Paul groaned, and turning his face to the wall he said: Woe is me, this also has been done to multiply the judgments upon me. The emperor asked why he said this. He replied: Is it not miserable, my Lord, that pontiffs should suffer such things. Then he earnestly adjured the emperor that the past sufferings were sufficient, and that he should bear no more. When this was heard by that apostolical man, who did not receive what he was expecting, he was not pleased with that promise, but was made quite sad, for he was longing to finish a good fight, and to depart unto Him Whom he desired.

“The patriarch Paul died, and Pyrrhus who had been patriarch before him was trying to recover his seat, but the retractation which he had offered to the Pope Theodorus was brought up against him. The emperor sent an officer, an assistant of the fiscal, to examine Pope Martin about it. Demosthenes entering said to the Pope: See in what great glory you were, and to what you have reduced yourself. Nobody did this to you, but you did it to yourself. The Pope made no answer except, Glory and thanksgiving for all things to the sole immortal King. His majesty, said Demosthenes, has instructed you thus: inform us of what passed in the case of the expatriarch Pyrrhus here, and at Rome afterwards. Why did he go to Rome? Was it by order, or of his own accord? The Pope answered, Of his own accord. Demosthenes said, How did he draw up that paper? Under any one's compulsion? The Pope replied, Under none but of himself. Demosthenes said: When Pyrrhus came to Rome, how did Pope Theodorus, your predecessor, receive him? as a bishop? The Pope replied with tranquillity, And why not? Before Pyrrhus came to Rome, blessed Theodorus wrote hither, that is to Paul, who had acted unfittingly, and invaded another's see. When afterwards Pyrrhus came to Rome, to the threshold of St. Peter, how should not my predecessor receive and honour him as a bishop? Demosthenes said, That is most true. But where did he get what was most needful for his support? The Pope said, Clearly from the Roman patriarchal palace. The assistant remarked: What sort of bread was given to him? The Pope said, My Lords, do you not know the Roman Church? For I tell you whoever in however poor a plight comes hither to lodge, all things for his need are given him, and St. Peter sends away none who come without his gifts; the best bread and various wines are given both to him and to his attendants. If this is done in the case of the abject, when one comes in the honour of a bishop, what treatment should he receive? Demosthenes said, We have been informed that Pyrrhus was forced to make that statement at Rome, that he bore wooden fetters, and suffered much. The Pope replied, Nothing of the kind was done. For unless some are kept in their place by fear, they cannot speak out the truth. There are many at Constantinople who were then at Rome, and know what took place there. The patricius Plato survives, who was then exarch, and who directed some of his men then to Pyrrhus at Rome. Ask him if I speak falsely about this. But why enquire further? I am in your hands. Do with me what you will. As God allows, it is in your power. If you cut me to pieces, as when you delivered me to the prefect, you ordered, I do not communicate with the Church of Constantinople. I am here: examine me, and try, and you will find by experience the grace of God and of His faithful servants. Again Pyrrhus was mentioned, who had been so often anathematised, and stripped of the sacred honour. Demosthenes and his assistant were astonished at the tranquil Pope's boldness and constancy for Christ unto death. For this his chalice of passion was ordained. The attendants also were amazed: they made a copy of all which the blessed man had said and retired.

“Now the most reverend Pope passed in that same guard-house of Diomedes eighty-five days after the first ninety-three, that is, in all one hundred and seventy-eight days. Then Sagoleva the scribe came, saying, I am commanded to take you hence, and to remove you to my house, and after two days to conduct you whither the fiscal shall command. The Pope asked whither he was to be taken; the other refused to say. Then the holy man asked that he might be allowed to remain in the same guard-house until he was banished, and might be taken direct from it, which also was refused him. But about sunset the venerable Pope said to those who were in the prison: Approach, brethren, and let us take leave; behold he is at hand who will take me hence. And as he said this they each drank of the chalice. And rising with serene countenance, with much firmness and thanksgiving he said to one of those present dear to him: Sir, my brother, come and give me the kiss of peace. Now the heart of that brother, as he told me himself at that very time, was, I conceive, such as the heart of that disciple who watched his Lord upon the cross. And as he was giving the kiss of peace to the most holy Pope, through the depth of their affection they shed a flood of tears. But all present broke into a terrible lamentation. The blessed man distressed at this, besought them not to do so, looking at them undisturbed. And placing his venerable hands upon his head, said with a smile: Sir, my brother, this is good, this is seasonable – should you act thus? Is it for our peace? Rather you should rejoice over me now. To whom the brother with deep contrition answered: Servant of Christ, God knows. I rejoice in the glory with which Christ our God has deigned that you should suffer all these things for His Name's sake; but I am sad for the perdition of all. Then all paying him their respects retired. So the scribe coming forth at once took him away and brought him to his own house. It was said then that he was banished to Cherson, and a few days afterwards we learnt that the holy Apostolical man had been carried thither in a vessel secretly.

“Upon his arrival he wrote a letter after a few days to a most dear friend in Byzantium, one of those who loved him for the Lord's sake and for his right faith. And this our father was in banishment and great tribulation, and on account of his many and severe bodily sicknesses, and the every way defective supply of that country, where nothing was to be found, particularly bread, which they knew by name, but not in fact, asked for certain things to be sent him. Thus he wrote, attesting upon oath that a small bark touched there, carrying a little wheat in exchange for salt, and they were scarcely able to get a bushel of wheat for four coins, and that with much entreaty. That holy soul wrote that he was suffering various distresses there, not only from his own body, but through the oppression of those who ruled there, under direction from the lord in Byzantium, so that he was dying miserably. I then, your humble and sinning servant, beseech you, Fathers honourable in God, since I have declared to you what I myself saw and most carefully heard from others, that is, the trials pressing on our most blessed Pope for his right confession in Christ our Lord, and for his anathema uttered upon the new heretics. Short as is my account out of many things, but the best I could send you, do you for your part set forth these things to those who have zeal for God's worship, and beseech them to imitate him, and to maintain the traditions of the holy fathers, as he has done, and to hold no communion with those of an opposite mind. Entreat also for me, your unworthy servant, the writer, that, together with him and with you, I may find mercy from Christ our Lord for ever. Amen.”

We possess two letters written by the Pope from the Crimea to his friend in Byzantium, which would seem to be the letters referred to by the writer I have just quoted. In them the Pope declares the extreme need of necessaries for life, in which he suffers. In the first he says, “If St. Peter thus supports strangers at Rome, what shall we say of ourselves, who are his proper servants, and at least for a time ministered to him, and are in such a banishment and affliction”. In the second his words are still more pressing: “I am astonished at the inattention and want of compassion of all who once belonged to me, of my friends and relations who are so utterly forgetful of my misery and care not to know, as I find by experience, whether I am or am not upon the earth. Much more still do I wonder at those who are of the most holy Church of the Apostle Peter, since they have taken such pains for their own body and member – that is, for their affection to us – that we may be without solicitude. For if the Church of St. Peter possess not gold, at least, by the grace of God, it is not without wheat and wine and other necessaries whereby at least to show a moderate care of us. What fear has fallen upon men that they should not do the commands of God? Have I appeared such an enemy to the whole fulness of the Church, and an adversary to them? But may God, who wishes all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth by the intercession of St. Peter, establish their hearts in the orthodox faith, and confirm them against every heretic and person adversary to our Church, and maintain them unshaken, especially the pastor who is now declared to rule them, so that failing, declining, surrendering no whit of the things which they have writtenly professed in the sight of our Lord and his holy Angels, they may, together with my humility, receive the crown of justice belonging to the orthodox faith from the hand of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. As for this my poor body, the Lord Himself will care as it pleases Him to order, whether for sorrows without end or for moderate relief. For the Lord is at hand, and for what am I solicitous? I hope in His mercy that He will not long delay to finish my course, as He has appointed.”

The “present pastor,” whom Pope Martin thus seems to recognise was Pope Eugenius, elected at Rome in his lifetime, through dread, it is said, of the clergy there that the Emperor Constans II. would force upon them some Monothelite of his own to sit in the See of Peter.

The last scene is thus described, as appended to the foregoing narrative: —

“The most holy thrice blessed Apostolical, Martin the Pope, a true confessor and martyr of Christ our God, died in his banishment in the Crimea, according to his own petition to our Lord God, offered to Him with tears at the moment that he disembarked and trod that land – that is, that in it he might finish his life, fighting the good fight, finishing his course of martyrdom, keeping the good faith, on the 16th September, the day on which in the year's course the most precious and blessed memory is kept of the martyr Euphemia, guardian of the orthodox faith. He was buried about a stadium outside the walls of the city of Cherson, in the Church of Our Lady, the most chaste, immaculate, most excellent of all creatures, the fullest of grace, the maker and giver of joy, the ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of God. By the intercessions of which Virgin and confessor may Christ our true God and Saviour, who came forth from her for the human race in a manner ineffable and without seed, guard and protect us, and all faithful hearers, and all the people whom He has acquired unto sincere faith and practice, in peace and charity, and all justice to the end.”

So Pope Martin I. gave up his life for the faith of Christ and for the independence of the Church, and no less for that guardianship of both which is vested in the Holy See. For he was thus treated because he held a Council at the Lateran expressly condemning an imperial document of the reigning sovereign called a Typus, and as Pope placed it under anathema, and published his Encyclical “to the whole sacred plenitude of the Church”. And he was condemned as a traitor, exactly repeating the passion of his Lord, as he sat in the seat of him to whom our Lord said, Follow thou Me. And further, he followed his great predecessor, Pope Clement I., the personal friend both of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the third successor of St. Peter, dying in the Crimea, where St. Clement died by command of the great heathen emperor Trajan, as St. Martin died by command of Constans II., a successor of Constantine, and by his office as “Christian prince and Roman Emperor” the first son and defender of the Church.

Chapter III. Heraclius Betrays The Faith, And Cuts His Empire In Two

We left the emperor Heraclius carrying back the true Cross in triumph to Jerusalem from its captivity under the Persian fire-worshipper, whose empire he had wounded to death. This was in the year 629, in the pontificate of Honorius, and in that act the emperor seated at Byzantium, on the throne of Constantine, at the head of the empire which was the proper creation of Constantine, seemed to have made himself the champion of the faith which is embodied in the Cross. Had Heraclius then died it would have been with a halo not only of human but of Christian glory surrounding his head. But he survived during twelve years in which his inertness, considered by some to be unexplained, suffered the eastern empire to undergo irreparable losses. These, moreover, came from a foe of whose mere existence he was indeed conscious, but of whom he had no fear at the time of that triumphal entry into Jerusalem. An obscure Arabian raider was striving to gain a mastery among some savage tribes in that little known peninsula. The lord of the golden city, seated as queen of Europe and Asia on broad-flowing Hellespont, would hardly deign to cast his eyes upon an incursion of southern robbers, made on an empire which for three hundred years had been watching war-clouds big with tempests from the north, or matching itself with difficulty against the restored Sassanid kingdom. This at last was beaten down. Might not Constantinople hail in security the return of an emperor who had conquered Persia? But we, looking back over the ages, may think that the act of Heraclius replacing the Cross in the Holy City and in the church which Constantine had built over the sepulchre of Christ may be called with much truth the last act of the real Cæsarean empire, inasmuch as during the twelve succeeding years it lost for ever its greatest provinces to the very foe whose advent as a conqueror Heraclius had not even suspected.

We have now to follow briefly one of the greatest revolutions which has ever occurred in human affairs. It is a revolution which not merely sets up one kingdom instead of another, or alters the persons of individual rulers; but which changes human society to its very depths, provides a different standard of morals, and, so far as it succeeds, but only so far, reverses the course of Christian civilisation, and undoes in certain countries the greatest conquests which the Christian Church had obtained for the good of the human race. Not States only are changed, but fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters: in fine, Græco-Roman heathenism has disappeared, but instead of it arises a religion borne on the shoulders of a temporal rule, and a legislation compared with which in certain respects that old heathenism was pure and benignant. The revolution reaches in fact man's belief in the nature of God Himself: and a change of belief in the nature of God involves a change in all His relations to His moral creatures, and in their relations to each other. The creature in all action reproduces what it holds concerning the Creator. The religion of self-sacrifice springs from a God who sacrifices Himself: the religion of self-indulgence from a God from whose worship sacrifice has been expunged.

It appears that even before the triumphal entry of Heraclius into Jerusalem with the recovered cross he had met in the Persian campaigns, in 622 or 623, with a certain bishop named Cyrus, then holding the see of Phasis, in Armenia. But Cyrus himself had for years before been in communication with Sergius, the powerful patriarch of Constantinople, the guide and inspirer of the emperor. Sergius had held the see of the capital since the year 610, in which the accession of Heraclius took place. It had been all along his dream to reconcile the various monophysite sects which troubled his master's empire. In the political point of view such a reconciliation could not but appear very important. In Egypt alone the Monophysites numbered about six millions, against three hundred thousand orthodox. How deeply their national feeling was mixed up with their heresy is shown by the name of Melchites or Royalists, which they gave to their opponents. The patriarch Sergius and the emperor Heraclius fell upon the device of gaining the heretical party, not only in Egypt, but in the Eastern empire generally, to at least an outward union with the orthodox by introducing the formula “One Operation” as a theological expression for the acts of our Lord. St. John of Damascus describes in his treatise on heresies the 99th as that of the Monothelites “who derived their origin from Cyrus of Alexandria, and their strength from Sergius of Constantinople. These men maintained two Natures in Christ, and one Person, but assert one Will and one Operation, by which they destroy the duality of natures, and strongly adhere to the doctrines of Apollinarius.” Now Sergius, uniting great ability and strong character to his position as bishop of the capital city and minister of the Emperor Heraclius, dominated his mind. Heraclius exerted himself greatly to disseminate the formulary of these two patriarchs. His purpose was that of drawing together his own distracted empire. This purpose of Heraclius is carried back so far at least as the year 628. Nay, at the beginning of his campaign against the Persians he recommended it. How much more when by the peace of the year 628 he recovered the provinces which had been taken from him. It would seem that the faltering of Heraclius in the faith, which he was willing to subject to a deceptive compromise the doctrine of the incarnation itself, was coincident in time with the opening of the Mohammedan era, the hegira or flight of Mohammed from Mecca, which marks his assumption of the claim to propagate by force a conquering religion. That claim was in a few years to cost Heraclius the half of his empire. It is certain that about the year 630 he promoted Cyrus to be patriarch of Alexandria. He also put a certain Athanasius of like doctrine into the see of Antioch, and thus three patriarchal sees at once were in favour of the heresy. And Sergius wrote to Pope Honorius commending it as a wonderful mode of restoring unity to the Church in the East.

Cyrus drew up nine heads of doctrine, by which he thought that he had reconciled the Theodosians and other powerful sects in Egypt. His announcement was received with exceeding joy by Sergius at Constantinople. Sergius wrote to Pope Honorius describing the action of Cyrus in these words: “Certain dogmatic heads were agreed upon between the two sides, in consequence of which those who but yesterday were parted into divisions and acknowledged the wicked Dioscorus and Severus as their ancestors, were united to the one most holy Catholic Church, and all the people of Alexandria, beloved by Christ, and besides this we may say all Egypt and Thebais and Libya, and the other dioceses of the Egyptian province, became one flock of Christ our true God. They who were until then to be seen an innumerable multitude of divided heresies, now, by the good pleasure of God and the zeal well-pleasing to Him of the most holy prelate of Alexandria, have all become one, with one voice and unity of spirit, confessing the true doctrines of the Church.”

Such was the picture set before Pope Honorius by the patriarch Sergius, then in the height of his credit as bishop of the imperial city and prime minister of the emperor, in the year 633, when Abu Bekr was elected the first of the chalifs to carry on the power of Mohammed, who had died a few months before. A few years after this supposed reunion of all, these same Egyptians welcomed submission to Omar, the second chalif and successor of Abu Bekr, as lord of Egypt, who would, as they thought, be more favourable to them than Heraclius.

And the successor of St. Peter was deceived into believing that the picture drawn by Sergius was a true statement.

But before the union described in such terms by Sergius had been completed, a man had come to Alexandria, who was to protest in the face of the whole world against this compromise to which the Catholic faith was being subjected. This was Sophronius, a monk of high repute, to whom the patriarch Cyrus showed the articles of union, while they were as yet unpublished. Sophronius threw himself at the patriarch's feet, and conjured him most earnestly not to announce them from the pulpit, as they manifestly expressed the heresy of Apollinaris. Sophronius did not succeed with Cyrus, but carried a letter from him to Sergius at Constantinople, to whom it would seem that Cyrus directed him as the chief supporter and exponent of the doctrine which Sophronius rejected.

All that Sophronius was able to obtain from Sergius was that both expressions concerning the action of our Lord, as God-man, that is, the One Operation, or the Two Operations, should be equally avoided. Sophronius on his return to Jerusalem, was elected patriarch, and as such, presently issued his synodical letter. This is almost the most important document in the whole Monothelite struggle: a great theological treatise, which embraces the Trinity and the Incarnation, and fully sets forth the doctrine of the Two Operations in Christ. Copies of it were sent to all the patriarchs. The copy sent to Sergius has come down to us among the acts of the 7th session of the 6th council. Out of the copy in the acts I will here quote some few of the very words in which the great champion of the faith states the doctrine. It is that which St. Leo defined at the Council of Chalcedon, for which Pope S. Martin offered his life in sacrifice, for which the Popes preceding and following him suffered trials and persecutions without end, which four successive patriarchs of Constantinople endeavoured to overthrow, and for their incessant quarrels over which, three eastern patriarchates, with their bishoprics, were delivered over as a prey to the hordes of the false prophet.

Sophronius addressing his colleagues began with regretting that he was advanced to the pontifical throne from a very humble state against his will. Begging his fathers and brethren to support him, he noted that it was an apostolic custom throughout the world that they who were thus advanced, should attest their faith to the colleagues preceding them. After this introduction, Sophronius threw his words into the form of a creed, in which the first part dwelt upon the Trinity. He then, at greater length, set forth his belief in the Incarnation. How God the Son, taking pity upon the fall of man, by His own will, and the will of His Father, and the divine good pleasure of the Spirit, being of the infinite nature, incapable of circumscription and of local passage, entered the virginal womb, resplendent in its purity, of Mary the holy, the God-minded, the free from every contamination of body, of soul, and of mind; the fleshless took flesh, the formless, in His divine substance, took our form; the eternal God becomes in truth man. He, who is in the bosom of the eternal Father is bosomed in a mother's womb. He who is without time receives a beginning in time. Then, passing to the point in question, he went on: Christ is One and Two, One in Person, Two in Natures and their natural attributes. On this account, One and the same Christ and Son, and Only-begotten is found undivided in both natures. He worked physically the works of each nature according to the essential quality or natural property which belonged to each. This He could not have done, had He possessed, as One only Person, so One only Nature, not compounded. For then, the One and the Same would not have completely done the works of each Nature. For when has Godhead without body worked naturally the works of the body? or, when has a body without Godhead worked works which substantially belong to the Godhead? But Emmanuel, being One, and in this Oneness both, that is, God and Man, did, in truth, the works of each Nature; being One and the Same, as God He did the divine, as Man the human works. Being One and the Same, He works and He speaks the divine and the human. Not one wrought miracles, and another did human works, and suffered pains, as Nestorius meant, but one and the same Christ and Son wrought the divine and the human according to each, as St. Cyril taught. In each of the Two Natures He had the two powers unmingled, but undivided. As He is eternal God, He wrought the miracles; as He was Man in the last times, He wrought the inferior and human works.

The answer to the Synodical letter of Sophronius, made by Sergius at Constantinople, was not to receive it, but to draw up his own Ecthesis, and prevail on the emperor Heraclius to stamp it with the imperial signature, and proclaim it as the faith of his empire. Before the Ecthesis was brought to Rome in December, 638, Pope Honorius had died in the preceding October. Sophronius had commissioned the chief bishop of his patriarchate, Stephen of Dor, as we have already seen, to carry his appeal to Honorius, in the See of Peter. And now it is time to turn to those events which were in the meanwhile happening in the eastern empire.

In the three hundred years from Constantine to his twenty-second successor, Heraclius, the empire which he had set up in the fairest city of the world had developed into a double despotism. It is difficult to say whether that despotism pressed more severely on the religious or on the civil well-being of its subjects. As to each, it is requisite to say something. The gravity of the events which took place within ten years demands it; while in their permanent effect that gravity most of all consists. The immediate result was most rapid and unexpected, yet a long train of action during the three hundred years preceding had led straight up to it, and a period of four times three hundred years has since witnessed its evolution.

Let us take first this pressure of despotism on religion. In speaking of Constantine I noted that there were in him two very distinct periods of his rule after he became a Christian. The first precedes his acquisition of the whole empire in 323; the second follows in the fourteen years from that time to his death. But in this second period the change, which dates from the moment at which he becomes sole emperor, is yet gradual. At the first General Council, in 325, the calling of which is agreed to by the Pope and the eastern patriarchs, but springs from himself, he acknowledges both in word and conduct that the Christian Church is the kingdom of Christ, and that its government lies in the hands of those who receive a divine consecration thereto from Christ. They are the witnesses of His doctrine, which they maintain and promulgate in virtue of that consecration. Upon this doctrine their judgment is final. Constantine never in thought submitted to any power but the Catholic Church. The thought of warring sects was abhorrent equally to the soldier, the conqueror, and the legislator. Yet before his reign closed, at the age of sixty-three, he had been seduced in his conduct from this high tone of action by the counsels of the Court bishop, Eusebius; he had restored Arius and persecuted Athanasius. He had selected the bishops who were to attend local councils, while he stretched the powers of such local councils beyond their competence. He had in fact advanced with his imperial sword into the Church's Council Chamber, and claimed to be a judge of her doctrine. And his kingdom was forthwith divided among three sons, none of whom as rulers at all represented their fathers majesty, while one, Constantius, became after not many years the sole ruler, and as such propagated the heresy of the day, and practised encroachment on the doctrinal independence of the Church. Constantius was cut off in his forty-fourth year, receiving clinical baptism from the hands of an Arian on his death-bed. In twenty years after his death the imperial power passes through two new families, and when a third is called in to support a falling empire, Theodosius has fifteen years given to him in which to save the empire from imminent destruction and the eastern Church from heresy. The victory of that Arian heresy during fifty years had so deranged that eastern episcopate, that no one but a saint and champion of the faith, such as St. Basil, could venture to describe its condition. From the death of Theodosius, in 395, the eastern empire passed through fifteen successors to Heraclius, and in that succession there are ten changes of family. One daughter of an emperor, who was himself a successful insurgent, conferred the empire twice, both times on the most worthless of men, as much marked for their civil misgovernment as for persecution of the Church. But with every step in the succession it may be noted that the original independence of the Church, as recognised by Constantine and by his successors down to the Emperor Leo I. in a long series of imperial laws, fell more and more into the background. Each general who by slaughtering his predecessor mounted the eastern throne assumed at once the bearing of the lord of the world: with the purple boots he put on the imperial pride. The Roman Primacy was indeed acknowledged by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and no less by the Emperor Marcian, the husband of the Theodosian heiress. But twenty-five years after that Council the western Emperor was abolished. From that moment the sole Roman Emperor was seated at Byzantium. At once an eastern schism was set up by the Bishop of the Capital. Rome was in the possession of Teuton Arians, who impaired the freedom of the Papal election, and made the imperial confirmation of it a custom. And when at last an honest general, who had entered the army as an Illyrian peasant, and risen from the ranks to the throne, had discountenanced the schism, condemned four successive bishops of his own capital, and acknowledged in amplest terms that the Pope's power was supreme, and also that it consisted in descent from St. Peter, the eastern emperor forbore, indeed, to deny the Primacy, but his endeavour was to control its action by making the spiritual subject to the civil power. This was the outcome of Justinian's long reign from 527, to 565. And the fatal conquest of Italy and Rome, making the one to be a captive province, and the other to be the garrisoned city, but not even the capital of a captive province, aided Justinian in acts to undo the reverence which in words he testified to the successor of St. Peter. In eighty-five years, from 553 to 638, the occupant of the eastern throne had advanced from holding a Council at Constantinople without the Pope's consent, to presenting at Rome a doctrinal decree for his signature. A few years afterwards, when the Pope called a Council, and condemned the decrees of two emperors as heresy, and three successive bishops of Constantinople as the heretics who supported it, the grandson of Heraclius, Constans II., tried the Pope as guilty of high treason before the Senate of Byzantium, and crowned him with martyrdom in exile. Step from Pope Vigilius a captive guarded at Constantinople in 553, to Pope Martin sentenced there as a traitor in 655, and dying in the Crimea a martyr. That step will mark the advance of eastern despotism and the peril of the Church's independence.