Kitabı oku: «Peter's Rock in Mohammed's Flood, from St. Gregory the Great to St. Leo III», sayfa 9
So the second, third, and fourth chalifs – Omar, Osman, and Ali – perished by assassination within seventeen years of each other, in 644, 656, and 661. Let us turn to see what has been doing at Constantinople in these seventeen years. We have already seen how Omar, in his ten years, had built up an empire from the spoils of Byzantium and Persia, which, during the civil wars of his two successors, was yet increased. The seat of its sovereign power was transferred from Medina to Damascus as soon as Muawiah was acknowledged as chalif, in the year 661. But during the four chalifs, from the death of Mohammed in 632 to 660, the immense Mohammedan realm was governed from Medina.
When Heraclius died in 641, he was covered with defeat, and the chief provinces of his empire were, day by day, falling away. He left a son, Constantine, twenty-eight years old, who had been named emperor from his birth: and, by his second marriage with his niece, Martina, a son, Heracleonas, nineteen years old, who had been named emperor two years before, and two younger sons, David and Marinus, named Cæsars, besides two daughters, who, like their mother, had been named expresses. In his will he directed his two sons, Constantine and Heracleonas, to reign together with equal power, and to acknowledge Martina as empress-mother. Constantine III. was not Monothelite, but orthodox. At his accession he received a letter from Pope John IV., maintaining the true doctrine, and also that his predecessor, Honorius, answering a question put to him by the patriarch Sergius, “taught concerning the mystery of the Incarnation, that there were not in Christ, as in us sinners, opposing wills of the mind and the flesh: and for this, certain persons, trusting to their own meaning, threw out the suspicion that he had taught there to be the only one will of the Godhead and the Manhood, which is altogether contrary to the truth”. This the Pope proceeds to prove at length. And he ends by saying that he finds a certain document, contrary to Pope Leo, of blessed memory, and the Council of Chalcedon, has been issued, to which bishops are compelled to subscribe. This was the Ecthesis of Heraclius. And he entreats the new emperor, as guardian of the Christian faith, to command this document to be torn down, and, as a first sacrifice to God, to scatter from His Church every cloud of novelty. So, if he regard the things of God, may the Lord, whose faith is preserved in purity, preserve his empire from the nations trusting in their ferocity.
But the emperor, Constantine III., died 103 days after his father, poisoned, as eastern historians say, by his step-mother, the empress Martina: with which crime they also inculpate the patriarch Pyrrhus. She then reigned with her son, Heracleonas; but not for long. An insurrection deposed her: both she and Heracleonas were maimed and banished, and Constans II., son of Constantine III., and grandson of Heraclius, at twelve years old became emperor, under tutelage of the council. The answer given to the letter of Pope John IV. was that the Ecthesis affixed to the door of churches should be removed.
But the empire was torn to pieces by the strife of the various heresies contending for mastery. The patriarch Pyrrhus, who had succeeded Sergius in the see of Constantinople, and in the patronage of his heresy, found it expedient on the deposition of Martina to leave his see. He appeared in Africa, and had a great controversy with Maximus in the presence of the African episcopate in 645. He acknowledged himself to be defeated: and went to Pope Theodorus at Rome, where he renounced the Monothelite heresy, and was received by the Pope as bishop of the capital. But he returned presently, at the instance of the exarch of Ravenna, to the errors which he had renounced.
In due time the emperor, Constans II., produced the Typus to take the place of his grandfather's Ecthesis. And, when Pope St. Martin held his great Council at Rome in 649, Constans burst into fury, and, as above recorded, afterwards caused the Pope to be kidnapped, to be tried at Constantinople, and to be condemned for high treason; finally, to perish of want in the Crimea.
With Pope St. Martin, Maximus had been the great defender of the faith. It is time to give some record of his life, his labours, and his reward.
Maximus sprung about the year 580 at Constantinople from an old and noble family. There were few of rank superior to his relations. He had great abilities, received an excellent education, and became one of the most learned men in his time, and the ablest theologian. The emperor Heraclius drew him against his wishes to the court, and made him one of his chief secretaries. But, in the year 630, his love for solitude, as well as his observance of the wrong bias which the mind of Heraclius was taking, led him to withdraw from court. He resigned the brilliant position which he occupied, became a monk in the monastery of Chrysopolis, that is, Scutari, and, on the death of its abbot, was chosen unanimously to succeed him. Henceforth to the end of his life, at the age of eighty-two, he became, by word and deed, a champion of the Catholic faith against the Monothelite heresy. In 633, he went with Sophronius, then a simple monk, to Alexandria, and joined him in entreating the patriarch, Cyrus, to desist from promulgating the new heresy. Against this, Sophronius, having become patriarch of Jerusalem, published his synodical letter quoted above. Maximus went on to the west, visiting Rome and Carthage, and rousing the African bishops against the heresy. He showed his great dialectical skill in a contest with Pyrrhus, then the deposed successor of the patriarch Sergius. Pyrrhus even accompanied him to Rome, and renounced the heresy before Pope Theodorus.
Maximus continued at Rome to use all his efforts against the heresy, and counselled Pope Martin to call the Lateran Synod, and formally condemn it. As the Ecthesis of Sergius had been composed against Sophronius, and then the Typus – drawn up by the patriarch Paul, and imposed by the will of the emperor Constans II. – had been substituted for it at Constantinople, the Council of the Lateran which in 649 condemned both, excited the bitterest wrath of the emperor. Three men had especially in his mind counter-worked all his endeavours to impose his will as the standard of faith upon the Romans and the bishops. These three men were Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, who had died shortly after the surrender of his city to Omar, Pope Martin, and the Abbot Maximus. How he avenged himself on the Pope St. Martin has been already described.
About the same time at which the Pope was carried off to Byzantium, in 653, Maximus also was seized, with his two disciples, both named Anastasius, one a monk, the other a Roman priest, who had been a nuncio. They were carried also to Byzantium, and thrown into prison. After the Pope had been judged by the senate, and condemned to death for high treason, Maximus and his disciples were also brought to trial.
Maximus had distinguished himself by a great number of writings. He is considered the greatest theologian of the seventh century. He has kept a very high rank through all the centuries which have followed him. After the death of Sophronius, the intellectual combat against the Monothelite heresy rested mainly upon him. The very high rank which he had held as a minister of Heraclius, conjoined with his scientific defence of the truth, made him the most conspicuous person in the Church after the martyrdom of Pope Martin, whose friend, counsellor, and supporter he had been, and his unbending constancy under the severest tortures has given him among the Greeks the name of “the Confessor.”
Part of a letter is extant from him to a certain Peter, a man of high rank, who had entreated him to meet and resist the patriarch Pyrrhus in the African conference. With regard to him Maximus says: “if Pyrrhus will neither be heretical, nor be so-called, let him not satisfy this or that individual. That is superfluous and unreasonable; for just as when one is scandalised in him all are scandalised, so when one is satisfied all surely will be satisfied. Let him then hasten to satisfy before all the Roman See. When this is satisfied all men everywhere will accept his religion and orthodoxy. In vain he speaks who would gain me and suchlike as me: and does not satisfy and implore the most blessed Pope of the holy Roman Church, that is, the Apostolic See, which has received and holds the government, the authority, and the power of binding and loosing over all the holy Churches of God in the whole earth in all persons and matters from the Incarnate Word of God Himself, and likewise from all holy Councils according to the sacred canons. For with him the Word who rules the celestial virtues, binds and looses in heaven. For if he thinks that others must be satisfied, and does not implore the most Blessed Pope of Rome, he is like the man who is accused of homicide, or any other crime, and maintains his innocence not to him who by law is appointed to judge him, but without any use or gain strives to clear himself to other private men who have no power to absolve him.”
Yet more remarkable, if possible, is another testimony which this great martyr, born and bred at Constantinople, and up to the age of fifty a minister of the eastern emperor, who bears the greatest name among the theologians of the seventh century, has left behind him. It was apparently written at Rome after the completion of the Lateran Council in 649, which he mentions in it, and numbers with the five preceding ecumenical Councils. It runs thus: —
“All the ends of the world, and all therein confessing the Lord with pure and upright faith, gaze stedfastly upon the most holy Church of the Romans, its confession and faith, as upon the sun of eternal light. They expect the brightness which ever lightens from it, in the doctrine of Fathers and Saints, as, guided by a divine wisdom and piety the six Councils have set it forth, drawing out with greater distinctness the Symbol of the Faith. For from the beginning when the Incarnate Word of God descended to us, all churches of Christians everywhere possess and hold as the only basis and foundation that greatest of churches, as against which, according to the promise of the Saviour, the gates of hell never prevail: as which possesses the keys of the right faith and confession of Him: as which discloses the real and only religion to those who approach it religiously, while it shuts up and stops every heretical mouth loudly speaking iniquity. For they are seeking without labour and apart from suffering, O wonderful patience of God which endures it! by two words to pull down what has been established and built up by the Creator and Ruler of all things, our Lord Jesus Christ, by His disciples and apostles, by all the sequence of holy Fathers, Teachers, and Martyrs, who offered themselves up by their words and deeds, their struggles and labours, their toil and blood-sheddings, and lastly, by wondrous deaths, for that Catholic and Apostolic Church of us who believe in Him. They would annul that mystery of right Christian worship with all its greatness, its brightness, and its renown.”
Pope Martin, who held this great Council, at which Maximus was present, supporting the Pope with all his learning, had been seized, as we have seen, in his own city and church, in the year 653, four years after it. At the same time, Maximus, being about 73 years old, was seized at the same place, and deported to Constantinople, and upon his arrival was taken straight from the ship, naked and without sandals, together with his two disciples and companions, and they were put into different prisons by five officers and their attendants. Later, when the proceeding against the Pope had been; closed, Maximus was brought into the palace before the whole senate and a great crowd. He was placed in the middle of the hall, and the fiscal angrily addressed him with the words, “Art thou a Christian?” Maximus replied, “By the grace of God I am”. “That is not true.” “Thou mayest say so, but God knows that I am a Christian.” “And if thou art a Christian, how canst thou hate the emperor?” asked the judge. “But,” replied Maximus, “how is this known to thee? Hatred, like love, is a secret affection of the spirit.” “It is become plain by thy deeds that thou hatest the emperor and his realm, for it is only thou who hast delivered Egypt and Alexandria and the Pentapolis, Tripolis and Africa into the hands of the Saracens.”
These accusations fell to the ground, as the false witnesses brought could not maintain them. But the end of this trial was to condemn Maximus and his two companions to a separate and severe exile.
The Pyrrhus whom Maximus had so far prevailed over in the famous conference held in Africa in 645, that he had renounced his heresy to Pope Theodorus, and been received by him in St. Peter's, who had then fallen back through the influence of the exarch, and been excommunicated, had succeeded in regaining the see of Constantinople, upon the death of Paulus, the author of Typus. After a few months, he had died in the summer of 655. He was followed by Peter, whose synodal letter, sent to Rome to Pope Eugenius, is said to have been so dark on the subject of heresy that the clergy and people would not suffer the Pope to celebrate Mass in the Church of St. Mary until he had promised not to accept this letter.
Later in the summer, Maximus was again brought into the judgement hall of the palace, where the two Monothelite patriarchs – Peter of Constantinople and Macedonius of Antioch, then living in the capital – were present. “Speak the truth,” said Troilus to him, “and the emperor will have mercy on thee, for if one of the accusations be proved juridically against thee, thou wilt be guilty of death.” Maximus declared they were all false; that he had submitted the Typus to anathema, not the emperor. The Lateran Council was asserted to have no force for he who held it has been deposed, “Deposed he was not,” said Maximus, “but expelled.” Maximus and his companion, Anastasius, were sent to different banishments.
A year later, a fresh attempt was made to break down his resolution. Paul and Theodosius, two men of consular rank, and Theodosius, Bishop of Cæsarea, the latter as commissary of the patriarch, Peter, the former two of the emperor, reached the imprisoned confessor on the 24th August, 656. Every effort was made to induce Maximus to accept the Typus, and enter into communion with the see of Constantinople.
The terms which Maximus required were reported to the emperor, and fresh commissaries, the patricians, Troilus and Epiphanius, and the same bishop, Theodosius, sent again to Maximus. “The Lord of the world sends us to thee,” said Troilus, “to inform thee what it pleases him to require. Wilt thou obey his command or not?” Maximus requested that he might hear the command. They required that he should first answer the question. Maximus said, “Before God and Angels, and you all, I promise, what the emperor commands me, in respect of earthly things, I will do”. At length Epiphanius said, “The emperor by us informs thee: since all the West and all the perverse-minded in the East look to thee and make contention because of thee, since they will not submit to us in faith, the emperor wills to move thee that thou enter into communion with us on the basis of the Typus issued by us. We will then personally go out to Chalce, and embrace thee, and offer thee our hand and, lead thee to the cathedral with all honour and pomp, and place thee by our side where the emperors are wont to sit, and we will then partake of the life-giving Body and Blood of Christ, and declare thee again for our father: and there will be great joy not only in our own residence, but in all the world. For we are well assured that if thou enterest into communion with this holy see, all who have divided themselves from our communion on thy account will unite themselves to us again.”
Then Maximus turned to the bishop and said to him with tears: – “My good lord, we are all awaiting the Day of Judgment. You know what we drew out, and agreed upon respecting the holy Gospels, the life-giving Cross, the image of our God and Saviour, and the all-holy ever-virgin Mother who bore Him.” The bishop cast down his eyes, and said to him, in a lower voice: – “What can I do, since the emperor has chosen something else?” Maximus said, “Why did you and those with you touch the holy gospels, when you could not bring about the promised issue? Indeed, the whole power of heaven would not persuade me to do this. For what answer shall I give, I say not to God, but to my own conscience, that for the glory of men, which has in it no substance, I have forsworn the faith which saves those who cling to it.”
At this word they all arose, their fury overmastering them: they pushed and scratched and tore him; they covered him with spittle from his head downwards, so that his clothes reeked, until they were washed. And the bishop, rising, said, this ought not to be done, but his answer only should be heard, and then be reported to our lord. For religious matters are done in different fashion from this. The bishop could scarcely induce them to desist. They took their seats again, and reviled him with indescribable insults, and imprecations. Epiphanius said furiously, “Malefactor and cannibal, speakest thou thus, treating us and our city and our emperor as heretics? We are more Christian and orthodox than thou art. We confess that our Lord and God has both a divine will and a human will, and an intellectual soul, and that every intellectual nature has by nature, Will, and Operation, since motion belongs to life, and will to mind: and we know Him to have the capacity of Will not only in the Godhead, but also in the Manhood. Nor do we deny His Two Wills and Two Operations.”
The abbot, Maximus, answered: – “If you so believe, as the intellectual Natures and the Church of God, why are you compelling me to communicate on the terms of the Typus, which merely destroys those things?” “That,” said Epiphanius, “has been done for accommodation, that the people may not be injured by these subtleties.” Maximus said: – “On the contrary, every man is sanctified by accurate confession of the faith, not by its destruction, as put in the Typus”. “I told thee in the palace,” said Troilus, “that it did not destroy, but bade silence be kept that we may all live in peace.” Maximus answered: – “What is covered in silence is destroyed. The Holy Spirit says by the prophet: – ‘There are no speeches nor languages, where their voices are not heard’: a word not spoken is no word at all.” Troilus said: “Keep in thy heart what thou wilt; no one prevents thee”. Maximus answered, “But God did not limit salvation to the heart when he said: – ‘He that confesseth Me before men, I will confess him before My Father in heaven,’ and the Apostle, ‘With the heart we believe unto justice, but with the mouth confession is made to salvation’. If then God, and God's prophets and apostles bid the great and terrible mystery which saves all the world to be confessed by holy voices, there is no need that the voice which proclaims it be in any way silenced, in order that the salvation of those who are silent be not impaired.”
Then Epiphanius, speaking most harshly, said, “Didst thou sign the writing?” he meant the Lateran Council. Abbot Maximus said, “Yes, I signed”. “And how didst thou dare to sign, and anathematise those who confess and believe as the intellectual Natures and the Catholic Church? In my judgment thou shalt be taken into the city, and be put in chains in the forum, and the actors and actresses, and the women that stand for hire, and all the people shall be brought, that every man and woman may slap thee, and spit in thy face.” Abbot Maximus replied: – “Be it as thou hast said, if we have anathematised those who confess Two Natures of which the Lord is, and the two natural Wills and Operations corresponding to Him who is both God and Man. Read, my Lord, the acts and decree, and if what you have said is found, do all your will. For I, and my fellow-servants, who have subscribed, have anathematised those who, according to Arius and Apollinarius, maintain one Will and Operation, and who do not confess our Lord and God to be intellectual in each of those Natures of which, in which, and which He is: and, therefore, in both of them having Will and Operation of our salvation.”
They said, “If we go on treating with this man, we shall neither eat nor drink. Let us go, and take food, and report what we have heard. For this man has sold himself to the devil. They went in and dined, and made their report, it being the eve of the Exaltation of the life-giving Cross in the year 656.”
The next day, Theodosius, the Consul, came out early to the aforesaid Abbot Maximus, and took away all that he had, and said, in the emperor's name: – “Since thou wilt not have honour, it shall be far from thee. Go to the place thou hast thought thyself worthy of, suffering the judgment of thy disciples, him at Mesembria, and him at Perberi.” The patricians Troilus and Epiphanius had said: – “We will bring the two disciples, him at Mesembria, and him at Perberi, and put them, too, to the proof, and see the result. But learn, Sir Abbot, that, when we get a little relief from this rout of heathens (that is, the Saracens), by the Holy Trinity, we will bring you to terms, and your Pope, who is now lifted up, and all the talkers there, and the rest of your disciples: and we will cook you all, each in his own place, as Martin has been cooked”. And the Consul Theodosius took him and committed him to soldiers, and they took him to Perberis. It is not known how long what is called the second exile of St. Maximus lasted, which ensued after he had thus resisted the offers of the emperor.
At a later time, he was brought from Perberis, with his disciple, Anastasius, back to Constantinople. A Synod, there held, excommunicated them both, as well as Pope St. Martin, St. Sophronius, and all the orthodox. The second Anastasius, who had been a Nuncio, was also brought, and the Synod passed on all three the sentence: – “As the Synod has passed against you its canonical sentence, it only remains that you be subject to the severity of the civil laws for your impiety. And though no punishment could be proportionate to your crimes, we, leaving you to the just Judge in respect of the greater punishment, grant you the indulgence of the present life, modifying the strict severity of the laws. We order that you be delivered to the prefect, and by him taken to the guard: that you be then scourged; that in you, Maximus and Anastasius, and Anastasius, the instrument of your iniquity, the blaspheming tongue be cut out to the roots, and then your right hand, which has served your blaspheming mind, be cut off: that thus deprived of these execrable members, you be carried through the twelve quarters of this imperial city, and then be delivered to perpetual banishment and prison, to lament for the remainder of your errors.”
This sentence was carried out by the prefect. St. Maximus was then transported to Lazika, in Colchis: the other two to different castles. As Maximus, from weakness, could neither ride nor bear a carriage, he was borne on a sort of bed made of branches to the Castle of Schemarum. St. Maximus foretold the day of his death, which took place on the 13th August, 662, when he was eighty-two years old. At that moment the chalif Muawiah had about completed the first year in which he had fixed the seat of the Saracenic empire at Damascus: and the “rout of heathen” from which the Byzantine Consul had anticipated deliverance, held in peril during the whole of Muawiah's reign to 680 the imperial city on the Bosphorous, where “the lord of the world” usually resided.
