The Church and the Barbarians Part 5

[Sidenote: The pastoral rule.]

His ideal of the pastoral office is set forth in that golden book, the _Liber regulae pastoralis_, in which he describes the life of a true shepherd of the Christian people. A life of absolute purity and devotion as therein sketched was that which made Gregory's pontificate notable for its wisdom, its discretion, and its wise governance. The pastoral office to him was one even more of the cure of souls than of government, and that idea is shown in all his letters. He wrote to kings, abbats, individual Christians, with the spirit of direct encouragement and admonition, as a wise teacher dispensing instruction.

In the Lateran he lived, as he had lived on the Caelian hill, a life of strict ascetic rule, wearing still his monastic dress, and living in common with his clerks and monks. [Sidenote: Gregory's life.] John the Deacon, who wrote his biography nearly two centuries after his death, says that "the Roman Church in Gregory's time was like that Church as it was under the rule of the apostles, or the Church of Alexandria when S. Mark was its bishop." Charity was by him developed into a great scheme of benevolence organised with the minutest care and recorded in detail in books that were a model to later times. The political and ecclesiastical cares of the papacy never prevented Gregory from what he considered the chiefest duty of his office, that of preaching. His sermons, which were as famous as those of Chrysostom in Constantinople, were {65} direct in their appeal, vivid in their ill.u.s.tration, terse and epigrammatic in their expression. Paul the Deacon sums up his work by saying that he was entirely engrossed in gaining souls.

[Sidenote: His statesmanship.]

At the same time he was a statesman as well as a bishop. He governed the "patrimony of S. Peter," lands scattered over Italy and even Gaul, with a careful supervision, entering into minute matters as well as general policy, freeing slaves, caring for the cultivation of land; and the intimate knowledge which he thus acquired is shown in his _Dialogues_, which throw a flood of light on the life, secular as well as ecclesiastical, of his age. Outside these districts, in purely spiritual matters, he showed a constant vigilance. Everywhere what was needed seemed to be known to the pope, and everywhere he was planning to remedy evils, to build up the Church, to reform abuses, to convert heretics, to supply new bishops, to encourage the growth of monasticism. This activity extended not only to what were called the suburbicarian provinces but to distant lands, such as Spain, Illyric.u.m, Gaul, Africa, as well as to Northern Italy. Something has been said of his relations in Gaul, and remains to be said of his intervention in Africa. His relations with Constantinople may be most significantly ill.u.s.trated by the dispute as to the t.i.tle of the patriarch of New Rome.

[Sidenote: The t.i.tle "Universal Bishop."]

In 588 the acts of a synod of Constantinople were declared by Pelagius II. to be invalid be-cause the patriarch used the t.i.tle _oikoumenikos_ or _universalis_. Just as at the Council of Chalcedon the Alexandrine representatives styled the pope "oec.u.menical archbishop and {66} patriarch of the Great Rome," so the patriarch of Constantinople used the style and dignity of "oec.u.menical patriarch." It was one that had been employed at least since 518, and it seems to have been commonly used. From the use of this t.i.tle came grave controversy. In 588 the acts of a synod of Constantinople were declared by Pelagius II. to be invalid because the patriarch used the t.i.tle _oikoumenikos_ or _universalis_: and in 595 Gregory the Great strongly condemned the use of such a phrase, at the same time repudiating its use for his own see.

"The Council of Chalcedon," he wrote, "offered the t.i.tle of universal to the Roman pontiff, but he refused to accept it, lest he should seem thereby to derogate from the honour of his brother bishops." [6] And to the emperor Maurice he said still more distinctly, "I confidently affirm that whosoever calls himself _sacerdos universalis_, or desires to be so called by others, is in his pride a forerunner of Antichrist."

But the patriarchs continued to use the t.i.tle, and before a century had elapsed, the popes followed their example.

[Sidenote: The province of Illyric.u.m.]

The relation of Gregory with the Church of Illyric.u.m gives opportunity for mention of that anomalous patriarchate. Somewhat apart from the general Church history of the early Middle Age stands the province of Illyric.u.m. Its ecclesiastical status was even more ambiguous than its political. On its borders, or within its limits, the patriarchate of Rome touched that of {67} Constantinople, and the claims of the two, sometimes at least conflicting, were complicated by the privileges given by Justinian to his birthplace. In the tenth century it was undoubtedly under the jurisdiction of Constantinople, in the seventh it appears to have been under that of Rome. In the Councils at Constantinople in 681 and 692, the Illyrian bishops appeared as attached exclusively to Rome; and so, it has been noticed, did those of Crete, Thessalonica, and Corinth. In the sixth century there are instances, though not numerous ones, of papal interference, in the nature of the exercise of judicial power, in the province of Illyric.u.m; and at the end of the century Gregory the Great was especially active in his correspondence with the bishops. It would seem from one of his letters that he counted even Justiniana Prima as under his authority, though the intention of the emperor was certainly not to make it so.

This edict--for so it practically is--is interesting also because it appears to deal with all the ecclesiastical provinces of the empire which depended immediately on the Roman patriarchate. It omits Africa, and the fact that the popes did not send the pallium to the Bishop of Carthage (the North African Metropolitan) shows that the popes did not claim to confer jurisdiction, but merely to recognise a special relationship, by this act.[7] On the other hand, it is to be observed that the code of Justinian contains a law of Theodosius II. which places the Illyrian bishopric under the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople. But this law is beset with many difficulties, and it has been {68} argued that it was merely the expression of a temporary rupture between the Empire and the papacy, which in the schism of 484-519 was gravely accentuated; and there are grounds for thinking that the bishops of Thessalonica exercised authority in Illyric.u.m as delegates of Rome--yet rather from their political than their ecclesiastical a.s.sociations. However this may be, there can be no doubt that the position given by Justinian to the city of his birth was intended to be practically patriarchal, and that the Bishop of Thessalonica, whether vicar or not of the pope, was practically ignored. The whole question is indeed a notable example of the difficulties consequent on the close connection between religion and politics in the sixth century.

[Sidenote: Gregory's claim to jurisdiction.]

Gregory's action was that of a wise but masterful ruler, and it seems to have been based on the view that all the bishops of the West were directly under his jurisdiction. Similar cases of interference are to be found in regard to the churches of Istria, and to the great sees of Ravenna and Milan. In connection may be seen the claim to grant the _pallium_, a mark of honour which seems to have been gradually pa.s.sing into a sign of jurisdiction.[8] Gregory claimed for the successors of S. Peter something like an apostolic authority, and he at least suggested a theory of the papal office which was capable of almost indefinite extension. Politic and religion here met together. When Airulf in 592 appeared before Rome the pope made a separate treaty with him: he stepped into the {69} place of ruler of imperial Italy when he disregarded the exarch and even the emperor, and entered into negotiations on his own account; and up to the time of his death he was practically responsible for the rearrangement of Italy. His letter to the great Lombard queen, Theodelind, of whom memorials survive to-day at Monza, show how the two sides of his position mingled; how he was statesman and diplomatist as well as priest and missionary.

[Sidenote: His missions.]

In his missionary interests he pa.s.sed far outside Italy. The most conspicuous example is the conversion of the English, which he had in earlier years been most anxious himself to undertake, and which was begun in 597 under his direction by Augustine; but it is not the only one. In Northern Italy, in Africa and Gaul, Gregory was active in seeking the conversion of pagans and heretics, and in endeavouring by gentle measures to lead the Jews to Christ.

[Sidenote: His relations on monasticism.]

More important still in the history of the papacy was Gregory's work in spreading, organising, and systematising monasticism. He insisted on the strict observance of the rule of S. Benedict. Not only did he reform, but he very greatly strengthened, the monasticism of Italy.

Conspicuously did his _privilegia_, granting or recognising a considerable freedom from episcopal control, start the monks on a new advance. While not exempting them from the rule of bishops, he made it possible for future popes to win support for themselves by granting such exemptions.

But Gregory's fame does not lie wholly in any of these spheres of activity. Great as a ruler and an {70} organiser, he was known also to later ages, as to his own, for his theological writings. He was not only a practical ruler and practical minister of Christ; he was also a leader in Christian learning--the last, as men have come to call him, of the four great Latin doctors.

[Sidenote: His relations to learning.]

The work of Gregory the Great was here as elsewhere far-reaching, but rather an organising than a formative one. Cla.s.sical studies, in which he had been trained, he put aside; and when he did his utmost to spread monasteries over the length and breadth of Italy, it was not at all of learning in a secular sense, but wholly of religion that he thought.

Thus his own theology is primarily a biblical theology. The Bible was to him the word of G.o.d. Like the author of the _Imitatio Christi_ in later days, he did not care to argue as to the authorship of the different books but to profit by what was in them. He was a great expositor, a great preacher, and that always with a practical aim. As he said, "We hear the doctrine words of G.o.d if we act on them."

[Sidenote: His doctrine of the church.] In his more general theological writings he sums up, with the precision of a master, not any new doctrines or advances in speculation, but the theology of the Church of his age. And he is able thus to emphasise the crying need of unity in words which state the claim of the Church for the conversion of the pagans and heretics of his day: "Sancta autem universalis ecclesia praedicat Deum veraciter nisi intra se coli non posse, a.s.serens quod omnes qui extra ipsam sunt minime salvabuntur." Outside this there was no hope of spiritual health. And this doctrine he based {71} on the unity of Christ's life with that of the Church: "Our Redeemer showed that He is one person with the Church, which He took to be His own"; and thus it was that "The Churches of the true faith set in all parts of the world make one Catholic Church, in which all the faithful who are right minded toward G.o.d live in concord." Thus he was, in theology as in ecclesiastical politics, a concentrating and clarifying force; and when, on March 12th, 604, he pa.s.sed to his rest, he had laid firm the foundations of the medieval papacy, and in hardly less degree those of the theological system of the medieval Church.

[1] _Paulus Diaconus_, iii, 26, ed. Waitz, pp. 105-7.

[2] Diehl, _op. cit._, gives a list, p. 256.

[3] Joannes Biclarensis, _Chronicon_ (Migne, _Patr. Lat._, lxxii. 868).

[4] See below, p. 76.

[5] The _Vita Antiquissima_ (S. Gall. MS.), by a monk of Whitby, does not represent them as slaves (pp. 13, 14), ed. Gasquet.

[6] S. Greg., _Epp._, v. 18. The term _sacerdos_ is commonly used for bishop at this date. Thus Gregory of Tours calls a bishop _sacerdos_ during this life, _antistes_ after his death. S. Gregory must not, however, be understood as disclaiming a papal supremacy.

[7] The letter is Epp. Greg. (Jaffe), 1497; cf. letter to Syagrius, Bishop of Autun.

[8] It does not seem, from Bede i. 39, that, as has been a.s.serted, it was always necessary to apply for it.

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CHAPTER VI

CONTROVERSY AND THE CATHOLICISM OF SPAIN

[Sidenote: Pelagian controversy of sixth century.]

Controversies which belong to this period are those connected with semi-Pelagianism and with Adoptianism. Faustus, Bishop of Riez, who died almost at the end of the fifth century, held views which were opposed to those of S. Augustine as well as to those of Pelagius. His writings were attacked by many, among them by Caesarius, Bishop of Arles from 501 to 542, who caused a synod at Orange in 529 to condemn semi-Pelagian opinions, in a statement which declared that sufficient grace is given to all the baptized (an expression which had an important history centuries later). The writings of Faustus were the subject of much discussion also at Constantinople, and they were condemned by several of the popes.

Of a wholly different kind was the heresy originating in the East, and probably revived through the controversy of the Three Chapters, which came into prominence in the eighth century in Spain. It has been thought that the exigencies of anti-Muhammadan controversy had something to do with the importance which the question now a.s.sumed.

The Spanish Church had a long record, in the Councils of Toledo, of orthodox and {73} strenuous adherence to the Christian faith; but it showed also a strongly nationalistic spirit, and it was natural that much should be developed, through antagonism to Muhammadanism and Arian influences, which would fall into danger of extreme reaction on the one side or of unwise concession on the other. "Spanish Christianity," it has been said in a phrase which has become cla.s.sical, "was a perpetual crusade." In Spain the Christian contest against sin and unbelief became more often, or more constantly, than elsewhere an actual physical struggle against those who distorted or denied the faith of the Church and those who trampled it under foot. This is, of course, most true of the ages which followed the Moorish invasions, of the long strife between Christians and Moors, of the times and the thoughts which gave birth to the immortal literature of the peninsula, to Calderon and Cervantes, to Lope de Vega and S. Teresa of Jesus. But it is also true, though in a less degree, of the earlier times--of those which extended from the introduction of Christianity--from the missionary visit, it may be, of S. Paul himself--down to the destruction of the monarchy of the Wisigoths in 711. Spain was in 589 won to Catholicism by the conversion of its king Reccared. But this was the end of a long and critical period, for from the acceptance of Arianism by Remismond in 466 the country was under the rule of princes who were pledged to that error.

The Wisigoths identified their heresy with their nationality. The general decadence of the Empire spread to Spain. The social system was in a state of dissolution. The canons of the Councils show a {74} picture of life which is appalling in its corruption, but at the same time are evidence of the earnest efforts of the Church for amendment.

[Sidenote: The conversion of Spain.] They show how Christianity had penetrated into the country districts, and how eager were the bishops of the sixth century to do their spiritual duty far and wide. Side by side with the canons of Church Councils is the great Fuero Jusgo (in process of compilation from the fifth to the eighth century) in witnessing to the efforts for a better state of things. During the rule of the West Goths, persecution of Catholics had been frequent, but when Amalric married Hlothild, daughter of Chlodowech, promising her tolerance of her religion, a way was opened for a new life to orthodoxy. But Amalric broke his promise, and an invasion of Spain by the Franks followed. In the reign of the Arian Theudis (531-48) there was still more decisive intervention. Childebert and Chlothochar invaded Spain and besieged Saragossa, but were driven back; and it was not till Athanagild called in the armies of Justinian that the confusion and division of Spanish life; between orthodox and heretic, Roman and Goth, was healed in the slightest degree. The year 560 witnessed the conversion of King Mir by Martin of Braga, and three years later, and again in 572, Councils at Braga witnessed to the Catholic faith of the Church. But it was an era of fightings and fears. The Roman armies of the Eastern Empire held the cities of the coast long after Athanagild had come to be recognised as king of all the Goths in Spain, but gradually unity was springing up under the rule of that able chieftain. He died in 568, having married his daughters, Brunichild and Galswintha, to {75} the Frankish kings, Sigebert and Chilperich. His successor Leovigild established a sway over all the Wisigothic possessions and ruled from Nimes to Seville. The wedding of Brunichild, though sung by Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, was but the beginning of crime and of sorrows; yet it led indirectly to the conversion of Spain. Brunichild's daughter Ingunthis married Leovigild's son Hermenigild. She was bitterly persecuted as a Catholic when she came to Spain, but she clung to her faith with the devotion of a martyr, and she won over her husband. [Sidenote: Hermenigild.] At Seville Hermenigild was for some time acting as king, under his father, and when he was threatened on his conversion with the loss of all he had he took up arms. After a long contest he was subdued, and he underwent a long persecution ending eventually in death when he refused to receive communion at the hands of an Arian bishop on Easter Day, 585.[1] Ingunthis escaped to Constantinople. Then till 587 Arianism reigned supreme in Spain, and John of Biclaro, Catholic bishop of Gerona, writes as one crying in a wilderness. But Catholicism in Spain was scotched, not killed, and when Reccared (586-601) called Arian and Catholic bishop alike before him, and after two years definitely accepted orthodoxy under the influence of his uncle Leander, Archbishop of Seville, it was not long before the whole of Council of Spain accepted his decision and followed his example. [Sidenote: Council of Toledo, 589.] This was in 587, and an {76} inscription shows that the cathedral church of Toledo was then consecrated in the Catholic faith.

With the Council of Toledo (third synod of Toledo), 589,[2] which accepted the first four General Councils and the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son, Spain returned to the unity of the faith. From Reccared's reign, too, dates a civilisation distinctly traceable to Constantinople and a recognition of absolute equality between the different races in the peninsula. And to that golden age belong also the great saint and preacher, Leander, who died in 603, and S. Isidore of Seville, the encyclopaedic writer, who died thirty-three years later. S. Leander had at Constantinople come to know Gregory the Great. He was the chief theologian of Spain in his age, and his words welcomed and ratified the conversion. Thus the modern history of Spain and her most Catholic kings begins. The importance of the period culminates in the compilation, almost final, of the great Wisigothic Code, the Fuero Jusgo, at once civil and ecclesiastical, the result of a union between Church and State even more perfect than that represented in the English Witenagemot.

The concentration of Spanish interests on theological questions led before long to new developments, but meanwhile it helped the happy tendency to unity which Recceswinth (652-72) confirmed by allowing the intermarriage which had long been forbidden--Recceswinth, whose splendid gold crown, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, still remains amongst the most striking memorials of the Christian art of the seventh century. Wamba, his successor, established his supremacy in {77} Septimania by the capture of Nimes from a traitorous vicegerent, and lived to show the sincerity with which the Wisigoths had accepted the idea of the sanct.i.ty of vows to G.o.d. During an illness, when he was supposed to be incapable of recovery and remained in a stupor, he received the tonsure that he might die as a monk: when he recovered he refused to return to the world and abdicated the throne. His successors were equally strict, it would seem, in obedience to the Church's laws, often unintelligently interpreted.

[Sidenote: Persecution of the Jews.]

To these days, too, belongs one of the first and darkest blots on the popular Christianity of the Middle Age--the persecution of Jews. The Jews of Spain had long been restless under a government which was so strongly ecclesiastical in its sympathies: persecuting laws oppressed them, and they could hardly even in secret practise their religion.

Plots were constant and natural, and at last it is said that the Jews incited the Saracens, who had overthrown the imperial power in Africa, to cross the sea and strip from the weak Wisigoths of Spain the last remains of their power. In 695 a Council at Toledo (the sixteenth) determined when the plot was discovered wholly to destroy the Judaic faith in their land. It was ordered that all grown-up Jews should be made slaves, and all children brought up as Christians. This was the very year of the storming of Carthage.[3] It is not to be wondered at that the Jews gave every help they could to the infidels who, before long, attacked the kingdom of the Wisigoths. Within twenty years Spain, up to the very mountains of the {78} Basque land and of the Asturias, was conquered by the followers of Muhammad, and silence fell upon the country which had appeared to be the home of an abiding Church.

The splendid edifice which had seemed to be reared on the solid foundations of religion and law was shattered by the repeated blows of the Arab invasion. Why was this? The chroniclers gave answer without hesitation--"Peccatis exigentibus, victi sunt Christiani." The Goths (as they proudly called themselves) "have so offended Thee, O Lord, by their pride, that they deserved a fall by the sword of the Saracen."

It was, in truth, as the great Sancho of Navarre declared in his charter of foundation to the abbey of Albelda, "Our ancestors sinned without scruple; they daily transgressed the commandments of the Lord, and so to punish them as they had deserved and to make them turn to Him, the Most Just of Judges delivered them to a barbarous people." In truth, the ma.s.s of the land had never been converted to Catholic Christianity at all, and a heretical society was powerless against Moslem sincerity and swords. Only in the north was Catholicism supreme, and thence came in later days the reconquest. But Catholics lived on all over Spain under their conquerors in comparative peace.

[Sidenote: The Adoptianist heresy.]

The Church survived. Persecution made its life strong and vigorous, and that life found outlet in new varieties of theological expression.

Elipandus, Archbishop of Toledo, within seventy years of the Saracen conquest, became known outside his own land, with Felix, bishop of the northern see of Urgel, for his advocacy of the statement that {79} Christ's Sonship was that of adoption. a.s.serting the two Natures and the two Wills of the Lord, the Adoptianists regarded Christ as only in His divine nature truly the Son of G.o.d. Eager to a.s.sert the full Humanity and to rebut the Muhammadan charges of idolatry, the Spanish theologians taught that "one and the same Person was in two aspects a Son, in virtue of His relation to two different natures," and that "the Divine Son of G.o.d, begotten from all eternity of the Father, not by adoption but by birth, not by grace but by nature--that He, when made of a woman, made under the law, was Son of G.o.d, not by origin but by adoption, not by nature but by grace." [4] It was an attempt to carry further the decisions adopted at Chalcedon and to account for the origin of the two Natures, their completeness in distinction, and their union together.

[Sidenote: Its condemnation.]

Adoptianism was condemned at Regensburg in 792, and at Frankfort in 794, and, under the influence of Alcuin, Felix made submission at Aachen in 799. Elipandus, safe among the Saracens, held out in his opinions. It would seem that the discussion represented the eighth-century expression of the age-long conflict between logic and mystery, the desire for exact definition, and the sense of something beyond human understanding in what belongs to the nature of G.o.d, and to the divine action in the Incarnation, the union of G.o.d and man.

[Sidenote: Adoptianism in the East.]