The Church and the Barbarians Part 6

Adoptianism had in the East a greater success and a longer history than in the West. In Syria and Armenia vast numbers joined the sect founded, or revived, by one {80} Constantine in the middle of the seventh century. He lived near Samosata, and probably inherited the teaching of the earlier heretic, Paul of that place. The sect came to be called Paulicians. They rejected the real divinity of Christ and placed themselves in opposition to very much else which belonged to the earliest Christian tradition, as in their rejection of the Old Testament and the perpetual virginity of the Lord's Mother. Armenia became the headquarters of a large and prosperous sect, towards which emperors alternately were persecuting or favourable. Nicephorus I.

(802-11) was friendly to it, but his successor put it down with relentless savagery; and after it had led to a formidable rebellion, its votaries were finally suppressed by the generals of Basil the Macedonian, 871. But its tenets lingered on in Thrace, whither it had been transported when some of its disciples were expropriated by Constantine V., till the eighteenth century, and still later in Armenia itself. The authoritative book of the Armenian Paulicians, the _Key of Truth_, has been thought to have been completed by one Smbat, minister of Chosroes of Persia, whose date is 800-50,[5] but the history of those days is certainly very confused and may have been distorted.

The intervention of Charles the Great in this controversy is but one ill.u.s.tration of the importance of theological questions in the outlook of the reviver of the Empire in the Catholic West. Other theological doctrines had a like interest in his view and in that of his house; and in some of them also Spain was concerned. At Toledo, in 589, Reccared, when he accepted the Catholic creed, had inserted his belief in {81} the double procession of the Holy Ghost. This was again discussed in 767 at Gentilly, and at Aachen in 809.

[Sidenote: The "Veni Creator."]

Alcuin, as in the Adoptianist controversy, played a great part in stating the view which the West was coming generally to accept. Leo III. was consulted, and advised that no addition should be made to the Creed for fear of widening the breach with the East. It would seem that the great hymn, "Veni Creator Spiritus," is the expression of this doctrine by the ninth century, and is the work of Raba.n.u.s Maurus, a monk of the famous house of Fulda.

[Sidenote: The "Quicunque Vult."]

While this sums up in devotional form the Christian thought as to one of the mysteries of faith, the hymn of a character more distinctly credal, called "Quicunque vult," enshrines it in another aspect. The "Quicunque" has, indeed, a much earlier history. In 633 the Fourth Council of Toledo quoted many of its clauses. Leodgar, Bishop of Autun (663-78), directed his clergy to learn it by heart; and it became a not uncommon profession of faith to be made by a bishop at his consecration. At the end of the eighth century it seems to have been widely recited in church. But it certainly goes back very much earlier. Caesarius, Bishop of Arles (501-43), the opponent of semi-Pelagianism, has been proved to have used the creed continually: it was quoted also by his rival, Avitus, Bishop of Vienne (490-523), and it is probable that it represents the teaching of the great abbey of Lerins in the controversies of the beginning of the sixth century.

It was decisively a Western creed: it {82} never came into the offices of the orthodox Church of the East. In the West it became a popular means of instruction and a popular confession of the joy of Christian faith. It was sung in procession, recited in the services, meditated on by the clergy. It formed a model of orthodox expression of belief in days of confusion and controversy.

[1] This story is discredited by a recent writer, Mr. Dudden, _S.

Gregory the Great_, i. 407 (following F. Gorres), but I see no reason to doubt that S. Gregory was rightly informed, and I accept what Dr.

Hodgkin (_Eng. Hist. Rev._, ii. 216) states as the facts.

[2] Mansi, _Concilia_, ix. 977-1010.

[3] See below, p. 109.

[4] See B. L. Ottley, _Doctrine of the Incarnation_, ii. 152-4.

[5] See F. C. Conybeare, _The Key of Truth_, p. 67.

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CHAPTER VII

THE CHURCH AND THE MONOTHELITE CONTROVERSY, 628-725

The years of peace that succeeded the death of Justinian ended with the triumph of the Empire over barbarian foes. Christian philosophy had seemed to be quiescent, but there were questions which thoughtful men must have seen would soon come up for solution as the inevitable result of the Monophysite controversy. Thought in the active Eastern minds could not stand still; and the West too, as the barbarians were conquered, a.s.similated, and converted by the Church, began to enter keenly into the theology of the East. In Gaul and Britain, as well as at Milan and at Rome, there arose critics and historians who could carry on the work of Leo the Great and of the line of chroniclers who had told in Greek the story of the Church's life. A word at first as to the general interest of the period.

[Sidenote: The East in the seventh century.]

With the victory of Heraclius over the Persians in 628, it might seem that heresy would be driven from its home in the distant East, that Nestorianism would die out, and that Sergius I., Patriarch of Constantinople (610-38), would be able to win back the Monophysites to the unity of the Church. But this happy result was {84} prevented by the spread of the Muhammadan conquest, beginning even before the death of the Prophet in 632, and by the rise of a new heresy--the Monothelitism which gave to the two Natures of our Lord but a single will. As the Mussulman arms spread the faith of Islam, the Jacobite Church of Syria seemed almost to welcome it as a refuge from the dominance of orthodoxy. In Egypt the Coptic (Monophysite) patriarch entered Alexandria in triumph with the Muslim force when the Orthodox patriarch fled with the imperial troops. The Melkite (Orthodox) body was, however, not wholly unprotected by the conquerors, and at Jerusalem it was allowed to remain in possession, though at Antioch there was for long no Orthodox patriarch at all. Of the Monothelite heresy--condemned at the Sixth General Council, 681--we may for the moment defer to speak, except to note that in the political disturbances that swept over the Lebanon the heresy took root there, under one John Maron, and founded the division, religious and political, of the Maronites, which still endures.

[Sidenote: Missionary work.]

But while the Church was thus suffering in various ways, the Byzantine missionary energy was far from exhausted. Heraclius sought to convert the barbarian tribes far and near, the Croats and Serbs, the Bulgarians and Slavs, and the Church of Constantinople appointed an official to inspect the districts on the frontiers and to examine candidates for baptism. Equally he sought to reunite the Armenians to the Orthodox Church; but after interviews and theological discussions the opponents of the Greeks triumphed, and the catholicos Nerses {85} III. in 645 anathematised the Council of Chalcedon--a declaration which, after a momentary reunion, was renewed early in the eighth century. The Armenian Church thus remained formally Monophysite. While the orthodox emperors were thus unsuccessful in reuniting the separated Churches, the patriarchate of Constantinople was winning a strength within which she had lost without; the area of her confined jurisdiction was straitly ruled, and 356 bishoprics towards the end of the seventh century acknowledged the patriarchal throne. The emperors and the Church alike recognised no supremacy of Rome--a fact which was emphasised by the decree of 666 which declared Ravenna free from papal jurisdiction, and in the condemnation of Honorius by the Sixth General Council. [Sidenote: The Trullian Council, 691.] So, again, the Council at Constantinople called _in Trullo_ (691), directed canon after canon against the customs and claims of the Roman Church. This independence was emphasised by the compilation of a _Syntagma_, or collection of canons, parallel to the much later collection in the West. These canons, it may be remarked in pa.s.sing, throw most interesting light on the customs of the Greek Church--on clerical marriage, for example, which was allowed to be dissolved only by the clergy of the recently converted barbarous tribes, among whom a return to celibate life might sometimes be advisable.

So much for the general characteristics of the period 628-725. We may now turn to the critical point of theology on which the ecclesiastical history of the time turned.

Monophysitism was not dead in spite of Chalcedon {86} or Constantinople. [Sidenote: The Aphthartodocetic controversy.] The Fourth and Fifth General Council had still left points of debate for those within as well as those without the Church. In the form which it was a.s.serted that Justinian had himself come to accept, it a.s.serted the Lord's Body to be incapable of sin or corruption, and only subject to suffering by the voluntary exercise of His divine power. While the accusations against Justinian in John of Nikiu and Nicetius of Trier are contradictory to each other, and make it clear that he did not accept the opinion of Julian of Halicarna.s.sus, they may serve to ill.u.s.trate the confusion of thought with which these subjects were handled. The followers of Julian, whose view has here been summarised, were nicknamed by those of the famous monk Severus (Monophysite patriarch of Antioch in 513), "Aphthartodocetes" or "Phantasiasts."

Those who followed Severus, while they were prepared to recognise two natures in Christ, yet dwelt strongly on their union, and especially on the "one energy" of the Lord's will. From this a further step was to be taken. There were some who believed in the transformation of the human nature into the Divine, and who came to be called _Aktistetes_, and, in a still further extreme, _Adiaphorites_, when they denied any distinction between the G.o.dhead and manhood in Christ. The error at the root of all these contentions seems to have been the dwelling upon the physical rather than the spiritual effects of the Divine power revealed in the incarnation of the Son of G.o.d. Theologians arose to controvert it and to develop the theological decisions of the Council; chief among them was Leontius of Byzantium, a philosophic apologist of real {87} eminence, whose work was taken up later and completed by John of Damascus.

[Sidenote: The Emperor Heraclius as a theologian.]

It is not to be wondered at that a great soldier, filled with a deep sense of the necessity of uniting the Empire against its foes, should be led to accept a theological development which seemed to offer the hope of a reconciliation. From 622, under the advice of Sergius, as a Patriarch of Constantinople, a basis of reunion was sought in the formula that though the Lord had two Natures He had yet only "one theandric energy." The emperor Heraclius turned unwisely from the army to the Church, which, like many able military men, he thought might be coerced or led into opinions which seemed to him to be common sense.

For a time it appeared that he would succeed: three patriarchs of Constantinople, one of Antioch, one of Alexandria, one of Rome (Honorius I.), were in agreement, if a little tepidly, favourable to the phrase. Honorius definitely stated that he confessed "_one_ WILL of our Lord Jesus Christ." [1] [Sidenote: The Ecthesis, 638.] Only Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem (634), held out. In 638 the emperor issued the Ecthesis,[2] or Confession of Faith, drawn up by the patriarch Sergius. It professed adherence to orthodox definitions, and continued, "Wherefore, following the Holy Fathers in all things, and in this, we confess one Will of our Lord Jesus Christ, the very G.o.d, so that never was there a separate Will of His Body animated {88} by the intellect, nor one of contrary motion natural to itself, but one which operated when and how and to what purpose He who is G.o.d the Word willed." This statement was repudiated by Rome, and in 649 condemned in a synod at the Lateran under Martin I., who ended his days in exile for disobeying the imperial power. The quarrel became one between Rome and Constantinople, at a time when the popes had recovered their orthodoxy and the patriarchs were subservient to impetuous emperors.

[Sidenote: The Type, 648.] In 648 the _Type_ issued from New Rome as an attempt at pacification; but the Old Rome rejected it, with anathemas.

In 680 a synod, under Pope Agatho, at which S. Wilfrith of Ripon was present and signed for the north part of Britain, rejected as heresy the doctrine of the two wills, and local councils (as at Hatfield six months later) agreed with the rejection.

[Sidenote: Sixth General Council, 681.]

All this led on to the summoning of the Sixth General Council at Constantinople, which sat from November, 680, to September, 681. The temporary schism between Rome and Constantinople was healed. Agatho's letter condemning the doctrine of the two wills was accepted; anathema was laid upon those, dead or alive, who had accepted the heresy, and among them Pope Honorius I., a condemnation repeated by many a pope after him. The Council declared that the Lord possesses two wills, "for just as the Flesh is, and is said to be, the Flesh of the Word, so also His human will is, and is said to be, proper [natural] to the Word." And also, "just as His holy and spotless ensouled flesh was taken into G.o.d yet not annihilated, so His human will though taken into G.o.d was not annihilated." Again, as so often in {89} the days of Justinian, the words of S. Leo were appropriated for a definition of the orthodox belief. The Council was attended by 289 bishops, the emperor occupying the position which had been common since Nicaea, while on his right were the bishops of the East, on his left those of the West. Rightly was the doctrine of one will condemned as contrary to the Chalcedonian a.s.sertion of the Lord's perfect Humanity; and the condemnation was readily accepted by the Church. Only in Syria, among the Maronites (followers of John Maro), did Monothelitism linger on for centuries, till they became absorbed in the Latin Church.

[Sidenote: The Monothelite controversy.]

The chief opponent of Monothelitism was Maximus, whose _Disputation with Pyrrhus_ remains the most important survival of the controversy.

It is a subtle and rational exposition of the orthodox doctrine. The original phrase, _theandric energy_, from which the Ecthesis of Heraclius started, seems to have been drawn from the unknown Platonist who came to be called Dionysius the Areopagite, and whose writings had a continued influence in the Middle Age. But to all reasonable thinkers the main question was decided. The truth of Christ's human nature was an essential verity of the faith, and to deny His human will would make His nature incomplete, and His goodness in any true sense impossible. The difficulty would arise again when Luther and Calvin carried further the dispute concerning the nature of the human will, but as regards her Lord the Church had come to a decision based upon her knowledge of His divine life on earth.

The Council _in Trullo_ (named from the {90} dome-shaped place of meeting), 691, called also _Quini-s.e.xtan_, summoned by Justinian II.

(685-711), was not Oec.u.menical, and was disciplinary rather than dogmatic. It condemned many Roman practices, and a.s.serted definitely that the patriarchal throne of Constantinople should enjoy the same privileges as that of Old Rome, should in all ecclesiastical matters be ent.i.tled to the same pre-eminence, and should rank as second after it.

The _Liber Pontificalis_, the Roman Church history of the time, states that the pope's legates gave a.s.sent to the decrees, which is unlikely.

But this one was no more than the repet.i.tion of many previous statements, as emphatic in the sixth as in the seventh century. The position was simply that claimed by the patriarch John when he signed the formula of Catholic faith drawn up and proposed by Pope Hormisdas.

[Sidenote: Repudiation of Roman claims.] He insisted on prefixing a repudiation of the Roman claim to supremacy over Christendom. "I hold," he declared, "the most holy Churches of the Elder and the New Rome to be one. I define the See of the Apostle Peter and this of the Imperial City to be one See." By this it is clear that he designed to a.s.sert both the unity of the Church--which, as it has always seemed to the East, was threatened by the demand of the Roman obedience--and the equality of the two great churches of the Old and the New Rome.

Justinian I. spoke of Constantinople as "head of all the churches"

("omnium ecclesiarum caput"), but it is clear that he did not regard this position as conferring any supreme or exclusive jurisdiction. It was a t.i.tle of honour which he would use of other patriarchates; and that he did not consider the power {91} of the patriarchates as unalterable is seen by his attempted creation of the new jurisdiction of his own city Justiniana Prima (Tauresium), a few miles south of Sofia, over a large district. To the archbishop whom he here created he gave authority to "hold the place of the apostolic throne" within his province.[3]

[Sidenote: Independent att.i.tude of Constantinople.]

This position, then, of the Byzantine patriarchate, as independent of the other patriarchates, and equal to that of the older Rome, but occupying in point of honour a secondary position, was recognised by Church and State alike; and it was this that the Council _in Trullo_ reaffirmed. In another point it was divergent from Rome--that of the marriage of the clergy. Subdeacons, deacons, and priests were forbidden to marry, but those married before ordination were equally forbidden, under pain of excommunication, to separate from their wives.

An attempt of the mad emperor Justinian II. to enforce the acceptance of the decrees by Pope Sergius I. was a complete failure. Popes were becoming much stronger in Italy than was the distant Caesar.

Rome was becoming independent of emperor and of exarch alike. In 711 the pope Constantine visited Constantinople as an honoured guest, where he was treated with diplomatic politeness, and where, possibly after they had undergone modification, he signed the {92} decrees of the Trullian Council. On this point the papal biographer is silent, but he a.s.serts with enthusiasm the reverence of the emperor for the pope and the latter's regret when the b.l.o.o.d.y tyrant met the reward of his crimes a few weeks later. With this the ecclesiastical interest of Eastern history is for a time in the background.

[1] This is spoken of by a recent Roman Catholic writer as "la deplorable reponse de Honorius, ce monument de bonne foi surprise et de navete confiante." It does not support the notion of papal infallibility.

[2] Given in Baronius, A.D. 689.

[3] See Procopius, _De Aedif._, iv. 1 (ed. Bonn., pp. 266, 267); and _Novellae_, xi. (de privilegiis archiepiscopi primae Justinianae) and cx.x.xi. (de ecclesiasticis canonibus et privilegiis), cap. 3. It is no alteration of patriarchal powers, but rather the a.s.sertion of them.

Still patriarchal jurisdictions are not regarded as unalterable--as is clear from the creation of the modern national churches of the Balkan lands.

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CHAPTER VIII