The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations Part 5

[37] It is to be observed that the Pope calls his judgment the Judgment of the Holy Ghost, just as Pope Clement I. did in the first recorded judgment.

See his letter, secs. 58, 59, 63, quoted in _Church and State_, 198-199.

[38] Photius, i. 124.

[39] Mansi, vii. 1139; Baronius (anno 484), 26, 27.

[40] Domini sacerdotes.

[41] Jaffe, 365; Mansi, vii. 1065.

[42] iv. 16.

[43] Silentiarius, in the Greek court, officers who kept silence in the emperor's presence.

[44] _Ep._ x.; Mansi, vii. 1067.

[45] "The recital of a name in the diptychs was a formal declaration of Church fellows.h.i.+p, or even a sort of canonisation and invocation. It was contrary to all Church principles to permit in them the name of anyone condemned by the Church."--_Life of Photius_, i. 133, by Card.

Hergenrother.

[46] "Cui feo la dote Dono infelice di bellezza, ond' hai Funesta dote d'infinite guai."

--_Filicaja._

[47] Photius, i. 128, who quotes Avitus, 3rd letter, and Ennodius, and Gelasius, _Ep._ xiii.

[48] Photius, i. 126; Hefele, _C.G._, ii. 596.

[49] Jaffe, 371, 372; Mansi, vii. 1097; vii. 1100.

[50] Dum scilicet ad Apostolicam Sedem regulariter destinatur, per quam _largiente Christo omnium solidatur dignitas sacerdotum_. Quod ipsae dilectionis tuae literae Apostolorum summum petramque fidei et caelestis dispensatorem mysterii creditis sibi clavibus beatum Petrum Apostolum confitentur.

[51] In compage corporis Christi consentire.

[52] Jaffe, 374; Mansi, vii. 1103.

[53] The "libellus synodicus," says Hefele, _C.G._, i. 70, "auch synodicon genannt, enthalt kurze Nachrichten uber 158 Concilien der 9 ersten Jahrhunderte, und reicht bis zum 8ten allgemeinen Concil incl. Er wurde im 16ten Jahrhundert von Andreas Darmarius aus Morea gebracht, von Pappus, einem Strasburger Theologen, gekauft, und von ihm im I. 1601 mit lateinischer Uebersetzung zuerst edirt. Spater ging er auch in die Conciliensammlungen ueber; namentlich liess ihn Harduin im 5ten Bande seiner Collect. Concil. p. 1491 abdrucken, wahrend Mansi ihn in seine einzelnen Theile zerlegte, und jeden derselben an der zutreffenden Stelle (bei jeder einzelnen Synode) mittheilte."

[54] akephalos.

[55] Words of infamous meaning.

[56] Civilta, vol. iii., 1855, p. 429. Acta SS. Jan. XI.

[57] Mansi, viii. 5. _Ep._ i.

[58] Ad veniam luxuriae de me cognosceris ista jactare.

[59] See Photius, i. 129-130. Civilta Cattolica, vol. iii., 1855, pp.

524-5.

[60] Mansi, viii. 13. Rescriptum episcoporum Dardaniae ad Gelasium Papam.

[61] _Ep._ iv. _ad Faustum_; Mansi, viii. 17.

[62] _Ep._ xiii. _Valde mirati sumus_; Mansi, viii. 49.

[63] Mansi, viii. 30-5.

[64] Ne arrogantiam judices divinae rationis officium.

[65] Quem cunctis sacerdotibus et Divinitas summa voluit praeeminere, et subsequens Ecclesiae generalis jugiter pietas celebravit.

[66] Photius, 134; Hefele, _C.G._, ii. 597.

[67] Hefele, _C.G._, ii. 597-605, has most carefully considered the text and the date of the Council of 496. I have followed him in his choice of the text of the best ma.n.u.scripts, and inasmuch as the biblical canon--the same as that held in the African Church about 393--seems to have been confirmed by Pope Hormisdas somewhat later, I have not made use of it in this place.

[68] _Epist._ xviii.

[69] Qui enim in petra solidabuntur c.u.m petra exaltabuntur.

CHAPTER III.

PETER STOOD UP.

Seven days after the death of Gelasius, Anastasius, a Roman, ascended the apostolic throne, which he held from November, 496, to November, 498. We have two letters from him extant, both important. In that addressed upon his own accession, which he sent to the emperor Anastasius by the hands of Germa.n.u.s, bishop of Capua, and Cresconius, bishop of Trent, on occasion of Theodorick's emba.s.sy for the purpose of obtaining the t.i.tle of king, he strove to preserve the "Roman prince" from the Eutychean heresy.

"I announce to you the beginning of my pontificate, and consider it a token of the divine favour that I bear the same as your own august name. This is an a.s.surance that, like as your own name is pre-eminent among all the nations in the world, so by my humble ministry the See of St. Peter, as always, may hold the Princ.i.p.ate a.s.signed to it by the Lord G.o.d in the whole Church. We therefore discharge a delegated office in the name of Christ."[70] After beseeching the emperor that the name of Acacius should be effaced, in which he is carrying out the judgment of his predecessor, Pope Felix, he mentions the full instructions given to his legates, in order that the emperor might plainly see how, in that matter, the sentence of the Apostolic See had not proceeded from pride, but rather had been extorted by zeal for G.o.d as the result of certain crimes. "This we declare to you, in virtue of our apostolic office, through special love for your empire, that, as is fitting, and the Holy Spirit orders, obedience be yielded to our warning, that every blessing may follow your government. Let not your piety despise my frequent suggestion, having before your eyes the words of our Lord, 'He who hears you, hears Me: and he who despises you, despises Me: and he who despises Me, despises Him who sent Me'. In which the Apostle agrees with our Saviour, saying, 'He who despises these things, despises not man but G.o.d, who has given us His Holy Spirit'. Your breast is the sanctuary of public happiness, that through your excellency, whom G.o.d has ordered to rule on earth as His Vicar, not the resistance of hard pride be offered to the evangelic and apostolic commands, but an obedience which carries safety with it."

The Pope, then, standing alone in the world, and locally the subject of Theodorick the Goth, makes the position of the Roman emperor in the world, and the Pope in the Church, parallel to each other. Both are divine legations. The Pope, speaking on divine things, claims obedience as uttering the will of the Holy Spirit, which Pope Anastasius a.s.serts, just as Pope Clement I., five hundred years before, had a.s.serted it, in the first pastoral letter which we possess. He, living on sufferance in Rome, a.s.serts it to the despotic ruler of an immense empire, throned at Constantinople, in reference to a bishop of Constantinople, whose name he requires the emperor to erase from the sacred records of the Church as a condition of communion with the Apostolic See.

This letter was directed to the East, the other belongs to the West, and records an event which was to affect the whole temporal order of things in that vast ma.s.s of territories already occupied by the northern tribes. On Christmas day of the year 496, that is, one month after the accession of Pope Anastasius, the haughty Sicambrian bent his head to receive the holy oil from St. Remigius, to wors.h.i.+p that which he had burnt, and to burn that which he had wors.h.i.+pped. Clovis, chief of the Franks, and a number of his warriors with him, were baptised in the name of the most holy Trinity, never having been subject to the Arian heresy. Upon that event, the Holy See no longer stood alone, and the ring of Arian heresy surrounding it was broken for ever. The words of the Pope are these:

"Glorious son, we rejoice that your beginning in the Christian faith coincides with ours in the pontificate. For the See of Peter, on such an occasion, cannot but rejoice when it beholds the fulness of the nations come together to it with rapid pace, and time after time the net be filled, which the same Fisherman of men and blessed Doorkeeper of the heavenly Jerusalem was bidden to cast into the deep. This we have wished to signify to your serenity by the priest Eumerius, that, when you hear of the joy of the father in your good works, you may fulfil our rejoicing, and be our crown, and mother Church may exult at the proficiency of so great a king, whom she has just borne to G.o.d. Therefore, O glorious and ill.u.s.trious son, rejoice your mother, and be to her as a pillar of iron. For the charity of many waxes cold, and by the craftiness of evil men our bark is tossed in furious waves, and lashed by their foaming waters. But we hope in hope against hope, and praise the Lord, who has delivered thee from the power of darkness, and made provision for the Church in so great a prince, who may be her defender, and put on the helmet of salvation against all the efforts of the infected. Go on, therefore, beloved and glorious son, that Almighty G.o.d may follow with heavenly protection your serenity and your realm, and command His angels to guard you in all your ways and to give you victory over your enemies round about you."[71]

Towards the end of the sixth century, the Gallic bishop, St. Gregory of Tours, notes how wonderfully prosperity followed the kingdom which became Catholic, and contrasts it with the rapid decline and peris.h.i.+ng away of the Arian kingdoms. And, indeed, this letter of the Pope may be termed a divine charter, commemorating the birthday of the great nation, which led the way, through all the nations of the West, for their restoration to the Catholic faith, and the expulsion of the Arian poison. No one has recorded, and no one knows, the details of that conversion, by which the Church, in the course of the sixth century, recovered the terrible disasters which she had suffered in the fifth; a conversion by which the st.u.r.dy sons of the North, from heretics, became faithful children, and by which she added the Teuton race, in all its new-born vigour and devotion, to those sons of the South, whose conversion Constantine crowned with his own. St. Gregory of Tours calls Clovis the new Constantine, and in very deed his conversion was the herald of a second triumph to the Church of G.o.d, which equals, some may think surpa.s.ses even, the grandeur of the first.

It was fitting that the See of Peter should sound the note, which was its prelude, by the mouth of Anastasius, as the pastoral staff of St. Gregory was extended over its conclusion.

Scarcely less remarkable than the words of Pope Anastasius were those addressed to the new convert by a bishop, the temporal subject of the Burgundian prince, Gundobald, an Arian, that is, by St. Avitus of Vienna, grandson of the emperor of that name. Before the baptismal waters were dry on the forehead of the Frankish king, he wrote to him in these words:[72]

"The followers of all sorts of schisms, different in their opinions, various in their mult.i.tude, sought, by pretending to the Christian name, to blunt the keenness of your choice. But, while we entrust our several conditions to eternity, and reserve for the future examination what each conceives to be right in his own case, a bright flash of the truth has descended on the present. For a divine provision has supplied a judge for our own time. In making choice for yourself, you have given a decision for all. Your faith is our victory. In this case most men, in their search for the true religion, when they consult priests, or are moved by the suggestion of companions, are wont to allege the custom of their family, and the rite which has descended to them from their fathers. Thus making a show of modesty, which is injurious to salvation, they keep a useless reverence for parents in maintaining unbelief, but confess themselves ignorant what to choose. Away with the excuse of such hurtful modesty, after the miracle of such a deed as yours. Content only with the n.o.bility of your ancient race, you have resolved that all which could crown with glory such a rank should spring from your personal merit. If they did great things, you willed to do greater. Your answer to that n.o.bility of your ancestors was to show your temporal kingdom; you set before your posterity a kingdom in heaven. Let Greece exult in having a prince of our law; not that it any longer deserves to enjoy alone so great a gift, since the rest of the world has its own l.u.s.tre. For now in the western parts s.h.i.+nes in a new king a sunbeam which is not new. The birthday of our Redeemer fitly marked its bright rising. You were regenerated to salvation from the water on the same day on which the world received for its redemption the birth of the Lord of heaven. Let the Lord's birthday be yours also: you were born to Christ when Christ was born to the world. Then you consecrated your soul to G.o.d, your life to those around you, your fame to those coming after you.

"What shall I say of that most glorious solemnity of your regeneration? I was not able to be present in body: I did not fail to share in your joy.

For the divine goodness added to these regions the pleasure that the message of your sublime humility reached us before your baptism. Thus that sacred night found us in security about you. Together we contemplated that scene, when the a.s.sembled prelates, in the eagerness of their holy service, steeped the royal limbs in the waters of life; when the head, before which nations tremble, bowed itself to the servants of G.o.d; when the helmet of sacred unction clothed the flowing locks which had grown under the helmet of war; when, putting aside the breastplate for a time, spotless limbs shone in the white robe. O most highly favoured of kings, that consecrated robe will add strength hereafter to your arms, and sanct.i.ty will confirm what good fortune has. .h.i.therto bestowed. Did I think that anything could escape your knowledge or observation, I would add to my praises a word of exhortation. Can I preach to one now complete in faith, that faith which he recognised before his completion? Or humility to one who has long shown us devotion, which now his profession claims as a debt? Or mercy to one whom a captive people, just set free by you, proclaims by its rejoicing to the world, and by its tears to G.o.d. In one thing I should wish an advance. This is, since through you G.o.d will make your nation all His own, that you would, from the good treasure of your heart, provide the seeds of faith to the nations beyond you, lying still in their natural ignorance, uncorrupted by the germs of false doctrine. Have no shame, no reluctance, to take the side of G.o.d, who has so exalted your side, even by emba.s.sies directed to that purpose.... You are, as it were, the common sun, in whose rays all delight; the nearest the most, but somewhat also those further off.... Your happiness touches us also; when you fight, we conquer."

It is easy to look back on the course of a thousand years, and see how marvellously these words, uttered by St. Avitus at the moment Clovis was baptised, were fulfilled in his people. "Your happiness touches us also; when you fight, we conquer." So spoke a Catholic bishop at the side, and from the court, of an Arian king, and thus he expressed the work of the Catholic bishops throughout Gaul in the sixth century then beginning. An apostate from the Catholic faith has said of them that they built up France as bees build a hive; but he omitted to say that they were able and willing to do this because they had a queen-bee at Rome, who, scattered as they were in various transitory kingdoms under heretical sovereigns, gave unity to all their efforts, and planted in their hearts the a.s.surance of one undying kingdom. We shall have presently to quote other words of St.