THE LIVES AND TIMES OF THE POPES FROM SAINT PETER TO GREGORY I THE GREAT

 

SAINT SIRICIUS

A.D. 385-398

 

 

 

SIRICIUS, a Roman, son of Tiburtius, lived in the time of Valentinian, who, for his being a Christian, had been very unjustly dealt withal, and cashiered from a considerable command in the army by Julian. But upon the death of Jovinian, being by the universal consent of the soldiers elected emperor, he admitted his brother Valens his colleague in the Empire, and assigned to him the government of the east. Afterwards, in the third year of his reign, at the persuasion of his wife and her mother, he created his young son Gratian Augustus. And whereas one Procopius had raised a sedition and set up for himself at Constantinople, him with his adherents the emperor very
suddenly overthrew and put to death.

But Valens having been baptized by Eudoxius, an Arian bishop, and becoming a bigoted heretic, presently fell to persecuting and banishing the orthodox, especially after the death of Athanasius, who, while he lived, was a mighty support to the Christian state for forty-six years together. Lucius, also another heretical bishop, was extremely violent and out rageous against the orthodox Christians; nor did he spare so much as the Anchorites and Eremites, but sent parties of soldiers to invade their solitudes, who either put them to death or else sent them into exile. Amongst this sort of men, they who at that time had the greatest esteem and authority were the two Macarii in Syria, the disciples of Anthony, one of which lived in the upper, the other in the lower desert; as also Isidorus, Panucius, Pambus, Moses, Benjamin, Paulus Apheliotes, Paulus Phocensis, and Joseph in Egypt. While Lucius was intent upon the banishment of these men, a certain inspired woman went about crying aloud, that those good men, those men of God, ought by no means to be sent into the islands. Moreover, Mauvia, queen of the Saracens, having by frequent battles very much impaired the Roman forces, and harassed their towns on the borders of Palestine and Arabia, refused to grant the peace which they desired at her hands, unless Moses, a man of most exemplary piety, were consecrated and appointed bishop to her people. This Lucius willingly assented to; but when Moses was brought to him, he plainly told him, that the multitudes of Christians condemned to the mines, banished to the islands, and imprisoned through his cruelty, did cry loud against him, and that therefore he would never endure the imposition of his polluted hands. Hereupon, certain bishops being recalled from exile to consecrate him, he was presented to the queen, and thereby a peace concluded. But Valens and Lucius continued still to wreak their fury against the orthodox, though Valens was rendered somewhat more favourable towards them by the letters of Themistius, the philosopher. Athanaricus also, king of the Goths, exercised very great cruelty against those of his people who were Christians, many of whom suffered martyrdom for their religion.

In the meantime, Valentinian, by his valour and conduct, subdued the Saxons and Burgundians. But while he was making preparations for war against the Sarmatians, who had spread themselves through the two Hungaries, he died at a little town called Brigio, through a sudden effusion of blood. At this time the Goths, being driven out of their own country, had possessed themselves of all Thrace; against them Valens marches with his army (having first, though now too late, recalled from exile the bishops and monks, and forced them to serve in the war with him), but his army was utterly routed, and himself burnt in an obscure cottage, an overthrow which proved very fatal to the Roman Empire and all Italy.

While these things were transacting, Siricius ordained that those monks whose life and manners were approved of, should be capable of admission into any ecclesiastical office, from the lowest to the highest, even the Episcopal dignity itself. That the several degrees of holy orders should not be conferred at once, but at certain distances of time. Moreover, he forbade the Manichees who lurked in the city, the communion of the faithful; but withal provided that upon their repentance and return to the orthodox faith, they should be received into the Church, upon condition they would undertake a monastic course of living, and devote themselves to fasting and prayer all their life; upon which, if it appeared that their conversion were sincere, they might, at the approach of death, receive the blessed sacrament as their viaticum. He ordained likewise, that none but a bishop should have power to ordain a presbyter; that whosoever married a widow, or second wife, should be degraded from his office in the church, and that heretics, upon their repentance, should be received with only the imposition of hands.

In his time lived Hilarius, Bishop of Poictiers, who wrote twelve books against the Arians, and one against Valens and Ursatius; but not long after he died at PoiEtiers. Victorinus, also an African, who had once been a professor of rhetoric at Rome, but afterwards, being very ancient, was converted to Christianity, wrote several books after the dialectic manner against Arius. Moreover, Gregcrius Baeticus, Bishop of Illiberis, wrote at this time divers tracts, showing the excellence of the Christian religion. But Photinus, a Galatian, the scholar of Marcellus, Bishop of Ancyra, endeavoured now to revive the heresy of Ebion, who held Christ to be a mere man, born in the ordinary way of generation. Being banished by the Emperor Valentinian, he wrote divers treatises, and especially against the Gentiles.

Didymus of Alexandria, who had been blind from his very childhood, and thereby utterly ignorant of the first rudiments of learning, became yet afterwards in his old age so great a proficient in those arts which most require the assistance of sight, particularly in logic and geometry, that he wrote some excellent treatises in the mathematics. He published also commentaries on the psalms, and the gospels of Matthew and John, and was a great opposer of the Arians. Moreover, Optatus, an African, Bishop of Mela, compiled six books against the Donatists; and Severus Aquilius, a Spaniard, who was kinsman to that Severus to whom Lactantius penned two books of epistles, wrote one volume, called "Catastrophe".

The Emperor Gratian was a young prince of eminent piety, and so good a soldier, that in an expedition against the Germans, who were now harassing the Roman borders, he did at one battle at Argentaria cut off thirty thousand of them, with very little loss on his own side. Returning from thence to Italy, he expelled all those of the Arian faction, and admitted none but the orthodox to the execution of any ecclesiastical office. But apprehending the public weal to be in great danger from the attempts of the Goths, he associated to himself, as a partner in the government, Theodosius, a Spaniard, a person eminent for his valour and conduct, who, vanquishing the Alans, Huns, and Goths, re-established the Empire of the east, and entered into a league with Athanaricus, king of the Goths, after whose death and magnificent burial at Constantinople, his whole army repaired to Theodosius, and declared they would serve under no other commander but that good emperor. In the meantime, Maximus usurped the empire in Britain, and passing over into Gaul, slew Gratian at Lyons, whose death so terrified his younger brother, Valentinian, that he forthwith fled for refuge to Theodosius in the east. Some are of opinion that those two brethren owed the calamities which befell them to their mother Justina, whose great zeal for the Arian heresy made her a fierce persecutor of the orthodox, and especially of St Ambrose, whom, against his will, the people of Milan had at this time chosen their bishop. For Auxentius, an Arian, their late bishop, being dead, a great sedition arose in the city about choosing his successor. Now Ambrose, who was a man of consular dignity and their governor, endeavouring all he could to quell that disorder, and to that end going into the church, where the people were in a tumultuary manner assembled, he there makes an excellent speech tending to persuade them to peace and unity among themselves, which so wrought upon them, that they all with one consent cried out, that they would have no other bishop but Ambrose himself. And the event answered their desires for being as yet but a catechumen, he was forthwith baptized, and then admitted into holy orders, and constituted Bishop of Milan. That he was a person of great learning and extraordinary sanctity, the account which we have of his life, and the many excellent books which he wrote, do abundantly testify.

 

Saint Siricius ordained that, except in cases of urgent necessity, baptism should be administered only at Easter and Pentecost.

He condemned the Manichaeans, those obstinate sectaries of Manes, a Persian slave, who propagated his errors in 273. They maintained that the body of Christ was altogether actual; that there are two supreme principles, the Good and the Evil, and that from this latter proceeded the old law. They forbade obedience to princes, as being dangerous. According to Manes, all the prophets were damned souls. The absurd dogma of the Metempsychosis, the prohibition to kill any animal whatever, or to use any kind of animal food, were some of the chief points of the heresy of Manes. He dogmatized publicly, and he sent disciples to preach his doctrines at first in the nearest provinces of Persia, and afterwards in India and Egypt. In imitation of the number of our Saviour's apostles, this man employed twelve emissaries, three of whom are named Thomas, Hermas, and Buldas. ("This name", Buldas, says the celebrated M. de Saint-Martin, "may be merely indicative of the dogmas that these heretics borrowed from the Indian legislator, Buddh or Buddha, whose doctrine at that time predominated in India and was widely spread in the regions which separate that country from China, where it is certain that Manes travelled.")

Saint Siricius also condemned the Priscillianists, followers of Priscillian, Bishop of Avila. That heresiarch adopted some of the errors of the Manichaeans, and added one of his own : that men are subject to the influence of evil stars. Juvenian, a Milanese monk, was also condemned. He denied the virginity of the Mother of God.

Some authors doubt the piety of Saint Siricius, because he did not promptly repel the mischievous errors of Rufinus, a monk of Aquileia, which errors were long kept concealed. They were at length made public by Saint Marcella, a Roman lady, and Pammachius, a Roman senator. The pontiff is defended upon this point by Florentini and Noris. Benedict XIV also excuses the pontiff, especially in a letter to John V, King of Portugal. He, moreover, ordered that the name of Saint Siricius should be placed in the Roman Martyrology. Baronius had previously accused him of having been cold in his relations with Saint Jerome, and of not continuing to him the confidence that Damasus had shown; but these circumstances did not influence the decision of Benedict XIV, which now has the force of a law. What must have especially struck that learned and sagacious Catholic legislator of the eighteenth century is that the works of Saint Siricius indicate great courage. In those letters the pontifical dignity shines forth in all its lustre. We recognize the spirit of the prince of the Church, when he commands that his decrees shall be published in all the provinces, and that the primates of the Church see to their execution, on pain of their immediate deposition. The pontiff expressly declares that whoever shall refuse to obey his injunctions will be cut off from the communion of the faithful, and liable to the pains of hell.

Saint Siricius, in five ordinations, in December, created thirty-two bishops, twenty-seven (some say thirty-one) priests, and sixteen or nineteen deacons. He was the first pontiff who called himself pope. Novaes discusses that question in his introduction to his Lives of the Sovereign Pontiffs of Rome. The following is his opinion upon this important point :

"When the new pontiff has accepted the election, he begins to be called Pope. I will not give here the catalogue of the various interpretations that authors assign to that name.

"This name is derived from the title of Pater Patriae; others derive it from Pater Patrum or Pater Pastorum. Some, again, say that the word is derived from the initial letters of the following words : thus, Petri, Apostoli, Potestatem, Accipiens" that is, Papa, or the Italian for pope. All those interpretations befit a name so mysterious.

"At first," continues Novaes, "this name was applied in common to all priests, whence came the custom of giving the name of father to every regular priest. Then the name was given only to bishops."

Papebrock says that Saint Siricius was the first who called himself Papa, and that he so styles himself in many letters which he wrote to various provinces. Saint Leo the Great, elected in 440, follows that example; in his Epist. 17 he entitles himself "Leo, Papa Universis per Sicilium constitutis, salutem." At the end of the ninth century this name was no longer given to any one but the sovereign pontiffs of Rome. About the end of the tenth century, Arulphus II, Archbishop of Milan, having taken the title of "Pope of the City of Milan," Gregory V, in 988, complained of it, and the Council of Pavia decreed that Arulphus must desist from that pretension of being pope.

"The schismatics, however, usurped the name of pope. Gregory VII, in the Council of Rome of 1076, strictly ordered that the title of pope should be unique in the Catholic world, and that no one should be allowed either to take that name for himself or apply it to any one but the sovereign pontiff."

"Carni has published a dissertation on the question whether that decree of Saint Gregory VII is genuine. It is written in Italian, and the title is in Latin."

With the reign of Siricius are also connected the sedition of Antioch, the massacre of Thessalonica, the letter of Saint Ambrose to Theodosius, and the penitence of that emperor, who for eight months refrained from entering the Church. During that time Siricius added his zeal to that of the great Saint Ambrose in endeavoring to restore peace to the empire. Siricius governed the Church during fourteen years. He died in 398, at the age of seventy-four years, and was interred in the cemetery of Priscilla, on the Via Salaria. His body was removed by Pascal I into the Church of Saint Praxedes. The Holy See was vacant nineteen days.

I must add that, under Saint Siricius, also appeared what Fleury calls the beginnings of Saint Augustine. He had been made a catechumen by the sign of the cross and by salt. At first he was addicted to the pleasures of the world, and fell into the hands of the Manichaeans, who, leading him astray by their pompous discourses, gave him a taste for their reveries, and an aversion for the Old Testament. Saint Monica, mother of Saint Augustine, begged a bishop to bring her son back into the right way. The bishop replied that it was necessary to wait, and, as the mother replied to those words with a flood of tears, he added, it is impossible that the child of those tears should perish.

Under the reign of Saint Siricius, died Saint Gregory of Nyssus, brother of Saint Basil and Saint Macrina. Gregory was Bishop of Nyssus, a city of Dardania; he is surnamed the Father of fathers. His principal works are Funeral Orations, Sermons, Panegyrics of the Saints, Commentaries on Scripture, and Dogmatic Treatises. He may be compared to the most celebrated orators of antiquity for purity, ease, strength, fecundity, and magnificence of style.

We must not forget the great Saint Athanasius, who died about this time (eleven years before the reign of Saint Siricius), after being Bishop of Alexandria during forty-six years. During more than fifty years he was persecuted by the Arians, whom he opposed with an invincible courage. Erasmus was a great admirer of the style of Saint Athanasius; a style which is by turns noble, simple, elegant, clear, and pathetic.

Siricius, having settled the affairs of the Church, died and was buried in the cemetery of Priscilla, in the Via Salaria, February 22. He was in the chair fifteen years, eleven months, twenty days; and by his death the see was vacant twenty days.

 

SAINT ANASTASIUS I

A.D. 399-402

 

ANASTASIUS I, the son of Maximus, was made Bishop of Rome in the time of Arcadius and Honorius, the sons of Theodosius.

Our Anastasius decreed that the clergy should by no means sit at the singing or reading of the holy Gospel in the church, but stand bowed, and in a posture of veneration; and that no strangers, especially those that came from the parts beyond the seas, should be received into our holy orders, unless they could produce testimonials under the hands of five bishops. Which latter ordinance is supposed to have been occasioned by the practice of the Manichees, who, having gained a great esteem and authority in Africa, were wont to send their missionaries abroad into all parts, to corrupt the orthodox doctrine by the infusion of their errors. He ordained, likewise, that no person infirm of body, or maimed, or defective of any limb or member, should be admitted into holy orders. Moreover, he dedicated the Crescentian Church, which stands in the second region of the city, in the Via Marurtina.

The pontificate of this Anastasius, as also that of Damasus and Siricius, his predecessors, were signalised not only by those excellent emperors, Jovinian, Valentinian, Gratian, and Theodosius, but also by those many holy and worthy doctors, both Greek and Latin, that were famous in all kinds of learning. Cappadocia, as Eusebius tells us, brought forth Gregory Nazianzen and Basil the Great, both extraordinary persons, and both brought up at Athens. Basil was a Bishop of Cesarea of Cappadocia, a city formerly called Mazaca. He wrote divers excellent books against Eunomius, one concerning the Holy Ghost, and the orders of a monastic life. He had two brethren, Gregory and Peter, both very learned men, of the former of which some books were extant in the time of Eusebius. Gregory Nazianzen, who was master to St Hierom, wrote also many things, particularly in praise of Cyprian, Athanasius, and Maximus the philosopher; two books against Eunomius, and one against the Emperor Julian, besides an encomium of marriage and single life in hexameter verse. By the strength of his reasoning and the power of his rhetoric (in which he was an imitator of Polemon, a man of admirable eloquence), he brought off the citizens of Constantinople from the errors with which they had been infected. At length, being very aged, he chose his own successor, and led a private life in the country. Basil died in the reign of Gratian, Gregory of Theodosius. About the same time flourished Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamine, in Cyprus, a strenuous oppugner of all kinds of heresies; as did also Ephrem, a deacon of the Church of Edessa, who composed divers treatises in the Syrian language, which gained him so great a veneration that in some churches his books were publicly read after the Holy Scriptures.

Saint Jerome calls Saint Anastasius "a man of very rich poverty and apostolic zeal."

It was especially in defending Saint Chrysostom, whom they attempted to expel from Constantinople, that Anastasius evidenced a great devotion.

In two ordinations Anastasius created ten or twelve bishops, eight or nine priests, and five deacons. "He governed the Church," says Innocent I, "with purity of life, abundance of doctrine, and perfect strictness of ecclesiastical authority." He reigned three years and ten days, and died in 401.

Saint Jerome further says that Rome did not long retain such a pontiff, because it was not intended that the chief city of the world should be attacked under the rule of such a bishop. In fact, very shortly after the good pope's death, in 410, Rome was for the first time sacked by the Goths. Their king, Alaric, had assaulted it three times before he could take it.

Saint Anastasius was interred in the cemetery of the Orso Pileato, on the Esquiline, and afterwards removed by Sergius I into the Church of Saints Sylvester and Martin a' i Monti. The Holy See remained vacant twenty days.