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THE LIVES OF THE POPES IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY VITALIAN.
AD. 657-672.
KINGS. ARIPERT I, 653-661. PERCTARIT
and GODEPERT, 661-662. GRIMWALD, 662-671. PERCTARIT (second time), 679.-688.
EXARCHS. THEODORE CALLIOPAS, 653-664.
GREGORY. 664-677.
This second part of the volume will see the dullness of the seventh
century give place somewhat before the coming of the great popes of the eighth
century and the dawn of the age of Charlemagne. It will see Monothelism swept
into oblivion, the disappearance of the last shreds of the Three Chapters, the rise and fall of Iconoclasm; it will witness the expanse and collapse of
the Lombard power in Italy; it will contemplate the definite passing of Roman
power in the peninsula from the nerveless fingers of the exarch, whence it had
long been slipping, into the hands of the Sovereign Pontiffs; and it will view
with satisfaction the consequent strengthening of the position of those who, with
lasting honor to themselves, and with enduring benefit to the nations, were to
take the proud position of Head of the Christian Commonwealth of the Medieval
States of Europe.
Considering the fact that Vitalian reigned for fourteen years and a
half, we know but little of his doings; absolutely nothing, for instance, of the first six
years of his pontificate. Of what we do know, however, it is interesting to
Englishmen to discover that a considerable portion has reference to this
country. And to him we owe a debt of gratitude for having sent us one of the
greatest men that have adorned the Church in this country—the Greek Theodore.
The son of one Anastasius, a name, it will be
observed constantly recurring m the history of the Church at this period,
Vitalian was born at Segni, a town of the Campagna, on the 'Latin Road', at the
thirtieth milestone from the city, picturesquely situated on a height, and, as
remains show, once possessed of extensive and massive fortifications. This town
is also famous in history for having resisted the Volscians of old, and as the
birthplace of that centre figure of the Middle Ages, Innocent III.
Vitalian’s first act as Pope was to send his
nuncios to Constantinople as bearers of
his synodical letter 'to the most pious
princes', for Constantine was now a partner in the empire, to notify his
consecration, and to proclaim his faith. And we learn from the acts of the
thirteenth session of the Sixth General Council that the Pope also wrote to the
patriarch Peter to exhort him to return to the orthodox faith. The results of
these letters were, on the part of the Letters to emperor,
a present for St. Peter in the shape of a copy of the gospels
written in letters of gold, and with its binding all adorned with fine jewels
of exceptional size; and on the part of the patriarch a letter to the Pope,
beginning: "The letter of your fraternity has given us spiritual
joy". The Fathers of the Sixth Council found that the passages of the ancient writers quoted by Peter in this letter in
support of his doctrine of the One Will had been strangely mutilated.
It is very hard to understand this change of front towards the See of
Rome on the part of Constans. Whether it was that his son Constantine had any
influence over him; that he was overawed by the determined stand of the Pope
and his legates, who, we are informed, reasserted the privileges of the Church;
or whether it was that, in view of the expedition he made later on against the
Lombards in Italy, he thought it advisable to make a friend of the Pope, we do
not know. Of one thing, against certain writers, we are certain, and that is
that there was no truckling to Constans on the part of the Pope in the matter
of Monothelism, though his letter may have been conceived in a very conciliatory
tone. This we may conclude on both positive and negative grounds; from the
firmness of his administration, and from the fact that, despite the real or
pretended opposition of Constantine Pogonatus, the name of Pope Vitalian was at
length struck off the diptychs of the Church of Constantinople; and that, too,
though no Pope’s name but his own had been inserted in them from Honorius to
the Sixth General Council under Pope Agatho. The attitude of the Pope on the
One Will question may also be gathered from the fact that the orthodox
patriarch, Thomas II, who succeeded Peter in 667, at once endeavoured to put
himself in communication with Vitalian. The synodical letter he wrote to the
Pope, which the Fathers of the Sixth General Council pronounced quite sound on
the matter of the two wills never got despatched to Rome owing to the troubles
caused by the Saracens. Two more orthodox prelates (John V, 669-674, and
Constantine I, 674-676) succeeded Thomas. John inserted Vitalian’s name in the
diptychs, and Theodore I (676-678), a Monothelite, succeeded in getting the
name removed.
We do not hear of Vitalian again till the approach of Constans to Rome.
In the year 662 Constans, for reason, determined to transfer the seat of empire
from Constantinople to Rome. His main object may have been a wish to recover
Italy from the grasp of the Lombards, but Theophanes avers, and a priori reasons
would render likely, it was unpopularity at home that caused Constans to make
the attempt to divert ill-feeling from himself, by concentrating public
attention on enemies abroad. His unpopularity was caused, says the chronicler,
by the murder of his brother Theodosius (c. 660) and his treatment of Pope Martin, St. Maximus and many other orthodox men, who would not
approve of his heresy. Landed in Italy, he soon found he was no match in arms
for Grimwald and his Lombards. He fell back on Rome, and, as “he could do
nothing against the Lombards, he raged against the defenseless Romans”.
However, as far as his relations with the Pope were concerned, Constans was amicable enough. On receiving news of his
approach the Pope and clergy went out (June 5, 663) to the sixth milestone on
the Appian Way to meet him. For twelve days the emperor remained in Rome,
making offerings to the various churches, and living apparently on the best
terms with the Pope. On his side Vitalian, either making a virtue of necessity,
or because he believed that a mild answer turns away wrath, showed no hostility
to the emperor. If Constans was considerate to the Pope, he was not so to Rome.
He carried off all the bronze, ornaments of the city, and even stripped the
Church of Our Lady ‘ad Martyres’, or the Pantheon, of its gilt bronze tiles!
With this plunder, this protector of his people withdrew to Naples, and thence
in the same year (663) to Sicily. Here for four years he did nothing but wring over into taxes from the people of Sicily, Calabria, Africa
and Sicily, Sardinia, rob the very churches of their sacred
vessels, and sell the people into slavery for money; so that well might the
chronicler add that life was not worth having. Like so many other
persecutors of the Church, he died a violent death, being assassinated in a
bath (July 15, 668). At his death the army and the officials in Sicily elected
an emperor of their own, one Mizizius or Mecetius. And now we cannot but read
with surprise that the Pope used his influence with considerable vigor in
helping to put down the rebellion. Troops poured into Sicily
from Italy, Africa, etc., and when the young Constantine arrived from
Constantinople, he found that the usurper was no more. When he had returned to
Constantinople, the Saracens made a descent upon Sicily (669), and captured
Syracuse, and with it the plunder Constans had taken from Rome. So little does
property sacrilegiously acquired ever permanently profit its dishonest
possessors.
We must now retrace our steps to the year 664. The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle tells how Peada, the first Christian king of the Mercians, and Oswin, King of Northumbria,
“came together and agreed that they would rear a monastery to the
glory of Christ and the honor of St. Peter. And they did so, and named it
‘Medeshampstede’ (Peterborough), .... and committed it to a monk who was called
Saxewulf”. Wulfhere, the brother and successor of Peada, resolved, with the
advice of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Deusdedit, and “by the counsel of all
his ‘witan’, both clergy and laity”, to finish the work begun by his brother
and to endow the monastery. “And he did so”. And after the monastery had been
blessed by the archbishop, in presence of the king and all his bishops and
nobles, the king declared : “And thus free I will make this minster that it be subject to Rome alone”. Wulfhere understood
well enough what so many, even Catholic bishops, have to their own cost often
enough failed to understand, viz., that a Church is then most free when it is
most subject to the See of Rome; and, of course, the less subject to the See of
Rome the less free, the more the slave and creature of the State. But Wulfhere
was anxious for his soul’s redemption, and he prayed that “the heavenly
gateward (viz. St. Peter) would take in heaven from the man who took from his
gift and the gifts of other good men”; and he confirmed the charters granting
all the presents and privileges to the monastery (ad 664), “I, King
Wulfhere, with the kings and earls and dukes and thanes, the witnesses of my
gift, do confirm it, before the Archbishop Deusdedit, with the Cross of
Christ”. “When”, adds the chronicler, “these things were done, the king sent to
Rome to Vitalian, who then was Pope, and desired that he should grant by his
writing and with his blessing all the before-mentioned things”. The wished-for
bull was granted, the Pope praying that St. Peter would exterminate with his
sword or open with his keys the gates of heaven, according as what he decreed
was contravened or obeyed.
Later on the monastery was destroyed by the Danes, and we are told by
the Saxon Chronicle that when its site was visited by Athelwold, Bishop of Winchester, “he found
nothing there but old walls and wild woods. There found he, hidden in the old
walls, writings that Abbot Headda had erewhile written, how King Wulfhere and
Athelred his brother had built it, and how they had freed it against king and
against bishop, and against all secular services, and how the Pope Agatho had
confirmed the same by his rescripts, and the Archbishop Deusdedit”.
All these details, however, in connection with the foundation of this
monastery are only to be read in one MS. of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This MS. (Bodleian, 636) seems to have
been transcribed in the year 1122; and, from the numerous entries in it that
relate to Peterborough, it is thought to have belonged to that monastery. It is
further supposed that the charters we have just quoted also first saw the light
in the twelfth century. No doubt, as they now appear in the Bodleian MS., they
are not exact copies of the deeds of Wulfhere and Vitalian. Still, as there is
no doubt that the monastery of Peterborough was founded about this time; and as
there is no doubt that, as early as the beginning of the seventh century, the
custom of placing monasteries under papal protection had begun, it is far more
likely that the Peterborough documents of the Saxon Chronicle are more or less faithful copies of genuine
originals than that they are absolute forgeries. It is in this belief that they
have been cited here—the more so that comparatively little is urged against
them even in the form in which they now exist
The archbishop (Deusdedit), in whose presence the consecration of the
monastery of Peterborough is said to have taken place, died soon after (July
14, 664), and by the joint action of Oswin or Oswy, the powerful king of
Northumbria, and Bretwalda (“who, though educated by the Scots, perfectly
understood that the Roman was the Catholic and Apostolic Church”), and Egbert
of Kent, one Wighard, who had been trained by the apostles whom Pope Gregory
had sent to England, was sent to Rome to be consecrated archbishop of
Canterbury. On arriving at Rome, Wighard made known the occasion of his journey
to the Pope. But unfortunately, “with almost all who went with him,” he was cut off by a
pestilence. This Vitalian notified Oswy in a letter, written probably in 665,
in which he praises his faith, exhorts him to follow the traditions of those
two great lights of the Church, Peter and Paul, not only with regard to the
Easter question, but in all other points, tells him that he has not been able
to find a man suitable, “in accordance with the tenor of his (Oswy's) letters”,
to be consecrated bishop for England, but that he will send the first proper
person he can find, and thanks the king for the presents he has sent him. “We therefore
beg your highness to make haste to dedicate all your island to Christ our God
.... who will prosper it in all things, that it may bring together a new people
of Christ, establishing there the Catholic and Apostolic faith”. Truly the
Pope, being the high priest of that year, prophesied. After having Theodo made every
effort to secure a proper person, Vitalian finally fixed on a Greek monk who
was in Rome, and who was as distinguished for his good life as for his
learning, both sacred and profane. This monk, named Theodore, resembled St.
Paul not only in having been born at the same place, viz. Tarsus in Cilicia,
but also in many points of his character. Both were learned, both men of fiery
energy (though Theodore was nearer seventy years of age than sixty when he
landed in England), and both eaten up with zeal for the glory of God. Such was
the man whom Vitalian in his wisdom ordained (March 26, 668) for the English Church, to whom he subjected all the churches in Britain, and
whom, he sent off to England (May 668) with letters of commendation to John,
metropolitan of Arles. It is not for the historian of the popes to tell of the
doings of Theodore in England. Suffice it to say that to him, and so to Pope
Vitalian, who sent him, the English people owe the deepest debt of gratitude.
By his energetic efforts to establish ecclesiastical unity in England, he did
more than any other man to make us the united people we afterwards became. He
inaugurated the golden age of England; “for our kings, being very brave men and
very good Christians, were a terror to all barbarous nations, and the minds of
all men were bent upon the joys of the heavenly kingdom of which they had just
heard, and all who desired to be instructed in sacred reading had masters at
hand to teach them”. Theodore ranks with those other great archbishops of
Canterbury, Anselm, Lanfranc, and St. Thomas a Becket, to whom Englishmen owed
the establishment and propagation of such religious maxims and practice as made
this country known to the world as the ‘island of saints’, and to whom
Englishmen of the present day even are largely indebted for being the freest
people on God’s earth.
In the history of every widely extended empire we
read of attempts, more or less
successful, on the part of subordinate rulers to throw off or lessen their
dependence on the supreme authority, and to make themselves as far as possible
independent. It has been with the Church as with temporal kingdoms. The subject powers in the Church
who carried matters to the greatest extremes were the patriarchs of
Constantinople. Bishops of a city second to none in the empire, they thought
that they themselves should be second to none in the Church, that they should
be in the Church what the emperor was in the State. At the period of which we
are now treating, Maurus, Archbishop of Ravenna, began to entertain somewhat
similar views. To him the residence of the exarchs made Ravenna politically the
first city in Italy, and himself at least as important as the other great
bishops of Milan and Aquileia. He would therefore, like them, be more his own
master; would be, as it was then grandly called, ‘autocephalous’. In 649 Maurus
was submissive enough, and came, or rather sent, his legates to Rome when
summoned to the Lateran synod by Pope Martin. But in 666, despite the canons of
the council of Nice and everything else, he refused to come to Rome to tender
his respects to the Holy See. Encouraged, perhaps inspired, by Constans, Maurus
replied to a letter of the Pope excommunicating him, by insolently attempting
the excommunication of the Pope. Both Vitalian and Maurus wrote to the emperor.
As might have been expected, an imperial edict, dated “Syracuse, March 1st, the 25th year of the reign of
Constans”, was straightway issued to Maurus, in which the emperor stated that
orders had been sent to the exarch Gregory in favor of Maurus, and in which he
decreed that the Church of Ravenna should in future not be subject to any
ecclesiastical superior, especially to the patriarch of ‘Old Rome’, but should
be ‘Autocephalous’. It is believed that this is the document which contemporary
mosaics on the left wall of the ‘mighty basilica’ of St. Apollinaris in Classis
(a sort of suburb of Ravenna) exhibit as being handed to Reparatus, the
successor of Maurus, and marked ‘Privilegium’. To as many as are not Erastians,
but are lovers of justice and respecters of Canon Law, this act of Constans
will be correctly set down as tyrannical, and fully justifies the reflection of
Muratori: “Ma di che non era capace quest' empio ed infelice Augusto!”. Though
Reparatus “again subjected the
Church of Ravenna to the Apostolic See”, there was more or less friction till
the Pontificate of Leo II, when Constantine Pogonatus (the Bearded) undid the
work of his father, and the bishop of Ravenna had to give up his ‘Privilegium’.
To prevent any misconstruction as to the meaning of the decree of
Constans, which has reached us only in a very corrupt condition, or any
misapprehension as to the aims of the bishop of Ravenna, and to prevent it
being thought that he had any intention of becoming a
schismatic and cutting himself off from all subjection to Rome, a few facts
connected with the various degrees of ecclesiastical jurisdiction exercised by
the Pope must be borne in mind.
Before the middle of the fourth century, the direct and immediate
jurisdiction of the Pope, as a primate or metropolitan, extended over all
Italy. All matters concerning the election of bishops, for instance, in the
parts subject to his metropolitical jurisdiction, had to be referred to him
directly. But before the middle of the fifth century the direct and immediate
jurisdiction over northern Italy had passed into the hands of the metropolitans
of Milan, Aquileia and Ravenna. The position of Ravenna, however, among the
other metropolitans was peculiar. His metropolitical jurisdiction extended only
over Aemilia, which was, therefore, outside the sphere of the Pope’s authority
as primate. The complex nature, then, of the position of the bishop of Ravenna
lies in this, as Duchesne explains. In the primatial province of Rome, in which his See of Ravenna was
situated, he was but a simple bishop; whereas over Aemilia he was a
metropolitan. To be thus inferior to his brethren of Milan and Aquileia did not
suit the bishop of Ravenna. He, therefore, aspired to be autocephalous, i.e., to be in all respects like the bishops just named. And this he sought for and
obtained at the hands of Constans.
This difference will be noted between the results of the revolts of
subordinate princes in temporal empires and in that of the Church. In the one
case the dismemberment of the earthly kingdom has sooner or later inevitably
been the consequence. In the case of the Church, the one result has been to
strengthen the position of its Head, the Pope. The great ones in the
supernatural realm of the Church, such as the patriarchs of Constantinople,
who, from time to time in the course of its history have endeavored to free
themselves from subjection to the See of Peter—where are they now? So insignificant
are they, that they are scarcely names in the civilized world.
The case of John, 667.
For some cause, which is nowhere stated, John, Bishop of Lappa in Crete, had been condemned by his metropolitan Paul, Archbishop of Crete, and his
suffragans. John appealed to Rome, and
begged the Pope that, “in accordance with the sacred canons and the
institutions of the Holy Fathers”, he would enquire into his case and pass
sentence according to his deserts. The Pope accordingly summoned a synod
(December 667); and, very indignant at the high-handed manner in which John had
been treated, especially at the effort Paul had made to prevent the execution
of John’s appeal to Rome, the synod declared John innocent, annulled the
sentence that had been passed upon him, and ordained that reparation should be
made him for the losses he had sustained. Paul was exhorted by the Pope to
carry out his sentence that he (Paul) might not experience the rigor of the
canons. Vitalian also wrote to Vaanus, the emperor's chamberlain, and to
George, Bishop of Syracuse, to see that John was restored to his See. Where are
we to find a part of the Church from which appeals have not been directed to
the Holy See from the time that that part has had any Christian history at all?
In all ages of the Church the wronged and the oppressed have ever felt that
they had still a source of comfort and strength, and that hope was not dead for
them as long as they had Rome to appeal to. To a Christian the appeal to the
See of Peter is, and ever has been, as the appeal to Caesar for the Roman.
Vitalian was buried in St Peter’s, January 27, 672,
and is on that day commemorated in the Roman
Martyrology.
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