CONON.

AD. 686-687.

 

EMPEROR. POGONATUS, 668-685.

KING. PERCTARIT, 672-688.               

EXARCH. THEODORE, 677-687.

 

On the death of John V there was disunion among the electors on the question of his successor. The clergy favored the archpriest Peter, the army the priest Theodore. As the gates of the Lateran basilica were in the hands of the soldiers, the clergy had to meet outside that noble church. The leaders of the army held their assemblies in the curious circular church of St. Stephen, with its very striking, if not very beautiful, frescoes. After message after message had passed to no purpose between the two parties, the clergy at length, entering the Lateran palace, unanimously elected Conon. The grey hairs and the angelic beauty of Conon, combined with the well-known beauty of his character—his candor, his simplicity, his piety, his freedom from secular concerns—produced a powerful impression. The judges and the military commanders at once recognized Conon, and offered the usual salutation and acclamation. Some think that Conon was a soldier’s son, and that this had some weight in the eyes of the military. They suppose that the remark of Anastasius, that Conon was “oriundus ex patre Thraceseo”, does not mean that he was born in Thrace, or that his father’s name was Thraceseus, but that he was a son of an officer of the Thracesian troop. Wherever he was born, Conon had been educated in Sicily. He afterwards came to Rome and was ordained priest.

When the rank and file of the army saw the unanimity of the clergy and their own leaders, they also acknowledged Conon after a delay of a few days. Then, in conjunction with the ‘clergy and people’, they sent off to the exarch Theodore notice of the election of Conon ‘according to custom’.

As to the meaning of these words of the Book of the Popes, enough has already been said. It may therefore suffice to remind the reader that those who believe that Constantine Pogonatus gave absolute freedom of choice to the electors of the popes think that this notice in the life of Conon merely signifies that official documents were sent to the exarch, as the emperor’s representative, to let him know who the new pope was. The opponents of this view maintain, on the contrary, that the documents were sent to seek for the exarch’s confirmation of the election. Certain it is, at any rate, that the interval between the election and consecration of a pope now becomes uniformly shorter than before, and that Conon was consecrated October 21, 686.

Mention has already been made of the mode of electing the popes from the third to the ninth century, and of those who had the right of election. It was then stated that throughout those ages the right of electing the popes lay with the clergy and people. However, as at this period there is frequent mention of the ‘army’ as a sort of third electing body, it will be convenient here to add a few more remarks on the same subjects. We are of opinion that the distinction between the ‘'army’ and the ‘people’, at the period of which we are now treating, is more apparent than real. Just as in the days of the Roman republic, the ‘people’, except the youths and old men, were the ‘army’. During the ‘Decline’ of the empire the Roman ‘people’, by the wholesale intro­duction of conquered nations into the forces of the empire, and the disinclination of '’Roman citizens’ to serve in the army, became a class quite separate from an army composed, for the most part, of foreigners. Hence in the first centuries the popes were said to be elected by the clergy and people. After the ‘Fall’ of the empire, the inhabitants of Rome—Romans we cannot now call them—had to look to themselves for protection against enemies from without. The emperors at Constantinople were unable to send troops for the protection of the old capital of the Roman empire. Consequently the ‘people’ of Rome had again to become soldiers, and by the close of the seventh century it would seem that ‘the people’, ‘the citizens’ were completely organized; and, with the universal exception of youths and old men, were all soldiers, were the ‘army’. Hence in the Liber Pontificalis mention is made sometimes (generally indeed from the close of the seventh century) of the ‘clergy, army and people’, and sometimes of the ‘clergy and army’. After what has been said as a proviso, it may be correct to speak of the ‘three electoral bodies’ that took part in papal elections in the earlier Middle Ages. From all this, it may be concluded with Mabillon, that the order of electing and consecrating the popes before the eleventh century was as follows. First they were elected by the clergy; then followed the salutation and acclamation of the judges and nobles, the consent of the army, and, in fine, before the decree of Constantine IV, the subscription of all to the notice of the election, which was sent to the emperor (or, for a time, to the exarch) for confirmation. When the election was confirmed, the Pope-elect was consecrated in the basilica of St. Peter’s on the Vatican, and enthroned in the Lateran basilica. In some cases, however, the enthronization preceded the consecration.

Justinian II and the Acts of the Sixth General Council

This Pope received an imperial rescript of Justinian II, writes Anastasius, in which the emperor says that he has recovered the acts, i.e., the original copies, of the Sixth General Council. This letter is still extant in a poor, scarcely intelligible Latin translation, and was addressed to Pope John V, though dated February 17, 687, a circumstance which may be used to show once again how slowly at times news travelled to Constantinople. “We have learnt”, runs the rescript, “that the acts (viz., the original copies) of the Sixth Ecumenical Synod have been sent back to some of our Judges who had lent them. We had not indeed imagined that anyone would be bold enough to keep possession of them, without our consent, for God, of His abundant mercy, has made us the guardians of the immaculate faith of Christ”. The rescript adds that the emperor summoned together the patriarchs, the papal apocrisiarius, the metropolitans and bishops who were staying in the city, the senate, and various State officials and officers of the various army corps, stationed in different parts of the empire. Then he (the emperor) caused the copies of the council to be read before them, and then caused all to sign them. The documents were then handed over to the emperor’s care, that “it might never be in the power of those who do not fear God, to corrupt or change them”. This decree had been sent to the Pope, that he might know what was being done.

This imperial letter is particularly interesting as showing the great care taken by the ancients to preserve intact the decrees of the general councils.

It would almost seem as if, for a time at least, some of his father’s good feeling for the Roman See must have found its way into the rude breast of Justinian. For, by two decrees, he remitted two hundred measures of corn which the ‘rectors’ of the ‘patrimony’ in Bruttium and Lucania had to pay every year; and he ordered the serfs belonging to the same patrimony and of Sicily, and who were held in pledge by the military, to be restored. Duchesne observes that this patrimony is not expressly mentioned in the letters of St. Gregory I. But it is clear from several of them that the notary Peter and the sub-deacon Sabinus, who are spoken of in these letters, or to whom they were actually addressed, were evidently ‘rectors’ of a ‘patrimony’ in those parts.

Age, it appears, does not always bring that experience and prudence which is looked for from it. And so we read in  Anastasius of the aged Conon neglecting to follow the safe custom of taking advice of the clergy; being deceived by designing men; appointing, in spite of the opposition of his counselors, a certain Constantine, a deacon of the church of Syracuse, as ‘rector’ of the important ‘patrimony’ of Sicily, and granting him an exceptional privilege, viz., the use of the coveted ‘mappulum’(horse trappings or cloth) for riding. But it was not long before this ‘sly and wicked man’ got into trouble. His extortions raised seditions, and the governor of the province had to step in and send Constantine to prison. “So dangerous is it”, moralizes Pagi, “for popes and bishops, without taking counsel, to promote to ecclesiastical offices and dignities men who have not been sufficiently tried”.

If Conon got no glory from the deacon Constantine, the same cannot be said of his connection with St. Kilian and his companions. At the time when Conon mounted the Throne of the Fisherman, most of Germany was still pagan, especially in the North. Round about the Rhine, through the action of the Franks, who had accepted Christianity in the course of the preceding century, there were Christians, as there were, too, in the countries Helvetia, Noricum, Rhoetia, south of the Danube—the remains of the Christian churches which were there when the frontier of the Roman empire was the Danube itself. And no doubt in other parts of Germany there were Christians also, but isolated, and in many cases infected with pagan superstitions or with the Arian heresy. But throughout the seventh century missionaries from the Franks, Irish, and Anglo-Saxons brought the faith of Christ to different parts of Germany, and, particularly in its southern half, undermined the power of paganism.

About the year 685 there arrived at Herbipolis, now Wurzburg on the Maine, in Franconia, a band of missionaries, among whom were SS. Kilian and Colman, priests, and Totnan, a deacon. They were a division of that great company of missionaries who left Ireland in the century of the greatest glory of the Church in that country (the seventh), and overran the continent of Europe, spreading everywhere the hope-kindling faith of Christ. When the saint and his companions arrived in Franconia among the Eastern Franks, his biographer, who seems to have lived about the end of the ninth century, tells how Kilian was greatly struck by the beauty of the country and its inhabitants, but correspondingly saddened by the reflection that they were in the power of “the old enemy”.

“My brothers”, said he, “you see how charming is this land, and how fair its people, in error though they are. If you think it well, let us do as we decided whilst at home! Let us go to Rome and visit the threshold of the Prince of the Apostles. Let us present ourselves before the Blessed Pope John; and then, with the advice and leave of the Apostolic See, let us return here and preach the faith”. To this exhortation all agreed, and betook themselves to Rome to obtain the Pope’s sanction that they might preach the Gospel with authority. Arrived in Rome, they found that John V, whom they had set out to see, was dead. They were, however, most kindly received by the venerable Conon, who ordained Kilian bishop, without assigning him any particular See. Armed with the papal permission to preach and teach, back to Wurzburg returned this noble band, feeling strong in the mission that Christ’s vicar had imparted to them. Great success attended their efforts, and the Duke of Franconia himself, Gosbert, was baptized. But when Geilana, whom Gosbert had taken to wife, though she was the widow of his deceased brother, learnt that Gosbert was preparing to dismiss her at the exhortation of the missionaries, she had them secretly slain in 689. But the work of conversion went steadily on under the son and successor of Gosbert, and in later times the descendants of Kilian’s converts venerated his relics. For his biographer tells how his sacred remains were translated to an honorable place by the joint action of St. Boniface and Burchard, first bishop of Wurzburg, and at the command of Pope Zachary.

After a long illness, which was so severe as almost to prevent him from holding the usual episcopal ordinations— a trial which is also related to have befallen his predecessor John V—Conon died and was buried in St. Peter’s, September 21 (22 according to Jaffe), 687. The donation to the clergy, which, to the same amount as his predecessor, Conon had set aside for them, we shall see, in the life of his successor, they never got.

 

ST. SERGIUS I