ST. BONIFACE IV.

AD. 608-615

 

Emperors of the East. Phocas, 602-610. Heraclius, 610-641.

King of the Lombards. Agilulph, 590-615.

Exarchs of Ravenna. Smaragdus, 602-611. John (Lemigius), 611-616.

Though Boniface IV, reigned for over six years, he is little more than a name to us. Very little is known about his doings during that time, and hardly anything which gives us any insight into his character, so that the biography of this Pope will scarcely be able to point a moral or adorn a tale.

After a long vacancy of over ten months, presumably again due to the tardiness of the emperor in confirming the election, Boniface, the son of John, a physician, and a native of the territory of the ancient Marsi in the province of Valeria (natione Marsorum, de civitate Valeria), was consecrated Bishop of Rome, August 25 (Duchesne), or September 15 (Jaffé), 608. These long vacancies alone are quite enough to show how undesirable it was that the papal elections should have to be dependent on the confirmation of the civil power.

What the L. P. here calls civitas Valeria, we have translated as the province of Valeria, in which the country of the Marsi was situated. But no doubt in the province there was a town which at this period was called by its name; and this passage of Anastasius shows that that town was in the country of the Marsi. Duchesne, therefore, looks for this town along the Via Valeria, the main road east from Rome, which traverses the country of the Marsi to the north of Lake Fucinus; and identifies it, with no small degree of probability, with Cerfennia (Collarmela), where the road bifurcates, going north to Marruvium and south to Corfinium.

Now it is very curious that Gregory in his Dialogues (III. 20) tells a story of a priest Stephen, of the province of Valeria, who, he says, was a very near relation “of this our Boniface, the deacon and dispensator of the Church”. The Dialogues were published at the close of the year 593, and in one of Gregory’s letters (IV. 2) of this same date there is mention of “my most beloved son Boniface, the deacon”. No doubt, then, Boniface IV was the dispensator of the Church who was related to the priest Stephen, and who was most beloved of Gregory. The dispensator seems to have been the Pope’s right-hand man, or the first official in connection with the administration of the patrimonies.

On May 13, 609 (?), Boniface consecrated  the Pantheon to the worship of the true God under the invocation of Our Lady and the Martyrs. Though Gregory the Great sanctioned the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon pagan temples into churches, there is no example before this of one in Rome being so treated. This beautiful specimen of ancient architecture, still one of the most perfect of the architectural wonders of Rome, and from its shape often spoken of as the Church of Our Lady of the Rotunda, had been built by Agrippa (BC 25) in honor of Augustus, and consecrated to Jupiter the Avenger, to Venus and to Mars. The pagan temples had been closed from the end of the fourth century, and the Pantheon would have fallen to ruin with the others had not Boniface obtained leave from Phocas to turn it into a Christian church. He, moreover, received many presents for it from the same emperor. “The finest architectural monument of ancient Rome has to thank the Church, which hallowed it to Christian uses, for its preservation from the spoiler. Had this transformation not taken place, the splendid building would undoubtedly have been converted into the fortress of some noble in the Middle Ages, and, having undergone assaults innumerable, would have survived, like the tomb of Hadrian, only in a ruinous and mutilated guise”. So Gregorovius. Truly does Rome belong to the popes, for in every way have they preserved it. “On the score of its antiquity, its beauty, and its sanctity”, continues the same author, “the new Church has always been esteemed by the Romans the most precious ornament of their city, and from the seventh century onwards remained the zealously guarded property of the popes. Even in the thirteenth century every senator was obliged to swear  that, together with St. Peter’s, the castle of St. Angelo, and the other papal possessions, he would also defend St. Maria Rotonda for the Pope”. But in our time, by a penurious and tyrannical government, with the brigand proclivities of many of its op­pressed people, the Pantheon has been taken from the popes, its preservers, and declared national property. If it remains in the hands of the government, there is reason to fear it may ere long go to ruin. The national property, to which it is declared to belong, is believed by some well acquainted with Italian affairs to be going headlong to national bankruptcy.

An historian of our own country, the Venerable Bede, is our authority for the next act of Boniface of which we have any knowledge. Mellitus, the first bishop of London, after the landing of St. Augustine, had occasion to go to Rome “to consult the Pope on important matters relative to the newly-established church in this country”. Arrived in Rome he took part in a synod of the bishops of Italy, which the Pope had called together to legislate on “the life and monastic peace of the monks”. These words of Bede constitute all we know of the work of this council. What is usually cited as the decree of the council is now generally regarded as spurious. Mellitus, however, brought home the genuine decree, whatever it was, as well as letters from the Pope to Lawrence, Archbishop of Canterbury, and to all the clergy, and to King Ethelbert and the English nation, concerning what had to be observed by the Church in England.

The letter to Ethelbert is somewhat obscure, but in it, “by his apostolic authority”, Boniface willingly grants what the king has asked through Bishop Mellitus, viz., that in the monastery over which Lawrence presides the king may establish a dwelling for monks living together in complete regularity, and that the monks, “who have preached the faith to you may associate these (and other) monks to themselves”. The letter concludes by warning the king that, if any of his successors, or any bishops or others violate this decree, “they will fall under the anathema of the Prince of the Apostles and his successors till they have done penance”. Montalembert conjectures that the introduction of monks of Saxon origin into the Italian community founded by St. Augustine is here indicated.

Some, indeed, doubt of the genuineness of this and the rest of the series of papal documents given by William of Malmesbury. But as their doubts rest but on trivial grounds they need not detain us. This letter is interesting also as being the first of the papal letters in which the era of the Incarnation is used, or which is dated in the year of the Lord. Some considerable time, however, was to elapse before the practice of dating letters in this way became regular with the popes, as the authors of L'art de vérifier les Dates note in connection with this Pope.

Among the many heroic souls who left Ireland in the seventh century, perhaps the most glorious age of the Church in Ireland, to labor to bring souls to God, none is more deservedly famous than the great St. Columbanus, the founder of a monastic order, which for the comparatively short period of its existence was a rival of the community of St. Benedict. In Columbanus we see, as was remarked before, all the distinguishing virtues as well as shortcomings of the Irish or Celtic character in a marked degree. And fascinating as is the life of Columbanus, one cannot fail to see that he had all the virtues in a preeminent degree except that of prudence. It is not contended that he had not enough of that virtue to enable him to be a very great saint. But while the fact that prudence was the least-developed virtue in him gave a glorious dash and go to his actions, it also gave an ephemeral character to his undertakings, and not unfrequently put him into an awkward or foolish position. Compelled to abandon for the time the grand work for the good of souls he was doing in France and Switzerland through the hostile attitude of Theodoric II, King of Burgundy, St. Columbanus crossed over into Italy. He was well received by Agilulph and Theodelinda, and did a great deal of good by his words and writings in helping on the work of withdrawing the Lombards from their Arianism. But unfortunately “he made himself, ridiculous by offering advice to Pope Boniface IV on a theological question which he himself confessed he had not studied”.  The question was that of the Three Chapters. Some of the bishops in Agilulph’s dominions, viz., those who were parties to the Istrian Schism, were supporters of the Chapters and Agilulph persuaded Columbanus to write to Boniface on the matter. Accordingly the abbot dispatched a very long letter to the Pope, in parts too garrulous to be clear and in parts too eloquent to be practical, in which he mixes up the strangest expressions of respect and love for the See of Peter and the Pope with charges and advice the more offensive that they came from one who, as we have said, evinced “no grasp at all of the theological problem” of the Three Chapters. Hence, though the letter is addressed “To the most beautiful Head of all the Churches of Europe .... to the Shepherd of Shepherds”, though it is “a poor wretch” writing “to the powerful; and wonderful to tell, a new portent, a rare bird, a dove, dares to write to his father Boniface”, still the Pope is plainly told that he is charged with heresy and exhorted to prove his orthodoxy in the matter of “a certain so-called 5th Council”, viz., that of Constantinople (553). And though he writes, “as is becoming, to offer a suggestion in a most lowly spirit”, though he is bound to the See of Peter, by which alone Rome is great to him, and though he writes as a humble follower still he will speak out freely to his masters and to the steersmen of the spiritual ship and bid them watch. By all the Irish “is the Catholic faith held firm, just as it was first given to us by you, viz., by the successors of the Holy Apostles. This gives me confidence to rouse you against those who call you a schismatic. Though with importunate clamorings, I endeavor to stir you up, as the prince of the leaders. The army of the Lord looks to you, who have the power of arranging and directing everything, of proclaiming war and urging on the leaders; of ordering arms to be seized, the line of battle to be drawn up, the trumpets to ring out, and in fine, yourself in front, the battle to be begun. Call a council to free yourself from the charges made against you”.

It would, however, be a complete mistake to suppose that, because Columbanus wrote with more freedom than discretion, he regarded himself as one not subject to the Pope, or that he was a rebel against the papal authority. If he heard anything against the popes, against Chair of St. Peter, “he lamented over it”, and if he cries out “to the mystic pilot”, he only does so because the water has entered the bark of the Church and the ship is in danger. And when he was told that the Pope had received heretics: “I declared in your name that the Roman Church never defended a heretic against the Catholic faith”. In the midst of the troubles around him he looks to the Pope, “who in your power through the honor of the holy apostle Peter are the only hope among the leaders”,"i.e. the spiritual leaders, the bishops. He would have the chair of Peter cleansed from error if, as some say, any may have got there. “For it would be matter for weeping and wailing if the Catholic faith were not held in the apostolic See”. It was the greatness of his love and attachment to the See of Rome that made Columbanus quite beside himself at the stories of its falling away which the clever schismatics of North Italy had poured into his simple and credulous ears.

“But”, he continues, “that I may say all and not seem to unduly flatter even you, it is also matter for grief that, with zeal for the faith, you have not displayed the purity of your faith, and long ago, as was becoming, seeing that you have the legitimate power, condemned and excommunicated the party which has receded from you. Wherefore it is that they dare to blacken the fame of the principal See of the orthodox faith.  My father and patron, I beg you drive away the confusion from before the faces of your sons and disciples, who for you are confounded; and, what is more important than all this, bring it about that all breath of suspicion be removed from the chair of Peter... Because of the two great apostles of Christ, you are almost celestial, and Rome is the head of the Churches of the whole world, saving the singular prerogative of the place of the divine resurrection.” In this last clause, as Doellinger notes, “he confounds the veneration which was due to that Church on account of possessing the holy scenes of our Redemption, and of being the place of pilgrimage for the whole world, with its ecclesiastical authority. This was not essen­tially attached to the Church of Jerusalem, but only as it was one of the apostolical, patriarchal Churches of the East”.

When he came into those parts (Bobbio), concludes Columbanus, he was warned against the Pope as having fallen into the heresy of Nestorius. But this allegation he declares he believed not: “For I believe that the pillar of the Church is ever firm in Rome. . . . Do you, then, O king of kings, follow Peter and let the whole Church follow you”.

What answer the Pope returned to this glowing effusion of the impulsive Celt, all aflame with love for God and the honor of the See of Peter, but fuller of classical quotations than theological knowledge, we do not know. But if the most recent editor of the letters of Columbanus, viz., Gundlach, is correct in marking a letter of Columbanus, discovered in recent years by Krusch, as addressed to Boniface IV, the two must have been on good terms. For in that letter the saint says that he has to speak about the feasts of the Church, Easter, etc., “under the compulsion of your commanding charity”. In the course of this epistle he notes that what unity then existed with regard to the time of celebrating Easter was due to the Church “following the authority of the apostolic See”. He concludes : “I have not been afraid, poor foreigner that I am, to send you in your richness this scrappy production because ‘perfect charity casteth out fear’ (1 John IV. 18); and because I believe, O venerable Pope, that obedience with faith is of more worth than human genius”. With this humble profession on his lips, we will leave that rara avis, Columbanus.

The same Theoderic II of Burgundy, who had expelled Columbanus from Gaul, and whom St. Gregory had, to no purpose, endeavored to lead along the path of virtue, wrote to Boniface IV to beg the pallium for the newly consecrated Archbishop of Arles, “according to ancient custom”. Praising the king for his care of his churches the Pope commends to him the interests of the church and the poor of the patrimony of St. Peter in Gaul; and, as the same Pope’s letter to Florian himself shows, sent the pallium as desired. In the last-mentioned letter, Boniface expresses his pleasure at the good character that he finds given to him on all hands. He exhorts him to live up to the honor he is conferring upon him, and especially to fight against simony—the same evil in the Church of Gaul against which we saw Gregory struggling and which we shall see so many other popes struggling earnestly to subdue. Boniface also commends to Florian the small patrimony of the Roman Church in those parts, of which Gregory’s nominee, Candidus, is still the agent.

In the case of Boniface IV it was not the Lombards who were his cross. The peace brought about by Gregory was renewed at frequent intervals, generally for a year at a time. But, as his biographer says that “in his time were famines, pestilences, and inundations”, it was doubtless with these that the attention of the Pope was taken up till his death.

His biographer also tells us that Boniface turned his own house into a monastery and endowed it. In this, as in certain other respects, we find Boniface imitating his great predecessor St. Gregory, a fact long ago noticed in the epitaph placed on his tomb,

Gregorii semper raonita atque exempla magistri

Vita, opere ac dignis moribus iste sequens.

Boniface was originally buried (May 8, 615, but May 25 615. according to Jaffé) in the portico of St. Peter’s. On his tomb there was placed the inscription, of which two lines have just been cited, and of which the rest may be read in Duchesne. His body was afterwards taken into the interior of the basilica. Papebroch, the Bollandist, gives particulars of three removals of his body—the first in the tenth or eleventh century; the second at the close of the thirteenth, under Boniface VIII, and the third in 1603. The later inscription on the tomb, in the days of Boniface VIII, may still be read in the crypt of St. Peter. Grisar, in his Analecta, has a reproduction of it.

 

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