CRISTO RAUL.ORG ' |
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READING HALLCAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY |
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THE
CHAPTER VIII
IMPERIAL ITALY AND AFRICA
WHEN in the year 534 Justinian organized the imperial
administration in Africa, and after the year 540 in Italy, it was not so much
his intention to create a new civil code as to restore in the main the
conditions which had existed before the break in the Roman rule. In Africa this
break had been complete owing to the constitution of the Vandal kingdom. In
Italy the Roman civil administration had remained unaltered, even at the time
when the rule of the Gothic king had superseded the direct imperial government,
and therefore, after the expulsion of the Gothic army quartered on the land,
only the military administration had to be created completely anew. Maintenance
of the continuity, which from an imperial point of view had legally never been
broken, and equal rights with those provinces which had never bowed to the yoke
of the barbarians, are therefore the natural principles upon which Justinian
founded his reorganization of the West. It was, however, impossible in practice
to ignore altogether the development of the last century. Africa and Italy had
for so many years lived in political independence of each other, that it was no
longer possible to look upon them as a united whole; in consequence of this,
their administration remained entirely separate, as before. Whereas the
dioceses of Africa had been under the rule of the praefectus praetorio
per Italias, until its occupation by the Vandals, it now received its
own praefectus praetorio, who took the place of the former,
henceforth superfluous vicarius Africae, so that the praefectus
Italiae was limited to Italy. Sardinia and Corsica, however, which had
been in the possession of the Vandals and were now won back by Justinian
together with the Vandal kingdom, remained united with Africa. It was further
of decisive importance for Italy that it was no longer, as before the so-called
fall of the West-Roman Empire, ruled by two emperors with a local division of
power, but by one only, and that he resided in the East. For the consequence
was, that the court offices and central offices proper, such as the
magister officiorum, the quaestor, the comites
sacrarum largitionum, rerum privatarum and patrimonii,
which as the highest administrative offices in Italy had been maintained within
the Gothic kingdom parallel with the court offices and central offices at
Constantinople, now disappeared in Italy and were amalgamated with the central
offices at Constantinople. The same applies to the Senate, which likewise was
not a local but an imperial governing body. There was no need to dissolve it;
it disappeared from Rome in the natural course of events, for the officials, of
whom it was composed at that time, henceforth only existed at Constantinople,
the residence of the single emperor.
Foundation of Imperial Administration
The principle underlying the bureaucratic
administration by which the Empire had been governed since Diocletian, and the
details of which had only been developed during the centuries following his
reign, remained unchanged: all autonomy was supplanted by a body of imperial
functionaries grouped hierarchically, according to their local and practical
powers, subject only to the absolute will of the Emperor and appointed by him,
chosen from the ranks of the landowners, the only persons who had the right to
migrate from their place of origin. They had at their disposal as an auxiliary
force a body of officials (officium), arranged likewise hierarchically,
but drawn from another class of the people. Opposed, however, to the ruling
class, which carried out the will of the State by means of the bureaucratic
organization, stood, as the working members of the State, all the rest of the
population, tied hereditarily to their class and its organization, which as far
as it existed had only the one object of making its members jointly responsible
for the expenses of the State. The principle also of separating the civil from
the military power, which had first been completely carried into force by
Constantine the Great, though sometimes abandoned by Justinian in the East, was
intended by the Emperor to come into full force in the West, as soon as an end
had been put to the state of war.
While the details of the Italian administration have
to be gathered partly from the so-called Pragmatica sanctio pro
petitione Vigilii, and partly from the remaining sources, chiefly the
letters of Pope Gregory, which unfortunately nowhere present a complete
picture, the Codex Justinianus (i. 27) contains the statutes
of the organization for the civil and military adjustment within the
African dioecesis, issued by Justinian in the year 534. The
statutes provided that the praefectus praetorio Africae, who as a
functionary of the highest class and receiving a salary of 100 pounds gold
(about £4500), stood at the head of the civil administration, should have
(besides his private cabinet, the consiliarii and cancellarii,
the grammatici and medici) an official staff of
396 persons, divided into ten scrinia and nine scholae.
Four of the former, who were also the best paid, were entrusted with the
financial administration, and one with the exchequer. Besides these there were
the scrinium of the primiscrinius or subadiuva,
and one each of the commentariensis and of the ab actis,
who conducted the business of the chancery and the archives, and lastly
the scrinium operum for the Public Works and the scrinium
libellorum for the Jurisdiction. The cohortales, probably
assistant clerks, were divided into the scholae of exceptores, singularii, mittendarii, cursores, nomenculatores, stratores, praecones, draconarii,
and chartularii. The sum total of the salaries paid to the staff
amounted to 6575 gold solidi (a little over £4000), which had to be raised,
like the praefect's salary, by the dioecesis. Subordinate to the
praefect were seven governors, three of whom had the rank of a consularis and
four that of a praeses. It seems that the former the text is not
quite clear were the governors of the old provincia proconsularis (Zeugitana,
Carthage), of Byzacena and of Tripolis, whilst the latter, who were of inferior
rank, appear to have governed Sardinia, Numidia, and the two Mauretanias
(Sitifensis and Caesariensis); a staff of 50 clerks was attached to each of
them.
Administrative Division
For the protection of the dioecesis, after
peace had eventually been so completely restored that the conquering army and
the moveable field army of the comitatenses could be
withdrawn, a frontier-army was to be newly enrolled, garrisoned, and settled,
and to be entrusted to the military commanders of the separate
frontier-provinces (limites). These were under the duces of
Tripolitana (in Leptis Magna), of Byzacena (in Capsa or Thelepte, the command
of which was afterwards shared with a second dux at Hadrumetum),
of Numidia (in Constantina), of Mauretania (in Caesarea), and of Sardinia.
Whilst these duces were to take up a temporary residence in
the capitals until the reoccupation of the old frontiers should be complete, a
few of the larger forts along the frontier were given into the charge of
tribunes. One of these, who was subordinate to the dux of
Mauretania, was also stationed at Septum to watch the Straits of Gibraltar and
to command the battleships there. Each of these duces had,
besides an assessor, a staff of 40 clerks with a number of gentlemen-at-arms,
the latter of whom he paid out of his own sufficiently high stipend, handed
over to him by the praefect. The duces, viri spectabiles,
i.e. officials of the second class, were subordinate in military rank to the
commanding magister militum of the moment. It is true that
this arrangement was quite provisional, for the limites were
not to be definitely adjusted till the old frontiers had been won back by the
Roman arms.
In Italy Justinian’s division of provinces can hardly
have differed essentially from the old Roman one, which had been accepted by
the Ostrogoths. The jurisdiction of the praefect was curtailed not only by the
separation of Sardinia and Corsica and by the loss of the two Rhaetias on the
northern frontier, but furthermore by the enactment of Justinian, which put
Sicily under a special praetor of the second class, from whom
an appeal passed directly to the quaestor of the court at
Constantinople. It is doubtful whether the intermediate court of the two vicarii (Italiae and urbis
Romae) was maintained under the praefect. With regard to the
provincial governors the Pragmatica sanctio ordains that they
should be chosen from the inhabitants by the bishops and most distinguished men
in each province, but must obtain the sanction of the praefect a very peculiar
regulation, which does not agree with the general bureaucratic principles of
the Byzantine administration, and which seems to prove that as early as the
middle of the sixth century the position of the provincial governors, like that
of the town councils in Italy, was brought very low and considered more of an
onus than an honor. Not long afterwards this regulation was extended to the
whole Empire. The special position of the municipal officials of Rome under
the praefectus urbi together with other privileges of the old
imperial capital was maintained, though from the outset this administrative
department hardly fitted any better here than elsewhere into the frame of the
general administration, and had to be relieved of a number of its former duties.
Defense of the Positions
The defense of the frontiers, temporarily established
by Belisarius in Africa, was organized in Italy by Narses, who had restored the
natural frontiers of Italy in the north to nearly the dimensions which had been
recognized by the Lombards in Gothic times after the cession of Noricum and
Pannonia to them. It is probable that the location of the frontier troops was
also influenced by the distribution of the garrisons during the Gothic rule. In
the east, Forum Julii (Friuli) was the centre of a chain of
small fortresses on the southern slope of the Alps, which were connected with
the fort of Aguntum (Innichen) by the pass over the Kreuzberg. From this point
the valley of the Rienz probably became the frontier. The bishopric of Seben
(Brixen) also belonged to the Empire, and further south a chain of forts from
Verruca (near Trent) as far as Anagni (Nanó) can be traced. Further west, the
Alpine passes were secured by forts at their southern end; thus mention is made
of one situated on an island in the Lake of Como, and of another at the outlet
of the pass over Mont Cenis at Susa. It is not clear in what manner these limites,
which had replaced the old ducatus Rhaetiarum and the tractus
Italiae circa Alpes of the Notitia Dignitatum, were
separated from each other. It appears, however, that some of the troops which
had come to Italy under Narses were garrisoned and settled in them, and that
certain generals who had served under Narses were placed at the head of
these ducatus. This would be the easiest explanation for the fact that
at a very early date the command over the garrisoned legions in Italy was not
held by ordinary duces, but by men holding the higher rank of magister
militum.
Justinian's dispositions had all been made on the
assumption that peace would be completely restored throughout the two new
sections of the Empire. During the wars of conquest, the Emperor’s authorized
generals were, in Africa Belisarius, who was magister militum per
orientem, and in Italy latterly Narses, who, as patricius and holder of
high court offices, belonged to the highest rank. These had acted without
restriction, both in their military and in their civil capacity, subject only
to the instructions they received from the Emperor. Procopius calls each
alike War Autocrats.
The Exarch
Circumstances, however, allowed neither country any
lasting peace; martial law continued as a consequence of the state of war, and
neither Africa nor Italy could safely be left without an active army. It became
necessary to create and to uphold a supreme authority, to which the civil
administration had to be subordinated for military purposes. In Africa a
passing attempt was made by Justinian to equip the praefectus praetorio with
the power of a magister militum, but this was an exceptional case.
In Africa, as also in Italy, when the Lombards invaded it after the recall of
Narses, the rule was to appoint extraordinary military commanders, who held a
high rank and were superior to the praefectus. But when the state
of war proved to be chronic, the extraordinary office developed into a regular
one. In the year 584 an exarch is mentioned in Italy for the
first time, and here as in Africa the title exarch is
henceforth commonly applied to the head of the military and civil
administration. In this combination of military and civil functions the exarch reminds
us of certain exalted provincial governors, whom Justinian, deviating from the
general principles of the Roman administration, had already installed in the
East. But the exarch is far more than these. Holding, as he
does, the highest office in his division of the Empire, he not only belongs to
the highest class with the title excellentissimus, but he owns also
the full title of patricius, a distinction not usually shared by
the praefect. If the patrician holds a court office it is usual, in official
language, to substitute this for the title patricius, as for
instance cubicularius et exarchus, or occasionally Patricius
et exarchus. In ordinary life, when speaking of the exarch in
Italy and Africa, only the title patricius was used.
The power of the exarch was practically unlimited.
Like the Gothic kings, he was the emperor’s representative; and as such, like
his predecessors, e.g. Belisarius and Narses, he held absolute command over the
active troops temporarily stationed in that part of the Empire, as well as over
the frontier legions. At the same time he took a hand, whenever it pleased him,
in the civil administration, decided ecclesiastical matters, negotiated with
foreign countries, and concluded armistices. His power was only limited in
time, inasmuch as he might at any moment be recalled by the emperor, and in
extent inasmuch as his mandate applied only to a definite part of the Empire.
He could therefore issue decrees, but could neither make laws nor conclude a
peace valid for the whole of the Empire. The command of the exarch of
Italy extended beyond Italy to the rest of the old dioecesis of
West Illyricum, and to Dalmatia, which also, since Odovacar's time, had been
added to the Italian kingdom. The military system of Sicily, on the other hand,
was allowed, at least in later years, to develop independently.
It followed naturally that the exarch, who resided at
Ravenna, had it his court, besides an officium befitting his
rank, a number of advisers and assistants for the miscellaneous branches of his
activity. We will only mention here the consiliarius, the cancellarius,
the maior domus, the scholastici versed in
jurisprudence, and in Africa with the rank of patricius a
representative of the emperor. He was further, like all generals of that time, surrounded
by a number of private soldiers, gentlemen-at-arms who held a more
distinguished position than soldiers of the regular army. The court of these
vice emperors was in every aspect a copy of the imperial court, and their
powerful position makes it conceivable that, when in the middle of the seventh
century the centre of the Empire was in distress, the attempt was repeatedly
made both from Africa and Italy to replace the emperor by an exarch.
It was in this manner that the dynasty of Heraclius attained to the throne.
The Militarising of the
Administration
The consequences of the uninterrupted state of war,
caused in Africa by the Berbers and later by the Muslims, and in Italy by the
Lombards, of course affected, not only the head of the general administration,
but also its organization and its efficacy. Tripolitana was detached from
Africa, probably under the Emperor Maurice, and added to Egypt. Mauretania
Sitifensis and the few stations of the Caesariensis which the Empire was able
to uphold, were joined together into one province, Mauretania Prima, whilst distant
Septum, with the remains of the Byzantine possessions in Spain, became the
province Mauretania Secunda. Of still greater importance is the fact that
Justinian's plan of restoring the frontiers of the Empire to the extent they
had before the Vandal occupation, was never carried out. It even became
necessary in several provinces to move back again the line of defense already
reached, so that the duces did not hold command in the
border-lands of their own provinces, but were stationed with their garrisoned
legions in the interior. This makes it impossible to define the sphere of local
power between the dux and the tribuni on the
one hand, and the praeses on the other. The provinces
themselves became as it were limites. Just as the praefect
continued to exist under the exarch, so there existed, at least in
the beginning of the seventh century and perhaps even up to the definite loss
of Africa, side by side with the duces, a number of civil praesides,
not to speak of the various revenue officers who were employed for the
taxation. Naturally the duces and the tribuni who
were appointed by the exarch proved the stronger, and
continually extended their powers at the expense of the civil officials. The
development, which must have led to the complete suppression of the civil
administration, hardly reached its final stage in Africa, because it was
forcibly cut short by the Mahometan occupation. It went further in Italy. The
Lombards in their onslaught had broken up the whole of the Italian
administration in the course of about ten years; attempts to re-establish it
failed, and when about the beginning of the seventh century the Empire had
accepted the inevitable, it made no further attempt to gain the remote
border-lands, but saw its task in trying to secure what remained of the Roman
possessions. It had been customary so far for the various army corps, of which
some were recruited from the East, to fight in different parts of Italy, led by
their magistri militum under the superior command of the
exarch. The primus exercitus was stationed at Ravenna at the
immediate disposal of the commander-in-chief. But gradually, and especially
when by the repeated truces a certain state of equilibrium had been attained,
there were no more reinforcements from the East, except perhaps the regiment of
guards for the exarch, and the legions in Italy were stationed at
those points which seemed most important for the defence. In the
interior of Italy also ducatus sprang up in all directions
with duces or magistri militum at
their head; everywhere forts were erected and put under the command of a
tribune.
By the conquests of Rothari, who seized Liguria, and
of Grimoald in the seventh century, as also by those of Liutprand and Aistulf
in the eighth century, the frontiers were still further displaced, but as early
as the first half of the seventh century the following ducatus can
be distinguished: Istria and Venetia, both confined to the coast-land and the
islands; the exarchate proper (in the narrower sense), the provincial
Ravennatium, the borders of which lay between Bologna and Modena in the
west, along the Po in the north, and from which the ducatus of
Ferrara was detached in the eighth century; the Pentapolis, i.e. the remains of
Picenum, with its dux residing at Ariminum; the ducatus of
Perusia, which with its numerous and strong forts covered the most important
passes of the Apennines and the Via Flaminia, the only connection between the
remains of the Byzantine possessions in the north, and in particular Ravenna,
with Rome; Tuscia to the north of the lower course of the Tiber; Rome and her
immediate surroundings, with the forts in partibus Campaniae to
the south, as far as the Valley of the Liris; the ducatus of
Naples, i.e. the coast-towns from Cumae to Amalfi with a part of Liburia (Terra
di Lavoro); the ducatus of Calabria, consisting of the remains
of Apulia and Calabria, Lucania and Bruttium. This division supplanted the old
division into provinces, and, when about the middle of the seventh century not
only the praefect of Italy, but also the provincial praesides disappeared
completely, the names of the old provinces continued to be used in ordinary
conversation only to define certain parts of Italy. The functions of the duces and praesides were
completely absorbed by the magistri militum in the same way as
those of the praefectus praetorio were absorbed by the exarch.
The whole administration had been militarized, and the same status established
which in the East under similar conditions appears as the "theme"
system.
The Church and the Public Administration
The civil administration of the State, however, was
not only threatened by the military organizations, but
also by another factor, the Church, which
prepared to occupy the gaps left by the activity of the State, and to enter upon
a part of its heritage. Through means of influence peculiar to herself
and not accessible to the State, the Church had in Italy a very special
position through her extensive landed property, as also by right of privileges
which former emperors, in particular Justinian, had accorded to her. The
legal privileges of the Church went so far, that popes of the sixth century
already claimed for the clergy the right to be judged by ecclesiastics
only, and its landed property was protected by special laws. The influence
of the Church in all matters could only be controlled by the actual
power and authority of the State, for the claim of the pope and of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy to be the representatives of the Civitas Dei, and as such
superior to worldly authorities, permitted a growth of
power to an unlimited extent.
The material foundation for this power was supplied by
the immense wealth, of the Roman Church especially, which designated its
possessions by preference as patrimonium pauperum. The
starting-point for its activity was indeed the care of the poor, a field which
had been entirely neglected by the State, but gained importance in proportion
to the increasing distress of the times and the insufficiency of the public
administration. The State itself, in fact, not only allowed the bishops an
important voice in the election of the provincial governors, but it granted
them a certain right of control over all officials, in so far as they were
permitted to attend to the complaints of the oppressed population, and to
convey them to the magistrates in authority or even to the emperor himself.
Time after time there was intervention, mostly by the popes, and no part of the
administration was free from their influence.
The predominance of the ecclesiastical influence over
the secular in the civil administration shows itself very clearly in the
department of municipal government, for the curiales, having lost
their autonomy and become mere bearers of burdens, were already doomed. In
Lilybaeum, for instance, the wealthy citizens, manifestly the curiales,
had made an agreement with the bishop in accordance with which the bishop took
over certain of their burdens, and in return a number of estates were
transferred to the Church. At Naples the bishop tried to get possession of the
aqueducts and the city gates. Above all, at Rome the pope extended the range of
his power in his own interest and in the interest of the population, who could
no longer depend upon the regular working of the public administration.
The Pragmatica sanctio had guaranteed
the maintenance by the State of the public buildings at Rome; nevertheless, in
the seventh century the care of the aqueducts as well as the preservation of
the city walls passed over to the papal administration. By this time no more
mention is made of the praefectura urbis, and when after almost two
centuries it appears again in our sources, it has become a pontifical office.
The old public distribution of provisions was replaced by the beneficial
institutions of the Roman Church, by her diaconates, shelters, hospitals, and
her magnificent charity organization, through which money and provisions were
dealt out regularly to a large part of the population. The vast granaries of
the Roman Church received the corn brought from all the patrimonies, especially
from Sicily, for the purpose of feeding a population whose regular sources of
income were totally insufficient for their support.
The recognized superiority of the papal administration
is also illustrated by the fact that the State further felt induced to hand
over to the granaries of the Church the revenue paid in kind by Sicily,
Sardinia, and Corsica and set aside for the provisioning of Rome and its garrison,
so that the pope appears in many respects as the emperor's paymaster (dispensator).
But the pope becomes also the emperor’s banker when the funds for the payment
of the army are made over to him, so that for a time at least the soldiers are
paid through his offices. Thus the organs of state administration were one by
one rendered superfluous by the development of a well-organized papal central
government, whilst the managers of the pontifical estates in the different
provinces, who were entrusted with the representation of the pope in all
secular matters, had an ever-increasing number of duties heaped upon them.
Militarising of Landed Property
In proportion as the reinforcements of soldiers from
Byzantium failed, Italy had to depend more upon her own resources, i.e. upon
the soldiers who had been settled in Italy at the time when the inner
boundaries were established --evidently in imitation of the old limitanei-- and
upon the native population, which latter being compelled to take its share in
the watch-service (murorum vigiliae) and obliged to provide for their
own up-keep, could soon no longer be distinguished from the former. For
example, the castrum Squillace was erected on land belonging
to the monastery of the same name, and for the allotments conceded to them the
soldiers had to pay a ground-rent (solaticum) to the monastery.
The castrum Callipolis had been built within the precincts of
a manor owned by the Roman Church, and the coloni of the
Church themselves formed its garrison. All those who were obliged to do
military service in a fort under the command of the tribune formed the numerus or bandus,
and being a corporation had the right to acquire landed property. The
inhabitants of Comacchio, for instance, taken collectively, are called milites,
and only in the large cities, such as Rome or Ravenna, the milites do
not embrace the entire population. On the other hand we often find the
inhabitants of a fort dependent upon a landlord. But though the power of a
tribune and that of a landlord were originally derived from entirely different
sources, they were naturally brought nearer to each other in the course of
their development, for while it became more common for the tribunes to acquire
landed property, the landowners grew more military. For the tribune did not
only hold the command of a fort, the power of raising part of the taxes, and
the jurisdiction over the population within the whole district of the fort, but
in addition to this the landed property of the State or of the corporation fell
to his share. Thus, the more the armed power assumed the character of a
militia, the more important it became that the tribunes, who probably continued
to pay their nomination-tax or suffragium to the exarch,
should be chosen from the landlords of the district, like the officers holding
command under them in the numerus, who are occasionally mentioned,
such as the domesticus, the vicarius, the loci
servator, and others. Probably in many cases the nomination by the exarch became
a mere formality, and certain seigniorial families raised a claim to the
tribunate. These local powers, the lords of the manor, who were qualified for
the tribunate, formed the actual landowning military aristocracy, who, by
uniting in themselves all the administrative offices of the first order,
virtually ruled over Italy, although under the supervision of officials
appointed by the central government.
Among these local powers were the various churches,
the bishoprics, and above all the Roman Church, the estates of which must in
many respects have been exempt from the government of the tribunes, much the
same as were the fundi excepti of the preceding time, so that
they existed by the side of the secular tribunes, but not in subjection to
them. When in the beginning of the eighth century the militia in the town of
Ravenna was reorganized, a special division was provided for the Church besides
the eleven other bandi. About the same time we see the rector of
the patrimonium of Campania leading the soldiers of the Church in a campaign.
Effect of the Italian Revolution
The conclusion and spread of this development of local
powers formed the social change which led to the great Italian revolt in the
first third of the eighth century. The state of anarchy in the centre of the
Empire and the dangers by which Constantinople itself was threatened through
the advance of Islam, had been a powerful help to the Italian struggle for
independence. Different parts of Italy had at various times witnessed risings
of the local powers, till the separate discontented forces united in a great
opposition movement under the leadership of the pope. This took place when
Gregory II boldly withheld the increased tax which Leo the Isaurian, the great
organizer of the Byzantine Empire, attempted to raise for the benefit of the
central government; and when, in addition to this, the edict against the
worship of images and the outbreak of Iconoclasm incited religious passions
against the imperial reformer. The first act of the rebels was to expel
the exarch and the duces, the representatives of
the central government, and to replace them by confidential friends of the
local powers. At Rome the pope and at Venice an elected dux (doge)
took the place of the former authorities. The dicio, as it was then
called, was by this revolt transferred from the emperor to the local
authorities, though they remained in formal adherence to the Empire. This, at
least, was the pope’s wish, and no emperor set up by the opposition in Italy
was generally recognized.
The suppression of the revolt resulted in the
resumption of the dicio by the emperor, and during the next
generation Italy was again ruled by his deputies and appointed duces.
The fact, however, that in consequence of the Italian revolt the local powers
had for a number of years been practically independent, could not be undone.
Henceforth it was impossible to appoint officials in the place of tribunes. In
the local organisation the landed proprietors had gained a
complete victory over the bureaucracy, and in this the hereditary principle had
prevailed. But the bureaucratic superstructure, by which the emperor exercised
his dicio, was entirely out of touch with the seigniorial element at
its base, and from this resulted at least as far as North and Central Italy
were concerned, where the revolution had temporarily taken a firm hold the
complete and permanent dissolution of the central power of the State.
Changes in the Administrative Division
Not very long after the termination of the Italian
revolt there appears at Rome as the highest imperial authority the patricius et dux Stephanus.
The title of patricius, and various other circumstances, indicate
that he was no longer subordinate but equal to the exarch of
Ravenna, and that Central Italy south of the Apennines had been constituted as
an independent province or theme. This division of Byzantine Italy, which had
long been geographically prepared, was probably due as much to strategical reasons,
e.g. the advance of the king of the Lombards, as to any political necessity.
Stephanus, however, seems to have been the first and last to bear the new
title; after him there appears no other permanent representative of the emperor
at Rome. The exarchate proper, comprising the Byzantine possessions north of
the Apennines from which the ducatus of Rome had been
detached, was ruled by the exarch, who resided at Ravenna until
King Aistulf took possession of that town (750-751), when only Venice and a part
of Istria of the lands north of the Apennines remained under Byzantine rule.
All that was left to the Byzantines in the two southernmost peninsulas of Italy
was, at a date which cannot be exactly determined, united into a ducatus which
received the name of Calabria, and retained this name even when the Byzantines
had completely evacuated the south-eastern peninsula which had formerly borne
this name, and were confined to their forts of the former Bruttium in the
south-west. This ducatus, which was not linked geographically to
the rest of Byzantine Italy, was placed under the command of the patricius of
Sicily, so that it was separated from Italy in its administration. In the same
way the churches of southern Italy were, in consequence of the Italian revolt,
detached from Rome and subordinated to the Greek patriarchate at
Constantinople. Thus in the second quarter of the eighth century there were in
the western part of the Byzantine Empire three themes under patrician governors
the Exarchate, Rome, and Sicily (with Calabria), of which the latter was for
the most part Greek in language and culture, whereas the two first were Latin.
Pontifical State under Byzantine Suzerainty
After the disappearance of the patrician governor from
Rome, the pope took his place and claimed the right to rule directly the city
of Rome with her surroundings, and also indirectly the ducatus attached
to Rome in the north and south as supreme lord of the two duces,
and to restore more or less the situation which had existed during the Italian
revolt. The papal bureaucracy, which had been developed to a certain extent on
the model of the Byzantine bureaucracy, took the place of the imperial
administration. In other words, the pope assumed the dicio over
Rome and the district belonging to it. Here in times of war and peace he
reigned like the exarch before him, negotiated and concluded
truces with the Lombards, recognizing however the suzerainty of the emperor,
whose commands he received through special embassies, and reckoning his dates
from the years of the emperor's reign. At the emperor's command he went to King
Aistulf at Pavia, and thence probably also in accordance with the imperial
wishes crossed the Alps and visited the king of the Franks. The concessions of
Pepin and Charles the Great were called "restitutions," by which was
understood that the old boundaries between the Empire and the Lombard kingdom,
as they had been recognized before Liutprand's reign, were restored, and the
sovereignty of the emperor within these boundaries was legally undisputed.
This is proved by the fact that down to the year 781
the popes reckoned their dates from the years of the emperor's reign. The
dispute between the popes and the Frankish kings on the one side and the
emperors on the other arose from the fact that Pepin gave the dicio of
the restored domains to the pope, and not to the emperor who laid claim to it,
so that the pope became the real master in the new Pontifical State and no room
was left for a representative of the emperor. Moreover the pope overstepped the
limits which had hitherto bounded the sphere of his power, by including in
his dicio not only the former patrician ducatus of
Rome but also the exarchate proper. This gave rise to protracted struggles with
the archbishop of Ravenna, who as the exarch's successor
assumed the dicio north of the Apennines. It was probably in the year 781 that
the new state of affairs was officially recognized and thereby consolidated, by
an agreement between Charles and Pope Hadrian on the one side, and the Greek
ambassador on the other. According to this agreement the emperor, or rather the
empress-regent Irene, abandoned all claims to the sovereignty over the
Pontifical State in favor of the pope.
Venice
The emancipation from the dicio of
the imperial government of those parts of Italy which still remained under
Byzantine rule, was carried out in a way analogous to that of the Pontifical
State, the only difference being that here the acquisition of the dicio was
effected by the local powers themselves and not through the interference of a
foreign ruler, and that the formal suzerainty of the Empire was maintained for
a longer time. In Venice, which about the end of the seventh century had been
detached from Istria as a special ducatus, circumstances were
particularly favorable to the development of the seigniorial local powers as
represented by the tribunes, though it is true that after the suppression of
the Italian revolt it fell back under the imperial dido, and was again ruled
by duces or magistri militum nominated by the
emperor, not by elected chiefs. In the second half of the eighth century,
however, after the fall of the exarchate, the bonds of subordination relaxed
here as elsewhere, and the nomination of the Doge became more and more an act
of mere formality. The Doge was placed in power by that fraction of the
tribunicial aristocracy which was for the moment in the ascendancy; by them he
was elected and to them he looked for support. He succeeded in making his
office lifelong, and sought to legalize his position by soliciting and
receiving a court title, as a form of recognition by the emperor at
Constantinople. In agreement with the emperor, some Doges even tried to make
the power hereditary in their families, chiefly we may suppose in virtue of
their extensive landed property and their wealth. Nevertheless, from the time
when in his final treaty of peace with Byzantium (812) Charles the Great
definitely renounced the conquest of Venice, the suzerainty of the Greek
emperor was permanently recognized. This was shown by the sending of ceremonial
embassies whenever a change of sovereign took place at Constantinople, by the
appeal for recognition of every new Doge, who probably had to buy his Byzantine
title with a high suffragium, and by the fact that the Venetian
fleet was obliged to lend support to the Byzantines, at least in the West. We
also hear otherwise of occasional interference on the part of the Byzantine
emperor, though Venice naturally grew more and more independent.
Naples, Amalfi, Gaeta
In the south, the dux of Naples considered himself the
successor of the imperial governor of Campania, and a right of control over him
was in fact claimed by the patricius of Sicily. The actual
holder of the dicio, however, was the dux, who, while
professing adherence to the Greek Empire, often acted in political matters with
complete independence, making his office first lifelong and afterwards
hereditary. In the first quarter of the ninth century the Byzantine Empire
succeeded temporarily in re-establishing a magister militum as
the real functionary, but in the course of time here as elsewhere the local
powers, and at times the bishop, remained victorious, so that the position of
Naples resembled in every way that of Venice. It is however true that some
other local seigniories, in particular Amalfi and Gaeta, detached themselves
from the ducatus of Naples and, after a gradual secession from
the supreme rule of the dux of Naples, exercised the dido independently within
their spheres of interest, formally as direct subjects of the Greek emperor,
and enjoying equal rights with Naples. At the head of these minor States
were hypatoi or praefecti, who in time also
developed dynasties. Thus the Byzantine bureaucracy was supplanted everywhere
by local powers who usurped the dicio, and of whom some, for instance Venice
and the coast towns of southern Italy, acknowledged the emperor's suzerainty,
whilst others, like the Pontifical State, refused to do so. The victory of the
local powers signified at the same time the universal establishment of the
medieval system of seigniorial rule.
II
GREGORY THE GREAT
By the Ven. W. H. Hutton
If the sixth century after Christ was one of the great
ages of the world's history, it would not be difficult to claim for Pope
Gregory I that he was the greatest man in it. The claim would be contested on
behalf of the Emperor Justinian and the monk Benedict of Nursia, if not by many
another who influenced the course of affairs; but if the work of medieval
leaders of men is to be judged by its results on later ages, Gregory would seem
to occupy a position of commanding greatness which is unassailable .
The facts of his life for the fifty years before he
became pope are soon told, yet hardly one of them is without significance. He
was born in Rome, of a family noble by race and pious by hereditary attachment
to the things of God, probably in the year 540. Justinian was Caesar, dwelling
at Constantinople, but exercising no slight control over Church and State in
Italy. Vigilius was pope, and an example of pitiable irresolution in things
both sacred and profane. Few could have foreseen in 540 that before the life —
not a long one — of the child born to the ancient family of Roman senators and
nobles would have closed in, a new century, the temporal power of the Papacy
would have been securely founded and the power of the Empire and the authority
of the Emperor in Italy threatened with a speedy end. In the onrush of
barbarian conquest it was not the military success of Justinian's generals
which was to be continued under the heirs of his Empire and to secure the
position which they had won. They had — in the words of the Liber
Pontificalis — made all Italy rejoice, but it was the patient
diplomacy of a great pope which would preserve the central independence of
Christian Rome, between the decaying power of the Byzantines and the extending
dukedoms of the Lombard invaders. It would not be preserved for long, it is
true; but so firmly was it founded on the immemorial traditions of the city,
and the holy sanctions of the ecclesiastical rule, that it was destined to
survive and emerge into supremacy when the discordant powers which had
threatened it had passed away. And that this was so was due conspicuously to
the descendant of Pope Felix IV who first saw the light before the sixth
century had run half its course.
Early Life of Gregory. 540-576
Gregory was the son of the regionarius Gordianus,
a rich nobleman with a fine house on the Caelian hill who held an office of
organization connected with the Roman Church. His mother was afterwards ranked
among the saints, and so were two of his father's sisters. He was brought up in
the life of a Christian palace, among the riches of both worlds, as a saint,
says his biographer John the Deacon, among the saints. In his education none of
the learning of the time was neglected, and it is with the consciousness of a
wider knowledge than the stricter folk of the day would allow that his
biographer calls him arte philosophus, a student of Divine
philosophy, not of the degraded type of Greek word-splitting which had lingered
on at Athens till Justinian closed the schools ten years or so before Gregory
was born. He was taught grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, after the fashion of the
day. He did not learn Greek then, or even later, though he lived six years in
Constantinople. For literary elegance he never cared, and he almost boasted of
the barbarisms of his style. In later life he is found reproaching a Frankish
bishop for expounding grammar, perhaps even for studying it; but there was more
in the reproof than the mere regret for time wasted that might be more
profitably employed not only by a bishop, but, as he says, by a religious
layman: it was the sense of alarm with which the Christian scholars still
regarded a mythology whose morals were by no means dispossessed from their
influence on men. Of Art, on the other hand, he was not ignorant: towards
painting as well as music he was sympathetic throughout his life. What special
training he received was, there seems no doubt, in law. When boyhood was over,
he emerges into light as praefect of the City of Rome (573),
holding what was at least theoretically the highest office among the citizens,
one of great labor and dignified ostentation, and, even in the decay of the
city's independence, of serious responsibility. That his tenure of office was
distinguished by any special achievement we do not know; but his leaving it was
dramatic and significant. His father was dead: his mother had gone into a
nunnery: he was one of the richest men, as he was the highest official, in
Rome. But the religious training of his early years had never ceased to
dominate his life. Now, at the very time when political leaders were most needed,
and when he was in a position to win the foremost place among them, he laid
aside ambition, put off his silk and his jewels, gave his father's property for
the founding of six monasteries in Sicily and in charity for the Roman poor,
and turned the great palace on the Caelian hill into a house of monks, entering
it himself as a brother among the rest. For three years he lived in seclusion
the religious life, according to the rule, there can be little doubt, of St
Benedict, which he often afterwards so warmly eulogized. The chief of the Roman
citizens had become a humble monk among monks: it was a contrast typical of the
life, set betwixt civilization and Christianity, barbarism and ascetic
devotion, of the early Middle Age.
Plans of Mission to the English . C. 580-590
In the monastery of St Andrew the second part of
Gregory's training was accomplished. For three years he was learning all that
monasticism could teach him. And first it taught him a keen interest in the
evangelization of the heathen. It was probably at this date (though the
evidence is uncertain), when he was one of the most famous personages in Rome,
the chief civil ruler of the city who had given up all for the religious life,
that his attention was first directed towards the distant isle of Britain.
There is no reason to doubt the familiar story told so picturesquely by Bede,
a narratio fidelium as the earlier Monk of Whitby calls it,
that he was walking in the forum when he saw some Anglian lads, probably
exposed for sale. He had heard of their coming and desired to see the denizens
of a country concerning which Procopius had told the strange tale that thither
Gaulish boatmen ferried the souls of the dead by night. Beautiful boys these
were, with light complexion and light hair. "Alas," he said, when he
was told they were heathens, "that lads so bright should be the slaves of
darkness." He asked what was the name of their race. "Angli,"
they told him, and he answered that they had angel faces and should be coheirs
of the angeli in heaven. They came from Deira: so should they
be saved de ira Dei. Their king was Aelle: Alleluia should be sung
in his land. From that moment Gregory planned to evangelize the English. He
obtained the leave of the Pope, Benedict I; but the punning habit which seemed
to have given him the first thought of his mission now intervened to check him
in its course. He sat reading, during the rest time on the third day of his
journey, and a locust settled on his book, and locusta seemed
to mean loco sta: he should not proceed. So it proved, for
messengers from the pope hurried to command his return, for the people of Rome
would not suffer the departure of one whose services to them had been so recent
and whose conspicuous self-abnegation seemed to shed a glory on the city of St
Peter. The call of the Angles was set aside, but it was not forgotten. Gregory
was given to learning, to asceticism, and to active assistance to the papal
court.
The learning of his school-days was now continued on
more exclusively ecclesiastical lines. In earlier years he had loved to read
Augustine and Jerome. He became a deep student of the Bible. Later years, when
he can have had little time for close study, showed that he had become
acquainted with the text of the Scriptures in detail more exact than was at all
common in his day. What he read he pondered on, and he became a master of that
"divine art" of Meditation which was to be so exhaustively developed
in the Medieval Church. And to meditation he added vigil and fast till his
health was injured for the rest of his life. But the time, as he looked back to
it again and again from the troubled world, seemed like a happy shore as seen
by the storm-tossed mariner on the waves of a mighty sea. On the sea of public
life indeed he was soon about to embark again.
Gregory as Apocrisiarius. 577-590
First he was made one of the Seven Deacons who shared
with the pope the governance of Rome, in charge of the seven regions of the
city. For such a post few could have been so well fitted as he who had played
so conspicuous a part in municipal life. This may have been in 578. In that
year Benedict I died; while the city was in throes of plague and flood, and the
Lombards were on the point of attack. Pelagius II, the new pope, determined to
send to Constantinople, as his resident at the Emperor's court, one who knew so
completely the needs and the dangers of old Rome. In the spring of 579 Gregory
left Italy as the apocrisiarius of the pope. The six years, or
more, during which he resided in the imperial city supplied perhaps the last
and most important of the formative influences of his life. Tiberius II was
emperor (578-582), Eutychius was patriarch (577-582). The papal envoy was
theologian as well as statesman, and he controverted a theory of the latter
that the resurrection-body would be impalpable, convincing at least the former
so that he put the erroneous treatise in the fire. But while he did not neglect
theology, for he also wrote while he was at Constantinople his famous Moralia,
a commentary on the Book of Job, a very Corpus of Divinity in itself,
containing also many wise saws and modern instances, he was more continuously
and actively employed in studying the magnificent system of imperial
government. In a city notorious for the luxury of the nobles and the political
independence of the people, where public interest was divided between the
controversies of theologians and the games of the hippodrome, he saw how the
turbulent life of a fickle and arrogant population was guided, not always
wisely, by ecclesiastics, and restrained with extraordinary and imperceptible
tact by an army of officials who, when dynasties changed and the throne
tottered, preserved the fabric of the imperial constitution through all hazards
and gave for centuries the most marvelous example of constitutional
organization amid the confused revolutions of Medieval Europe. As a theologian
Gregory made it his business to see and talk with heretics that he might win
them to truth, contrary to the example of those among whom he lived, some of whom
were "fired by mistaken zeal and imagine they are fighting heretics while
indeed they are making heresies." As for his own theological
controversies, if he entered upon them charitably he certainly took them
seriously: John the Deacon tells that at the end of his dispute with the
patriarch Eutychius he took to his bed from exhaustion. In 582 Eutychius was
succeeded by a famous ascetic, John "the Faster," a Cappadocian. With
him Gregory had no dispute till later days: but the first letter between them
that is preserved, written in 590, reads as though their cordiality had never
been great.
Constantinople and Rome. 585-590
In the imperial court the papal envoy made many
friends: and when Tiberius had chosen Maurice for his successor Gregory had
still closer relations with those of Caesar's household. Theoctista, the new
Emperor's sister, and Narses, one of his generals, are found later among those
to whom he wrote. He was intimate, too, with other foreign ecclesiastics,
visitors like himself at the centre of imperial power, notably with Leander of
Seville, afterwards the victorious champion of Catholicism against the Arian
Visigoths. Leander and Gregory became close friends: it was Leander who induced
Gregory to write his Moralia, and he received its dedication. In
later years no congratulations on Leander's success were so warm as those of
his old companion; though the Spanish prelate was absent in body yet, said
Gregory, he was felt to be ever present in the spirit his image impressed upon
the heart of his friend. Anastasius, once patriarch of Antioch, also lived in
Constantinople, with memories of the theological storm which clouded the last
days of Justinian, and he was said to have refuted the Aphthartodecetic
opinions which that Emperor probably never held and the edict in favour of them
which he certainly never issued. With him also Gregory was on cordial terms.
But from the imperial Court itself the papal apocrisiarius could
find no support for the cause which he came to advocate. The Lombards had northern
Italy at their feet, Pelagius wrote piteously begging for succor. But Maurice
looked eastwards rather than towards the West, and as Caesar would not, or
could not, help the pope. When Gregory returned to Rome in 585 he had
accomplished nothing. But he had acquired a knowledge of foreign politics, of
the routine of imperial administration, and of the great personages of his
time, which was invaluable to him.
For five years Gregory remained at Rome as head of his
own monastery, and he made it a school of saints, and a home of Biblical study.
He himself wrote commentaries on several of the Scriptures, and completed his
lectures on the Book of Job which (like the Magna Moralia) became
almost a popular classic in the Middle Age and proved a storehouse from which
very much of later theology was extracted. To him also was entrusted by Pope
Pelagius the conclusion of the unhappy controversy of Justinian's day on the
Three Chapters; and he set before the bishops of Istria the orthodox creed as
Rome and Constantinople had accepted it in a treatise of lucid and masterful
reasoning. In 590 Pelagius died and the Roman people insisted that he who had
once been their highest official and was now the most eminent of their monks
should become their bishop. If he was reluctant to accept it, he yet in the
interval before the imperial assent could be obtained showed himself to be the
religious leader that the city needed in its distress.
Gregory Pope. 590
Rome was swept by the plague: Gregory had himself done
his utmost to abate it by sanitary measures: Pelagius himself had been its
victim. Now the abbot of St. Andrew's organized a demonstration of public
penitence, and preached a famous sermon which another Gregory, himself a
hearer, and afterwards the great bishop of Tours, statesman and historian,
recorded from his lips. As the penitential procession, moving in seven bodies
and singing litanies, passed through the streets, death was still busy: in one
hour, as the solemn march went on, eighty men fell dead: but at last, said a
legend of later days, the Archangel Michael was seen to stand on the cupola of
the Mausoleum of Hadrian and to sheathe his flaming sword. So the plague was
stayed: and the Castle of Sant Angelo, with all its long history of romance and
crime, bears witness to the memory.
Six months after the death of Pelagius, in August 590,
came the sanction of Maurice the Emperor to the choice that had been made of
his successor. Gregory, still a deacon, prepared for flight, but he was
discovered, taken to St. Peter's and consecrated a successor of the Apostle as
bishop of Rome. It was on 3 September 590.
It was a ship rotten in every plank and leaking at
every seam that he came to captain: so he wrote to his brother of
Constantinople. With a real regret did he abandon the Rachel of contemplation
for the Leah of active life. Yet if any ecclesiastic was ever fitted for rule,
for statesmanship, for practical labor among men, it was Gregory the Great.
If Gregory's most obvious achievements, in the sight
of his own time, lay in the region of politics, it must be remembered always
that he himself viewed his whole work from the standing-point of a Christian
bishop. He sets this before every reader in his Regulae Pastoralis
Liber, a book which, probably addressed to John of Ravenna, his
"brother and fellow-bishop," was welcomed by all who knew him, both
clerk and lay, by the Emperor Maurice, who had a Greek translation made of it,
as well as by Leander of Seville: and, later on, to read it became part of the
necessary rendition of a bishop. Throughout the book there is a sense of
tremendous responsibility. The conduct of a prelate, says Gregory, ought to
surpass the conduct of the people as a shepherd's life does that of his flock.
In his elevation he should deal with high things, and high persons, yet should
he not seek to please men, being mindful of the duty of reproof and yet
reproving with gentleness. The mind anxious about the management of exterior business
is deprived of the sense of wholesome fear; and the soul is flattered with a
false promise of good works: there is danger in refusal as well as in
acceptance of high places; but most danger lest while earthly pursuits engross
the senses of the pastor the dust that is driven by the wind of temptation
blind the eyes of the whole Church. The entire treatise shows an intimacy of
practical knowledge in regard to men of all classes and of all characters which
is evidence how well fitted was the writer for dealing with all sorts and
conditions of men. And how he dealt with them may be found out from the
fourteen books of his epistles, that wonderful storehouse of Roman religion and
diplomacy laid up by the first of the great popes. The register of his letters is
known to have been in existence not long after his death. It was known in later
years to Bede and Boniface, and formed the basis of the latest collection and
arrangement. In this many details of policy may be followed, and the main aims
and methods of the great pope may be studied. Each alike, the treatise and the
letters, shows the same ideal of the pastoral office, that it is a work of
governance of men to be exercised by those who have intimate knowledge of men's
hearts and are skilled in the treatment of their souls. Politics are but a
branch of the dealing with men on behalf of God which belongs of obligation to
a bishop of Christ's Church. And this thought, almost as much as any necessary
assertion of orthodox faith and profession of brotherly kindness, is to be seen
in the synodical letter in which he announced to the patriarchs of
Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem his accession to the Roman
bishopric, and his belief in the doctrine of the Four General Councils, as also
in that of the more recent Fifth. The practical expression of this ideal in the
life of the new pope could be read by all men who came in contact with him. He
lived ascetically, as he had lived in his own monastery, and while nuncio at
Constantinople: he surrounded himself with grave and reverend men, dismissing
the curled and exquisite fops who had thronged the courts of earlier popes, a
gang of self-indulgent scholars and servants obnoxious to the stern man who had
not so learned Christ. Of himself the words of his early biographer Paul the
Deacon present a vivid picture: "He was never at rest. Always was he busy
in taking care for the interests of his people, or in writing some treatise
worthy of the Church, or in searching out the hidden things of heaven by the
grace of contemplation." His daily audiences, his constant sermons, filled
up the burden of his continual correspondence. And all through the fourteen
years of his pontificate he struggled against the illnesses which had perhaps
their beginning in his ascetic rigors. If his letters breathe a spirit of
sternness and make high demands upon men of commonplace intellect and low
ideals, there was no one with whom he was more stern, no one before whom he set
higher ideals, than himself.
Gregory's policy towards the whole Christian world
radiated from the centre. There, at Rome, men could see his life of strict
rule: they could see him re-consecrating Arian churches to Catholic use, could
hear him preaching, could watch his elaborate measures for the relief of the poor.
"Other pontiffs," says his biographer, "gave themselves to
building churches and adorning them with gold and silver; but Gregory, while he
did not altogether neglect this duty, was entirely taken up with gaining souls,
and all the money he could obtain he was anxious to give away and bestow upon
the poor." He was a practical ruler first of all and that as a Christian
bishop: afterwards he was a theologian and a statesman. This accounts for the
fact that he views all political questions sub specie aeternitatis and
shows no interest in any work of pure learning or scholarship even in Rome
itself.
Gregory's Administration. 590-603
And indeed the practical needs of the time were enough
to absorb the whole thoughts of any man who was set to rule. If in the East the
emperors were fully occupied with wars against Persians and Avars, and were
able to give little heed and no help to the stress of the city from which their
sovereignty took its name, the Papacy, already partly the representative and
partly the rival of the imperial power, was beset on every side by the
barbarian invasion and settlement. Rome itself had become, for all practical
purposes, an isolated and distant part of the Roman Empire. Imperial power in
Italy had dwindled till it was only a name. But at the ancient centre of the
ancient Empire sat, in the fourteen years from 590, a man of commanding genius,
of ceaseless vigilance, and of incessant activity, whose letters covered almost
every political, religious, and social interest of his time. His influence as a
great spiritual teacher and a great ruler of men radiated over the whole
Christian world.
The internal cares belonging to the "patrimony of
St Peter" were not light. The estates from which the income was derived
were scattered all over Italy, most largely in Sicily and round Rome, but also
in east and south, beyond the peninsula in Illyricum and Gaul, in Africa, and in
the isles of Corsica and Sardinia. They were administered by a multitude of
officials, often with the help of the imperial administrators. Gregory liked to
choose his agents from among the clergy, and employed priests and even bishops
in this secular service.
All were directly under the orders of the bishop of
Rome himself, and Gregory's letters of appointment contain special provision
for the care of the poor, for the keeping of strict accounts to be sent to
Rome, for the maintenance generally of ecclesiastical interests. This the rectores and defensores were
often charged with a sort of supervision which, while it at several points
encroached upon the proper province of the bishop, served to keep the distant
and scattered estates in close touch with the central authority of the Roman
See. Thus what was at first a mere matter of the ownership of property, through
its duties and responsibilities being enjoyed by the greatest bishop of the
Church, tended to become a lordship no less spiritual than material. Even
bishops themselves were under the eye of the pope's representative, and that
naturally came to mean that sooner or later they would fall under the
jurisdiction of the pope. For this Gregory's indefatigable care was largely
responsible. We find him within the first eighteen months of his pontificate
writing almost once a month to the Rector Siciliae, the subdeacon
whom he long employed in positions of trust in different parts of Italy. The
letters show minute care for justice, for the suppression of unjust exactions,
for the redress of grievances, as well as for the maintenance of proprietary
rights: besides the great landlord, there speaks the great bishop and shepherd
of the souls of men. No matter was too small for the pope's attention, whether
it was a safeguard for the interests of a convert from Judaism, a direction as
to the disposal of cows and calves, of houses and granaries, or a criticism of
the provision for personal needs. "You have sent us" he once wrote,
"a miserable horse and five good donkeys. The horse I cannot ride because
it is miserable, nor the donkeys, good though they be, because they are
donkeys." Different views have been taken of this interesting
correspondence between Gregory and his factor, but at least it reveals the very
close attention which the pope paid to detail in the oversight of the vast
possessions of his see. "As we ought not to allow property belonging to
the Church to be lost, so we deem it a breach of law to try to take what
belongs to others," are words which might serve as a motto for his
relation towards temporal things. With minute care he stopped the abuses which
had stained the administration under his predecessors. But above all the pope
endeavored to show impractical alms-giving the fervent charity of his heart.
John the Deacon tells that there was still preserved, nearly three hundred
years later, among the monuments of the Lateran, a large book in which the
names of the recipients of his benefactions, in Rome or the suburbs, in the
Campagna and on the coast, were set down. In nothing was he more insistent than
in the duty of ransoming captives, those taken in the wars and sold as slaves
in markets even so far away as Libya. Many letters deal with the subject,
convey his exhortations to bishops to join in the work and return thanks for
the gifts he had received to help it. Thus did the largest landowner in Italy
endeavor to discharge the duties of his trust.
From his administration of the papal patrimony we pass
naturally to his policy as a ruler, his dealings with the affairs of the world,
as a statesman and as a pope.
As a statesman his first and closest concern was with
the Lombards. Already he had been concerned in endeavoring to protect Rome and
the parts of Italy still unconquered: that had been the special object of his
long embassy at Constantinople. The emperors had given no aid, but the Franks
had caused a diversion by thrice at tacking the Lombards in flank. But the
snake was not killed, hardly scotched; and before Gregory had been long on the
throne peace between Franks and Lombards had been made by the new king Agilulf,
who had married Theodelinda, the late king's widow, and he turned the thoughts
of the Lombards towards the extension of their conquests from imperial Rome.
Still the ancient Empire, dimmed in its glory and with
ill-welded traditions from Christian and pagan past, held out in the great
cities of Genoa and Naples, of Ravenna and Rome, the two last the centres of
government under exarch and pope. At first the danger seemed to come not from
the king but from one of the dukes. At Spoleto on the Flaminian Way was settled
a Lombard colony of invaders under Ariulf, the outposts of whose territory were
almost within sight of Rome; and Gregory when he wrote to his friends at
Constantinople declared that he found himself "bishop not of the Romans
but of the Lombards, men whose promises are swords and whose grace a pain."
Against "the unspeakable Ariulf" he was ever
on the watch. In 591 and 592 he was taking constant precaution, telling
the Magister militum at Perugia to fall, if need be, on his
rear, and bidding the clergy and people of the lesser cities in the
neighbourhood to be on their guard and to obey the pope's representative in all
things. Step by step the Lombard duke approached, as yet without active
hostility. In July 592 at length he spoke of Ariulf as being close to the city,
"slaying and mutilating"; and Arichis, the Lombard duke of Benevento,
was at the same time threatening Naples. The pope himself sent a military
commander to the southern city. He bitterly resented the weakness of Romanus
the exarch, which prevented him from dealing in martial fashion with the duke
of Spoleto. Left helpless, he prepared to make a peace with Ariulf, and in July
592 it seems that a separate agreement was concluded which saved Rome from
sack. Paul the Deacon tells that an interview between the Lombard duke and the
Roman bishop made the "tyrant" ever after a devoted servant of the
Roman Church. "His heart was touched by divine grace, and he perceived that
there was so much power in the pope's words that with humblest courtesy he made
satisfaction to the most religious Apostolic bishop." Gregory's statesmanship
and charm won a diplomatic victory which preserved Rome from the Lombards.
But indirectly it would seem as if this success laid
the city open to another attack. Romanus the exarch was encouraged by it to
secure the communications between Ravenna and Rome by a campaign which
recovered many cities, including Perugia, from the Lombards. This new activity
on the part of the Empire which he may well have deemed moribund aroused
Agilulf, the Lombard king, to action. He marched southwards, recaptured
Perugia, and put to death Maurisio, a duke of the Lombards, who had surrendered
the city to the exarch and now held if for the Empire. Thence he marched to
Rome.
Gregory was illustrating Ezekiel, in sombre homily, by
the tragic events of his day, the decay of ancient institutions, the
devastation of country, the destruction of cities. Daily came news which deepened
the gloom of his picture, till at length he closed the book and set himself to
defend the city. The defense as before was that of spiritual not material arms.
Agilulf met Gregory on the steps of St Peter's, and the weighty wisdom of the
prelate gave power to his prayers for the city: they prevailed, the siege was
abandoned, and Agilulf went back to Milan, where the letters of Gregory were as
familiar to the clergy and as powerful as was his rule in Rome.
Thither came epistles to Theodelinda, the Arian Agilulf's
Catholic wife, instructing her in the right belief as to the still unfinished
strife about the Three Chapters, and to Constantius the bishop, begging him to
negotiate a peace between the Lombards and the Empire.
Disputes with the Emperor. 593-595
Peace was impossible so long as the Caesar at
Constantinople claimed the lordship of all Italy, and the Lombard barbarian
asserted all real power over the peninsula. Nor was Gregory at the time the
person to bring the foes together, for in August 593 he had written to the
Emperor Maurice in terms of criticism strangely bold and direct. When Maurice
was "not yet lord of all" he had been Gregory's own lord, and still
the pope would call himself the unworthy servant of the pious Emperor. But a
new edict which forbade a civil servant of the Empire, or a soldier, to become
priest or monk, seemed to him a monstrous infringement of individual and
religious liberty. By it, he said, the way to heaven would be closed to many,
for while there were those who could lead a religious life in a secular dress,
yet more there were who unless they forsook all things could in no way attain
salvation. What answer would he, who from notary had been made by God first
captain, then Caesar, then Emperor, then father of Emperor yet to be, and to
whose care the priests of God had been entrusted, make to the divine inquest of
the Last Day if not one single soldier was allowed to be converted to the Lord?
And Gregory drew a lurid picture of the "end of the ages" which
seemed to be at hand, the heavens and the earth aflame and the elements melting
with fervent heat, and the Divine Judge ready to appear with the six orders of
angels in His train. Yet it is an illustration of the fidelity with which
Gregory performed all his secular obligations that he had caused the law
against which he so vehemently protested to be published in the usual way.
This was not the only divergence in opinion between
the pope and the imperial Court. Gregory, with all his respect for authority,
was at least able to hold his own, and there was for a while at least no breach
in the friendly relations with Constantinople. Maurice sent relief to the
sufferers from the Lombard invasion, and Gregory lost no opportunity of
advising that the separate peace which he had made with Agilulf should be
enlarged at least into a general truce. Gregory, inter gladios
Langobardorum, could appreciate the needs of Italy in a way that was
impossible for the distant Augustus. In 595 however the divergence came to a
head. The Emperor reviewed the pope's peace policy in terms of contemptuous
condemnation and Gregory answered in one of the most vigorous of all his
letters, dated June 595. He resented the imputation that because he thought
that a firm peace could be made, as indeed it had been made, with Ariulf of
Spoleto, he was a fool. Fool indeed was he to suffer what he suffered in Rome
among the swords of the Lombards; but still he was a servant of the truth, and
grave injustice was it to the priesthood that he should be deemed a liar. On behalf
of all priests he made dignified protest, recalling the action and words of the
great Constantine as a rebuke to his successor in the Empire. "Where all
is uncertain I betake myself to tears and prayers that Almighty God will rule
with His own hand our most pious lord, and in the terrible judgment will find
him free from all offences, and so cause me to please men that I may not offend
against His grace."
Pope and Patriarch
How the Emperor received this letter we do not know;
but already there were other causes of dispute between Rome and Constantinople.
His experience had not made the pope very cordial towards Church or State in
the New Rome. Useful at Constantinople Gregory must undoubtedly have been, but
the fact that he never learned Greek shows at least that there were limits to
his usefulness. The information he received would often be inadequate, the
means of communication with the people among whom he dwelt incomplete. Official
interpreters do not always represent meanings faithfully. Gregory had to deal
most with the imperial Court, where his ignorance of Greek may not have been so
great a barrier; but, in his relations with the Patriarch, it would at least
serve to prevent any strengthening of the friendship between Churches which
were already beginning to drift apart.
That the Church was under the rule of five patriarchs
was a familiar view, and at least from the time of Vigilius (537-555) it had
been accepted in official language at Rome. Thus Gregory had announced his own
election to the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and
Antioch. His letters show traces of another theory, that of the three
patriarchates, Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, sharing, as it were, the throne
of St Peter. But Constantinople had long asserted a pre-eminence. Justinian had
recognized its precedence as second of the great sees, superior to all others
save Rome, and had declared the Church of Constantinople to be "the head
of all the churches." In doing this no doubt the Empire had claimed no
supreme or exclusive dignity for the New Rome, nor asserted any indivisible or
unalterable jurisdiction. But what the law recognized had encouraged further
expansion of claim. At first the relation between Constantinople and the elder
see was regarded as parallel to that between the two capitals: they represented
not diversity but unity: as there was one Empire, so there was one Church. When
John the Patriarch accepted the formula of faith drawn up by Pope Hormisdas he
prefixed to it an assertion of the mutual relation: "I hold the most holy
Churches of the old and the new Rome to be one. I define the see of the Apostle
Peter and this of the imperial city to be one see." From this it was an
inevitable step to use titles which Rome used. The pontiff of Constantinople claimed
to be ecumenical patriarch.
Controversy with John the Faster. 588-5951
In 588 Pelagius declared the acts of a synod at
Constantinople to be invalid because the patriarch had used the phrase. Very
likely Gregory himself had been the adviser of this course. Now in 595 he
pursued the protest. John the Faster had written to him and had employed the
offensive title "in almost every line." Gregory wrote, as he
describes it, "sweetly and humbly admonishing him to amend this appetite
for vain glory." He forbade his envoy to communicate with the patriarch
till he had abandoned the title. At the same time he repudiated any wish to
assume it for himself. "The Council of Chalcedon," he said,
"offered the title of universalis to the Roman pontiff
but he refused to accept it, lest he should seem thereby to derogate from the
honor of his brother bishops." He saw indeed that political interests were
complicating the ecclesiastical claim. His envoy had been commanded by the
Emperor to adjure him to live in peace with the patriarch, who seemed to him to
be as hypocritical as he was proud. Then either he must obey the Emperor and
encourage the proud man in his vanity, or he must alienate the Emperor, his
lord and the natural defender of Rome. He did not hesitate. He wrote to the
Emperor, tracing the misfortunes of the Empire to the pride of the clergy. When
Europe was given over to the barbarians, with cities ruined, villages thrown
down, and provinces without inhabitants; when the husbandman no longer tilled
the soils and the worshippers of idols daily murdered the faithful, the
priests, who should have abased themselves in sackcloth and ashes sought for
themselves empty names and titles novel and profane. Peter was never called
Universal Apostle, yet John strove to be Universal Bishop. "I confidently
affirm that whosoever calls himself sacerdos universalis, or
desires to be so called by others, is in his pride a forerunner of
Antichrist." What he said to the Emperor he reinforced to the Empress.
There should be no peace with the patriarch so long as he claimed this
outrageous designation. On the other side the argument became no attitude of
aggression, hardly a claim for equality. The patriarchs did not assert that
they were above the popes, and they constantly declared that they had no wish
to lessen the authority of the other patriarchs. But whatever the Greeks might
say, the Latins saw that words represented ideas; and universality could not be
predicated of Constantinople in any sense which was not offensive to the venerable
see and city of Rome. The bitterness of the strife abated when John the Faster
died on 9 September 595, it may be before Gregory's severe judgment had reached
him. Cyriacus, his successor, was a personal friend of the pope, and a man of
no personal pride. Gregory welcomed his accession and thanked the Emperor for
his choice. But in spite of friendly letters the claim was not abandoned. The
patriarchs continued to use the title of ecumenical bishop, and before a
century had passed the popes followed their example.
Church and State
Gregory saw that the patriarchs of Constantinople were
in danger of sinking into mere officials of the State, for with all their lofty
position they were in the power of the imperial Court. But the tone in which he
addressed them was always distinct from that which he employed towards the lay
officials of the Empire. From the beginning of his pontificate he had carefully
cultivated relations with the exarchs of Ravenna and of Africa, the praetor of
Sicily, the dukes of Naples and Sardinia, the praefect of Illyria, the
proconsul of Dalmatia, and with lesser officials rural and urban. His constant
letters show how closely he mingled in their concerns, watched their conduct,
approved their industry, advised on their political action, intervened on their
behalf or against them at Constantinople. Many of the officials were his close
friends; and the Emperor, in spite of the divergence between them, did not
cease to give heed to the counsels of one whom he knew to be a wise and honest man.
The maintenance of the imperial power in Italy indeed
depended not a little on the great pope, who yet by his incessant and
widespread activity was preparing the way of the ecclesiastical power which
should succeed it in the rule of the peninsula. The subdeacon who was his agent
at Ravenna, and those who administered the property of the Church in the
Campagna or in Sicily, the bishops themselves all over the Empire, reported to
Rome, and their words were not without effect, and in all the advice which issued
from this information Gregory pressed without faltering the authority of the
Church: the pope was above the exarch, the Church above the State: if the civil
law was invoked to protect the weak, to guide the rulers, to secure the rights
of all Christian men, there was behind it the supreme sanction of the law of
the Church. It was natural indeed that they should not be distinguished: a
wrong against man was a wrong against God. It did not matter whether it was the
oppression of a peasant or the pillage of a monastery: iniquity, it was the
perpetual cry of the great pontiff, should not go unpunished. And, in a
corresponding view to his attitude towards civil justice, Gregory insisted on
the privileges of clergy in the law courts; and in the civil courts he is found
placing representatives of his own beside the lay judges. Outside the law there
were still a wide sphere in which the aid of the State was demanded on behalf
of the Church. Governors would bring back schismatics, was congratulated on
their victories over heathen, were urged to act against heretics, and to
protect and support those who had returned to the faith.
On the other hand he no doubt set plain limits, in his
own mind, to his sphere of action and that of the bishops. He constantly told
the Italian bishops to observe the rights of the lay courts, not to interfere
in the things of the world save when the interests of the poor demanded help.
But his own keen sense of justice, his political training, his knowledge of
affairs, forbade him to hold his tongue. The Empire, like the Church, was to
him a splendid power of holy and heroic tradition: there was ever, he said to
an imperial official, this difference between the Roman emperors and the
barbarian kings that while the latter governed slaves the former were rulers of
free men. To keep this always in the mind of the governing class must have been
his aim, and his consolation, when, as he said, the cares of the world pressed
so heavily upon him that he was often doubtful whether he was discharging the
duties of an earthly official or those of a shepherd of men's souls.
In both capacities his work was continuous and
engrossing. Invasion, rapine, insecurity of life and property, made clerk as
well as lay lax livers, negligent stewards, cruel and faithless, luxurious and
slothful. Against all such Gregory was the perpetual witness.
Dealings with the Lombards. 596-5991
When Romanus the exarch died, probably in 596, his
successor at Ravenna, Callinicus, received a warm welcome from the pope. For a
time there was a lull in the tempest, but still Gregory preached vigilance, to
bishop and governor alike, for Italy had not shaken off the terror even if Rome
was for the moment outside the area of the storm. Writing in 598 to a lady in
Constantinople the pope was able to assure her that so great was the protection
given by St. Peter to the city that, without the aid of soldiers, he had
"by God's help been preserved for these many years among the swords of the
enemy." A truce was made with Agilulf, it seems, in 598: in 599 this
became a general peace in which the Empire through the exarch, and with the
active support, though not the signature, of the pope, came to agreement with
Agilulf the Lombard king and with the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento. His
letters show how much this was due to the tact, the wisdom, the patient
persistence of Gregory; and it is certain also that Theodelinda, the Catholic
wife of Agilulf, had played no unimportant part in the work of pacification. At
Monza remain the relics of this wise queen; fitly beside the iron crown of the
Lombards is the image of the protection that was given by the peace of Church and
State, a hen that gathers her chickens under her wings.
The year 599 which dates this peace between the
"Christian Republic" and the Lombards marks a definite epoch in the
history of Italy. Paul the Deacon in his History of the Lombards shows that it
was a time of crisis, conquest, and resettlement for Agilulf the king. The
letters of Gregory show that it was for him a period of incessant activity and
reassertion of papal authority, while at Rome the city was "so reduced by
the languor of various diseases that there are scarce left men enough to guard
the walls" and the pope himself was in the clutch of increasing sickness,
often unable to leave his bed for days together. Italy was still swept by
pestilence; and exhaustion as well as political peace gave quiet for some two
years.
In 601 the flames of war were rekindled by a rash move
on the part of the exarch Callinicus. Agilulf again took up arms, seized Pavia
and levelled it to the ground — a fate which the medieval chroniclers century
by century record to have befallen the unhappy city. He made alliance with the
heathen Avars, and with them ravaged Istria. He passed over northern Italy in a
career of conquest: he carried the Lombard frontier forwards to include the
valley of the Po. At Ravenna the imperial authority lingered on, and the exarch
Callinicus was succeeded by Smaragdus, holding office for a second time. But
the reality of power was passing, if it had not already passed, under the
incessant energy of Gregory, into the hands of the pope, who had become the
practical ruler of central Italy. It was in the year 603, when the Empire and
the Lombards were at war, that Gregory showed his aloofness from a strife which
seems to have left the power of the Church undisturbed, by his rejoicing at the
Catholic baptism of Adaloald, the firstborn son of Agilulf the Arian and
Theodelinda the Catholic queen. Paul the Deacon indeed says, though he is
unsupported by other witness, that Agilulf the father had already accepted the
Catholic faith. As his sickness grew the great pope saw the future less dark
than it had been during his life of anxiety. Rome, if impoverished and
enfeebled, was securely in the possession of its bishop; and the conflicts
which raged over northern and central Italy could hardly end, now that
Catholicism was conquering the Lombards, otherwise than in favour of the papal
power.
Gregory and Phocas. 601-603
It may well be that this feeling colored his attitude
when news came to him of the revolution at Constantinople in 602. Maurice had
long seemed to Gregory, as indeed he had seemed to his people, to be unworthy
of the imperial throne. He was timid when he should have been bold, rash when
prudence was essential to the safety of the State. His health had broken down,
and fits of cowardice alternated with outbursts of frenzied rage. All the
tales of him that reached Rome would increase Gregory's dislike and distrust.
Already he had rebuked the Caesar to his face, and well he may have thought,
when he heard of his deposition and murder by the centurion Phocas, that the
warning he had given had been disregarded, and the judgment he had prophesied
had come. With Maurice perished his whole family, with whom Gregory had been on
terms of affectionate regard. Maurice had been an unwise, perhaps a tyrannical
ruler, and certainly he had seemed to the pope an oppressor of the poor. And he
had supported the patriarch in his overweening pretension to be "universal
bishop." When Phocas therefore announced his accession, silent no doubt as
to the butcheries which accompanied it, and dwelling rather on his orthodoxy
and attachment to the Apostolic See, Gregory replied in language of surprising
cordiality. The revolution was to him something that came from "the
incomprehensible providence of God "; and he trusted that soon he should
be comforted by the abundance of rejoicing that the sufferings of the poor had
been redressed —"We will rejoice that your benignity and piety are come to
the imperial throne." Later letters to Phocas and his wife Leontia breathe
the same spirit: of congratulations on the political change: of hope that it
will mean relief and liberty for the Empire: of solicitude that the aid which
Maurice had long denied might now be given to Italy, trodden down by the
barbarian and the heretic. We are shocked as we read Gregory's cordial letters
to the brutal murderer of Maurice; but we must remember that the pope had no
representative at Constantinople to tell him what had really happened: all that
he may have known was that popular indignation had swept a tyrant from the
throne and avenged its injuries on him and his innocent family, and that a
soldier had been set up, with all due forms of law, as ruler in his stead. From
a bed of suffering he indited these letters to those from whom he might have
new hopes of the salvation of Italy. But he wrote as an official of the Church
to an official of the State, and he mingled with his formal words of
congratulation and the Church's Gloria in excelsis no words of
personal adulation. Whatever may be the true judgment on Gregory's attitude at
this moment, it is obvious that in the change of dynasty he hoped for a better
prospect for Italy and knew that more power would come to Rome itself and the
Roman bishop.
It is as a Roman and a Roman bishop that Gregory fills
the great place he holds in the history of the Middle Age. He was a Roman of
the Romans, nurtured on traditions of Rome's imperial greatness, cherishing the
memories of pacification and justice, of control and protection. And these,
which belonged to "The Republic," he was eager to transfer to the
Church. Vague were the claims which the Roman bishops had already put forth in
regard to the universal Church. But what all bishops held as inherent in their
office, the right of giving advice and administration, was held by the Roman
pontiffs to belong especially to the see which was founded in the imperial
city. There was a prerogative of the Roman bishop as of the Roman Emperor, and
already the one was believed to run parallel to the other. The pope directly
superintended a large part of the Christian world: everywhere he could reprove
and exhort with authority, though the authority was often contested. And
Gregory's exercise of this power was one of the great moments in the world's
history. To the practical assertions of his predecessors he gave a new moral
weight, and it was that which carried the claims to victory. Well has it been
said by Dean Church that "he so administered the vast undefined powers
supposed to be inherent in his sea; that they appeared to be indispensable to
the order, the good government, and the hopes, not of the Church only, but of
society." And this success was due not so much to the extent of her claims
or the weakness of his competitors, but to the moral force which flowed from
his life of intellectual, moral, and spiritual power.
The Church in Africa. 591-596
We can trace, in different but conspicuous ways, the
effect of this force in Africa, in Britain, in Spain, and in Gaul, in Istria
and Dalmatia, as well as nearer home. In Africa there was a period of revival
since the imperial reconquest from the Vandals. For more than half a century
the Church, diminished in power no doubt and weakened in its organization, had
been re-established, and Arianism had been successfully extirpated, if we may
judge from the silence of the pope's letters. The imperial officials were ready
to accept his advice, or even authority. Side by side with the bishops of
Numidia and Carthage, we find Gennadius the exarch extending the influence of
the papal see; and appeals to Rome seem to have been recognized and encouraged.
On the other hand Gregory was careful to make no practical encroachment on the
power of the bishops and even to encourage their independence, while he
asserted the supremacy of Rome in uncompromising terms: "I know of no
bishop who is not subject to the Apostolic See, when a fault has been
committed." His intervention was chiefly invoked in regard to the still
surviving Donatism of Numidia. Against the Donatists he endeavored to encourage
the action of both the secular and the ecclesiastical power. "God,"
he said to the praetorian praefect Pantaleo, "will require
at your hand the souls that are lost." In one city even the bishop had
allowed a Donatist rival to establish himself; and Church and State alike were
willing to let the heretics live undisturbed on the payment of a ransom-rent.
To Gregory it seemed that the organization of the Church was defective and her
ministers were slothful.
The primacy in northern Africa, except the proconsular
province, where the bishop of Carthage was primate, belonged to the senior
bishop, apart from the dignity of his see or the merits of his personal life;
and it was claimed that the rule went back to the time of St. Peter the Apostle
and had been continued ever since. Gregory accepted the historic account of the
origin of the African episcopate, as is shown by a letter to Dominicus, bishop
of Carthage. On it he based an impressive demand for steadfast obedience, and
he appointed a bishop named Columbus to act as his representative, though he
was not formally entitled Vicar Apostolic. A council in 593 received his
instructions; but they do not seem to have been carried out. A long
correspondence shows the urgency of the need for action against the Donatists,
and the difficulty of getting anything done. By the toleration of the imperial
government they had been enabled to keep their churches and bishops; they
conducted an active propaganda, they secured the rebaptism of many converts.
For six years, from 591 to 596, Gregory's letters show the vehemence of the
contest in which he was engaged. In 594 a council at Carthage received an
imperial decree stirring Church and State to action; but the State did not
abandon its tolerant attitude: still there was great slackness, and Gregory
wrote urgently to the Emperor on the subject. It would seem that some measures
were taken, and that the law was in some districts enforced but
Donatism if it died down did not become extinct. It was largely through his
constant interventions in the matter of heresy that Gregory was able to
establish on so firm a basis the papal authority in the exarchate of Africa. He
concerned himself no less with the surviving pagans, urging Gennadius to wage
war against them "not for the pleasure of shedding blood but with the aim
of extending the limits of Christendom, that by the preaching of the faith, the
Name of Christ should be honoured among the subject tribes." Constant in
urging the secular officials to action, Gregory was still more urgent with the
bishops. A continual correspondence was maintained with the African episcopate:
everyone who had a grievance applied to him: no important decision was arrived
at without his consent. He claimed to defend with unchanged determination
"the rights and privileges of Saint Peter." Paul of Numidia applied
to him for justice against the Donatists, and the patrician Gennadius, who
persecuted him, bishop though he was. With stedfast persistence the pope
insisted on securing the trial of the case himself, and sent the bishop back to
Africa assured of the imperial protection. Almost insensibly his persistence
and the moral grandeur of his character told on the independence of the
imperial officials. They began to listen to his advice, and then to admit his
authority; and it was soon hard to distinguish their respect for the man from
their obedience to the See. And at the same time, amid the chaos of
administrative disorder, the people put their trust in the Church: they took
the bishops for their defenders, and most of all the Bishop of Rome. Gregory
exercised the authority then bestowed upon him partly through Hilarus, whom he
sent to be overseer of the patrimony of the Church, and partly through the
Numidian bishop Columbus. If protest was made — as it seems to have been made
by a Numidian primate Adeodatus and by Dominicus of Carthage—it was overruled:
Rome, said Gregory, was the mother church of Africa, and her authority must be
respected. Such a pope was one to make it respected, whether he advised and
exhorted in regard to the decay of spiritual life in monasteries, or reproved
administrators and judges for unjust exaction of tribute. No better
illustration of the way in which the papal claims attained acceptance could be
found than is afforded by the history of Africa in the time of Gregory the
Great.
Istria: Gaul. 595-596
While Donatism died hard in Africa, nearer home the controversy
of the Three Chapters was not yet concluded. In Istria the Church was in
schism, for it had not submitted to the decision of East and West. Gregory
invoked (with but small success) the secular arm against Severus, patriarch of
Aquileia, and summoned him to Rome. The bishops of the province protested and
adjured the Emperor to protect them, professing no obedience to Rome and
threatening to acknowledge the ecclesiastical authority of Gaul. Maurice
commanded Gregory to stay his hand, which he did very reluctantly. He had long
before intervened in the matter as the secretary of Pelagius II: he distrusted
the Istrian bishops as schismatics and as assertors of independence, and when
he became pope had again addressed them in lucid theological arguments. He
received individual submissions, and he used every kind of pressure to heal the
schism; but when he died his efforts had not been entirely successful. With
Milan too he had similar difficulties. Defective theology was combined with
provincial independence in resistance to papal power. In Dalmatia and Illyria
other difficulties needed other treatment. An archbishop whose manner of life
did not befit his office was rebuked, ironically exhorted, pardoned: when he
died a strong attempt was made to fill his place by a man of austere life whom
the pope had long honoured. The attempt was a failure, and a very long and
bitter struggle ensued in which Maximus, the imperial candidate, was refused
recognition, summoned to trial at Rome and only at last admitted to his see as
lawful prelate when he had lain prone in penance at Ravenna, crying "I
have sinned against God and the most blessed Pope Gregory." Over Illyria
generally, in spite of the creation of Justiniana Prima as a patriarchate by
the Emperor who had given it his name, he exercised the power of a patriarch.
He forbade the bishops to attend a synod at Constantinople without his leave.
He made it plain that Illyria belonged to the West and not to the East.
Mission to the English . 596-601
And in the West he was ever eager to enlarge the
boundaries of the Church. Already as a young man he had set his heart on the
conversion of the English. As pope he had the means to undertake it. It may be
that he planned it, as Bede says, as soon as he came to discharge the office of
pontiff, and also, as one of his letters suggests, that he prepared for it by
ordering the purchase of English slave boys to be trained in Gaulish
monasteries. It was probably in 595 that he first sent forth the monk Augustine
and his companions to journey through Gaul to Britain for the conversion of the
English. When, daunted by anticipated dangers, the monks sent Augustine back,
Gregory ordered him to return as their abbot, and furnished him with letters to
the bishops of Gaul, and notably to Vergilius of Arles, the bishop of Aix, and
the abbot of Lerins, as well as to Theodebert of Austrasia and Theodoric of
Burgundy, children of nine and ten, under the guardianship of Brunhild their
grandmother. To Brunhild herself, "queen of the Franks," who went
with him, he was sure, " in heart and soul," the pope said that the
English nation, by the favor of God, wished to become Christian, and he was
sending Augustine and other monks to take thought — in which he bade her help —
for their conversion. He considered that the bishops of Gaul had been remiss,
in doing nothing for the conversion of those English tribes whom he regarded as
their neighbors: but when in 596 he set the new mission in motion, he was able,
as his letters show, to rely upon personal kindness from the queen towards the
missionaries and upon the aid of Gaulish priests as interpreters of the
barbarous English tongue. The mission was, vaguely, to "the nation of the
English," for Gregory knew no difference between the men of Deira and the
men of Kent; and Augustine would learn at Paris, if not before, that the wife
of Aethelberht of Kent was daughter of a Frankish king.
The tale of the landing, the preaching, and the
success will be told elsewhere. Here it belongs only to note that Gregory continued
to take the keenest interest in the venture he had planned. He instructed
Vergilius of Arles to consecrate Augustine as bishop, and spread over
Christendom the news of the great work that was accomplished. To Eulogius,
patriarch of Alexandria, he told of the conversion due, as he said, to their
prayers, and he warmly thanked Syagrius, bishop of Autun, and Brunhild for
their aid. To Augustine in 601 he sent the pallium, a mark of favour conferred
by pope or emperor, not, it would seem, as conferring metropolitan authority,
which Augustine had already exercised, but as recognizing his position as a
special representative of the Roman See. To the queen Berhta, whose somewhat
tardy support of the Christian faith in her husband's land he was able now to eulogize
and to report even to the Emperor at Constantinople, he wrote words of
exhortation to support Augustine, and to Aethelberht her husband admonition and
praise with his favorite eschatological reference. To the end Gregory remained
the trusted adviser of the Apostle of the English. He sent special
reinforcements, with all manner of things, says Bede, needed for public worship
and the service of the Church, commending the new missionaries again to the
Gaulish bishops and instructing them especially as to the conversion of heathen
temples into Christian churches. And he gave a very careful reply, written with
characteristic breadth and tact, to the questions which Augustine addressed to
him when the difficulties of his work had begun to be felt. The authenticity of
these answers, it is true, has been doubted, but the evidence, external as well
as internal, appears to be sufficient. The questions related to the support of
the mission clergy, the liturgical use of the national Church now formed in
England, the cooperation necessary in the consecration of bishops, and to
matters touching the moral law about which among a recently heathen nation a
special sensitiveness was desirable. Gregory's answers were those of a monk,
even of a precisian, but they were also eminently those of a man of affairs and
a statesman. "Things," he said "are not to be loved for the sake
of places, but places for the sake of good things," and the claim of Rome
herself depended on such an assertion. As a monk he dealt firmly with morals:
as a statesman he sketched out the future organization of the English Church.
London was to be one metropolitan see, York the other, each with the pallium and
with twelve suffragan sees. Neither bishop was to be primate
of all England by right, but the senior in consecration was to be the superior,
according, it seems, to the custom of the Church in Africa of which he had
experience, but restricted as his wisdom showed to be desirable. It may be that
Gregory had already heard of the position of the British Church: if so, he
provided for its subjection to a metropolitan. Certainly he judged acutely
according to the knowledge he possessed.
The beginnings of the English mission had brought the
pope into closer observation than before with the kings and bishops of peoples
but recently converted to the faith. In Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy
reigned a race of kings whose wickedness was but slightly tempered by the
Christianity they had accepted. In Spain there was more wisdom and more reality
of faith.
Gregory and the Franks . 595-599
From Britain we pass naturally to the country through
which Gregory's envoys passed on their way to new spiritual conversion: from
Gaul we may pass to Spain. So far did Gregory's interests extend: of his power
it may not be possible to speak with so much certainty. In truth the Church in
Europe was not yet a centralized body, and local independence was especially
prominent among the Franks. Even in doctrine there are traces of divergence,
though these were kept in check by a number of local councils which discussed
and accepted the theological decisions which came to them from East and West.
But the real power resided in the bishops, as administrators, rulers, shepherds
of men's souls. Christianity at this period, and notably Frankish Christianity,
has been described as a federation of city churches of which each one was a
little monarchy in itself. If no one doubted the papal primacy, it was much
further away than the arbitrary authority of the kings, and in nothing were the
Merovingians more determined than in their control of the Church in their
dominions. If in the south the bishop of Arles, as vicar of the Gauls,
maintained close relations with the Roman see, the episcopate as a whole held
aloof, respectful certainly but not obedient. The Church in Gaul had been
engulfed in a barbarian conquest, cut off from Italy, severed from its ancient
spiritual ties. The conversion of Clovis gave a new aspect to this separation.
The kings assumed a powerful influence over the bishops, and asserted their
supremacy in ecclesiastical matters. Whatever may have been the theory, in
practice the interference of Rome in Gaul had become difficult, and was
consequently infrequent: it had come to be considered unnecessary: the Church
of the Franks had outgrown its leading-strings. But in practice? The special
privileges of the see of Arles are evidence of a certain submission to the
Papacy on the part of the Merovingian kings, though the monarchs were autocrats
in matters of religion as well as in affairs of state, and did not encourage
resort to the Holy See. It fell to Gregory, here as elsewhere, to inaugurate an
era of defined authority.
When he became pope the royal power of the
Merovingians was at its height: in a few years it would totter to its fall, but
now the clergy were submissive and the bishops for the most part the creatures
of the court. When he died the claims of Rome to supremacy were established,
even if they were not fully admitted. With Gaul throughout his pontificate he
maintained close relations. Gregory of Tours tells with what joy his namesake's
election was received by the Franks, and from the first sets himself to tell
his doings and sayings with an unusual minuteness. Within a year of his
accession the new pope was called upon to judge the bishops of Arles and
Marseilles, whom Jewish merchants accused to him of endeavoring forcibly to
convert them: Gregory reproved and urged the bishops rather to preach and
persuade than to coerce. Again, he reproved Vergilius of Arles and the bishop
of Autun for allowing the marriage of a nun, commanding them to bring the woman
to penitence, and exhorting them with all authority. He intervened in the
affairs of monasteries, granting privileges and exemptions in a manner which
shows the nature of the authority he claimed. By his advice the difficult
questions raised by the insanity of a bishop in the province of Lyons were
settled. He claimed to judge a Frankish bishop and restore him to his see,
though here he felt it necessary to explain and justify his conduct to the
masterful Brunhild. He is found reproving the iconoclastic tendencies of
Serenus of Marseilles, and ordering him to replace the images which he has
thrown down. He gave directions as to the holding of church councils, he advised
bishops as to the administration of their dioceses and the enforcement of
ecclesiastical discipline. His correspondence with bishops and monks was
constant, the requests to him to intervene in the affairs of the Gallican
Church were frequent. Thus he prepared himself to inaugurate in Gaul a decisive
and necessary reform.
Here he came into direct relations with the kings. In
595 Childebert of Austrasia applied to him for a recognition of the powers, as
papal representative, of the bishop of Arles — evidence of the survival of the
traditional idea of dependence on the Roman Church. In granting the request
Gregory took occasion to develop his scheme of ecclesiastical discipline.
Simony, interference with the election of bishops, the nomination of laymen to
the episcopate, were crying evils: and the kings were responsible for them. He
believed that the Frankish monarchy, the purity of whose faith shone by
comparison with the dark treachery of other peoples, would rejoice to carry out
his wishes; and in the notorious Brunhild he strangely found a deep religious
sense and good dispositions which should bear fruit in the salvation of men: to
her he repeated the desires which he had expressed to Childebert and urged her
to see that they were carried out. He applied to her to put down crime,
idolatry, paganism, to prevent the possession by Jews of Christian slaves —with
what success we do not know. Unsuccessful certainly he was when he urged
Theodoric and Theodobert to restore to the bishop of Turin the parishes which he
had lost during the barbarian invasion and which the Frankish kings were by no
means willing should be under the control of a foreign bishop. But with
Brunhild he seems always to have held the most cordial relations: she asked his
advice and assistance in matters of religion and politics, in regard to a
question of marriage law and to the relation of the Franks with the Empire in
the East. And throughout his pontificate the attitude of the kings was one of
deep respect, that of the Pope that of father by counsel which easily wore the
cloak of authority.
It was thus that early in his pontificate Gregory
warned Childebert and Brunhild, as he warned Vergilius and the bishops of
Childebert's realm, of the need of instant action against the gross simony
which was eating away the spiritual life of the Church. Young men, evil livers,
laymen snatched from the business or pleasures of the world, were hurriedly
ordained or hurriedly promoted and thrust into the high places of the Church.
In 599 he addressed the bishops of Arles, Autun, Lyons, and Vienne in vigorous
protest, laying to their charge at least the acquiescence which made gross
abuses possible. Ready though he was to submit to lawful exercise of the royal
power in nomination, he utterly forbade the ordination of laymen in high
office, as inexcusable and indefensible. The Church was to be strengthened
against the world by total prohibition of marriage to the clergy and by the
summoning of yearly councils for the confirmation of faith and morals. In the
councils everything was to be condemned which was contrary to the canons; and
two prelates should represent him and inform him of what was done. The abbot
Cyriacus was sent on a special mission, with letters to bishops, to kings, and
to the queen Brunhild, to bring discipline to the Gallican Church. But the
murderous uncertainty of dynastic intrigues set every obstacle in the way of a
reform which might make the bishops less the creatures of the kings. To
Theodoric at one moment thanks were given for his submission to papal commands,
and he was directed to summon a council. At another a special envoy was sent to
indicate and insist on reform. At another letter after letter in vehement
exhortation was addressed to Brunhild, apparently the real ruler of the distracted
realm. Bishops were again and again reproved, exhorted, reproached. But it is
difficult, perhaps through the scanty nature of the historical materials of the
period, to discover cases of definite submission to the papal authority. It was
asserted with all the moral fervour and all the sagacious prudence which
belonged to the great man who sat in the papal chair. It was not repudiated by
Frankish kings and bishops: rather the assertion was received with judicious
politeness and respect.
But beyond this the evidence does not carry us. That
the policy of the Frankish State was affected, or that the character of the
kings, the ministers of the Crown, or even the bishops, was moulded by the
influence of the Papacy it would be impossible to say. Tyrannous and fratricidal,
the Merovingian kings lived their evil lives unchecked by more than a nominal
regard for the teaching of Christian moralists. But Gregory's continual
interest in the Frankish Church was not in vain. He had established a personal
relation with the barbarous kings: he had created a papal vicar in the kingdom
of the South: in granting the pallium to the bishop of Autun
he had at least suggested a very special authority over the lands of the Gauls:
he had claimed that the Roman Church was their mother to whom they applied in
time of need. If the practical result was small; if the Frankish Church
maintained a real independence of Rome, and Arles never became a papal
vicariate; yet Frankish monks, priests, poets, as well as bishops and kings,
began to look to Rome as patron and guide. Venantius Fortunatus, Columbanus,
Gregory of Tours, in their different ways, show how close was the relation of
Gregory the Great to the religion of the Franks.
Gregory and the Visigoths . 585-586
Brighter was the prospect when Gregory turned from the
moral chaos of Gaul to the growing unity of Spain. The Visigothic race had
produced a great warrior in Leovigild, whose power, as king of all the Goths,
extended from Seville to Nimes. He obtained for his son Hermenegild Ingundis
the daughter of Brunhild (herself the child of Athanagild, Leovigild's
predecessor as Visigothic king) and the Frankish king Sigebert. From Gregory's
letters we learn a story of martyrdom as to which there is no reason to believe
that he was deceived. Ingundis, beset by Arian teachers who had obtained
influence over Leovigild, not naturally a persecutor, a tyrant, or a fanatic,
remained firm in her faith, and when her husband was given rule at Seville she
succeeded with the aid of his kinsman Leander, bishop of Seville and friend of
Gregory, in converting him to the Catholic belief. War was the result.
Leovigild attacked his son, says John of Biclar, for rebellion and tyranny.
Hermenegild sought the aid of the Catholic Sueves and "the Greeks"
—the imperial garrisons which had remained since the partial reconquest of
Spain by Justinian. But Leovigild proved the victor: the Suevic kingdom was
extinguished, and Hermenegild was thrown into prison. Ingundis escaped with the
Greeks and died at Carthage on her way to Constantinople. "Hermenegild was
killed at Tarragona by Sigisbert" is the simple statement of John of
Biclar, Catholic bishop of Gerona. Gregory in his Dialogues tells the tale more
fully. On Easter Eve 585 he was offered communion by an Arian bishop, and when
he refused to receive it at his hands he was murdered by the order of his
father. He was regarded as a martyr and 13 April was observed throughout all
Spain. His blood proved the seed of the faith.
A year later his brother Recared became king and
accepted Catholicism. "No wonder," says Gregory, "that he became
a preacher of the true faith, for his brother was a martyr, by whose merits he
is aided in bringing back many souls to the bosom of God." Nor could this
have happened had not Hermenegild the king laid down his life for the truth. So
one Visigoth died that many might live. In a great synod at Toledo Recared
abjured Arianism, and in May 589 was summoned the council which was to confirm
the Catholicism of Spain. Leander preached the sermon which concluded the
assembly, and reported to the pope the orthodox speech of Recared, the
acceptance of the creeds and decisions of the four general councils, and the
enactment of canons to regulate the lives and professions of the now Catholic
people. Leander's letter was a veritable song of triumph for a victory to
civilization as well as religion, and as such Gregory accepted it with delight.
In later years the pope corresponded with Recared himself, wisely refraining
from mixing himself up in the Visigothic relations with Constantinople, where
Athanagild, son of the martyred Hermenegild, was being brought up, but praising
him warmly for his devotion, and pointing him, as was his wont, for warning and
encouragement, to the day of doom which was always in his own thoughts. To
Leander he wrote frequently to the end of his life. He had sent him a pallium,
through King Recared, as a recognition of ancient custom and of the merits of
both king and prelate. He advised him, as he advised Augustine, in important
matters of doctrine and practice. He gave him his Pastoral Care and his Moralia:
and he remained his friend to the end of his life. At the exercise of authority
over the Spanish Church Gregory made no attempt. He was content to recognize
the great miracle, as he called it to Recared, of the conversion of a people,
and to leave to their kings and bishops the direction of their Church. But
outside the Gothic dominions his letters dealt with a case, in which he
believed that injustice had been done to a bishop of Malaga, with great
explicitness and claimed an authority which was judicial and political as well
as ecclesiastical. If the documents are genuine, as is probable, they show that
Gregory was prepared not only to use to the full the powers of the Empire, when
it was in agreement with him, for the redress of injustice in Church as well as
State, but to extend by their means the jurisdiction and authority of the papal
see. But equally clear is it that when he did so it was justice he sought to
establish, not personal power: Spain for a long while remained to a
considerable extent apart from the general current of life in the Western
Church.
Character and Influence of Gregory
In June 603 the long agony with which the great pope
had so bravely struggled came to an end. The Romans to whom he had devoted his
life paid no immediate honor to his memory: but a legend in later days, based
perhaps on a statement of his archdeacon Peter, attributed to him a special
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and gave rise to his representations in art
with a dove hovering over his head. His enormous energy had bequeathed to the
Church a mass of writings which placed him among her four great doctors and
exercised a powerful influence on the theology of the following centuries. For
long Gregory was regarded as the great Christian philosopher and moralist, the
interpreter of Holy Scripture, the teacher of the rulers of the Church. His
sermons, his music, his dogmatic theology, and his method of interpretation
were for long the models which the Western Church followed unquestioningly. But
the historical importance of his life would be as great as it is had he never
written a single theological treatise. The influence of his career came from
his personal character, the intense power of the active Christianity which
radiated from his sick bed as from his throne.
Gregory emerges from the darkness of his age as a
figure whom men can plainly see. His letters reveal him as few other heroes of
the Middle Age are revealed: hardly any great ecclesiastics save Bernard and
Becket are so intimately known. We recognize him as a stern Roman, hating the
barbarians as unclean, despising the Greeks as unworthy of their share in the
Empire which had sheltered them with its name. He was a passionate advocate of
justice between man and man, a guardian of men's rights, a governor set to
repress wrong and to preserve the stability of the ancient State. He was
eminently practical, as a builder, an administrator, a philanthropist, and a
patriot. No doubt his fame is due partly to the weakness of his predecessors in
the Papacy and partly to the insignificance and wickedness that followed. But
his fame is due still more to the real achievement of his life. He gave to the
Papacy a policy and a position which were never abandoned or lost.
The primacy of the see of Rome was by him translated
into a practical system as well as a theory and a creed. His personal
character, and that passion of his for a justice more righteous even than that
of the old Roman law, made his claim to hear appeals, to be judge as well as
arbiter, seem more than tolerable, even natural and inevitable. In the decay of
old civilization, when the Empire, East and West, could scarce hold its own,
there remained in Rome, preserved through all dangers, a centre of Christian
authority which could exercise, in the person of Gregory, wisely, loyally,
tactfully, the authority which it claimed. Gregory was indeed, as John the
Deacon calls him, Argus luminosissimus. He could admonish princes, and
rebuke tax-gatherers: nothing seemed too small or too great for the exactness
of his survey. And, after the example of all great rulers, he founded a
tradition of public service which could be passed on even by weak hands and
incompetent brains. He made Christian Rome a centre of justice. He gave to the
Papacy a policy of attracting to itself the best in the new nations which were
struggling for the sovereignty of Italy. If it was impossible for the Empire to
fight the barbarians, peace must be made with them, and if peace, a lasting
peace. In any case the Church should be their home, and tyranny should be
turned into love. This was his ideal for Italian and Lombard alike. And his
principles, of even-handed justice, of patriotism, of charity, were the bases
on which he endeavored to erect a fabric of papal supremacy. From his letters,
as from a storehouse of political wisdom, there came in time rules in the Canon
Law, and powers were claimed far beyond what he had dreamed of. Where he was
disinterested lesser men were greedy and encroaching: where he strove to do
justice others tried to make despotic laws. All over the Christian world
Gregory had taught men to look to the pope as one who could make peace and
ensue it. On this foundation the medieval Papacy was founded. Not long was it
contented so to rest.
CHAPTER IXTHE SUCCESSORS OF JUSTINIAN
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