In
582 Eutychius was succeeded by a famous ascetic, John "the Faster,"
a Cappadocian.
582 Eutychius was succeeded by a famous ascetic, John "the Faster,"
a Cappadocian.
Cambridge Medieval History - v2 - Rise of the Saracens and Foundation of the Western Empire
It even became necessary in several
provinces to move back again the line of defence 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 com-
plete suppression of the civil administration, hardly reached its final stage
in Africa, because it was forcibly cut short by the Mahometan occupa-
tion. 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
ch. viii. (a) 16—2
## p. 228 (#260) ############################################
228 New Administrative Division
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 dis-
tinguished: Istria and Venetia, both confined to the coast-land and the
islands; the exarchate proper (in the narrower sense), the provincia
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
connexion 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 com-
pletely, 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 militarised, and the
same status established which in the East under similar conditions appears
as the "theme" system.
The civil administration of the State, however, was not only threatened
## p. 229 (#261) ############################################
The Church and the Public Administration 229
by the military organisations, 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 posses-
sions by preference as patrvmonium 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 shews itself very clearly in the department of
municipal government, for the curiales, the remainders of the old 7roXt? ,
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 sunctio 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 urbhs, and when after almost two centuries it
CH. VIII. (a)
## p. 230 (#262) ############################################
230 Militarising of Landed Property
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 organisation, 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 recognised 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-organised papal central government, whilst
the managers of the pontifical estates in the different provinces, the
rectores patrimonii, who were entrusted with the representation of the
pope in all secular matters, had an ever-increasing number of duties
heaped upon them.
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 SquiUace 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
## p. 231 (#263) ############################################
Effect of the Italian Revolution
231
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 land-
owning 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
reorganised, 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.
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/j Different parts of Italy had at various times wit-
nessed risings oftne 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 organiser 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
. I
4
CH. VIII. (a)
## p. 232 (#264) ############################################
232
Changes in the Administrative Division
1
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 recognised.
The suppression of the revolt resulted in the resumption of the dido 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.
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 con-
stituted 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
## p. 233 (#265) ############################################
Pontifical State under Byzantine Suzerainty 233
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.
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 dido 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, recognising 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 em-
peror'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,11 by which was understood that the old
boundaries between the Empire and the Lombard kingdom, as they
had been recognised before Liutprand's reign, were restored, and the
sovereignty of the emperor within these boundaries was legally undis-
puted. 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 Prankish 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
recognised 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 favour of the pope.
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
CH. VIII. (a)
## p. 234 (#266) ############################################
234 Venice
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
favourable to the development of the seigniorial local powers as repre-
sented by the tribunes, though it is true that after the suppression of the
Italian revolt it fell back under the imperial dicio, 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 tri-
bunicial 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 legalise 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 con-
quest of Venice, the suzerainty of the Greek emperor was permanently
recognised. This was shewn 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 siiffragium, 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.
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 patrkius 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 tem-
porarily 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 them-
selves from the ducatus of Naples and, after a gradual secession from
the supreme rule of the dux of Naples, exercised the dicio independently
## p. 235 (#267) ############################################
Naples, Amalfi, Gaeta 235
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 every-
where by local powers who usurped the dido, 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.
(B)
GREGORY THE GREAT.
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
Pontificalia—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
ch. vin. (b)
## p. 236 (#268) ############################################
236
Early Life of Gregory
[540-576
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.
Gregory was the son of the regionarius Gordianus, a rich nobleman
with a fine house on the Caelian hill who held an office of organisation
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 philo-
sophic, 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 Constanti-
nople. 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 labour 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
## p. 237 (#269) ############################################
c. 580-690] Plans of Mission to the English
237
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 eulogised.
The chief of the Roman citizens had become a humble monk among
monks: it was a contrast typical of the life, set betwixt civilisation and
Christianity, barbarism and ascetic devotion, of the early Middle Age.
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
evangelisation 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 fidelivm 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 evangelise 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 locustn 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, shewed 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
CH. VIII. (b)
4
## p. 238 (#270) ############################################
288 Gregory as Apocrisiarius [577-590
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.
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 apocriiiarius 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), Eutychios
was patriarch (577-582). The papal envoy was theologian as well as
statesman, and he controverted a theory of the latter that the resurrec-
tion-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 marvellous example of constitutional organisation
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
## p. 239 (#271) ############################################
68S-690]
Constantinople and Rome
239
the first letter between them that is preserved, written in 590, reads as
though their cordiality had never been great.
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 Constanti-
nople, with memories of the theological storm which clouded the last
days of Justinian, and he was said to have refuted the Aphthartodocetic
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 apocrisiar'vus 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
succour. 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 store-
house 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 shewed himself
to be the religious leader that the city needed in its distress.
OH. VIII. (b)
## p. 240 (#272) ############################################
240 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 organised 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 Sanf 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 labour 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 erudition 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 shews an intimacy of practical knowledge in regard to
## p. 241 (#273) ############################################
590]
Gregorys Letters
241
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, shews 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 rigours. 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 reconsecrating 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
C. JIED. B. VOL. II. CH. VIII. (b)
16
rV
## p. 242 (#274) ############################################
242
Gregory s Administration
[590-603
taken up with gaining souls, and all the money he could obtain he was
anxious to give away and bestow upon the poor. '" Me 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 shews no interest in any
work of pure learning or scholarship even in Rome itself.
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 ad-
ministered 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. Thus 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
## p. 243 (#275) ############################################
590-603]
Gregorys Administration
243
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 shew 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 endeavoured to shew in practical
alms-giving the fervent charity of his heart. John the Deacon tells
that there was still preserved, nearly three hundred years later, among
the muniments 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 endeavour 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 endeavouring 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 attacking 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.
! ■*
ch. viii. (b) 16—2
"
## p. 244 (#276) ############################################
244 Military Measures [591-592
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 lost 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. 11
Against "the unspeakable Ariulf1' he was ever on the watch. In
591 and 592 he was taking constant precaution, telling the Magister
militivm 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 states-
manship 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 it 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 defence as before was that of spiritual not
## p. 245 (#277) ############################################
593-595] Disputes with the Emperor 245
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.
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
VIII. (b)
## p. 246 (#278) ############################################
246
Pope and Patriarch
\
^
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. "
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 shews
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 shew 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 recognised 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 recognised had en-
couraged 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
## p. 247 (#279) ############################################
688-595] Controversy with John the Faster 247
one see. " From this it was an inevitable step to use titles which Rome
used. The pontiff of Constantinople claimed to be oecumenical (oIkov-
fAeviKos or universalis) patriarch.
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. 11 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,11 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 honour 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 soil,
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. 11 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 2 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
CH. VIII. (b)
## p. 248 (#280) ############################################
248 Church and State
to use the title of oecumenical bishop, and before a century had passed
the popes followed their example.
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.
provinces to move back again the line of defence 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 com-
plete suppression of the civil administration, hardly reached its final stage
in Africa, because it was forcibly cut short by the Mahometan occupa-
tion. 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
ch. viii. (a) 16—2
## p. 228 (#260) ############################################
228 New Administrative Division
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 dis-
tinguished: Istria and Venetia, both confined to the coast-land and the
islands; the exarchate proper (in the narrower sense), the provincia
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
connexion 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 com-
pletely, 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 militarised, and the
same status established which in the East under similar conditions appears
as the "theme" system.
The civil administration of the State, however, was not only threatened
## p. 229 (#261) ############################################
The Church and the Public Administration 229
by the military organisations, 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 posses-
sions by preference as patrvmonium 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 shews itself very clearly in the department of
municipal government, for the curiales, the remainders of the old 7roXt? ,
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 sunctio 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 urbhs, and when after almost two centuries it
CH. VIII. (a)
## p. 230 (#262) ############################################
230 Militarising of Landed Property
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 organisation, 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 recognised 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-organised papal central government, whilst
the managers of the pontifical estates in the different provinces, the
rectores patrimonii, who were entrusted with the representation of the
pope in all secular matters, had an ever-increasing number of duties
heaped upon them.
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 SquiUace 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
## p. 231 (#263) ############################################
Effect of the Italian Revolution
231
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 land-
owning 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
reorganised, 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.
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/j Different parts of Italy had at various times wit-
nessed risings oftne 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 organiser 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
. I
4
CH. VIII. (a)
## p. 232 (#264) ############################################
232
Changes in the Administrative Division
1
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 recognised.
The suppression of the revolt resulted in the resumption of the dido 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.
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 con-
stituted 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
## p. 233 (#265) ############################################
Pontifical State under Byzantine Suzerainty 233
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.
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 dido 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, recognising 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 em-
peror'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,11 by which was understood that the old
boundaries between the Empire and the Lombard kingdom, as they
had been recognised before Liutprand's reign, were restored, and the
sovereignty of the emperor within these boundaries was legally undis-
puted. 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 Prankish 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
recognised 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 favour of the pope.
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
CH. VIII. (a)
## p. 234 (#266) ############################################
234 Venice
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
favourable to the development of the seigniorial local powers as repre-
sented by the tribunes, though it is true that after the suppression of the
Italian revolt it fell back under the imperial dicio, 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 tri-
bunicial 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 legalise 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 con-
quest of Venice, the suzerainty of the Greek emperor was permanently
recognised. This was shewn 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 siiffragium, 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.
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 patrkius 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 tem-
porarily 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 them-
selves from the ducatus of Naples and, after a gradual secession from
the supreme rule of the dux of Naples, exercised the dicio independently
## p. 235 (#267) ############################################
Naples, Amalfi, Gaeta 235
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 every-
where by local powers who usurped the dido, 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.
(B)
GREGORY THE GREAT.
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
Pontificalia—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
ch. vin. (b)
## p. 236 (#268) ############################################
236
Early Life of Gregory
[540-576
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.
Gregory was the son of the regionarius Gordianus, a rich nobleman
with a fine house on the Caelian hill who held an office of organisation
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 philo-
sophic, 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 Constanti-
nople. 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 labour 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
## p. 237 (#269) ############################################
c. 580-690] Plans of Mission to the English
237
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 eulogised.
The chief of the Roman citizens had become a humble monk among
monks: it was a contrast typical of the life, set betwixt civilisation and
Christianity, barbarism and ascetic devotion, of the early Middle Age.
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
evangelisation 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 fidelivm 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 evangelise 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 locustn 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, shewed 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
CH. VIII. (b)
4
## p. 238 (#270) ############################################
288 Gregory as Apocrisiarius [577-590
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.
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 apocriiiarius 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), Eutychios
was patriarch (577-582). The papal envoy was theologian as well as
statesman, and he controverted a theory of the latter that the resurrec-
tion-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 marvellous example of constitutional organisation
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
## p. 239 (#271) ############################################
68S-690]
Constantinople and Rome
239
the first letter between them that is preserved, written in 590, reads as
though their cordiality had never been great.
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 Constanti-
nople, with memories of the theological storm which clouded the last
days of Justinian, and he was said to have refuted the Aphthartodocetic
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 apocrisiar'vus 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
succour. 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 store-
house 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 shewed himself
to be the religious leader that the city needed in its distress.
OH. VIII. (b)
## p. 240 (#272) ############################################
240 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 organised 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 Sanf 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 labour 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 erudition 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 shews an intimacy of practical knowledge in regard to
## p. 241 (#273) ############################################
590]
Gregorys Letters
241
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, shews 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 rigours. 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 reconsecrating 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
C. JIED. B. VOL. II. CH. VIII. (b)
16
rV
## p. 242 (#274) ############################################
242
Gregory s Administration
[590-603
taken up with gaining souls, and all the money he could obtain he was
anxious to give away and bestow upon the poor. '" Me 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 shews no interest in any
work of pure learning or scholarship even in Rome itself.
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 ad-
ministered 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. Thus 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
## p. 243 (#275) ############################################
590-603]
Gregorys Administration
243
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 shew 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 endeavoured to shew in practical
alms-giving the fervent charity of his heart. John the Deacon tells
that there was still preserved, nearly three hundred years later, among
the muniments 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 endeavour 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 endeavouring 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 attacking 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.
! ■*
ch. viii. (b) 16—2
"
## p. 244 (#276) ############################################
244 Military Measures [591-592
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 lost 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. 11
Against "the unspeakable Ariulf1' he was ever on the watch. In
591 and 592 he was taking constant precaution, telling the Magister
militivm 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 states-
manship 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 it 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 defence as before was that of spiritual not
## p. 245 (#277) ############################################
593-595] Disputes with the Emperor 245
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.
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
VIII. (b)
## p. 246 (#278) ############################################
246
Pope and Patriarch
\
^
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. "
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 shews
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 shew 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 recognised 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 recognised had en-
couraged 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
## p. 247 (#279) ############################################
688-595] Controversy with John the Faster 247
one see. " From this it was an inevitable step to use titles which Rome
used. The pontiff of Constantinople claimed to be oecumenical (oIkov-
fAeviKos or universalis) patriarch.
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. 11 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,11 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 honour 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 soil,
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. 11 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 2 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
CH. VIII. (b)
## p. 248 (#280) ############################################
248 Church and State
to use the title of oecumenical bishop, and before a century had passed
the popes followed their example.
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.
