The empire, like the Church, needed such a man as St. Leo in its days of adversity. The invasion of the barbarians was triumphant in the West, and nearly all of the conquerors were either Arians, who denied the divinity of Christ, or idolaters. Leo triumphed over all these calamities. Rome had already been ravished by Alaric in 410, but even he respected the churches in which the population had fled for refuge. Attila, at the head of seven hundred thousand men, marched on Rome for the purpose of devastating it with fire and sword; resistance seemed out of the question, and the Emperor was preparing to escape. Amidst the universal panic, Pope Leo, accompanied by a consul, went out to meet the dreaded chieftain, and induced him to turn back.
Some years later, Genseric poured his vandals into Italy, and again Leo boldly presented himself before his fierce assailant, and made him renounce his intention of burning the city and slaying the inhabitants. Thus did circumstances lead the way for the temporal power of the popes in Rome, of which they eventually became the sole guardians and defenders.
But the genius of Leo served only to defer the downfall of the Western Empire, which was doomed to disappear fifteen years after his death. His successors continued to protect Italy, so far as in them lay, against the horrors of war; and Pope Agapetus, though weighed down by years, undertook the perilous mission of going to Constantinople to make peace between the Emperor of the East and the King of the Visigoths. A few years afterwards, Pope Pelagius I. had the courage to seek an interview with Totila, and so preserve Rome from massacre and dishonour. Pelagius II., who kept within bounds the Lombards, at that time masters of Italy, was succeeded by Gregory I., surnamed Gregory the Great, one of the most illustrious of the Roman pontiffs.
Gregory, whose father was a Roman senator, and whose mother was canonised, was prætor or chief magistrate of Rome, and his administration had gained for him great popularity when, by his father’s death, he inherited a large fortune. This enabled him to found seven monasteries, and, having distributed the remainder of his money amongst the poor, he became a monk in the Abbey of St. Andrew, which he had founded previous to his entering the priesthood. Chosen as pope on September 3, 590, he, in spite of his resistance to the clergy, the senators, and the people, immediately made his profession of faith in the customary manner. He converted the Lombards, who were professed Arians, and even idolaters. This was no small triumph, for it meant the peaceful subjection, or rather the alliance of a warlike people, whose close neighbourhood to Rome had been a constant cause of alarm. It was especially in his relations with the court of Constantinople that Gregory displayed all the loftiness of his character. While he bridled the ambition of the Lombards, so as to preserve for the emperors of the East their Italian possessions (Fig. 207), he defended with equal energy and tact the independence of the Church and the interests of the Italians against the unjust pretensions of the Byzantine Court. He rendered more distinct the rôle of the papacy in the Middle Ages, which was to uphold the purity of dogma as opposed to heresy against the theological pretensions of emperors, to protect also the Catholic population, vanquished and often persecuted by new masters, whether pagan or heretic; and, lastly, to convey the tidings of the Gospel to the most remote nations of the earth.
Fig. 207.—St Michael the Archangel, Minister of God, offering to a Byzantine Emperor the globe surmounted by the cross, the symbol of the imperial power.—A leaf of an ivory dyptic or tablet of the Sixth Century, preserved in the British Museum.—From a copy by M. J. Labarte. The second leaf of this dyptic being lost, the Greek inscription, which signifies, “Receive this object, and learning the cause,” is incomplete, and its meaning enigmatical.
To this great pope appertains the glory of having converted England by means of the missionaries whom he sent thither. “There is nothing grander in the history of Europe,” said Bossuet, “than the entry of St. Augustine into Kent with forty of his companions, who, preceded by the cross and image of the Great King our Lord Jesus Christ, prayed fervently for the conversion of England. St. Gregory, who had sent them forth, edified them by truly apostolic letters, and constrained St. Augustine to tremble with amazement at the numerous miracles which God wrought through him. Bertha, a French princess, brought her husband, King Ethelbert, over to Christianity. The kings of France and Queen Brunehild supported this new mission. The French bishops entered cordially into this good work, and, by order of the pope, they consecrated St. Augustine. The support which St. Gregory gave to the new bishop bore abundant fruit, and the Anglican Church was thus formed.”[13]
Amidst these important engagements, the activity of Gregory found time to superintend the relief of the poor and the education of the young. He built schools and hospitals in Rome, and increased the splendour of the church services by a judicious and well-conceived reform of sacred music. M. F. Clement, in his history of religious music, says, “St. Gregory, not content with regulating the antiphon for every service throughout the year, also founded a school of singing at Rome, and personally superintended the teaching there. While other masters were entrusted with the task of giving lessons in one division of the school, at St. Peter’s in the Vatican, he directed another section of St. John of Lateran. We read in the life of this pontiff, written by John the Deacon, that, compelled by his infirmities to lie at full length upon a couch, he still taught the children singing, and that the staff which he used for beating time is still preserved.”
A century after his death, two popes of the same name who succeeded each other, Gregory II. and Gregory III., recalled to mind the virtues, and above all the firmness of their glorious predecessor. They had to struggle against the extraordinary pretensions of the emperors of the East, who declared themselves iconoclasts—that is, breakers of images. Alleging certain abuses, brought about by the ignorance of some unenlightened Christians, Leo the Isaurian published in 726 an edict commanding the destruction of the images—the crucifixes and the statues—throughout the whole empire. Neither the clergy nor their flocks had ever seen any sign of idolatry in the worship of these images, which were venerated as sacred symbols and respected like family portraits. The Patriarch of Constantinople, refusing to obey this edict, was banished. This new heresy was severely rebuked by Gregory II., and after him by Gregory III. The latter replied to the emperor, who had requested him to convoke a council, in these noble words, “You have written asking us to assemble an œcumenical council; it would be futile, as you alone persecute the images; cease these evil deeds, and the world will be at peace, and scandals will come to an end. Do you not see that your crusade against the images is an act of revolt against the Church and of presumption? The churches were enjoying a period of profound tranquillity when you excited this tempest of disputes; put an end to the schism, and then there will be no need of a council.” This apostolic firmness excited the wrath of Leo, who dispatched against Rome a fleet of vessels carrying a large body of troops, but they were lost in the Adriatic.
Trasmund, Duke of Spoleto, and the Duke of Benevento, having risen in revolt against Luitprand, King of the Lombards, took refuge in Rome. Gregory received them very cordially, and refused to deliver them up to their redoubtable suzerain. Luitprand at once marched upon Rome, and Gregory demanded help from Charles Martel—which, however, he declined to give; and the good pope died just in time to be saved from witnessing the sack of the Eternal City (741).