Ten years after this, in 535, the same Book of the Popes records that Pope Agapetus, being the subject of Theodatus, King of the Goths, was sent by him on embassy to the emperor Justinian. Theodatus had put to death the Queen Amalasunta, daughter of Theodorich, who had herself given him the crown. He hoped that the Pope might save him with the emperor. The Pope was received with all distinction. But he found a heretic seated on the see of the capital, whose orthodoxy the emperor defended. And the emperor said to the Pope, “Either agree with us or I will have you banished”. The Pope replied: “Sinner that I am, I came to Constantinople to see the most Christian Emperor Justinian. I find instead a Diocletian. But I do not fear your threats. But that you may know that your bishop does not belong to the Christian religion, let him confess there to be Two Natures in Christ.” Then the Bishop Anthimus, being cited by the emperor, would never confess in answer to the question of Pope Agapetus that there are Two Natures in our Lord Jesus Christ. So the Pope prevailed. [pg 286] The emperor with joy submitted himself to the Holy See, and worshipped Pope Agapetus; he expelled Anthimus from his communion and banished him, and besought the Pope to consecrate Mennas in his stead. This was done. The Pope was taken ill, and died after two months at Constantinople. He was buried with a greater concourse of people than had ever attended the funeral of emperor or bishop. His body was carried back in triumph to Rome and buried at St. Peter's.[160]
Shortly after Justinian added the direct sovereignty of conquest to that respect, whatever its extent may have been, with which Rome and the Popes regarded the sole emperor who since the abolition of the western emperor in 476 represented the Roman name, though seated on the Bosphorus. Pope Vigilius in 547 was his subject, and as such summoned by him to Constantinople, whither he went with the same reluctance as his two predecessors at the command of Theodorich and Theodatus. The emperor's purpose was to force the Pope to set his seal upon a doctrinal edict of his own. At first Justinian humbly besought his blessing, and embraced him with tears. But this soon turned to persecution, and seven years of perpetual humiliation for the Pope followed. Deceived, isolated, imprisoned, deserted, he did not surrender the faith. St. Peter in his person was not overcome, but he was discredited, and it required forty years, crowned by the wisdom and fortitude of St. Gregory, to restore the full lustre of the Holy See.
After a hundred years and a succession of fourteen Popes, St. Martin held a great Council at Rome in 649, in which he passed anathema upon the heresy of two eastern emperors, grandfather and grandson. In requital for this the grandson had him seized in his Lateran Church itself, carried secretly to Constantinople, judged by the senate there for high treason, condemned to death, and finally suffered him to die of starvation in the Crimea. As Pope John I. gained his crown of martyrdom by the first visit of a Pope to Constantinople, so Pope Martin gained the like crown by the fourth.
About thirty years after this a General Council was held in which the heresy which St. Martin had placed under ban was condemned afresh; and it was called by the wish and command of the then reigning emperor, son of the very man who had persecuted St. Martin to death, and in it the largest acknowledgments of St. Peter's succession at Rome were made to St. Martin's successors.
Yet, ten years afterwards, this man's son, then emperor, tried to repeat upon Pope Sergius the crime of the grandfather committed on Pope St. Martin. That his attempt was baffled, the life of his messenger saved by Pope Sergius, and the messenger dismissed in most ignominious flight, was owing to the Italian troops of the emperor rising in defence of the Pope. They would not allow him to be taken to the capital on the Bosphorus.
In another ten years the usurper Apsimar had despatched another exarch, Theophylact, to carry Pope [pg 288] John VI. to Constantinople that he might be induced to give the consent which Pope Sergius had refused to the canons of the Trullan Council. This attempt also was frustrated by the flocking of Italian troops to Rome in defence of the Pope.
Last is the visit of Pope Constantine, in which two things are remarkable. The very emperor who had attempted to kidnap Pope Sergius in 693, being on the eve of the extinction which was to fall on the line of Heraclius, in 710 invited Pope Constantine to visit him, ordered him everywhere to be received with royal honours; when they met, fell, though crowned, at his feet to kiss them, and sent him back in highest honour. And presently the patriarch of Constantinople, begging of him to be condoned for a grievous fault, drew a picture of his supremacy the functions of which he compared to those which the Creator in His wisdom has given to the head in the human body. I will venture to say that no western mind has expressed with greater force or tenderness the office which belongs to him who sits in the see of the chief apostle than was done by the tenant for the time of that see of New Rome, which for more than three centuries had been striving to rival and depress the elder Rome.
The emperor Anastasius, so strangely chosen from a first secretary to succeed a fallen usurper, and undo his establishment of heresy, was both orthodox and blameless in conduct, and strove to defend his much endangered empire. He had armed a fleet, but it rebelled and killed its commander. The end of a civil war, [pg 289] lasting six months, was that Anastasius retired of his own accord on condition that his life should be spared: he became a monk and priest and was banished to Thessalonica. He had reigned two years and a half.
Anastasius, some time after his retirement, made, when Leo III. was established on the throne, an attempt to regain it. For this he was publicly executed at Constantinople. So he was added to his predecessors, Leontius, Apsimar, and Justinian II., making the fourth of the seven emperors reigning from 685 to the accession of Leo III. in 717, to whom the throne was a scaffold.
Theodosius III., a good man but an incapable ruler, had in vain tried to escape the crown imposed on him by the rebellious fleet. After a year the general of the army of the East, a soldier of great capacity and vigour, was advancing to dethrone him. The senate and patriarch advised him to resign. His private property was secured to him on condition that both he and his son became priests. Theodosius III. yielded possession of a throne from acquiring which he had fled, and lived in peace at Ephesus. He gave himself up to good works, and when he was buried in St. Philip's Church he had ordered the single word health to be engraven on his tomb: a silent intimation that he was the sole among Leo's six predecessors who had escaped unhurt, and no less that he found in death the healing of all sorrows.