Chapter VI. An Emperor Priest And Four Great Popes.
The Sixth General Council had been held in 680, and on the union of the East and West the long and obstinate Monothelite heresy had seemed to be extinguished with all the authority wielded by the Pope at the head of a General Council. Yet thirty years after this event the fifth emperor of the line of Heraclius was dethroned and beheaded by a usurper; and the first act of the insurgent when seated on the throne of Constantine was to call a council of his own eastern bishops at Constantinople, which at his command attempted to abrogate the Sixth Council and to set up again as the proper faith of the Church the heresy which it had condemned. And this act of Philippicus Bardanes met with nothing like an adequate resistance from the eastern bishops. It is true that the patriarch Cyrus, refusing to comply with the wishes of the new emperor, was deposed by him, and a more obsequious successor, the deacon John, put in his place. But even Germanus, then archbishop of Cyzicus, yielded to the storm, and thus a bishop of imperial blood, who four years afterwards was himself placed in the see of Constantinople, who held it during fifteen years, and [pg 298] then was deposed because he would not yield to the heretical measures of another emperor, is said to have been subservient to the will of Philippicus Bardanes.
No incident can show more plainly the pretensions of the eastern emperor and the weakness of the eastern bishops than the fact that the first act of an Armenian officer when he had, by the murder of his sovereign, put on the imperial buskins on which the eagle of the Roman power was embroidered, consisted in an attempt to alter the faith of the Church, and that the alteration was supported by the bishops whom he had convened. Philippicus himself was a worthless sensualist, whose reign was put an end to in eighteen months by another revolution. Two more transient emperors passed to the dishonoured throne, and then appeared a third, who reigned twenty-four years, and has left his mark on history.
Leo III. was a soldier of great courage and considerable skill. He was of low birth in the province of Isauria, but worked his way through the various grades of the army until he became the most highly reputed of its generals at a moment when a succession of seven revolutions had seemed to portend the coming extinction of the empire. Besides its internal dissensions, it was hard pressed by the chalif Solomon, who was making every preparation for the final conquest of the capital. When by the cession of the good but impotent Theodosius III. the Isaurian officer obtained the crown, sodden as it were with the blood of three successive emperors, it might have seemed that the last hour had come of the [pg 299] great city whose ramparts had served as the only sufficient bulwark against the Mohammedan torrent of conquest. Leo III. thought not so. His first act was to defeat the chalif and cast back his invading host. The eastern empire breathed afresh under his resolute spirit and strategic skill, and learnt to meet not ingloriously the Saracen in battle. Ten years of success had given to its ruler some rays of the glory which had shone upon the older emperors.
It is of the year 726 that the most learned of Italian historians[164] speaks in these words: “This year Leo, the Isaurian, began a tragedy which convulsed the Church of God and laid the foundations for the loss of Italy to the Greek emperors. Theophanes, Nicephorus, and other historians tell us that a submarine volcano had broken out in the Ægean Sea and cast up a quantity of pumice stone on the adjoining coast. This natural incident had produced the greatest alarm. Moreover, a perfidious renegade named Bezer,[165] who had embraced the Arabian superstition, had nestled himself in the imperial court, and succeeded in making the emperor believe that God was enraged with the Christians on account of the images which they had in their churches and venerated. No doubt abuses did exist in the veneration of these images, as have since appeared among the Moscovites, united to the Greek Church. But such abuses neither were nor are a reason to abolish these images, for, as men of [pg 300] great knowledge have proved, the use of images and a well-regulated veneration of them is not only lawful, but greatly fosters piety in the Christian Catholic people. Now the emperor Leo, infatuated by his own great penetration of mind and seduced by this evil counsellor, practised a usurpation upon the rights of the priesthood, and published an edict ordering that from that moment all the sacred images should be forbidden and removed through the territory of the Roman empire. He called the kissing them or venerating them idolatry. This was the beginning of the Iconoclast heresy. This rash and iniquitous prohibition excited great commotion among his subjects. The larger part detested him as heretical, as holding Mohammedan sentiments, and the more because it was known that he held in abomination the sacred relics, and denied the intercession of the saints with God—that is, attacked beliefs established in the Church of God. He also impugned thereby the profession of faith which he had made when he assumed the imperial throne, refusing to listen to the judgment of bishops who are chosen by God for guardians of the doctrine which belongs to the faith. Though we have not the letters written by him to Pope Gregory II. about abolishing the sacred images, and the pontiff's answers to him, yet the sequel plainly shows that he sent to Rome the above-named edict, and that the holy pontiff not only opposed it, but wrote with kindled feelings to the emperor about it, inducing him to give up this sacrilegious design.”
Though the letters thus mentioned no longer exist, we [pg 301] possess letters from Pope Gregory II. to the emperor Leo shortly after, which present to us the clearest and most authentic picture of the Iconoclast contest. Both the contention of the emperor and the censure of the pontiff are there expressed in the words used at the very moment of the struggle. I shall follow them accurately and in so much detail as to show the interests which were then at stake.
In the person of St. Gregory II., after several Popes of eastern descent, a Roman had again reached the pontificate.[166] He was acquainted with Constantinople, to which place he had accompanied his predecessor, Pope Constantine. His experience in political things was as great as his grasp of theological knowledge was firm. He had dealt with Greeks and Lombards, not only in ecclesiastical affairs, but as counsellor, as arbitrator, and as party concerned in disputes. He adorned the churches of Rome, but he likewise strengthened her fortifications on the Esquiline. When, in the year 717, a considerable portion of the city had been dangerously flooded, and in the quarter of the Via Lata the water had risen eight-feet high, the poor people found support and consolation in the Pope. During many years there had been peace between Church and Empire as also between the Roman See and the patriarchate of the imperial capital. The first years of Leo III. promised nothing but good. Born of low birth in the mountains of Isauria, and destitute of education, he had risen by his valour step by step, and was in command of the Anatolian army when called to [pg 302] succeed Theodosius III. His reign of four and twenty years would have been fortunate had not the dogmatising fancies which seemed to be inherited by the most various natures on the Byzantine throne taken possession of him. Through them he kindled a conflict which set East and West in commotion, and completed the rent between them.