The destruction of the images proceeded with brutal violence. Leo was not content with destroying them, but likewise ruined the finest works of art. The new patriarch, Anastasius, priest and syncellus of Sancta Sophia, who had played the traitor to the man in whose place the emperor had intruded him, acted with the emperor in all his violence. Bishops were persecuted as idolaters, and above all the monks, who practised painting. The schools directed by them perished almost entirely. Leo is even said to have burnt the famous library with the twelve monks and their superior who [pg 327] presided over it. The imperial edict found no execution in the East only, under Saracenic domination, where the great theologian, John of Damascus, openly opposed the Iconoclasts, as the Pope had; like whom he censured the imperial despotism in religious matters. “It belongs not to kings,” said he, “to lay down laws for the Church. The Apostle said, ‘God has placed in the Church first apostles, then prophets, thirdly, pastors and teachers for the perfection of the Church’; he did not go on to say kings. And, again, ‘Obey those set over you and be subject to them, for they watch over you, as those who will give account for your souls’. And further, ‘Remember your prelates, who have spoken the word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering; the end of their conversation’. Not kings, but apostles and prophets, pastors and doctors spoke the word to you. When God had commanded David concerning building Him a house, He said afterwards to him, ‘Thou shalt not build Me a house, because thou art a man of blood’. The Apostle Paul cried out, ‘Tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour’. To kings belong prosperity of the body politic; the regimen of the Church to pastors and teachers. This, brethren, is the invasion of a robber. Saul rent the mantle of Samuel. What was the retribution? God rent the kingdom from him and gave it to David, the meekest of men. Jezabel persecuted Elias; swine and dogs licked up her blood, and harlots washed themselves in it. Herod slew John, and died eaten up of worms. And now the blessed Germanus, illustrious [pg 328] in life and word, has been scourged and banished with many other bishops and fathers, whose names we know not. Is not this a robber's act? ‘The Lord, when scribes and Pharisees drew near to tempt Him, that they might entangle Him in His talk, and asked Him, is it lawful to give tribute to Cæsar. He answered, bring Me the coin: when they brought it He said, whose image is this? They answered, Cæsar's. And He said, Give then to Cæsar the things of Cæsar, and to God the things of God.’ We yield to you, O emperor, in the things that are secular, tribute, custom, gifts. As to these our substance is in your hands. But in the regimen of the Church we have pastors who have spoken to us the word, and have formed ecclesiastical legislation; we remove not the ancient boundaries which our fathers have set us, but we hold to the traditions as we have received them. For, if we begin to pull about in the smallest thing the structure of the Church, the whole will come to pieces bit by bit.”[173]
While Leo III. was thus violently proscribing and executing the defenders of the Church's rights in the East, St. Gregory II. at Rome censured his interference with the faith, but maintained his sovereignty as emperor in Italy. He had much ado to keep the peoples of Italy within imperial allegiance. When Anastasius, the intruded heretical patriarch of Constantinople, sent the letter announcing his succession to Gregory, the Pope rejected it. The personal acts of the emperor against his life did not move him from his settled [pg 329] purpose. The guardsman Marinus was sent as duke to Rome with orders to kill the Pope, or at least to take him prisoner. He could do nothing. A second attempt was made by the Duke Basil, in conjunction with the chartular Jordanes and the sub-deacon John. A third under the exarch Paul, who caused troops to march against Rome. Romans and Tuscans encountered them and made them retreat. Duke Basil had to save his life by taking refuge in a monastery. The Romans frustrated the further attempts of the exarch, and compelled the Pope to assume the full government of Rome, while the emperor intended to depose him and put a compliant tool in his place. Venice, Ravenna, and the five cities of the Pentapolis, under support of the Lombards, chose themselves dukes, renounced obedience to the exarch, and declared themselves for the cause of the Pope. The purpose of the Italians was to choose themselves a new emperor and advance upon Constantinople. Only the fidelity and the prudence of the Pope, who still hoped for the emperor's amendment, prevented the execution of this project.
The Lombard king, Liutprand, thought it was just the opportunity for which he was waiting to extend his monarchy in central Italy. Exhilaratus, imperial prefect at Naples, with his son Adrian, got possession of part of Campania, and set the people against the Pope; but the Romans attacked them, and after a furious battle slew them both. They chased the duke Peter from Rome. In the territory of Ravenna it came to a fierce struggle between the Italians on the Pope's side and the imperials, [pg 330] in which the exarch Paul lost his life. The Lombards took many cities, especially in the Pentapolis, and well nigh put an end to the imperial dominion there. King Liutprand advanced as far as Sutri, took it, but a hundred and forty days later bestowed it upon the Apostles Peter and Paul, that is, the Roman Church. This was in the year 727. It is reckoned by some the first beginning of the State of the Church.[174]
Then it lay in the hand of the Pope to put an end to Byzantine dominion in central Italy. The exarchate was in Liutprand's possession. Had Gregory II. come to terms with him, the Pope would have obtained a free hand over the duchy of Rome. It already refused tribute to the emperor; in arms repulsed his troops, frustrated the repeated attempts upon the freedom and life of Gregory II., and bound itself under oath to protect him. The city of Rome expelled the imperial duke, and seems to have given itself a municipal government. It was the desire of the cities on the Adriatic to substitute an orthodox for an heretical emperor. Had the Pope put himself at the head of this revolt, the emperor's power was at an end. He did it not. He maintained the purity and the freedom of the faith against imperial interference; but he urged the population to continue their allegiance to the sovereign. No stronger proof of this can be given than a letter of the Pope to Ursus, doge of Venice, in these words: “Gregory, the bishop, servant of the servants of God, to Ursus, duke of Venice. Since by sinful [pg 331] action the city of Ravenna, the head of all, has been captured by that unutterable race of Lombards, and our son, the noble lord the exarch, is, as we know, sojourning at Venice, your nobility should support him, and maintain his cause, as we do, that the city of Ravenna may return to the former condition of the sacred commonwealth, as belonging to the domain of our lords and sons, the high emperors Leo and Constantine. So by the help of the Lord we may be able to remain firm, by zeal and love to our holy faith, in the commonwealth and the imperial service. God preserve you in safety, beloved son.”[175]
This conduct could not fail to endanger the Pope's position with king Liutprand. In the year 728 the strangest scene of this perplexed time took place. The Lombard king appeared with his host before Rome. Pope Gregory II. visited him in his camp, and exercised such influence over him that the king desisted from the siege, went as pilgrim to the Apostle's tomb, and left as gifts there his crown, his arms, and his mantle.
Such events as these fill up the last four years of Gregory II. The result was what we might expect. Lord of Rome the emperor was called; Pope Gregory II. became in fact a glorious beginning of the papal rule. Not reckless force, not ambitious struggle and self-seeking formed the basis of this rule, but the free voice of the population in return for real protection, for duty steadfastly fulfilled, for never-failing courage, firm belief, and holy life. Put on the one hand the struggles, the [pg 332] fierce enmities, the treacheries, the revolts, the scenes of blood, the shifting of parties evoked by the Iconoclast storm in Italy and Rome, threatened by the two antagonists, Greeks and Lombards; and on the other hand the great activity of Pope Gregory II. in his own spiritual domain. And then estimate the Pope who repulsed Leo III. in his attack upon the Church's indefeasible rights, but maintained him as emperor; who fostered St. Boniface, enabling him by erecting a united hierarchy to lay the foundation of a Germany, one and Christian. We may fairly place the second Gregory by the side of the first for prudence, for courage, for insight, for the sagacity of a ruler in the person of a saint. The great annalist has even said of him, “If what he wrote were extant, and what he did had been more carefully recorded, he would be thought no less than Gregory the Great”.[176]
On the 11th February, 731, St. Gregory II. closed a pontificate as renowned in its present action, as fruitful in its results. While the clergy and laity stood beside his coffin, they chose his successor, who was consecrated thirty-five days later, when the consent of the exarch was brought from Ravenna, this being the last time it was given by a viceroy of the Greek emperor.[177]
Concerning this Pope, Anastasius writes:—“Gregory III., a Syrian by nation, son of John. He sat ten years, two months, and twenty days. A man most meek and most wise, well instructed in the holy Scriptures, knowing both the Greek and Latin tongues. He [pg 333] knew all the psalms by heart, in their order, and was exceedingly skilful in their meaning by his long study of them. He was a polished speaker, an exhorter to all good works, a favourite popular preacher, a maintainer of the Catholic and Apostolic faith immutilate, who, by his fatherly warnings, ceased not to strengthen the hearts of the faithful, a fearless and zealous defender of orthodoxy: a lover of poverty, providing solicitously for those in want, not only with piety, but with careful pains. Redeemer of captives, generous supporter of orphans and widows: a lover of the religious life, so, by God's help, he reached the sacred order of the priesthood. Upon him the Romans, moved from the highest to the lowest by an inspiration from heaven, while he was absorbed in devotion beside the coffin of his predecessor, suddenly laid their hands and chose him for pontiff. It was in the times of the emperors Leo and Constantine, in the midst of that persecution which they set up, for the casting down and destruction of the sacred images of our Lord Jesus Christ and the holy Mother of God, of the apostles, and all saints and confessors. The same most holy man issued writings with the vigour of the Apostolic See, like as his predecessor of holy memory had done, to move them to repentance, and to put away this error.”
Anastasius then records how the emperor had imprisoned his messenger in Sicily. “Whereupon the pontiff, with greater zeal, attended by the archbishops of Grado and Ravenna, with other bishops of the [pg 334] western part, to the number of ninety-three, held a Council at the sacred confession of St. Peter's most holy body, with all the clergy and the people, and passed a decree, that if henceforth there be any who, despising those who faithfully retain the ancient usage of the Apostolic Church, pull down, destroy, profane, or blaspheme the veneration of the Sacred Images, that is, of our God and Lord Jesus Christ, of His Ever-Virgin Mother, the immaculate and glorious Mary, of the blessed apostles, and of all saints, he be debarred from the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, that is, from the unity and structure of the whole Church. This they all solemnly confirmed with their subscriptions.”[178]
While the emperor replied to the Council's decree by imprisoning the papal bearer of it for a year in Sicily, the position of Pope Gregory III. was one of great difficulty in respect to the Lombard duchies of Benevento and Spoleto. They desired to be set free from their loose connection with King Liutprand, who, on his part, desired their complete subordination to himself. To the Pope their maintenance was of great importance. Thence arose a web of party-shiftings, treaties, and counter treaties, which encompasses the whole later history of the Lombard kingdom.