The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I

by T. W. Allies

The eastern bishops[47] crouched before the emperor's power and his patriarch's intrigues, who deposed those who were not in his favour, and tyrannised over the greater number, so that many fled to the West. John Talaia himself, the expelled patriarch of Alexandria, received the bishopric of Nola from the Pope, to whom he had appealed. This continued to be the state of things during five years, from 484 to 489, when Acacius died, still under sentence of excommunication. One of the greatest bishops of his time, St. Avitus of Vienna, characterises him with the words, "Rather a timid lover than a public asserter of the opinion broached by Eutyches: he praised, indeed, what he had taken from him, but did not venture to preach it to a people still devout, and therefore unpolluted by it". Another equally great bishop, Ennodius of Ticinum—that is, Pavia—says: "He utterly surrendered the glory which he had gained, in combating Basiliscus, of maintaining the truth"; while the next Pope Gelasius charges him with intense pride; the effect of which was to leave to the Church "cause for the peaceful to mourn and the humble to weep".

But all this evil had been wrought by Acacius, and upon his death it remained to be seen how his successor would act. He was succeeded by Fravita,[48] who, so far from maintaining the conduct of Acacius in excluding the name of Pope Felix from the diptychs, wished above all things to obtain the Pope's recognition. He would not even assume the government of his see without first receiving it. It was usual for patriarchs and exarchs to enter on their office immediately after election and consecration, before the recognition of the other patriarchs which they afterwards asked for by sending an embassy with their synodal letter. It seems Fravita would make no use of this right, but besought the Pope's confirmation in a very flattering letter. It would seem also that, by the death of Acacius, the emperor Zeno had been delivered from thraldom, and returned to some sentiment of justice. For he supported the letter of the new patriarch by one himself to the Pope, and it is from the Pope's extant answers[49] to these two writings that we learn some of their contents. To the emperor, the Pope replies that he knows not how to return sufficient thanks to the divine mercy for having inspired him with so great a care for religion as to prefer it to all public affairs, and to consider that the safety of the commonwealth is involved in it. That, desiring to confirm the unity of the Catholic faith and the peace of the churches, he should be anxious for the choice of a bishop who should be remarkable for personal uprightness and, above all things, for affection to the orthodox truth. That the Church has received in him such a son, and that the pontiff, in whose accession he rejoices, has already given an indication of his rule in referring the beginning of his dignity to the See of the Apostle Peter. For the newly-elected pontiff acknowledges in his letter that Peter is the chief of the Apostles and the Rock of the Faith: that the keys of the heavenly mysteries have been entrusted to him, and therefore seeks agreement with the Pope. Then, after enlarging upon the misdeeds of Acacius, and his rejection of the Council of Chalcedon, and his absolution of notorious heretics, the Pope beseeches the emperor to establish peace by giving up the defence of Acacius. "I do not extort this from you—as being, however unworthy, the Vicar of Peter—by the authority of apostolic power; but, as an anxious father earnestly desiring the prosperity of a son, I implore you. In me, his Vicar, how unworthy soever, the Apostle Peter speaks; and in him Christ, who suffers not the division of His own Church, beseeches you. Take from between us him who disturbs us: so may Christ, for the preservation of His Church's laws, multiply to you temporal things and bestow eternal."

In his answer to Fravita, Pope Felix expresses the pleasure which his election gives, and the hope that it will bring about the peace of the Church. He takes his synodal letter as addressed to the Apostolic See, "through which, by the gift of Christ, the dignity of all bishops is made of one mass,"[50] as a token of good-will, inasmuch as his own letter confesses the Apostle Peter to be the head of the Apostles, the Rock of the Faith, and the dispenser of the heavenly mystery by the keys entrusted to him. He is the more encouraged because the orthodox monks formed part of the embassy. But when the Pope required a pledge from them that Fravita should renounce reciting the names of Peter the Stammerer and Acacius in the church, they replied that they had no instructions on that head. For this reason the Pope delayed to grant communion to Fravita, and he exhorts him, in the rest of the letter, not to let the misdeeds of Acacius stand in the way of the Church's peace. "Inform us then, as soon as possible, on this, that God may conclude what He has begun, and that, fully reconciled, we may agree together in the structure[51] of the body of Christ."

Fravita died before he received the answer of the Pope, having occupied the see of Constantinople only three months, and out of communion with the Pope.

It would seem that the first successor of Acacius as well as the emperor receded both from his act and the position which it involved. They acknowledged in their letters, as we learn from the Pope's recitation of their words, the dignity of the Apostolic See. What they were not willing to do was to give up the person of Acacius. What the subsequent patriarchs, Euphemius and Macedonius, alleged, was that he was so rooted in the minds of the people that they could not venture to condemn him by removing his name from commemoration in the diptychs.

In 490, Euphemius followed in the see of Constantinople. He was devoted to the Council of Chalcedon, and ever honoured in the East as orthodox. He replaced the Pope's name in the diptychs, and renounced communion with Peter the Stammerer, who had again openly anathematised the Council of Chalcedon; only he refused to remove from the diptychs the names of his two predecessors. Pope Felix had written, on the 1st May, 490, to the archimandrite Thalassio,[52] not to enter into communion with the bishop who should succeed Fravita, even if he satisfied these demands respecting Acacius and Peter the Stammerer, unless with the express permission of the Roman See. This condition he maintained, acknowledging Euphemius as orthodox, but not as bishop, because he would not remove from the diptychs the names of two predecessors who had died outside of communion with the Roman See.

Euphemius had himself subscribed the Henotikon of Zeno, without which the emperor would never have assented to his election; but he confirmed in a synod the Council of Chalcedon. When, in April, 491, Zeno died, and through the favour of his widow, the empress Ariadne, Anastasius obtained the throne in a very disturbed empire, the patriarch long refused to set the crown on his head, because he suspected him to favour the Eutychean heresy. The empress and the senate besought him in vain. He only consented when Anastasius gave him a written promise to accept the decrees of Chalcedon as the rule of faith, and to permit no innovation in Church matters. On this condition he was crowned: but emperor and patriarch continued at variance. The emperor tried to escape from his promise in order to maintain Zeno's Henotikon, which he thought the best policy among the many factions of the East. Euphemius was in the most unhappy position with the monks, who would not acknowledge him because he was out of communion with the Pope on account of Acacius.

Pope Felix, having all but completed nine years of a pontificate, in which he showed the greatest fortitude in the midst of the severest temporal abandonment, died in February, 492. Italy then had been torn to pieces for three years by the conflict between Odoacer and Theodorick. Gondebald, king of the Burgundians, had cruelly ravaged Liguria. Then it was that bishops began to build fortresses for the defence of their peoples. The Church of Africa was in the utmost straits under the cruelty of Hunneric. Pope Gelasius succeeded on the 1st March, 492. His pontificate lasted four years and eight months; during the whole course of which his extant letters show that he was no less exposed to temporal abandonment than Felix, and no less courageous in maintaining the pastorship of Peter.

But the death of the emperor Zeno in 491, and the death of Pope Felix III. ten months afterwards, in 492, require us to make a short retrospect of the temporal condition of empire and Church at this time. Zeno, receiving the empire at the death of his young son by Ariadne, Leo II., in 474, had reigned seventeen years, if we comprise therein the twenty months during which the throne was occupied by the insurgent Basiliscus from 475 to 477, precisely at the moment when Odoacer terminated the western empire. Zeno, recovering the throne in 477, had acted as a Catholic during about four years. Pope Simplicius had warmly congratulated him on the recovery of the empire on the 8th October of that year. In 478, the Pope had thanked Acacius for informing him that the right patriarch, Timotheus Solofaciolus, had been restored at Alexandria. But from 482 all is altered. The chronicle of Zeno's reign becomes a catalogue of misfortunes. The publication of his Formulary of Union is a gross attack upon the spiritual independence of the Church. He imposes it upon the eastern bishops on pain of expulsion. He puts open heretics into the sees of Alexandria and Antioch. All this is done under the advice and instigation of Acacius, who is the real author of the Henotikon, and who completes his acts by open defiance of Pope Felix. When Zeno died he left the empire a prey to every misery. In Italy, Herules and Ostrogoths were desperately contending for the possession of the country. Barbarians beyond the Danube incessantly threatened the north-eastern frontiers. There was no truce with them but at the cost of incessant payments and every sort of degradation. Egypt and Syria were torn to pieces by the Eutychean heresy. The infamous surrender of Italy to Theodorick in 488 has been touched upon. By that the support which the Ostrogothic king had given to keep Zeno on a tottering throne, followed by the terror which his discontent had caused at Constantinople, purchased from the Roman emperor himself the sacrifice of Rome and all the land from the Alps to the sea. Such was the man with whom the Popes Simplicius and Felix had to deal. To him it was that, from a Rome which drew its breath under an Arian Herule, the commander of adventurers who sold their swords for hire, these Popes wrote those letters full of Christian charity and apostolic liberty which have been quoted.