In the last years of this emperor, the churches of the eastern empire were involved in the greatest disorders and sufferings. He had thrown aside altogether the mask of Catholic: he filled the patriarchal sees with the fiercest heretics. Flavian was driven from Antioch, Elias from Jerusalem. Timotheus, a man of bad character, had been put by him into the see of Constantinople. In this extremity of misery and confusion, the eastern Church addressed Pope Symmachus in 512.[93]
"We venture to address you, not for the loss of one sheep or one drachma, but for the salvation of three parts of the world, redeemed not by corruptible silver or gold, but by the precious blood of the Lamb of God, as the blessed prince of the glorious Apostles taught, whose chair the Good Shepherd, Christ, has entrusted to your beatitude. Therefore, as an affectionate father for his children, seeing with spiritual eyes how we are perishing in the prevarication of our father Acacius, delay not, sleep not, but hasten to deliver us, since not in binding only but in loosing those long bound the power has been given to thee; for you know the mind of Christ who are daily taught by your sacred teacher Peter to feed Christ's sheep entrusted to you through the whole habitable world, collected not by force, but by choice, and with the great doctor Paul cry to us your subjects 'not because we exercise dominion over your faith, but we are helpers in your joy'. 'Hasten then to help that east from which the Saviour sent to you the two great lights of day, Peter and Paul, to illuminate the whole world.'" They call upon him as the true physician; they disclose to him the ulcerous sores with which the whole body of the eastern Church is covered; and they finish by directing to him a confession of faith, rejecting the two opposite heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches. They remind him of the holy Pope Leo, now among the saints, and conjure him to save them now in their souls as Leo saved bodies from Attila.
But yet it was not given to Pope Symmachus to put an end to this confusion. He sat during fifteen years and eight months, dying on the 9th July, 514. The schism raised by the Greek emperor was at an end; and seven days after his decease the deacon Hormisdas was elected with the full consent of all. In the meantime the state of the East had gone on from bad to worse. Anastasius, by writing and by oath, had pledged himself at his coronation to maintain the Catholic faith and the Council of Chalcedon. Instead he had persecuted Catholics, banished their bishops, by his falsehood and tyranny sown discord everywhere. At last one of his own generals, Vitalian, rose against him. After a long silence he once more betook himself to the Pope. In January, 518, he wrote to the new Pope, Hormisdas, "that the opinion spread abroad of his goodness led him to apply to his fatherly affection to ask of him the offices which our God and Saviour taught the holy Apostles by mouth, and especially St. Peter, whom He made the strength[94] of His Church". He asked, therefore, "his apostolate by holding a council to become a mediator by whom unity might be restored to the churches," and proposed that a general council should be held at Heraclea, the old metropolis of Thrace.
Hormisdas, after maturely considering the whole state of things, sent a legation of five persons to the emperor at Constantinople—the bishops Ennodius of Pavia, Fortunatus of Catania, the priest Venantius, the deacon Vitalis, and the notary Hilarius—with the most detailed instructions how to act. The intent was to test the emperor's sincerity—a foresight which after events completely justified. This instruction is said to be the earliest of the kind which has come down to us. Since nothing can so vividly represent the position of the Holy See as the words used by it on a great occasion at the very moment when it took place, I give a translation of it. In reading this it should be remembered that these are the words of a Pope living in captivity under an Arian and barbaric sovereign, who had taken possession of Italy about twenty years before, and had sought for and accepted the royal title from this very emperor. Further, that with the exception of the Frankish kingdom, in which Clovis had died four years before, all the West was in possession of Arian rulers, who were also of barbaric descent. The Pope speaks in the naked power of his "apostolate". The commission which he gave to his legates was this:[95]
"When, by God's help and the prayers of the Apostles, you come into the country of the Greeks, if bishops choose to meet you receive them with all due respect. If they propose a night-lodging for you do not refuse, that laymen may not suppose you will hold no union with them. But if they invite you to eat with them, courteously excuse yourselves, saying, Pray that we may first be joined at the Mystical Table, and then this will be more agreeable to us. Do not, however receive provision or things of that kind, except carriage, if need be, but excuse yourselves, saying that you have everything, and that you hope that they will give you their hearts, in which abide all gifts, charity and unity, which make up the joy of religion.
"So, when you reach Constantinople, go wherever the emperor appoints; and before you see him, let no one approach you, save such as are sent by him. But when you have seen the emperor, if any orthodox persons of our own communion, or with a zeal for unity, desire to see you, admit them with all caution. Perhaps you may learn from them the state of things.
"When you have an audience of the emperor, present your letters with these words: 'Your Father greets you, daily intreating God, and commending your kingdom to the intercession of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, that God who has given you such a desire that you should send a mission in the cause of the Church and consult his holiness, may bring your wish to full completion'.
"Should the emperor wish, before he receives your papers, to learn the scope of your mission, use these words: 'Be pleased to receive our papers'. If he answer, 'What do they contain?' reply, 'They contain greeting to your piety, and thanks to God for learning your anxiety for the Church's unity. Read and you will see this.' And enter absolutely into nothing before the letters have been received and read. When they have been received and read, add: 'He has also written to your servant Vitalian, who wrote that he had received permission from your piety to send a deputation of his own to the holy Pope, your Father. But as it was just to direct these first to your majesty, he has done so; that by your command and order, if God please, we may bear to him the letters which we have brought.'
"If the emperor ask for our letters to Vitalian, answer thus: 'The holy Pope, your Father, has not so enjoined on us; and without his command we can do nothing. But that you may know the straightforwardness of the letters, that they have nothing but entreaties to your piety, to give your mind to the unity of the Church, assign to us some one in whose presence these letters may be read to Vitalian.' But if the emperor require to read them himself, you will answer that you have already intimated not such to be the command of the holy Pope. If he say, 'They may have also other charges,' reply, 'Our conscience forbids. That is not our custom. We come in God's cause. Should we sin against Him? The holy Pope's mission is straightforward; his request and his prayers known to all: that the constitutions of the fathers may not be broken; that heretics be removed from the churches. Beyond that our mission contains nothing.'
"If he say, 'For this purpose I have invited the Pope to a council, that if there be any doubt, it may be removed,' answer, 'We thank God, and your piety, that you are so minded, that all may receive what was ordered by the fathers. For then may there be a true and holy unity among the churches of Christ, if, by God's help, you choose to preserve what your predecessors Marcian and Leo maintained.' If he say, 'What mean you by that?' answer, 'That the Council of Chalcedon, and the letters of Pope St. Leo, written against the heretics Nestorius, and Eutyches, and Dioscorus, may be entirely kept'. If he say, 'We received and we hold the Council of Chalcedon, and the letters of Pope Leo,' do you then return thanks, kiss his breast, and say, 'Now we know that God is gracious to you, when you hasten to do this, for that is the Catholic faith which the Apostles preached, without which no one can be orthodox. All bishops must hold to this and preach it.'