If we considered the principles of Justinian alone as exhibited in his legislation, without regard to his conduct, we might, like the eastern bishops, take these words as the motto of his reign and the key to his acts as legislator. Indeed, it may be said that this legislation cannot be understood except by presupposing throughout the cordiality of the alliance between the Two Powers. In the election and the lives of bishops, in the discipline of religious houses, in the strict observance of the celibate life which has been assumed with full consent of the will by clergy and by monks, the emperor is as strict in his laws as the Church in her canons. The ruler of the State, who makes laws with a single word of his own mouth, who commands all the armies of the State, who bestows all its offices, who is, in truth, the autocrat, the impersonated commonwealth, shows not a particle of jealousy towards the Church as Church. He enjoins the strict observance of her canons in the fullest conviction that the end which she aims at as Church is the end which he also desires as emperor; that the good life of her bishops and priests is essential for the good of society in general; that the perfect orthodoxy of her creed is the dearest possession, the pillar and safeguard, of his own government. Heresy and schism are, in his sight, the greatest crimes against the State, as they are the greatest sins against the Church and against God. In the course of the two hundred years from Constantine to Justinian the Roman State, as understood by the Illyrian peasant who ruled it for thirty-eight years, had intertwined itself as closely with the Catholic Church as ever it had with Cicero's "immortal gods" in the time of Augustus, or Trajan, or Decius. It was the special pride and glory of Justinian to maintain intact this alliance as the palladium of the empire. And, therefore, his legislation touched every part of the ecclesiastical government, every dogma of the Church's creed, and only on account of this alliance did the Church acquiesce in such a legislation. I suppose that no greater contradiction can ever be conceived than that which exists between the mind of Justinian and the mind which now, and for a long time, has directed the nations of Europe, so far as their governments are concerned in their attitude towards the Church of God. In Europe are nations which are nurtured upon heresy and schism, whether as the basis of the original rebellion which severed them from the communion of the Church or as the outcome of "Free-thought" in their subsequent evolution through centuries of speculation unbridled by spiritual authority; nations, again, bisected by pure infidelity, or struggling with the joint forces of heresy and infidelity which strive to overthrow constitutions originally Catholic in all their structure. In one empire alone the attitude of Constantine and Justinian towards the Church is still maintained. It is that wherein the emperor rules with an amplitude of authority such as Constantine and Justinian held, whose successor he claims to be; where, also, an imperial aide-de-camp, booted and spurred, sits at the council board of a synod called holy, and is by far the most important member of it, for nothing can pass without his sanction—a synod which rules the bishops, being itself nothing but a ministry of the State, drawing, like the council of the empire, its jurisdiction from the emperor.
Justinian was a true successor of the great Theodosius in so far as he upheld orthodoxy, and endeavoured to unite all his subjects in one belief and one centre of unity. The greatest of the Roman emperors had for their first and chief motive, in upholding this first principle of imperial policy, the conviction that thus only they could hope to maintain the peace and security of the empire. Schism in the Church betokened rebellion in the State. In the fourth century heresy had driven the empire to the very brink of destruction. Besides this, all the populations converted from heathendom were accustomed to see a complete harmony between religion and the State, which appeared almost blent into one. Again, we must not forget that at this time the Christian religion had been lately accepted distinctly as a divine institution, and that it embraced the whole man with a plenitude of power which the indifference and division of our own times hardly allow us to conceive. Those who would realise this grasp of the Christian faith, transforming and exalting the whole being, may reach a faint perception of it by reading the great Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries—St. Basil, St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and St. Leo. They were not in danger of taking the moral corruption of an effete civilisation for the Christian faith. Again, the emperors, living in the midst of this immense intellectual and moral power—for instance, Justinian himself practising in a court the austerities of a monastery—recognised the confession of the same faith as the strongest band which united subjects with their prince. They thought that those who were not united with them in belief could not serve them with perfect love and fidelity. And, lastly, they hoped that their own zeal in maintaining the Church's unity unimpaired would make them worthier of the divine favour, and give success to all their undertakings. Let us take the words of Theodosius, one of the greatest and best among them, to his colleague the younger Valentinian, who up to the time of his mother Justina's death had been unjust to the Catholic cause and favoured the Arian heresy: "The imperial dignity is supported, not by arms, but by the justice of the cause. Emperors who feared God have won victories without armies, have subdued enemies and made them tributary, and have escaped all dangers. So Constantine the Great overcame the tyrant Licinius in a sea-fight. So thy father (the first Valentinian) succeeded in protecting his realm from its enemies, won mighty victories, and destroyed many barbarians. On the contrary, thy uncle Valens polluted churches by the murder of saints and the banishing of priests. Hence by guidance of Divine Providence he was besieged by the Goths, and found his death in the flames. It is true that he who has not unjustly expelled thee does not worship Christ aright. But thy perverse belief has given this opportunity to Maximus. If we do not return to Christ, how can we call upon His aid in the struggle?" The following emperors were of the same judgment: so that they attached to each decree which concerned ecclesiastical matters the motive of meriting thereby God's approval, since they not only took pains to please Him, but also led their subjects to do so. We employ, says Justinian, every care upon the holy churches, because we believe that our empire will be maintained, and the commonwealth protected by the favour of God, but likewise to save our own souls and the souls of all our subjects.
Justinian likewise would have a keen remembrance of the degradation from which his uncle had restored the empire. None knew better than he how the ignoble reigns of the usurper Basiliscus, of Zeno, and of Anastasius, by perpetual tampering with heresy and ruthless persecution of the orthodox, had well-nigh broken that empire to pieces. Had he not thrown all his energy, as the leading spirit of his uncle's realm, into that great submission to Pope Hormisdas which rendered its beginning illustrious?
Nevertheless a dark blot lies upon the name and memory of Justinian. He was not only successor of the great Theodosius in his ardent zeal for the Church's doctrine and unity, but likewise of Constantine, when he sullied his greatness and risked all the success of his former life by falling into the hands of the Nicomedian Eusebius.
The vast event by which the Christian Church had become a ruling power in the commonwealth had affected from that time forth the whole being of Church and State. Christian emperors had come to see in bishops the Fathers and Princes of such a Church, consecrated by God to that office, not appointed by men.[170] As such they had honoured them, committed to their wisdom and guidance the salvation of their own souls, and the weal itself of the commonwealth; not hindered them in the performance of their duties, not hampered them by restrictive laws. Rather they had protected them by external force from hindrance when invited thus to show their protection as heads of the State. Circumstances led them on to a more immediate entrance into the Church's special domain, and the things which happened in that domain led to this their entrance. It kept even pace with the developments and disturbances caused by heresy therein.
Christ had committed to the whole episcopate, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the task of spreading the seed of Christian doctrine over the earth, of watching its growth, of eradicating the false seed sown in night-time by the enemy. In proportion as the empire's head took part in this work, his influence on the episcopate could not but increase. If his participation was confined within its due limits, if the temporal ruler hedged the Church round from irruption of external power, if he rooted the tares out of her field only to clear her enclosure, his relation to the bishops remained merely external. But if he went on himself to lay down the limit of the Church's domain, or even if he only took an active part in such limitation; if he made himself the judge what was wheat and what was tares, in so doing he had won an influence on the bishops which did not belong to him. Then Church and State ran a danger of seeing their respective limits confused. Thus the relation of the bishops to the ruler of the State became then, and remains always, an unfailing standard of the Church's freedom and independence.
Now, striking and peremptory as the eastern submission to Pope Hormisdas was, in which Justinian, then a man of thirty-six, had taken large part; clear and unambiguous as in his legislation appears the recognition of the Two Powers, sacerdotal and imperial, which make together the joint foundation of the State, and are a necessity of its wellbeing; distinct, likewise, as is the imperial proclamation of the Pope as the first of all bishops in his laws, his letters, confirmed by his reception of the Popes Agapetus and Vigilius in his own capital city; frank and unembarrassed as his acknowledgment of St. Peter's successors, yet, when he had reached the mature age of seventy, and was lord by conquest of Rome reduced to absolute impotence, and of Italy as a subject province, his treatment of the first bishop, in the person of Vigilius, was a contradiction of his own laws as to the two domains of divine and human things. He passed beyond the limits which marked the boundaries of the two powers. He made himself the supreme judge of doctrine. He convoked a General Council without the Pope's assent; he terminated it without his sanction; he treated the Pope as a prisoner for resisting such action. It is true that St. Peter's successor—and this with a stain upon him which no successor of St. Peter had worn before him—escaped with St. Peter's life in him unimpaired; but so far as the action of Justinian went it was unfilial, inconsistent with his own laws, perilous in the extreme to the Church, dishonouring to the whole episcopate. The divine protection guarded Vigilius—that Vigilius whom an imperious woman had put upon the seat of a lawful living Pope—from sacrifice of the authority to which, on the martyrdom of his predecessor, he succeeded. He died at Syracuse, and St. Peter lived after him undiminished in the great St. Gregory. The names mean the same, the one in Latin, the other in Greek; but no successor ever took on himself the blighted name of Vigilius, while many of the greatest among the Popes have chosen for themselves the name of Gregory, and one at least of the sixteen has equalled the glory of the first.
In judging the conduct of Justinian, both in treatment of persons and in dealing with doctrine, we cannot fail to see that the imperial duty of protection passed into the imperial lust for mastery. If his treatment of Vigilius, whom he acknowledged in the clearest terms as Pope, was scandalous and cruel, still worse, if possible, was the assumption of a right to interpret and to define the Church's doctrine for the Church. The usurper Basiliscus had been the first to issue an imperial decree on doctrine. This was in favour of heresy. He was followed in this by the legitimate emperors Zeno and Anastasius, also in favour of heresy. On the contrary,[171] the edicts of Justinian were generally in conformity with the decisions of the Church: generally occasioned by bishops, often drawn up by them. But in the council called by him at Constantinople in 553, he issued decrees on doctrines which only the Church could decide. In doing this he infringed her liberty as grossly as the three whose unlawful act he was imitating. The whole effect of his reign was that State despotism in Church matters lowered the dignity of the spiritual power. The dependence of his bishops on the court became greater and greater. The emperor's will became law in the things of the Church. He persecuted Vigilius: he deposed his own patriarch Eutychius. His example, as that of the most distinguished Byzantine monarch, told with great force upon his successors, for the persecution of future Popes and the deposition of future patriarchs.
The Italy which he had won at the cost of its ruin as to temporal wellbeing was, after his death in 565, speedily lost as to its greater portion, and the Romans[172] of the East did little more for it. The Rome which he had reduced almost to a solitude, and ruled through a prefect with absolute power, escaped in the end from the most cruel and heartless despotism inflicted by a distant master on a province at once plundered and neglected. His own eastern provinces suffered terribly from barbarian inroads, and the end of the thirty-seven years' domination, which had seemed a resurrection at the beginning, showed the mighty eastern empire from day to day declining, the western bishops under the action of the Pope more and more exerting an independence which the East could not prevent, the patriarch of Constantinople more and more advancing as the agent of the imperial will in dealing with eastern bishops. What the See of St. Peter was at the end of the sixth century it remains to see in the pontificate of the first Gregory, who shares with the first Leo the double title of Great and Saint.
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