The Latin church, led by the bishop of Rome, was always ready to oppose the Greek clergy, who enjoyed the favour of the imperial court, and this jealousy engaged the pope in violent opposition to the Type. But the bishop of Rome was not then so powerful as the popes became at a subsequent period, so that he durst not attempt directly to question the authority of the emperor in regulating such matters. Perhaps it appeared to him hardly prudent to rouse the passions of a young prince of eighteen, who might prove not very bigoted in his attachment to any party, as, indeed, the provisions of the Type seemed to indicate.
Robes of a Pope of the Seventh Century
The pope Theodore therefore directed the whole of his ecclesiastical fury against the patriarch of Constantinople, whom he excommunicated with circumstances of singular and impressive violence. He descended with his clergy into the dark tomb of St. Peter in the Vatican, now under the centre of the dome in the vault of the great cathedral of Christendom, consecrated the sacred cup, and, having dipped his pen in the blood of Christ, signed an act of excommunication, condemning a brother bishop to the pains of hell. To this indecent proceeding Paul the patriarch replied by persuading the emperor to persecute the clergy who adhered to the pope’s opinion, in a more regular and legal manner, by depriving them of their temporalities, and condemning them to banishment.
The pope was supported by nearly the whole body of the Latin clergy, and even by a considerable party in the East; yet, when Martin, the successor of Theodore, ventured to anathematise the Ecthesis and the Type, he was seized by order of Constans, conveyed to Constantinople, tried, and condemned on a charge of having supported the rebellion of the exarch Olympius, and of having remitted money to the Saracens. The emperor, at the intercession of the patriarch Paul, commuted his punishment to exile, and the pope died in banishment at Cherson in Tauris. Though Constans did not succeed in inculcating his doctrines on the clergy, he completely succeeded in enforcing public obedience to his decrees in the church, and the fullest acknowledgment of his supreme power over the persons of the clergy. These disputes between the heads of the ecclesiastical administration of the Greek and Latin churches afforded an excellent pretext for extending the breach, which had its real origin in national feelings and clerical interests, and was only widened by the difficult and not very intelligible distinctions of monothelitism. Constans himself, by his vigour and personal activity in this struggle, incurred the bitter hatred of a large portion of the clergy, and his conduct has been unquestionably the object of much misrepresentation and calumny.
THE GROWING DANGER FROM THE SARACENS
[650-658 A.D.]
The attention of Constans to ecclesiastical affairs induced him to visit Armenia, where his attempts to unite the people to his government by regulating the affairs of their church, were as unsuccessful as his religious interference elsewhere. Dissensions were increased; one of the imperial officers of high rank rebelled; and the Saracens availed themselves of this state of things to invade both Armenia and Cappadocia, and succeeded in rendering several districts tributary. The increasing power of Moawyah, the Arab general, induced him to form a project for the conquest of Constantinople, and he began to fit out a great naval expedition at Tripolis in Syria. A daring enterprise of two brothers, Christian inhabitants of the place, rendered the expedition abortive. These two Tripolitans and their partisans broke open the prisons in which the Roman captives were confined, and placing themselves at the head of an armed band which they had hastily formed, seized the city, slew the governor, and burned the fleet.
A second armament was at length prepared by the energy of Moawyah, and as it was reported to be directed against Constantinople, the emperor Constans took upon himself the command of his own fleet. He met the Saracen expedition off Mount Phœnix in Lycia and attacked it with great vigour. Twenty thousand Romans are said to have perished in the battle; and the emperor himself owed his safety to the valour of one of the Tripolitan brothers, whose gallant defence of the imperial galley enabled the emperor to escape before its valiant defender was slain and the vessel fell into the hands of the Saracens. The emperor retired to Constantinople, but the hostile fleet had suffered too much to attempt any further operations, and the expedition was abandoned for that year. The death of Othman, and the pretensions of Moawyah (or Muaviah) to the caliphate, withdrew the attention of the Arabs from the empire for a short time, and Constans turned his forces against the Slavonians, in order to deliver the European provinces from their ravages. They were totally defeated, numbers were carried off as slaves, and many were compelled to submit to the imperial authority. No certain grounds exist for determining whether this expedition was directed against the Slavonians who had established themselves between the Danube and Mount Hæmus, or against those who had settled in Macedonia. The name of no town is mentioned in the accounts of the campaign.