During the Gothic rule in Italy (493-553), its representatives manifested the utmost tolerance in relation to religious questions, and showed little disposition to impose any restraints on the policy of the popes, although each monarch, by virtue of his title of “king of the Romans,” claimed the right to veto any election to the papal chair. In the year 483, when Odoacer sent his first lieutenant, Basilius, from Ravenna to Rome, the latter was invested with the titles eminentissimus and sublimis. The pope accordingly appeared as politically the subject of his Arian overlord. The advantage thus gained by the temporal power appears to have been the result of its intervention, which Simplicius (468-483) had himself solicited, in the elections to the papal office, and one of the principal acts of the Palmary synod (above referred to) was to repudiate the chief measures of Basilius, which had been especially directed against the abuses that prevailed on such occasions, and more particularly against bribery by alienation of the church lands. The assertion of this authority on the part of the civil power was declared by the synod to be irregular and uncanonical, and was accordingly set aside as not binding on the church. The fierce contests and shameless bribery which now accompanied almost every election were felt, however, to be so grave a scandal that the synod itself deemed it expedient to adopt the ordinance issued by Basilius, and to issue it as one of its own enactments. In order more effectually to guard against such abuses, Boniface II, in the year 530, obtained from a synod specially convened for the purpose the power of appointing his own successor, and nominated one Vigilius—the same who ten years later actually succeeded to the office. But a second synod, having decided that such a concession was contrary to the traditions of episcopal succession, annulled the grant, and Boniface himself committed the former decree to the flames. At his death, however, the recurrence of the old abuses in a yet more flagrant form induced the senate to obtain from the court of Ravenna a measure of reform of a more comprehensive character, and designed to check not only the simoniacal practices within the church itself, but also the extortion of the court officials.
An Ancient Conception of St. Peter
(From a woodcut in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris)
[526-590 A.D.]
In the year 526 Dionysius Exiguus, a monk in Rome, undertook the labour of preparing a new collection of the canons of the councils, and, finding his production favourably received, proceeded also to compile a like collection of the papal letters or decretals, from the earliest extant down to those of Anastasius II in his own day. The letters of the popes were thus placed on a level with the rescripts of the emperors, and in conjunction with the canons formed the basis of the canon law, which afterwards assumed such importance in connection with the history of the church. The negative value of the collection formed by Dionysius may be said, however, almost to equal that of its actual contents; for, from the simple fact that it does not contain those yet earlier decretals subsequently put forth by the pseudo-Isidorus, it affords the most convincing disproof of their genuineness.
The substitution of the rule of the Greek emperors for that of the Gothic monarchs was inimical in almost every respect to the independence and reputation of the popedom. For a short interval before Justinian landed in Italy, Agapetus (535-536), appearing as the emissary of Theodotus to the Eastern court, assumed a bearing which inspired the emperor himself with respect, and his influence was sufficiently potent to procure the deposition of one patriarch of the Eastern capital and to decide the election of another. But, after Belisarius entered Rome and the city had been reduced to subjection, the pontiff was seen to be the mere vassal of the emperor, and not only of the emperor but of the courtesan on the imperial throne. The deposition of Silverius (536-540), and his mysterious fate at Pandataria, together with the elevation of Vigilius (540-555), the nominee of the abandoned Theodora and her pliant slave, completed the degradation of the Roman see. Each successive pope was now little more than a puppet which moved at the pleasure of the Eastern court, and the apocrisiarius or deputy whom he maintained at that court was generally (as in the case of Pelagius I, Gregory I, Sabinian, Boniface III, Martin) his own successor—an honour purchased, it can hardly be doubted, by systematic compliance with the imperial wishes. In the career and fate of Vigilius the papal office was dishonoured as it had never been before, at once by the signal unworthiness of its bearer and by the indignities heaped upon him by the savage malice of his foes. So sinister, indeed, had become the relations between the Roman bishop and the eastern court that Pelagius I (555-560) is said to have besought Narses to send him to prison rather than to Constantinople.
In the year 568 the Lombards invaded Italy. Like the Goths they became converts to Arianism; but they were also far less civilised, and looked with little respect on Roman institutions and Roman habits of thought, while their arrogance, faithlessness, and cruelty gained for them the special detestation of the Roman see. Their conquests did not extend over all Italy. Ravenna and the Pentapolis, Venice, Rome, and its duchy (as the surrounding district was then termed), Naples, Calabria, and Sicily, remained subject to the empire. In the peninsula the pope was, after the exarch of Ravenna, the most powerful potentate, and the presence of a common foe caused the relations between himself and the empire to assume a more amicable character. The emperor, indeed, continued to control the elections and to enforce the payment of tribute for the territory protected by the imperial arms; but on the other hand the pontiff exercised a definite authority with the Roman duchy and claimed to have a voice in the appointment of the civil officers who administered the local government. From the time of Constantine the Great the church had possessed the right of acquiring landed property by bequests, and the Roman see had thus become greatly enriched. Some of its possessions lay far beyond the confines of Italy.[f]
GREGORY THE GREAT (590-604 A.D.)
[42-590 A.D.]