The death of Theodoric (August 30, 526) was followed by the downfall of his power. Within ten years all Italy was won back to the Roman and Catholic Empire ruling from the East.
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[Sidenote: The imperial restoration, 554.]
With the restoration of the imperial power the Church came to the front more prominently. So long as Justinian reigned the popes were kept in subjection; but ecclesiastics generally were admitted to a large share in judicial and political power. The emperors looked for their strongest political support in the Catholic party. Suppression of Arianism became a political necessity at Ravenna. Justinian gave to Agnellus the churches of the Arians. [Sidenote: The Pragmatic Sanction.] In 554 the emperor issued his solemn Pragmatic Sanction for the government of Italy. Of this, Section XII. gives a power to the bishops which shows the intimate connection between State and Church. "Moreover we order that fit and proper persons, able to administer the local government, be chosen as iudices of the provinces by the bishops and chief persons of each province from the inhabitants of the province itself." This is important, of course, as allowing popular elections, but far more important in its recognition of the position of the clerical estate. Justinian's new administration of Italy was to be military; but hardly less was it to be ecclesiastical. Here we have, says Mr. Hodgkin,[5]—whose words I quote because I can find none better to express what seems to me to be the significance of this act—"a pathetic confession of the emperor's own inability to cope with the corruption and servility of his civil servants. He seems to have perceived that in the great quaking bog of servility and dishonesty by which he felt himself to be surrounded, his only sure standing-ground was to be found in the spiritual estate, the order of men who wielded a power {34} not of this world, and who, if true to their sacred mission, had nothing to fear and little to hope from the corrupt minions of the court." This is significant in regard to the rise of the power of the popes in the Western capital of the Empire and in the whole of Italy. It was by the good deeds of the clergy, and by the need of them, that they came forward before long as the masters of the country.
This rule of the Pragmatic Sanction was not an isolated instance; at every point the bishop was placed en rapport with the State, with the provincials, and with the exarch himself.[6] In jurisdiction, in advice, from the moment when he assisted at a new governor's installation, the bishop was at the side of the lay officer, to complain and even, if need be, to control.
One power still remained to the emperor himself (in the seventh century it was transferred to the exarch)—that of confirming the election of the pope. Narses seated Pelagius on the papal throne; but when one as mighty as the "eunuch general" arose in Gregory the Great, the power of the exarchate passed, slowly but surely, into the hands of the papacy. The changes of rulers in Italy, the policies of the falling Goths and of the rising Roman Empire, found their completion in the effects of the Lombard invasion. But before this there were thirty years of growth for the Church, and the growth was due very largely to a new force, though for a while it remained below the surface. It was the power of the monastic life, realised anew by the genius and holiness of S. Benedict of Nursia. {35} [Sidenote: The work of S. Benedict.] Born about 480, of noble parentage, he gave himself from early years to serve God "in the desert." At about the age of fifteen he is spoken of by his biographer, the great S. Gregory, in words which might form the motto of his life, as "sapienter indoctus." First, a solitary at Subiaco; then the unwilling abbat of a neighbouring monastery, whose monks endeavoured to kill him; then again living "by himself in the sight of Him who seeth all things"; at last, in 529, he founded in Campania the monastery of Monte Cassino, the mother of all the revived monasticism of the Middle Age.
[Sidenote: His rule.]
The monastery of Monte Cassino became a pattern of the religious life. S. Benedict was a wise and statesmanlike ruler, to whom men came with confidence from every rank and every race, to be his disciples, or to place their boys under him for instruction. The rule which he drew up was as potent in the ecclesiastical world as was the code of Justinian in the civil. It had its bases in the root ideas of obedience, simplicity, and labour. "Never to depart from the governance of God" was his primary maxim to his monks; and a monastery was to be a "school of the Lord's service" and a "workshop of the spiritual art." The beginning of all was to be prayer. "Inprimis ut quidquid agendum inchoas bonum, a Deo perfici instantissima oratione deposcas." And though absolute power was left, without appeal, in the hands of the abbat, and the rule of the whole house was to be "nullus in monasterio proprii sequatur cordis voluntatem," yet great individual liberty was left to each monk in the direction of his own religious {36} life. Everyone, he knew, had "his own gift of God"—some could fast more than others; some could spend more time in silent prayer and meditation; and none could do any good, he knew, however strict their outer rule, without daily enlightenment from God. There was place in his scheme for those whose work was chiefly manual, those who reclaimed uncultivated lands and turned the wilderness into a garden of the Lord, and for those who spent long hours in contemplation and prayer. The public solemn singing of offices was no more characteristic of his rule than was the following of the hermits in pure prayer.
One who would be admitted to the monastery must take oath before the whole community that he intended constantly to remain firm in his profession, to live a life of conversion to God, and to obey those set over him, but the last only "according to the rule." True monks were his followers to count themselves only if they lived by the labours of their hands. Idleness, said Benedict, is the enemy of the soul. The life of the monks was ascetic, but without the extreme rigour of the earlier "religious"—hermits and coenobites. The rule required austerities, and gave strict injunction as to food at all times, and especially in Lent; but it did not encourage voluntary austerities beyond the rule, and it admitted many relaxations for the old, the infirm, or those whose labours were especially hard.
Where all depended so much on a superior it was of especial importance that he should be wisely chosen and should rule wisely. In three things he was to be pre-eminent—exhortation, example, and prayer; and prayer, says the saint, is the greatest of these; for {37} although there be much virtue in exhortation and example, yet prayer is that which promotes grace and efficacy alike in deed and word. He was to recognise no difference of social rank. Good deeds and obedience were to be the only ways to his favour. Only if exceptional merit required promotion was there to be any breach of the proper order in which each should hold his place, "since, whether slaves or free, we are all one in Christ, and, under the same Lord, wear all of us the same badge of service."