This position, then, of the Byzantine patriarchate, as independent of the other patriarchates, and equal to that of the older Rome, but occupying in point of honour a secondary position, was recognised by Church and State alike; and it was this that the Council in Trullo reaffirmed. In another point it was divergent from Rome—that of the marriage of the clergy. Subdeacons, deacons, and priests were forbidden to marry, but those married before ordination were equally forbidden, under pain of excommunication, to separate from their wives.
An attempt of the mad emperor Justinian II. to enforce the acceptance of the decrees by Pope Sergius I. was a complete failure. Popes were becoming much stronger in Italy than was the distant Caesar.
Rome was becoming independent of emperor and of exarch alike. In 711 the pope Constantine visited Constantinople as an honoured guest, where he was treated with diplomatic politeness, and where, possibly after they had undergone modification, he signed the {92} decrees of the Trullian Council. On this point the papal biographer is silent, but he asserts with enthusiasm the reverence of the emperor for the pope and the latter's regret when the bloody tyrant met the reward of his crimes a few weeks later. With this the ecclesiastical interest of Eastern history is for a time in the background.
[1] This is spoken of by a recent Roman Catholic writer as "la déplorable réponse de Honorius, ce monument de bonne foi surprise et de naïveté confiante." It does not support the notion of papal infallibility.
[2] Given in Baronius, A.D. 689.
[3] See Procopius, De Aedif., iv. 1 (ed. Bonn., pp. 266, 267); and Novellae, xi. (de privilegiis archiepiscopi primae Justinianae) and cxxxi. (de ecclesiasticis canonibus et privilegiis), cap. 3. It is no alteration of patriarchal powers, but rather the assertion of them. Still patriarchal jurisdictions are not regarded as unalterable—as is clear from the creation of the modern national churches of the Balkan lands.
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CHAPTER VIII
THE CHURCH IN ASIA
[Sidenote: The Church in Persia.]