Part 79 (1/2)
And the subscription of the laity.
I, (_name_), in the name of G.o.d, consul, have with full consent subscribed to this doc.u.ment which we have made concerning (_name_), most holy archdeacon, our bishop-elect.
(_d_) Paulus Diaconus, _Hist. Langobardorum_, IV, 44. (MSL, 95:581.)
Agilulf may have been a convert to the Catholic faith, _v. supra_, 99. His successors were not. In fact, not until 653, when Aribert, the nephew of Theodelinda, ascended the throne, were the Lombards permanently under Catholic rulers.
44. After Ariwald (626-636) had reigned twelve years over the Lombards he departed this life, and Rothari of the family of Arodus took the kingdom of the Lombards. He was a strong, brave man, and walked in the paths of justice; in Christian faith, however, he did not hold to the right way, but was polluted by the unbelief of the Arian heresy. The Arians say, to their confusion, that the Son is inferior to the Father and, in the same way, the Holy Ghost is inferior to the Father and the Son; we, Catholic Christians, on the contrary, confess that the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are one true G.o.d in three persons, equal in power and glory. In the times of Rothari there were in nearly all the cities of his kingdom two bishops, a Catholic and an Arian.
To this very day there is shown in the city of Ticinus [Pavia] the place where the Arian bishop resided, at the church of St. Eusebius, and held the baptistery while the Catholic bishop was at the head of another church. The Arian bishop, however, who was in this city, whose name was Anastasius, accepted the Catholic faith and afterward ruled the Church of Christ. This king Rothari caused the laws of the Lombards to be reduced to writing and named the book _The Edict_; the law of the Lombards up to that time had been retained merely in memory and by their use in the courts.
This took place, as the king in the preface to his law-book says, in the seventy-seventh year(313) after the Lombards came into Italy.
109. Rome, Constantinople, and the Lombards in the Period of the First Iconoclastic Controversy; the Seventh General Council, Nica, A. D. 787
By the eight century the veneration of pictures or icons had become wide-spread throughout the Eastern Church. Apart from their due place in the cultus, grave abuses and superst.i.tions had arisen in many parts of the Church in connection with the icons. To Leo III the Isaurian (717-741), and to the army, the veneration of the icons, as practised by the populace, and especially by the monks, seemed but little removed from the grossest idolatry. Accordingly, in an edict issued in 726, Leo attempted to put an end to the abuses by preventing all veneration of the icons.
Meeting with opposition, his measures pa.s.sed from moderate to severe. In Italy, although the use of icons was not developed to the same extent as in the East, sympathy was entirely against the Iconoclasts. Gregory II (715-731) and Gregory III (731-741) bitterly reproached and denounced the action of the Emperor. Nearly all the exarchate willingly pa.s.sed under the power of the Lombards. Other parts of northern Italy also broke with the Emperor. Leo retaliated by annexing Illyric.u.m to the see of Constantinople and confiscating the papal revenues in southern Italy. From that time the connection between the Pope and the Emperor was very slight. The Emperor Constantine V Cop.r.o.nymus (741-775) was more severe than his father, and in many respects even fiercely brutal in his treatment of the monks. A synod was a.s.sembled at Constantinople, 754, attended by three hundred and thirty-eight bishops, who, as was customary in Eastern synods, supported the Emperor. His son, Leo IV Chazarus (775-780) was less energetic and disposed to tolerate the use of icons in private. But his widow, Irene, the guardian of her infant son, Constantine VI, was determined to restore the images or icons. A synod held at Constantinople in 786 was broken up by the soldiery of the capital. In 787 at Nica, a council was called at a safe distance and Iconoclasm was condemned.
Additional source material: _St. John Damascene on Holy Images_, Eng. trans. by Mary H. Allies, 1898; St. John of Damascus, _Exposition of the Orthodox Faith_, PNF, ser. II, vol. IX; Percival, _Seven Ec.u.menical Councils_ (PNF).
(_a_) _Liber Pontificalis, Vita Gregorii_ II. Ed. d.u.c.h.esne, I, 403.
Disorders in Italy consequent upon Iconoclasm.
The following pa.s.sage from the _Liber Pontificalis_ gives a vivid and, on the whole, accurate picture of the confusion in Italy during the last years of the authority of the Eastern Roman Empire in the peninsula. It is hardly likely that the Emperor ordered the death of the pontiff as recorded, and more probable that his over-officious representatives regarded it as a means of ingratiating themselves with their master. The pa.s.sage is strictly contemporaneous, as the _Liber Pontificalis_, at least in this part, is composed of brief biographies of Popes written immediately after their decease and in some instances during their lives. For a fuller statement of the whole period, see Hefele, 332 _ff._, who gives an abstract of the following and also of two letters alleged to have been written by Gregory II to the Emperor, which Hefele accepts as genuine. For a criticism of these letters, see Hodgkin, _op. cit._, VI, 501-505. Hodgkin gives an excellent account of King Liutprand in ch. XII of the same volume, pp.
437-508, and throws much light on the following pa.s.sage.
For the events immediately preceding this, see Paulus Diaconus, _Hist. Langobardorum_, VI, 46-48, given above in 106. Paulus refers to the capture of Narnia in the last sentence of ch. 48.
and his next chapter is apparently a condensation of the following sections of the official papal biography.
At that time [_circa_ A. D. 725] Narnia(314) was taken by the Lombards.
And Liutprand, the king of the Lombards, advanced upon Ravenna with his entire army, and besieged it for some days. Taking the fortress of Cla.s.sis, he bore off many captives and immense booty. After some time the duke Basilius, the chartularius Jordanes, and the subdeacon John, surnamed Lurion, conspired to kill the Pope; and Marinus, the imperial spatarius, who at that time held the government of the duchy of Rome, having been sent by the command of the Emperor to the royal city, joined their conspiracy. But they could not find an opportunity. The plot was broken up by the judgment of G.o.d, and he therefore left Rome. Later Paulus, the patrician, was sent as exarch to Italy, who planned how at length he might accomplish the crime; but their plans were disclosed to the Romans, These were so enraged that they killed Jordanes and John Lurion. Basilius, however, became a monk and ended his life hidden in a certain place. But the exarch Paulus, on the command of the Emperor, tried to kill the pontiff because he hindered the levying of a tax upon the province, intending to strip the churches of their property, as was done in other places, and to appoint another [Pope] in his place. After this another spatarius was sent with commands to remove the pontiff from his seat. Then again the patrician Paulus sent, for the accomplishment of this crime, such soldiers as he could withdraw from Ravenna, with his guard and some from the camps. But the Romans were aroused, and from all sides the Lombards gathered for the defence of the pontiff at the bridge of Solario, in the district of Spoleto, and the dukes of the Lombards, surrounding the Roman territories, prevented this crime.
In a decree afterward sent, the Emperor ordered that there no longer should be in any church an image(315) of any saint, or martyr, or angel (for he said that all these were accursed); and if the pontiff a.s.sented he should enjoy his favor, but if he prevented the accomplishment of this also he should fall from his position. The pious man, despising therefore the profane command of the prince, armed himself against the Emperor as against an enemy, rejecting this heresy and writing everywhere to warn Christians of the impiety which had arisen.
Aroused by this, the inhabitants of the Pentapolis(316) and the armies of Venetia resisted the command of the Emperor, saying that they would never a.s.sent to the murder of the pontiff, but on the contrary would strive manfully for his defence. They anathematized the exarch Paulus, him who had sent him, and those who sided with him, refusing to obey them; and throughout Italy all chose leaders(317) for themselves, so eager were all concerning the pontiff and his safety. When the iniquities of the Emperor were known, all Italy started to choose for itself an emperor and conduct him to Constantinople, but the pontiff prevented this plan, hoping for the conversion of the prince.
Meanwhile, in those days, the duke Exhiliratus,(318) deceived by the instigation of the devil, with his son Adrian, occupied parts of Campania, persuading the people to obey the Emperor and kill the pontiff. Then all the Romans pursued after him, took him, and killed both him and his son.
After this they chased away the duke Peter [governor of Rome under the Emperor], saying that he had written against the pontiff to the Emperor.
When, therefore, a dissension arose in and about Ravenna, some consenting to the wickedness of the Emperor and some holding to the pontiff and those faithful to him, a great fight took place between them and they killed the patrician Paulus [exarch at that time]. And the cities of Castra milia, Ferroria.n.u.s, Montebelli, Verabulum, with its towns, Buxo, Persiceta, the Pentapolis, and Auximanum, surrendered to the Lombards.(319) After this the Emperor sent to Naples Eutychius Fratricius, the eunuch, who had formerly been exarch, to accomplish what the exarch Paulus, the spatarii, and the other evil counsellors had been unable to do. But by G.o.ds ordering his miserable craft was not so hidden but that his most wicked plot was disclosed to all, that he would attempt to violate the churches of Christ, to destroy all, and to take away the property of all. When he had sent one of his own men to Rome with written instructions, among other things, that the pontiff should be killed, together with the chief men of Rome, this most b.l.o.o.d.y outrage was discovered, and the Romans would at once have killed the messenger of the patrician if the opposition of the Pope had not prevented them. But they anathematized the same exarch Eutychius, binding themselves, great and small, by an oath, never to permit the pontiff, the zealous guardian of the Christian faith and the defender of the churches, to be killed or removed, but to be ready all to die for his safety. Thereupon the patrician [Eutychius], promising many gifts to the dukes and to the king of the Lombards, attempted to persuade them by his messengers to abandon the support of the pontiff. But they despised the mans detestable wiles contained in his letters; and the Romans and the Lombards bound themselves as brothers in the bond of faith, all desiring to suffer a glorious death for the pontiff, and never to permit him to receive any harm, contending for the true faith and the salvation of Christians. While they were doing this that father chose, as a stronger protection, to distribute with his own hand such alms to the poor as he found; giving himself to prayers and fastings, he besought the Lord daily with litanies, and he remained always more supported by this hope than by men; however, he thanked the people for their offer, and with gentle words he besought all to serve G.o.d with good deeds and to remain steadfast in the faith; and he admonished them not to renounce their love and fidelity to the Roman Emperor.