Part 5 (2/2)
[5] The _Vita Antiquissima_ (S. Gall. MS.), by a monk of Whitby, does not represent them as slaves (pp. 13, 14), ed. Gasquet.
[6] S. Greg., _Epp._, v. 18. The term _sacerdos_ is commonly used for bishop at this date. Thus Gregory of Tours calls a bishop _sacerdos_ during this life, _antistes_ after his death. S. Gregory must not, however, be understood as disclaiming a papal supremacy.
[7] The letter is Epp. Greg. (Jaffe), 1497; cf. letter to Syagrius, Bishop of Autun.
[8] It does not seem, from Bede i. 39, that, as has been a.s.serted, it was always necessary to apply for it.
{72}
CHAPTER VI
CONTROVERSY AND THE CATHOLICISM OF SPAIN
[Sidenote: Pelagian controversy of sixth century.]
Controversies which belong to this period are those connected with semi-Pelagianism and with Adoptianism. Faustus, Bishop of Riez, who died almost at the end of the fifth century, held views which were opposed to those of S. Augustine as well as to those of Pelagius. His writings were attacked by many, among them by Caesarius, Bishop of Arles from 501 to 542, who caused a synod at Orange in 529 to condemn semi-Pelagian opinions, in a statement which declared that sufficient grace is given to all the baptized (an expression which had an important history centuries later). The writings of Faustus were the subject of much discussion also at Constantinople, and they were condemned by several of the popes.
Of a wholly different kind was the heresy originating in the East, and probably revived through the controversy of the Three Chapters, which came into prominence in the eighth century in Spain. It has been thought that the exigencies of anti-Muhammadan controversy had something to do with the importance which the question now a.s.sumed.
The Spanish Church had a long record, in the Councils of Toledo, of orthodox and {73} strenuous adherence to the Christian faith; but it showed also a strongly nationalistic spirit, and it was natural that much should be developed, through antagonism to Muhammadanism and Arian influences, which would fall into danger of extreme reaction on the one side or of unwise concession on the other. ”Spanish Christianity,” it has been said in a phrase which has become cla.s.sical, ”was a perpetual crusade.” In Spain the Christian contest against sin and unbelief became more often, or more constantly, than elsewhere an actual physical struggle against those who distorted or denied the faith of the Church and those who trampled it under foot. This is, of course, most true of the ages which followed the Moorish invasions, of the long strife between Christians and Moors, of the times and the thoughts which gave birth to the immortal literature of the peninsula, to Calderon and Cervantes, to Lope de Vega and S. Teresa of Jesus. But it is also true, though in a less degree, of the earlier times--of those which extended from the introduction of Christianity--from the missionary visit, it may be, of S. Paul himself--down to the destruction of the monarchy of the Wisigoths in 711. Spain was in 589 won to Catholicism by the conversion of its king Reccared. But this was the end of a long and critical period, for from the acceptance of Arianism by Remismond in 466 the country was under the rule of princes who were pledged to that error.
The Wisigoths identified their heresy with their nationality. The general decadence of the Empire spread to Spain. The social system was in a state of dissolution. The canons of the Councils show a {74} picture of life which is appalling in its corruption, but at the same time are evidence of the earnest efforts of the Church for amendment.
[Sidenote: The conversion of Spain.] They show how Christianity had penetrated into the country districts, and how eager were the bishops of the sixth century to do their spiritual duty far and wide. Side by side with the canons of Church Councils is the great Fuero Jusgo (in process of compilation from the fifth to the eighth century) in witnessing to the efforts for a better state of things. During the rule of the West Goths, persecution of Catholics had been frequent, but when Amalric married Hlothild, daughter of Chlodowech, promising her tolerance of her religion, a way was opened for a new life to orthodoxy. But Amalric broke his promise, and an invasion of Spain by the Franks followed. In the reign of the Arian Theudis (531-48) there was still more decisive intervention. Childebert and Chlothochar invaded Spain and besieged Saragossa, but were driven back; and it was not till Athanagild called in the armies of Justinian that the confusion and division of Spanish life; between orthodox and heretic, Roman and Goth, was healed in the slightest degree. The year 560 witnessed the conversion of King Mir by Martin of Braga, and three years later, and again in 572, Councils at Braga witnessed to the Catholic faith of the Church. But it was an era of fightings and fears. The Roman armies of the Eastern Empire held the cities of the coast long after Athanagild had come to be recognised as king of all the Goths in Spain, but gradually unity was springing up under the rule of that able chieftain. He died in 568, having married his daughters, Brunichild and Galswintha, to {75} the Frankish kings, Sigebert and Chilperich. His successor Leovigild established a sway over all the Wisigothic possessions and ruled from Nimes to Seville. The wedding of Brunichild, though sung by Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, was but the beginning of crime and of sorrows; yet it led indirectly to the conversion of Spain. Brunichild's daughter Ingunthis married Leovigild's son Hermenigild. She was bitterly persecuted as a Catholic when she came to Spain, but she clung to her faith with the devotion of a martyr, and she won over her husband. [Sidenote: Hermenigild.] At Seville Hermenigild was for some time acting as king, under his father, and when he was threatened on his conversion with the loss of all he had he took up arms. After a long contest he was subdued, and he underwent a long persecution ending eventually in death when he refused to receive communion at the hands of an Arian bishop on Easter Day, 585.[1] Ingunthis escaped to Constantinople. Then till 587 Arianism reigned supreme in Spain, and John of Biclaro, Catholic bishop of Gerona, writes as one crying in a wilderness. But Catholicism in Spain was scotched, not killed, and when Reccared (586-601) called Arian and Catholic bishop alike before him, and after two years definitely accepted orthodoxy under the influence of his uncle Leander, Archbishop of Seville, it was not long before the whole of Council of Spain accepted his decision and followed his example. [Sidenote: Council of Toledo, 589.] This was in 587, and an {76} inscription shows that the cathedral church of Toledo was then consecrated in the Catholic faith.
With the Council of Toledo (third synod of Toledo), 589,[2] which accepted the first four General Councils and the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son, Spain returned to the unity of the faith. From Reccared's reign, too, dates a civilisation distinctly traceable to Constantinople and a recognition of absolute equality between the different races in the peninsula. And to that golden age belong also the great saint and preacher, Leander, who died in 603, and S. Isidore of Seville, the encyclopaedic writer, who died thirty-three years later. S. Leander had at Constantinople come to know Gregory the Great. He was the chief theologian of Spain in his age, and his words welcomed and ratified the conversion. Thus the modern history of Spain and her most Catholic kings begins. The importance of the period culminates in the compilation, almost final, of the great Wisigothic Code, the Fuero Jusgo, at once civil and ecclesiastical, the result of a union between Church and State even more perfect than that represented in the English Witenagemot.
The concentration of Spanish interests on theological questions led before long to new developments, but meanwhile it helped the happy tendency to unity which Recceswinth (652-72) confirmed by allowing the intermarriage which had long been forbidden--Recceswinth, whose splendid gold crown, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, still remains amongst the most striking memorials of the Christian art of the seventh century. Wamba, his successor, established his supremacy in {77} Septimania by the capture of Nimes from a traitorous vicegerent, and lived to show the sincerity with which the Wisigoths had accepted the idea of the sanct.i.ty of vows to G.o.d. During an illness, when he was supposed to be incapable of recovery and remained in a stupor, he received the tonsure that he might die as a monk: when he recovered he refused to return to the world and abdicated the throne. His successors were equally strict, it would seem, in obedience to the Church's laws, often unintelligently interpreted.
[Sidenote: Persecution of the Jews.]
To these days, too, belongs one of the first and darkest blots on the popular Christianity of the Middle Age--the persecution of Jews. The Jews of Spain had long been restless under a government which was so strongly ecclesiastical in its sympathies: persecuting laws oppressed them, and they could hardly even in secret practise their religion.
Plots were constant and natural, and at last it is said that the Jews incited the Saracens, who had overthrown the imperial power in Africa, to cross the sea and strip from the weak Wisigoths of Spain the last remains of their power. In 695 a Council at Toledo (the sixteenth) determined when the plot was discovered wholly to destroy the Judaic faith in their land. It was ordered that all grown-up Jews should be made slaves, and all children brought up as Christians. This was the very year of the storming of Carthage.[3] It is not to be wondered at that the Jews gave every help they could to the infidels who, before long, attacked the kingdom of the Wisigoths. Within twenty years Spain, up to the very mountains of the {78} Basque land and of the Asturias, was conquered by the followers of Muhammad, and silence fell upon the country which had appeared to be the home of an abiding Church.
The splendid edifice which had seemed to be reared on the solid foundations of religion and law was shattered by the repeated blows of the Arab invasion. Why was this? The chroniclers gave answer without hesitation--”Peccatis exigentibus, victi sunt Christiani.” The Goths (as they proudly called themselves) ”have so offended Thee, O Lord, by their pride, that they deserved a fall by the sword of the Saracen.”
It was, in truth, as the great Sancho of Navarre declared in his charter of foundation to the abbey of Albelda, ”Our ancestors sinned without scruple; they daily transgressed the commandments of the Lord, and so to punish them as they had deserved and to make them turn to Him, the Most Just of Judges delivered them to a barbarous people.” In truth, the ma.s.s of the land had never been converted to Catholic Christianity at all, and a heretical society was powerless against Moslem sincerity and swords. Only in the north was Catholicism supreme, and thence came in later days the reconquest. But Catholics lived on all over Spain under their conquerors in comparative peace.
[Sidenote: The Adoptianist heresy.]
The Church survived. Persecution made its life strong and vigorous, and that life found outlet in new varieties of theological expression.
Elipandus, Archbishop of Toledo, within seventy years of the Saracen conquest, became known outside his own land, with Felix, bishop of the northern see of Urgel, for his advocacy of the statement that {79} Christ's Sons.h.i.+p was that of adoption. a.s.serting the two Natures and the two Wills of the Lord, the Adoptianists regarded Christ as only in His divine nature truly the Son of G.o.d. Eager to a.s.sert the full Humanity and to rebut the Muhammadan charges of idolatry, the Spanish theologians taught that ”one and the same Person was in two aspects a Son, in virtue of His relation to two different natures,” and that ”the Divine Son of G.o.d, begotten from all eternity of the Father, not by adoption but by birth, not by grace but by nature--that He, when made of a woman, made under the law, was Son of G.o.d, not by origin but by adoption, not by nature but by grace.” [4] It was an attempt to carry further the decisions adopted at Chalcedon and to account for the origin of the two Natures, their completeness in distinction, and their union together.
[Sidenote: Its condemnation.]
Adoptianism was condemned at Regensburg in 792, and at Frankfort in 794, and, under the influence of Alcuin, Felix made submission at Aachen in 799. Elipandus, safe among the Saracens, held out in his opinions. It would seem that the discussion represented the eighth-century expression of the age-long conflict between logic and mystery, the desire for exact definition, and the sense of something beyond human understanding in what belongs to the nature of G.o.d, and to the divine action in the Incarnation, the union of G.o.d and man.
[Sidenote: Adoptianism in the East.]
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