The Imperial Church from Constantine to the Early Middle Ages. // History of the Church. Ed. Hubert Jedin, John Dolan. Vol. II. 846 pp.

 

Content

SECTION TWO

 

Inner Life of the Church to the End of the Seventh Century

 

Chapter 3 8

 

North African Christianity from the Beginning of Vandal Rule to the Muslim Invasion

 

When Augustine's life was nearing its end, the Church of North Africa seemed to look forward to a peaceful further development. The majority of the population of the Roman provinces, especially in the cities, had converted to Christianity; the still pagan minority, including members of the intellectual and propertied upper class, could be gained through a prudent missionary work, as could the pagan tribes on the long southern frontier of the romanized territory, to whom thus far too little attention had been given, because all too many personnel were tied down by the conflict between Catholics and Donatists. True, the Donatist denomination still existed, but it was forced on the defensive by State measures and especially by Augustine's theological work. Here too a positive development could be anticipated, if Augustine's program was followed, which had as its goal the inner reconciliation of the two denominations. But all this depended decisively on a consolidating of the political situation in the Western Empire, which had fallen into a very precarious position because of the wanderings of the peoples.

 

The North African Church under Vandal Rule

Suddenly the relatively calm situation changed for North Africa also, when in May 429 the tribe of Arian Vandals, then numbering c. 80,000 persons, under King Gaiseric (428-477) crossed from the southern Spanish coast to Tangiers and began its progress through the Roman provinces. Thus began for the North African Church a period, lasting more than a century, of suppression and persecution by the new rulers, which added to it severe material and even deeper-reaching moral injuries. This persecution, which probably affected Catholics and Donatists in equal measure, knew two phases of greater and lesser intensity; it also had locally circumscribed centers of gravity and occasionally was suspended for several years, but it can neither be questioned as a whole nor minimized in its brutal characteristics. The statements of the different sources, among them eyewitness reports, are too unanimous for this and are in part confirmed by archeological investigation.

 

The first, extremely harsh wave of persecution extended from the beginning of the invasion to the definitive establishment of Vandal power (429-442). Since the Vandals were preceded by the reputation of a special intolerance toward the Catholic clergy, many bishops and priests considered flight, but the aged Augustine at once intervened with a clarifying word and stressed firmly that it was the duty of the clergy to persevere everywhere, even if only a remnant of the congregations remained which would need the help of its priests then in precisely such a situation of misery. The first reports on the behavior of the conquerors which reached the eastern provinces were depressing: churches burned, monasteries destroyed, cemeteries desecrated, private houses plundered, and everywhere the corpses of the slain or of those tortured to death. The roads were inundated with refugees, and Bishop Capreolus of Carthage could not even gather the bishops for a synod in order to appoint the delegates for the Council of Ephesus. Only a few cities, such as Cirta, Hippo, and Carthage, which were moreover filled with refugee peasants, were able to hold out longer. A first agreement with Ravenna, which in 435 recognized the Vandals as foederati, was exploited by Gaiseric to prepare for new warlike measures, and the persecution of the clergy continued. In the province of Byzacena the bishops of Vita and Usurita were tortured to death; three others, including Possidius of Calama, were exiled; three noble Spaniards in Vandal service who refused to convert to Arianism were executed. A series of sermons give information about the situation and frame of mind of the Catholics, especially in Carthage before the conquest of the city in 439; with good reason they are attributed to the

Bishop Quodvultdeus.8 He regarded the calamity which had overtaken the Church of North Africa as punishment for the tepidity of many Christians, who were even now to be found in the circus instead of letting themselves be guided by the heroic model of their martyrs, Perpetua, Felicity, and those who right then in the country were more gladly enduring death than betray their faith. An apparently considerable number of Christians had already succumbed to the pressure of the enticements of the Vandals and had gone over to the Arian profession. In the most severe expressions they were warned of attempts at blackmail and bribery.9

 

After the fall of Carthage the wrath of the conquerors exploded in full force against the inhabitants because of their long resistance. So many people met death that they had to be interred in a mass-grave without ecclesiastical burial. Plundering affected especially the property of the Church: the principal churches of the city were given to the Vandal clergy, others were used as barracks. Bishop Quodvultdeus was banished with a part of his clergy and taken to damaged ships, which however still reached Naples.10 The senators and other members of the upper class were first expelled from the city, then banished from the country. Flight brought some of them as far as Syria, where Bishop Theodoret of Cyrrhus took care of them.11 An organized care of souls was not possible for years in the occupied territories, and the demoralizing consequences were not lacking. The pressure was partly alleviated when a new treaty between Gaiseric and the Emperor Valentinian III in 442 transferred to the Vandals the provinces of Proconsular Africa, Byzacena, Tripolitana, and eastern Numidia as an independent sovereigntyЧthe so-called sortes VandalorumЧwhile western Numidia and the two Mauretanias remained imperial. Pope Leo I at once tried to reconstruct, at least in these provinces, a Church government capable of functioning.12 After a vacancy of fifteen years, the Vandal King also allowed the occupation of the see of Carthage by Bishop Deogratias in 454.13

 

The political chaos produced in Italy by the assassination of Valentinian III in 455 was exploited by Gaiseric for a quick attack by his fleet on the Tyrrhenian Sea; he took Rome by a coup de main and subjected

 

8 Catalogue of the twelve sermones: CIP, nos. 401-412; survey of the state of the discussion about the author in P. Courcelle, Histoire litteraire, 126, note 7. 'Especially characteristic are the two sermones de tempore barbarico, PL, Suppl. 3, 287- 298, and PL 40, 698-708.

 

Victor of Vita, Hist. 1, 6; 1, 9; 1, 16.

 

Ibid. 1, 12; 1, 15; Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Ep. 29, 31, 36, 52-53, 70.

 

Leo I, Ep. 12; Ad episc. Afr., PL 54, 646-656.

 

Victor of Vita, Hist. 1, 24.

 

L ?J\A ,

 

the city to a heavy contribution in art treasures and precious metals; Pope Leo I had to surrender liturgical vessels but obtained from Gaiseric in return that the city would be spared burning and bloodshed. In addition to the widowed Empress and her two daughters, the Vandals carried off to Africa a large number of captives of different ranks, whose misery Bishop Deogratias tried to alleviate so far as he could. When he died in 457, the Church of Carthage was again orphaned for twenty- four years. Any new filling of an episcopal see that became vacant was forbidden, so that of the 164 episcopal communities of Proconsular Africa eventually only three had a bishop. Not until toward the end of Gaiseric's reign could the Emperor Zeno obtain permission for the return of the exiled clerics (475).

 

The first years of the reign of King Hunneric (477-484) seemed to introduce a change for the better, since Catholic worship was again allowed and the community of Carthage obtained a new head in Bishop Eugene (481). Through his social concern, he quickly gained high esteem, but thereby aroused the envy of the Vandal clergy and of the Patriarch Cyrila, who gradually succeeded in inducing the King to a change of course. At first attendance at Catholic worship was forbidden to all who wore Vandal dress, hence also to all Catholics in the service of the Vandals. A repulsive campaign of moral defamation of clergy and nuns ensued. Then all Catholics in the army and administration were given the alternative of accepting Arianism or giving up their positions; but the latter were punished by confiscation of property and banishment to Sicily or Sardinia. With the issuing of a decree in 483 which banished almost 5,000 people, clerics and laity of all classes, to the frontier district of the province of Byzacena, dominated by the Moors, the persecution under Hunneric reached its first climax. Victor of Vita described the march of the exiles to the desert, partly as an eyewitness; for many it became a road to death. Rediscovered inscriptions and the remains of a memorial chapel of their graves confirm his report.20

 

Probably as a reply to the remonstrances of the Emperor Zeno, Hunneric summoned the Catholic bishops to Carthage for a religious discus-

I Mf. LA1IIN LnuBV,I1 1 i1 HUU-<llJlil\/i1 IV A1AU

 

sion on 1 February 484, although the Vandal clergy, in contrast to the Catholic, had hitherto shown little interest in theological discussion. Bishop Eugene wanted also Catholic representatives from non-African countries, especially from Rome, to be invited to it, because a discussion between Arians and Catholics was not merely an inner African matter. The request was rejected, and before the beginning of the conference some Catholic bishops who were versed in theology were banished or intimidated by ill-treatment. What then took place at the sessions under the presidency of the Vandal Patriarch Cyrila was less a religious discussion than a passionate debate of both sides concerning questions of procedure; nevertheless, the Catholics were able to submit a detailed profession of faith, probably drawn up by Eugene. King Hunneric at once took up the charge of the Vandal participants in the meeting that the Catholic bishops were the real mischief-makers and issued an edict which placed the Catholic Church entirely under particular law. According to this, the earlier imperial laws against heretics were again declared valid against all who within a determined interval had not been converted to Arianism: all churches were to be closed, all Masses, baptisms, and ordinations were to be discontinued, the liturgical books were to be destroyed, the church property was to be conveyed to the Vandal clergy. After various tortures, a part of the bishops were deported to Corsica, the majority were degraded to the status of coloni, a remnant were forced to work in the mines. Now the harshest phase of the persecution also overtook the general population; occasionally it had sadistic features. Add to this a severe famine, so that under the double pressure the number of conversions to Arianism from all classes rose sharply, while others bravely endured torture and death. Only the accession of King Gunthamund (484-496) brought a mitigation of the terror. The decrees of banishment were partly annulled, Bishop Eugene after his return in 487 could also resume Mass in the cemetery church of a suburb of Carthage, at his request Gunthamund in 494 finally allowed the return of all the exiles, and Catholic churches were again opened everywhere in the country. The African Church as a whole offered a picture of devastation, in which the spiritual and moral damage weighed far more than the materialЧa recovery had to last for years. Since the surviving bishops at first could not meet for a synod of the entire African Church, they turned over the question of the treatment of the numerous lapsi to Rome for instructions; the sources, however, supply no data on the number of those willing to do penance.

 

But no real reconstruction, within and without, came about, for the period of relative toleration ended after the first years of the reign of King Thrasamund (496-523). When the ecclesiastical leadership in the province of Byzacena began around the turn of the century to give new bishops, as far as possible, to the orphaned communities, in opposition, of course, to a royal edict, a new decree sent both consecrators and the newly ordained into exile. Again part of the bishops had to flee or look for a hiding place, again conversions to Arianism were recorded. Among the deported was the new Bishop of Ruspe, Fulgentius, whose theological learning soon made him the intellectual leader of the African episcopate. Through his extensive correspondence, which he carried on from Sardinia, partly as "secretary" of the exiled bishops, through his activity as superior of the monastery founded by him at Cagliari, through his preaching and lecturing, he became a factor in ecclesiastical politics whose importance the Vandal King could not neutralize by mere banishment. When c. 515 Thrasamund let him be brought to Carthage31 to have him give his opinion in regard to the objections of the Arian clergy against the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, he seemed to have had hopes of a disputation conducted in writing with Fulgentius alone rather than of a religious discussion on the model of 484. The Arian compiler of the objectiones, which the King had presented to Fulgentius, once in writing, the other time only read out, is unknown. Fulgentius replied in two works, which in their verbal respect toward the King corresponded to etiquette, but de facto represented the Catholic standpoint without any compromise; the second turned directly to Thrasamund and demanded of him that he accept the Catholic teaching.32 Since Fulgentius used the relative freedom granted him in Carthage for a successful activity among Catholics and Arians, under the pressure of the Vandal clergy he had to return to exile in Sardinia in 517. An abecedarian psalm from his pen, oriented on the

I Ht LA 11IN l-nURl-n iwuioinu^ .. ~

 

Augustinian model and sharply anti-Arian, which urged the Catholics to remain true to the faith, belongs to this period. Thus ended in failure the attempt of King Thrasamund to take the Catholic Church of North Africa into the service of the Vandal Kingdom, first by reprisals, then by more ecclesiastico-political procedures.

 

A lasting peace for the Catholic Church of North Africa was first brought about by the accession of King Hilderic (523-530), to whom hostility to Catholics was foreign, since he had spent years at Constantinople and regarded himself as a member of the Theodosian Dynasty through his maternal pedigreeЧhe was the son of Eudocia and the grandson of Valentinian III. His first measures, probably undertaken in agreement with the Emperor Justin IЧannulling of the decree of exile for the bishops, return of the alienated churches, permission for the filling of orphaned sees Чgave back freedom of worship and of preaching to the Church and made it possible for it to tackle the reconstruction of a too deeply disturbed ecclesiastical life. As early as 523 the bishops of Byzacena in synods at Junca and Sufes took inventory; two years later the new Bishop of Carthage, Boniface, summoned a general council, in which the list of participants, only sixty bishops, had of course to note many absences. Hilderic's ecclesiastical policy of friendliness to Catholics, however, evoked an ever-growing opposition among the Vandals, at whose head stood Gelimer, a great-grandson of Gaiseric. Then when Hilderic's troops suffered several defeats in battle against rebel Berbers, Gelimer had him imprisoned and himself acclaimed as King of the Vandals in 530. The ever more clearly apparent decay of Vandal power induced the Emperor Justinian I, in spite of some hesitations because of the technical difficulties of the enterprise, to bring the North African provinces again under the full authority of the Empire by a military intervention. In half a year, September 533 to March 534, the Byzantine expeditionary force under Belisarius, supported by the native population, succeeded in breaking the Vandals' resistance. In the victor's triumphal procession at Constantinople was seen their last King, Gelimer.

 

 

Christianity in Byzantine North Africa

 

The Emperor Justinian, who saw himself confirmed in his religious mission through the success of the North African undertaking, promised in the law which reorganized the administration of the Diocese of Africa that all inhabitants of these provinces would understand in what freedom they could live under his rule.37 Above all, the Catholic clergy could assume that they had special claim to freedom. They immediately began at a general Synod under Bishop Reparatus of Carthage in 534, in which 220 bishops were able to participate, discussions on the restoration of their so severely injured Church. In this, three problems occupied the foreground: 1) the restoration of all African clerics who were still staying in the other areas of the Empire, but now were needed for the rebuilding of an organized pastoral work in their homeland; 2) the procedure in the reception of Catholics who through force or seduction had gone over to Arianism, among whom were numerous clerics; 3) the reinstituting of the Catholic Church in its previous rights, which included both the return of its former possessions and the recognition of the special position of the Catholic denomination. For the first two questions the Council requested the confirmation of its decrees by Rome. According to these, only those clerics overseas should be received who could show in writing a special commission from their bishop. Further, every Arian cleric willing to return should be received only as a lay person, but the Church should see to his suitable support.38 For the regulation of the third question an imperial decree was required, and Justinian issued it in August 535.39 It ordered the return of all church buildings and liturgical vessels and confirmed the metropolitan rights of the Bishop of Carthage. Extremely severe were the measures which the decree laid down in regard to Arians, Donatists, Jews, and pagans: they had to close their churches and stop every cultic act; any gathering was forbidden; it sufficed that they were able to live. The Pope congratulated the Emperor for such zeal for the spread of God's Kingdom.40

 

This harshness would take a bitter toll. When, soon after the return of Belisarius to Constantinople, the indigenous tribes in the south and west of the central provinces rose against the new regime, the Arian and

 

R. Devreesse, "L'eglise d'Afrique durant l'occupation byzantine," MAH 57 (1940), 143-168. Justinian's law: Cod. Just. I, 27.

 

Letter of the Synod to Pope John II and replies of Pope Agapitus I: Coll. Avell., nos. 85-87.

 

39Nov. 37.

 

¶Man

 

40 Coll. Avell., no. 88.

 

609

 

 

Donatist clergy supported the rebels, so far as was possible, in their war, which lasted more than fifteen years and made a consistent and effective reconstruction of the Catholic Church impossible. But one gets the impression that the episcopate, on the other hand, had no comprehensive reconstruction plan sketched out on a wide view, although occasionally synods were held, which, however, like that of Byzacena in 541, were preoccupied chiefly with the special rights of their ecclesiastical province. Add to this the further burden of the controversy over the Three Chapters, in which the African episcopate took an active part. As its two spokesmen first appeared Facundus of Hermiane and the deacon Ferrandus of Carthage, both of whom repudiated Justinian's theology or called for opposition to it. In 550 the Synod of Carthage even withdrew its communion from Pope Vigilius in the event that he annulled his Judicatum and formally protested to the Emperor against the condemnation of the Three Chapters. Of the heads of the African ecclesiastical provinces summoned to Constantinople, only the Primate of Numidia proved to be submissive to the imperial wishes, while Re- paratus of Carthage had to pay for his refusal with banishment to Pon- tus, where he died in 563. A second group of eight bishops, who were probably chosen as delegates for the Council of 553 by the successor of Reparatus, Primosus of Carthage, because they were loyal to the Emperor, likewise caused no difficulties. After the Council Primasius of Hadrumetum accepted the condemnation of the Three Chapters, in return for which Justinian rewarded him with the dignity of Primate of Byzacena. But on their return to Africa these bishops encountered the cold repudiation of their colleagues, whose resistance to the decrees of 553 they could break only with the aid of the State's power. Among the unreconciled was Victor of Tunnuna, who as an exile had to lead a ceaselessly itinerant life and was finally confined to a monastery in Constantinople.

With the accession of Justin II (565-578) this theological strife gradually died out, but the authoritarian claims of the Byzantine Emperor left their mark on the African episcopate. In the Exarch of Carthage they constantly had the representative of imperial power close by; he had to foster the true faith, of course, but at the same time he understood this commission as control over the Church or as a right to interfere in its affairs. Thus more and more there spread among the bishops a certain resignation, and smaller and smaller grew the number of those who devotedly troubled themselves over the restoration of religious life. Furthermore, a peaceful development favorable to this was again and again placed in jeopardy by tedious struggles with the rebel tribal chiefs, such as King Garmul, which only came to an end under the Emperor Maurice.

 

In the face of the frequent encroachments of an often corrupt bureaucracy the African Church more than previously sought aid from the Roman Pope, but only men like Gregory the Great could occasionally secure remedies here. His correspondence with his Legate, Hilary, with some reliable bishops, and with the high State officials partly discloses serious abuses also in the higher clergy, which could only be regarded as signs of a progressively negative development. Tirelessly, Gregory sought to shake the bishops out of their lethargy, which showed itself especially in regard to the Donatists, who were becoming again very active in Numidia, since the Emperor Maurice had relaxed Justinian's strict decrees. The Synod under Dominic of Carthage in 594 at least decided to watch more zealously than before over the preservation of the purity of the faith, but it still had to threaten with deposition bishops who were all too negligent. Several synods of Numidia likewise worked for the localizing of the danger, but Donatism persisted until the Muslim conquest.

 

However, the resumption of missionary work among the pagan tribes in the frontier zones of the provinces represented a positive characteristic in the life of the African Church of this time. Here the Byzantine policy of securing the Empire's boundaries by the christianization of the population at the same time coincided with the Church's mission mandate. Already under Justinian the Moorish tribes in the south of the province of Tripolitana had been gained for Christianity. The year 569 brought the conversion of the Garamantes in the district of Fezzan in southwest Libya. And in the south of Byzacena Christianity found entry among the tribes in the oasis of Girba and in the southern slope of the Aures Mountains. In the extreme west of Mauretania Caesariensis numerous Christians lived under the rule of King Masuna, and their bishops took part in the synods at Carthage. Even Arabic authors attest that the Islamic troops in their conquest encountered many native tribes that professed Christianity. The representatives of this mission activity are unknown as individuals. However, the outcome of their efforts was not lasting, since the follow-up of the evangelization requiring years, which would have assured a conversion in depth, was missing. Under the burdens of the Muslim invasion that soon occurred, the new faith possessed only slight and easily paralyzed powers of resistance.

 

The scanty sources on the interior situation of North African Christianity begin to flow somewhat more abundantly in the first decades of the seventh century, when the Monothelite Controversy made an impact here too. With the wave of eastern Christians who fled to Africa before the Muslim conqueror c. 640 came also adherents of Monothelitism, whose propaganda was, of course, at first severely suppressed by the Exarch George with the approval of the Catholics. An opportunity for the African Church to reject the new theological doctrine just as decisively as once it had rejected the condemnation of the Three Chapters was the public dispute between Maximus Confessor and the former Patriarch Pyrrhus of Constantinople at Carthage in 645, in which Maximus overwhelmingly demonstrated the untenability of the Monothelite theology. The bishops informed Pope Theodore of their rejection of Monothelitism and at the same time asked him to induce the Patriarch Paul of Constantinople to the same view or to exclude him from ecclesiastical communion. They addressed a letter with the same content to the Emperor Constans II (641-668), and finally directly called upon the Patriarch to abandon the erroneous teaching at the beginning of 646. A delegation of African bishops took part in the Lateran Synod of 649, at which Pope Martin I solemnly rejected Monothelitism. With the episcopate of the other western countries the bishops of Africa adhered to Rome's verdict, which the Pope made known to all churches by an encyclical.

 

The Muslim Invasion and the Ruin of North African Christianity

 

The tedious theological confrontations, along with other reasons, had led in the population of the North African provinces to a new wave of hostility toward Byzantine rule. The Exarch Gregory used this situation for open rebellion against the central government, but he was soon involved in battle because of an advance of Arab troops to Sufetula in Byzacena, and in it he found death (647). The incident should have been the signal for the Byzantine government to put the North African provinces at once in a state of defense. When, two decades later, the Arabs again invaded the same province, they could without hindrance build the city of Kairawan as their religious and military center in North Africa; thereby a constant threat to Carthage and the rest of North Africa was created. Only when in 696 the Arabs under Hassan brought Carthage under their power did the Emperor Leontius send a fleet, which was at first able to relieve the city, but in the spring of 697 the Byzantines yielded without a battle rather than face another attack. In the next years, the Muslim troops broke the resistance of the Berber tribes in Numidia and Mauretania, and in 709 all of North Africa except for the bridgehead of Septem (Ceuta) was in their hands.32

 

Unfortunately there is no eyewitness report from a Christian pen which would directly inform in detail of the conduct of individual Christians as well as of Church leaders during the Islamic conquest and of the situation of Christianity in the following decades. One may certainly reckon with a considerable decline of the Christian population in the years of the subjugation, which was caused by the flight of many Christians to Italy and Gaul as well as by the death of many inhabitants in the severe battles for the possession of the cities, which were in the majority Christian. However, the remainder of the Christians were at first treated according to the usual practice of the conquerors, that is, the exercise of their religion was allowed on the payment of a tax and the renouncing of any propaganda for their faith. But c. 720 a heavy pressure began under the Caliph Omar II on the still Christian Berbers to convert to Islam, and most succumbed to it. Archeological investigation has been able, it is true, to bring to light a considerable number of Christian inscriptions and remains of Christian churches, which attest the continued existence of Christians in several places of North Africa long after the conquest. And reports of Arab writers and even letters from the papal chancery in the eleventh century testify to the continued life of at least small Christian groups up to this period. But these testimonies underscore ultimately the fact that North African Christianity,

differently from the Egyptian or Syrian under similar conditions, perished relatively fast as a large organized community. The question often raised as to the causes of this process can be answered only with reference to many factors.56 A cause reaching far back was produced with the split of African Christianity into a Catholic and a Donatist denomination, which reduced their interior strength more and more. A further weakening followed from the Vandal persecution with its crushing permanent effect, from which the Church never really recovered. The rapid apostasy of the christianized Berber tribes, finally, was very much the fault of the African Christians themselves, who in the fourth century did too little and thereafter carried out an intensive mission activity too late among this part of the population and thus could not achieve an existential conversion. The rest of western and eastern Christianity in its total tragedy scarcely noted the ruin of a Church which had produced figures such as Tertullian, Felicity and Perpetua, Cyprian, and Augustine. There were no voices that would have given authentic expression to the shock of this loss.

 

56 C. J. Speel, "The Disappearance of Christianity from North Africa in the Wake of the Rise of Islam," CH 29 (I960), 379-397, who especially strongly emphasizes the effects of the Vandal persecution.

 

Chapter 39

 

The Papacy between Byzantium and the German Kingdoms from Hilary (461-468) to Sergius 1(687-701)

 

The relative understanding with the Christian East, especially with Byzantium, reached under Pope Leo I, continued under his successor, Hilary (461-68),1 who as Legate at the Synod of Ephesus of 449 had become acquainted with the East from personal observation. But a new topic of future papal concern was already intimated during his reign: the relationship to the Arian Germans. Hilary had to live with the fact that an Arian community had established itself in Rome and with the help of the German military commander Ricimer built a church of its own, from which grew the Church of Santa Agata dei Goti.2 His program, announced at his accession, that he would strive especially for the unity of the episcopate, caused him to intervene repeatedly in the questions

 

Letters in A. Thiel, op. cit., 126-174.

 

See H. Grisar, Geschichte Roms und der Papste I, 88.

 

L 614

 

of jurisdiction among the Gallic and Spanish bishops, and in these cases he preferred to have his decisions reached at Roman synods.

 

The extant correspondence of Pope Simplicius (468-483) shows that the post-Chalcedon development in the East was beginning to claim the special attention of the Popes. There, under the Emperors Leo I (457-474) and Zeno (474-491), the nascent Monophysite movement succeeded in filling the sees of Alexandria (Timothy the Cat) and Anti- och (Peter the Fuller) with its own men, who enjoyed the special favor of the usurper Basiliscus (475-476). When the last-named, under their influence, condemned the creed of Chalcedon and the Epistola dogmatica of Pope Leo I in his Encyclion, and thereby intended to restore the Christological question to the position of Ephesus of 431, and when some 500 bishops, even though under pressure, assented to the edict, it was understood at Rome on what precarious ground the result gained with so much work at Chalcedon stood. In a series of letters Pope Simplicius implored the Emperor Zeno, restored to power in 476, and the Patriarch Acacius (471Ч489) to preserve the legacy of Chalcedon and to eliminate the people who were threatening it. The delaying tactics of Acacius, concerning whose failure to supply information the Pope repeatedly complained bitterly,5 led to a steadily growing mistrust on the part of Rome, especially when Constantinople elevated an open supporter of Timothy the Cat, Peter Mongus, to be Patriarch of Alexandria. This mistrust in Rome worked disastrously in regard to the Henoticon, composed by the Patriarch Acacius and issued by the Emperor in 482, which aimed to bring about a union of the factions by a compromise, avoiding an unambiguous acknowledgment of Chalcedon but expressly recognizing Cyril's anathemas. The Henoticon promptly obtained the consent of the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, who interpreted it in the Monophysite sense. The urgent warnings of the Pope against an obliteration of principle remained unheeded.

Since neither Emperor nor Patriarch even notified the Pope about the Henoticon, the far more self-conscious and energetic Felix II (483Ч492), in comparison to Simplicius, decided on crucial but momentous measures, especially since the abbot of the monastery of the Acemetae monks of Constantinople was complaining of Rome's hitherto hesitant attitude toward the Monophysite movement that was growing ever stronger. A papal embassy brought letters for the Emperor and the Patriarch, in which the latter was summoned to a Synod at Rome. When the papal legates were thereupon first imprisoned at Constantinople and then won over by bribes to accept the communion of Acacius and Peter Mongus, Felix II, in the setting of a Synod in July 484, had the Bishop of Constantinople solemnly deposed from his priestly office and any communion with him forbidden. In several letters to the clergy and people of Byzantium, to the monks of the city and its vicinity, but especially to Acacius and the Emperor himself, the decree of the Synod was made known and justified in sharp expressions. The chief reason for the condemnation of the Patriarch was, in Rome's view, the fact that he had again accepted the ecclesiastical communion of Peter Mongus, whom he had himself once condemned as a heretic, and whose condemnation he had also demanded of Rome. At Rome, despite Acacius's contrary assertions, people remained convinced that the Patriarch of Alexandria had never repudiated his rejection of Chalcedon, especially since his adherents in Rome confirmed this. Thus the Roman decision meant an open break between East and West, the Acacian Schism, which was deepened through the sharp and at times cutting instruction, never heard since the time of Ambrose, to the Emperor Zeno on the limits of imperial power vis-a-vis the Church: "The Emperor is a son of the Church, not a bishop of the Church. In matters of faith he must learn, not teach. ... By God's will the direction of the Church belongs to the bishops, not to the civil power. If this is a believer, then God intends it to be subject to the Church."

 

Pope Gelasius I (492-496)

The freedom of the Church from the tutelage of the State, here demanded, was also the primary goal of the activity of Pope Gelasius I (492-96), who as Felix II's deacon, had formulated the statements quoted. The erasing of the names of Acacius and Peter Mongus from the diptychs remained for Rome the conditio sine qua non for the restora

tion of unity: only thus, so it was thought, was a clear recognition of Chalcedon assured. This attitude was also maintained when Acacius's successor Fravitas, made known to the Pope the hope of an elimination of the schism, and also when the next Patriarch, Euphemius (490-495), held himself aloof from Peter Mongus, because the latter had demanded of Fravitas the rejection of the Council of Chalcedon and thereby had himself confirmed Rome's suspicion of his Monophysite connections. The reply of Gelasius I to Euphemius's notification of his election, which clearly aspired for peace and was not sparing in its praise of the Pope, was not only inflexible in the matter but even in form was a perplexing mixture of cold lack of courtesy and irony. The Pope utilized his first contact with the Emperor Anastasius I (491-518) for the presentation, more moderate in tone but portentous for the future in its content, of the task and rank of the two powers by which the world is ruled, the auctoritas sacrata pontificum and the regalis potestas. The competence of the latter is fully recognized for the secular sphere, and it also binds the bishops, but it remains subordinate to the former, so that the Emperor cannot direct the bishops, to whom res divinae are entrusted, according to his will, but is dependent on their judgment. Among the representatives of the spiritual authority, the occupant of that see is again preeminent whom the word of Christ placed ahead of all and whom the Church from time immemorial has recognized as its supreme head. The responsibility placed on this Apostolic See for the preservation of the purity of the faith has made necessary the exclusion of Acacius, since he maintained communion with those who rejected the creed of Chalcedon. Gelasius also staunchly defended these views in his letter to the episcopate of the provinces of Illyricum and Dar- dania, which were especially exposed to Greek counterpropaganda. He thereby definitively secured himself against the reproach made by the Greeks that basically the See of Rome did not care about the question of faith but about the condemning of persons through whom it felt itself injured. In reality, the theological question so deeply troubled the Pope that he gave an account of it in several treatises, some of them

quite detailed, especially in the work De duabus naturis, which went beyond Leo I's achievement, since it displayed a deeper knowledge of Greek theology and found more precise formulations, even if it could not define the exact relationship of nature and person. It must be admitted that Gelasius I understood that to a great degree he was responsible for preserving the heritage of Chalcedon from any falsification and depreciation, and since he saw it threatened also by the imperial power, he sharply pointed out the State's limits in relation to the Church. Unfortunately, he defended his view vis-a-vis Constantinople with a roughness that was bound to make the opponent obdurate rather than flexible.

 

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The opinion that the Pope's intransigent attitude is explained by the strong backing which the Ostrogothic power in Italy gave him against Byzantium finds no corroboration in the sources. Already as a deacon, Gelasius had defended this policy in respect to Constantinople, before Theodoric had firmly established himself in Italy, and as Pope he just as courageously warned the Gothic Count Teja not to interfere in ecclesiastical affairs, especially since he belonged to another denomination and his master, Theodoric, had recognized the autonomy of the Church. When he once enumerated examples for ecclesiastical opposition to State encroachments, he could with satisfaction refer to the fact that he himself had refused any obedience to the German King Odocer, when the latter demanded something unlawful from him. It is understandable that the Pope repeatedly turned to Theodoric from nonpoliti- cal motives, since the Gothic King had expressly guaranteed to respect the Catholic Church and especially the Roman See. If Gelasius's understanding of the primacy, as it is manifested in word and deed, is compared with that of Leo I, two important further developments become prominent: the obligation of the Roman Bishop to watch over the purity of doctrine was drawn more strongly into the foreground and maintained without compromise, and the freedom of the Church with respect to the highest representatives of the civil power was thought out anew and more deeply and formulated with a precision which defined the relations of the two powers to each other for the West for centuries, in a sense that strongly deviated from the understanding of the Byzantine imperial power.

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Because of this activity, another aspect in the total work of Gelasius I is occasionally unduly relegated to the backgroundЧhis extensive pastoral work. In the heavy afflictions which the Ostrogothic conquest meant for the population of Italy, he exerted himself tirelessly for the alleviation of every misery. From Theodoric's mother, the Catholic Ereleuva, he asked support for his seeking of aid from the King. He repeatedly reminded the clergy that one-fourth of the revenues of a church must be used for the poor, that the bishops should maintain captives and strangers from their share, that a conscientious administration of Church property was a duty of the episcopal office. Concern for widows and orphans had to remain a constant aim of the clergy. He often protested the rather frequent violation in those disturbed times of the churches' right of asylum. An irrevocable presupposition for the pastoral mission of the Church was seen by Gelasius to be a zealous, conscientious clergy; in a comprehensive decretal he assembled guidelines for the selection of recruits, for their formation, for the active care of souls, for the building, endowing, and dedicating of churches. True, the Pope had far more to blame than to praise in his clergy, but he still had a sympathetic heart for their problems and needs; full of concern, he inquired after the state of health of a sick bishop, warmly interceded for a priest whom some wanted to deprive of his position after an accident, and threatened to report to the King an official who disregarded the rights of his clergy. Just as little did the Pope put up with a diminution of the rights of the lower clergy and of the laity by the bishops; when, during the election of a bishop, the bishops wanted to make the decision on the candidate among themselves, he decisively insisted that the clergy of all parishes and the entire community should take part in the election.

Liturgical activity did not occupy the lowest rung in the pastoral work of Gelasius I. He may be regarded as the compiler of the old Roman Kyrie-Litany, the Deprecado Gelasii, which was probably introduced in connection with an adaptation of the Universal Prayer, related to it in content, in the Mass liturgy. Finally eighteen Mass formularies preserved in the Sacramentarium Leonianum go back to him. They are all in the context of Gelasius's struggle against the spring festival of the Lupercalia on 15 February, still attractive to many Romans in his day even if no longer understood in its pagan meaning; he took a stand against it in his comprehensive "Open Letter."

 

Under Pope Anastasius II (496-98) a change in the relations between Rome and Byzantium seemed to be in progress, since he delegated an embassy to the East to carry notification of his election to the Emperor. In a letter, very humble in form, the Pope expressed his regret over the existing separation and unambiguously recognized the validity of the ordinations and baptisms performed by Acacius, but he still did not see himself in a position to confirm his orthodoxy by placing his name in the diptychs. In another place he even candidly expressed his satisfaction that the Church of Thessalonica had assented to the verdict of Gelasius I on Acacius. Anastasius defended himself against the charge that the Apostolic See, for which he claimed the primacy of the Universal Church, had acted in the condemnation of the Bishop of Constantinople not out of concern for the faith but out of arrogance. The early death of the Pope prevented further discussion.

 

The split in the Roman congregation over the question of what attitude to maintain toward Byzantium led to a double election and hence to the Laurentian Schism, which for years crippled the activity of the Roman See. After hearing the bitterly feuding factions at Ravenna, King Theodoric first decided against the pro-Byzantine priest Lawrence for Symmachus (498-514), in whose favor the earlier time of his ordination and the greater number of adherents also spoke. At a Roman Synod in 499 Symmachus tried to prevent a repetition of such occurrences by a unique decree on the papal election, which aimed to assure to the reigning Pope a sort of right of designation of his successor and hence in practice excluded the collaboration of the community in the election of the Pope. Although Lawrence signed the synodal decrees and then assumed the see of Nocera, the pro-Byzantine senatorial faction continued its opposition to Symmachus and accused him to Theodoric of serious moral lapses, squandering of Church property, and disregard of the date of Easter, whereupon the King ordered an investigation of the accusations by a synod and appointed a visitor for the Roman Church until a clarification of the affair had been made. Despite repeated admonitions from Theodoric and pressure from the senatorial majority, the Synod, which met from early summer to late autumn 502, could not decide on a formal judicial process against Symmachus because people were of the opinion that the occupant of the Roman See cannot be judged by his subordinates. Finally, it reached the uniquely formulated decree that a verdict in this case must be left to God, that Symmachus himself should be regarded as immune from judgment and able freely to celebrate the liturgy in all churches. But this outcome only hardened the resistance of the opposition, which brought Lawrence back to Rome and, in addition to the papal residence of the Lateran, was able to put him in possession also of most of the Roman titular churches, whereas Symmachus was restricted to Saint Peter's. The continuing disturbances in the city were accompanied by serious literary feuding, in which Ennodius, then still a deacon at Milan, and Avitus of Vienne intervened and in the course of which the so-called Symmachan Forgeries were launched, whose aim it was to prove by the example of alleged cases from the history of the papacy the principle that the first episcopal see cannot be subjected to any courtЧPrima sedes a nemine iudicatur, Not until the fall of 506, when Theodoric had to take into account the growing political tensions with Byzantium, did he decide, pointedly and definitively, for Symmachus, to whom he had all the churches of Rome given back, and thus caused the end of the schism, especially since the opposing faction soon lost its head through the death of Lawrence, whom Symmachus had excommunicated.

 

How very much this victory increased the Pope's self-consciousness in regard to Constantinople appears from his answer to a letter of the Emperor Anastasius, who saw himself betrayed by the Roman Senate and in his anger reviled the "illegally ordained" Pope as a Manichaean. Symmachus paid him back with equally gross coin, accused the Emperor of favoring every heresy, and branded him as a persecutor of the orthodox and a despiser of the Roman See. Also a letter, probably composed by Ennodius by command of the Pope, to the Illyrian episcopate is characterized by a like intransigence toward Constantinople; the gulf was not to be bridged under this Pope.

 

In the West Symmachus showed a special interest in the Church of Gaul. He not only restored the old vicariate rights of Aries in their full extent, but extended its jurisdiction even to the Spanish sees. A hitherto unusual distinction of a bishop was the granting of the pallium to Caesarius of Aries. The conversion of the Arian Burgundian Prince Sigismund of Geneva to CatholicismЧhe appeared also at Rome as a pilgrim Чthe first case of a change of denomination on the part of a German king, seems however not to have been clear in its significance to the Pope, any more than a Roman reaction to the baptism of the Frankish King Clovis can be perceived.

 

Pope Hormisdas (514-523)

 

For Pope Hormisdas (514-523), previously the trusted collaborator and the successor of Symmachus, reconciliation with the East was also a duty of the first rank, but he undertook its solution with much greater caution, flexibility, and genuine readiness for peace. In this he was favored by certain factors of the inner political development in the East, such as the growing discontent of the population of the capital with the pro-Monophysite policies of the reign and the revolt of the general Vitalian in 513-15, which forced the Emperor Anastasius at least temporarily to greater indulgence. To two letters from the Emperor, which invited Hormisdas to a Synod at Heracleia, the Pope replied with the sending of a carefully briefed delegation under the leadership of Ennodius of Pavia in August 515, which explained in Constantinople the Roman minimum conditions for a restoration of peace: recognition of the Council of Chalcedon and of the pertinent writings of Pope Leo by the Emperor and the bishops of the East; condemnation of Nestorius, Eutyches, and their adherents, including Acacius; signing of a libellus, the Formula Hormisdae, and treatment of the cases of the deposed or exiled bishops before a papal tribunal. In addition, detailed instructions were given to the papal embassy for the conduct of the negotiations. But the entire enterprise ended in failure, since the Emperor, after an abatement of the inner political difficulties, was not prepared to accept the Roman demands, especially the condemnation of Acacius. The same fate befell a second attempt of the Pope in 517, who this time had given to his legates a series of letters and propaganda writings for the Patriarch, the bishops of the East, and the clergy and people of the capital. Pope and Emperor maintained their basic positions, and in a crude letter Anastasius declared that further negotiations were meaningless, since he "was unable to accept any commands" from Rome. Only the change on the throne in 518, which placed the Byzantine religious policy in the hands of the Emperor Justin I (518-527), a pro-Chalcedonian, and of his nephew and successor, Justinian I (527- 565), brought a fundamental change. Since both men at once asserted their readiness for peace and asked for the sending of an embassy or, if possible, for the personal presence of the Pope, Hormisdas gave his legates the draft for a conclusion of peace, already worked out for Anastasius, in addition to letters to Justin, the imperial nephew, the Patriarch John, and other highly placed personalities of the capital; in these the glad and certain expectation of the restoration of Church unity was emphatically expressed. Immediately after the arrival of the delegation some bishops in the Balkan Peninsula accepted the libellus of Hormisdas and hence confirmed the Roman optimism. Surprisingly quickly, the legates were able to furnish the Pope with a detailed report of the union consummated on 28 March 519, when the Patriarch after initial hesitations signed the libellus amid the acclamations of clergy and people. An enthusiasm of joy and gratitude over the ending of the thirty-five-year-old schism runs through the letters on both sides, exchanged on this occasion; the Pope stressed with praise the share of the Emperor in the arrangement of the union, but also admonished him to be active for the full restoration of unity in Antioch and Alexandria. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the "Gloria in excelsis

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Deo" in the letters of thanks and congratulations from Pope Hormisdas to the Emperor Justin. Of course, if the value of the achievement is gauged only on the criterion of the permanence of the success, then, with a view to the new difficulties soon to emerge, one would be inclined to speak of Rome's pyrrhic victory. But such an evaluation is not appropriate to the basically religious motives by which the papacy was guided in its exertions to guarantee the Christological propositions of Chalcedon. One needs only to ask what would have become of these if the papacy had left alone without resistance the changing interests of the imperial policies of the Byzantine Empire.

 

Resistance to the restored unity came, as was to be expected, principally from Egypt, from where the exiled Severus of Antioch tried to sabotage it, and from the Metropolitan Dorotheus of Thessalonica, whose deprivation of office the Pope was unable to effect with the Emperor. A totally unnecessary threat to the peace was presented also by the so-called Theopaschite Controversy, which proceeded from a group of Scythian monks. They demanded the solemn recognition of the formula "One of the Trinity suffered in the flesh," because by it the Council of Chalcedon was really protected against any Nestorian interpretation. Neither the papal legates at Constantinople nor Hormisdas at Rome saw the necessity of the formula, correct in itself, and rejected it as inopportune, since the statements of Leo I and of the Council of 451 did not require such an interpretive addition, which would perhaps occasion new discussions.

 

Despite all his involvement in the question of union, Pope Hormisdas sought to maintain close contact with the Western Church, as his correspondence with the Spanish Bishops John of Ilici, Sallust of Seville, the bishops of the province of Baetica, and the entire Spanish episcopate makes clear. He informed them, among other things, of the end of the Acacian Schism, gave guidelines in regard to the discipline of the clergy, inculcated the holding of annual synods, and confirmed and defined the sphere of the Vicariate of Seville, always guided by the effort to keep awake and deepen the awareness of a living connection of the Spanish Church with Rome, even under the rule of the Visigoths. His correspondence with Avitus of Vienne and Caesarius of Aries, with the reports on the status and progress of the negotiations for union with the East, aimed to stimulate interest in the fate of the Universal Church.

 

Hormisdas's successor, John I (523-26), opened the series of those strikingly brief pontificates, whose holders were necessarily caught up in the struggle which the mortally threatened Ostrogothic Kingdom had to wage against the superior Byzantine power. These Popes were partly not spiritually and morally, partly not even physically equal to the burdens connected with this struggle, and so the papacy of these years had to endure an unmistakable loss of authority. The descent began in the last years of the reign of King Theodoric, who, through the turning of the Burgundian Sigismund and of the Vandal King Hilderic in 523 to the Byzantine Emperor, was thrown into a political isolation, which caused him to end his hitherto tolerant attitude toward the Catholics of Italy. In his suspicions, he had the Patrician Albinus, his minister Bo- ethius (524), and the latter's father-in-law, Symmachus, leader of the Senate, executed, one after the other, because of alleged conspiracy with East Rome or the abetting of high treason. When he learned that the Emperor Justin was applying the laws on heresy against the Arians of the Eastern Empire and turning over their churches to the Catholics, and that many Arians embraced their faith under pressure, he demanded of the Pope a shameful mission: John I, by a personal intervention with the East Roman Emperor, was to demand the repeal of these measures. The Pope, of course, even before his departure from Ravenna, refused to ask for a return of converted Arians to their former denomination. The humiliation imposed on him could not be offset by the manifold honors bestowed on the papal guestЧthe Emperor accorded him the adoratio proper in itself only to the imperial majesty, and at the Easter liturgy in 526 had the imperial crown placed on his head by the Pope instead of, as usual, by his Patriarch; they only increased the suspicion of the King, who after the Pope's return kept him at Ravenna because of the nonimplementation of his chief demand, and there he quickly died. This treatment made John I a martyr in the eyes of the Roman Catholics, while only a few generations later legend made the Arian Ostrogothic King the melancholy persecutor of Catholics and had him, like Arius, the founder of his denomination, die a ghastly death, fancifully described.

 

In an effort to assure a man of his confidence in the Roman See, Theodoric contrived the elevation of the deacon Felix III (526-530) as Pope, but the King's death soon after, in August 526, did not allow a collaboration of any duration. Felix Ill's intervention in the final phase of the controversy over grace became of importance when he supported Caesarius of Aries in the warding off of Semipelagian tendencies, a help which the Gallic bishop used effectively at the Synod of Orange. Since the opposition between pro-Gothic and pro-Byzantine factions continued even in the Roman clergy, Felix III sought to counter a possible double election after his death by the designation of the Archdeacon Boniface as his successor. His intention was supported by a decree of the Senate, which forbade any agitation about an election during the lifetime of a Pope.

 

Nevertheless, after Felix's death a majority of the clergy decided on the pro-Byzantine former Alexandrian deacon, Dioscorus, who however died after a few weeks, and so Boniface II (530-32) quickly obtained general acceptance. But when he too designated the deacon Vigilius as his successor, the clergy, with the cooperation of the Senate, compelled him to rescind this uncanonical decree, a procedure which did considerable damage to papal prestige. What possibilities of conflict between Rome and Byzantium were also offered from now on in the Balkans was shown by the case of the Metropolitan Stephen of Larissa, who was deposed by the Patriarch of Constantinople, although his see belonged to the Vicariate of Thessalonica; his appeal to Pope Boniface became the subject of discussion at a Roman Synod.

After a vacancy of three months, during which the papacy again lost respect because of the quarrel over the succession, in accord with the wish of the Ostrogothic King Athalaric the priest Mercury was elected Bishop of RomeЧhe called himself John II (533-35), the first example of a change of name by a Pope. He let himself be won by the Emperor Justinian I for the acceptance of the Theopaschite Formula, by which the latter intended to strengthen his policy of union in regard to the Monophysites. In this connection Justinian had, it is true, praised the doctrinal authority of the Roman Bishop in high-sounding words, but it became clear here that he would on occasion stress them for his own religious and political goals, an attitude which could easily bring the papacy into serious conflict or into unworthy dependence on the Byzantine imperial office.

 

Pope Agapitus I (535-36) showed himself to be equal to this danger to a certain extent: like John I a few years previously, he likewise had to make the journey to the Byzantine imperial court at the command of an Ostrogothic king, Theodahad, in an effort to induce Justinian to halt the already far developed preparations of East Rome for the liberation of Italy from Gothic rule. While the Emperor, who again did not fail in external reverence for the Pope, brusquely rejected Theodahad's request, he showed himself to be surprisingly accessible in the ecclesiastical-political sphere. When, in spite of all pressure, Agapitus stubbornly refused to accept the communion of the Patriarch Anthimus, transferred from Trebizond to the see of Constantinople, friendly to the Monophysites, and a favorite of the Empress Theodora, Justinian abruptly abandoned Anthimus and put in his place the former priest Menas, who even had himself ordained by the Roman Pope. Emperor and Patriarch again professed the Formula of Hormisdas, and Justinian also confirmed the verdict of a synod which came out against Anthimus, Severus of Antioch, and their adherents, even though Pope Agapitus had died at Constantinople, following a brief illness, a few weeks after the elevation of Menas. The sudden death of this strongly principled man, also very receptive to theological scholarship, introduced the most serious crisis of the papacy in the sixth century.

 

After the news of his death had arrived, Silverius (536-37), a son of Hormisdas, was quickly made Pope by Theodahad. The struggle between the Byzantines and the Ostrogoths for the possession of the City of Rome and the intrigues of the deacon Vigilius, who had counted on his own election, were to be fatal to the new Pope. Even though on his advice the Romans had surrendered the city without a struggle to the Byzantine general Belisarius, the Pope was accused of high treason, deposed in a disgraceful manner, and banished to Lycia. At the command of Belisarius, who was probably following a directive of the Empress Theodora, Vigilius (537-555) was elected his successor. True, Justinian had Silverius brought back to Italy for a new investigation, but

Vigilius had him relegated by Belisarius to the island of Ponza, where he died the same year, 537.71 Vigilius believed he was now at the secure goal of his desires.72 For the methods he used to achieve it he was to do penance with a humiliation such as had hitherto befallen no Pope.

 

In 543 the Emperor Justinian had by decree condemned the so-called Three Chapters and now he sought to end the resistance of the West to this edict precisely by having it signed by the Roman Pope, whom he curtly summoned to Constantinople for this very purpose. The tragedy during the eight years of the Pope's stay at East Rome has been told in Chapter 25: on the one side the figure of the authoritarian Basileus, who in opposition to the previous order disposed tyrannically of the doctrine and faith of the Church and played a repulsively cruel game with Vig- ilius's spiritual misery; on the other side, the equally depressing figure of the Pope, who, weak in character, changed his opinion with the lengthy pressure from the Emperor and entered into a secret, compromising agreement with him, and who ultimately lacked the courage to give the witness to which his office obliged him. In all this he should have been able to appeal for a clear, decisive attitude to the extensive support of the western episcopate, but instead he had to accept from it a stormy protest, which culminated in his excommunication by an African episcopal synod.73 Spiritually and morally broken, Vigilius died at Syracuse on the return journey to Rome.

 

The mortgage left by him heavily burdened the pontificate of his successor, Pelagius I (556-561),74 selected by Justinian. True, as papal apocrisiarius in Byzantium, he had first called upon his master to resist the Emperor's demands and had come out against them in a work of his own,75 but then he had accepted the verdict of the Synod of 553 against the Three Chapters. Only painfully and with slight success could he overcome the enormous suspicion which he encountered everywhere in the West. In Tuscany several bishops refused to mention his name in the Eucharist, the Metropolitans of Aquileia and Milan renounced communion with him, in Gaul people disseminated his work in defense of the Three Chapters and spitefully compared it with his later attitude.

 

On the deposition of Silverius, see P. Hildebrand, HJ 42 (1922), 213-249; O. Berto- lini: ASRomana 47 (1924), 325ft; and E. Stein, II, 386f.

 

His letters and decrees: PL 69, 15-178, supplemented by E. Schwartz; Vigilius's letters: 5AAI (1940), 2, 1-15, and ACO IV, II, 138-168. On the whole matter, L. Duchesne, L'Eglise au VIeSteele (Paris 1925), 151-218; P. Batiffoi, Cathedra Petri (Paris (1938), 286-314; and Seppelt, II, 270-290.

 

Victor of Tunnuna, Chron. ad a. 550 (2, 202, Mommsen). Also Facundus of Her- miane, Pro defensione trium capit. II, 6, blames the Pope.

 

Caspar, II, 286-305.

 

In defensione trium capitulorum, ed. R. Devreesse (Rome 1932), then PL, Suppl. 4,

 

1284-1369.

 

Again and again the Pope stressed his loyalty to Chalcedon and the doctrinal writings of Pope Leo I, to his predecessors John II and Agapitus I, and even sent a solemn profession of faith to the Frankish King Childebert. He was able gradually to overcome the opposition of the Romans by means of his grand-scale concern for the poor, the renovation of churches looted during the disturbances of the war, the reorganization of the administration of the papal patrimonies, and, not least, through his exertions on behalf of recruits for the clergy.

 

Only his successor, John III (561-574), was able to diminish the schism in Upper Italy when in 572 he gained the Bishop of Milan. But the ecclesiastical province of Aquileia again refused any union. In his pontificate occurred the invasion of Italy by the Arian Lombards in 568, whose pitiless warfare extensively limited the activity of his immediate successors, Benedict I (575-79) and Pelagius II (579-590). The appeals for help to Constantinople remained without an echo worthy of mention, since in the East people were tied down by the Persian war. But at that time Pelagius II saw in the Frankish Kingdom a possible support for the papacy, since he designated its kings as the helpers of Rome and Italy appointed by God, a concept which would be realized a century and a half later. Under Pelagius II occurred the first conflict with the Byzantine Church over the title of "Ecumenical Patriarch," which the Pope came upon as a designation for the Bishop of Constantinople in the acts of the Synod of 587.

 

Pope Gregory the Great (590-604)

 

With the great-grandson of Felix III there succeeded to the See of Rome a man who again so unmistakably represented the papal office by the uniqueness of his religious and priestly personality that to posterity he long appeared as the ideal figure of the papacy by which its later representatives more and more had to be measured. He came of a senatorial family and had risen in the civil service to be head of the city administration of Rome; after that he lived in the Roman monastery of Sant' Andrea al Monte Celio which he had founded, until he was ordained a deacon in 579.

Gregory saw the relationship of the papacy to the Byzantine imperial office and hence also the relationship of Church and State in fundamentally the same understanding as had his predecessors. For several years, until the end of 585, he had lived as papal apocrisiarius at the Byzantine court, and in his view the Basileus, even when he was so doubtful a character as the Emperor Phocas (602-610), remained in principle the supreme head of the Christian Imperium, called by God, and even the Pope could treat with him only in the established forms of court etiquette. If in regard to the Lombards Gregory regarded as necessary a different attitude from that of the Emperor Maurice (582-602), this was not an indication or a result of a basically new orientation of papal policy, but an insight gained from Italy's bitter, concrete situation and based in the final analysis on pastoral considerations. Since the Exarch of Ravenna was militarily not the equal of the Lombards, their pressure on the people and Church of Italy could be relieved only by the concluding of peace with them, and this again was only assured if there was success in gaining them for the Catholic confession.

 

It was also principally pastoral motives which caused Gregory's important correspondence with the Merovingian rulers, without whose consent and cooperation a change in the Frankish clergy, especially in the episcopate extensively infected by simony, could not be achieved. And so he had proposed an "eternal peace" between Franks and Byzantines, because in his eyes it was the precondition for the restoration of health to religious life, especially in Italy. If Gregory also did not thus intend the Frankish alliance, de facto by these contacts with the Merovingian Kingdom he created the initial moves toward a development in the course of which the Byzantine protectorate would finally be exchanged for the German.

 

Gregory's rank in the history of the papacy is also not based on an especially striking defense of the Roman Primacy or on a profound theoretical justification of the primatial idea. Like his predecessor, he also protested against the title of "Ecumenical Patriarch" to John the Faster at Constantinople, because it seemed to him to place in jeopardy the preeminence of the Roman Church. But he lodged his protest in the form of an unofficial discussion and referred the Patriarch to the non- biblical character of this title, just as for himself he refused the title universalis episcopus. When his objection remained without effect, he did not for this reason permit matters to proceed to a break with the East, but, with recourse to a phrase of Augustine, he preferred in his letters the formula servus servorum Dei, which was later adopted by the papal chancery.

 

The real greatness of Gregory is based rather on his extensive pastoral activity, which made him one of the most important shepherds of souls among the Popes. Here must be mentioned charitable activity that shrank from no toil and no sacrifice; by means of it he sought to moderate the overwhelming misery of the people of Italy. Without hesitation he used for this purpose the patrimonial possessions of the Roman Church in Italy, Sicily, Dalmatia, and Provence, which, according to one of his most beautiful expressions, were "the property of the poor," and energetically reorganized the administration that had been shattered by the confusion of the interminable wars, so that a better yield would be forthcoming. He took the officials directly into the papal service, admonished them firmly to loyalty and justice, and especially protected the small farmers from exploitation. His warm-hearted care was directed especially to the socially weak, the orphans, the ashamed poor, those suddenly fallen into distress through misfortune. This aspect of his work, apart from the grateful devotion of the people, brought to Gregory a degree of esteem in the public life of Italy which elevated him far above the highest ranking official of the country, the Exarch of Ravenna.

Gregory devoted a great deal of time and energy to the improvement of the clergy, who everywhere, especially in the Frankish Kingdom, had sunk to a low level. For them he composed in his Regula Pastoralis an impressive mirror for shepherds, to which he added the happy motto: ars est artium regimen animarum. For centuries this was the book for the pastors of the West to the same degree that the Regula Benedicti was to become so for western monasticism. In addition to the duty of daily self-examination, he especially inculcated in the clergy responsibility for the orthodox proclamation of the faith. Preaching was to take place during the celebration of the Eucharist and especially should explain the gospel of the day. Gregory's forty extant Homilies on the Gospels supply an instructive glimpse into his special manner of preaching. They renounce any rhetorical accessories and aim to touch the heart of the faithful in their intentionally simple style and to impress themselves on the memory with their many examples taken from life.

The former monk Gregory gave, even as Pope, a preferred place in his thought and works to monasticism, provided effective aid for monasteries that had fallen into distress, and sought in every way to support and renew monastic discipline. He addressed himself to monks in his most voluminous work, the Moralia in Job,Щ originating in talks which he later retouched. Here and in the twenty-two Homilies on Ezekiel, which likewise presupposed a preponderantly monastic body of readers, Gregory set down his thoughts on Christian ethics, piety, and striving for perfection, gained from an allegorical exegesis of Scripture, which he preferred. What to today's reader seems a defect, precisely allegory, the breadth of the presentation, the numerous digressions, was regarded in another age as praiseworthy excellence and gained a deep-reaching aftereffect for these works in the medieval monasteries and, especially because of their content, in the moral theology of this period. In addition to Scripture, Gregory's personal piety was nourished on that of his favorite author, Augustine, even if for the reproduction of his thought at the end of the sixth century the same linguistic possibilities of expression were no longer at his disposal. By his innermost inclination totally devoted to contemplatio, like his model he did not refuse himself to service for his fellowman in and outside the Church. Although Gregory was deeply affected by the idea that an aging world was moving to an end soon, this conviction did not for a moment cripple his activity, which besides he had to wring from a usually sickly body. Rather, this eschatological tension impelled him to the undertaking which sprang from his initiative and was most pregnant in consequences both for Church history and universal history, the evangelization of the Anglo-Saxons. As no Pope before him, he understood the work of the mission as the first-ranking duty of the supreme head of the Church and in this connection he was the first Pope to consciously direct his gaze beyond the frontiers of the Imperium. His effort to gain the Lombards to Catholicism was partly determined by the severe distress of the Church in Italy itself, but in the Anglo-Saxon enterprise the biblical mission mandate operated in its original purity. (On the course and outcome of the Anglo-Saxon mission, see Chapter 37.)

 

Someone once designated Gregory as a "really little great man" and claimed that he did not deserve the nickname "the Great." Such a judgment was to a great extent determined by the lack of sympathy for the religious and moral qualities which were manifest in Gregory's pastoral work. The faithful of Italy and later of the other countries of Western Europe felt with a surer instinct that, besides diplomatic dexterity and authoritarian display, there was also greatness of heart, and for centuries willingly let itself be stamped by Gregory's religious world.

 

Popes of the Seventh Century

 

Gregory's immediate successors could not in their mostly brief pontificates maintain the papacy at the height reached by him. More than ever before, it fell into dependence on the Byzantine imperial office and into the tangled mesh of ecclesiastical politics, which operated especially ominously in the Monothelite quarrel. Only a few of its representatives are treated in what follows.

 

In the history of the City of Rome, Boniface IV (608-615) left his mark, for he obtained the Pantheon from the Emperor Phocas and consecrated it as the Church of Sancta Maria ad Marty res, and so in this way it has been preserved to the present. The Roman Synod of 610 saw the first Bishop of London, Mellitus, among its participants. The Schism of the Three Chapters, not yet liquidated in the ecclesiastical provinces of Milan and Aquileia, evoked new discussions when the Lombard King Agilulf patronized it and the monk Columban of the monastery of Bobbio let himself be induced by him to intervene in the quarrel. In a long letter he exhorted the Pope with Irish verbosity and very audacious formulations to that watchfulness in which, despite his name, Pope Vigilius had been deficient.

 

The pupil of Gregory the Great, Pope Honorius I (62 5-63 8), sought to carry out his office in the spirit of his model, with whom he shared a care for a correct adminstration of the Roman Patrimony and zeal for the winning of the Lombards. He had a partial success in his exertions to liquidate the schism in Upper Italy, since he contrived to fill

 

1 nu LAX1XN LflUIVLIl UN 1 JVM1"N Ol X iwn XV mu u/iixi^i mii/iy^ mwu^

 

the metropolis of Grado with a bishop loyal to Rome. Honorius also showed great interest in the progress of the Anglo-Saxon mission and granted the pallium to the Metropolitans of Canterbury and York. But his stand in the Monothelite controversy had a disastrous effect: with it he created the assumptions for the origin of the "Question of Honorius," so much discussed at the First Vatican Council. When the Patriarch Sergius I of Constantinople reported in 634 on the divisions in this matter within the Eastern Church and proposed to him, in the interest of an elimination of the quarrel, that henceforth there be no further talk of one or two energies but only of one will in Christ, Honorius to a great extent followed this proposal, without seriously examining its theological significance and without considering the opposing view of, for example, the Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem. In this regard he commended the avoidance of the manner of speaking of one energy and professed "one will of the Lord Jesus Christ," but, of course, he stressed that in this question he intended to follow the plain faith of the Bible and rejected whatever in new formulas could become a scandal especially for the unlearned in the Church. The historic context of these expressionsЧapproval of a suggestion of the Patriarch of Constantinople, who had not requested a decision of faith universally binding, inadequate examination of the theological problemЧlets it appear as highly doubtful that here Honorius intended to render a decision ex cathedra in today's meaning. The "Question of Honorius" received its real importance rather from the fact that the Sixth General Council of 680-81 believed it should and must condemn the Roman Pope as a heretic because of his expressions and that Pope Leo II (682-83) confirmed the decrees of the Council and hence its verdict on Honorius, even if he tried to soften it by the hint that the Pope, through his negligent conduct in this question, had become an abettor of heresy.

 

iHtS PAPAL! DEI WEEIN DIZAIN HUM AJMU 1 Ht litJKMAJN KlINlilJUMS

 

How difficult it was to get free of entanglement with the imperial religious policy was to be learned, after the unsuccessful efforts of Pope Theodore I (642-49), especially by Pope Martin I (649-653/655),100 who as a former apocrisiarius had a good knowledge of the theological dispute and of the personalities involved in the discussion. Without awaiting the imperial confirmation of his election, he had himself ordained and convoked a Synod to the Lateran for October 649, at which he had Monothelitism, its leading representatives, and their writings condemned, and had the verdict circulated to the Universal Church.101 The Emperor Constans II (641-668), to whom the Pope had sent the synodal acts with the request that he assent to the anathema,102 intended to enforce his will in Italy, and, after a first failure, had the Pope arrested by his Exarch in June 653 and brought to Constantinople. Here he was condemned to death, not because of his rejection of Monothelitism, but for alleged high treason, then reprieved with relegation to Cherson in the Crimea, where after a few months he died of physical and spiritual exhaustion in September 655.103 What oppressed Martin most of all was the total silence of the Roman clergy, who as early as August 654, only too submissive to the imperial will, had elected as his successor Pope Eugene I (654-57).104

 

Only under Pope Agatho (678-681) was reconciliation between Rome and Byzantium possible, when he acceded to the request of Constantine IV Pogonatus (668-685) and, following preliminary preparations by the Lateran Synod of 680, sent a delegation to a "conference" at Constantinople, which became the Sixth General Council. At the fourth session the Pope's dogmatic letter was approved and in the concluding decree on the faith Monothelitism was definitively repudiated.105 However, under the last Pope of this century, Sergius I (687-701) new tensions resulted, when the Emperor Justinian II (685-695 and 705-711) summoned a Synod at ConstantinopleЧ Trullan II or Quinisext of 692Чat which, without the participation of the West, under the almost exclusive use of eastern sources of canon law, 102 canons106 of a predominantly disciplinary character were issued, but Latin customs such as fasting on Saturdays or priestly celibacy were sharply rejected. When Pope Sergius decisively refused the assent demanded by the Emperor to these synodal decrees, it was intended

 

Margin I's letters: PL 87, 119-204; Mansi 10, 785-1188.

 

On the acts of the Synod: E. Caspar, ZKG 51 (1932), 75-135.

 

Martin I, Ep. 3.

 

An eyewitness report on the course of the trial in PL 129, 591-604; Martin's description of his arrest and journey to Constantinople in Ep. I4f.

 

Martin I, Ep. 16 and 17.

 

Acts of the Synod: Mansi 11, 19-920; definition of the faith also in D 289.

 

Mansi 11, 921-1006; see Hefele-heelercq 3, 560-581.

that he, like Pope Martin earlier, should be made agreeable after a forcible kidnapping to Constantinople, but the plan foundered on the resistance of the militias of Rome, Ravenna, and the Pentapolis.107 The aborted action revealed unmistakably the current limits of imperial power on Italian soil and definitively introduced the process of the political and ecclesiastical separation of the West from the East.

 

107 Duchesne, LP 372f.

 

Chapter 40 The Ecclesiastical Organization and the Clergy

 

Papal Vicariates

 

Spain. Pope Simplicius (468-483) was the first to confer special full authority on a Spanish bishop, namely Zeno of Seville. Zeno, because of his particular merits, was to take care, in place of the Roman See and with its authority in Spain, that the decrees enacted by the Holy Fathers were not violated. Pope Felix 11(483-492), Simplicius's successor, wrote in the same vein to the same Zeno of Seville. Thirty years later Pope Hormisdas renewed the full authority of the Bishop of Seville, who was now Sallust. However, this letter apparently contains a restriction: the power of vicar is valid only for the provinces of Baetica and Lusitania, hence for southern and southwestern Spain, no longer for central Spain or for the north and northwest. Likewise, in regard to content the authority which Sallust obtained from Pope Hormisdas was not so great: the privileges of the metropolitans were not to be infringed. The papal vicar was to be concerned chiefly for the observances of ecclesiastical tradition and, if necessary, summon synods. It seems also that this conferring of the privileges on Bishop Sallust of Seville did not proceed motu proprio on the Pope's part, but was demanded by a letter from the bishops of the province of Baetica, who showed themselves to be alarmed by the fact that Pope Hormisdas had granted special powers to Bishop John of Ilici. John had gone to Rome in 517 and on the one hand had informed the Pope of the situation in Spain and on the other hand had received from him the commission to send there a libellus on the question of Acacius for the bishops to sign and to make known rules of conduct in regard to ecclesiastical community with people coming from the East. Of course, full authority comparable to that of the Bishop of Seville was not bestowed on the Bishop of Ilici, which lay about 100 kilometers north of Cartagena, to whose ecclesiastical province it belonged. John was only to press for the maintenance of the ecclesiastical canons and the papal decretals, especially of those of Hormisdas himself, in addition to making known the important canonical cases (causae ecclesiasticae) to the Pope. Whether the Bishop of Ilici, relying on this papal letter, came forth with special authority is unknown. Likewise, nothing more is known of disciplinary measures of the Papal Vicar of Seville. The sole testimonies are the papal letters themselves. Hence it is perhaps advisable not to speak of "vicariates" in the general sense, but merely to regard the bishops personally charged in each case as extraordinary envoys for very specific functions. Each individual Pope appointed them for the duration of his pontificate only, in the expectation that their zeal would be enhanced by the granting of the "vicarship." From the conversion of the Visigoths under King Recared in 586, the basis for a vicariate in Spain was eliminated. The Church felt itself to be safe under the protection of the King and flatly declined the care of the far distant Pope. Gregory the Great seems already to have perceived this; in any event, he sent the pallium to his friend, Bishop Leander of Seville, as a purely personal distinction, even if he also appealed to tradition and made it known to King Recared. But this was not at all the granting of a vicarship.

 

Arles. We know more about the Vicariate of Aries, which went back to Pope Zasimus (417-18), and was confirmed by Leo the Great, than about the papal vicariates in Spain. Leo's successor, Pope Hilary (461-68), expected from the Archbishop of Aries reports from time to time on all important ecclesiastical events and problems and scolded him if such information arrived from elsewhere. The Bishop of Aries was to hold synods and issue letters of recommendation for traveling Gallic ecclesiastics. But Aries did not thereby gain precedence in southern Gaul; there persisted the old rivalry between Aries and Vienne, which possessed in Avitus a bishop towering far above the entire Gallic episcopate. Indeed, at the end of the fifth century there was an interlude in favor of Vienne. Pope Anastasius, whose letter is lost, gave Avitus of Vienne the right to ordain bishops in some churches which had hitherto belonged to the metropolitan territory of Aries. In 500 Pope Symmachus confirmed the rights of the Bishop of Aries, because Anastasius had acted against tradition. In the next year Symmachus appeased the Metropolitan of Vienne: he was to suffer no loss if he could supply documents from which the legality of the decision of Anastasius should be made clear. Only in 513 did Pope Symmachus definitively confirm the precedence of Aries, and that even though Avitus of Vienne a decade earlier had converted Sigismund, son of the Burgundian King, to Catholic Christianity, and the latter had turned up in Rome as the first royal pilgrim from a German kingdom. Symmachus not only again took up the old tradition: Caesarius, the Archbishop of Aries, on his visit to Rome, had personally taken care to ask for new papal decrees for questions which had long ago been in reality canoni- cally regulated. Thus the Pope granted him the right, as the first western bishop, to wear the pallium. In the next year Caesarius was expressly made Vicar for all the Gallic and Spanish provinces, but this probably only meant that Caesarius was to be competent for all provinces under the sovereignty of Theodoric of Ravenna, who at the time was ruler of Provence and exercised a guardianship over the Spanish Visigothic Kingdom. The far larger part of Gaul was then already in the possession, respectively, of the Franks or of the Burgundians now quickly losing importance. As Papal Vicar, Caesarius was to exercise the function of a supermetropolitan: he alone should issue letters of safe- conduct for all ecclesiastics traveling from Gaul, just as Pope Zosimus had decided, and Pope Hilary had renewed it. Thus Aries possessed a clear position of preeminence in southern Gaul, which would probably have devolved on this see even without the papal vicariate. True, there is mention already of special care in questions of faith, but Caesarius did not at all appear in the entire Semipelagian controversy as an ecclesiastical prince conscious of special authorization. Rather, he requested instructions from Rome and obtained them from Pope Felix III; besides, he even had the decrees of his synod confirmed by Pope Boniface II. In the dispute over the ecclesiastical penance of Bishop Contumeliosus of Riez Caesarius was expressly entrusted by Pope John II with the supervision of the vacant see, which should have been taken for granted in the case of a papal vicar. Furthermore, soon afterward Pope Agapitus I quite unnecessarily disavowed Caesarius in this same affair, blaming him for a too severe verdict, which Caesarius had not even issued. On the contrary, humble as ever, he had defended the verdict of Pope John II against all the Gallic bishops and had supported it with synodal excerpts. It is probably to be understood from the example of Caesarius and his relations with the various Popes that the vicariate authority had no firmly determined dimensions and hence the vicariate was not an element of the ecclesiastical structure; the vicar had merely to act ad nutum pontificis. This held good even when, for example, in the letter of Pope Pelagius I (556-561), it was stated that the Church of Aries possessed the primacy over Gaul and the vicarship of the Apostolic See. Pelagius himself by no means regarded Bishop Sapaudus of Aries as his vicar from the start but only held out to him the prospect of such an honor, if he solicited it and especially stood up for the Roman Church. He only obtained the dignity in the next letter. Moreover, it meant a great deal to Pelagius to bind Sapaudus especially to him, although he seems to have been rather tardy; he was to dispel all doubts remaining in Gaul about the personal orthodoxy of the Pope, who even before his election had recognized the Fifth Council of 553, which he had originally combated. Sapaudus, however, seems to have accomplished nothing; in fact he even had to endure that the Frankish King Childebert summoned him before the court of a subordinate bishop, Чwhich represented a clear contempt of his dignity as Primate and his vicariate, but at the same time made known that there could be no future for a papal vicariate of Aries in the Frankish Kingdom, especially since it apparently never played a role in the care of souls and the inner life of the Church. Later Gregory the Great seems not to have taken this omen into consideration.

 

Especially deserving of being stressed is the fact that with Pope Vig- ilius (537-555), the predecessor of Pelagius, a new element became noticeable in the granting of the vicarship. He obtained the assent of the Emperor Justinian before he agreed in 545 to the request of Aux- anius of Aries, presented in 543, and transmitted special synodal jurisdiction to him, with the exception of causae maiores. In the next year Vigilius even joined the conceding of the dignity of vicar to Aurelian of Aries with the commission to work for a good understanding between their Byzantine majesties, Justinian and Theodora, and the Frankish King Childebert. Hence the papal vicar at Aries was expected to contribute to the political and military encirclement of the Ostrogothic King Totila in Italy. It is not known whether Aurelian undertook anything in this regard successfully.

 

In the following years the relations between Rome and Aries seem not to have been especially close; in any event, Gregory the Great had to have the Metropolitan of Aries warned by another Gallic bishop to send on to Rome the revenues which his predecessor had drawn from the patrimonies of the Roman Church but had withheld. But it must not be concluded from this that there was a deterioration of the relationship between Gregory and Virgil of Aries, who had been named as vicar the year before; for the reason why Gregory turned to Protasius of Aix lay merely in this, that under Virgil's predecessor Protasius had been the administrator of the property of the Church of Aries.

 

The clearest and most comprehensive account of the papal vicariate for Aries comes from Gregory the Great in his three letters to Virgil, the bishops in Childebert's kingdom, and Childebert himself. Virgil was to represent the Pope in Childebert's entire Kingdom; without his permission no bishop could undertake a journey of some distance; he was to decide questions of faith with a Commission of Twelve of the bishops. Only when a question could not be decided should it be submitted to the Pope, whereas hitherto in principle all causae maiores had been reserved to the Pope. The bishops were admonished zealously to obey the invitatiops to synods, to be expected from Virgil. Childebert, who had supported Virgil's request for the grant of the dignity of vicar, was called upon to give him all assistance so that the abuses that were prevalent in the Church of Gaul, namely simony and the premature ordination of laymen, could be eliminated. One would expect success for this far-reaching project of Gregory, pushed with such effort. But, despite the great authority given him, his vicar acquired no important influence. Aries lay too much on the outer fringes of the Frankish Kingdom and had been incorporated into it too late. In the course of the sixth century the Bishop of Lyon obtained greater importance in the Frankish Kingdom; he was even referred to as Patriarch by the Synod of Macon in 585. Of course, at Macon there were only the bishops of the kingdom of King Guntram, hence from Burgundy-Orleans, but they represented, nevertheless, six ecclesiastical provinces. At the great synods of the seventh centuryЧParis in 614, Clichy in 627, Chalon in 650Чthe Bishop of Lyon presided unchallenged. The vicariate of Aries came to an end at the moment when it should have obtained its greatest authority. In 613 Boniface IV granted the pallium to Bishop Florian of Aries still only as a personal distinction, after Gregory had been prepared to give it also to Bishop Syagrius of Autun, not only, of course, because the Frankish Queen Brunhildis intervened for him, but also because he seems to have been deserving due to the mission to England.

 

Gregory the Great had himself probably understood that he could not adequately assert his influence by means of his vicar at Aries in the Frankish Kingdom. So he tried, through Abbot Cyriacus, whom he sent to Gaul, and the Priest Candidus, whom he had appointed steward of the Roman patrimonies in Gaul, to influence the Church in the Frankish Kingdom and to remedy its abuses through a synod, which should meet under the presidency of Syagrius. But the new men likewise disillusioned him; neither the synod nor the reform of the Frankish Church took place!

Thessalonica. After the civil dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Thrace had been subordinated to the ecclesiastical supremacy of New Rome by canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Western Illyricum was left under the supremacy of the sole Patriarch who could claim it, namely, the Bishop of Rome. True, a part of Western Illyricum belonged to the eastern half of the Empire, but through the delimiting of a sphere for Constantinople, it could, from Rome's viewpoint, appear less urgent to have a man of confidence in Illyricum than at the end of the fourth century, when precisely the Western Emperor had relinquished these provinces to the Eastern Empire and an ecclesiastical orientation of these sees to the East was to be feared. Thus the papal vicariate of Thessalonica apparently fell into oblivion in Rome itself c. 500 and was again brought to mind there only through the appeal of Bishop Stephen of Larissa, who had been deposed at Constantinople and hence had turned to Rome for help. At the Roman Synod of 53141 the representatives of the Metropolitan of Larissa, two of his suffragans, submitted twenty-seven documents, all of which referred to the vicariate function of the Bishop of Thessalonica. Pope Agapitus had them examined for their authenticity by means of the Roman register. It is striking that Pope Agapitus now did not call upon the Metropolitan of Thessalonica to become involved in this affair or censure him for not bringing Stephen of Larissa's case before him and having it decided in the name of the Roman See. Nothing of the sort was also intended on the part of the Illyrian petitioner. The reference to the vicariate function, conferred repeatedly on Thessalonica, served only to emphasize the competence of the Bishop of Rome, and not of that of Constantinople, for Illyricum. In this connection people were probably aware that on the one hand the Illyrian bishops were inclined to appeal to Constantinople, that is, apparently to the Emperor, not so often to the Patriarch, and on the other hand in Constantinopolitan circles appeals to the Roman See were very badly received.

 

But this Roman Synod of 531 did not involve, as might have been expected, a renewal of the papal vicariate of Thessalonica. Instead, the Emperor Justinian was soon busy; in 535 he raised his native city, under the name of Justiniana Prima, to the rank of an ecclesiastical supermet- ropolitan and assigned to it as its sphere of jurisdiction provinces for which Thessalonica had hitherto been competent. The assent of the Pope was not obtained nor was the papal vicariate of Thessalonica at all mentioned.42 Law 131 of the year 545 then gave the definitive version of the Novel of 535. In it there is at least a reference to an agreement with Pope Vigilius, which however did not mean much, since the Pope probably merely had to acquiesce. To the city of Justiniana Prima was now granted the position of Rome's vicar for the provinces definitely assigned to it. In all this, then, there was no question of a papal authorization of the Bishop of Justiniana Prima but of an elevation in rank of this city by imperial decree, for which a canonical status familiar in Rome,

 

Mans/ VIII, 739ff-; cf. Caspar, op. cit. II, 207f.

 

Caspar, op. cit. II, 209.

 

/LAl.

 

that of a vicariate, served well. This occurred at the same time to the prejudice of Thessalonica, whose area of influence was diminished. But neither the Bishop of Justiniana Prima nor that of Thessalonica seems to have exercised the power of a vicariate by a Roman mandate in the sixth century. Only Gregory the Great in one of his letters referred to the vicariate position of the Bishop of Justiniana Prima. He scolded Bishop John, because in a legal quarrel with Bishop Adrian of Thebes occasione vicium nostrarum he had dared to commit a wrong. True, judicial competence had been entrusted to John by the Emperor at Constantinople, but he had had a deacon turned over to the secular power and tortured. Gregory the Great examined the acts of the trial that were submitted to him and himself handed down a decision; hence he also did not bring in the Bishop of Thessalonica. He was apparently content with the transfer of the dignity to Justiniana Prima, for he bestowed it on the successor of the Bishop John whom he had blamed, who was also named John: Pallium ... ex more transmisimus et vices vos apostolicae sedis agere iterata innovatione decernimus. But not much authority is here discernible. John is admonished to be a good shepherd and to guard himself especially against simoniacal ordinations. Gregory apparently did not intend to be active in the Balkans by means of the Bishop of Justiniana Prima. On another occasion he addressed the metropolitans of Illyricum without distinction of rank or dignity. It was more in accord with his policy to intervene even in the Balkans through his stewards, assigning to them duties of supervision and representation even in jurisdictional questions. Thus the subdeacon Antoninus received instructions to arrange a canonical episcopal election in Salona, that is, to prevent a simoniacal election and completely to rehabilitate the Archdeacon Honoratus of Salona.

 

Gregory the Great was generally inclined now also to entrust with tasks of ecclesiastical discipline the rectores of the Roman patrimonies, whom he himself had appointed, in order to assure to his Church the necessary revenuesЧthe local episcopate, which was earlier responsible for the administration of the goods, was really negligent in the transmission of the produce. The very first letter of Gregory that has come down to us speaks of the subdeacon Peter, who was to administer the Roman patrimonies in Sicily and in addition obtained the authority of a vicar with allusion to earlier models. If by these are meant the vicariates of Aries and Thessalonica, it is still clear that, as the papal stewards were appointed entirely ad nutum pontificis, so the vicariates were only to be thus understood and did not represent structural elements in the Church. In any case, in Church history they had as little future as the many new vicariates which Gregory conceded. In North Africa, in Britain, in Ireland, there were never papal vicariates. In Africa the position of the Primate of Carthage on the one hand and the exertions for independence on the other hand were so strong that there was a situation there similar to that of Spain in the seventh century. Ireland probably lay too far on the fringe of Europe, and England was at first to be cared for from Gaul.

 

Parish Organization

 

It is true that the future parochial organization could first be discerned not only in the country but also in the city as early as the fourth century, and in the great cities such as Rome, Carthage, and Alexandria even earlier, but what is today understood by "parish," which possessed a certain autonomy even vis-a-vis the bishopric, was first found in the epoch to be surveyed here. Churches in the countryside are attested as early as the First Council of Toledo, which in 398 required in canon 5 that every cleric, if there was a church in his place of residence, should go there every day for the sacrificium. In this connection also the castella, vici (villages), and villae outside the cities were also mentioned as places where there were churches, and hence where the clerics should fulfill this duty. This prescription appeared, it is true, in number 63 of the collection of capitula of Bishop Martin of Braga in northwestern Spain c. 585 which states that clerics should come to the church morning and evening for the sacrifice of the psalmody, psallendi sacrificium, whereas participation in the celebration of Mass was required of all clerics only on Sundays (ibid., 64). The Council of Tarragona in 516 insisted on the daily celebration of Vespers and Lauds in all churches, but in this matter priest and deacon might alternate weekly. Probably the First Council of Toledo did not intend to oblige every cleric to the daily celebration of the Eucharist in his church,53 but only imposed on clerics attendance at church as a duty of their state not attached to a locality. The synod attests that churches with regular worship were no longer anything unusual even in the countryside. But whether they were parish churches, hence whether the clergy had pastoral responsibility and authority for a definite territory is not clear. The ordinary worship might represent a free offering for the people living nearby or correspond to the desire of the founder54 or even occasionally have served for the veneration of relics. In any event at Epaon in Burgundy in 517 a synod forbade in canon 25 the depositing of the relics of saints in a church in which there was not at least one cleric who could see to the regular psalmody. The rural parishes were apparently, in any case in southern Gaul, erected not in just any nucleus of a settlement but in a place which represented, even in pre-Christian times, a religious center for the surrounding peasantry.55 Thus it becomes clear that the organization of the parish system in the country coincided with the evangelization of the country. Thus Martin of Tours, during his long episcopate, consolidated the christianization of the peasantry by the erecting of parishes. True, he himself founded only six, and his successors to the end of the fifth century founded only fourteen more parishes. Thus the see of Tours, which c. 500 still had the extent of a modern departement, included only about twenty parishes.56 Around the same time the bishop of Auxerre had the same number of churches in the country, of which eight were in vici and twelve in villae\ a century later there were thirty- sevenЧthirteen in vici and twenty-four in villae.57 In this regard not the entire area of the bishopric was divided into these pastoral centers, but they were responsible only for a smaller territory; the care of the rest of the territory was still directly incumbent on the bishop.

 

While the Council of Agde in 506 still expressly forbade priests in canon 44 to give blessings or penance to the faithful in the church, Isidore of Seville at the beginning of the seventh century saw it as precisely the duty of a priest to bless the people. Hence, in the mean-

 

Thus Fernandez Alonso, op. cit., 207.

 

Cf. Gregory the Great, Reg. Epp. IX, 71.

 

Seston, op. cit., 241-254.

 

Gregory of Tours, Hist. 10, 31; cf. E. Griffe, MD 36 (1953), 44.

 

Griffe, op. cit., 55.

time a decisive change must have occurred; the credit belongs to Caesarius of Aries, who it is true held the presidency at Agde, but at the time had had only a few years' pastoral experience. Twenty years later at the Synod of Carpentras in 527 he drew the canonical consequences from his experiences as bishop and established an administration of the property of the rural churches that was to a certain degree autonomous. Previously, the bishop received half the offerings in the cathedralЧthe rest of the clergy received the other halfЧand one-third of the offerings in the rural churches; their land and other property were on the whole administered by him. But now, in accord with the wish of Caesarius, the bishop could have recourse to the rural churches only when they were wealthy and his cathedral was in special need. The Synod of Vaison in 529, likewise presided over by Caesarius, expressly gave to the priests in the country the right of preaching, which at the same time meant the duty of preaching; if no priest was present, the deacon should at least read aloud the Lord's Prayer (canon 2). For Caesarius preaching was the chief means of the care of souls. True, Pope Celestine had reproached some South Gallic bishops for turning over the entire activity of preaching to their priests, but this seems to have referred to Masses in the episcopal church. But perhaps this papal admonition contributed to the fact that into the next century priests were regarded as unqualified to preach. Thus the decision of Caesarius of Aries was really a deeply effective measure and gave the rural clergy and hence the rural churches a real importance.

 

Caesarius wanted to go even further and oblige the rural priests to recruit their own successors, that is, first to educate young lectors, and in this he appealed to Italian customs which he had himself come to know on the occasion of his journey to Ravenna and Rome. He surely was also thinking of the example of the school in his own episcopal residence and in those of many of his educated colleagues. Thus here was the beginning of the parish school; indeed, it even appeared as a sort of seminary for priests. Caesarius himself seems not to have established any rural parishes; they were probably present in the territory of Aries in sufficient numbers. But the admonition to the pastors to be concerned for the young clergy seems to have been successful; in any event, his Vita (II, 20) reports that Caesarius miraculously cured an only eight-year-old cleric on one of his visitation journeys. Then in the

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course of the sixth century there arose parish schools in various places in Gaul, not only in the form of a boarding school, as Caesarius intended, but also for externs. But naturally these were to the advantage of the future clergy.

 

The requirement of canon 18 of the Synod of Merida in southern Spain in 666 went, it is true, in a similar direction, but it had a lesser impact. There the pastors were admonished, on the basis of the wealthy church property, which also included slaves, familia ecclesiae, to raise such church slaves in their house and to train them as lesser clericsЧ today they would be called altar boysЧand servants. It must not be assumed that they were regarded as recruits for the priesthood. Besides, it is not known how much success the canon had, so that one cannot infer from it the existence of parish schools in all Spain. It may be assumed that around the middle of the sixth century there were rural parishes in the entire Christian West, even if the network of the parochial organization became constantly thicker in the succeeding centuries. Even in the well documented districts of the Frankish Kingdom the number of parishes was then about five times smaller than today. Furthermore, the Arian Vandal Church in Africa seems to have known rural parishes as early as c. 500; in any case, the Vita of Fulgentius (chapters 6 and 7) reports on an Arian priest residing on a villa. We hear scarcely anything about Italy, apart from the reference in Caesarius. The reports on the Italianpievi (plebes) only begin in the eighth century.

 

The question of from when on parishes were also erected on villae cannot be easily answered. True, the First Council of Toledo in 400 presupposed churches in villae, and the First Council of Orange in 441 regulated the competence of the diocesan bishop for such churches; but precisely because the proprietors built these churches it seems to follow that it was not a question of parish churches. Many churches of villae became such only in the course of the sixth century; in every case they were such as early as 541, when a Synod of Orleans (canons 26 and 33) demanded adequate endowment for them and at the same time their subordination to the bishop. The first builders of "proprietary churches" seem to have been bishops, who in this way intended to care for the people of a villa belonging to their cathedral. They also regarded themselves as justified in such care if the villa lay in the territory of another bishop. Great proprietors from the lay state seem then to have followed this example of the bishops. In any event, canon 9 of the First Council of Orange in 441 let it be presumed, when it required that the

 

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dedication and the entire administration of such a church was reserved to the bishop who was responsible for this territory and not to the builder-bishop, and a fortiori it did not pertain to a bishop invited at pleasure. If by this was meant also the administration of the property, then the wish of this synod was not universally implemented. In any case, the Second Council of Braga in northwestern Spain in 572 had to complain in canon 6 that churches were partly built simply for the purpose of making money, since the builder left one-half of the contributions received to the clerics appointed there and reserved the other half for himself. Since in preceding canons the Council had taken measures against the avarice of bishops, the suspicion is obvious that the censured erecting of churches for mere purposes of gain must be traced back to the bishops. The Seventh Council of Toledo in 646 still had to defend parish priests against the greed of the bishops in canon 4. But synods had to deal much more frequently with proprietary churches in order to insist that they and especially the clergy serving them were under the direction of the diocesan bishop or of his archdeacon respectively. Such admonitions were directed to the clergy of the proprietary church67 or also to the proprietors.68

 

The parish organization spread slowly from South to North. It gradually established itself in England, for example, in the eighth century.69 In Thuringia, Hesse, and Bavaria, on the other hand, it seems to have existed even before the arrival of Boniface. In any event, he encountered rural priests, whom he could only regard as half-pagan, as heretical, and as immoral (letters 68 and 91), and from this it must be inferred that a certain decay had already set in.

 

It needs to be observed also that, parallel to the increase in the number of churches in the country, the privileges of parish churches were stressed. True, the Synod of Agde in 506 recognized the justification of oratories and Masses in the country propter fatigationem familiae, and hence to spare long journeys to the serfs: at Easter, Christmas, Epiphany, Ascension, Pentecost, and the Birth of John the Baptist, however, the celebration of Mass should take place only in the cities (cathedrals) and parish churches; the clerics of the oratories had to come there, unless the bishop made an exception. Four years later, in 511, this demand appeared at Orleans in canon 25, on the one hand restricted to the three high feasts of Easter, Christmas, and Pentecost, and on the other hand it affected only the townsmen, not the clerics. Probably the liturgy was celebrated also on these feasts for the serfs. Hence in central

 

67 Orleans 541, can. 26.

 

88 Lerida 546, can. 3; Toledo 633, can. 33; Chalon 650, can. 14. 69 Wallace-Hadrill, Settimane, . . . VII, 545.

 

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Gaul people were more generous than in the South. In the Kingdom of Burgundy again the adult townsmen were admonished to seek out some bishop in the city at Easter and Christmas in order to receive his blessing. This prescription had, of course, nothing to do with the parochial principle. Instead, this was all the more clearly expressed then in 535 at the Auvergne Synod in canon 15, in which the rule of Agde was renewed, whereby all "canonical" ecclesiastics not in the parishes were to assemble around the bishop; the adult townsmen were to do the same. Hence Mass was to be celebrated in parish churches on these feasts, but not in private oratories. Finally, canon 3 of the Council of Orleans in 541 decreed that the first citizens must not celebrate Easter outside the city; if one did so without having expressly obtained the bishop's permission, he should be refused communion on this feast. Hence the Eucharistie celebration was also presupposed in the villae on these great feasts.

 

After the middle of the sixth century such instructions disappeared. Apparently people had to come to terms with the fact that all high feasts were celebrated in the private churches; in addition, the number of parishes in the country, that is, also in the villae, grew considerably. Thus the Council of Lyon of 583 in canon 5 limited itself to inculcating in the bishops themselves that they celebrate in their own churches on Easter and Christmas, unless they were prevented by a royal mandate. And almost a century later, in 673, the Council of Saint-Jean de Losne in Burgundy in canon 8 again imposed this duty exactly. Behind all these decrees stands, of course, the self-evident assumption that the bishop or parish priest or the priest of an oratory respectively only celebrated once daily and that there were sufficient clergy. A totally different development occurred in Visigothic Spain. Although some churches were rich in land and serfs, others possessed nothing, so that the support of an ecclesiastic was not assured and several churches had to be assigned to one priest. But then he was obliged to celebrate on all Sundays in all his churches, and hence to celebrate several times.

Noteworthy in the history of the parish is the change of name: par- rochia originally denoted the urban congregation ruled by the bishop. Rural congregations were so named for the first time by Pope Zosimus in 417. At first such a community that depended on the bishop was

called diocesis, by which was expressed that the rural parish was an administrative unit of the local episcopal church. From the time of Sidonius Apollinaris at the end of the fifth century it became customary to use both expressions interchangeably. In the course of the sixth century the current distinction of name established itself with a few variations; this was true for the Merovingian Kingdom as well as for the sources available from Spain and Italy, notably Gregory's letters. Then universally from the seventh century the territory of one bishop was designated as diocesis, the individual congregation subordinate to him as parrochia. The episcopal church had, so to speak, given up its honorary name and become a unit of administration; the religious life was moved into the parishes for the majority of the faithful. The consequence of this was that the parishes no longer felt so intimately joined to one another, as was the case in the unity of the episcopal parrochia. The bishop lost a good part of his religious authority and tried to compensate elsewhere by relying on the feudal lords.74 Of course, the reason for this must not be sought only in the strengthening of the parishes but in this, that the originally annual visitation journey of bishops was disregarded by all parishes. The Council of Tarragona of 516 in canon 8 represented it as an ancient custom, which was no longer in use everywhere, so that churches could go to ruin without anyone caring about them. The Synod of Braga in 572 enacted an exact program for the visitation journey in canon 1, and the Fourth Synod of Toledo in 633 again imposed the duty of annual visitation in canon 36; in the latter case the bishop, if he was ill or hindered, could be represented by a priest. Hence it must be concluded that visitation journeys were probably made, but not with the necessary regularity. Equally or even more important for the union of bishop and parishes would have been the diocesan synods. The oldest whose acts are extant took place at Auxerre between 561 and 605. In Spain every pastor had to render an account to the diocesan synod, while the bishop reported on the results of the provincial synod.75 But all together these synods also seem not to have been very frequent, so that the estrangement between bishop and rural clergy could gain ground.

 

Clergy

 

Formation. The Gallic councils especially have much to say about the essential morals, the financial resources, and the rights of clerics, in particular the privilegium fori, but very little about their formation and education. Apart from Caesarius's initiative in regard to encouragement of recruits, there were occasional references at councils to the effect that lay persons who were to become priests or bishops must study ecclesiastical discipline for at least a year. In 524, in canon 2 of the Council of Aries, Caesarius stated as a reason for the ordination of laymen as bishops and priests the fast growing number of churches. Nevertheless there was surprise that it was Caesarius who brought forward this argument, although he himself seems not to have established any parish but had found sufficient churches. When the Synods of Orleans of 533 in canon 16 and Narbonne of 589 in canon 11 demanded that only one who could read and write might be ordained a deacon, this was a sign of a quite low level of education of clerics. The Diocesan Synod of Auxerre, which took place between 561 and 605, said in canon 44 that lay persons must not disregard the instruction and admonition on the part of the archpriest, that is, probably generally on the part of their pastor; but it may be asked how these clerics were in a position to provide instruction and admonition. The overwhelming majority of pastors in the sixth century must not have been equal to theological confrontations, even if they had behind them the ideal careerЧten years as lector, five years as subdeacon, fifteen years as deacon, twenty years as priestЧas for example, the priest Cato at Clermont, who for this reason thought himself qualified to succeed the deceased bishop, and hence probably correctly regarded himself as a very special person. But whoever had been a lector for ten years probably satisfied Caesarius's demand (Vita, I, 56) that every future deacon had to have read the entire Bible four times.

 

In Spain also conciliat legislation had to be concerned with the education of the clergy. Thus the Second Council of Toledo in 527 required in canon 1 that young lectors be trained in the bishop's house under a master and be introduced into the ecclesiastical sciences; at the same time Caesarius of Aries demanded that this be done not only on the level of the bishopric but, probably on a more modest scope, on the level of the parish. In canon 11 of Narbonne in 589 uneducated priests and deacons were obliged to learn to read and write. In canon 25 the Council of Toledo of 633 deplored the ignorance of some priests: it is the mother of all errors, and hence priests, that is, bishops, who should teach the people, must incessantly study and meditate on the Holy Scriptures and the canons. Knowledge of the canons was also demanded by the bishops in Gaul. The fact that in Gaul no complaints of synods over the ignorance of the priests are found probably does not prove that the clergy were generally better educated than in Spain. For if there were episcopal schools in some twenty episcopal cities of Gaul, it was the urban clergy who took advantage of them, hardly those in the country. The Spanish episcopal schools, which were the object of conciliar legislation, were, however, not the reason why there were bishops of outstanding literary merit in Spain; rather, they had obtained their education in monastic schools. So that the individual priest would not be left to his own devices in his parish, the Council of Toledo of 633 in canon 26 demanded that the bishop give him a sacramentarium or libellas officialis. In Gaul we hear nothing of such books, except of the one which Sidonius Apollinaris, that highly educated Bishop of Clermont, had compiled at the end of the fifth century, apparently only for his own use. But the clergy, even in Spain, should not be dependent on such books but know the entire psalter, the customary hymns and canticles, and the rite of baptism by heart.

Morality. The synods were even more concerned for the morals of clerics. In 583 it was decreed at Orleans in canon 30 that clerics from deacon upward must not engage in money-lending, which apparently was not generally forbidden for a Christian but only for clerics, who were supposed to separate themselves entirely from secular businesses. Thus at the Burgundian national Council of Epaon in 517 in canon 4 and at Macon in 585 in canon 13 the owning of hunting dogs and falcons was forbidden to them, as was participation in the hunt at Saint-Jean de Losne in Burgundy in 673. The Synod which met near Bordeaux in 662 forbade clerics in canon 1 to bear arms or wear extraordinary dress. Canon 1 of Narbonne in 589, which was at that time under Spanish Visigothic rule, similarly forbade clerics to wear purple dress. A few years earlier, at Macon in 581 in canon 1, it was enjoined on clerics to avoid secular dress entirely; of course, in none of these passages was it said how the ecclesiastical dress of clerics should look.

 

Clerics, more exactly priests and deacons, must not undertake a journey without a testimonial letter from their bishop; in any event, they must nowhere be admitted to sacramental communion. From the time of Pope Zosimus the Bishop of Aries was to issue the required passports for all clerics traveling out of Gaul. According to the view of the Council of Orleans in 533 in canon 9, priests must not even live together with so-called worldlings, unless the bishop has permitted this.

 

Celibacy. Celibacy occupied the most space in clerical legislation. The requirement of celibacy for the higher clerics was made as early as c. 300 at Elvira, but this Council seems to have had no influence on the further development. The demand for celibacy again appeared toward the end of the fourth century with Popes Damasus I and Siricius. Then in the fifth century Innocent I and Leo the Great referred to Siricius, and Leo extended the requirement of celibacy also to subdeacons. However, this did not mean that married men would no longer be admitted to the higher ranks of the clergy, but only that, before their ordination, they must promise not to live any longer with their wives in the conjugal state. On the part of the Popes, however, there had always been hesitations about the ordaining of a married man, especially if he had children. Thus Pope Pelagius I (556-561) only very reluctantly agreed to the candidacy of a married man for the episcopal see of Syracuse. For each case he demanded that a complete list of his private properties be supplied in order to make certain that at his death he would not bequeath to his children a part of the ecclesiastical property. Here must be recognized an important root of the legislation on celibacy, namely, concern for church property. Celibacy was the surest guarantee that ecclesiastical office-holders would have no heirs. Under Pelagius II (578-590), however, it became clear that in any case the subdeacons in Sicily for far more than a century had not carried out the requirement made by Leo the Great, and the corresponding instruction of the reigning Pope appeared to them as a novelty. Gregory the Great expressed himself very urgently on the matter and declared that married men who received the higher orders must not dismiss their wives but must live with them, from then on, in complete continence.89 In his Dialogues (4, 11) Gregory gave an example of how such continence was observed in an exemplary manner by a priest and his wife.

 

In Gaul people willingly accepted the new legislation from Rome. In its canon 21 the Council of Orange of 441 had already prescribed that for the future married men were to be ordained deacons only when they began an ascetic life, that is, took the vow of perfect chastity. This vow was also required of the wives of these clerics, so that, if, for example, the husband died, they for their part could not remarry.90 But not all married men could be ordained to the higher ranks of the clergy: one who had married a second time or had married a widow was just as much out of the question as was one who had done public penance, for this excluded one entirely from the clergy.91 The vow of perfect chastity, in which in Gaul was seen the most effective protection of celibacy, was required in Spain only about two centuries later, namely by the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633.92 In Gaul also the Roman motivation for celibacy was adopted, especially the exegesis of First Corinthians 7:5, in which Paul, really to limit overzealous asceticism and to guard his Corinthians against disillusionment, had instructed them to hold themselves aloof in order to devote themselves for a time especially to prayer. But now, after celibacy seemed required,93 this became the instruction: if lay people must live in continence so that their prayers may be heard, all the more then the priests and levites who constantly serve in God's presence and must pray for the people. Hence it is not surprising that almost all synods of the fifth and sixth centuries in Gaul imposed the obligation to continence on the higher clerics. In this connection it is interesting that the wife of the bishop was called episcopa and apparently occasionally played an important role in the administration of the see, for example, by undertaking the charitable activity.94 A bishop who had no episcopa seems, according to canon 14 of the Council of Tours of 567, to have clearly been an exception. He should have himself served by clerics; these should see to it that no woman came into the house. The same Council spoke of the wife of a priest, presbytera, and of the diaconissa and the subdiaconissa in canon 20; apparently they all occupied a worthy rank in Church and society, but could no longer live together with their men in the married state. But the decrees on penalties for transgressions of these prescrip-

 

s9Reg. Epp. I, 50; IX, 110.

 

Cf. Agde 506, can. 16; Orleans 511, can. 13- In Macon 585, can. 16, this was extended even to the wives of exorcists and acolytes.

 

Epaon 517, can. 2.

 

Cf. Gryson, op. cit., 190.

 

Ibid., 199.

 

Cf. Beck, 27.

tions were frequent, just as the synods quite often had to take care that clerics who were not married were reprimanded because of intercourse with women and issue regulations as to how the household of a priest should be managed. Only close female relatives might be in the house of a bishop or priest, such as the mother, sister, daughter, or other persons who could evoke no suspicion of any sort. For the rest, the archpriests should especially see to it that other members of the clergy should always be in their company, who could give testimony to their continence. In Spain canon 6 of the Council of Gerona of 517 expressed the desire that the higher clerics after their ordination should no longer live in a house with their wives, whom they had now to consider as their sisters; but this demand did not become law. After the conversion of the Arian Visigoths in 586 there resulted for the Spanish Catholic Church a special problem due to the conversion of certain Arian clergymen who had up to now been married and now also wanted to continue their marriage, after they had been accepted into the Catholic clergy following a special examination. But canon 5 of the Third Council of Toledo in 589 decreed that such ecclesiastics, if they insisted on their marriage, were to be degraded to the order of lector. The same Council proceeded especially severely against concubinage: the ecclesiastic should submit to canonical penalties, that is, be deposed and sent to a monastery, the woman should be sold as a slave and the price of the sale distributed among the poor (canon 5). The Fourth Council of Toledo in 633, which was entirely under the influence of Isidore of Seville, demanded in canon 27 that the priests and deacons of rural parishes take a solemn vow of chastity before their bishop; in 666 the same was required at Merida by the bishops in canon 4. The Eighth Council of Toledo in 653 was forced to deal with subdeacons who not only continued their marriage but also those who believed themselves justified in marrying again after the death of their wives. They cited as motive that at their ordination they had received no benedictio from the bishop, as was the case with priests and deacons. In canon 8 the Council decided that a benedictio should be inserted into the rite of ordination of subdeacons so that such an evasion could no longer be allowed. But two years later, in 655, the Ninth Council of Toledo in canon 10 had to state that the many decisions of the Fathers which were supposed to serve to restrict the licentiousness of clerics had had no impact up to now, and so it had recourse to the severest means: children born to a cleric, from subdeacon to bishop, after his ordination, were not to be entitled to inherit, in fact they were forever to be slaves of the church which the

 

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clergyman served. If the Eleventh Council of Toledo in 675 decreed excommunication and perpetual banishment for a bishop who was said to have seduced a relative of a secular lord, then it was certainly thinking of an individual case, and this was not an allusion to the general moral level of the Spanish episcopate.

 

Nevertheless it must be admitted that toward the end of the seventh century an intellectual and moral decline in the Spanish episcopate must be deplored, which went back to the strong involvement of Church and State with each other: the bishops belonged to the electoral body for the crown, and the King named all bishops. Also in Frankish Gaul the influence of the crown on the filling of episcopal sees had grown greatly in the sixth century.97 The consequence was that frequently laymen were ordained and simony flourished. The fact that in Gaul too the bishops became increasingly involved in politics in the seventh century must probably be attributed to this, that from the middle of the seventh century the parish system was established and the bishops had no further dynamic function within the Church.98 On the other hand, there was a reason for this in the deficient education of the episcopate. True, c. 575 Gallic bishops were pleased to be extolled by Venantius For- tunatus because of their stylistic skill, and at the Synod of Macon in 585 Bishop Praetextatus of Rouen received only scattered applause for his preaching, because it displayed no rhetorical art,99 so that an awareness of style may be assumed in a majority of the episcopate, but the complaints on the decline of education are general.100 Gregory the Great especially tried to obtain bishops from monastic circles, because they guaranteed a minimum in intellectual and moral formation. Still one must guard against too dark a picture. In any event, for the sixth century in southeastern Gaul east of the Rhone and south of Lyon, of 148 bishops thirty-four at least can be named who were venerated as saints.101 And when it is seen how decisively Gregory the Great proceeded against violation of duty,102 it cannot be assumed that the entire episcopate had become corrupt.103

 

Archpriest. With the completion of the parish organization, in any event in Gaul, the title of "archpriest," which hitherto had been reserved to a cleric of the episcopal church, came into wider use. These were now the archpriests appearing in the countrysideЧfor the sake of clarity they

 

Gregory of Tours, Hist. 3, 17; 4, 6; 4, 26.

 

H. F. Muller, L'epoque merovingienne (New York 1945), 93f.

 

Gregory of Tours, Hist. 8, 20.

 

Gregory of Tours, Hist., praef.; Gregory the Great, Regular pastoralis 1, Intro.

 

Beck, 40.

 

For example, Reg. Epp. Ill, 44, 45.

 

Giordano, op. cit., 8If.

 

were called "village archpriests," archipresbyteri vicani, in canon 20 of the Synod of Tours in 567. They were not, as later in the Carolingian age, competent for several parishes, but at times only for their own parish, but there they were responsible not only for the care of souls but also for the behavior of all the others of the parish clergy, to which, in addition to readers, singers, in any event in Merovingian Gaul, seem to have always belonged at least a deacon and a subdeacon. In many cases it seems that, besides the archpriest, there were still other priests in the parish. Since the number of rural pastors who bore the title of "archpriest" is very large, but still smaller than the number of pastors in general,104 it may be assumed that only those pastors did not bear the title of archpriest in whose parish there were no other priests.105

 

In Spain, on the other hand, there continued to be only one archpriest in each episcopal church. He, or the archdeacon, according to canon 7 of the Synod of Braga of 563, which of course applied only to Galicia, had the duty of administering the third of the ecclesiastical revenues which was destined for the purposes of worship. And canon 5 of the Synod of Merida of 666 decreed for all Spain that a bishop could be represented at a synod by his archpriest or another worthy priest but by no means by a deacon. Thus in Spain the archpriest appears alongside the archdeacon, in fact with a certain precedence. In Merovingian Gaul, on the contrary, the one archdeacon in each bishopric was placed over the many archpriests of the parishes, for lapses of the clergy were to be reported to him or to the bishop;106 in regard to jurisdiction he was the vicar of the bishop and during the vacancy of the see the ultimately responsible steward. Some Gallic councils apparently wanted to exalt the esteem of the archpriests: they should be deposed only with the consent of the other priests107 and only for a serious lapse;108 they were to take care that younger clerics were always with them to testify to their fidelity to celibacy.109

 

Two synods of the seventh century, that of Clichy of 626 in canon 21 and that of Saint-Jean de Losne in Burgundy of 673 in canon 9, forbade without qualification the giving of the office of archpriest to a layman; hence this custom had probably crept in. But in this regard it was not greed that was blamed, as might be suspected.110 There seems to have

 

E. Griffe, MD 36 (1953), 57.

 

Thus Sagmiiller, op. cit., 35-

 

For example, Auxerre 573/603, can. 20.

 

Tours 567, can. 7.

 

Council at an unknown place after 614, can. 11.

 

Tours 567, can. 20.

 

Of course, this motive cannot be excluded; canon 5 of the Synod of Chalon (between 647 and 653) finds fault that laymen (saeculares) had the property of a parish or the parish itself (apparently for the sake of the property) made over to them.

been another reason. The Council already mentioned, which took place at an unknown locality after 614, forbade the installing of a layman as archpriest by the bishop, unless the candidate exhibited special personal superiority and was alone in a position to defend the members of the parish. The archpriest was competent, in fact, not only for the care of souls and the supervision of the rest of the parochial clergy but also for the defense or representation respectively of the parish clergy in public. The diocesan Synod of Auxerre (between 561 and 605) decided in canon 43 that no judge must bring a cleric before his court without the consent of the bishop or of the archdeacon or at least of the competent archpriest. Apparently it became difficult to defend the parish clergy in this manner in the course of the seventh century in the framework of the decay of the Merovingian Kingdom and its organization. In any event, this may still have been possible for people who had secular esteem and secular power and who for this reason were appointed as archpriests by the bishops. Here would be a comparison with the function of monastic advocatus that would come into vogue later; but this providing of the archpriest from the lay state had no future.

 

Chapter 41 Liturgy, Care of Souls, Piety

 

Liturgy

 

The period between the pontificate of Leo the Great and the beginning of the eighth century brought the Roman Liturgy to full development and in many features to its definitive shape. The oldest extant collection of Mass prayers bears the name of Leo the Great; another, which reveals a later stage of development, is attributed in tradition to Pope Gelasius I (492-96), and a third, in which the liturgy appears substantially curtailed and more rigid, to Pope Gregory the Great (590-604).

The oldest of these sacramentarles must have originated through the combining of individual booklets, Mass libelli, which collected various Mass formulas for the same feast of the Lord or of a saint. These libelli themselves are probably to be explained by the fact that Roman priests who preserved them in the archives of the Lateran compiled Mass prayers recently drafted from time to time by individual Popes. The Leonine, better called simply the Veronese from its place of discovery, extends only from the months of April to December: the beginning seems to have been lost. In April are found forty-four Mass formulas for feasts of saints, grouped together with different numbers of prayers; for Christmas there are nine formularies, not all of which, it is true, are complete, but all contain a proper preface. One gets the impression that the compiler aimed to preserve every discoverable prayer of the Roman Liturgy, but occasionally there was a wrong classification. Thus we find in this sacramentary under the date of 2 August nine formularies for the old Roman feast of Pope Stephen I, killed in 258 in the Valerian Persecution and, under the indication of place, in cymeterio Callisti in via Appia, hence of the burial place of the third-century Popes, but all these formularies refer to the Protomartyr Stephen, who died in Jerusalem and whose feast was celebrated on 26 December from the time he was generally venerated in the West.2 In this connection, however, some of the formularies make known, through mention of the birth of Christ, that they were composed for the feast of this Stephen. Such a confusion would probably not have occurred to a Roman cleric.

 

The oldest extant manuscript of the sacramentary that is connected with Pope Gelasius comes not from Rome but from the Frankish Kingdom and is one of the many testimonies to the zeal with which Roman liturgical property was appropriated on purely private initiative in the Frankish Kingdom in the course of the seventh century. The Gelasian Masses are distinguished by this, that before the prayer over the gifts they provide two or three prayers which apparently are not optional, for then it is said: item alia, and hence one can infer more than merely two scriptural readings. In Gaul and Spain three readings were usual up to the adoption of the Roman liturgy.

 

The Gregorian Sacramentary is preserved substantially in two forms: first, as the so-called Hadrianum, which was sent to Charles the Great as a result of his request by Pope Hadrian I, but which must have been supplemented in the Frankish Kingdom, since the Sunday Masses were missing, and then the Paduense, named from the place of finding, which was likewise written in the Frankish Kingdom but reached Padua via Verona, where the Mass of Saint Zeno was added to it. In the Sacramen- tarium Gregorianum the modern reader to whom the liturgy from the period before the reform of Vatican II is familiar immediately feels at

 

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home. The Mass formularies generally contain only three prayers, occasionally another optional one; the prefaces are strictly abbreviated. Here obviously there was at work a man to whom what mattered were clarity, purity, and intelligibility. People are quite prepared to recognize here the work of the great Pope, who reorganized the Roman ecclesiastical system at the turn of the seventh century. Probably for the sake of easier use, the Mass formularies were put into a continuous series, whereas the Gelasianum were put in three books, first the Proprium de tempore, in the second book the Proprium de Sanctis, in the third book the Votive Masses. Of course, the transition to the Gregorianum does not always also represent a qualitative advance; that Pope Gregory in remodeling made old prayers shallow in some places seems to have already struck the Frankish compiler of the Gelasianum that has come down to us:5 in some places he did not take the more recent prayers, but followed the older and better form.6 While the Gelasianum still gives no Mass formularies for the Thursdays of Lent, such are found from the start in the Gregorianum-HadrianumЧthey were later added in the Paduense. But in fact, according to the information in the Liber Pon- tificalis, it was Pope Gregory II (715-731), who was also the first Pope officially to direct his energies to establishing the influence of the Roman Liturgy outside Rome, namely through Boniface in Bavaria, who ordered these Thursday Masses and had texts created for them. The Sacramentarium Gregorianum-Hadrianum can thus have achieved its definitive form not under Gregory I but at the earliest under Gregory II; this also follows from the presence of Gregory's feast on 12 March,7 before the revision of the liturgical calendars. Hence when it is claimed in the title of the book that this sacramentary was editum by Pope Saint Gregory, this only means that Gregory was the liturgical authority for the eighth century, probably because his creative liturgical activity was still best remembered, though probably with some exaggeration. A first redaction of the Gregorianum occurred probably as early as under Honorius (625-638).8 Especially characteristic, on the other hand again familiar to the modern person acquainted with the preconciliar liturgy, is the indication of the Roman churches in which Mass was celebrated, hence to which the Pope went on occasion, for example, on Christmas to Santa Maria Maggiore at night, to Santa Anas- tasia at dawn, to St. Peter's in the day. Hence it reveals the Gregorianum as clearly composed for the papal Mass, whereas the Gelasianum does

 

'ХCod. Vat. Regin. lat. 316. 8 C. Coebergh, ALW VII, 1 (1961), 56.

 

Sect. 30, nos. 137-139, ed. Deshusses.

 

Cf. Deshusses, 53.

 

CjLCi _ _____

 

not mention the stational churches but, for example, for the three Christmas Masses gives only the times of day, and so can thereby, among other things, be recognized as a Mass book for priests. Chavasse has discovered in it two strata, which he would like to explain by means of two Roman nonpapal liturgical centers, namely St. Peter's at the Vatican and St. Peter-in-Chains. But scholarship has not followed him in this absolutely. The two strata can probably be explained also by the assumption that two different priests coming to Rome, probably from the monastic state, must be regarded as responsible for the compilation. One of the two could have come from Campania, which would explain the actually very striking emphasis on Campanian saints in the Gelasianum without one's having to suppose a Campanian origin for greater portions of the Gelasianum. In every case also the Old GelasianumЧmany mixed forms later appeared in Italy and the Frank- ish kingdomЧseems not to have been a genuine Roman work. The mixture of feasts celebrated in the sixth century in still locally separated churches, that is, only in individual ones dedicated to saints, seems to exclude this. That Bishop Maximian of Ravenna was the author seems not yet to be adequately demonstrated. True, the Gelasianum goes back to the time before Gregory the Great, but it cannot have received the form in which it migrated from Rome into the Frankish kingdom before 628, when the Emperor Heraclius brought the holy cross back from Persia to Jerusalem, for we find there on 14 September the feast of the Triumph of the Cross, which commemorates the victory of Heraclius.

 

Some references to the form of celebration of Mass can be inferred from the sacramentaries, but they contain no liturgical rubrics. This gap is closed by the so-called Ordines Romani, which give, among other things, the external course of the Papal Mass (Ordo I), of the preparation for baptism (Ordo XI), the celebration of Holy Week (Ordo XXVII), the ordination of clerics from acolyte to bishop (Ordo XXXIV).

 

In Ordo I the solemn papal stational Mass is described, in which the entire celebration begins with the assembling of the Roman urban clergy at the Lateran Palace. It is stated from which of the seven regions of the city the clergy had to carry out the service in the papal Mass on the individual days of the week. In what order the clergy go to the stational church is also described; it is even decided in what manner someone coming down the road may present a petition to the Pope, the Apostolicus. On Easter Sunday, when the Pope goes to Santa Maria

Maggiore, there comes to meet him on the Via Merulana the notary of this region to make known to him the number of children baptized on the vigil at Santa Maria Maggiore. The Pope rides to the stational church, and some other high dignitaries accompany him likewise on horseback, while the majority of the clergy precede on foot. Naturally, with so numerous an entourage, the entry of the Pope into the stational church was a very solemn procession, and it is not surprising that during it the schola executed a chant, the introitus. The Pope was preceded by a subdeacon with the censer and seven acolytes with candlesticks. The Ordo prescribed exactly how at which parts of the Mass the candlesticks were to be placed in the altar area. After the introitus the schola sang the Kyrie eleison: then the Pope, standing at his chair that had been specially brought along (Ordo I, 23) turned to the people and intoned the Gloria, but then immediately turned back to the East or the apse respectively. For the Pax vobis he again faced the people, but once more turned to the East to say Oremus and the prayer. This rubric seems to presuppose the, for the most part, de facto not real orientation of all Roman churches, hence it can probably be recognized as a Frankish interpretation.

 

In regard to the direction in which the Pope prays there is also the important instruction (Ordo I, 87) that before the beginning of the preface the regionary subdeacons should station themselves opposite the Pope on the other side of the altarЧretro altare aspicientes ad pontificemЧso that they can give the responses to the Dominus vobiscum, Sursum corda, and Gratias agamus. Hence it must not be excluded, though it is also not self-evident, that the celebrating Pope faced the people on the other side of the altar.

Contact with the crowd of the faithful, at least with those of senatorial rank, was had by the celebrating Pope at the preparation of the gifts and the communion. Following the Dominus vobiscum and Oremus after the gospelЧthey apparently had long served no purpose (Ordo I, 63, 69)Ч the Pope, assisted on his right and his left by the first notary and the first defensor, went from his seat down to the nave in order to receive the gifts of the nobles (principes). He handed them to the regionary subdeacon and by the hands of the next subdeacon they arrived at the altar. At the same time that the Pope was receiving the gifts of bread, the archdeacon accepted the gifts of wine in little vessels and poured them into a larger chalice, which was then again poured into a larger vessel (ibid. 70). The gifts of bread and wine of the rest of the people were accepted by the bishop who performed the weekly service or the next deacon respectively (nos. 72 and 73). It is expressly stressed that the Pope also went to the women's side to accept their gifts. It is interesting that apparently all clerics taking part in the Mass brought gifts to the altar; even the Pope had his personal gifts of bread given to him by the archdeacon (nos. 74, 82, 83).

 

During the actual celebration of the Eucharist a paten and only one chalice with handles stood on the altar. Naturally the chalice did not suffice for the communion of the entire clergy and people. Furthermore, the Pope communicated, apparently for the sake of solemnity but hardly in accord with the meaning of the Eucharistie celebration, not at the altar but at the seat. While a deacon brought the apparently very large paten to the Pope seated on his cathedra, it should be noted that a piece of the Eucharistie bread remained on the altar so that during the celebration of Mass "the altar may not be without the sacrifice" (no. 105). After the communion of the Pope a small amount of wine from the consecrated chalice was poured into the large vessel containing unconsecrated wine, which the acolytes were holding. Then all clerics present communicated at the altar, during which the highest in rank of the celebrating bishops received the chalice from the hand of the archdeacon (no. 110). The consecrated wine still remaining after the communion of the clerics was likewise poured into the large vessel already mentioned. Then the Pope himself went down to the nave to give the consecrated bread to the faithful of senatorial rank. The archdeacon gave them the Precious Blood (no. 113), but apparently not from the chalice, which was in the meantime again put away (no. 112), but from the other vessel, which was filled from the large pitcher (nos. Ill, 115). The wine which the faithful received in communion was therefore consecrated by contact with the Precious Blood poured into it. This seems to have been a peculiar Roman usage. In Gaul from the start there were apparently two or three chalices on the altar in order to have sufficient consecrated wine at the disposal of the laity. But later Pope Gregory II found fault with this custom in his fourteenth letter to Boniface: Christ took one chalice and said, "This cup. . ." and so forth; hence it is not fitting to have two or three chalices on the altar.

 

For the distribution of communion also the Pope went to the women's side (Ordo I, 118) and returned to his seat for the final prayer. The external course of the celebration of Mass is strongly characterized by the two ceremonies of the kiss of peace, which was passed from clergy to people (no. 96), and the breaking of the Eucharistie bread, in which all priests present took part (no. 102). In order that no particles might be lost, the consecrated breads were first put into small bags (no. 101). The ceremony of the breaking of the bread was accompanied by the singing of the Agnus Dei, which according to Ordo I, 105, was sung by the schola, but according to Ordo XV, 53, by all. During this chant, the Pope dictated to a secretary the names of those who should be invited for this day to the noon meal with him or with his vicedominus. Then two clerics went down immediately to the nave and gave the invitation. Equally surprising is it to the modern reader that the archdeacon, with the Eucharistic chalice in his hand, announced where the next stational liturgy would take place (no. 108). The reason was perhaps that many left during the communion, so that this announcement could not be delayed until the end of Mass. It is also interesting that neither Ordo I nor Ordo XV attests a blessing at the end of Mass. Perhaps the deacon proclaimed Ite, missa est, but the Pope's last word was the concluding prayer, before which, furthermore, he did not direct the introductory Dominus vobiscum to the people, but said it toward the East or the apse respectively (no. 123). Of course, during the recessional the Pope blessed in order the bishops, priests, monks, schola, standard-bearers, candle-bearers, and sacristans (I, 126; similarly, Ordo XV, 65).

 

The description of the celebration of Mass in Ordo XV, it is true, lets the personnel appear less; but it is doubtful whether it is therefore to be regarded as older. It may for this reason deal with different degrees of solemnity. Both descriptions of Mass may probably belong to the seventh century, but then to its last years, for it was Pope Sergius I (687-701) who introduced the Agnus Dei, attested in both, into the Roman Liturgy. Ordo I especially shows a type of Mass so richly developed and at the same time so specific even in details and distributed among the different ranks of the clergy that probably Byzantine influence could rightly be responsible for it. More exactly, one may thirtk of the pontificate of Pope Vitalian (657-672), who disregarded the dogmatic tensions of the Monothelite controversy and thought of a compromise with Byzantium. The fact that the papal singers were later called Vitaliani lets one conclude that Vitalian entrusted the new chants to the Lateran school, one of the two scholae cantorum founded by Gregory the Great, while that at St. Peter's continued to cultivate the traditional Roman urban chants.

Thus there developed in the second half of the seventh century the new typically papal rite and chant, which differed from the old Roman considerably, but was only codified and recommended for dissemination in the West by Pope Gregory II (715-731).21 One reason for this conclusion is that the English Church, which had been founded from Rome and accordingly had extensively adopted the Roman Liturgy, toward the end of the seventh century regarded the establishing of new contacts with Rome as necessary. In any event, Benedict Biscop, who died in 689 as Abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow, went to Rome several times and each time brought back liturgical books. On the journey at the time of Pope Agatho (678-681), John, Abbot of the Roman monastery of St. Martin, who at the same time was archcantor at St. Peter's, came with him to England, where he trained many clerics and wrote books on ecclesiastical chant.22 All this seems to indicate that in the second half of the seventh century a decisive liturgical change was in progress at Rome.

 

But allusions to the changes of rite, which had taken place as early as the sixth century, can also be obtained from the sacramentaries. Thus the Mass formularies of the Gelasianum contain, after the prayer designated as post communionem, very frequently another prayer which is entitled ad populum. Also the formularies of the Leonianum regularly provide after the preface two prayers, the latter of which asks God's protection for the Christian people, believers, the household of God, and the like. Hence it seems that into the sixth century no blessing was spoken at the conclusion of Mass in Rome, but the prayer over the people. The Gregorianum contains in both its Hadrianic and its Paduan versions a prayer over the people only for the weekdays of Lent, as this was preserved up to our own day. Apparently in the course of the seventh century the episcopal blessing took the place of the prayer over the people as the conclusion of Mass at Rome.23 Since this form probably represented a certain solemnity, it seems not to have been employed for the Lenten weekdays. That in the sixth century no other type of final blessing besides the prayer over the people was known appears from the report of the arrest of Pope Vigilius by the Byzantine police. He was dragged away from Mass; the people followed him and demanded to receive the prayer from him. After he had given the prayer, the people responded Amen, and the ship sailed off with the Pope.24 Later a series of fifty-two blessings for various occasions was added to the Gregorianum-tladrianum in the Frankish kingdom. The difference which existed between the benedictio and the oratio super populum was

 

Id., SE 12 (1961), 484.

 

Bede, Hist. IV, 18; cf. Andrieu, Ordines II, 27f., and supra, p. 600.

 

Cf. Chavasse, Le sacramentaire Gelasien, 188f.

 

LP I, 297; cf. Chavasse, op. cit., 189.

 

not only that the oratio was very much more concise than the benedictio, but especially that the oratio addressed God, whereas the benedictio addressed the people and mentioned God in the third person.

 

The blessings were especially popular in the Gallican and Spanish liturgies, but there they had their place before the communion. This blessing was especially favored by Caesarius of Aries; canon 44 of the Synod of Agde in 506 expressly reserved this blessing to the bishop. Furthermore, it was enacted in canon 47 that no one must leave Mass without having received the bishop's blessing. It was probably endured as inevitable that then many left the church and only those who were to communicate remained. The fact that at Rome the place of the next stational liturgy was announced before the distribution of communion seems to indicate that there too similar habits prevailed. The episcopal benedictio offered pastors the opportunity to enter again into the mystery of the feast and give the faithful a reminder for the journey. At the same time one could display all one's rhetorical gifts. In any event, this blessing seems to have been extraordinarily popular in Gaul and Spain with episcopate and people: all together 2,093 different formulas of benediction have come down to us, and this, even though Pope Zachary in 751 in his letter to Boniface cited against such a peculiar Gallic custom very serious but probably not appropriate exegetical arguments and compared the Gauls, desirous of glory, with people who preach another gospel. The benedictio was without doubt one of the elements of the Gallic or Visigothic-Spanish liturgies respectively which proved them to be more strongly pastorally oriented and popular than the Roman Liturgy. Therefore it is to be welcomed that the solemn benedictio in the most recent liturgical reform has again come into honor, provided it is employed only pastorally and does not serve for inflexible solemnization.

 

The liturgical dress customary in Rome during this time was quite different from contemporary custom. Ordo Romanus I expressly testifies that at the end of the seventh century a distinction was made between the liturgical and the ordinary dress. In connection with Ordo 34,10, it is known that with the exception of the deacon, who was clothed in the dalmatic, all clerics from acolyte to the bishop, hence also the subdeacon and the priest, wore the planeta during the liturgy, but it was probably not like the Mass vestments of modern times, but must have been very long and wide, probably also of flimsy material, so that the acolytes could hold the sacred vessels or the gospel book with hands veiled in the planeta.

 

The liturgy in use in Gaul and Spain not only differed from the Roman as regards the already mentioned episcopal benedictio before communion, in which, of course, one should speak rather of a divergence of the Roman Liturgy from a probably extensively universal basic type. Reference has already been made to the fact that the three prayers at the beginning of the Mass in the Leonianum and in the Gelasianum seem to point to three readings at Rome also. Of course, it must be taken into account that a wider reading attested in Rome, as also the first prayer, did not belong to the stational liturgy but were spoken in the church of the collecta, from which people marched to the stational church. The churches of Gaul and Spain in any case preferred three readings; regularly one from the Old Testament, one from the epistles, and one from the gospel. In this connection, on feasts of saints the Old Testament reading could be replaced by the passio or vita of the saint or at least by its last part, which had not been read in the solemn morning Office.

 

It is striking that in southern Spain before the middle of the sixth century gospel and sermon apparently only took place after the preparation of the gifts and the dismissal of the catechumens. In any event, canon 1 of the Council of Valencia in 549 decreed that the gospel should be read before the inlatio munerum and the missa catechuminum so that catechumens as well as the penitents could be edified by gospel and sermon, and others perhaps be even converted by them, as had occasionally happened. A few years later, in 561, canon 4 of the First Council of Braga, which of course made rules only for the small and at that time still dependent Kingdom of the Sueves, decreed that Mass should be celebrated according to the model which Bishop Profuturus had brought from Rome; and canon 5 stated that baptism likewise should be administered in the Roman way.

In fact, Pope Vigilius at the beginning of his pontificate had in 538, at the request of the Bishop of Braga, sent him a baptismal ritual and an ordo precum and had indicated that the latter always remained the same in the celebration of Mass, that only on Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Epiphany, and feasts of saints were capitula especially appropriate to these days inserted. From this it may probably be deduced that on the one hand at Rome in the days of Vigilius there were still no liturgical books in which the celebrations of one year or even only of a part of the Church year were collected, and on the other hand an official control of the variable prayers was not regarded as necessary. In fact, in contrast to the African Church, which very early knew prescriptions relating to the liturgical prayers, the Roman Church did not make the first efforts in this direction until the eighth century. Until then limits were hardly placed on the creative liturgical activity of the Popes. Thus, the oldest Roman collection of prayers, hence the so-called Sacramentarium Leonianum, contains several Mass formularies which Pope Vigilius probably composed. It is fitting to stress that at the Synod of Braga the texts that had come from Rome appeared as adequate models, hence that there was no wish to set limits to the free creative activity of the bishops for the variable prayers, whose volume in the Spanish Liturgy to a great extent surpassed the variable prayers of the Roman Mass.

 

If it is also questionable to speak of a Gallic Liturgy, because in Gaul there was absolutely no uniformity, still some common characteristic features can be emphasized. To be sure, we first have adequate sources only for the seventh century, for the letters of pseudo-Germanus, in which is found a description of the liturgy, are really an "edifying commentary on the liturgical decrees of an unknown Frankish council of the end of the seventh century." All the extant Gallic sacramentaries, for example, the Galltcanum Vetus, the Missale Goticum, and so forth, are already romanized. It has been pointed out that the Gallic, and likewise the Spanish, Liturgy shows a greater common character with the oriental than with the Roman. But it must be noted that in the variability of the Mass prayers Roman and Gallic Liturgies are in agreement against the oriental.

 

The Gallic pontifical Mass probably did not know a solemn entry of the bishop to the accompaniment of song before the seventh century; the bishop seems rather to have come in without any special ceremony so that the deacon first had to urge the faithful to silence in order that then the bishop could greet them. Then the Trisagion was sung in Greek and Latin; but it was probably adopted from the East only in the seventh century, and then the older Kyrie-htaay standing at this place, which for its part had been introduced by canon 3 of the Synod of Vaison of 529 not only for Mass but also for Lauds and Vespers, was reduced to a mere appendage. The Benedictus occupied the place which the Gloria had maintained at Rome since Pope Symmachus. Then the celebrant said the first prayer, the collecta. After the readings from the Old Testament and the apostolic epistles, the Canticle of the Three Children, called the Benedictio, was executed as the intermediate song. The gospel was read from the ambo, to which there was a solemn procession. After this, some of the faithful left the church, as Caesarius complained (Sermo 73, 2) and tried to correct, among other things by having the church doors closed. After the sermon the deacon recited a litany, which was concluded with the collect of the celebrant. The dismissal of the catechumens and of the penitents was followed by the Prayer of the Faithful, but probably, as at Rome, this had been severely reduced under the influence of the Gelasian Kyrie-htaay. During the bringing of the gifts to the altar the so-called Laudes, that is, a triple alleluia, was sung. To this was added the mention of the names of the dead, for whom prayers were to be offered, and this was continued in a special prayer post nomina. Next the kiss of peace was given, introduced by a suitable prayer adpacem. At Rome in the early fifth century the kiss of peace had found its position at the place in the Mass familiar to us today. Also at Rome there was occasional criticism that in Gaul the names of those for whom there were to be prayers were mentioned before the Canon. The preface, called contestatio in the Gallic Liturgy, was often a long description of the miracles of a saint. The further course of the Mass, namely, Canon, breaking of the bread, Lord's Prayer, was, except for the episcopal blessing before communion, very much like the Roman. But it should still be emphasized that in Gaul Psalm 33 was sung at communion, apparently because of verse 9: Gustate et videte, quoniam suavis est Dominus.

 

The Spanish Visigothic Mass, in any case, from the time of Julian of Toledo, knew a penitential act of the priest at the beginning. Isidore of Seville enumerates seven variable prayers, which were to be attached to the Mass of the Faithful. The first is a prayer of admonition to the people; the second, an appeal to God that he would accept the gifts and hence corresponds to the Roman Prayer over the Gifts, the former Secreta. The third prayer is the Oratio post nomina, hence an intercession for the deceased just named. The fourth prayer is related to the kiss of peace, that is, it asks that what is expressed by the external sign may be effective in the faithful. The fifth variable prayer, the inlatio, corresponds to the Preface. After the Sanctus there is also a variable prayer, which leads on to the consecration. The Liber ordinum gives as the

 

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seventh variable prayer one after the account of the Last Supper (post pridie), whereas Isidore gives it as the transition to the Lord's Prayer. Apparently, Isidore wanted to extol the sacred number of seven, and so the benedictio and the conpleturia, which are attested by the Liber ordinum and other liturgical documents, are left unmentioned.

 

Especially in comparison with the full mention of the names of the deceased and the prayers post nomina of the Gallic and Spanish Liturgies, it is surprising that no commemoration of the dead is found in the Canon in the Gregorianum^iadrianum. However, this may be explained in this way, that at Rome on Sundays and solemnities, differing from Gaul, the deceased were not expressly named, and the model sent to Aachen contains only the solemn form of the papal Mass. Furthermore, the memento mortuorum seems, together with the Nobis quoque peccatoribus, to have been inserted into the Canon by Pope Gelasius when the Oratio fidelium was abolished and at least in part supplanted by the #ym?-litany. If it is thought that the intercessions for the living and the dead must have been a special concern of the faithful, then, at Rome in any event, solemnity defeated popular appeal in the liturgy. Moreover, the papal rite and chant, newly introduced in the seventh century under Byzantine influence, made of the participants at Mass mere viewers and listeners. Both the Gallic and the Spanish Liturgies were, from the pastoral viewpoint, superior to the Roman Liturgy, but only so long as the people understood the liturgical language.

To the normal liturgical life belongs not only the celebration of the Eucharist but also the Liturgy of the Hours. Early Christianity took care, as Tertullian testifies, to sanctify the important hours of the day by prayer. Then this became the special duty of monks. But also in the episcopal churches these hour-prayers of the Officium divinum are found in the sixth century, probably through adoption from the monastic life. Surest is the testimony for Aries, where Caesarius, who during his long episcopate retained his monastic ascetical life, had the entire Office, namely, Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and, before the great feasts, Vigils celebrated by his clergy, but with the participation of the people, because these hours represented for him an important means of pastoral care, especially since he frequently preached at morning or evening prayer. In the sharing in these hours of prayer, which he presented as obligatory at least for Lent (Sermo 196, 2), he saw an essential manifestation of devotion. But there must also have been psalmody, that is, the hour-prayers, in the rural churches and chapels, at least a morning and an evening prayer: however, the more exact scope is unknown to us. In Spain, Isidore of Seville first attests the Little Hours as a duty of the diocesan clergy, but nothing is observed in regard to an obligation of participation by the people. Besides, Isidore, who was basically as monastic-minded as Caesarius, seems not to have succeeded in introducing the Little Hours as a fixed element of the cathedral office. Still, in the meantime the development had gone so far that Isidore attests Compline as a special hour-prayer after Vespers.

 

While in most areas of Christianity a distinction must be made for the seventh century between the monastic liturgy and the liturgy of the diocesan clergy, this was not the case at Rome, because there were monasteries at the great basilicas. In fact the monks who were on duty at Rome before Benedict had "so thoroughly replaced the cathedral prayer by their own arrangement that the modern Roman Office has an expressly monastic character." In the seventh century all the hours of prayer later customary took place, as can be learned from Ordo Romanus XII. It is expressly indicated that on Holy Saturday only the nocturns and Matutinae Laudes were prayed. Especially impressive in Rome must have been the customary double vigil celebration before great feasts. On the eve was held a vigil without invitatorium and without participation of the people, which included between five and nine readings and from six to nine psalms. Then around midnight began the second vigil, which was introduced by the invitatorium and took place with the participation of the people, and then to it were attached the Matutinae Laudes.

The order of readings for the Liturgy of the Hours began at Rome in the spring, seven days before the beginning of Lent, with Genesis, which was followed by the other books of Moses and then Joshua and Judges (iOrdo Romanus XIV, 27). For the Franks, however, the liturgical year began with Advent, so that Ordo XVI, which witnesses to the adoption of the Roman order of readings in Frankish monasteries, begins with Isaiah, which was also read in Advent at Rome, but the books of Moses were allowed to remain in Lent. Thus it may be assumed that, from the time people thought at all about the question of the beginning of the liturgical year, the spring date was the oldest. True, both the Gelasianum and the Gregorianum begin the cycle of the year with Christmas, but the Advent Masses still stand at the end of the series in the Sankt Gallen Late Gelasianum, which on the one hand was under strong Frankish influence, and on the other followed the arrangement of the Gregorianum.

 

In Spain, on the contrary, it had become usual in the seventh century to have the liturgical year begin even with 17 November, hence with the start of the long period of preparation for Christmas. But the originally Gallic usage of beginning with a shorter Advent definitively established itself. While at Rome, besides the books of the Bible, also the treatises of Jerome, Ambrose, and the other Fathers were read at the nocturns; in Gaul also the accounts of the sufferings of the martyrs and the biographies of the Fathers acquired a place in them and were not displaced even at the adoption of the Roman order of readings.

 

The hymns, without which the Church's Liturgy of the Hours is hardly possible, had in the countries of Western Christendom a very different fate, which can easiest be illustrated in the office of Good Friday. While at Rome very early the Miss a praesanctificatorum (of the bread and wine), coming from the East, was adopted for Good Friday, Isidore of Seville, who calls Palm Sunday also Capitilavium, because on it the heads of the children qui unguendi sunt were washed, and who reports expressly about the liturgical celebration of the Cena Domini, knows no Good Friday liturgy. It was first introduced by canon 7 of the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633. The fact that the hymn Crux fidelis, composed by Venantius Fortunatus, was sung in the Good Friday office was only possible after the decree of the First Council of Braga in 563, whose canon 12 had excluded all nonbiblical hymns from the liturgy, apparently out of concern that they might not be orthodox, had lost its meaning. Still, the Fourth Council of Toledo, just mentioned, saw itself required expressly to defend the newly composed hymns and to threaten their rejection with excommunication (canon 13). There would also be other "prayers" and "imposition of hands" composed for the liturgy. As a matter of fact, the Spanish Church in the seventh century produced some fifty hymns.

 

Care of Souls

 

Preaching. If occasionally a powerful means of pastoral care was seen in the publication of conciliar decrees or in the reading of the accounts of martyrs' sufferings, after which, for example, Braulio of Zaragoza permitted the omission of preaching, nevertheless the sermon was still the chief instrument of which pastors, especially of the sixth century, disposed. It was consistently composed of instruction for adults; we nowhere hear of a special catechesis for children.

 

If one bears in mind that at the end of the sixth century there were still many pagans in Spain and especially in Gaul in the rural areas, then one is surprised that absolutely no testimonies in regard to missionary initiatives are to be found. At most it was expected that pagans should come to Mass and be converted by hearing the gospel and sermon. Gregory the Great, who inaugurated the Anglo-Saxon mission and gave his missionaries very useful instructions and also wanted to have the pagan or heretical Germans in Italy converted by preaching and admonition, recommended for the gaining of the pagan remnant still in Sicily only administrative measures, as it were: pagans who worked and lived on ecclesiastical property 0rustid) should, if necessary, be compelled to convert by raising their rents.

 

When Caesarius of Aries declared that the word of God and hence its interpretation in the sermon was no less than the body of Christ, that is, the reception of communion (Sermo 78, 2), he then attested to the usual high estimation of preaching which was general in Gaul of the sixth century. In Rome too it was known that there were then capable preachers in Gaul. The Statu ta Ecclesiae antiquae (no. 31) threatened with excommunication those of the faithful who went out during the bishop's sermon. Caesarius not only urged them to remain, he personally thwarted those who wanted to leave Mass early by even having the church doors closed and not opened again until after the blessing. But it would be false to conclude from these references that people had no interest in preaching; in sixth-century Gaul it was still quite usual that the faithful reacted to the sermon with applause or rejection; occasionally there was loud muttering, especially against purposeful moral exhortation. Caesarius demanded of his colleagues and of himself that they preach on all Sundays and solemnities; and in Lent he even did so daily (Sermo 230, 6), often even in the morning and evening, namely at Lauds and Vespers. According to Avitus of Vienne also, preaching should be frequent. The normal sermon lasted, in any case with Caesarius, not more than a half-hour. In most cases the sermons must have been very simple, because the preachers had an all too meager education, but also because it was desired to make oneself understood by all the hearers. Of Caesarius it is known that he quite consciously preached on different levels, in each case depending on the state of education of his audience. Caesarius was probably not the first who put his sermons at the disposal of others; but he was the first who planned his own collections of sermons and dispatched them even to Spain.

The bishops preached not only in their cathedrals but also especially on the occasion of the visitation of parish churches. Thus the work on the improvement of the peasants of Archbishop Martin of Braga in northwestern Spain is nothing more than a model sermon for which he had been asked by his colleague, Polemius of Astorga, and which was to be given chiefly on the occasion of the visitation, regarded as annually necessary. There is also a visitation of Caesarius extant: sermo in par- rochiis necessarius. Of course, such a sermon could hardly take into consideration the parts of the liturgical year; but it can be gathered from many sermons of Caesarius and Avitus that the Gallic pastors of the sixth century found abundant points of contact in the feasts of the Church's year and the biblical readings proper to them. The chief end of the sermon seems to have been to guide the thoughts of the hearers to eternity. But in this regard what mattered especially to Gregory the Great was to comfort the faithful so that they would not perish in the misery of this life (Moralia I, XIV, 27); Gregory lived in difficult times, which also marked his liturgical production. Caesarius, on the other hand, ascertained a rather careless attitude in his people and held before their eyes the picture of Christ the Judge. Indeed, he could even claim that the words of Christ on the Last Judgment would be completely sufficient of themselves alone; it was not necessary to have more of Holy Scripture {Sermo 158, 1).

 

In the decisive struggle against superstition and magic, especially for the sake of cures, as they had been preserved from pagan times, Caesarius and Martin of Braga were in agreement. The pastors of the whole Christian world must have seen themselves facing this task at the time. Caesarius of Aries, furthermore, saw himself forced especially to warn against drunkenness; for Martin of Braga, on the contrary, pride and vanity seem to have been the special dangers to the Christian life. Caesarius stressed that it is more important to have Christ before one's eyes as model than to ponder individual commandments (Sermo 35, 2). The name of Christian does not do it alone; even the sign of the cross does not help alone: necessary are alms, love, justice, and chastity (Sermo 13). On the other hand, Caesarius emphasized also the necessity of a minimal knowledge of the faith; at least one must master the Creed and the Lord's Prayer (Sermo 135, 1). But to an active Christian life also belong the gifts made at the altar (wax, oil, bread, wine) and attendance at Sunday Mass (Sermo 13). Later, canon 4 of the Second Council of Macon in 585 required that all men and women bring wine and bread to the altar every Sunday, because one may thus expect to be freed from sins and made a sharer in the communion of saints. Finally, the demand for Sunday rest was inculcated not only in sermons but also in synodal decisions.

 

The Sunday rest, was, of course, not demanded for its own sake. On the one hand, it was, so to speak, defined interiorly: good works, even long journeys to visit a friend, were permitted. Indeed, the earliest extant synodal decision on the question was directed first against "Jewish" exaggeration, which allowed no sort of journey, preparation of foods, cleansing, and so forth. Only the agricultural work should remain undone. In other respects, the Sunday rest was not only an element of religious culture, but a Christian profession, especially where it replaced the hitherto usual rest from work on Thursday, hence on Jupiter's day.

 

From the moral instruction which Caesarius provided for his hearers two points must be singled out, because they throw a piercing light on the situation in southern Gaul of the early sixth century. In spite of all the exertions of the pastors, the number of young men who early entered into concubinage and only later into lawful marriage was so large that it was not possible to excommunicate all of them (Sermo 43, 4.5). Naturally this evil custom prevailed only in the upper class. The ladies of the aristocracy were blamed by Caesarius because they wanted to restrict the number of their children to at most two or three and hence drank means that would produce a miscarriage or make them sterile. Caesarius regarded both as murder. Against contraception he had an interesting argumentum ad hominem ready: the noble ladies regard it as important that their serving women have numerous children so that a large serving class may grow up. But then they should not limit the number of future servants of God (Sermo 44, 2).

Baptism. To the extent that, in the course of the sixth century, baptism was administered in ever greater numbers to children and no longer to adults, it took place more and more in the parishes and not only in the episcopal churches. However, there are accounts of the administration of baptism, for sixth-century Gaul, only in Caesarius. At most there are references that not only infants but also one-year-old to two-year- old children were baptized. True, an effort was made to keep the Easter Vigil as the sole date for baptism, but canon 3 of the Council of Macon in 585 had to complain that occasionally at most two or three children could be found for this date. Most children were baptized at Christmas or on the feast of Saint John or on that of another saint; even Clovis, the first Frankish King to be converted, had been baptized on Christmas, as appears from the letter of Avitus to the King. Caesarius adapted himself to the new situation not only by accommodating the old catechumenate, which had its most intensive phase in Lent, to the conditions of the baptism of children, but also by anticipating in brief form for each baptism the preparations formerly properly made in Lent. Even infants were registered among the competentes and received the imposition of hands and the anointing on the forehead. If at Rome the scrutinia were customary as examinations of the faith and life of the competentes and if in Africa exorcisms were seen in the scrutinia, the custom of Gaul, namely, that of exorcisms by breathing, was nearer to the African than to the Roman.92 The giving of salt to the competentes was a typically Roman usage and had no parallel in Gaul. In the framework of the longer, pre-Easter preparation for baptism, a particular role was played by special instruction, which was addressed chiefly to the godparents. They bound themselves to teach the child later the minimum profession of faith, that is, the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, and to assure his or her introduction into virtue. For baptism in the course of the year Caesarius required at least a week of preparation, during which the child received anointing and imposition of hands, and the parents were supposed to fast and at least take part in the morning Mass.93 Of course, he did not refuse baptism if the parents appeared in church with the child only for the baptism itself. An anointing administered immediately before baptism was not known in Gaul, but probably after baptism first the anointing with oil, then with chrism, and finally the comignatio, that is, the sealing with the sign of the cross. Very probably after the renunciation of the Devil the entire profession of faith was asked of the candidate or the godparents, perhaps in the way in which it was already attested in the Church Order of Hippolytus.94 As the final ceremony there took place in Gaul the washing of the feet of the neophytes. A further symbol of faith in the Trinity may have been seen in the three steps which led down to the baptismal font.

 

Baptistries in Gaul were occasionally flanked by a bath house, which served for cleansing before the baptism. Occasionally too there was another area furnished with an apse, in which confirmation was administered by the bishop.95 In Spain Ildefonse of Toledo, hence in the seventh century, like Martin of Braga in the sixth, still reckoned with adult applicants for baptism, to whom he gave the Creed on Palm Sunday and from whom he inquired about it on Holy Thursday.96 In this connection the adult applicants were probably not only Jews baptized under compulsion; however, the pastoral practice of the Spanish Church in the seventh century was powerfully overshadowed by the compulsory conversion of Jews. Canon 57 of the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633, it is true, tried to assure freedom of religion, but it did not allow the reversion to Judaism of those converted by force. Besides, canon 3 of the Sixth Council of Toledo in 638 brought back the old harsh language.

 

Penance. While in most parts of the Western Church the bishops reserved to themselves the administration of penance and the imparting of

 

The word scruttnium, furthermore, was not used: Beck, 172f.

 

Wo 225, 6; 229, 6; 121, 8.

 

Caesarius, Sermo 12, 4; 85, 3; cf. Martin of Braga, corr. 15.

 

Beck, 180.

 

Fernandez Alonso, 274.

 

reconciliation, at Rome this, like baptism, was the affair of priests. For the Sacramentarium Gelasianum, intended for use by priests, contains rubrics and prayers for the treatment of the penitents on Ash Wednesday (I, XVI, no. 83) and their reception back into the community on Holy Thursday (I, XXXVIII, nos. 352f), whereas the Gregorianum, destined for papal use, contains a reference to the penitents neither on Ash Wednesday nor on Holy Thursday. The only prayer for penitents which is given (no. 989) is a later addition. Furthermore, the Gelasianum prescribed on Ash Wednesday a solemn confining of the penitents. It is not said where this was to happen; in every case it seems to concern a special Roman custom. On Holy Thursday the penitents were again released from their voluntary custody.

 

In the sixth century, even though in principle the ancient form of public penance was maintained, in Gaul the periods of penance were strongly curtailed in comparison with the earlier custom, and the bishops were clearly aware of this fact. But the ancient forms were kept: at the start of the period of penance the bishop imposed hands on the penitent and handed him the cilicium, a hood of goat's hair. The penitent himself was then obliged to cut off his hair and put on the penitential garb. Penitents were not allowed to take part in banquets and in trade; rather they were to spend their time in fasting and prayer; even military service was forbidden to them. Caesarius of Aries expected of penitents all the corporal works of mercy, such as to give alms, shelter strangers, care for the sick, bury the dead, and finally to clean the church. But the most incisive demand was that of perfect continence in marriage. This obligation continued even after reconciliation, and hence it pertained to the permanent consequences of penance, just like the inability to be accepted into the clergy. It was especially aggravating that even a penance accepted on one's deathbed had the same effect in the case of an unexpected recovery as every other public penance.

As regards admission to the clergy, evidently a very serious problem was seen here, which canon 1 of the Council of Gerona in 517 sought to solve: if a person had declared himself a sinner only generally in the most serious illness, but without actually confessing serious sins, he could later still become a cleric. Canon 54 of the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633 renewed this prescription. The problem of continence required in marriage by penance was solved differently. Avitus of Vi- enne103 advised younger people who had no culpae capitales to prefer to die without penance than to put themselves in the danger that, on recovering, they could not observe conjugal continence and for that reason would have to be regarded as apostates. Canon 2 7 of the Council of Orleans in 538 decreed in the same sense that the penitential blessing must not be entrusted to young people; the married might receive the penitential blessing only in advanced age and also with the consent of the other spouse. It is surprising that it was really nowhere asked by what right permanent continence was demanded even after the completion of penance. Only Fulgentius of Ruspe seems to have convincingly solved the problem as pastor. Even in his first letter he declared that the penance accepted in danger of death obliged to continence only when the other spouse had consented to this. But even in this case he wanted to show a certain mildness. Anyone who could not observe continence should abstain from all wickedness and guard himself especially against avarice, that is, give alms. Then, according to Fulgentius's assurance, he might count on not being damned. Canon 8 of the Sixth Council of Toledo in 638 apparently first found a synodal regulation of the problem, conceding as a favor that everyone who had undertaken penance in danger of death but had recovered might go back to conjugal life; if the other spouse died, then the penitent must not remarry; but in the case of the demise of the reconciled penitent, remarriage was permitted to the surviving spouse. But the burden of penance and of its consequences was apparently not yet made tolerable thereby, for canon 4 of the Sixteenth Council of Toledo in 693 still had to state that some sinners committed suicide out of despair over the stringent penance. But the bishops did not have a solution for this problem: it must probably be said that here penance was literally reduced ad absurdum.

 

In other respects, a broad decline of public penance can be ascertained in the course of the seventh century in Spain; its place was slowly taken by private penance.106 In Gaul as early as the beginning of the sixth century Caesarius had to state that most persons put off penance to the end of their life (Sermo 60, 4); this situation was intensified in the course of the sixth century. Thus the time was clearly ripe for private penance. However, it did not come into practice first with the Celtic monks, disciples of Columban, but was spread by usages which can be ascertained as early as the sixth century in Gaul and Spain.107 This is true for both the laity and the clergy. Originally, there was no penance for clerics; they were deposed but might communicate as laymen; rehabilitation was not possible. But gradually a period of penance was also adopted for clerics, usually in a monastery, and after it restoration to office.108 Gregory the Great quite often prescribed a penance even for bishops, for example, he imposed on John of Justiniana Prima thirty days' abstention from the Eucharist,109 and on Spanish bishops six months' penance in a monastery.110 Such a penance was doubtless public, but it did not prevent the people thus treated from remaining in or returning to their office respectively.

 

Canon 11 of the Third Council of Toledo in 589 aimed to eliminate the abuse whereby in some churches of Spain people practiced penance in such a way that they demanded reconciliation just as often as they had sinned and to restore the old canonical form to force. It seems however to be much more certain that priests were acting in the exercise of their office and that in this there was question of sins which excluded one from the Eucharist.111 Less clear is a reconciliation, that is, absolution from serious sins, without public ecclesiastical penance in the writings of Caesarius of Aries. He first got around the difficulties which were connected with public penance by urging to frequent self-imposed penance and especially to examination of conscience (Sermo 50, 3). If he declared that crimina, hence serious sins, had to be effaced either by elemosynarum remedia or by poenitentiae medicamenta (Sermo 56, 2), he still seems to attribute to the private devotional exercise of almsgiving the same efficacy as he did to public ecclesiastical penance. The consequences would be that the penitent, after the verdict of his own conscience, would again join in the reception of the Eucharist.112 On the other hand, Caesarius speaks not only in his Rule for Virgins of confession through which guilt is made known,113 but he urges younger sinners against chastity to come quickly to confession and penance.114 If one considers how reserved he was otherwise with penance, especially for younger persons, there is probably not a question here of public penance with all its consequences. And when he finally declared expressly that penance, which a person publicly undertakes, could also be performed in secret (secretins), then he seems to have thought of a procedure which took

 

Fernandez Alonso, 560ff.

 

Reg. Epp. Ill, 6.

 

Ibid. XIII, 47.

 

Fernandez Alonso, 571.

 

Thus Delage, l69f., against C. Vogel, La discipline penitentielle en Gaul des origines a la fin du VIIe siecle (Paris 1952).

 

Floril. Pair. 34, p. 36.

 

Sermo 66, 1; similarly 56, 3; 65, 2.

?on place, not indeed before the community, but, however, could be considered as ecclesiastical in so far as it was under the supervision and responsibility of the bishop.

In the Vita of Bishop Desiderius of Vienne and in that of Bishop Siffred episcopal absolutions seem to be attested apart from public penance. It is most interesting that Bishop Philip of Vienne in 570 appointed the priest Theudarius aspoenitentiarius of his diocese. That means that many came to him and confessed their secret sins; each left medicatus sanusque . . . securior et laetior. Here confession and the forgiveness of sins in entirely the modern sense seem already attested. In this context attention should be directed to the Ninth Sermon of Gregory the Great on Ezekiel 40. He there requires (no. 18) the capability of distinguishing in penance: neither must discipline be too strict nor must mercy be too soft; neither must guilt be illegally remitted, because otherwise the guilty person would become more deeply involved in guilt, nor must guilt be regarded beyond the proper degree, because otherwise the penitent would become even worse, since he experienced no mercy. Indeed, it could even happen that a pastor, who lacked the spirit of discrimination, either was so easy on sins that he did not correct them, or, because he really injured in correcting, he did not remit the sins (no. 20). On this occasion Gregory reports that many are made aware of their sins by preaching and afterwards come to the preacher and confess and ask his intercession for their sins; he should then extirpate by his prayer the guilt which he made known through his preaching. The holy teachers must pray to almighty God for the contrite and sinners confessing their guilt. It is striking how often in this connection confession is stressed. If one recalls that the normal penitential care of souls, including excommunication and reconciliation, was provided at Rome not by the Pope himself but by the priests of the titular churches, then one is inclined to see here something like private or, better expressed, not public confession or penance. Perhaps one may even glimpse in the prayer of the holy teacher, which, according to Gregory, should efface sins, a deprecatory form of absolution, especially since Leo the Great declared (Ep. 108, 3) that the guilt of sin was absolved by the intercession of the bishop, sacerdotalis supplicatio, which brought the performance of public penance to an end. That finally around the middle of the seventh century penance was no longer connected with a class of penitents seems to be clear from canon 8 of the Council of Chalon (between 647 and 653), since there penance is characterized as a remedy for sins and necessary for all men.

 

Anointing and Imposition of Hands. It has already been pointed out that in Spain and Gaul as well as at Rome in our period the neophytes received an anointing, in some places even a twofold anointing.119 This anointing was not regarded at any time as the Sacrament of Confirmation or brought into connection with the Holy Spirit; Isidore, for example, who knew only one postbaptismal anointing, namely that with the chrism, declared rather that this anointing took place to make one like Christ, and only after that was the Holy Spirit given to the baptized and anointed by the imposition of the bishop's hands120 or the invocation of the Holy Spirit respectively.121 Furthermore, we know from a letter of Eugene of Toledo to Braulio of Zaragoza122 that often even the deacons performed the anointing with chrism after the baptism. Anointing with chrism was ambiguous in so far as it could also be the external sign of the readmittance of heretics to the Church.123 Canon 16 of the Council of Epaon in 517 decided that heretics who wished to convert should request the chrism from the bishop; but if they were dying, the priest might come to their aid with the chrism. Hence there was question here not of the anointing of the sick but of an anointing which could be placed on a level with the postbaptismal anointing. The otherwise customary imposition of hands as a sign of the reconciliation of heretics was, it is true, still cited by Pope Siricius in his letter to Himerius of Tarragona124 in connection with the invocation of the Sevenfold Spirit, but Pope Vigilius in his letter to Profuturus of Braga (no. 3)125 introduced a careful distinction: the reconciliation takes place not by that imposition of hands which acts through the invoking of the Holy Spirit, but by that one through which the fruit of penance is acquired and the restoration of holy communion (of the communion of the Church) is completed.

 

Nevertheless, canon 7 of the Second Council of Seville in 619 still seems to make no distinction between these two impositions of hands, when in one breath it forbids the priests to give the Holy Spirit through the imposition of hands to baptized faithful or to those converted from heresy. Perhaps one may see in this the aftereffects of early African

 

119 Cf. supra, pp. 676f. 120Eccl. off. II, 26.

 

Etym. 6, 19, 54.

 

Braulio, Ep. 35.

 

Cf. infra, p. 710.

 

See Denzinger-Schonmetzer, no. 183.

 

PL 69, 18A =PL 84, 831C.

 

^Q/1 __ . - ...

 

U1UKVJI, l^/VAE ur OUULJ, riE 1 I

 

theology, for this view corresponds exactly to that of Cyprian's opponents, who did not rebaptize but only wanted to impose hands for the reception of the Spirit.

 

The anointing of the sick is attested for the sixth century in both Gaul and Spain. In Spain the oil for the anointing of the sick was consecrated on the feast of the holy physicians, Cosmas and Damian, with a prayer which asked the healing of body and soul by virtue of the sufferings of Christ.126 There are many testimonies in Gaul that this holy oil was used by lay persons to cure the sick or drive out demons. The faithful were even urged to this by the clergy, for example, by Caesarius of Aries, but apparently chiefly to draw them away from ancient pagan magical practices.127 Caesarius of Aries invited the sick to come to church to communicate and be anointed; thus would the admonition of the Epistle of James (5:l4f.) be implemented (Sermo 19, 5). It is astonishing, however, that Caesarius could instruct the sick to have the consecrated oil given to them by the priest and to anoint themselves (Sermo 13, 3). That in this also Caesarius saw a complying with James 5:14 seems to indicate that he was not thinking of a self-anointing by the sick but has only expressed himself tersely on the subject.128

 

Piety

 

At the turn of the fifth to the sixth century the frequency of the reception of the Eucharist sharply declined. As early as 506 the Council of Agde in canon 18 had to declare that whoever did not communicate at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost could not be regarded as a Christian. But since the same Council demanded a strict preparation for communion, it could hardly have paved the way to more frequent communion. Caesarius of Aries in his sermons appealed besides for communion on the feast of John the Baptist and the other martyrs, but he did not venture to require a regular Sunday communion. The reason was no doubt the strict standard which was laid on the necessary preparation. Thus, for example, Caesarius required of those who wished to communicate at least several days of conjugal continence (Sermo 16,2{ 19, 3; 44, 3).129 He invited the newly married to stay away from church for a month (Sermo 43, 23). It deserves to be stressed that he emphasized the equality of rights and equality of obligation of both sexes according to Christian faith (Sermo 44, 5). In Spain continence was inculcated as a preparation for communion even in the marriage ceremony, and Isidore

 

Fernandez Alonso, 577.

 

Beck, 242.

 

Thus in any case, Beck, 245ff.

 

Cf. Delage, 157.

1 jrlc la jl un l<nui\v<xi 111 i. iviun ux m. їwi -i a v - - Ђ...

 

(Eccl. Off. 1, 18, 9-10) required many days of continence, but perhaps in this lay a conscious exaggeration.130 In any event, even daily attendance at Mass did not yet mean frequent communion.131

 

Christian piety is at times powerfully impressed by the saints, to whom special veneration belongs. In relation to the present-day understanding, one should ask first about the place which Mary occupied in the Christian consciousness. At Rome the name of Mary was introduced into the canon at the beginning of the sixth century, but the first Marian feasts in the West date only from the seventh century. The Sacramen- tarium Veronense (Leonianum), in which the first three months are missing, knows, in addition to the feasts of local Roman saints, only the veneration of the Baptist and of the Protomartyr Stephen, and Mary is mentioned only in a preface for the feast of the Baptist.132 Under Pope Theodore (642-49) the feast of the Purification on 2 February was introduced, and before Pope Sergius I (687-701) were added the feasts of the Annunciation (25 March), the Assumption (15 August), and the Birthday (8 September). Here eastern influence is clearly to be seen.133 In this it is noteworthy that Pope Sergius was apparently not satisfied with the form and the Mass formularies of the three last-named Marian feasts, but desired greater solemnity. He accomplished this by introducing a procession for these feasts, on which the people set out from another church. The collecta was recited in this church of the assembly. Thus these last three feasts obtained the same solemnity as was already customary on the feast of the Purification. This is revealed by the fact that the Hadrianum and the Paduense agree in the Mass formulary of 2 February and both provide a collecta at the beginning. On the other hand, in the Paduense the other three feasts have no collecta and hence no procession took place. The Hadrianum gives for the last three Marian feasts prayers differing from the Paduense and for each a collecta at the beginning.134

 

But the Marian feasts were not the oldest testimony to the veneration of Mary. In Gregory the Great, for example, we find no Marian feast attested, but he does mention churches dedicated to the Mother of God, not only Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome but also several churches and oratories in Italy, and one in Gaul, at Autun.135 Then in Gaul in the seventh century numerous convents of nuns are ascertained whose

 

""Thus Fernandez Alonso, 335.

 

131 Gregory of Tours, Gloria Confes. 65.

 

132Sacrarnentarium Veronense, ed. Mohlberg and others, no. 234.

 

Deshusses, 53.

 

Ibid., 54.

 

Cf. Reg. Epp., MGEp. II, Index.

 

churches were dedicated to Mary; indeed, this was the rule, while monasteries of monks were mostly dedicated to Peter and Paul. Circa 705 the seriously ill Wilfrid of York was reproached in a vision of an angel that he had indeed erected churches for Peter and Andrew but still none in honor of Mary, from which it must probably be concluded "that Mary and the Apostles belonged together in the piety of the age!" But the cult of Mary verified by patronages can be pursued farther back. Circa 400 Nicasius seems to have built the first Marian cathedral at Reims, and this so set a precedent that in the sixth century in many episcopal churches a complex of three churches was characteristic, namely, with one church for clerics dedicated to the Apostles, one church for catechumens dedicated to Mary, and the baptistry dedicated to John the Baptist. In Spain the cathedrals were mostly dedicated to Mary in the sixth and seventh centuries, but there the cult of Mary is found in literature only at the middle of the seventh century with the treatise of Ildefonse of Toledo on the perpetual virginity of Mary. The Tenth Council of Toledo of 656 in canon 1 transferred the feast of the Annunciation, which till then had not yet been celebrated uniformly on 25 March, to 18 December. The day was certainly not only chosen because it comes a week before Christmas, but also because at the Fifth Council of Toledo in 636 in canon 1 new rogation days had been introduced for the triduum of 15-17 December. In this connection there was probably only a question of accommodating King Chintila, who was seeking the protection of heaven, but later these rogation days served to enhance the solemnity of this Marian feast now transferred to Advent. The fact that in the festal Mass the above-mentioned treatise of Ildefonse, divided into six or seven sections, was read in place of the Old Testament selection shows how movingly and in response to the demands of the people and the time the Spanish Church of the seventh century fashioned its liturgy.

 

The long-disseminated view that the "Merovingian Age" was under the aegis of the patrons of the country and the place, "and the cult of Peter was only transmitted to the Carolingians by the Anglo-Saxons" can no longer be held, after it can be shown that not only in the seventh ' century were there seventy-eight monasteries under Peter's patronage, occasionally joined with the patronage of Paul or of Mary, but that

even for the early Merovingian period some forty basilicas in honor of Peter and about half as many cathedrals dedicated to him can be named. In this regard, in many places the patronage of Peter seems to have succeeded a general patronage of the Apostles, so that the "cult of the Apostles obtained a more personal note." The Princes of the Apostles, especially Peter, passed over in the Early Middle Ages as the special patrons of the Roman Church into general awareness. The Latin episcopate of late antiquity, in order to emphasize the unity of the Empire against all appearances of collapse, had fostered the cult of the two Princes of the Apostles and thus passed it on to the newly converted Burgundians, Visigoths, and Franks. But in many places the cult of Peter in the later Merovingian period was overshadowed by the veneration of those saints whose remains were buried locally. This was not least of all connected with the fact that people could obtain only second-class relics from the Roman graves of the Apostles, whereas first-class relics corresponded more to the German mentality.

 

Like the cult of Peter, so the newly Christian German peoples also adopted the custom of the pilgrimage from Latin and Greek antiquity. The first Christian king of the Burgundians, Sigismund, was at the same time also the first Christian German king to make the pilgrimage to Rome. He brought back relics, which were apparently soon used up, for he sent a deacon to Rome to fetch new relics. In 590, Bishop Gregory of Tours likewise sent his deacon to Rome, and he brought back many relics. From him Gregory also learned how Peter's tomb was venerated at Rome. Especially impressive is the description that, if one prayed devoutly and piously enough, the little cloth which one was careful to let down to Peter's grave in order thereby to obtain a second-class relic was heavier than before after its contact with the tomb, and so one had proof of the grace of God. From the British Isles also pilgrims came to Rome even before the year 500. The new German rulers of the island, who were converted to the Catholic faith, also adopted the high esteem for Peter and the instinct for the pilgrimage. Some rulers laid aside their crown and went as pilgrims to Rome. In their own country they erected churches in honor of Peter as substitutes: one who could not go to Rome should honor Peter here. It is due to these eager pilgrimages of the Germans that in the fifth and sixth centuries, when Rome was gradually losing its external splendor, after it had lost its

 

LI I UKlji, LAKB Uf SUULS, PIETY

 

power, the former center of the Empire became the Holy City. In it during these centuries were honored the most famous martyrs of all Christendom; thus Rome became the agent and the distributor of these treasures. The pilgrimage to Rome for relics was of the greatest importance for the religious and cultural development of the West. Indeed it can even be said that pilgrimages created and developed a Catholic spirit, that is, a universal spirit for the whole of Christianity. Through the pilgrimages was spread a really fraternal attitude among the faithful in the most varied lands. In the seventh century there developed in Western Christianity, under the influence of the new penitential practice of the Irish monks, a new type of pilgrimage, namely, the penitential pilgrimage. It was chiefly undertaken by clerics, who were not admitted to public penance, for the expiation of serious sins; in this it was not a question of a specific goal, but of assuming homelessness as atonement. Of course, such pilgrimages also led to the holy places and contributed to the spread of the cult of saints and relics. Deserving of mention in this context is also the pilgrimage to the shrine of the Archangel Michael on Monte Gargano in South Italy, because here was found not the tomb of a saint or the site of a biblical event in the center of the pilgrimage, but the place where, according to legend, the angel appeared. The pilgrimage, which then assumed a total European extent in the Middle Ages and could also be compared with the pilgrimages to Rome and to the alleged tomb of the Apostle James at Santiago de Compostela, apparently began as early as the seventh century. Also, of course, to be mentioned would be the pilgrimage to the grave of Saint Martin at Tours, which in the sixth century was occasionally even more highly esteemed than the pilgrimage to Rome. In any event it corresponded to the active propaganda of Bishop Gregory of Tours. But it must be remembered that the pilgrimage to Rome, which apparently received very early the character of a pilgramage of expiation, occupied a special place, in so far as people went as pilgrims not only to the tomb of the Apostle but increasingly at the same time and in the course of years to the successor of the Apostle, the Roman Pope, in whom people were quite aware was the power of the keys, that is, Peter's full power of forgiving.

 

At Aries there were in the sixth century some twenty to twenty-five

 

feasts of saints; in general, this century saw a powerful growth of the cult of saints, as can be inferred especially from the works of Gregory of Tours. Originally, of course, the veneration referred to the martyrs, but then it was extended to the ascetics, who through their austerity had shown that they were of the same rank as the martyrs. In many cities, for example, of southeast Gaul, there were tombs of saints, and people were interested in finding new ones, and then in some cases built large churches over the tombs. But the saints were not only invoked at their graves, but also at a great distance away; then, of course, the effort was made to get into contact with them through relics. Gregory of Tours recommended their use in case of sickness, probably to wean the faithful from magical practices. It is noteworthy that Caesarius did not yet know this use of relics.

It was important to know the exact day of death of a saint, because his feast had to be celebrated on it. A vigil was held throughout the night, or at least a very early celebration of Lauds. The solemn Mass began around nine o'clock; in it thepassio or the vita of the saint was read. The clergy who served at the shrine of a martyr were furthermore obliged to treat the people flocking there to wine. For their part the faithful sought the closest possible contact with the tomb of a saint. Thus they took along, for example, oil from the lamps burning there, in order to use it against sickness. The cult of saints must not only be regarded as a characteristic of popular devotion: it was rather a part of episcopal pastoral care. The picture of the saint might achieve more than the preaching of the bishop; indeed, it could even be said that the saint complemented the bishop's activity, but he was a mysterious, all- knowing power, which began to act where the bishop's action ceased. In general, the bishops seem to have had no reservations in regard to the cult of saints and relics: quite the contrary. Canon 5 of the Third Council of Braga in 576 saw itself obliged to check somewhat the zeal that probably promoted the personal vanity of the bishops. The shrines of relics were to be carried by deacons; in no case, however, should a bishop, under the pretext that he had to hold the shrine of relics, have himself carried on a chair. Only once is it attested that a bishop, namely Serenus of Marseille at the end of the sixth century, took a stand against the cult of saints. He even had their images destroyed, because he assumed that the people adored them. Gregory the Great indeed praised his zeal for the exclusive adoration of God, but at the same time blamed the destruction of the images, since they could be of service to the faith of the uneducated.

 

It must be stressed that the cult of relics was in no sense only a characteristic of popular devotion. In fact, the Christian theologians of late antiquity were occupied with the question and assured the faithful that even the smallest part of the relic of a martyr meant a great treasure, for the power and grace of the saint were in some way in every tiniest particle as in the entire body. The distribution of relics, on the other hand, facilitated the collecting of relics of many saints, whereby people thought, probably quite naively, to assure themselves of the protection of many saints. In this way, the system of phylacteries, that is, the manufacture and use of amulets with relics, flourished. The fact that at Rome no bodily relics of the Apostles were given up, but only second-class relics, was based not only on the cult of the Apostles but also on the belief that every division of the relics of the Apostles would have weakened the position of the papal primacy, which for that age was founded not only on the succession of Peter but on the possession of the Apostles' tombs.

 

If it is now recalled that Isidore's monastic Rule (24, 1-2), hence a work from the seventh century, mentions for the first time an annual memorial on which the holy .sacrifice was to be offered for all the deceased ЧMasses for the dead, which were celebrated partly at the exact hour of death of the deceased, were known in Gaul as early as the sixth century Чthen it may be said that the decisive monuments of Christian piety were formed in the period here surveyed. This applies especially if it may be assumed that auricular confession, only generally coming into practice under the influence of the Celtic monks, which is without doubt a characteristic of Catholic piety, was already spread in this period on the basis of the development of the ancient western practice of penance.

 

Chapter 42

 

Latin Monasticism from the Mid-Fifth Century to the End of the Seventh Century

 

The further development of Latin monasticism from c. 450 to 700 makes it clear that the episode of the wanderings of the peoples with its effects fostered the previously high estimation of the monastic ideal far more than obstructed it. The continuity with the monasticism of the fourth century was maintained, since both its ideal basis, the example of the East, and the earlier forms, cenobitic and eremitical, persisted. The latter experienced a certain variation, since, first, in addition to the strict eremitism of the individual, a type became more frequent which kept the hermit in the vicinity of a monastery and hence in contact with its abbot, and second, now itinerant hermits, at first predominantly of Irish origin, appeared, who joined to anchoritism the peregrinatio, the asceti- cal renunciation of home and all it meant. From now on, eremitism was valued as the chief form of monastic existence, to the demands of which only one who had previously been proved in a cenobitic community should expose himself.

 

The great majority of ascetics accordingly chose the cenobitic form of life, which in the period here treated acquired some characteristic features. Monasteries, growing vastly in numberЧtheir founders were, besides the individual monk, bishops, Popes, and also well-to-do lay persons, especially the Merovingian nobility and crownЧfirst consolidated their inner organization, since they more and more lived according to a definite Rule, now fixed in writing. In such Rules, indeed, the ideal of eastern cenobitism was ever more decisive, but everywhere an adaptation to the concrete circumstances of Western European areas was undertaken. This is already noticeable in the Institutions (1-4) of John Cassian and in the Latin form of Basil's Ascetica, and more clearly in the revision of the Rule of Pachomius and the two rules coming from Lerins, the Regula quattuor Patrum and the Regula Macarit, which be-

JLAlliN MUiNAsii^iam rxvvm I jw / \j\j

 

long to the fifth century. In southern Gaul abbots of several monasteries met on occasion for discussion of the inner structure of their monasteries, and from their decisions proceeded the so-called Regula quattuor Patrum, the Regula secunda and tertia Patrum. The sixth century was the age of the great Rules of the Master and of Benedict of Nursia in Italy and of the Bishops of Aries, Caesarius and Aurelian, in Gaul, who, however, made use of earlier works. Some of the new Rules were expressly mixed Rules, Regulae mixtae, such as the Regula Ferioli, the Regula Tarnatensis Monasterii, the Regula Orientalis, and the Regula Pauli et Stephani, which took over whole parts of existing Rules. Thus the Irish-Frankish monasticism acquired its own form through combining the Regula Columbani with the Regula Benedicti. In the monastic Rules of Spain from the seventh century, which were composed by Leander of Seville, his brother Isidore, and Fructuosus of Braga, even more eastern influence is detectable, in addition to that of the Rule of Augustine. The observance of the same Rule in several monasteries did not yet lead to their organizational union.

 

In so significant an element of the Church's inner life that the numerous monasteries represented, the contemporary episcopate showed an understandable interest and aimed, stimulated by the monastic legislation of the Council of Chalcedon, to see also in the Latin West the monastic system subjected in principle to its jurisdiction. This process of increasing episcopal control began in the fifth century, but, of course, it did not move everywhere at the same pace. In North Africa the oppressed situation of the Church under Vandal domination fostered an extensive independence of the monasteries. In Italy, following the Byzantine reconquest in 535, the eastern monastic canon law established itself especially in the area under Byzantine authority and thereby gave the bishop the possibility of calling upon the monks of the many smaller monasteries, especially in the South, for pastoral tasks. In the parts of Italy controlled by the Ostrogoths and then by the Lombards, however, the less numerous but often more important monasteries retained a greater freedom of movement with regard to the bishop. Then Gregory the Great subordinated them in general to episcopal supervision, which in the course of the sixth century was recognized also in Gaul and Spain, as the synodal legislation of the time makes known. The crucial points of episcopal control were influence on, or at least examination of, the election of the abbot and overseeing the administration of monastery property. A relaxation and limitation of episcopal jurisdiction, however, followed in the seventh century from the influence which the wealthy layman who had participated in the founding of the monastery could keep for himself, or from privileges which the landowner granted to a monastery. Monastic exemption, here under way, was first conceded in its full extent to the Upper Italian monastery of Bobbio by Pope Honorius I in 628.

 

A further important development in western monasticism of this period appeared with the undertaking of missionary activity on a scale hitherto unknown. From the thus far customary, often only occasional, mission among the population of the neighborhood of a monastery, the glance was directed to distant goals; there was a going over to the evangelization of unfamiliar peoples, which, as in the mission to the Anglo-Saxons, was planned and taken up on a grand scale. Then when the Irish-Scottish monks joined the ascetical peregrinatio with missionary work on the continent, the great missionary task was firmly anchored in the consciousness of western monasticism.

As a final characteristic of Latin monasticism of this age must be mentioned the monastic school, an institution now spread everywhere. True, it served exclusively for the formation of the monastery's own recruits, who had to be enabled to read the texts for the liturgical service and the Holy Scripture as material for the lectio divina and be able to prepare the manuscripts required for this; hence it purposely excluded the profane, especially the pagan, literature of antiquity from its program. But this monastic school was still not an ever atrophying remnant of the decaying school system of the Later Empire with its other institutions; rather, despite its elementary character, it was the viable germ from which, just as from the episcopal schools of the age, the medieval school would spring as the agent of Western Christian education. In the following geographically arranged survey the important facts, personalities, and tendencies in the monasticism of the period will be set forth.

 

Italy

 

The eremitical life, already noteworthy in Italy at the turn of the fourth to the fifth centuries, retained its esteem in the following period, but now it was encountered, not only on the preferred islands of the Mediterranean, but also in the interior of the country, for example, on Montelucano near Spoleto. The influence of Egyptian anchoritism here present was kept alive by the Latin translations of the Apophtheg- mata literature of the sixth century, the Verba seniorum, in which the future Popes Pelagius I (556-561) and John III (561-574) took part. But Italian cenobitism was also further oriented toward the eastern model, as, for example, with Lawrence, probably a native of Syria, who around the middle of the sixth century founded near Spoleto the monastery of Farfa, eventually to become famous. The Regula Orien- talis, whose title indicates eastern influence, also had an Italian origin, apparently at the beginning of the sixth century. Gennadius praised its clarity, but erroneously attributed it to a deacon Vigilius. Certain impulses for the Italian monasticism of this period proceeded also from African monks, who abandoned their homeland under the pressure of Vandal rule. Thus the African Gaudentius founded a monastery at Naples, and Fulgentius of Ruspe assembled African monks in two settlements at Cagliari on Sardinia, in which theological study occupied no small position. Circa 500 a monastic community settled around the grave of Saint Severinus in the Castellum Lucullanum near Naples, whose second abbot, Eugippius, author of the Vita of Severinus, also wrote, according to Isidore of Seville, a Rule for his monastery, which is very likely identical with the anonymous Rule of a Parisian manuscript. In the course of the sixth century the number of monasteries in Italy grew vastly, as the correspondence and the Dialogi of Gregory the Great show, in which is mentioned an abundance of monastic settlements, but no precise information on the circumstances of their origins is available.

J. nii X Ol A v ЂVЂ 1 A . - - -

 

Today, almost without exception, the two most comprehensive monastic Rules of this epoch, which since 1938 have been the object of an intensive and still not finished discussion, the so-called Regula Magistri (RM) and the Rule of Benedict of Nursia (RB), are assigned to the sixth century. Between them exists so strong a relationship, in both content and form, that on the one hand the question of their reciprocal dependence, on the other hand that of the priority in time of the one over the other, urgently intrudes itself. The Regula Magistri is anonymous and in comparison with the Rule of Benedict about three times as large; in most manuscripts there is named as author of the latter a Benedict, who is apparently identical with that Benedict of Montecas- sino, whose signs and miracles Pope Gregory the Great described in the second book of his Dialogi and to whom he attributed a monastic Rule which was marked by discretio and clarity (Dial., II, 36). True, Gregory supplied few chronological references to events in Benedict's life, but together with some credible criteria from the rest of the tradition about him they permit one to assign his life-span between 480/490 and 550/ 560. This tradition has him come from the old province of Nursia and study for a time at Rome in his youth. But he soon left the city in order to live as a hermit in a cave near Subiaco until disciples joined him, whom he is said to have gathered, according to the Pachomian model, into several communities. Then he sought to realize the experiences and insights gained here in regard to real cenobitism in a new foundation on Montecassino, where he must have died around the middle of the sixth century.

 

Today the priority of the Regula Magistri may be regarded as the established and also almost generally recognized outcome of the discussion just mentioned, and its origin ascribed to the first three decades of the sixth century, since, among other things, it represents a less developed cenobitism than that of the Regula Benedicti, since it also employs the apocryphal Scriptures to a degree that can only with difficulty be reconciled with the so-called Decretum Gelasianum de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis of the early sixth century, and finally since it was already used by Abbot Eugippius of Lucullanum (d. c. 530) in his now identified Rule. On the other hand, there is less agreement on the homeland of the

 

LJY11JN JMOJNA511L.XSM fKOM 43U TO /UU

 

Regula Magistri: some would see its origin chiefly in the vicinity of Rome, others hold rather that it came from Provence.

 

With the priority of the Regula Magistri there is also established its employment by Benedict, since a model common to both could be demonstrated with as little conviction as the thesis that Benedict was the author of both Rules. These did not find their definitive form in their first versions, but were expanded in content (the Regula Magistri) or improved in form (the Regula Benedicti)-. very likely the Regula Magistri was in Benedict's hands in an intermediate stage. Among the sources common to both Rules Holy Scripture holds the first place; both also refer to Cassian, and Cyprian is familiar to them, while the meager use of the apocrypha by Benedict indicates, not a direct knowledge of them, but a direct adoption from the Regula Magistri, apparently even without more detailed knowledge of their character. As the special property of the Regula Magistri is knowledge of Julianus Pomerius, Caesarius of Aries, and Nicetas of Remesiana, while Benedict is acquainted with far more voluminous relevant works, such as the Vitae patrum, the "Rule of our holy Father Basil," the Historia monachorum, the Rule of Pachomius, and especially the Rule of Augustine, from which he gained some ideas, without expressly naming it. With the stock of ideas created from these sources Benedict put in order the knowledge acquired from his own experience and meditation, as this seemed to him essential for the cenobitic form of life and at the same time humanly possible. Thus, with a greater stylistic ability than the author of the Regula Magistri could call on, he created in a happy synthesis the hitherto most complete monastic Rule, which was to surpass for the next centuries in its greater power of attraction all other Rules from the early age of monasticism. It in no way diminishes the rank of Benedict's achievement when one refuses to designate him, as historically incorrect, as the founder of western monasticism or even as the Father of the West.

 

If one asks about the basic idea of the Regula Benedicti, its Christocen- trism will have to be named. Already the decisive motive for the entry into the monastic community is the desire for the unconditional following of Christ. Service in the militia Cristi Regis determines the entire manner of life of the monk (conversatio morum). He gives obedience to the abbot,25 because in him he sees Christ; he takes up every renunciation because he wants to share in the Passion of Christ; nothing is dearer to him than love for Christ. To assure this central following of Christ is the purpose of the regulations on the liturgy (opus Dei),26 on the lectio divina, and on stabilitas loci 27 With the following of Christ as thus understood, Benedict's second fundamental concern is assured, caritas fraterna, which must be at the same time as the deepest Christian humanitas the basis of any monastic community, an insight which Benedict to a great extent owes to the reading of the Rule of Augustine.28 Some individual prescriptions of the Regula Benedicti are so flexibly composed that they could easily be adapted to various climatic conditions: hence its author reckoned on its spread. Whereas the testimonies for the existence of the Regula Magistri in the sixth century are relatively frequent, they begin only in the seventh century for the Regula Benedicti. Certainly the picture of Benedict in the Dialogi of Gregory the Great fostered its spread, and it appeared relatively early in the Merovingian Kingdom, at times as part of a Regula Mixta, for example, together with the Rule of Columban, until in the course of the eighth century it gained ground powerfully and through the combined efforts of the first Carolingian Emperors and of Abbot Benedict of Aniane (d. 821) achieved almost exclusive validity.29 In the former minister of the Ostrogothic King Theodoric, Cas-

 

Benedikts (Beuron 1952); id. (ed.), "Commentationes in Regulam S. Benedicti," SA 42 (Rome 1957); G. Turbessi, Ascetismo e monachesimo in San Benedetto (Rome 1965); P. Delatte, Commentaire sur la Regle de s. Benoit (Solesmes 1969). On the Christocentrism of the Regula Benedicti see A. Borias, "Le Christ dans la Regle de s. Benoit," RBen 82 (1972), 109-139.

 

On the position of the abbot, his election and installation, see, besides A. de Vogiie (Paris I960, in the Literature for the chapter), K. Hallinger, ZKG 76 (1965), 233-245; H. Grundmann, ibid. 77 (1966), 217-223; R. Sommerville, RBen 77 (1967), 246-263; M. Angerer, StudMon 12 (1970), 43-56.

 

See A. de Vogiie, RBen 71 (1961), 233-264; RAM 42 (1966), 389-404; 43 (1967) 21-33.

 

On conversatio and stabilitas see B. Steidle, SA 44 (1959), 136-144, and Erbe und Auftrag 36 (1960), 103-112; H. Hoppenbrouwers, Graecitas et Latinitas Christianorum primaeva, Suppl. 1 (Nijmegen 1964), 45-96.

 

See the proofs in A. de Vogiie, La Regle de s. Benoit, 131f., and A. Borias, "Hospitalite augustinienne et benedictine," RHSp 50 (1974), 3-16.

 

28 On the spread of both Rules see G. Penco, Benedictina 10 (1956), 181-198; SA 42 (1957), 321-345.

siodorus, born c. 485, we meet a layman, who as a zealous promoter of monasticism founded on his South Italian estate of Squillace two colonies, a settlement of anchorites on the hill of Castellum and in the immediate vicinity the real monastery of Vivarium, which was intended to serve a specific task, namely, scientifically based and organized work on the Bible that went far beyond the previous lectio divina. In his Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum, dedicated to the monks, Cassiodorus set down his ideas on this and developed a concrete program of studies. An important presupposition for this was a library in which faultless biblical manuscripts, introductions to the Bible, the exegetical works of the Church Fathers, and those works of profane literature were on hand which could not be dispensed with for a scientifically fruitful study of the Bible. A special scriptorium should undertake the production of the necessary manuscripts. New in this concept was, first, the demand of genuine scientific activity at all, and then the strong stress which was laid on the recourse to profane literary scholarship, but which Cassiodorus tried to justify again and again. In the realization of such exalted aims, of course, not all the monks of the monastery were involved; in any event a rather long starting-time was needed before a work force capable of such achievement was trained. But as early as the founder's death c. 580 interest in the enterprise apparently began to flag, and thus from Vivarium came only one exegetical work, an Expositio psalmorum, and even this came from the pen of Cassiodorus himself, who in it relied on Augustine's Enarrationes in psalmos, without attaining its religious value even remotely. What were the most worthwhile, then, were, first, the stock of the library built by Cassiodorus and his program developed in the Institutiones, which of course would later gain a substantial share in the renewal of scholarly activity in the West.

The powerful impulses which proceeded from Gregory the Great, himself a monk and founder of monasteries at Rome and on Sicily, to the contemporary monasticism of Italy, have been repeatedly mentioned. Many of his measures were intended for the external and internal reconstruction of the monastic system, which, like ecclesiastical life as a whole, had suffered because of the chaos of the Lombard invasion. It was further significant that Gregory more and more took monasticism into the direct service of the Church, called abbots to become bishops, sent them on important missions to Ravenna or Pavia, for example, or assigned to them the preaching among the Lombards and the evangelization of the Anglo-Saxons. Here is discernible an informative change in Gregory's view of the vocation of the monk, which was based on his own career. Whereas he at first regarded the monk's being and the exercise of an ecclesiastical office or function as incompatible, he later saw in the service of the Church a possibility for attaining the highest perfection, since in it could be joined together the vita activa and contemplativa. Soon after Gregory's death the Irish-Scottish monasticism acquired influence on the Italian, when in 612 Columban (d. 615) founded not far from the Trebbia, south of Pavia, his last monastery, Bobbio, which from the start enjoyed the rich encouragement of the Lombard royal family and in a certain sense was a royal proprietary monastery. Its rapid economic flowering allowed it an intensive activity in the cultural and theological sphere; especially by means of its scrip- tor urn Bobbio became a first-class intellectual center in contemporary Italy, which with its numerous daughter-houses and through the spread of the cult of Columban, radiated not only in the area of Lombard rule but also into Byzantine territory. Columban's austere Rule remained in force under his first successors: only in the second half of the century did the influence of the Regula Benedicti gradually assert itself, to then become exclusively prescribed in the eighth century.

Monasticism in the Merovingian Kingdom

 

In what had been Roman Gaul there continued as the two centers of gravity for the expansion of monasticism in the fourth and fifth centuries the area of the Lower Rhone Valley and Aquitaine, but in the sixth and seventh centuries they experienced important differentiations, partly coming from without. In Rhone monasticism the influence of Lerins at first still remained predominant, as especially the already mentioned Regula Macharii makes known. Reference has already been made to the importance of the synods of abbots, now making their appearance in the provinces of Narbonne and Provence. Bishop Caesarius of Aries (d. c. 542) became the most important promoter of southeast Gallic monasticism; he himself was a monk at Lerins before he assumed the direction of a monastery outside the gates of Aries, until 502. In the two monastic Rules composed by himЧthe first was written for the convent of nuns of Saint John, founded by him as bishop, and his sister Caesaria was its superior; the second, a Rule for Monks, is probably only a revised abridgment of the Rule for Nuns Чnow, besides the Lerins tradition, the influence of Augustine's Rule becomes traceable. The Rule for Nuns obtained special esteem when Chlotar I's wife, Queen Radegundis (d. 587), adopted it for the convent of nuns of Saint Mary, later of the Holy Cross, founded by her; apparently this was true also in the two convents of nuns at Autun, founded by Queen Brunhildis. Both Rules of Caesarius worked to stimulate later authors of monastic rules, such as his successor Aurelian, who strongly relied upon Caesarius in his Rules for the monasteries erected at Aries by King Childebert. Likewise, for the anonymous author of the Regula Tar- natensis monasterii, which probably lay on the River Tarn in South Gaul, Caesarius, in addition to Augustine, was a source from which he took passages, partly verbatim. A relationship, more similar in ideas, with the Rules of Caesarius is present in the Rule of Bishop Ferreolus of Uzes (553-581) in the southern part of the Frankish Kingdom, but the Regula Tarnatensis was also familiar to him. All the above-mentioned post-

 

Caesarian Rules, however, display no influence of the Regula Benedict!. Finally, still in the seventh century, Bishop Donatus of Besancon (c. 624-660) relied on Caesarius's Rule for Nuns when he compiled a Regula Mixta for the convent of Jussa-Moutier; furthermore, this adopted much from the Regula Benedicti and some things from the Rule of Co- lumban, among whose disciples Donatus had previously been. The fact that the Rhone monasteries gave themselves a stricter organization so relatively early through the introduction of a Rule could not but have had a positive impact on the entire monastic life. It certainly contributed to the circumstance that precisely in the South Gallic monasteries there was a lively interest in theological and religious questions, as this became clear in the discussion on Augustine's doctrine of grace. It is furthermore striking that the very bishops who came from Rhone monasticism showed a special readiness actively to shape public life both in the ecclesiastical and in the secular sphere.

 

In the central and western areas of ancient Gaul monasticism was at first still under the influence of Martin's ideals and retained its old inclination to individualism, which showed itself, in addition to other ways, in the rejection of stabilitas loci and of the introduction of a definite monastic Rule. Thus there occurred again and again the founding of monasteries by individual monks without a definite plan and often soon abandoned; hence the first Frankish national Council of Orleans in 511, in clear conformity with the monastic regulations of Caesarius of Aries, made the establishing of monastic settlements dependent on the consent of the local bishop and prescribed that monks settle down. That these decrees were implemented, however, only to a modest degree becomes clear from the reports of Gregory of Tours on the monasticism of the late sixth century, in which lack of discipline and organization was still characteristic.

The decisive impulse for a further development of Merovingian monasticism came when the Irish monk Columban (c. 543-615) arrived there with twelve companions to the Frankish Kingdom c. 590 and was able to put the monastic ideal of his homeland80 into effect on new soil. When the Irishman gave up the position of first teacher at the school of his monastery of Bangor in order to go far way, his motive was the peregrinatio in its religious understanding, as he emphasized in his letter to the bishops of the Merovingian Kingdom. Only when he came to know the depressing situation of the Merovingian Church from his own observation did he also decide on pastoral work among the people, in so far as this was possible in the framework of monastic community life. In this it was of the greatest importance that for his activity Columban quickly found the approval and support of King Sigebert and of the Merovingian upper class, who were powerfully impressed by the personality of the Irish monk. On the southeast slope of the Vosges he was able to establish, one after another, three settlements, Annegray, Luxeuil, and Fontaine, of which the second became the most important because of the magnitude of the planЧrefectory, monastic school, guest-houseЧand the rapidly growing number of monks. For these monasteries Columban wrote down his regulations, the Regula Monachorum in ten chapters, which rather determined the basic attitudes of the ascetical life of monks, and the Regula Coenobialis, a loose sort of notebook record of penances which were imposed for failings in the monastic life. Both reflect the theory and practice of the Irish home monastery of Bangor, which its Abbot Comgall had there introduced. To these belong especially the serious, strict characteristic of striving for interiority, to which the monastic Rule leads, the order of prayer (Chapter 7), and the detailed penitential regulations of the Regula Coenobialis. From the start, Columban's foundation had a strong power of attraction, which was expressed in two important traits. First, the Frankish nobility were attracted in a unique way by the Irish- Scottish monastic ideal: its sons were partly educated at Luxeuil or entered there as monks: monks of Luxeuil were summoned to be bishops, who then called into being monasteries on the model of Luxeuil or introduced the order of Luxeuil into existing monasteries; and finally laymen made numerous new foundations in both Neustria and Austrasia and North Burgundy, so that the number of monasteries oriented to Luxeuil rose to more than 100 in the course of the seventh century.M The originally exclusive validity of the Rule of Columban was, of course, replaced in the course of the century by a Regula Mixta, into which it developed with parts of the gradually advancing Benedictine Rule. Second, there proceeded from these monasteries far-reaching pastoral activity, since auricular confession, which they recommended, and the stressing of a serious penitential attitude55Чin brief, the excercise of an individual pastoral careЧmet a deep need in all levels of the population. This twofold success of the Luxeuil spirit, however, immediately became also an occasion for a serious conflict between monasticism and parts of the episcopate, as well as with King Theodebert II. The bishops were displeased by the relative independence of the Irish-Frankish monasteries, just as by the effective pastoral activity of Columban, and both the bishops and the King especially took a dim view of the candid words of the Irish monk, who unambiguously recalled to the diocesan clergy their duty as shepherds and sharply rebuked the King for his concubinage. Columban finally had to yield in 610 to the common pressure from both; after two years' missionary work among the still pagan population between the Lake of Zurich and Bregenz, he crossed the Alps in the fa11 of 612 and at Bobbio reached the last city of his peregrination But the work of the Irish-Scots on Frankish soil began an important stimulus for the religious elevation of the population of the Merovingian Kingdom, which can be ascertained at the beginning of the Carolingian Age.

 

Spanish Monasticism

 

The development of Spanish monasticism in the fifth century was interrupted by the invasion of the Vandals, Sueves, and Visigoths, but after the consolidation of the political situation it knew a steady upswing, which led to a considerable flowering in the seventh century. Just as in Italy, here too eremitism retained its importance, especially on the Balearic Isles and in the mountains of Asturias and Galicia,57 but the center of gravity lay in the cenobitic colonies, rapidly growing in num-

 

M The history of these foundations in F. Prinz, 121-151, with maps V, VIIA, and VIIB; on the Regula Mixta, ibid., 270-289.

 

55 The authenticity of the penitential attitude should be maintained in the readiness for corresponding works of penance, which Columban collected in two catalogues, preserved as Pomitentiale; see pp. 168-180 of Walker and the special edition of J. Laporte, Le Penitentiel de s. Columban (Tournai 1958).

 

M On the chronology of this phase of Columban's life, see J. O'Carroll, ITbQ 24 (1957), 76-95.

 

s7 Cf. M. C. Diaz y Diaz, op. cit., and A. Linage Conde, 244-250. Especially to be noted is the self-willed figure of the hermit Valerius of Bierzo.

 

bers, which at first owed their origin to bishops and monks and then, after the conversion of King Recared to Catholicism in 589, also to the reigning dynasty.

 

Soon after 506 the monastery of Saint Martin of Asan was founded on the southern slope of the Pyrenees, north of Huesca; its Abbot Victorian (d. 558) was active to the mid-century for the spread of monasticism by the erecting of smaller colonies subject to him. Even more important was the work of Martin of Braga, a native of Pannonia, who came from Palestine to Galicia c. 550 and there established the monastery of Dumio, over which he presided as abbot until he was called to be Bishop of Dumio in 556. By means of a collection of sayings of Egyptian Fathers, translated and revised by him, which could be employed as a "Rule," he gave his monastery an eastern outlook, which made it similar to the Martinian monasticism of Gaul. Then, not without influence on Spanish monasticism, came the founding of the monastery of Servitanum in the Visigothic sphere by Abbot Donatus, who before 570 migrated from North Africa with seventy monks and a considerable library and soon acquired high esteem. His successor Eutropius, who became Bishop of Valencia after the Council of Toledo of 589, defended the stern discipline of his monastery in a special work. It must probably be assumed that the Rule of Augustine was followed in the Monasterium Servitanum.82

 

The treatise De institutione virginis, which Bishop Leander of Seville (d. c. 600) composed for his sister, the nun Florentina, made use of ideas from the writings of Jerome, especially his Letter XXII to Eus- tochium, but also of Cassian and Augustine; however, no traces of the Rule of Benedict can be found. The Regula Monachorum of his brother and successor Isidore (d. 636) is, in regard to content, dependent on eastern monastic writingsЧ'the Rules of Pachomius and Macarius, CassianЧand on western worksЧJerome, Caesarius of Aries, and perhaps also Benedict. His own achievement consisted in the clarity and balance with which he formed the material before him into a well- thought-out Rule.6* Isidore reported also of a contemporary, Bishop John of Gerona (d. before 621), who founded the monastery of Bic- larum on the spurs of the Pyrenees and wrote a Rule for it, but this must probably be regarded as lost. A helpful promoter of monasticism was also Isidore's friend, Bishop Braulio of Zaragoza (d. 651), a pupil of the monastic school of Seville. He maintained a correspondence with Fructuosus of Braga (d. c. 665), who came from a prominent Visigothic family, used his wealth for the erecting of several monasteries in Galicia and on the southern coast of Spain, and later became Bishop of Dumio and Metropolitan of Braga. His Regula Monachorum is based on Pachomius, Cassian, and Isidore, but also displays certain parallels to Jerome and Augustine. Unique is the prescription in Chapter 22 that the monk, on entering the monastery, signs a pactum, in which he asserts the voluntary character of his decision and obliges himself in a sort of treaty to the fulfilling of the monastic statutes. The Regula communis, attributed to Fructuosus, probably incorrectly, refers to another special type of monastery, common in Galicia, in which entire families led a sort of monastic life on their property, but this involved several abuses.

As a special characteristic of the Spanish monasticism of this period may be mentioned its receptivity to intellectual activity, in which the study of the Bible, which in Leander's view was also a duty in convents of nuns, retained its previous preeminence. For the daily prescribed three hours of lectio the monk obtained his reading matter from the sacrarius from the monastic library of Seville; it included also the works of profane authors to the extent that they were beneficial for theological study. Almost all the more important Spanish bishops of the seventh century obtained their considerable education in the monastic schools of Seville, Toledo (Agali), or Zaragoza, and as bishops continued to use and foster their scriptoria. In this lively interest in intellectual activity may rightly be seen the influence of African monasticism at work, which proceeded from the monastery of Servitanum, already mentioned, under the African Abbot Donatus. It was the merit of the Spanish monasticism of this period to have given to its Church an episcopate which, measured by its ascetical and theological formation, occupied a high rank in the Latin Church of the seventh century. The religious self-evaluation of this monasticism was, of course, traditional, if it is compared with the zeal which it devoted to the practical shaping of monastic life by means of rules, synodal decrees, and other writings. It was extensively oriented to the stock of ideas which was offered by Jerome, Augustine, and Cassian, and at times a renovation and reform of monasticism were understood in the sense of a return to its original idea.

 

The Monasticism of Africa

 

African monasticism, which reached a rapid flowering chiefly through the initiative of Augustine, was affected in the last months of his life by the invasion of the Arian Vandals, just as the African Catholic Church as a whole. In addition to churches and cemeteries, many monasteries were also destroyed, partly burned down, and their inhabitants expelled; some of them found death through the sword or torture, others were sent off into captivity. Probably those monasteries were chiefly

 

I ME LAI 11N LflUIVLn ?AAi^l Jlliwix lu JLIIU U/I.

 

affected which lay on the Vandals' route of march or in the province of Africa Proconsularis, the special territory of settlement of the Vandals. Since many African monasteries of men also had clerics in their community, these were also included in King Gaiseric's decree of expulsion against clerics. Going beyond his father's measures, King Hunneric (477Ч484) planned the total suppression of all monasteries, since by a decree of 484 he had them turned over to the Moors, but his death prevented the implementation of the project. Under the persecution of Hunneric, besides clerics, also monks and nuns went over to the Arianism of the conquerors, but the majority splendidly stood the test in difficult circumstances. When King Gunthamund (484Ч496) revoked in succession his predecessor's decrees of persecution and banishment, the expelled religious were able to return and put an end to the damage done in the persecution; even a relatively rapid renewal of monastic life can be ascertained, which is reflected, especially for the province of Byzacena, in the Vita of Bishop Fulgentius of Ruspe (d. apparently in 527). As earlier, there were, in addition to monasteries which had only lay persons as members and were in the minority, others in which also clerics and, with them at times, the bishop lived as monks.

 

At the Synod of Carthage in 525 there occurred an interesting discussion on monastic canon law. In this an Abbot Peter made charges against Bishop Liberatus, Primate of Byzacena, because the bishop had subjected the abbot's monastery completely to episcopal jurisdiction and treated the monks as though they were his clerics. The Council decreed the full independence of the monastery from the bishop, especially the free election of the abbot, and stressed that the Rule given to the monastery by its founder was to be observed in every respect; to the bishop belonged only the right of ordination of the clerics destined for liturgical duty in the monastery. The matter came up once again for discussion at the Council of Carthage of 536, at which a Bishop Felix from Numidia stood up for the confirmation of the synodal decrees of 525. Frequently in the contemporary sources there is mention of a rule or order, according to which monasteries lived. It is, of course, natural to think here of the Rule of Augustine, especially since the memory of Augustine was highly esteemed precisely in the African monasteries, but the question must be left open, because in the time of Fulgentius there were monasteries of varied austerity of observance.82 However, that Augustine's spirit lingered on in African monasteries of the fifth and sixth centuries can be inferred from the interest which they displayed in the study of the Bible and in the theological discussions of the day, as for example, the monks Ferrandus and Felix proved in the Three Chapters controversy.

 

A new feature was brought into the picture of African monasticism when, after the Byzantine reconquest of North Africa by Belisarius (533-34), Greek monks in flight before the Persians came to North Africa from Palestine, Syria, and Egypt, or later in consequence of the Monothelite quarrel, and settled in Proconsular Africa, where in the first half of the seventh century four Byzantine monasteries, among them a laura of Saint Sabas, can be demonstrated.83 Among the most famous representatives of this monasticism were, at least for a time, the Abbots Sophronius and Thalassius, that of Saint Sabas, and Maximus Confessor. The three last-named journeyed from Africa to Rome and took part in the Lateran Synod of 649, which occupied itself with the Monothelite controversy. When the Arab invasion began around this time, North African monasticism, with the African Church, was also drawn into the ever-changing struggles for the possession of these provinces and shared with it the fate of a long but inexorable death.

 

Ferrandus, Vita s. Fulg. 12, 63; 28, 135.

 

On the name and location of the Byzantine monasteries, see J. J. Gavigan, op. cit., 209-214.

 

Chapter 43 Theological Discussions

 

The Church's Confrontation with the Arianism of the Vandals and the

 

Goths

The confrontation was conducted on the part of the Vandals in Africa as a persecution, using all the State's means of power. This is attested by the History of the Persecution in the province of Africa of Bishop Victor of Vita, published in 488-89, which was of course not only a historical record but at the same time an agency of the argument. Victor aimed (3, 62) to set right all who highly esteemed the barbarians and to show that the barbarians were still barbarians and had nothing else in mind than the annihilation of all Romans; hence he identified Catholics with Romans and conversely. He closed with a prayer that God might put an end to this punishment for the sins of the Romans (3, 70), but he probably also hoped to induce the Byzantines to intervene in Africa, in which of course he did not succeed. Over and above this purpose, the work, despite its partiality, remains one of the most important sources, from which it follows that the Vandals indeed tried to gain the Catholic African population, but insisted on the rebaptism of those converted. The Roman Count Sebastian, for whom King Gaiseric personally exerted himself, rejected conversion and rebaptism thus: "As bread originates by the fact of flour's passing through water and fire, so I was baptized and cooked by the fire of the Holy Spirit. When bread is again cut up, soaked again, and baked again and in this way becomes better, then I will have myself rebaptized." Here it can be ascertained that the confrontation with the Arianism of the Germans was not only a matter for theologians and pastors, but also for the laity. The possibilities for the clergy were extraordinarily limited: Gaiseric forbade not only solemn Catholic funerals with chants and hymns, because he regarded them as effective propaganda, but he also received reports on the sermons of the Catholic clergy. Anyone who had spoken of Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar or a similar figure from the Old Testament; was accused of having thereby meant the king and was sent into exile. Gaiseric may have been hypersensitive, but it must be assumed that in fact sermons in this encoded manner were doing battle against the Arian ruler who was persecuting the Church. Gaiseric's successor, Hunneric, in 483 again prescribed the creed of the Synod of Rimini of 359 for North Africa, because it was, he said, really ecumenical. The Vandals should be regarded not simply as Arians, but as adherents of the vague creed of Rimini, hence as Homoians. It is remarkable that King Hunneric appealed expressly to the anti-Arian legislation of the Emperors in order to use it against the Homoousians, the Catholics. When the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno interceded with Hunneric to permit again the election of a Catholic bishop for Carthage, he demanded on his part freedom of worship and of preaching for the Arian bishops at Constantinople and in the eastern provinces; otherwise, the Carthaginian clerics would be exiled. Here can be recognized, at least in its initial stages, an Arian, or, rather, an anti-Catholic Germanic ecumenical conviction, which could not but appear threatening to the Catholic Church. Thus the clergy of Carthage preferred to renounce the election of a bishop, but had to yield to the wish of the people.6

 

In his history of the persecution Victor included a book on the Catholic faith,7 in which, among other things, he presented the Christ- ology of Chalcedon, that is, the doctrine of the two natures. Hence he was aware that only at Chalcedon was the definitive reply given to Arius. However, Fulgentius of Ruspe, Victor's younger contemporary, was first able to argue successfully from there. In addition to the scriptural arguments, which were known from the first Arian controversy, and were already developed in the lands of Greek speech, Victor profited from the text of the Old Latin translation. Thus he quotes from Jeremiah 9:10: "They do not hear the voice of the substance." What was meant was: "The hills no longer hear the sound of the flocks": in this way Jeremiah described the abandonment of the land of Israel, punished for its sins. In this passage Victor saw a proof that the heretical Arians, who would have nothing to do with the common substance of Father and Son, were facing damnation. Apparently the Vandals in Africa called themselves Catholics, while on the other hand they labeled both Roman Catholic Christians and Donatists together as Homoou- sians. Thus Fulgentius could argue that the word "Catholic" was no more scriptural than was homoousios; the Arians would have to submit to being called the Triousians.

From the disciplinary measures which the Church had to adopt it appears that the struggle against Arianism was not always successful, but that many of the faithful, even clerics, let themselves be seduced to the Arian side. Thus in 487 Pope Felix II assembled at Rome a synod of the African episcopate to solve the problems of the apostates in the Vandal persecution. In his letter to the bishops of Sicily he made known the outcome: higher clerics who had gone over to the Arians should do penance throughout life; lesser clerics, monks, and lay persons should spend three years among the hearers and seven more years among the penitents, and for two years they must not take part in the presentation of gifts at the altar. Later, canon 9 of the Council of Lerida in Spain in 523 decreed that all who had had themselves rebaptized without compulsion might only pray for seven years among the catechumens and then two more years among the faithful before they were fully reconciled. It is noteworthy that no regulation was made there for those who had accepted rebaptism under compulsion, probably because the Visigoths in Spain did not resort to force. As a rule, the Arians, or, more correctly, the anti-Nicene Germans, insisted on the rebaptism of those converted to them. The Visigothic King Leovigild in 580 was the first to disavow this demand in order to facilitate conversions. But as early as c. 500 there were in Africa Catholics who went over to the Arians without rebaptism and expressed the hope that they had not sinned so seriously and would not incur the loss of eternal salvation. On the other hand, under the rule of the Catholic Clovis, who in 507 seized the greatest part of Gaul from the Arian Visigoths, there were conversions of Arian clerics. For then, canon 11 of the Council of Orleans, which met at Clovis's command in 511, decreed that they were to be restored to office through the laying on of hands of the Catholic bishop; Arian churches should be consecrated. The national Burgundian Council, which met at Epaon in 517, decided, on the contrary, in canon 33 that only such churches should again be taken into Catholic use which had been Catholic before their occupation by the Arians; the others should be thoroughly desecrated. Naturally, such decisions were possible only in the areas ruled by Catholic princes. Arian lay persons who converted to Catholicism should be admitted to the Church by anointing with chrism, which the priest might administer in cases of necessity; otherwise, the bishop. Gregory of Tours reports that both in Frankish Gaul and also in Spain it even happened that sometimes a new name was given to the convert. Gregory the Great, however, saw the reconciliation anointing for Arians only in the East; in the West the mere imposition of hands was performed. One will hardly have to reckon with a change of practice, but think of the Italian Roman custom, which Gregory regarded as general for the West.

In the first third of the sixth century Caesarius, Bishop of Aries, distinguished himself in southern Gaul as the opponent of Arianism. More important than his work on the mystery of the Holy Trinity and his Breviary against heretics was without doubt the fact that, due to his influence, canon 3 of the Council of Vaison in 529 prescribed the threefold Sanctus for all Masses. In this way it was probably intended to express that the three divine persons are holy in the same way, that is, they are of one being; for canon 5 decreed that, as hitherto in the East, Africa, and Italy, so now also in the southern Frankish Kingdom the "as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever" was to be added to the Gloria Patri in order to counteract the Arian "There was a time when he was not." No doubt such liturgical anti-heretical measures were especially successful and lasting. In this connection it must be mentioned that the insertion of the Creed of Nicaea-Constantinople into the Mass, which had taken place at Constantinople as early as the beginning of the sixth century, represented for the West an anti-Arian measure. The Visigothic King Recared decreed, in the introduction to the Third Council of Toledo in 589 immediately after he had converted to the Catholic faith with his people, that from now on this Creed was to be recited aloud at all Masses before communion. In the Spanish Visigothic Kingdom Recared also decided, as earlier in the Frankish Kingdom of Clovis, to retain celibacy for the reception of Arian clerics into the Catholic clergy, in case they were prepared. Here a new ordination seems, however, to have been required; in any event, there is mention that the "blessing of the priesthood" must be received again.

 

True, Victor of Tunnuna reported for 507 that theology, that is, the doctrine of the Trinity, was discussed at the baths, but very little is said about debates among theologians. The encounter between the African Bishop Fulgentius, banished to Sardinia but briefly recalled to Carthage, and the Arian Vandal King Thrasamund c. 515 represented an outstanding episode, which could indeed be likened to that between Ambrose and Theodosius. For this occasion Fulgentius composed his still extant three-volume work for King Thrasamund. A little earlier Bishop Av- itus of Vienne in the southern Frankish Kingdom may have discussed the Trinity with the still Arian Burgundian King Gundobad (d. 516). Of course, the situation in the Burgundian Kingdom was different from that in the African Vandal Kingdom. Avitus succeeded in converting Sigismund, son and successor of Gundobad, to the Catholic faith. It is not surprising that for the period of Justinian's wars against the Germans there were no reports of theological discussions. Then toward the end of the sixth century there was at least a report of the debate between the Catholic Bishop Masona, who, furthermore, was of Gothic descent, and the Arian Bishop Sunna under King Leovigild at Merida. But the report creates the impression of something extraordinary. Unexpectedly Masona argued in a scholastically clear and convincing manner, so that his Arian opponent Sunna could not refute him. Hence there was surprise at how philosophically and technically this bishop could debate. Unfortunately, none of his arguments has been quoted. It must probably be assumed that such discussions were not at all frequent, especially since Leovigild had this one held as a theological duel over the episcopal see of Merida.

 

Gregory of Tours reports in his historical work, completed toward the end of the sixth century, two discussions which he himself had had with Gothic Arians from Spain, no doubt in such detail because the war against Arianism was to him an important concern; however, he introduced his complete work not only with the Nicene Creed but in the foreword he refuted the Arian argument from Mark 13:32Чthe Son does not know the time of the endЧunderstanding by this Son the entire Christian people. The Goth Agila, who was not a priest but an envoy of King Leovigild, proved to be quite equal to the discussion, even if Gregory judged him quite contemptible. He referred to the fact that, according to John 14:28, the Father is greater than the Son, that Christ was grieved and gave up his spirit, as Matthew's gospel declares in 26:38 and 27:50, and he even included the Holy Spirit in the discussion: he was promised and sentЧ. . . PromissusЧmissusЧhence he is less than Father and Son. Gregory tried to argue from the miserable end of Arius, but drew from Agila the deserved rebuff: another's religion must never be ridiculed; the Arians did not do so; rather they permitted everyone the freedom to honor even a pagan sacrificial shrine by a bow of the head.

 

The discussion with Oppila in 584 makes known that Gothic Arianism in Spain had meanwhile changed. Oppila professed himself to be orthodoxЧFather, Son, and Spirit are unius virtutisЧand participated in the Mass but without communicating. But afterward Gregory took him to task, for he declared that he had stopped short because of the Gloria Patri. Glory must be given to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. In this Gregory recognized him as a heretic and discussed at length but without success, in order to convince him of the correctness of the Catholic formula: "Glory to the Father and the Son . . ." If the report is included that the Arian Visigothic King Leovigild began to pray in Catholic churches and stated that the Son is aequalis

Patri but he could not recognize the Holy Spirit as God, then it is seen how thoroughgoing was the change which King Leovigild imposed at the Arian Council of 5 80 Чthe only one of which we know: cessation of the demand for rebaptism, recognition of the equal divinity of the Son. Nevertheless, it is surprising that the King then clung so tenaciously to the Arian form of the Gloria Patri. From this it probably appears that the Arians, and a fortiori the Arian kings who ruled their Churches, were not really concerned with theologically pondered considerations, but rather with traditions, even with liturgical forms. In any case, Leovigild, of course without intending it, had prepared the conversion of his entire nation to Catholicism, by decreeing on the whole a decisive change which, in addition, already represented the half-way point to the Nicene profession; for, through it, Arianism, which lived only on the basis of the tradition, could not but be convulsed. On the other hand, through this deep intrusion into dogma and ecclesiastical discipline, Leovigild must have prepared the supremacy of the later Catholic kings over the Church, especially since one must reckon with the fact that among the bishops of the Third Council of Toledo in 589, at which King Recared acted so authoritatively, were some who had taken part in Leovigild's Arian Synod of 580 but had meanwhile become Catholics.

 

Special doctrinal discussions of course occurred on the occasion of the marriages of princes, as, for example, when c. 565 the Arian Vis- igothic Princesses Brunhildis and Galswintha went from Spain as wives of two Frankish kings and were converted as a result of "the preaching of the bishops and the urgings of the kings," professed the Holy Trinity, and were anointed with chrism. It is interesting that in the reverse case, that is, when a Catholic Frankish princess, Ingundis, came to Spain as the wife of an Arian Visigothic prince, Hermenegild, Gregory attributed the preaching to her. She thereby brought it about that Hermenegild became a Catholic, received the anointing with chrism, and in this connection even received a new name, John. Gregory had little sympathy for anything Gothic, in fact for anything Spanish. Thus he did not mention the activity of Bishop Leander of Seville, which was of importance for Hermenegild's conversion, but only the admonition which the Bishop of Agde imported through Ingundis as she was en route. For him, just as for Gregory the Great, it was Hermenegild who rebelled against his father and was finally murdered in prison, a martyr. On the contrary, the Catholic Spanish writers of the seventh century did not speak of Hermenegild's conversion but only of his alliance with the Greeks and his revolt against the legitimate King Leovigild. Thus did the judgment change quickly through the elimination of the Arian controversy. If Gregory of Tours also apparently had an interest in extolling the Franks and hence also the Frankish Princess Ingundis who had gone to Spain to be married, there is no need to doubt the authenticity of the reports on her steadfastness and her religious formation. Despite the threats and blows of her mother-in-law, who even had her thrown into the Arian baptismal font in an effort to force her rebaptism, she declared in Spain: "It is sufficient that I was once cleansed of original sin by the healing bath of baptism and professed the Holy Trinity in one equality." Ingundis's resolution may have contributed to King Leovigild's abandoning of the demand for rebaptism. From the conduct of the three princesses, from the intervention of Leovigild and similar procedures in Vandal Africa, it may be concluded that Catholic Christianity developed an individual denominational moral sense among the newly converted German peoples, whereas Arian Christianity continued to be determined by the principles of the German comitatus.

 

The struggle against Arianism, however, easily operated to the other extreme. King Chilperic, who also on other occasions showed himself to be quite pretentious, composed a dogmatic decree on the Trinity and intended to oblige all bishops to it. Gregory of Tours at once recognized that in it Sabellianism was merely undergoing a revision, but only the Bishop of Albi was able to dissuade the King from his plan, which in any event had to be fitted into the total confrontation with Arianism. At the time a good share of this argument was borne by lay people, probably even by lay people of nonnoble rank, even if detailed accounts of this are lacking. Thus the merit for the overcoming of Arianism belongs not only to the outstanding figures among bishops and theologians, but to the totality of the Roman Catholic faithful.

 

The Arian German domination in North Africa and Italy, which had experienced in the sixth century a development working in the opposite direction, in the sense that the Vandals moved from intolerance to a certain toleration in regard to Catholics, whereas in the Kingdom of Theodoric the Great the converse was true, ended in both cases in the middle of the sixth century in Justinian's reconquest. The Visigoths' Arian domination in Spain, which had been rather tolerant until c. 580, but then for a short time under Leovigild had exerted pressure on the Catholics, became Catholic under King Recared in 586, so that toward the end of the sixth century Arianism could really have been overcome everywhere if the Lombards had not produced a certain epilogue. It cannot be determined exactly what, as regards faith, they really brought with them to Italy; it is certain that many of them were still pagans, but they appeared not as persecutors of the Catholics but rather as brutal warriors. Religiously and ecclesiastically, the Lombards, though masters of Italy, felt themselves overcome by the people they ruled. True, under the Lombard King Rothari, hence in the second quarter of the seventh century, there was in many a city of Italy besides the Catholic also an Arian bishop, but we hear nothing about theological controversies. From c. 640 to 680 the Lombards converted to Catholicism, something that was facilitated for them by the circumstance that the Catholic Church was in opposition to Byzantium either because of the quarrel over the Three Chapters or because of the Monothelite controversy, so that they did not have to accept the religion of their political opponents.

 

What the Catholic writers transmit does not permit us to assume a very high theological level among the Arians. However, some important testimonies are still extant. Thus the famed Codex Argenteus, which is kept at Uppsala, a Bible manuscript written with silver ink, must have been written in Italy in the time of Theodoric and is proof of a high Arian religious culture. That there were also Arians of high theological and scientific rank can be deduced from a codex which was apparently written in Italy in the sixth century by an educated Goth. There is found on the wide, originally empty border of a codex of Ambrose, which contained the first two books De fide of the Bishop of Milan and the Gesta Aquileiensia, hence the acts of the Synod of Aquileia of 381, the Dissertatio Maximini contra Ambrosium. Hence the writer of the gloss attached importance to correcting the report on that Synod influenced by Ambrose by this means, that he wrote into the same codex the work of the Arian Maximinus against Ambrose. This theological level of Gothic Arianism may have survived the political dominance. In any event, the polemic which Bishop Agnellus of Ravenna composed c. 560 against Arianism was directed against Arian Goths.

 

It can be ascertained in the seventh century that the Bishop of Pavia was directly subject to Rome and was ordained by the Roman Bishop, even though Pavia really belonged to the ecclesiastical province of Milan. This case is the earliest exemption of a bishop in the West, in fact the only one at all until the eleventh century. True, the royal Lombard residence was probably supposed to be especially honored, but this arrangement occurred as a result of the Arian quarrel. At Pavia apparently the Catholic succession had died out at the beginning of the seventh century, but then the Arian bishop became a Catholic: he had announced his conversion to the Roman Bishop and was received by him.

Accomplishment and progress, but at the same time also endangering and one-sidedness of the anti-Arian theology, which had an impact on the future and to a degree even today, are seen most clearly in Fulgen- tius. At the beginning of the sixth century bishop of the North African city of Ruspe, he was during most of his episcopate an exile in Sardinia. He stood forth not only as the greatest Latin theologian of his century, but also as the most determined and profound opponent of the anti- Nicene Homoian creed of Seleucia-Rimini upheld by the Germans. In his anti-Arian works he quoted especially Cyprian and Tertullian, hence pre-Nicene authors, but not, for example, Augustine by whom he was so strongly influenced that he could be called the abbreviated Augustine. He argued against the Germans, who had stopped on the position of the Synod of Seleucia-Rimini, from the height, meanwhile achieved, of Trinitarian theology and the development of Christological dogma. Thus, for example, he aimed so to speak that no one could impute to him either the idea of two Christs or the introduction of a fourth person into the Trinity. And so, in regard to this basically outdated confrontation, he had at hand the anti-Nestorian concern of the fifth century and the anti-Apollinarist concern of the fourth. Indeed, he could even expound results of the purely theological development of the Vandals, not supported by ecclesiastical definition, as necessary for salvation. This was true especially of Augustine's psyschological analogy of the Trinity, which in him is found as memoriaЧintelligentia (respectively cogitatio or verbum)Чvoluntas.Щ For example, he declared against Fabian that whoever later wanted to learn the truth of the Creator himself now had to look at the picture of the Creator in the mirror of created man; through this faith one could ascent to the sight. But Fulgentius did not stop with Augustine: in some Christological questions he went far beyond him. For Augustine, the soul of the Redeemer was, as it were, the connecting link between his divinity and his humanity, so that at the moment of his death the divinity remained united only with the soul, but not with the body. Fulgentius, on the contrary, repeatedly stressed the idea that the divinity of Christ remained united with the body at his death; hence at least in this point he was influenced by eastern Christology, for the first to express himself clearly in this sense seems to have been Gregory of Nyssa. Fulgentius championed his doctrine probably not only to stress the omnipresence of the supernatural nature of Christ and from there to prove its divinity, but also to expound its incapacity to suffer, which for the anti-Nicene Germans was always unacceptable: in the biblical accounts of the Passion they found the proof of the inferior divinity of Christ. Fulgentius developed at least an elementary psychology of Jesus: It was of his human soul that it was said it did not yet know the good and the evil; of it was said that it grew in wisdom and grace. In this too appeared the significant progress of the Nicene position in relation to the Arian dispute of the fourth century. Even more it was the result of the Catholic Trinitarian theology, that had meanwhile become common property, that Fulgentius attributed all appearances and all supernatural effects to the entire Trinity and thus merged the divine persons to such a degree that their invocation became indistinguishable. Against the argument of the anti-Nicene Fabian, that the "Our Father" is addressed to the Father alone and the sacrifice of the Church is offered to the Father alone, hence Son and Spirit are of a lower rank, Fulgentius reacted decisively and maintained that not only the "Our Father" but also the sacrifice of the Church are directed to the entire Trinity; the same applies to the prayer of the prophets; the Father alone was named so that the danger of polytheism could be avoided; because the Trinity is only one substance and effects our salvation in inseparable power and goodness, it is invoked together, even under the Father's name. If Fulgentius rejects the view that Exodus 3:l4f. refers to the person of the Father alone, and immutable being is attributed to him alone, with the argument that it would follow from this that the Father had appeared, then this sounds archaic and recalls the ideas of the apologists and the pre-Nicene theology in general. Hence it was expected that the appearance would be attributed to the Son, and Fulgentius thus interprets the divine appearance: God made himself visible by means of a creatura subiecta; hence Exodus 3:14 must refer to the entire Trinity. Of course, Fulgentius still knew that some (aliquanti, apparently not only anti-Nicenes) referred to the revelations of God in the Old Testament and the coming down of God to the Son: but the future did not belong to this interpretation.

The opponents of Fulgentius also, even though they appealed to the Council of Seleucia-Rimini, did not entirely stop in the first phase of the theological discussion of the Trinity, but included the question of the Holy Spirit with it. Fabian, for example, regarded the Holy Spirit as a subordinate essence of lesser rank, because one did not pray for his coming but that he be sent. Hence here an argument from the prayer practice of the Church was opposed to the argument from the baptismal form, usual on the Catholic side, for the divinity of the Holy Spirit. The sending of the Holy Spirit, however, according to Fulgentius, could not be compared to the sending of the angels, as Fabian did it; the Spirit is regarded rather as sent by Father and Son for this reason that he proceeds from the Father and the Son, a patre filioque procedit. Hence the later disputed Filioque had at least an anti-Arian root. But the procession gives to the Holy Spirit an entirely special rank. While essence of begotten or born can be transmitted from the one Son to the many adoptive sons, procession applies only to the Holy Spirit and cannot be stated of any creature. Fabian had appealed for the lesser divinity of the Son to this, that man was created according to his image, hence according to that of the Son. But Fulgentius insisted that man is an image of the entire Trinity.72 Without quoting the Augustinian analogy of the Trinity, he betrayed how very much he was dependent on it in this passage. But this meant, on the one hand, that only the intellectual part of human nature is understood as the image of God, namely memoryЧunderstandingЧlove, as representation of Father, Word, and Spirit, and, on the other hand, that, without this being intended, the relation of God to man is no longer a personal relation but appears as a natural reflection. Each has considerable consequences for Christian morality and piety in so far as, on the one side, the entire Trinity is, as the one substance, the one addressed in prayer and sacrifice,73 and, on the other side, no positive importance can any longer be assigned to sexuality, for example.74 Of course, the ideas of Fulgentius and of the other Catholic defenders of Nicaea were not so much pushed in this direction by original hostility to the body as rather by the insight that all statements about God can be made only in analogy. On the contrary, the opponents of Nicaea wished to imagine the divine as they imagined the human.75 Indeed, Fulgentius blamed them for expressing thoughts of flesh and blood, which cannot inherit the Kingdom of God (cf. 1 Cor. 15:50). Such argumentation no doubt made an impression, but it confused the requirement which must be placed on philosohical thought with the New Testament requirement of penance and conversion.

 

To the former Catholic monk, then Arian priest Fastidiosus, who thought that it would follow from the indivisibility of the Trinity that it had been born together, suffered together, and so forth,76 Fulgentius replied with the aid of Chalcedonian Christology: Just as in Christ there are not two persons, although the special character of each of the two natures persists, so too the assumption of human nature was not common to the entire Trinity.77 In this connection attention must be di-

 

Fragm. 21, 3.

 

Cf. supra, p. 718.

 

Cf. doctrine of original sin, infra, p. 724.

 

Cogitare divina sicut cogitat humana: Fragm. 28, 16, against Fabian.

 

Sermo Fast., no. 4.

 

Contra Fast., no. 12. Diesner <Fulgentius, 54) finds the invectives of Fulgentius against Fastidiosus merely painful. He probably understood them as expression of the conviction frequently expressed in the struggle against heretics, that heretics are morally inferior. Fulgentius's claim that the monk and priest Fastidiosus had fallen into impurity and had lived in it for two years and regarded himself as fortunate until he died apparently pretty early (Contra Fast., 21, 1, and 22, 1) seems to show a knowledge of the facts. Perhaps there was question here of a monk who among other things had gone over to "Arianism" in order to marry and still remain a priest. Thus this case belongs to the history of celibacy; on the other hand, it makes clear that the Catholics had to do not only with Vandals who spoke Latin poorly but also with converted Latins.

 

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rected to a significant weakness of Fulgentius's theology, which clearly called for compensation. Although the unity of the person of the Redeemer was for Fulgentius an established theological possession, just as the duality of natures, it must be stated that he had no concept of person in the sense of personality, but understood persona almost as something natural: God suffered in the Man, because the person of God and of the Man is only one; God did not suffer with the Man, because the substance of God and of Man is not blended in the one Christ. Because of the unity of the person, Scripture attributes suffering to the Son of God, but the divinity of Christ itself, which suffered for us according to the flesh, must be regarded as immortal and incapable of suffering. Hence not the person is the subject, but the divinity of Christ. Finally, Fulgentius could even draw a parallel between the person-unity of God and Man in Christ, which signifies suffering and resurrection of the Son of God, with the nature-unity of Father and Son, in consequence of which the sacrifice of the Son by the Father is at the same time a self-sacrifice of the Son. If, however, he says that both priest and also sacrificial gift are accomplishments and names of Christ's human nature or the total Man offered himself or employed his soul respectively, then the humanity in the Redeemer appears almost as an autonomous subject alongside the divinity of Christ. Thus Fulgentius comes suspiciously close to Nestorianism, because he lacks Cyril of Alexandria's doctrine of appropriation, that the Son of God made the flesh his very own with all its sufferings, and he also thought that in the anti-Arian opposition he had to insist that the entire Trinity is the subject of the sacrifice. Nevertheless, he there succeeded, where he renounced the concepts of nature and person, in expressing himself not only as authentically Cyrillan but as completely orthodox in the sense of the Universal Church, by employing the slogan of Cyril, "one and the same," adopted by Chalcedon. One and the same Christ experienced in the humanity what was of man, but in the divinity he remained incapable of suffering and immortal.

 

The discussion of the idea that Christ suffered in his supernatural nature led Fulgentius to claim that Christ assumed a rational soul with its passiones for the purpose of freeing our souls from all passiones.

 

There redemption is interpreted very one-sidedly, more Stoically than biblically. Hence the biblicism of the Arians evoked in the Catholics a moving away from the Bible in the direction of philosophical positions. This also operated exactly as one-sidedness in the theology of the Trinity. While the Nicenes of Serdica in 343 had still conceded that the Father is greater than the Son precisely on the basis of the name of Father, for Fulgentius the Son is subordinate to the Father only as the Incarnate One; indeed, the Father must not even be placed before the Son. Thus anti-Arianism led to the complete leveling of the theology of the economy of the Trinity.

 

A similar one-sidedness can be ascertained in the image of the Church: the true Church is characterized almost only by the faith in a Trinity undivided in substance; the saving faith seems to be only the profession of God one in substance. The proclamation of God's saving work in the historical Jesus moves into the background. For his ecclesiology, Fulgentius relied on Cyprian, but for Cyprian there was outside the Church, the one Mother, absolutely nothing worth recognizing, Christian, endowed with grace. Fulgentius, however, as heir of the Augustinian anti-Donatism, sought the following compromise: The Church as Mother is like Sarah, and the schismatic or heretical communities are to be compared to her maid. The children of the maid could also be saved, if they came to the true Mother; only then is the truth of the paternal seed of use to them, namely, baptism administered validly in heresy. However, it appears there when membership in the Church determines the effectiveness of the true divine gift of grace, when the Church stands above God or at least closer to the feeling of the believer or to the theological thinker. Thus this greatest theologian of the West in the sixth century is a proof of how fateful on the one side was an antiheretical position, especially then when the development of theology had proceeded beyond this controverted point, and on the other side how necessary was the acceptance of the total achievement of the past generations of theologians.

In fact, within Catholic piety and Catholic expressions of faith after the conclusion of the confrontation with the Arianism of the Germans, there are found remnants of this struggle which to a degree last to this day. The Spanish Liturgy especially displayed the effort again and again to stress the equal divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit. That the language of prayer glides and it is often unclear which divine person is meant seems to be intention rather than carelessness. Something similar, if softened, could be found in the Gallic Liturgy. But the fact that the Spanish Bishop Braulio of Zaragoza (d. 651) spoke of the Creator Christ the Lord has in this connection not received the importance that similar expressions of Gregory the Great have. For example, in his seventh Sermon on Ezekiel 1-3 (no. 2) he called Christ both Judge and Creator; Christ is our Maker (auctor noster, ibid., no. 4); Christ is Maker and Redeemer of the human race (ibid., no. 12); Christ is the Creator of all, even of the angels (ibid., no. 19); Christ is the sublimis Deus, of whom there is mention in Ezekiel (ibid. 8, 2); Christ is the ever active God, who inwardly infuses grace, while outwardly he draws man to himself. Indeed, just where Gregory stressed against Pelagius that we can do any good only on the basis of the Lord's gift (ibid. 9, 2) it was clear that he was thinking of Christ as God. And so his viewpoint, also in this connection, was more strongly anti-Arian than anti-Pelagian. This even appeared when Gregory forbade Bishop Desiderius of Vienne to teach grammar, because praise of Jupiter could not have place together with praise of Christ in one and the same mouth. Hence Gregory instinctively opposed Jupiter, the pagans' supreme god, not to God the Father, but to Christ. Since Gregory, with his letters, homilies, and scriptural exegesis was of such importance for all of medieval devotion, it is not surprising if this outlook was disseminated: the Heliandlied, for example, was entirely influenced by it. Perhaps that custom of our age still simply to call the Crucified One the Lord GodЧcompare "carving of the Lord God," "shrine of the Lord God"Чis a final offshoot of that anti-Arian exertion to stress the divinity of Christ by every means. In any event, it must be affirmed that the Western Church was never so enduringly influenced by any dispute as by the struggle with Arianism. The two controversies still to be treated were rather episodes.

 

The Semipelagian Quarrel

 

Fulgentius, concerning whom there was detailed mention in the framework of the dispute with Arianism, was also the one who completed

 

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the Augustinian doctrine of grace. With a view to the so-called Semipelagians, that is, those theologians such as the monk John Cassian and Bishop Faustus of Riez in southern Gaul, who had understood man's desire for salvation as the achievement of his own will and predestination simply as the result of God's foreknowledge, and whose view had prevailed at Gallic synods after 470, Fulgentius defended Augustine by pushing his doctrine to its most extreme consequences even if he did not overstate it. In Augustine are found contradictions, but not in Fulgentius. Augustine corrected himself several timesЧin his sermons he frequently withdrew, even quite far, from the theses which he upheld in his polemics. Fulgentius, however, came with inexorable logic, without letting himself relent through any sort of consideration, to the following chief doctrines.

 

The guilt of our first parents was transmitted through procreation. All men are unworthy of salvation and sentenced to damnation. The free will is fundamentally incapable of turning itself to the good. The grace of God is absolutely necessary to begin every meritorious work, to continue it, to bring it to a good end. The grace of God is absolutely unearned, all are undeserving of it, it is granted to men through pure mercy and in accord with God's discretion. God does not look at the future works of men to predestine them for heaven, but only to predestine them for eternal punishment. God's salvific will is universal (1 Tim. 2:4) only in so far as men are selected from all nations, all classes, and all ages. Children dying without baptism are condemned to eternal punishments. When it was objected to him that not only is baptism necessary for salvation, but also the eating and drinking of the Lord's body and blood, Fulgentius could thus interpret the reception of the Eucharist: Because all Christians are the one body of the Lord, one participates in this body at the moment when one is added to it, that is, baptized. Hence baptism bestows all that is the content of the Eucharist.

 

For the rest, it is not the sacrament of baptism as such which grants deliverance from sin, but children are freed by means of the profession

 

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of others, since they are also bound by the chain of the unrighteousness of others. They are cleansed when others utter the spirit-filled profession, since they are also tainted by the carnal intercourse of others. Hence, because children are destined by the agency of others for condemnation in a twofold mannerЧthrough the origin and the transmission of sinЧthey can also be externally destined for salvation through the faith and the profession of others. Hence, on the one hand, the sacrament is here spiritualized and made relative, and, on the other hand, carnalis concubitus and spiritualis affectus are as equally contrasted as spirit (=grace) and flesh (=sexuality) are directly natural contrasts. This impression is confirmed if the original sin of man is understood as the loss of the soul's health (animcte sanitas) or of the garment of faith (vestimentum fidei), so that carnal desires inflict wounds on man. It seems to be forgotten here that the sin of Adam consisted in the wish to be like God, not that the flesh gained the upper hand. But this is not the only one-sidedness which can be ascertained in this great disciple and executor of the testament of Augustine. He interpreted the redemption so consistently as a new creation that man could contribute nothing at all to it, and God's salvific action had to precede in time every act proper to man. This constraint in the time-scheme and this clearly natural, indeed material, understanding of the power of sin and the grace of redemption did not facilitate an agreement with the opponents of such an excessively consistent Augustinianism; these doctrines were not then adopted unreservedly by the Universal Church, although Fulgentius was regarded in the whole of Christendom as the expert in the theology of grace, and people applied to him from Constantinople itself.

 

Fulgentius maintained that the eternal punishment of sinners was fair because they did not even wish to stop sinning, indeed they took more pleasure in the sin than in life; however, he also regarded it as freely decided by God that pardon took place only here on earth, and thereafter only punishment; God could have decided otherwise, but he did not wish to. The eternity of the punishment seemed to Fulgentius to be such a concern that it falsified his exegesis. Thus for him the sentence from the Sermon on the Mount, "You will not come out until you have paid the last penny" (Matt. 5:26), curiously became a proof for the unending pains of hell. The fact that he so understood the resurrection of the dead that only the just acquired a transformed and transfigured body, while sinners, on the contrary, received a perishable one, capable of suffering, was of course not his fault but the fault of the textual development, which had turned 1 Corinthians 15:51, "We will not all fall asleep, but all will be changed" into "We will all indeed rise, but not all will be changed."

 

As much as the emphasizing of grace and hence of the all-causality of God served to make man humble and take from him all pride, for example for ascetical achievements, so too, an unprecedented claim to authority could flow precisely from this. Thus Fulgentius declared that he intended to write to Euthymius in regard to the forgiveness of sins whatever God suggested to him; it is then necessary for salvation to say that exactly; but then the addressee must accept it. But at least equally dangerous is the plain application of the doctrine of predestination to one's own experience, especially if it went hand-in-hand with antiheretical polemic. Thus it is said in Fulgentius's biography (XXI, 46), which came from one of his pupils and displayed his spirit, that the Arian Vandal King Thrasamund did not let himself be convinced by Fulgentius, because "he was not predestined to salvation." Later Gregory of Tours distinguished according to this standard between Arian Goths and Catholic Franks and regarded the possession of Gaul as proof of the divine favor for the Franks. As much as the intervention of Fulgentius on behalf of the Augustinian theology of grace was a necessary reply to Semipelagianism, which had again established all of salvation, with the initium fidei as its basis, on the will of man itself, just as little could this theology be the last word in the question. The Universal Church followed Fulgentius less than Gregory the Great, or, at first, Caesarius of Aries respectively.

 

Caesarius of Aries, the somewhat younger contemporary of Fulgentius, had, in the conflict with Semipelagianism, not thought so one- sidedly of Augustine's doctrine as final, but, so to speak, had reduced it to the degree generally tolerable to the Church. Since the condemnation of Pelagius, it was the conviction of the entire Church that God's grace is necessary for every meritorious work. But it seemed, especially to some monastic circles, not only in Africa but also in southern Gaul, that human free will was abolished by Augustine's doctrine; by means of the theology of Fulgentius, such suspicions were even strengthened. Freedom seemed to be maintained only if at least the beginning of conversion, the first step to faith, was understood as the accomplish- 1h? la 11 in lmukth un 1ka1n3u1w1n 1 w inn carli lviiljui-ji nouo

 

ment of the human will itself. Even if especially Bishop Faustus of Riez, who had earlier been a monk on the island of Lerins, had expressed himself in this sense as early as the fifth century, this so-called Semipelagianism must still not be regarded as the characteristic attitude of mind of the island monastery, for Caesarius, who helped Augustine to victory against Semipelagianism, remained to the end of his life entirely under the stamp of Lerins. Of course we do not have from Caesarius a theological treatment of the problem, as we do from Fulgentius. But the expressions frequently coming from his pen, such as "with God's help" or "if the Lord grants it," make known that, like Augustine, he was convinced of the necessity of God's grace for beginning, continuing, and completing every good work. To the hearers of his sermons Caesarius did not appear to suggest any Pelagian or Semipelagian errors; in any event, he rather saw himself compelled to take a stand against those who denied the freedom of the human will, Manichaeans and astrologers (Mathematici). The will was so important for him because it could directly substitute for the external good work: fasting and almsgiving are doubly good; almsgiving alone is meritorious; fasting alone, without alms, is not meritorious, because it is, as it were, only a form of thrift, that is, of concern for self. But to one who has nothing at all from which he can give alms good will suffices, that is: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will." Sermon 199, in which these statements are found (Chapter 2), was regarded as the most widely read of all Caesarius's sermons, and this fact was surely no mere accident. It is shown in this, that the popular preaching tended rather to moralize than that the height of the Augus- tinian theology of grace could maintain itself. True, Augustine refers the words from the angelic hymn of Luke 2:14, which characteristically do not appear in his early anti-Pelagian writings, to the human will in the work On Grace and Free Will (2,4), but he there understood them entirely as the gift of God, not as the least achievement of man, as Caesarius did. Caesarius took pains to rework, in the Augustinian sense, the material for his sermons, which he took wherever he found it, for example, in Faustus of Riez or in the collected sermons of the so-called Eusebius Gallicanus, but there still remained in his model sermons expressions such as would probably never have come from Augustine's lips. Our God feeds (pascitur) not on the abundance of alms but on the good will (benevolentia) of the giver, appears in Sermo 197, 4, which depended extensively on Faustus; indeed, Caesarius could even so express himself as though man had to care quite alone for his eternal salvation. In Sermo 198, 2, he indeed said that the soul is fed by the food of the Word of God, but he then explained: "If we each year fill barns, granaries, and cellars so that our body may have food for a year, how much must we then lay aside so that our soul may have suppport for eternity."

 

In the discussion with his colleagues, Caesarius put the accent differently. At the Synod of Valence in 528 he was attacked because of his standing up in principle for Augustine. It was characteristic of him that he did not compose a polemic against this Synod but turned to the Roman See. "A few (pauca) chapters" came from there as his answer, which he himself designated as extracts from Holy Scripture made by the Fathers. Caesarius submitted them to a synod of his suffragans at Orange in July 529, which adopted them as their own. In regard to form, these capitula appeared with surprisingly little claim to authority. True, the first eight, which deal with original sin (1 and 2) and grace (3 to 8), are presented in the form of canons, beginning with "if anyone . . .," but they do not end with anathemas but with judgments such as: "contradicts the Prophet Isaiah" or "resists the Holy Spirit." It was the two chief errors of PelagiusЧthat only the body of man, not also the soul, was injured by sin, and Adam hurt only himself, not his posterityЧthat were shown to be contrary to Scripture. Then there was question principally of expounding that God does not await the decision of the human will for the good, that he not only increases faith but also grants the initium fidei, indeed even the devout desire for faith (canon 5); that his grace precedes every good human impulse (canon 6); that the nature of man, of itself, with the enlightenment and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is capable of no good work deserving of salvation (canon 7). Hence here was made a sharp separation between every supernatural salvific activity and every natural thing unimportant for salvation. And this is true not only of a part of men, so that some would be saved only by grace, others by the decision of their own will, but of all (canon 8).

 

Canons 9-25 present extracts from the propositions from the works of Augustine that had been collected by Prosper of Aquitaine. In some passages the harmony is not perfect, but essential modification probably cannot be established. The choice is, of course, characteristic; there is found no single expression on predestination or on perseverance in good. Of course, this is not due to Caesarius but probably to that Roman cleric who had made the selection from the Augustinian florilegium. Nevertheless, this selection agrees with the views of

 

Caesarius. In any event, he emphatically stressed in his accompanying letter the necessity of the prevenient divine grace and the incapacity of human nature to acquire salvation of itself. It was his desire to stress, however, that with the aid of Christ's grace the faithful should and could fulfill what was necessary for the soul's salvation. He came to speak of predestination only in the sense that he angrily rejected the idea that some are predestined by the divine omnipotence to evil. Of course, neither Augustine nor his overly consistent pupil Fulgentius had claimed that. The question to what extent predestination may and must be spoken of was not answered by the Second Council of Orange. Besides, even though Caesarius had requested and obtained from Pope Boniface II an express confirmation, in which divine grace, preceding every good work, was again emphasized, it very soon fell into oblivion and was not again brought to light until the discussions of the Council of Trent. But Gregory the Great followed Augustine, on whom he extensively depended, only so far as did the Council of Orange, and thus showed that the Roman tradition, as whose expression it must be understood, had maintained itself.

 

The Quarrel over the Three Chapters

 

The decree by which the Emperor Justinian I condemned Theodore of Mopsuestia, the anti-Cyrillan writings of Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and the letter of Ibas to Mari evoked a powerful rejection in the entire Western Church. The sharpest and most detailed repudiation of the imperial decree was the work of the African Bishop Facundus of Her- miane in his Defense of the Three Chapters. Although he was clear as to the authorship, he declared that he did not wish to regard Justinian as the author, because in it he discovered a contradiction of the faith already professed by the Emperor. Indeed, in accord with 1 Peter 2:17, one must fear God and honor the king. Thus, out of fear of God, he would refute what contradicted the Church of Christ but, out of honor for the king, not charge to the king the views he had to combat but charge them to the Eutychians, who had merely used the awe-inspiring imperial name {terror personae).

 

Facundus knew he was in agreement with Justinian in this, that on the one hand one must profess as a definition against both Nestorians and Eutychians that one of the Trinity was crucified for us, and on the other hand that Mary is truly and really called Mother of God. But it must still be addedЧhe apparently missed this in JustinianЧthat the same Lord Jesus Christ exists in two natures, that is, that divinity and humanity are not diminished in him. True, Facundus occupied himself essentially with questions of form in order to show that the Three Chapters should not have been condemned, but he also offered a few noteworthy reflections of theological content. Thus in John 1:14 he found an adequate scriptural argument against Nestorians as well as Eutychians and their Apollinarist ancestors: "The Word became flesh" designated the one person, because the same one, who is God-Word, became Man; "he dwelt among us" shows that the two natures remain, because another is the one that indwells, and another is the one that serves as the dwelling. Despite this Johannine perspective, Facundus declared that one comes through the humanity of Christ to the knowledge of his divinity, and thereby expressed a basic rule always valid for theology and faith, even if often not sufficiently observed.

 

Facundus did not think that the Eutychians would really return to the communion of the Church when the Three Chapters had been condemned. The attack on the Three Chapters would not succeed in freeing Chalcedon from the charge of pro-Nestorianism and thus make it acceptable to the Eutychians, but only in burdening it and fighting it. If it was a question of the defense of Cyril, then people would also have to attack, for example, Isidore of Pelusium and Gennadius of Constantinople and others, who had expressed themselves harshly in regard to Cyril. Later the subsequent Pope Pelagius I also adopted this idea in his work, likewise called Defense of the three Chapters, composed while he was still a deacon. He followed Facundus also in this argument: if praise of Cyril were the sole criterion of Orthodoxy, then the Eutychians would have to be considered orthodox. But in his argumentation Facundus surely went too far when he claimed that the letter of Ibas should not now be condemned because it had been approved at Chalcedon. No synodal verdict was issued at Chalcedon on this letter any more than on the works of Theodoret, but there was question there of the person of the two bishops just mentioned, namely, whether they might be recognized as full participants in the synod and retain their episcopal sees. Later it was declared on the part of Rome, in order to

reconcile the Fifth Council with that of Chalcedon, that at Chalcedon there was question of the sessions of an ecumenical council only to the sixth session inclusively, hence only so long as the imperial commissioners supervised the agenda; the rest, in which Theodoret and Ibas had been rehabilitated, were not binding and were also not approved by Pope Leo.

 

One will perhaps not agree with Facundus, but still show a certain admiration for the keenness of mind with which he defended the letter of Ibas. Since Ibas attacked Cyril only because of an Apollinarist opinion imputed to him, but then praised him because of his alleged conversion from Apollinarist error, a condemnation of the letter of Ibas means nothing more than subsequently to make Cyril a Nestorian. In the case of Facundus, as of almost all opponents of the Second Council of Constantinople and moreover of the opponents of the Three ChaptersЧlater theology has to a great extent adopted this simple legacyЧa defect in historical reflection must be ascertained, when he wanted, for example, to defend Theodore of Mopsuestia with the allusion that he had been praised by such orthodox teachers as John Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzen: Theodore outlived both of them long enough to have been able to fall into serious errors. On the other hand, one insight of Facundus is perhaps still helpful today: the Church Fathers, who illuminated us like heavenly lights, often suffered eclipses exactly like these, namely, when they had controversies among themselves which we cannot understand and approve.

 

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That Facundus, however, toward the end of his work, tried to reduce ad absurdum the strivings for union as they were being pushed in the East, especially by the Emperor Zeno, by the fact that he declared that where one God is, there can be only one Church and not, for example, different communities of the same Church, may indeed seem logical, but it causes one to suspect an inflexibility in the discussions, which then brought no honor to the Christian name in the course of Church history. Facundus himself in fact remained inexorably consistent; Pope Pelagius, on the contrary, who as a deacon had definitely championed the Three Chapters, but then had probably realized that Chalcedon had not been denigrated by the Council of 553, perhaps also by the hint that he was the only one under consideration as a successor

for Vigilius, had been moved to a change of position, but had to let himself be reviled by the irreconcilable Africans, especially by Facun- dus, as nekrodioktesЧpersecutor of the deadЧbecause he had accepted the condemnation of the long dead Theodore of Mopsuestia. In this connection, Pelagius in his great profession of faith, which he made on his assumption of office at Rome, passed over Theodore in silence but expressly defended the persons of Theodoret and Ibas.

 

Most strongly compromised was, of course, the memory of Pope Vigilius. Occasionally he incurred a plain damnatio memoriae, even there where his papal decisions remained in force. Thus the First Council of Braga in Galicia of 561 appealed four times to the letter of Vigilius to Profuturus of Braga in canons 4 and 5, but without mentioning Vigilius by name, although it otherwise cited all papal decrees by the name of the author.

The most significant theological achievement in the quarrel over the Three Chapters, important even for posterity, was produced by the Roman deacon Rusticus, nephew of Vigilius. He was deposed and excommunicated by the latter because of his obstinate championship of the Three Chapters, that is, because of his opposition to recognizing the Fifth Council as ecumenical, but he found refuge in a monastery of the Acemetae at Constantinople. There he compiled the Latin collection of the acts of the Council of Ephesus, which was to serve not only the purposes of documentation but as an argument in the theological debate. He himself intervened in this with great energy and deep professional knowledge. True, his work on the definitions, which he himself mentions, is lost, but the chief outcome seems to have been included in the extant disputation against the Acephalae. In it Rusticus offered the results of the theological discussions which he had conducted at Constantinople, at Antinoe in the Thebaid, and at Alexandria. He showed himself in these discussions to be well acquainted with the Aristotelian philosophy and with real skill developed the theological speculative argument which Boethius had made important. In the theology of the Trinity, it is true, he displayed a greater obligation to eastern thought than to that of Augustine and Boethius by basing the Trinity of the divine persons not so much on relations as rather on proprietates; but in Christology he relied on Boethius's definition of person and at the same time carried it farther. "Person" was for him not the individual substance endowed with reason, but the rational individual subsistence. In this regard he seemed to be aware that person could not be defined in opposition to nature but could at most be described. Thus the person is the coming together, concursus, of all that describes the rationally endowed subsistence.

 

Surely the individual human nature of the Redeemer, considered purely in itself, that is, apart from his divinity, could appear as a person; however, the true reality does not lead to such a view, but rather to the intellectual defect, namely the forgetting of the union, that is, of divinity and humanity in Christ. But at the moment when the spirit is reminded that that which is Man in the Redeemer did not, so to speak, remain in itself, but through the union became the special property of the subsistence of God the Word, he can no longer be regarded as a person. Here, while Cyril's name does not appear, his doctrine of appropriation is employed. Thus Rusticus can further declare that the humanity of the Redeemer does not belong separately to itself, as is the case with us, but is so united with God the Word that it becomes his own just like garment and tool. Consequently the humanity of the Redeemer is not so much itself a subject as rather in a subject. It thereby becomes clear that for Rusticus subsistence means, beyond substantiality, the being of subject. Thus not only was a step taken beyond Boethius and that which was expressed as still missing in him, but even more that Leonine formula was tacitly corrected in which the Word and the flesh of the Redeemer appear as autonomous subjects and which had aroused such anger among the Cyrillans. Here it is clarified also by a Latin theologian; this clarification being gained precisely in the discussion with Cyrillans that the Redeemer is a single subject and not a composite, but that the divine person is to be regarded as the subject of the human nature. Expressed in Aristotelian terms, this means that the humanity of the Redeemer is, in comparison to God the Word, to be understood not as a subject but as an accident.

 

The fact that Rusticus described the relation between divinity and the humanity in the Redeemer again in analogy to the relation of soul and body in man,149 as the theology of the fourth century had already done, does not represent a relapse into pre-Ephesus methods of thought, but shows how consistently Rusticus employed the Aristotelian potency-act and matter-form schema respectively and thus at least for a moment anticipated scholastic theology, which then of course, to its own hurt, was based not so much on Rusticus as rather on the less perfect definition of person of Boethius.

 

Consequences of the Quarrel over the Three Chapters

 

The quarrel over the Three Chapters produced for the ecclesiastical organization of North Italy much more decisive and enduring consequences than the exemption of the see of Pavia as a consequence of the Arian controversy. On the invasion of Italy by the Lombards in 568, the Bishop of Milan transferred his seat to Genoa, where he felt safer under Byzantine protection; likewise, the Metropolitan of Aquileia fled to imperial territory, namely to the island of Grado. Both metropolitans rejected the Second Council of ConstantinopleЧthey defended the Three Chapters. At first the Byzantines apparently took no offense at this. But the Bishop of Milan, since he was dependent on the Sicilian property of his Church, was very quickly induced by the Roman Bishop to recognize the Second Council of Constantinople and to condemn the Three Chapters. This led the bishopric of Como, which really belonged to the ecclesiastical province of Milan, toward the end of the sixth century, to request from Aquileia the ordination of a bishop who upheld the Three Chapters. Como then remained a suffragan of Aquileia into the thirteenth century. In this it became clear that the question of the Three Chapters agitated not only the episcopate but also the clergy and people, at least those of the clergy and people who came into question as electors of a new bishop.

 

For the Catholic Queen Theodelinda of the still extensively pagan or, respectively, Arian Lombards, it was a matter of course from her Bavarian homeland to recognize the Three Chapters, so that she refused to accept the communion of the Bishop of Milan when she learned that he recognized the Second Council of Constantinople. Thus Gregory the Great saw himself forced to have an admonition sent to her in which he defended the Second Council of Constantinople. The letter, of course, did not reach the Queen's hands; instead, the Bishop of Milan, Constantius, in whose interest, among other things, it was written, held it back because he knew that the Queen would be only more enraged by this defense of the Second Council of Constantinople. Gregory wrote the Queen another admonition, in which there was no mention of the Second Council of Constantinople, and praised Bishop Constantius of Milan for his prudence. Hence Gregory was prepared to overlook the schismatic agreement of Queen Theodelinda with the Three Chapters because he saw in her a strong ally for the conversion of the Lombards to the Catholic faith. He also decisively defended himself against the reproach of having abandoned Chalcedon; rather, he condemned all those who had been condemned by the four Councils and recognized all who had been recognized by them. But when he declared, vis-a-vis the Bishop of Milan, that the Second Council of Constantinople, which was counted by many as the Fifth Synod, had decided nothing on the faith but only on people, about whom nothing had been said at Chalcedon, this was inexact, for the Second Council of Constantinople had very probably discussions at Chalcedon de personis, namely ofTheodoret and Ibas.

 

Gregory proceeded much more decisively against Bishop Severus of Aquileia, who had been detained for a year at Ravenna by the Byzantine Exarch Smaragdus and during this time had maintained communion with the opponents of the Three Chapters, the adherents of the Second Council of Constantinople. The next year he had returned to Grado, where the patriarchate had taken refuge before the Lombards, and at a synod, yielding to the urging of his suffragans, he had repudiated the Second Council of Constantinople. Gregory now ordered him, with his supporters, the bishops who like him had maintained communion at Ravenna with the adherents of the Second Council of Constantinople, to Rome in order to hold there a synod on this question. From the long petitions of the ten suffragans of Aquileia living under Lombard rule to the Emperor Maurice of Byzantium it became evident that Gregory intended to have the Patriarch of Aquileia brought to Rome by police power, in regard to which he of course relied on a decision of the Emperor from the previous year. It appears from the Emperor's command to Gregory that Severus himself and his suffragans who were in Byzantine territory also wrote in the same sense. In this it is remarkable that these bishops did not intend to justify themselves before a synod directed by Gregory because they saw in him their antagonist, while on the other hand they hoped to gain from the Emperor a nonpartisan verdict. In the event that the Emperor did not intervene in their favor, they called to his attention that future episcopal ordinations in the ecclesiastical province of Aquileia would take place with the aid of the Gallic archbishops who were close by; this would then be to the detriment of the Church of Aquileia and to the harm of the res publica, hence of the Roman Empire, because thus far he ruled also churches in barbarian territory by means of the Church of Aquileia. In a pretty rough tone the Emperor commanded Gregory for the time being to leave matters alone until peace had returned to North Italy, until Byzantium had again won the upper hand. But this never happened: there was no victory of Byzantines over Lombards, but there was a change on the throne at Byzantium. Phocas toppled Maurice and exerted himself to solve the question of Aquileia in the sense of Gregory the Great. When Severus had died at Grado as Patriarch of Aquileia in 607, Phocas had Candidian, loyal to Rome, installed as bishop by the Exarch Smaragdus. The outcome was that the bishops in the area of Lombard rule repudiated this new Patriarch at Grado and in Aquileia itselfЧold Aquileia, as they saidЧelected an adherent of the Three Chapters, John, who then took his seat as Bishop of Aquileia at Cor- mons in Friuli; later the seat was transferred to Cividale.

 

It seemed for a time that an adherent of the Three Chapters had succeeded to the patriarchal see even in Grado, but Pope Honorius I was able, after John's expulsion by the Exarch of Ravenna, to have the Roman subdeacon Primogenius elected and enthroned at Grado. Hon- orius's tomb inscription thus extols him for the definitive gaining of Grado for Orthodoxy, not for a union of Grado and Aquileia, which in any event had been only an interlude: the patriarchate of Old Aquileia persisted in schism until the end of the seventh century, that is, until the Synod of Pavia in 698. The two patriarchates long remained separate, at least until that of Grado was transferred in the fifteenth century to Venice, where the patriarch had continuously resided since the twelfth century, and that of Aquileia was abolished in the eighteenth century. In all the rest of the Latin Church the opposition to the Second Council of Constantinople gradually died out without there occurring any too important controversies about it.

Chapter 44 'The Epilogue of Early Christian Latin Literature

 

The Golden Age of the Fathers came to an end in the Latin West in the fourth century, but the rich treasures of biblical exegesis and the great accomplishments of the Fathers in speculative theology were transmitted beyond the collapse of the ancient world to the Middle Ages. In the period here studied the ideas of the Fathers were reconstructed and rethought, especially by Fulgentius of Ruspe, and their works were collected and again and again copied and used for the care of souls and preaching, especially by Caesarius of Aries. There were far-seeing men of the ancient world who sought to save from the general decline all that was worthwhile; indeed they probably succeeded also, despite their view of what they believed was the approaching end of history, in preparing a new and permanent synthesis of the traditional treasures of faith and thought. Some Christian writers can be named, poets and authors of saints' vitae, but in this chapter after Fulgentius and Caesarius were treated extensively in the discussion of the controversies with the Arians and the Semipelagians, those four great men together with their theological achievement should be exhaustively presented and evaluated on whom all the intellectuality and piety of the Middle Ages was based as on four pedestals: Boethius, Cassiodorus, Gregory the Great, and Isidore of Seville.

 

Boethius

 

Boethius, who sprang from the noble Roman house of the Anicii, was at the beginning of the sixth century in the service of the Ostrogothic King Theodoric for several years. In 523 or 524 he was accused of high treasonЧfor conspiring with East Roman circlesЧand executed. In prison he wrote for his own solace the De Consolatione Philosophiae, which has a thoroughly religious but not clearly Christian content.

 

Boethius entered the history of the European mind through his translations of Aristotle's works, especially of the works on logic, and the commentaries he composed on them, as one of the great initiators of medieval philosophizing. Compared to the philosophical works, his theological writings are of clearly negligible importance. Nevertheless, they have acquired an extraordinarily great significance for Church history, especially for the history of theology and dogma. Through them Boethius became the founder of the argument from the ratio theologica, which then, scarcely a half-century later, the Roman deacon Rusticus used so skillfully in his fight against the decisions of the Fifth General Council, in his championing of the Three Chapters. In this connection the four works on the U nity of the Trinity, the Three Divine Persons, How Substances Can Be Good, and On the One Person and the Two Natures (in Christ) are rather occasional writings.

 

Boethius not only dedicated the first to his father-in-law Symmachus and the latter's other son-in-law Patricius, but he submitted it to their judgment. Because he discovered in all other contemporaries only intellectual sluggishness and subtle envy, he deliberately expressed himself concisely and introduced new words from the philosophical disciplines into theology, so that, besides himself and his two addressees, no one could understand the pamphlets, indeed would be scared off from reading them. Boethius was thoroughly aware of presuming something unprecedented, but he relied on the authority of Augustine and wanted also to be gauged by his works. In seven chapters he explained that the divine substance is pure forma, that it is not subject to computation, that Aristotelian predicaments can be applied to God, that in God there must be talk above all of relations, because the names Father and Son express a reciprocal relationship, that finally the unity of God is based on substance, the Trinity on relations.

 

The three other pamphlets are dedicated to a Roman deacon John, probably the future Pope John I (523-526). Especially important is the treatise On the One Person and the Two Natures against Nestorius and Eutyches. In the introduction, Boethius reminded John that at a council, in which apparently both took part, a letter was read according to which the Eutychians confessed indeed that Christ is of two, but not in two, natures. Because Boethius did not speak at the meeting itself, he had agreed with John on a discussion which, however, both were then prevented from holding, so that Boethius had to write to John what he really had intended to present orally. To this accident the history of theology owes a definition of person, which in Scholasticism enjoyed the highest repute. Since in the controversy with the Nestorians and the Eutychians there was question of person and nature, Boethius first investigated, in Chapter 1, the concepts of nature and person. Nature

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is not only statically the manner of being proper to everything, but also dynamically the propelling power of the natural movement, motus principium, whereby, for example, fire presses upward and earth presses down. He tried to establish what a person is by exclusion: person cannot be in the accidents, but only in the substance, but likewise neither in nonliving bodies nor in irrational systems of life; besides, a universal idea cannot be a person. To personality, then, belong substantiality, rationality, individuality. And so there results the following definition: persona est naturae rationalis individua substantia (Chapter 3).

 

Boethius at once called attention to the fact that he here indicated not the etymology of person but an objective definition of what was meant by hypostasis to the Greeks. But he did not go on to the property of the person; he did not comprehend the idea of subjective being, because he proceeded from the question which natures really had person, hence which considered person as a characteristic of special natures and understood them himself as something natural.

 

Boethius's definition exercised, to be sure, a strong influence on all succeeding theology, but it provided no single argument for his own confrontation with Nestorius (Chapters 4-7). There person merely is that whose unity is maintained in the duality of natures of the Redeemer. The Christological speculation was only carried further by the definition of person of Leontius of ByzantiumЧbeing of itselfЧand of the earlier mentioned Roman deacon Rusticus, who wrote at ConstantinopleЧ remaining in itself.

 

Especially noteworthy is Boethius's argument that the subordinate Two-Person-Christology of Nestorius did not do justice to the newness (novum), the greatness (magnum), and the singleness (semel) of the coming of the Redeemer. There was earlier intimate relationship of human persons with God; they were even for that reason called Christ. In this regard, Boethius referred generally to the authority of the Old Testament, but without quoting a single scriptural passage. In this it is made clear how with him the theological process of proof freed itself from individual biblical arguments, but nevertheless remained convinced of being in general scriptural.

 

Cassiodorus

 

Cassiodorus, who had served as minister of three Ostrogothic kings in Italy, evidence of which is supplied by the edicts and letters of the rulers, the Variae, that came from him because they were formulated by him, in 535 left the service of the Gothic government that was becoming ever more anti-Roman and withdrew to private life. He had agreed with Pope Agapetus I to establish at Rome a theological academy, in which professional teachers should see to it that "on the one hand souls could receive the preaching necessary for salvation and on the other hand the speech of the faithful should obtain the same care and development" as pagan philologists and poets had bestowed on their language, with the difference, of course, that everything that was presented should be "chaste and pure" and hence should be distinguished clearly from the myths and poetry of the pagans. Cassiodorus had been greatly pained that hitherto there was still no scholarly academy for Christian theology in the West, as one had existed earlier in the East at Alexandria and in his day was flourishing in Syrian Edessa. The Roman Church would share in the financing of the new Roman academy, which Cassiodorus himself intended to help pay for to a great extent; but the war, that is, Justinian's reconquest of Italy that had just begun, which led finally to the annihilation of the Ostrogothic Kingdom, prevented the implementation of the project. After the conclusion of the war, Cassiodorus, who had meanwhile spent several years at Constantinople, returned to Italy. Although Justinian now gave new assurances of support to state professors at Rome in an effort to make good the damage done by the war to education, Cassiodorus did not again take up his earlier plan for an academy.

 

Instead, on his property in South Italy he founded a monastery which he called Vivarium, the center of whose life was represented by the library systematically established by him at great cost. For the monks he wrote two brief introductions to study or reading plans, by which they

 

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were to be introduced into the theological and philosophical literature respectively on hand in the library. He was aware that he thereby, on the one hand, entered of necessity upon the post of professor (ad vicem magistri) and that on the other hand his two introductory works could not replace a live college of teachers. Rather, this should be the task of the writings of the Fathers collected in the library, especially of the scriptural exegetes. Since only Latin works were available to his monks, he had pertinent Greek commentaries, of which no Latin translation yet existed, put into Latin and included them in the great commentary. This consisted of nine codices emended by Cassiodorus himself, which contained commentaries on the following parts of Scripture: 1) the Oc- tateuch, 2) the Books of Kings, 3) the Prophets, 4) the Psalter, 5) Solomon, or the Wisdom Books, 6) the Hagiographers, 7) the Gospels, 8) the Epistles, 9) the Acts of the Apostles, and 10) Revelation.15

 

Among the exegetes were represented, besides the great Latin Fathers, also Greeks, such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. At that time there were still no continuous commentaries on some books of the Bible, but only scattered remarks of the great Fathers. Thus in Volume II, that is, on the Books of Kings, and elsewhere, Cassiodorus collected the six questions and answers to Simplician by Augustine and three questions and answers of Jerome to Abundantius. Despite all his efforts, there remained gaps in the commentary. Cassiodorus sought to close them by, among other means, asking the priest Bellator to compose commentaries on various biblical books. But of all that Bellator contributed to Cassiodorus's work of collectionЧfor example, two books on Ruth and the other outstanding women of the Old Testament16Чnothing has survived. The nine-volume commentary seems not to have been completely copied, but soon to have been lost. In addition to the commentators, Cassiodorus also collected in a special codex works of some of the Fathers that were introductions to the Bible.

 

In regard to this whole project, his work consisted not only in collecting the patristic texts that appeared to him to be important and helpful, but also in the preparation of a reliable scriptural text, which represented precisely a presupposition for the salvation of souls. The word of the two or three witnesses, by whom each matter can be decided (Matt. 18:16, Deut. 19:15b), which in Origen served as an exegetical principleЧa theological statement is to be proved by two or three biblical quotations17Чbecame in Cassiodorus18 the basis of textual criticism: two or three ancient codices guarantee a text.

 

ls Inst. 1 and 9.

 

Ibid. 1.

 

Matth. Com. 10, 15; GCS Origines 10, 18, 29ff.

 

Inst. 15.

As regards the text of the commentaries, Cassiodorus in no way felt himself obliged to the true maintaining of what had been transmitted; instead, the orthodoxy and the value for edification of a work is the supreme standard. Thus he took care that on the occasion of the translation of the commentaries of Clement of Alexandria all his imprudent (incaute) expressions were suppressed. Cassiodorus was not impressed by the fact that commentary on Paul was circulating under the name of Pope Gelasius but corrected, at least in the commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, all Pelagian errors which he discovered in it. Some texts with which he was not in agreement he let stand as they were but with a corresponding marginal note, especially, for example, in the commentaries of Origen and Tyconius. Cassiodorus also provided the biblical text with punctuation marks, so that it could better be read aloud. He himself revised the nine codices already referred to, but he left others to the work of notaries busy in the monastery. The mere spelling was to him so important for the understanding of the text that even at the age of ninety-three he composed for his monks a work on orthography, at the beginning of which he enumerated his earlier theological writings. The fact that here he began with the commentary on the psalms makes it obvious that he ascribed his work on the soul to an earlier, closed period of his life, to which also belonged his official letters, the Variae.

 

Although Cassiodorus found light from above in the entire Bible, nevertheless the psalter, the prophets, and the epistles meant the most to him, and at the same time they represented the deepest abysses and the summit of the whole Scripture. He felt beginners in the study of Holy Scriptures should first take up the fourth codex and so become familiar with the psalter. The monk should first fill himself with the reading of Holy Scripture, then apply himself to the commentators.

 

Theological knowledge is acquired in various ways: first, one should read the introductores, for example, Tyconius and Augustine, then the expositores, in the third place the Catholic teachers who have left question-and-answer literature. Finally one must carefully investigate the entire corpus of patristic literature that has been handed down. But it is not done with reading alone: there is knowledge which comes to the monk only in discussion with an experienced elder. Cassiodorus, it is true, sketched his reading plan for monks according to objective neces- sities, but the personal uniqueness of the individual must be respected. Thus he recommended to each of the monks to select one of the great Church Fathers, with whom he could engage in an inner dialogue. Cassiodorus hoped that his monks, through zealous study of the great biblical exegetes, would become capable of composing biblical commentaries themselves, so that the passages not yet treated by the Fathers might find their exegesis. He did not surrender the hope of being able to make scripture scholars of all his monks, but he reckoned that some would be capable of no intellectual work at all. They should devote themselves to horticulture, and for them the monastic library had on hand specialized works on that subject.

 

The simple man in the monastery, vir simplex, should, however, also come into the enjoyment of some knowledge of profane science and philosophy (mundanae litterae), because they contributed not a little to the understanding of Scripture; this is explained by the fact that, apart from some additions by learned men, they have their origin in Scripture, indeed they were directly stolen from it. Thus, for example, Abraham was the first to bring arithmetic and astronomy to Egypt. Hence the Fathers had recommended the reading of such works, because through them we are diverted from carnal things and led to things which could be grasped only by the heart. And so, abstraction is a means for the cultivating of spirituality. But for speculative theology Cassiodorus did not care: the Fathers interested him only as exegetes.

Cassiodorus did not devote himself to secular knowledge only because he was convinced that it served for the understanding of Scripture, but also because he found its rules and standards employed in Scripture itself; for example, in the book of Job, all the tricks of dialectics. Thus he felt himself to be justified and obliged to leave to his monks also a complete library of the art es and to introduce them into the study of the three linguistic disciplinesЧgrammar, rhetoric, and dialecticЧas well as the four mathematical sciencesЧarithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. This second introductory book actu- iiu hi liajuuii \jr caiu.i LrtKlSHAIN LA 11JNI LITERATURE

 

ally represents a compendium of the accomplishments of ancient scholarship, and became the foundation for the medieval division of the artes into the trivium and quadrivium. The chapter on rhetoric, for example, would still be useful today as an introduction. Of course, it is surprising when Cassiodorus, who in this second introductory work was still addressing his monks, declared that, within the court speechЧ judicial trials were the chief field of activity for rhetoricЧthe narrative must begin with the description of the people involved, in which connection the person who belongs to "our side" must be fittingly praised, whereas a person of the opposite side (aliena) must be disparaged. The aged founder of Vivarium probably did not want to teach his monks such; instead, in these sentences one suspects a verbatim quotation from a work which Cassiodorus had in his library and which he excerpted for the introductory work. He seems on the whole, as must probably be inferred from occasional, unjustified repetitions, not always to have remembered the general view and to have simply followed a codex which he then had at hand.

 

It is surprising that this man, who ranks as a great statesman, to whom the politically successful decisions of the Ostrogothic government in Italy are attributed, and to whom, in contrast to the idealist Boethius, a more balanced realistic sense is adjudged, is said to have given to his monastery no constitution and prescribed no daily routine of life. Hence it is not surprising that in Cassiodorus some have sought to find the author of the Regula Magistri. But the fact that Cassiodorus, at the beginning of his last work, the one on orthography, in which he listed his religious and literary achievements, did not mention a monastic rule does not speak in favor of his being the author.

 

It must especially be stressed that Cassiodorus, in spite of all his preoccupation with ancient scholarship, still placed great value on emphasizing the differences in content and style between Scripture and profane scholarship. After he had concisely summarized Varro's Cosmology, he concluded his introduction to science with the invitation to be content with what Scripture says about the world and man. Indeed, he even meant that the Semiticisms, anthropomorphisms, and translation errors of the Bible were signs of the divine manner of speaking and therefore must not be subjected to the laws of profane language or literary scholarship. Thus, despite all his scholarly strivings, did Cas- siodorus justify a fideist-authoritarian attitude, which long dominated the future.

 

Gregory the Great

Gregory the Great, the last of the four great Doctors of the Latin Church, lived in an age which neither required great intellectual achievementsЧthere were no serious theological controversiesЧnor permitted them: anxiety over a vestige of calm and order, indeed over daily bread for the poor often monopolized the attention of the Roman Bishop. Gregory had to reorganize the administration of all the patrimonies of the Roman See, since these, for the most part in the hands of the local episcopate, had scarcely yielded any returns. He was concerned for the correct use of money; since the coins customary in southern Gaul were not accepted in ItalyЧthey had a lesser gold contentЧ clothes for the poor at Rome had to be bought on the spot andЧeven in the hardest times Gregory was never only an almonerЧyoung English slaves purchased to serve God in Italian monasteries. Gregory would have deserved his epithet "the Great" entirely from his ecclesiastical- political and practical pastoral accomplishments, but he was not only a practical man. Even his letters gave, where necessary, not only admonition but also clear replies in theological questions. A chambermaid of the Byzantine Empress was not only urged to penance but also instructed that on earth there can be no guarantee of the obtaining of pardon, indeed of salvation at all. In reply to the question whether all encountered by Christ in limbo were redeemed, Gregory relied not only on Filastrius and Augustine, but himself proved from the Bible that only those were redeemed by Christ who had good works to show. Gregory's letters were clearly an inexhaustible mine for bishops and pastors who sought a model, but Gregory influenced the future more powerfully as the theorist of the pastoral office. Soon after the beginning of his pontificate he composed, as had Gregory Nazianzen, his Regula Past oralis in an effort to show how justified had been his resistance. In the first part he described the suitable candidate for the episcopacy, in the second the lifestyle which the office requires, in the third the necessary differences in preaching, and closed with a brief admonition to humility. When Gregory (I, 5) interpreted the Levirate Marriage (Deut. 25:5ff.) as the episcopal office and in the glorified Christ the dead oldest brother, but relying on Matthew 28:10, saw in the bishop the youngest brother, who must see to producing offspring or let himself be reviled by the wife (the Church), then this was not exegesis in accord with standards current today, but no doubt a suitable means for stimulating seriousness and zeal for pastoral care. Gregory attested and demanded an awareness of responsibility that is almost Donatist in color, when he asked: How can one request from God pardon for others who does not himself know whether he is reconciled with him? (I, 10). When, on the other hand, in Genesis 9: If. ("fear and dread of you is on all animals") he found the rejection of any ownership of men over their fellowmen and thereby a limit to the blame and punishment necessary in pastoral care (II, 6), one may indeed agree with him in this matter today.

 

True, Gregory clearly saw in the bishop the superior, but he stressed that a candid word of a subject was to be regarded precisely as a sign of humble obedience, in any case by a pastor who is not full of self-love (II, 8). That Gregory equated preaching with admonition was probably solely conditioned by the time, but the third part of the Pastoral Rule offered in the enumeration of thirty-four pairs of opposites met in practiceЧjoyful and sad, bold and shy, obstinate and fickle, sinner in act and sinner in thought, those who do evil secretly and do good publicly, those who do good secretly but publicly have a poor reputation, and so forthЧsuch a differentiated description and introduction to exhortation that even today profit can be drawn from them. In them Gregory's view of the bishop as physician of souls holds good; he would have had him understood only as preacher, if such an extensive listing of characteristics were neither necessary nor possible. Thus it is no wonder that the Pastoral Rule was everywhere enthusiastically received, as in Spain, where Gregory had sent it to his friend Leander of Seville, and even in the East, where the Emperor Maurice had it translated into Greek. In the Empire of Charles the Great several synods demanded the reading of the Pastoral Rule by all bishops. In England King Alfred the Great saw to its translation, together with the Dialogues, into Old English at the end of the ninth century and had a copy given to each bishop. It meant for the diocesan clergy what the Regula Benedicti represented for monks. Gregory formed for centuries the bishops who for their part formed the modern nations, and thus he became the great teacher of the West.

 

In exegesis Gregory is less original. He collected and passed on to the

 

Middle Ages what the Fathers provided, without of course really intending it, because he was convinced of the approaching end. In this he is surprisingly nearer to Origen than, for example, Augustine and Ambrose, even nearer than Jerome. In his Moralia in Job, a commentary on the book of Job in thirty-five books, in the foreword the distinction of the three senses of Scripture is theoretically explained, and Gregory set out to demonstrate the threefold exegesis, but he did not stick with the three levels which he had so clearly distinguished in Book I; as early as Book IV the historical sense no longer interested him and from Book V the exegesis was only allegorical and moral, although Gregory was convinced that all meaning was lost if one did not take the historical sense seriously. The distinction of the various senses of Scripture could be found in Gregory by future ages, but their order is disputed. Most of the time, Gregory ranked second the allegorical-typical sense, which in part provides information on Christ and in part on the Church, and thus is twofold, and he ranked third the moral sense, that is, the exhortation to action contained in every scriptural word. Thus he used the deeper meaning only to justify the moral claims of the biblical word.

 

The ultimate goal in the context was action or, within preaching, admonition respectively. But the Bible was for Gregory not only the foundation of the sermon; it should also be read privately; the reader of the Bible is clearly the good man. In the framework of the sermons on Ezekiel the invitation to action seems not to be the highest and last; instead, the Word of God grows with the reader. The demands are only the external of the Bible; its interior, however, offers promises. Whether a person applies himself to the interior of Scripture is not placed fully in the preference of the interpreter; whoever neglects it deprives himself of the most valuable sense of the Word of God, which he owes

 

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to his hearers, because only thus does faith gain its fullness. In this regard Gregory was convinced with Origen that Holy Scripture itself compels appropriated exegesis: he counts all images, comparisons, anthropomorphisms, which would today be regarded as the literal sense, as allegorical statements. Thus he intended only to think more consistently, where today scientific exegesis would see an infringement of limits. Nevertheless, he could be very tolerant in the exegesis of Scripture and concede that the one is satisfied with history, which will conduct him in the long run beyond himself, that another seeks the intelligent ia typica, finally the third the intelligentia per typum contemplativa, that is, then, advances by means of typology to contemplation without having placed himself more deeply in the moral sense. But Gregory took into account that the way to contemplation leads by way of his- toria, moralitas, and the intelligentia allegoriae. This passage, which is probably not taken sufficiently seriously by Dudden and Hofmann, makes known that Gregory's piety is oriented not only to asceticism and moral activity but that his basically world-fleeing outlook revolves around the consideration of the eternal, around the vision of the promised good. Morality as the first step to knowledge was generally an ancient philosophical notion and was self-evident to Origen, for example. If Gregory was really a man of antiquity, perhaps the last who speaks to us, then for him morality could not be the highest and last. On the other hand, through this recognition of contemplation, springing from loyalty to the tradition, as the goal striven for in various ways, he protected the intellectual life of the future from having at once to prove itself by usefulness and thus becoming atrophied in pure expedience. But Gregory exercised the widest influence on the future through his Dialogi de vita et miraculis patrum Italicorum, because they were read not only by clerics and monks, as were the Moralia and the Regula Pastoralis, but found their way to the laity. Gregory showed in these artificially arranged stories in dialogue form in four books that not only the East but also Italy displayed ascetics and wonderworkers. Besides Pau- linus of Nola and Benedict of NursiaЧthe latter's deeds fill all of Book IIЧthe heroes are scarcely familiar; thus the Dialogues must be used only very cautiously as historical sources. But in this is expressed not only an early Italian national pride, but also the insight of the pastor and promoter of the mission among the Lombards and Anglo- Saxons that the Word of God is only there highly esteemed where one is influenced by the life of saints. Thus Gregory sent his Dialogues to the Catholic Lombard Queen Theodelinda, in whom he saw his strongest ally for the gaining of this nation.

 

But Gregory not only narrated the edifying; he also introduced exegetical-dogmatic discussions, for example, on the question of how the saints, despite Romans 11:33 ("how inscrutable are his ways!"), have the knowledge of the divine decrees and express them (II, 16), or where hell is; whether the souls of the damned can be regarded as immortal (IV, 42-44); whether there is a purification in the next world (IV, 25 and 39); how ecclesiastical burial and prayer are of use to the dead (IV, 5Iff. and 55). Of course, such questions were not answered purely theoretically or exegetically, but with the aid of examples, visions, and dreams from the lives of saints. The teachings on purgatory and on the expiatory power of the Mass thus found their securest place in Christian piety and from there in theology. That a priest secured eternal rest for a dead person by a week's penance and daily Mass did not influence the future as much as the thirty-days' celebration of Mass ordered by Gregory himself as abbot, by which a monk, who had sinned against poverty, after dying repentant was received into the company of the blessed (IV, 55); only this last usage continues as Gregorian Masses.

 

Gregory's teaching on penance and purgatory was based on the principle that no sin is forgiven without atonement, and hence was always in the danger of a certain notion of a balance-sheet, but this would of course be eliminated by the fact that the uselessness of external works without love was frequently emphasized. The basis for a certain intellectual imbalance of these doctrines on the last things lies in this, that on the one hand Gregory did not follow even the deeply revered Augustine in everything, and on the other hand, he first formulated views which up to now had prevailed in the Roman Church and thereby fixed them. Gregory's teaching on original sin was entirely in accord with Augustine's: all mankind is collectively responsible for Adam's sin, and children dying unbaptized go to hell. Sexuality is the refuge of sin, desire is already defilement. But in his doctrine of grace Gregory occupied an approximately middle position between Augustine and Semipelagianism: it is true that the gift of grace is the first beginning of conversion, but free will is not only, as in Augustine, the form of grace realizing itself but an agent which must be added to it. Thus Gregory understood Paul's sayings: "by the grace of God I am what I am" and "I have worked more than all" (1 Cor. 15:10). Hence Gregory tacitly dropped the idea of the irresistible grace and unconditional election and saw a certain merit in the assent of the human will to the prompting of grace. That God crowns his gifts when he crowns our merits means for Gregory that the free will acquires merits and finally God even imputes his gifts to man. Gregory arrived at no doctrine of predestination because the idea of praedestinatio post praevisa merita did not suit him. In him strict Augustinianism is limited by the demands of practical moral instruction; but Augustine himself had not remained entirely consistent in his sermons, and many a defender of Augustinianism at the beginning of the fifth century had also not been able to be so. Gregory thus had the same convictions as the Synod of Orange, which was in fact only the expression of the Roman reception of Augustine. It was not known to the Middle Ages, but these obtained their ideas through Gregory. That he bequeathed to the future, besides important stimuli for spirituality and mysticism, also peripheral Christian subjects, has just been mentioned: an Augustinian-inspired feeling of unworthiness justified an intensive cult of the saints, especially then when Christ was seen as the Judge to come. Of course, Gregory did not go so far as to characterize the cult of the saints as an essential part of Christianity, as his somewhat older contemporary, Gregory of Tours, did. Finally, the Devil of the Middle Ages also appeared in that form in which he molested Dominic or Luther quite frequently in Gregory's Dialogues on the Italian Fathers. Thus Gregory passed on not only content to the theology of the future, but an abundance of ideas to the popular imagination and thereby to the plastic art and poetry, especially Dante.

 

Isidore

 

In the literary work of Isidore, Bishop of Seville from 600, which was impressive only because of its bulk and the abundance of its information, the question of the Three Chapters occupied only a little space, but it was, so to speak, a test question, with the aid of which Isidore's position is easily determined. In Book VI of his great encyclopedia, which treats of ecclesiastical books and duties, he spoke also of conciliar decrees and especially stressed the four synods worthy of veneration, which chiefly comprise the whole faith, without even mentioning a fifth synod. Of course, it need not have been expressly excluded in this way; Gregory the Great also occasionally kept silent about it. In Book VII of the Etymologiae (7, 12, 5), where Isidore speaks of God, the angels, and the orders of believers, he thus explains the title "patriarch": he is a patriarch who has an apostolic see, for example, the one in Rome or in Antioch or in Alexandria. Hence, Constantinople was not recognized as a patriarchate. In Book VIII of the Etymologiae (8, 5, 66) it is said that the Acephalae got their name from this, that no founder could be determined for them, they were opponents of the Three Chalcedonian Chapters, they denied the uniqueness of the two substances in Christ, and recognized only one nature in him. Isidore most clearly expressed himself in his catalogue of authors, in which he expressly vindicated Theodore of Mopsuestia: true, he was condemned by the bishops of the Acephalae at the instigation of the Princeps Justinian, but he was commended by praiseworthy men. Here, therefore, the Council of Constantinople of 553 is designated as a synod of heretical bishops of the Acephalae, that is, of irreconcilable Cyrillans. Thus any possibility of recognition of this Council was basically excluded.

 

That Justinian is named, not as king, but as princeps, seems not to be meaningless. For Isidore "king" is an honored name: one keeps the name of king only if one acts rightly; one loses it through sin. True, the title of princeps is also an indication of dignity and rank, but "king" (basileus) means very much more, namely, that kings support the people

as a foundation. Hence, to Isidore, Justinian seems not to have been such a foundation. Apparently for Isidore whatever is connected with Constantinople did not rank as typical. Here not only theological evaluation but also the fate of Isidore's family became significant, because it was probably expelled by the Byzantines from Cartagena. However, Isidore seemed quite generally to reject the centralized world-empires, hence also the Roman Empire and a fortiori Justinian's work of restoration, for in his book on grammar he said that every people of whom the Romans had taken possession had brought to Rome, together with its treasures, also the blemishes of its language and of its morals. Hence so much that is wicked could never come together in national states as in a universal state.

 

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89

 

In some respects Isidore is to be compared with Cassiodorus; but while the latter after his turning to the religious life attributed value only to Jewish and Christian historiographers, Isidore in his great work set Sallust and Livy on the same plane with Eusebius and Jerome. Thus to a certain extent in Isidore there can be ascertained a liberal assessment of ancient pagan scholarship in conformity with Augustine. Isidore's works were hardly subject to a definite purpose; they were rarely apologetic and polemical and interested chiefly in knowledge as such. He himself had acquired great knowledge and he aspired to pass it on to younger clerics and his colleagues who expressly asked him for it. The most mature fruit of his willing acquiescence in such requests, of course, also of his own encyclopedic inclinations and perhaps also of the collaboration of a whole staff of secretaries, were the twenty books of the Etymologiae, which get their name from the fact that Isidore offers a great many explanations of wordsЧBook X is wholly devoted to explanation of words arranged alphabeticallyЧbut also occasionally and perhaps more correctly also called Origines, because Isidore expected to arrive at the basic origin of things through explanation of words. The work, in which all the knowledge available in Isidore's day is assembled, treats in its modern form grammar (I), rhetoric and dialectic (II),

the four mathematical disciplines or the later Quadrivium (III), medicine (IV), laws and times with a survey of the six ages (V), ecclesiastical books and activities (VI), God, angels, and the orders of the faithful (VII), the Church and various sects (VIII), languages, peoples, military service, and degrees of kinship (IX), explanations of words (X), man and monsters (XI), living beings (XII), the world and its parts (XIII), the earth and its parts (XIV), architecture and estates (XV), stones and metals (XVI), agriculture (XVII), war and games (XVIII), ships, houses, and clothing (XIX), and finally domestic economy and storage (XX). The two books on the differences of names and things are like a preliminary study to the great encyclopedia. His different works on the Bible offer a number of realia, information on the biblical environment and times, but at the same time an abundance of allegories and possibilities of allegorizing, for example, on the numbers occurring in the Bible, so that the preachers of many centuries could obtain their equipment here.

 

Isidore could express himself quite naively on difficult theological questions, when, for example, in his Differentiae rerun, he speaks just as directly and simply about God as about things of daily life. Of course, he then appended a series of questions, such as: "How is the Father unbegotten?" or "Who will understand all this?"94 Thus he made clear that even in an encyclopedic presentation theology is not simply an exercise ground of the mind, but demands the highest respect and reserve. For the rest, Isidore was not only the expert on the Bible or books, but an observer of reality on earth. In his systematically theological work (Sententiae), derived almost entirely from Augustine, he had to speak of predestination and declared it a judgment of God which lets some people strive for the above and the inner, others for the below and the external; but then he stressed that in this great darkness man was unable to see through to the divine disposition (2, 6). Hence he distinguished between the order of experience and the order of theological statement of faith and thereby separated himself pleasingly from Fulgentius of Ruspe, for whom the Augustinian doctrine of predestination served to prove that clearly the Arian Vandals were not destined for salvation,95 and from Gregory of Tours, who saw in history the proof that the Catholic Franks were destined to expel the Arian Goths from Gaul. Certainly for Isidore the great experience which the Spanish Church had undergone, namely, the conversion of the ruling Goths to the Catholic faith, played a decisive role for his theological reflection.

 

probably be concluded from Isidore's sole polemical work, On the Faith against the Jews, but this is amazingly dedicated to his sister Florentina. "Diff. II, 3, 10, PL 83, 71C. 95 See supra, p. 725.

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Probably it must also be stated that Isidore was no longer a man of late antiquity, that he displays no longing for the old conditions, no enthusiasm for an empire, no faith in Roma Aeterna, no anxiety before the collapse of the world, as is the case, for example, with Gregory of Tours or, still more clearly, with Gregory the Great.96

 

One understands that Isidore was admired by his contemporaries for his knowledge and that the future world willingly took over these rich treasures without making the effort to go behind Isidore. Thus to Isidore is due principally the break-through of the seven liberal arts in the early Middle Ages.97 His Chronicle, which was finished c. 615, was used and expanded a century later in Gaul. As early as the seventh century some of his works had spread as far as Ireland.98 As in the case of Cassiodorus, so too Isidore's Grammar, that is, Book I of his encyclopedia, was by no means a grammar in our sense; rather, it is an introductory treatise to the various activities which pertain to a skill, to writing and expressing oneself.99 Isidore was the only one in whom in the seventh century almost all the wealth of classical antiquity once more resounds across the very limited period of late antiquity. For him the artes liberales were an express instrument of culture, that is, a tool for the cultivation of thought and word. In this he is distinguished also from his older contemporary, Gregory the Great, who could indeed express himself very properly in practice, for example, in the foreword to the Moralia, but in principle and theory rejected such efforts.100 Following the example of Augustine,101 Isidore counted historiography in grammar, because all that is worth remembering was written down.102 While in the other points he extensively followed the classical models, he showed himself independent in the definition of historiography and stressed that historiography, in contrast to the compiling of annals, was the work of eyewitnesses, who presented everything truthfully. Here the definition of historiography was gained by the aid of the idea of the gospels; hence it was defined in a Christian and theological manner.103 Even when Isidore emphasized that the ancient historians had written in order to instruct and educate later ages,104 he was influenced by the New Testament (Rom. 15:4).

 

Cf. A. Borst, op. cit., 59f.

 

Cf. B. Bischof, Isidoriana, 344.

 

Ibid., 321.

 

"J. Fontaine, op. cit. I, 206.

 

Reg. Epp. V, 53a, 5: the words of the heavenly oracle must not be forced into the rules of [the grammarian] Donatus.

 

Augustine, De ordine 2, 12, 37.

 

Etym. 1,42,2.

 

J. Fontaine, op. cit. I, 181.

 

Etym. 1,43.

 

In contrast to Cassiodorus, with whom he must be compared again and again, Isidore composed a monastic Rule and thus also showed the way for the practical organization of the life of monks. In this he was concerned for the divisions of the day, for the architectural plan of the monastery, for example, the location of the infirmary, for the publishing of books, and so forth. In Isidore's opinion, the monks should devote themselves completely to the spiritual life; but their life should be characterized chiefly by manual labor, though not by heavy fieldwork, which was left to slaves. If secular laborers sing unseemly songs during their work, then the monks must, a fortiori, praise Christ during their work.105 Hence, Isidore's monastery was not a monastery of intellectuals, like that of Cassiodorus, even though he was very much concerned for education. But the education of the clergy as a whole was a concern of his. For this reason the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633, inspired by him, complained in canon 25 especially of the ignorance of the clergy and imposed on the bishops the frequent reading of Scripture and the canons. Caesarius of Aries had also recommended the reading of the Bible as the means of education and of personal sanctification. The canonical regulations as obligatory reading were a new element, which was explained by the fact that meanwhile various canonical collections, such as that of Dionysius Exiguus and especially the so-called Hispana, had appeared.

 

In the Liber Ordinum (no. 43), which probably belongs to Seville, there is a special ordination for the cleric to whom is entrusted the care of the books and copyists. From the verses with which Isidore of Seville himself had embellished his library,106 it appears that external quiet was demanded in the scriptorium, and uninterrupted work by the writers was presumed. From this it becomes clear that no longer as in antiquity were multiple copies made by dictation, but merely individual copies, probably only on demand and by individual order.

 

Isidore himself seems to have taught orally also,107 but especially in his writings he supplied us108 with all that was then necessary for the education of a cleric, namely, the humaniora in Books IЧIII and X of the encyclopedia and in the two books of Differences; theology proper in Books VII and VIII of the encyclopedia and in Book I of the SentencesЧBooks II and III are concerned with morals and the guidance of soulsЧand furthermore in the book On the Catholic Faith. He passed on biblical knowledge in his work on the Fathers, in the allegories, and in the questions from the Old and the New Testament. If the Collectio

 

Reg. 5, 5, PL 83, 874B.

 

Nos. 25-27; C. Beeson, Isidorstudien (Munich 1913), p. 166.

 

Cf. Ildefonse of Toledo, Vir. illustr. 9, PL 87, 28.

 

Thus Fernandez Alonso, op. cit., 85f., and 89ff.

 

Hispana really came from Isidore, he also took pains with instruction in canon law. Finally, pastoral theology is treated in the book on ecclesiastical duties and in the final chapters of the Sentences.

 

That Isidore was not an especially speculative thinker can be seen above all in his Christology, which, it is true, is thoroughly orthodox and takes pains to survey and preserve the doctrines of the Fathers, but which did not give attention to the achievements of the recent period, especially those brought forth in the dispute over the Three Chapters. Apparently Isidore knew no difference between substantia andsubsisten- tia; if he says in Book VII of his encyclopedia (7, 4, 11) that in God there are three hypostases, it means in Latin either three persons or three substances, but in Latin substance is not expressed in the real sense of God but only abusive, for in the true sense of the word substance means in Greek person but not nature. It is interesting and, for Isidore, characteristic that in Book VII of his encyclopedia, where he enumerates the various names for the Son of God, he mentions not only the homoousios (7, 2, 14) but also the homoiousios (7, 2, 16); in this also it appears that he is in closer connection with the Christian literature of the fourth and fifth than with that of the sixth century, for Hilary had recognized the Homoiousians as orthodox.

 

Isidore forbade Christians to read pagan poetry, but he showed himself quite at home in it. Here one must not seek to discover an inconsistency. Perhaps Isidore was convinced of having provided for this work of reading and selecting once for all time for Christian education. In any case, he seems to have assumed that clerics must make the content of his works entirely their own. Thus he recommends the occasional reading and reflecting on brief sections. In this regard, one should read quietly because one can thus better grasp what has been read, and because the voice is spared. Of course, even better than the reading is the repeated discussion in common of what was read, because in this way what is obscure or doubtful becomes clear. Such discussion (col- la tio) was a custom in monasteries since the fifth century and in Isidore presupposes the community of monks or clerics. But Isidore definitely rejects the debate. Just as the collatio builds, so the contentio destroys. It loses the feeling for the truth, produces quarrels, even leads to blasphemy; for the sake of one's own glory the truth is often sacrificed; therefore sophistries must unconditionally be avoided. Hence even though Isidore transmitted to the Middle Ages a good part of his knowledge, he could not become the father of scholastic theology, for characteristic of it is the methodical new start of confrontation with opposing authors and even the debate.

 

If one surveys the work of the four Christian writers of late antiquity here presentedЧespecially Fulgentius and Caesarius should also be reckoned with themЧthen one understands that they prepared the riches of the faith and of thought of Christian and pagan antiquity for a new unity to be created by the Middle Ages. In this connection it has already been said also that they were not yet able themselves to create such a unity. This literature is vastly inferior to the great accomplishments of the fourth and fifth centuries, not only in linguistic style but also in theological content. The reason for this must not be sought only in the general cultural decline, in the chaos of war, the destructions and daily miseries, but probably especially in the isolation in which these men existed. Cassiodorus and Boethius expressed it in saying that they found no debating partners; Isidore was admired by his contemporaries and was asked for new works and new instruction, but he was unable to obtain help and encouragement from them. But this situation is presented clearest in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great: true, there was a partner in conversation, but he really knew how to say nothing, and scarcely to pose real questions; Gregory himself alone had to see even to the progress of the discussion. Great new theological literature could not appear again until a new intellectually formed community had been born.