The Historians' History of the World 08

The chief obstacle to the recognition of the supremacy of the Roman pontiff was now to be found in the revival of Arianism, which, professed alike by the Goth and the Vandal, represented the dominant faith in the chief cities of northern Italy, as well as in Africa, Spain, and southern Gaul. But the rivalry thus generated only increased the disposition of the Catholic party to exalt the prerogatives of their head, and the attitude of Rome towards other churches continued to be more and more one of unquestionable superiority. In the year 483 Pope Felix II (or III)[84] ventured upon an unprecedented measure in citing Acacius, the patriarch of Constantinople, to Rome, to answer certain allegations preferred against him by John, patriarch of Alexandria, whom he designated as “frater et coepiscopus noster” (Thiel,j Epistolæ, p. 239). On Acacius’ refusing to recognise the legality of the letter of citation, he was excommunicated by Felix. The successor of Felix, Gelasius I (492-496), refused to notify, as was customary, his election to the patriarch of Constantinople, and by his refusal implicitly put forward a fresh assumption, viz., that communion with Rome implied subjection to Rome. Throughout the pontificate of Gelasius the primacy of the Roman see was the burden of his numerous letters to other churches, and he appears also to have been the first of the pontiffs to enunciate the view that the authority which he represented was not controllable by the canons of synods, whether past or present. In Italy these assumptions were unhesitatingly accepted. The Palmary synod, as it was termed, convened in Rome during the pontificate of Symmachus (498-514), formally disavowed its own right to sit in judgment on his administrative acts. Ennodius, bishop of Pavia, (circa 510), declared that the Roman pontiff was to be judged by God alone, and was not amenable to any earthly potentate or tribunal. It is thus evident that the doctrine of papal infallibility, though not yet formulated, was already virtually recognised.

During the Gothic rule in Italy (493-553), its representatives manifested the utmost tolerance in relation to religious questions, and showed little disposition to impose any restraints on the policy of the popes, although each monarch, by virtue of his title of “king of the Romans,” claimed the right to veto any election to the papal chair. In the year 483, when Odoacer sent his first lieutenant, Basilius, from Ravenna to Rome, the latter was invested with the titles eminentissimus and sublimis. The pope accordingly appeared as politically the subject of his Arian overlord. The advantage thus gained by the temporal power appears to have been the result of its intervention, which Simplicius (468-483) had himself solicited, in the elections to the papal office, and one of the principal acts of the Palmary synod (above referred to) was to repudiate the chief measures of Basilius, which had been especially directed against the abuses that prevailed on such occasions, and more particularly against bribery by alienation of the church lands. The assertion of this authority on the part of the civil power was declared by the synod to be irregular and uncanonical, and was accordingly set aside as not binding on the church. The fierce contests and shameless bribery which now accompanied almost every election were felt, however, to be so grave a scandal that the synod itself deemed it expedient to adopt the ordinance issued by Basilius, and to issue it as one of its own enactments. In order more effectually to guard against such abuses, Boniface II, in the year 530, obtained from a synod specially convened for the purpose the power of appointing his own successor, and nominated one Vigilius—the same who ten years later actually succeeded to the office. But a second synod, having decided that such a concession was contrary to the traditions of episcopal succession, annulled the grant, and Boniface himself committed the former decree to the flames. At his death, however, the recurrence of the old abuses in a yet more flagrant form induced the senate to obtain from the court of Ravenna a measure of reform of a more comprehensive character, and designed to check not only the simoniacal practices within the church itself, but also the extortion of the court officials.

An Ancient Conception of St. Peter

(From a woodcut in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris)

[526-590 A.D.]