The second decision was political. Constantine moved the imperial capital away from Rome, to a new eastern city built expressly for it on the shores of the Bosphorus, occupying the site of the ancient Greek colony of Byzantium, a city which he originally intended should be named New Rome but which from the start was always called after him, Constantinople. He inaugurated it on May 11, 330—dedicating it, incidentally, to the Virgin—and on that day the empire, too, acquired a new description, the Byzantine; but it is important to remember that neither he nor his subjects recognized any qualitative change or break in continuity. To them the empire was what it had always been, the Roman Empire of the Emperor Augustus and his successors; and they, regardless of the language they spoke—and as time went on Latin died out and Greek became universal—remained in their own eyes Roman through and through.
TO POPE SYLVESTER I and his flock in Rome, the news of the emperor’s second decision must have done a good deal to mitigate that of his first. Christianity might now be smiled upon, persecution a thing of the past, and on Constantine’s only visit to Rome in 326 he had not only refused to take part in a pagan procession (causing considerable offense to the traditionalists) but had chosen the sites of several of the great basilicas that he intended to build—and to endow lavishly—in and around the city. First among these was, of course, that which was to be dedicated to St. Peter, above the saint’s shrine on the Vatican Hill. Then there were to be a second cathedral and baptistery next to the palace on the Lateran, occupying the site of the old barracks of the imperial cavalry.3 Next was the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, commemorating the finding of the True Cross by the emperor’s mother, St. Helena, and raised on the ruins of her former palace; and finally the great church on the Appian Way marking the traditional spot to which the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul had been transferred in 258 but now dedicated—somewhat unfairly, it may be thought—to St. Sebastian.
All this was excellent news; on the other hand, as Sylvester was well aware, Constantine had almost simultaneously ordered the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem,4 together with others at Trier, Aquileia, Nicomedia, Antioch, Alexandria, and several other cities—to say nothing of the Great Church of St. Sophia, the Holy Wisdom, in his new capital. How now was the Bishop of Rome to further his claim to supremacy over the whole Christian Church? It was not he but the Patriarch of Constantinople who would henceforth have the emperor’s ear. For well over six hundred years it was firmly believed that Constantine, in gratitude for his miraculous healing from leprosy by Sylvester, had sugared the pill by handing over to the pope and his successors “Rome and all the provinces, districts and cities of Italy and the West as subject to the Roman Church forever.” Alas for the Papacy, he did no such thing. The so-called Donation of Constantine is now known to have been a forgery—fabricated, probably during the eighth century, within the Roman Curia; it was, however, to prove of inestimable value to the territorial claims of the Papacy until the fraud was finally exposed (by the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla) in 1440.
It was Pope Sylvester’s misfortune to witness, during his papacy, the appearance of the first of the great heresies that were to split the Church in the centuries to come. This was first propagated by a certain Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, a man of immense learning and splendid physical presence. His message was simple enough: that Jesus Christ was not coeternal and of one substance with God the Father but had been created by Him at a specific time and for a specific purpose, as his instrument for the salvation of the world. Thus, although a perfect man, the Son must always be subordinate to the Father. Here, in the eyes of Arius’s archbishop, Alexander, was a dangerous doctrine indeed, and he took immediate measures to stamp it out. In 320 its propagator was arraigned before nearly a hundred bishops from Egypt, Libya, and Tripolitania and excommunicated as a heretic.
The damage, however, was done: the teaching spread like wildfire. Those were the days, it must be remembered, when theological arguments were of passionate interest, not just to churchmen and scholars but to the whole Greek-speaking world. Broadsheets were distributed; rabble-rousing speeches were made in the marketplace; slogans were chalked on walls. Everyone had an opinion: you were either for Arius or against him. He himself, unlike most theologians, was a brilliant publicist; the better to disseminate his views, he actually wrote several popular songs and jingles—for sailors, travelers, carpenters, and other trades—which were sung and whistled in the streets.5 Then, a year or two later, Arius—who had hurriedly left Alexandria after his excommunication—returned in triumph. He had appeared before two further synods in Asia Minor, both of which had declared overwhelmingly in his favor, and now he demanded his old job back.
Finally, in 324, the emperor intervened. There would be no more synods of local bishops; instead there would be a universal Council of the Church, to be attended by all the leading ecclesiastics from both East and West—an Ecumenical Council of such authority and distinction that both parties to the dispute would be bound to accept its rulings. It would be held in Nicaea during May and June 325, and he—Constantine—would himself participate. In the event he did rather more than that; effectively, he seems to have taken the chair, arguing, encouraging, assuaging ruffled feelings, forever urging the importance of unity and the virtues of compromise, and even on occasion switching from Latin into halting Greek in his efforts to convince his hearers.
It was Constantine, too, who proposed the insertion into the draft statement of belief of the key word which was to settle, at least temporarily, the fate of Arius and his doctrine. This was the word homoousios—meaning “consubstantial” or “of one substance,” to describe the relation of the Son to the Father. Its inclusion in the draft was almost tantamount to a condemnation of Arianism, and it says much for the emperor’s powers of persuasion—and, it must be suspected, of intimidation—that he was able to secure its acceptance. And so the Council delivered its verdict: Arius, with his remaining adherents, was formally condemned, his writings placed under anathema and ordered to be burnt.
The emperor had hoped for a large attendance from the Western churches at the Council of Nicaea, but he was disappointed. Against some three hundred or more bishops from the East, the West was represented by just five—plus two priests sent, more as observers than anything else, by Pope Sylvester from Rome. It was, on the pope’s part, an understandable decision; he probably considered that to make the journey would be demeaning to both himself and his office. Besides, Western churchmen lacked the insatiable intellectual curiosity of their Eastern brethren; the Latin language—which had replaced Greek as the lingua franca of the Roman Church less than a century before—did not even possess the technical terms necessary to express the subtle shades of meaning that gave Orthodox theologians such delight. Nevertheless, it was a grave mistake. Sylvester’s attendance at the Council would have greatly strengthened his prestige. One claiming to be the supreme head of the universal Church should surely have been present at the drafting of the Nicene Creed, the Church’s first official statement of belief, a revised version of which is still today regularly recited at both Catholic and Anglican Eucharists.
And what of Arius himself? He was exiled to Illyricum, the Roman province running along the Dalmatian coast, and forbidden to return to Alexandria, but he was soon back in Nicomedia, where over the next ten years he gave the authorities no rest. At last, in 336, Constantine was forced to summon him to Constantinople for further investigation of his beliefs. It was during this last inquiry that
Arius, made bold by the protection of his followers, engaged in lighthearted and foolish conversation, until he was suddenly compelled by a call of nature to retire; and immediately, as it is written,6 “falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and gave up the ghost.”
This version of the story, admittedly, comes from the pen of Arius’s implacable enemy Archbishop Athanasius of Alexandria; but the unattractive circumstances of his demise are too well attested by
contemporary writers to be open to serious question. Inevitably, they were interpreted by those who hated him as divine retribution: the archbishop’s biblical reference is to the somewhat similar fate which befell Judas Iscariot.
The death of its initiator did not, however, put an end to Arianism. It continued to flourish in many parts of the empire, until in 381 the Emperor Theodosius the Great, a fanatically anti-Arian Spaniard, summoned the second Ecumenical Council, which was held at Constantinople and finally worked out a satisfactory solution to the problem. Indeed, he did more: he decreed a general ban on all pagan and heretical cults. Heresy—any heresy—would henceforth be a crime against the state. In less than a century a persecuted Church had become a persecuting Church. The Jews in particular came under heavy pressure: for was it not they, after all, who had crucified Christ? As for Arianism, it was virtually extinguished within the empire, although it was to remain widespread among the Germanic barbarian tribes for at least another three hundred years.
Pope Damasus sent no representatives to this Council, nor were any Western bishops present, and he was horrified later to learn of its decree that “the Bishop of Constantinople shall have the preeminence in honor after the Bishop of Rome, for Constantinople is the New Rome.” That preeminence, he thundered, was in no way due to Rome’s past as capital of the empire; it was based exclusively on its apostolic pedigree going back to St. Peter and St. Paul. Nor was Constantinople even second in seniority; not even yet a patriarchate, it was outranked by both Alexandria and Antioch—the former having traditionally been founded on St. Peter’s orders by St. Mark, the latter because Peter had been its first bishop before he went on to Italy.
Relations between Rome and Constantinople were deteriorating fast.
THE EMPEROR CONSTANTINE had died on Whitsunday, 337. Though for years a self-styled bishop of the Christian Church, he had received baptism only on his deathbed, from Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea—ironically enough, an Arian. Until the end of the century he and his successors reigned supreme over the whole empire, but Theodosius the Great, dying in 395, divided it again, giving his elder son, Arcadius, the East and his younger, Honorius, the West. It proved a disastrous decision. Under the sway of thirteen emperors, living for the most part not in Rome but in Ravenna, each more feckless than the last and all today virtually forgotten, the Western Empire now embarked on an inexorable eighty-year decline, the prey of the Germanic and other tribes that progressively tightened their grip.
But by now the bishops of Rome had developed a quasi-monarchical position of dominance in the West. The emperor, as always involved in the East, had exempted them from taxes and granted them jurisdiction over matters of faith and civil law, and over the years they had steadily built up their authority. Damasus I (366–384) had claimed an “apostolic” seat, deliberately using Christ’s declaration in St. Matthew to support his claims to power; he had also still further increased his reputation by commissioning the Vulgate—a new and vastly superior translation of the Bible—from the Italian scholar St. Jerome. His successor, Siricius (384–399), had been the first to assume the title of “Pope,” giving it much of the significance that it bears today; Pope Innocent I (401–417) insisted that all important matters discussed at synods should be submitted to himself for a final decision. In the East, it need hardly be said, such claims were never for a moment taken seriously; there, the emperor alone—assisted, perhaps, by an Ecumenical Council which he only could summon—remained the supreme authority. Nonetheless, the bishops of Rome could be said to have come of age: they were, at long last, effectively popes, using Latin, not Greek, for their liturgy; and it was as popes that they now found themselves with a new role: as defenders of Rome itself.
THE FIFTH CENTURY began with a bang: in the early summer of 401 King Alaric the Visigoth invaded Italy. Still no more than thirty years old, he had already spread terror from the walls of Constantinople to the southern Peloponnese. In fact, he was not fundamentally hostile to the empire; his real objective was to establish a permanent home for his people within it. If only the Roman Senate and the dim-witted Western Emperor Honorius—whose only interest at the time seems to have been the raising of poultry—could have understood this, they might have averted the final catastrophe; by their lack of comprehension they made it inevitable. In September 408 Alaric was before the walls of Rome, and the first of his three sieges of the city began. It lasted for three months. The civic authorities were helpless while the fugitive Honorius cowered among the marshes of Ravenna; it was left to Pope Innocent to negotiate with the conqueror and make what terms he could. Alaric demanded a huge ransom of gold and silver and other precious materials, including 3,000 pounds of pepper; but, thanks entirely to the pope, he respected Church property and there was, thank Heaven, no bloodbath.
The second of Alaric’s sieges had one purpose only: to overthrow Honorius. The King of the Goths made it clear to the Romans that all they had to do was to depose their idiotic emperor; he would then instantly withdraw. The Roman Senate, meeting in emergency session, did not take long to concur, but Honorius refused to go. He continued to make trouble until eventually, in the early summer of 410, Alaric marched on Rome and besieged it for the third time. With food already short, the city could not hold out for long. Toward the end of August the Goths burst in through the northern wall, just at the foot of the Pincian Hill.
After the capture, there were the traditional three days of pillage, but this early sack of Rome seems to have been a good deal less savage than the school history books would have us believe—quite restrained, in fact, compared with the havoc wrought by the Normans in 1078 or the army of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1527. Alaric himself, devout Christian that he was, had given orders that no churches or religious buildings were to be touched and that the right of asylum was everywhere to be respected. Yet a sack, however decorously conducted, remains a sack; the Goths were far from being saints, and, despite occasional exaggerations, there is probably all too much truth in the pages that Gibbon devotes to the atrocities committed: the countless magnificent buildings consumed by the flames, the multitudes of innocents slain, the matrons ravished, the virgins deflowered.
When the three days were over, Alaric moved on to the south, but he got no further than Cosenza when he was attacked by a sudden violent fever, and within a few days he was dead. He was still only forty. His followers carried his body to the Busento River, which they dammed and temporarily deflected from its usual channel. There, in the stream’s dry bed, they buried their leader; then they broke the dam, and the waters came surging back and covered him.
Pope Innocent had done all he could, but had been unable to save his flock from the third and last siege. Arguably, he was the first really great pope. A man of vast ability, high resolution, and impeccable morality, he stands out like a beacon after the scores of mediocrities that preceded him. Papal supremacy, he was determined, should be absolute; all major causes of dispute must be submitted to the judgment of the Holy See. He was surely gratified when, in 404, he received a respectful appeal from the Bishop of Constantinople, St. John Chrysostom, that saintly but insufferable prelate whose scorching castigations of the Empress Eudoxia—she had by this time deserted her husband, Arcadius, in favor of an apparently interminable string of lovers—had resulted in his deposition by the Patriarch of Alexandria7 and subsequent exile. John now demanded a formal trial at which he could confront his accusers, unmistakably implying that he recognized the Bishop of Rome as his superior. Innocent naturally leaped to his defense, summoning a synod of Latin bishops which duly called on Arcadius to restore Chrysostom at once to his see; then, when this was seen to have no effect, he dispatched a delegation to Constantinople. Including as it did no less than four senior bishops, it could hardly be ignored; but Arcadius was unimpressed. The envoys were not even permitted to enter the city. Their letters of credence were snatched from them; they were then thrown into a Thracian castle, where they were subjected to what was almost certa
inly a painful interrogation. Only then, insulted and humiliated, were they allowed to return to Italy.
Thus, when in 407 St. John Chrysostom died in a remote region of Pontus on the Black Sea—probably as a result of ill-treatment by his guards—he left with the Church profoundly split; and Pope Innocent, who only three years before had had good reason to believe that his supremacy was generally acknowledged in Constantinople, was now faced with all-too-convincing proof of his misapprehension. He remained in power, however, for another decade, making important contributions in the fields of the liturgy and theology and governing Rome with a firm hand. Whether or not he altogether deserved the sainthood that was subsequently bestowed on him is perhaps open to discussion; but he gave the Papacy an international prestige of a kind that it had never before known, and he marks the first milestone on its road to greatness.
JUST TWENTY-THREE years (and five popes) after Innocent’s death in 417, the Tuscan lawyer and theologian Leo I (440–461) was elected to the papal throne. He was the first Bishop of Rome to adopt the title of the pagan chief priest, pontifex maximus, and the first of only two in all papal history to have been known as “the Great.” In fact, he deserved the title no more than had Innocent, whose campaign to establish the supremacy of Rome he enthusiastically continued. Papal authority, he claimed, was the authority of St. Peter himself; the pope was Peter’s unworthy spokesman. This is the overriding message of his vast correspondence with bishops and churchmen all over the Western world. He and he alone was the guardian of orthodoxy, which he did his utmost to spread also throughout the East—though such a task, as he well knew, required much diplomacy and tact.
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