593-595]

Disputes with the Emperor

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material arms. Agilulf met Gregory on the steps of St Peter's, and the weighty wisdom of the prelate gave power to his prayers for the city: they prevailed, the siege was abandoned, and Agilulf went back to Milan, where the letters of Gregory were as familiar to the clergy and as powerful as was his rule in Rome.

Thither came epistles to Theodelinda, the Arian Agilulf's Catholic wife, instructing her in the right belief as to the still unfinished strife about the Three Chapters, and to Constantius the bishop, begging him to negotiate a peace between the Lombards and the Empire.

Peace was impossible so long as the Caesar at Constantinople claimed the lordship of all Italy, and the Lombard barbarian asserted all real power over the peninsula. Nor was Gregory at the time the person to bring the foes together, for in August 593 he had written to the Emperor Maurice in terms of criticism strangely bold and direct. When Maurice was "not yet lord of all" he had been Gregory's own lord, and still the pope would call himself the unworthy servant of the pious Emperor. But a new edict which forbade a civil servant of the Empire, or a soldier, to become priest or monk, seemed to him a monstrous infringement of individual and religious liberty. By it, he said, the way to heaven would be closed to many, for while there were those who could lead a religious life in a secular dress, yet more there were who unless they forsook all things could in no way attain salvation. What answer would he, who from notary had been made by God first captain, then Caesar, then Emperor, then father of Emperor yet to be, and to whose care the priests of God had been entrusted, make to the divine inquest of the Last Day if not one single soldier was allowed to be converted to the Lord? And Gregory drew a lurid picture of the "end of the ages" which seemed to be at hand, the heavens and the earth aflame and the elements melting with fervent heat, and the Divine Judge ready to appear with the six orders of angels in His train. Yet it is an illustration of the fidelity with which Gregory performed all his secular obligations that he had caused the law against which he so vehemently protested to be published in the usual way.

This was not the only divergence in opinion between the pope and the imperial Court. Gregory, with all his respect for authority, was at least able to hold his own, and there was for a while at least no breach in the friendly relations with Constantinople. Maurice sent relief to the sufferers from the Lombard invasion, and Gregory lost no opportunity of advising that the separate peace which he had made with Agilulf should be enlarged at least into a general truce. Gregory, inter gladios Langobardorum, could appreciate the needs of Italy in a way that was impossible for the distant Augustus. In 595 however the divergence came to a head. The Emperor reviewed the pope's peace policy in terms of contemptuous condemnation and Gregory answered in one of the most vigorous of all his letters, dated June 595. He resented the imputation

that because he thought that a firm peace could be made, as indeed it had been made, with Ariulf of Spoleto, he was a fool. Fool indeed was he to suffer what he suffered in Rome among the swords of the Lombards; but still he was a servant of the truth, and grave injustice was it to the priesthood that he should be deemed a liar. On behalf of all priests he made dignified protest, recalling the action and words of the great Constantine as a rebuke to his successor in the Empire. "Where all is uncertain I betake myself to tears and prayers that Almighty God will rule with His own hand our most pious lord, and in the terrible judgment will find him free from all offences, and so cause me to please men that I may not offend against His grace.'

How the Emperor received this letter we do not know; but already there were other causes of dispute between Rome and Constantinople. His experience had not made the pope very cordial towards Church or State in the New Rome. Useful at Constantinople Gregory must undoubtedly have been, but the fact that he never learned Greek shews at least that there were limits to his usefulness. The information he received would often be inadequate, the means of communication with the people among whom he dwelt incomplete. Official interpreters do not always represent meanings faithfully. Gregory had to deal most with the imperial Court, where his ignorance of Greek may not have been so great a barrier; but, in his relations with the Patriarch, it would at least serve to prevent any strengthening of the friendship between Churches which were already beginning to drift apart.

That the Church was under the rule of five patriarchs was a familiar view, and at least from the time of Vigilius (537–555) it had been accepted in official language at Rome. Thus Gregory had announced his own election to the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch. His letters shew traces of another theory, that of the three patriarchates, Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, sharing, as it were, the throne of St Peter. But Constantinople had long asserted a pre-eminence. Justinian had recognised its precedence as second of the great sees, superior to all others save Rome, and had declared the Church of Constantinople to be "the head of all the churches." In doing this no doubt the Empire had claimed no supreme or exclusive dignity for the New Rome, nor asserted any indivisible or unalterable jurisdiction. But what the law recognised had encouraged further expansion of claim. At first the relation between Constantinople and the elder see was regarded as parallel to that between the two capitals: they represented not diversity but unity: as there was one Empire, so there was one Church. When John the Patriarch accepted the formula of faith drawn up by Pope Hormisdas he prefixed to it an assertion of the mutual relation: "I hold the most holy Churches of the old and the new Rome to be one. I define the see of the Apostle Peter and this of the imperial city to be

588-595]

Controversy with John the Faster

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one see." From this it was an inevitable step to use titles which Rome used. The pontiff of Constantinople claimed to be oecumenical (oikovpevikós or universalis) patriarch.

In 588 Pelagius declared the acts of a synod at Constantinople to be invalid because the patriarch had used the phrase. Very likely Gregory himself had been the adviser of this course. Now in 595 he pursued the protest. John the Faster had written to him and had employed the offensive title "in almost every line." Gregory wrote, as he describes it, "sweetly and humbly admonishing him to amend this appetite for vain glory." He forbade his envoy to communicate with the patriarch till he had abandoned the title. At the same time he repudiated any wish to assume it for himself. "The Council of Chalcedon," he said, "offered the title of universalis to the Roman pontiff but he refused to accept it, lest he should seem thereby to derogate from the honour of his brother bishops." He saw indeed that political interests were complicating the ecclesiastical claim. His envoy had been commanded by the Emperor to adjure him to live in peace with the patriarch, who seemed to him to be as hypocritical as he was proud. Then either he must obey the Emperor and encourage the proud man in his vanity, or he must alienate the Emperor, his lord and the natural defender of Rome. He did not hesitate. He wrote to the Emperor, tracing the misfortunes of the Empire to the pride of the clergy. When Europe was given over to the barbarians, with cities ruined, villages thrown down, and provinces without inhabitants; when the husbandman no longer tilled the soils and the worshippers of idols daily murdered the faithful, the priests, who should have abased themselves in sackcloth and ashes sought for themselves empty names and titles novel and profane. Peter was never called Universal Apostle, yet John strove to be Universal Bishop. "I confidently affirm that whosoever calls himself sacerdos universalis, or desires to be so called by others, is in his pride a forerunner of Antichrist." What he said to the Emperor he reinforced to the Empress. There should be no peace with the patriarch so long as he claimed this outrageous designation. On the other side the argument became no attitude of aggression, hardly a claim for equality. The patriarchs did not assert that they were above the popes, and they constantly declared that they had no wish to lessen the authority of the other patriarchs. But whatever the Greeks might say, the Latins saw that words represented ideas; and universality could not be predicated of Constantinople in any sense which was not offensive to the venerable see and city of Rome. The bitterness of the strife abated when John the Faster died on 2 September 595, it may be before Gregory's severe judgment had reached him. Cyriacus, his successor, was a personal friend of the pope, and a man of no personal pride. Gregory welcomed his accession and thanked the Emperor for his choice. But in spite of friendly letters the claim was not abandoned. The patriarchs continued

to use the title of oecumenical bishop, and before a century had passed the popes followed their example.

Gregory saw that the patriarchs of Constantinople were in danger of sinking into mere officials of the State, for with all their lofty position they were in the power of the imperial Court. But the tone in which he addressed them was always distinct from that which he employed towards the lay officials of the Empire. From the beginning of his pontificate he had carefully cultivated relations with the exarchs of Ravenna and of Africa, the praetor of Sicily, the dukes of Naples and Sardinia, the praefect of Illyria, the proconsul of Dalmatia, and with lesser officials rural and urban. His constant letters shew how closely he mingled in their concerns, watched their conduct, approved their industry, advised on their political action, intervened on their behalf or against them at Constantinople. Many of the officials were his close friends; and the Emperor, in spite of the divergence between them, did not cease to give heed to the counsels of one whom he knew to be a wise and honest man.

The maintenance of the imperial power in Italy indeed depended not a little on the great pope, who yet by his incessant and widespread activity was preparing the way of the ecclesiastical power which should succeed it in the rule of the peninsula. The subdeacon who was his agent at Ravenna, and those who administered the property of the Church in the Campagna or in Sicily, the bishops themselves all over the Empire, reported to Rome, and their words were not without effect, and in all the advice which issued from this information Gregory pressed without faltering the authority of the Church: the pope was above the exarch, the Church above the State: if the civil law was invoked to protect the weak, to guide the rulers, to secure the rights of all Christian men, there was behind it the supreme sanction of the law of the Church. It was natural indeed that they should not be distinguished: a wrong against man was a wrong against God. It did not matter whether it was the oppression of a peasant or the pillage of a monastery: iniquity, it was the perpetual cry of the great pontiff, should not go unpunished. And, in a corresponding view to his attitude towards civil justice, Gregory insisted on the privileges of clergy in the law courts; and in the civil courts he is found placing representatives of his own beside the lay judges. Outside the law there were still a wide sphere in which the aid of the State was demanded on behalf of the Church. Governors would bring back schismatics, was congratulated on their victories over heathen, were urged to act against heretics, and to protect and support those who had returned to the faith.

On the other hand he no doubt set plain limits, in his own mind, to his sphere of action and that of the bishops. He constantly told the Italian bishops to observe the rights of the lay courts, not to interferc in the things of the world save when the interests of the poor demanded

596-599]

Dealings with the Lombards

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help. But his own keen sense of justice, his political training, his knowledge of affairs, forbade him to hold his tongue. The Empire, like the Church, was to him a splendid power of holy and heroic tradition: there was ever, he said to an imperial official, this difference between the Roman emperors and the barbarian kings that while the latter governed slaves the former were rulers of free men. To keep this always in the mind of the governing class must have been his aim, and his consolation, when, as he said, the cares of the world pressed so heavily upon him that he was often doubtful whether he was discharging the duties of an earthly official or those of a shepherd of men's souls.

In both capacities his work was continuous and engrossing. Invasion, rapine, insecurity of life and property, made clerk as well as lay lax livers, negligent stewards, cruel and faithless, luxurious and slothful. Against all such Gregory was the perpetual witness.

When Romanus the exarch died, probably in 596, his successor at Ravenna, Callinicus, received a warm welcome from the pope. For a time there was a lull in the tempest, but still Gregory preached vigilance, to bishop and governor alike, for Italy had not shaken off the terror even if Rome was for the moment outside the area of the storm. Writing in 598 to a lady in Constantinople the pope was able to assure her that so great was the protection given by St Peter to the city that, without the aid of soldiers, he had "by God's help been preserved for these many years among the swords of the enemy." A truce was made with Agilulf, it seems, in 598: in 599 this became a general peace in which the Empire through the exarch, and with the active support, though not the signature, of the pope, came to agreement with Agilulf the Lombard king and with the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento. His letters shew how much this was due to the tact, the wisdom, the patient persistence of Gregory; and it is certain also that Theodelinda, the Catholic wife of Agilulf, had played no unimportant part in the work of pacification. At Monza remain the relics of this wise queen; fitly beside the iron crown of the Lombards is the image of the protection that was given by the peace of Church and State, a hen that gathers her chickens under her wings.

The year 599 which dates this peace between the "Christian Republic" and the Lombards marks a definite epoch in the history of Italy. Paul the Deacon in his History of the Lombards shews that it was a time of crisis, conquest, and resettlement for Agilulf the king. The letters of Gregory shew that it was for him a period of incessant activity and reassertion of papal authority, while at Rome the city was "so reduced by the languor of various diseases that there are scarce left men enough to guard the walls" and the pope himself was in the clutch of increasing sickness, often unable to leave his bed for days together. Italy was still swept by pestilence; and exhaustion as well as political peace gave quiet for some two years.