Peter's Rock in Mohammed's Flood, from St. Gregory the Great to St. Leo III. Allies Thomas William
of an imperial decree, but the theological form of a creed, Paul showed himself more skilful, and dressed his Typus in imperial clothing. Constans himself says that he meant to restore the peace of the Church by this new decree. There is no reason to doubt this, since, in tearing down the Ecthesis from the wall of Sancta Sophia, he plainly purposed to quiet the minds of the Westerns and those who held with them. It is further clear that while the Ecthesis forbade contention concerning One or Two Operations, it inconsistently proclaimed One Will, that is Monothelism. But the Typus consistently rejected not only One Operation, but One Will. It wished in this to be impartial. This apparent impartiality is likewise the chief distinction between the Typus and the Ecthesis, for they are like each other in the main thought, which is, that the development of doctrine should remain at the point to which it had come in the five general councils, and that further questions should not be entered into. However, that impartiality is but a false via media, for it puts the true doctrine of the Two Wills upon the same footing with the heresy, and forbids both one and the other. Another distinction between the Ecthesis and the Typus lies in this, that the Ecthesis only required obedience in general. Constans, on the contrary, threatened every transgressor of his Typus with the severest civil punishments, and these he executed with the utmost cruelty.
The Typus is the fifth specimen of doctrinal despotism proceeding from the Byzantine emperors since the time of St. Leo. In all these the effort was the same. So far as the relation between the emperor and the Pope is concerned, the principle at issue is whether the Byzantine emperor, with the Byzantine patriarch as his chief agent, should dictate the creed and direct the government of the Church, or the Pope and the bishops.
The first attempt proceeds from Basiliscus, who, by insurrection got possession of the imperial throne for about twenty months, and in that short time issued the Encyclikon, in which Timotheus Ailouros, patriarch of Alexandria, helped him as to the composition, and 500 Greek bishops were found to accept and praise it. Basiliscus with his wife and children, was presently starved to death by the emperor Zeno.
The second attempt was by Zeno, when he had recovered the throne, and fallen into the hands of his patriarch Acacius. He then issued the Henoticon, which Acacius had drawn up, which was imposed by force on the bishops, and which Fravita, Euphemius, Macedonius, and Timotheus, successive patriarchs of Constantinople, submitted to subscribe, the first under Zeno, the following three under Anastasius. The wisdom and firmness of successive Popes frustrated this attempt, and Hormisdas finally obtained a full reparation, and the acknowledgment of his own charge over the whole Church, by the gift of Christ to St. Peter, which the bishops of the Apostolic See inherited.
Yet, notwithstanding this most solemn confession on the part of the bishop of Constantinople, of the emperor, and of the nobles of the East, some thirty years later, Justinian, having become direct lord of Rome, and having summoned Pope Vigilius as his temporal subject, to go to Constantinople, makes a third attempt, and issues to the Fifth General Council his own “Confession of Faith,” which a recreant court-archbishop, Theodore Askidas, supplies him with, and which the patriarch of Constantinople, Eutychius, then, by the emperor's nomination, presiding over the Council, as well as the eastern bishops in the Council, receive. The whole attitude and conduct of Justinian at the Fifth Council show how deeply this most distinguished of the eastern emperors was imbued with the doctrinal despotism of his throne. And from that time, the contention of his successors is still more pronounced, and their temporal power over the Pope, as their subject, is unsparingly exercised, not to deny his spiritual supremacy in itself, but to make its exercise subject to their imperial power, and in this the patriarchs of Constantinople, assuming by and with the consent of the emperors, the title of Ecumenical Patriarch, serve their sovereign as the chief instrument for reducing the Church to servitude. It is to be observed that Justinian conferred this title upon them in his laws. From that time they one and all clung to it.
The fourth attempt is made by Heraclius at the end of his long reign, when he had fallen under the influence of Sergius, as his predecessor, Zeno, had fallen under the influence of Acacius. Not only did Sergius hold the great see of the capital during twenty-eight years from 610 to 638, but things recorded of him seem to indicate that he was a man of extraordinary resolution. He had preserved Heraclius from deserting his capital, and flying back for refuge to his father at Carthage, after a long series of defeats from the Persians. He had acted as guardian of his son, and administrator of the empire during the marvellous six years when Heraclius, shaking off twelve years of apathy, and going forth in the name of God, and in publicly uttered commendation of his kingdom to the Blessed Mother of God, had triumphed over the Great King. Servius finally supplied him with the exposition, which was to present in seeming concord the wrangling episcopacy of his eastern empire, and overcome the Roman Pontiff in his maintenance of the faith.
The fifth attempt was made by Constans II., grandson of Heraclius, for whom Paul II., patriarch of Constantinople, invested his heresy in fitting language, and presented it in the Typus as an imperial decree which all were to accept under punishment to property, freedom, or life. And Pope Martin I. had to fight the old battle of the Church as a subject to a sovereign who was at once without mercy and without scruple.
The Typus is the perfect specimen of the theologising emperor, who begins by attributing to himself the charge over the whole Church, and puts himself precisely in the place of the Pope and the bishops in formulating the true Christian doctrine, wherein he claims the initiative, and the ultimate decision.
It need only be added that in all this succession of attempts to deprive the Church of God of her liberty, and the Pope of that guardianship of the faith which alone is adequate to its maintenance, the successors of Constantine departed essentially from the position which the first of Christian emperors took at the first General Council. He did not sit in that Council. He placed himself with the sword of empire at the entrance to guard the approach. He made the decrees of the Council laws of the Roman empire; but he acknowledged that the power to make them rested in the bishops alone.
Nor would it be unhistorical to note that in proportion as the emperors, whose seat was Byzantium, encroached upon the liberty of the Church, and sought domination over the successor of St. Peter, in whose prerogatives that liberty was seated, their temporal empire declined. The despotism which flung itself with insolence and violence against the Church became odious to its own subjects. We shall see an instance of this which almost passes belief when the patriarchate of St. Athanasius embraces the Moslem conqueror, to escape the Byzantine sovereign, and terms the defenders of the Christian faith Melchites, that is, Royalists, because, while they rejected the Eutychean heresy, they were likewise loyal to the eastern emperor.
Let us see how Pope Martin meets this attempt. No sooner is he invested with “the great mantle,” than he summons a Council to meet in the basilica of Constantine, then called the Church of the Saviour, now St. John Lateran, adjoining the papal palace, the Mother Church of Rome. He called this council in order to judge the doctrine which two emperors, using two Byzantine patriarchs, and at the same time used by them, seek to impose upon the Church, instead of the doctrine of St. Leo the Great, accepted and set forth at the Council of Chalcedon. It held from the 5th to the 31st October, 649, five sittings. It was attended by 105 bishops, chiefly from Italy (excluding the Lombard dominion), Sicily and Sardinia, with some African, and a few foreign. The acts have come to us complete, both in Greek and Latin, the former being the proper language of the two documents, the Ecthesis and Typus. I give the following epitome of the Pope's speech to the Council: —
“Christ has commanded pastors to be watchful: this concerns us also, and especially must we watch over the purity of the faith, since certain bishops, who do not deserve this name, have lately sought to spoil our confession of belief by new invented expressions. Everyone knows them, since they have come forward openly to injure the Church: such are Cyrus of Alexandria, Sergius of Constantinople, and his followers, Pyrrhus and Paulus. Cyrus eighteen years ago taught in Alexandria One Operation in Christ, and published from the pulpit nine heads of doctrine. Sergius approved this, issued somewhat later the Ecthesis under the name of the emperor Heraclius, and taught One Will and One Operation, which leads to One Nature of Christ. The Fathers distinctly taught that Operation answers to Nature, and whoever has like Operation must likewise be of like Nature. Since then the Fathers teach Two Natures in Christ, it follows that Two Wills and Operations are united without mixture and without division in one and the same Incarnate