Peter's Rock in Mohammed's Flood, from St. Gregory the Great to St. Leo III. Allies Thomas William
in conflict with the Mohammedan assault, and about fifty years later was entirely swept away. It would be difficult to find stronger words than it uses to describe the Papal authority and the special gift which it recognises as belonging to the See of Peter by divine ordinance.
Several of the letters written by Pope Martin after the Lateran Synod testify his zeal to overthrow the Monothelite heresy. Among these is his answer to the just-quoted letter, which he addresses to the Church of Carthage, and all the bishops, clergy, and laity subject to it. He praises them for the synodical letters drawn up by the Church's glorious orator, Augustine, through the Holy Ghost, to his Apostolic See, alluding to that great confession of his Primacy which we have in the letters of the Saint, and which, he says, their words repeat, and so he presents to them the acts of the Lateran Council.
Particularly remarkable is the Pope's letter to the bishops under the Sees of Jerusalem and Antioch, that is, the patriarchates which had fallen under Mohammedan domination. He announces to them that, after due examination, he had condemned “the Exposition of the Emperor Heraclius, and the formula of the present serene emperor,” and he deplores the havoc which heretics had made in the East, irregularly setting up a false bishop at Antioch, the heretic Macedonius, and another, Peter, at Alexandria. The Pope adds that in his anxiety to build up the Church of God, which they were laying waste, he had, according to the power given him by the Lord in the person of blessed Peter, ordered his brother John, Bishop of Philadelphia, to supply his place in all ecclesiastical matters through the East, and to create in all cities episcopally subject to the Sees of Antioch and Jerusalem bishops, priests, and deacons, and he begs them as sons of obedience “to help our Vicar set by Apostolic authority”.
The Bishop of Thessalonica, in the course of 200 years since St. Leo and the succeeding Popes had made him their Vicar for the great province of Eastern Illyricum, had become a prelate of very high rank. Paul was actually bishop, but he favoured the new heresy, and the Pope, after warning him in vain, wrote deposing him, unless he received without the least omission everything which had been synodically ratified and defined at the Council. At the same time he wrote to the people of Thessalonica, enjoining them to have no society, agreement, or connection with such a man.
Thus, in the case of any diocese, whether that of a simple bishop, or a primate, or a patriarch, the Pope does not hesitate to tell their several diocesans that they are set free from all duty of obedience to one condemned by him. No act can show the superior authority of the universal Primate more strongly than this. St. Gregory the Great had said that all bishops were equal when performing their respective work in their own diocese; but if that work is not duly performed, he knows of no bishop who is not subject to the Apostolic See. The power of the Primacy is essentially for edification of the whole Church, and so is exerted whenever the Church and the faith of the Church are anywhere in danger. The acts of St. Martin I. at a crisis of singular danger follow exactly the rule of St. Gregory. If an emperor supports heresy, he condemns his act, though he may be a lawful sovereign; if a patriarch is false to the faith, he sets a vicar of his own to appoint fresh bishops in the patriarchate. If his own vicar sins against the power which appointed him, he dissolves the primary bond according to which the people of that diocese is bound to their own bishop.
But the supreme authority of the Roman See is indicated most plainly in the encyclical letter issued by the Pope. It is addressed “Martin, Servant of the Servants of God, by grace Bishop of God's holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of the Romans, together with the Synod of Bishops here canonically assembled with us for the confirmation of the true dogmas of the Catholic Church, to those who have inherited the like precious faith as we of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through the laver of regeneration, who sojourn in holiness and justice in every part of His dominion, our brethren the bishops, priests, deacons, heads of monasteries, monks, ascetics, and to the whole sacred plenitude of the Catholic Church”.
I give the main contents of this letter thus addressed to the whole world to announce the decision of the Council by Pope Martin. It expresses in every line, supported by constant quotations of Scripture, the solicitude of the Pope for the maintenance of the doctrine concerning the Person of the Lord which had been held from the beginning. “Our predecessors, the Pontiffs of Catholic memory, have not ceased to admonish the innovators to recede from this their heresy. Bishops from various provinces, and, what is more, general synods, have not only by their own writings called upon them to amend their heresy, but conjure our Apostolic See to exercise its regular authority, and not to suffer to the end this innovation to make a prey of the churches. Meeting, therefore, in this Roman most Christian city, we have confirmed by our sentence the holy Fathers; we have anathematised the heretics with their most depraved doctrines, the impious Ecthesis and the most impious Typus, in order that all you who dwell over the whole earth, recognising that these things have been piously done by us for the safeguard of the Catholic Church, may carry them out together with us.” “The Lord says, every kingdom divided against itself shall not stand, and every sentence, every law divided against itself shall not stand; and if the Typus destroys the Ecthesis, and the Ecthesis destroys the Typus, the one asserting that our Lord has one will and operation, the other denying it, then both are divided; and how shall the heresy stand, being shown to be invalid and empty by itself, rather than destroyed by us?” This, the never-ending refutation of heresy, runs through the whole letter, and against it is set “the manifestation of God through apostles, prophets, doctors, and the five Universal Councils, whose decrees are the law of the Catholic Church”. “Behold the Judge stands before the door joyfully promising crowns to those who suffer for His sake.”
Thus the Lateran Council of 649, presided over by Pope Martin, who directs all the proceedings, who informs the emperor of the condemnation of the Typus, composed by this emperor's own patriarch, and issued by himself as a law, who addresses an encyclical letter to all bishops and their people, summing up its acts, who writes to various provinces, and in particular to the eastern patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem, appointing his vicar over them, gives us in full detail a picture of the discipline existing in the Church just at the middle of the seventh century. As to doctrine, the Lateran Council stands precisely on that set forth two hundred years before at the Council of Chalcedon by the great authority of St. Leo. In condemning the Monothelite heresy, espoused by two emperors and three successive patriarchs of Constantinople, it alleges the tradition of the Fathers from the beginning, and the doctrinal decrees of the five Councils, then accepted as General. During these five centuries the East has been agitated almost without ceasing by the efforts of the Eutychean heresy and its last progeny, the Monothelite, to overthrow the true faith concerning the Incarnation, on which the whole economy of human salvation rests. The eastern patriarchates have utterly failed to secure the occupants of the sees of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, from the prevailing error. Cyrus, patriarch of Alexandria, and Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, are the chief patrons of this error. After them, Pyrrhus, and then Paul, are using the utmost power of the emperor from their seat in the capital to impose it by force: and the ecumenical patriarch especially is using it as a lever against the Roman Primacy, and in drawing up decrees of doctrine fathered by the imperial power is practically denying the Roman Primacy to be the guardian of the Christian faith, and striving to transfer that guardianship to himself, always under the wing of the emperor. Had the Popes yielded to the Ecthesis or the Typus, both the faith of the Church would have been altered, and its government transferred from Old Rome to Roma Nova. St. Martin, as the first act of his pontificate, plays this most remarkable part of summoning a Council which defeats this double aggression. And the moment at which it is done may be marked as that in which the temporal weakness of Rome touches its lowest point. The subsequent treatment of the Pope, which I have now to mention, is an incontestable proof how entirely he was exposed to the machinations, the violence, and the despotic tyranny of his enemies, especially to the malevolent union of emperor and patriarch. Yet it is to be observed that neither emperor nor patriarch even affects to deny the authority of St. Peter's successor; what they attempt to do is to control and subject him in the exercise of it.
History is silent as to events in Rome from the end of the Council of 649 to 653. What the exarch Olympius, by special command of the emperor Constans II. did while it was being held, has been narrated above. Olympius was dead, but another exarch, Theodore Kalliopas, was sent from Constantinople to execute the work in which Olympius had failed. On the 15th June, 653, Kalliopas came to Rome. Concerning