The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I. T. W. Allies
of the Roman empire's fall. I confine myself to purely human considerations: I put aside every element foreign to the natural consequences of natural facts. If Christianity had only been a belief, a feeling, an individual conviction, we may suppose that it would have broken down at the dissolution of the empire and the barbarian invasion. It did break down later in Asia and in all north Africa beneath an invasion of the same kind—that of barbarous Mussulmans. It broke down then though it was an institution, a constituted Church. Much more might the same fact have happened at the moment of the Roman empire's fall. There were then none of those means by which in the present day moral influences are established or support themselves independent of institutions: no means by which a naked truth, a naked idea, acquires a great power over minds, rules actions, and determines events. Nothing of the kind existed in the fourth century to invest ideas and personal feelings with such an authority. It is clear that a strongly organised, a strongly governed, society was needed to struggle against so great a disaster, to overcome such a hurricane. I think I do not go too far in affirming that, at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century, it is the Christian Church which saved Christianity. It is the Church, with its institutions, its magistrates, and its power, which offered a vigorous defence to the internal dissolution of the empire, to barbarism; which conquered the barbarians; which became the bond, the means, the principle of civilisation to the Roman and the barbarian world."[27]
In this passage, Guizot speaks of the Church as a government, as a unity. At the very moment of which he speaks, St. Augustine was addressing the Pope as the fountainhead of that unity; and in the midst of the dissolution an emperor was recommending him to the Gallic bishops "as the chief of the episcopal coronet"[28] encircling the earth. The whole structure which lasted through this earthquake of nations had its cohesion in him—a fact seen even more clearly in the time of the third Valentinian than in that of the conquering Constantine.
But looking to that East, which dates from the Encyclikon of a Basiliscus and the Henotikon of a Zeno, here the Pope appears as the sole check to a despotic power. He alone could speak to the emperor on an equal and even a superior footing. Would such a power not have repudiated his interference, had it not been convinced of an authority beyond its reach to deny? The first generation following the utter impotence of Rome as reduced to a municipium under Arian rulers will answer this question, as we shall see hereafter, with fullest effect.
I have adduced above three political situations. The first is when the Primacy passes from dealing with one government to deal with more than one; the second when the Primacy has to deal with an unsettled world of many governments; the third when it is the sole fixed point in the face of a hurricane on one side and a despotism on the other. I observe that the testimony of all three concurs to bring out its action and establish its divine character. As an epilogue to all that has been said, I will suppose a case.
Three men, great with the natural greatness of intellect, greater still in the acquired greatness of character, greatest of all in the supernatural grace of saintliness, witnessed this fifth century from its beginning: one of them, during two decades of years; the second, during three; the last, during six decades. They saw in their own persons, or they heard in authentic narratives, all its doings—the cities plundered and overthrown; the countries wasted; all natural ties disregarded; neither age, nor sex, nor dignity, respected by hordes of savages, incapable themselves of learning, strangers to science, without perception of art; the sum being that the richest civilisation which the world had borne was crushed down by brute force. They saw, and mourned, and bore with unfailing personal courage their portion of sorrow, mayhap turning themselves in their inmost mind from a world perishing before their eyes, to contemplate the joy promised in a world which should not perish. But neither to St. Jerome, nor to St. Augustine, nor to St. Leo, did the thought occur that this barbarian mass could be controlled into producing a civilisation richer than that which its own incursion destroyed. That, instead of perpetual strife and mutual repulsion, it could receive the one law of Christ; be moulded into a senate of nations, with like institutions and identical principles; that, instead of one empire taking an external impress of the Christian faith, but rebelling against it with a deep-seated corruption and an unyielding paganism, and so perishing in the midst of abundance, it should grow into peoples, the corner-stone of whose government and the parent of their political constitution should be the one faith of Christ, and their acknowledged judge the Roman Pastor; and that the Rome which all the three saw once plundered, and the third twice subjected to that penalty, should lose all its power as a secular capital, while it became the shrine whence a divine law went forth; and that these hordes, who laid it waste before their eyes, should become its children and its most valiant defenders.
Had such a vision been vouchsafed to either of these great saints, with what words of thankfulness would he have described it. This is the subject which this narrative opens; and we, the long-descended offspring of these hordes, have seen this sight and witnessed this exertion of power carried on through centuries; and degenerate and ungrateful children as we are, we are living still upon the deeds which God wrought in that conversion of the nations by the pastoral staff of St. Peter, leading them into a land flowing with oil and wine.
NOTES:
[3] "Episcopatus unus est cujus a singulis in solidum pars tenetur."—S. Cyprian, De Unitate Ecclesiæ.
[4] Gregorovius, i. 286. "Das Papstthum, vom Kaiser des Abendlandes befreit, erstand, und die Kirche Roms wuchs unter Trümmern mächtig empor. Sie trat an die Stelle des Reichs."
[5] Gregorovius, i. 200.
[6] St. Ignatius, Epistle to the Romans.
"That Roman, that Judean bond
United then dispart no more—
Pierce through the veil; the rind beyond
Lies hid the legend's deeper lore.
Therein the mystery lies expressed
Of power transferred, yet ever one;
Of Rome—the Salem of the West—
Of Sion, built o'er Babylon." A. de Vere, Legends and Records, p. 204.
[8] Gregorovius, i. 208.
[9] Gregorovius, i. 215.
[10] Sidonius Apollinaris, Epist., i. 9. "Hi in amplissimo ordine, seposita prærogativa partis armatæ, facile post purpuratum principem principes erant."
"Sed si forte placet veteres sopire querelas
Anthemium concede mihi; sit partibus istis
Augustus longumque Leo; mea jura gubernet
Quem petii."—Carmen, ii.
[12] Reumont, i. 700.
[13] He says at the end of 500 hendecasyllabics (jam te veniam loquacitati Quingenti hendecasyllabi precantur):
"Hinc ad balnea non Neroniana,
Nec quæ Agrippa dedit, vel