Part 20

When the Emperor-elect approached with his wife and retinue, he first took an oath to the Romans, at the little bridge on the Neronian Field, faithfully to observe the rights and usages of the city. On the day of the coronation he made his entrance through the Porta Castella close to St. Angelo and here repeated the oath. The clergy and the corporations of Rome greeted him at the Church of Santa Maria Traspontina, on a legendary site called the Terebinthus of Nero. The solemn procession then advanced to the steps of the cathedral. Senators walked by the side of the King, the prefect of the city carried the naked sword before him, and his chamberlains scattered money.

Arrived at the steps he dismounted from his horse and, accompanied by his retinue, ascended to the platform where the Pope, surrounded by the higher clergy, awaited him sitting. The King stooped to kiss the Pope's foot, tendered the oath to be an upright protector of the Church, received from the Pope the kiss of peace, and was adopted by him as the son of the Church. With solemn song both King and Pope entered the Church of Santa Maria in Turri, beside the steps of St. Peter's, and here the King was formally made canon of the cathedral. He then advanced, conducted by the Lateran count of the palace and by the _primicerius_ of the judges, to the silver door of the cathedral, where he prayed, and the Bishop of Albano delivered the first oration.

Innumerable mystic ceremonies awaited the King in St. Peter's itself. Here, a short way from the entrance, was the _rota porphyretica_, a round porphyry stone inserted in the pavement, on which the King and Pope knelt. The imperial candidate here made his profession of faith, the Cardinal-bishop of Portus placed himself in the middle of the rota and pronounced the second oration. The King was then draped in new vestments, was made a cleric in the sacristy by the Pope, was clad with tunic, dalmatica, pluviale, mitre and sandals, and was then led to the altar of St. Maurice, whither his wife, after similar but less fatiguing ceremonies, accompanied him. The Bishop of Ostia here anointed the King on the right arm and neck and delivered the third oration.

If the Emperor-elect were fitted by the dignity of his calling, then the solemnity of the function, the mystic and tedious pomp, the magnificent monotone of prayer and song in the ancient cathedral, hallowed by so many exalted memories, must have stirred his inmost soul. The pinnacle of all human ambition, the crown of Charles the Great, lay glittering before his longing eyes on the altar of the Prince of the Apostles. The Pope, however, first placed a ring on the finger of the Anointed, as symbol of the faith, the permanence and strength of his Catholic rule; with similar formulæ girt him with the sword, and finally placed the crown upon his head. "Take," he said, "the symbol of fame, the diadem of royalty, the crown, the empire, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; renounce the archfiend and all sins, be upright and merciful, and live in such pious love that thou mayest hereafter receive the everlasting crown in company with the saints, from our Lord Jesus Christ."

The church resounded with the Gloria and the Laudes: "Life and victory to the Emperor, to the Roman and the German army," and with the endless acclamations of the rude soldiers who hailed their King in German, Slav, and Romance tongues.

The Emperor divested himself of the symbols of the empire, and now ministered to the Pope as subdeacon at mass. The Count Palatine afterward removed the sandals, and put the red imperial boots with the spurs of St. Maurice upon him. Whereupon the entire procession, accompanied by the Pope, left the church and advanced along the so-called "Triumphal Way," through the flower-bedecked city, amid the ringing of all the bells, to the Lateran. At special stations were posted clergy singing praises, and the _scholæ_ or guilds placed to salute the Emperor as he passed. Chamberlains scattered money before and behind the procession, and all the scholæ and the officials of the palace received the _presbyterium_ or customary present of money. A banquet closed the solemnities in the papal palace.

Such are merely the barest outlines of an imperial coronation of this period. The ceremonies, borrowed from Byzantine pomp, had been established since Charles the Great, and had remained essentially the same, although, in the course of time, many details had been altered and others had been introduced. The magnificence of these spectacles is no longer rivalled by the pageantry of our days. The multitudes of dukes and counts, of bishops and abbots, knights and nobles with their retinues, the splendor of their attire, the strangeness of their faces and their tongues, the martial array of warriors, the mystic magnificence of the papacy with all its orders in such picturesque costume, the aspect of secular Rome, of judges and senators, of consuls and _duces_, of the militia with their banners, in curious, motley, fantastic attire; lastly, as the sublime scene of the drama, the stern, gloomy, ruinous city, through which the procession solemnly advanced--all combined to produce a picture of such mighty and universal historic interest that even a Roman accustomed to the pomp of Trajan's period could not have beheld it without feelings of astonishment.

These coronation processions restored to the city its character of metropolis. The Romans of the time might flatter themselves that the emperors whom they elected still ruled the universe. The strangers who flocked to the city freely distributed their gold, and the hungry populace could live for weeks on the proceeds of the coronation.

J.E. DARRAS

The accession of Gregory VI was the harbinger of an epoch of moral renaissance. The wise Pontiff, whose glory it had been to free the Church from a disgraceful yoke, proved himself worthy of the sovereign power, as much by the zeal with which he wielded as by the noble disinterestedness with which he resigned it. He found the temporal domains of the Church so far diminished that they hardly furnished the Pope with the means of an honorable maintenance. As guardian of the rights of the Church, he hurled an excommunication against the usurpers. The infuriated plunderers marched upon Rome with an armed force. The Pope also raised troops, took possession of St. Peter's church, drove out the wretches who stole the offerings laid upon the tombs of the Apostles, took back several estates belonging to the domain of the Church, and secured the safety of the roads, upon which pilgrims no longer ventured to travel except in caravans. This policy displeased the Romans, who had now become habituated to plunder. Their complaints induced Henry III, King of Germany, to hurry to Italy, and to summon a council at Sutri, during the Christmas festival, to inquire whether the election of Gregory should be regarded as simoniacal. The Pope and the clergy entertained the sincere conviction that they were justified in bringing about, even by means of money, the abdication of the unworthy Benedict, thus to end the scandal which so foully disgraced the Holy See. As opinions were divided on this point, Gregory VI, to set all doubts at rest, stripped himself, with his own hands, of the Pontifical vestments, and gave up to the bishops his pastoral staff. Having given to the world this noble example of self-denial, Gregory withdrew to the monastery of Cluny, bearing with him the consciousness of a great duty done. He died in that holy solitude in the odor of sanctity.

The see left vacant by the magnanimous humility of Gregory VI was bestowed, by general consent, upon Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, whom King Henry had brought with him to Rome. The new Pope, whose elevation was due only to universally known and acknowledged virtues, took the name of Clement II, and was crowned on Christmas-Day (A.D. 1046); in the same solemnity he bestowed the imperial title and crown upon Henry III, and his queen, Agnes, daughter of William, duke of Aquitaine.

The Emperor Henry, during his sojourn in Rome, sent for St. Peter Damian to assist the Pope by his counsels. The illustrious religious thus wrote to the Pontiff, in excuse for not complying: "Notwithstanding the Emperor's request, so expressive of his benevolence in my regard, I cannot devote to journeys the time which I have promised to consecrate to God in solitude. I send the imperial letter in order that your Holiness may decide, if it become necessary. My soul is weighed down with grief when I see the churches of our provinces plunged into shameful confusion through the fault of bad bishops and abbots. What does it profit us to learn that the Holy See has been brought out from darkness into the light, if we still remain buried in the same gloom of ignominy? But we hope that you are destined to be the savior of Israel. Labor then, Most Holy Father, once more to raise up the kingdom of justice, and use the vigor of discipline to humble the wicked and to raise the courage of the good."

On his return to Germany, Henry took the Pope with him. The city of Beneventum refused to open its gates to the Sovereign Pontiff, who, at the Emperor's request, pronounced against it a sentence of excommunication. Clement made but a short visit to his native land, and hastened back to Rome. His apostolic zeal led him to visit, in person, the churches of Umbria, the deplorable condition of which he had learned from the letter of St. Peter Damian. On reaching the monastery of St. Thomas of Aposello, he was seized with a mortal disease, before having accomplished the object of his journey. His last thought was for his beloved church of Bamberg, to which he sent, from his dying couch, a confirmation of all its former privileges, assuring it, in the most touching terms, of his unchanging affection.

DISSENSION AND SEPARATION OF THE GREEK AND ROMAN CHURCHES

A.D. 1054

HENRY FANSHAWE TOZER

JOSEPH DEHARBE

(In the division of the Greek Catholic Church from that at Rome, Protestant writers see a very natural and legitimate separation of two equal powers. Roman Catholics, regarding the Papal supremacy as established from the beginning, treat the division as a plot by evil and malignant men. Both viewpoints are here given.

The Eastern--or Greek Christian--Church, now known as the Holy Orthodox, Catholic, Apostolic, Oriental Church, first assumed individuality at Ephesus, and in the catechetical school of Alexandria, which flourished after A.D. 180. It early came into conflict with the Western or Roman Church: "the Eastern Church enacting creeds, and the Western Church discipline."

In the third century, Dionysius, Bishop of Rome, accused the Patriarch of Alexandria of error in points of faith, but the Patriarch vindicated his orthodoxy. Eastern monachism arose about 300; the Church of Armenia was founded about the same year; and the Church of Georgia or Iberia in 340.

Constantine the Great caused Christianity to be recognized throughout the Roman Empire, and in 325 convened the first ecumenical or general Council at Nicaea [Nice], when Arius, excommunicated for heresy by a provincial synod at Alexandria in 321, defended his views, but was condemned. Arianism long maintained a theological and political importance in the East and among the Goths and other nations converted by Arian missionaries. In A.D. 330, Constantine removed the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople, and thence dates the definite establishment of the Greek Church and the serious rivalry with the Roman Church over claims of preeminence, differences of doctrine and ritual, charges of heresy and inter-excommunications, which ended in the final separation of the churches in 1054.

In A.D. 461, the churches of Egypt, Syria, and Armenia separated from the Church of Constantinople, over the Monophysite controversy on the single divine or single compound nature of the Son; in 634 the struggle with Mahometanism began; in 676 the Maronites of Lebanon formed a strong sect, which, in 1182, joined the Roman Church. In 988, Vladimir the Great of Russia founded the Græco-Russian Church, in which the Greek Church found a refuge, when Mahometanism was established at Constantinople, after its capture by the Turks in 1453.)

HENRY FANSHAWE TOZER

The separation of the Eastern and Western churches, which finally took place in the year 1054, was due to the operation of influences which had been at work for several centuries before. From very early times a tendency to divergence existed, arising from the tone of thought of the dominant races in the two, the more speculative Greeks being chiefly occupied with purely theological questions, while the more practical Roman mind devoted itself rather to subjects connected with the nature and destiny of man. In differences such as these there was nothing irreconcilable: the members of both communions professed the same forms of belief, rested their faith on the same divine persons, were guided by the same standard of morals, and were animated by the same hopes and fears; and they were bound by the first principles of their religion to maintain unity with one another. But in societies, as in individuals, inherent diversity of character is liable to be intensified by time, and thus counteracts the natural bonds of sympathy, and prevents the two sides from seeing one another's point of view. In this way it coöperates with and aggravates the force of other causes of disunion, which adverse circumstances may generate. Such causes there were in the present instance, political, ecclesiastical, and theological; and the nature of these it may be well for us to consider, before proceeding to narrate the history of the disruption.

The office of bishop of Rome assumed to some extent a political character as early as the time of the first Christian emperors. By them this prelate was constituted a sort of secretary of state for Christian affairs, and was employed as a central authority for communicating with the bishops in the provinces; so that after a while he acted as minister of religion and public instruction. As the civil and military power of the Western Empire declined, the extent of this authority increased; and by the time when Italy was annexed to the Empire of the East, in the reign of Justinian, the popes had become the political chiefs of Roman society. Nominally, indeed, they were subject to the exarch of Ravenna, as vicegerent of the Emperor at Constantinople, but in reality the inhabitants of Western Europe were more disposed to look to the spiritual potentate in the Imperial city as representing the traditions of ancient Rome.

The political rivalry that was thus engendered was sharpened by the traditional jealousy of Rome and Constantinople, which had existed ever since the new capital had been erected on the shores of the Bosporus. Then followed struggles for administrative superiority between the popes and the exarchs, culminating in the shameful maltreatment and banishment of Martin I by the emperor Constans--an event which the See of Rome could never forget.

The attempt to enforce iconoclasm in Central Italy was influential in causing the loss of that province to the Empire; and even after the Byzantine rule had ceased there, the controversy about images tended to keep alive the antagonism, because, although that question was once and again settled in favor of the maintenance of images, yet many of the emperors, in whose persons the power of the East was embodied, were foremost in advocating their destruction. Indeed, from first to last, owing to the close connection of church and state in the Byzantine empire, the unpopularity of the latter in Western Europe was shared by the former. To this must be added the contempt for one another's character which had arisen among the adherents of the two churches, for the Easterns had learned to regard the people of the West as ignorant and barbarous, and were esteemed by them in turn as mendacious and unmanly.

In ecclesiastical matters also the differences were of long standing. These related to questions of jurisdiction between the two patriarchates. Up to the eighth century, the patriarchate of the West included a number of provinces on the eastern side of the Adriatic--Illyricum, Dacia, Macedonia, and Greece. But Leo the Isaurian, who probably foresaw that Italy would ere long cease to form part of his dominions, and was unwilling that these important territories should own spiritual allegiance to one who was not his subject, altered this arrangement, and transferred the jurisdiction over them to the Patriarch of Constantinople. Against this measure the bishops of Rome did not fail to protest, and demands for their restoration were made up to the time of the final schism. A further ecclesiastical question, which in part depended on this, was that of the Church of the Bulgarians. The prince Bogoris had swayed to and fro in his inclinations between the two churches, and had ultimately given his allegiance to that of the East; but the controversy did not end there. According to the ancient territorial arrangement the Danubian provinces were made subject to the archbishopric of Thessalonica, and that city was included within the Western patriarchate; and on this ground Bulgaria was claimed by the Roman see as falling within that area. The matter was several times pressed on the attention of the Greek Church, especially on the occasion of the council held at Constantinople in 879, but in vain. The Eastern prelates replied evasively, saying that to determine the boundaries of dioceses was a matter which belonged to the sovereign. The Emperor, for his part, had good reason for not yielding, for by so doing he would not only have admitted into a neighboring country an agency which would soon have been employed for political purposes to his disadvantage, but would have justified the assumption on which the demand rested, viz., that the pope had a right to claim the provinces which his predecessors had lost. Thus this point of difference also remained open, as a source of irritation between the two churches.

But behind these questions another of far greater magnitude was coming into view, that of the papal supremacy. From being in the first instance the head of the Christian church in the old Imperial city, and afterward Patriarch of the West, and _primus inter pares_ in relation to the other spiritual heads of Christendom, the bishop of Rome had gradually claimed, on the strength of his occupying the _cathedra Petri_, a position which approximated more and more to that of supremacy over the whole Church. This claim had never been admitted in the East, but the appeals which were made from Constantinople to his judgment and authority, both at the time of the iconoclastic controversy and subsequently, lent some countenance to its validity.

But the great advance was made in the pontificate of Nicholas I (858-867), who promulgated, or at least recognized, the _False Decretals_. This famous compilation, which is now universally acknowledged to be spurious, and can be shown to be the work of that period, contains, among other documents, letters and decrees of the early bishops of Rome, in which the organization and discipline of the Church from the earliest time are set forth, and the whole system is shown to have depended on the supremacy of the popes. The newly discovered collection was recognized as genuine by Nicholas, and was accepted by the Western Church. The effect of this was at once to formulate all the claims which had before been vaguely asserted, and to give them the authority of unbroken tradition. The result to Christendom at large was in the highest degree momentous. It was impossible for future popes to recede from them, and equally impossible for other churches which valued their independence to acknowledge them. The last attempt on the part of the Eastern Church to arrange a compromise in this matter was made by the emperor Basil II, a potentate who both by his conquests and the vigor of his administration might rightly claim to negotiate with others on equal terms. By him it was proposed (A.D. 1024) that the Eastern Church should recognize the honorary primacy of the Western patriarch, and that he in turn should acknowledge the internal independence of the Eastern Church. These terms were rejected, and from that moment it was clear that the separation of the two branches of Christendom was only a question of time.

Already in the papacy of Nicholas I a rupture had occurred in connection with the dispute between the rival patriarchs of Constantinople, Ignatius and Photius. The former of these prelates, who was son of the emperor Michael I, and a man of high character and a devout opponent of iconoclasm, was appointed, through the influence of Theodora, the restorer of images, in the reign of her son, Michael the Drunkard. But the uncle of the Emperor, the Caesar Bardas, who was a man of flagrantly immoral life, had divorced his own wife, and was living publicly with his son's widow. For this incestuous connection Ignatius repelled him from the communion. Fired with indignation at this insult, the Caesar determined to ruin both the Patriarch and his patroness, the Empress-mother, and with this view persuaded the Emperor to free himself from the trammels of his mother's influence by forcing her to take monastic vows. To this step Ignatius would not consent, because it was forbidden by the laws of the Church that any should enter on the monastic life except of their own free will. In consequence of his resistance a charge of treasonable correspondence was invented against him, and when he refused to resign his office he was deposed (857). Photius, who was chosen to succeed him, was the most learned man of his age, and like his rival, unblemished in character and a supporter of images, but boundless in ambition. He was a layman at the time of his appointment, but in six days he passed through the inferior orders which led up to the patriarchate. Still, the party that remained faithful to Ignatius numbered many adherents, and therefore Photius thought it well to enlist the support of the Bishop of Rome on his side. An embassy was therefore sent to inform Pope Nicholas that the late Patriarch had voluntarily retired, and that Photius had been lawfully chosen, and had undertaken the office with great reluctance. In answer to this appeal the Pope despatched two legates to Constantinople, and Ignatius was summoned to appear before a council at which they were present. He was condemned, but appealed to the Pope in person.

On the return of the legates to Rome it was discovered that they had received bribes, and thereupon Nicholas, whose judgment, however imperious, was ever on the side of the oppressed, called together a synod of the Roman Church, and refused his consent to the deposition of Ignatius. To this effect he wrote to the authorities of the Eastern Church, calling upon them at the same time to concur in the decrees of the apostolic see; but subsequently, having obtained full information as to the harsh treatment to which the deposed Patriarch had been subjected, he excommunicated Photius, and commanded the restoration of Ignatius "by the power committed to him by Christ through St. Peter."