anathematize] Acacius, who was Bishop of Constantinople, and who communicated with them, and all who defend any one of those heretics."1 It should be noticed that the Syrian monks are evidently approaching the Roman see for the first time. They say that their petition is to stand in lieu of a “libellus." They knew that Rome would do nothing for them, unless they explicitly anathematized Acacius and his followers. Still they express no sorrow for having been for more than thirty years out of communion with Rome. They write as those who wished to be admitted into communion with the West, not as those who asked to be received for the first time into fellowship with the Catholic Church. In February, 518, Hormisdas sent a reply (Lectis litteris) to this letter. The pope takes a hopeful view of his correspondents' ecclesiastical position. After giving them some good advice, as to how to behave in times of persecution, he says, "We willingly communicate with you in these teachings. For the wise Solomon saith, 'Well is he that speaketh in the ears of them that will hear :'2 for it is indeed a joy to hold converse with willing people, and to urge into the right way those who are not antagonistic. For we hold a pledge of your faith, the earnestness professed by your letter, by which, having been separated from the defilement of transgressors, you are returning to the teachings and commandments of the apostolic see, entering indeed late in the day into the way of truth."3 Afterwards he goes on to urge them to complete the work of separating themselves from the mud in which the heretics are swallowed up. The pope's letter is addressed to "the priests, deacons, and archimandrites of Syria Secunda, and to other orthodox persons living in any region of the East, and abiding in the communion of the apostolic see.”✦ It was through the instrumentality of their letter and of this reply to it, that the Syrian monks were brought into communion with the pope. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that these Eastern religious, by writing their respectful and complimentary letter to the pope, meant to submit to Rome on any such theory as that only in the Roman communion is the true Church of God to be found. As I have observed before, such a notion never entered the minds of Eastern Catholics. In their dire distress, when their lives were in danger, and all the orthodox patriarchs of the East were in banishment, they had been willing to anathematize Acacius and his followers, in the hope of getting some sympathy and help from the pope. But five months after the pope's reply had been dispatched, we find these same Syrian monks in full communion with the new Patriarch of Constantinople, John the Cappadocian, although he was out of communion with the pope, and was still retaining the name of Acacius on his diptychs. The fact was that Anastasius was dead, and Justin had come to the throne, and the Eastern Church was arising out of the dust. In the summer of the year 518, the archimandrites and monks of Syria 1 Collect. Avellan. Ep. cxxxix. § 10, ed. Günther, p. 568, et Thiel, Epistolae Romanorum Pontificum Genuinae, Hormisd. Ep. xxxix. § 5, p. 817. "Nihilominus et Acacium, qui fuit Constantinopolitanus episcopus, eorum communicatorem et omnes qui unum illorum haereticorum defendunt." 2 Ecclus. xxv. 9. Coleti, v. 1116, and Collect. Avellan. Ep. cxl. § 8, p. 576. Ibid., v. 1112, and Collect. Avellan. Ep. cxl. § 1, interpr. Graec., p. 573. Secunda1 presented a written memorial to the orthodox bishops of their province, in which they gave a detailed account of the crimes of Severus of Antioch and of Peter of Apamea. In this memorial they describe again the massacre of the 350 martyrs. The list of names appended to this memorial is substantially the same, so far as it goes, as the list appended to the letter to Hormisdas.2 The bishops of the province, having received this memorial and other evidence on the subject of the Metropolitan Peter's misdeeds, sent the whole mass of documents,3 with a letter of their own, to the Patriarch John of Constantinople, and to his "resident synod." "They address John in very respectful terms, calling him "Father of fathers, archbishop, and ecumenical patriarch." In the course of their letter the bishops go on to say that "we, instructed by the holy determination of your teachings, anathematize Severus and Peter, the madmen ;" and they add, "we, following your example, most blessed ones, deprive them of all honour, dignity, and episcopal power." " Then they ask John to confirm (Kupŵσα) their acts, and to inform the Emperor of them. It is to be observed that these bishops of Syria Secunda were not headed by their metropolitan; they were proceeding against him. They were all suffragan bishops of the province, and they were deposing and excommunicating their intruded patriarch and their intruded metropolitan; so they might well ask the Patriarch of Constantinople to confirm what they had done. Anyhow, they were in full communion with John, and therefore out of communion with Rome; and it is plain that the archimandrites and monks who were transmitting their memorial to the Constantinopolitan patriarch by the hands of their bishops, had naturally, in the altered state of things, passed back into the communion of the Eastern Church. The real reunion of the patriarchate of Antioch with Rome did not take place until A.D. 521,7 four years after the martyrdom of the 350. APPENDIX L. On the fact that many of the oriental bishops were admitted to the communion of Hormisdas without signing his “libellus” (see p. 402). It is in no way necessary to the success of my general argument that I should show that a considerable portion of the Eastern episcopate escaped the disagreeable necessity of signing Hormisdas' libellus. Even 1 Coleti, v. 1217-1225. In the 5th volume of Coleti compare coll. 599 ff. with coll. 1224, 1225. Mr. Allnatt (Cathedra Petri, 2nd edit., 106, 107) makes a great point of this title having been "given to the pope by the Orientals, from the sixth century downwards." But this sort of argument loses all its force when one discovers that titles of similar magnificence were also given to the other patriarchs. If I may venture to say so, Mr. Allnatt is very painstaking, but he appears to me to be curiously undiscriminating. Coleti, v. 1188. See Hormisdas' letter to the Patriarch Epiphanius of Constantinople, dated March 26, 521 (Collect. Avellan. Ep. ccxxxvii. § 6, pp. 726, 728), and compare an earlier letter of Epiphanius to Hormisdas (Collect. Avellan. Ep. ccxxxiii. §§ 5, 6, p. 708). if they did sign it, they signed it under compulsion from the Emperor, under threats of fire and sword, and their action was entirely valueless as a testimony to the faith of the Eastern Church, whose whole history is one long contradiction to the principles laid down in the libellus. But from the point of view of history the question whether they did or did not sign that document possesses considerable interest. To me it seems in the highest degree probable that they were not compelled to sign the libellus of Hormisdas. I have already pointed out that Hormisdas begged the Patriarch Epiphanius to send him a list of those whom he received into his communion, and to subjoin the contents of the libelli, which those bishops would present on the occasion of their reception. Commenting on this fact, the very learned historian Pagi, of the order of the Conventual Minorites, observes, "We come to this conclusion, namely that Hormisdas, who at first wished to compel the Eastern bishops to subscribe the formulary put forth by himself and offered to them by his legates, at last yielded to their opposition. For, if he had insisted on their subscribing that formulary, there would have been no need for Epiphanius to report to him what the libelli, or professions of faith, set forth by the aforesaid bishops contained, and with what form of words they subscribed."2 Natalis Alexander argues in a similar way.3 And the argument of these two great Roman Catholic critics seems to me to be very convincing. Moreover, we have positive proof that Hormisdas did not in all cases insist on his libellus being signed. For example, he did not insist on its being signed in the case of the archimandrites and monks of Syria Secunda, who in 517 addressed to him the petition Gratia salvatoris. As has been pointed out already, we learn from Hormisdas' letter, Inter ea, quae notitiae, that some copies of the earlier and sterner form of the libellus had been sent to the province of Syria Secunda in 515 or 516, and had been signed there by some persons. But the archimandrites and monks who in 517 drew up the petition, Gratia salvatoris, while they incorporated into it the anathema clause of the libellus in its sternest form, omitted those portions of that document which set forth in strong terms the prerogatives claimed by the Roman see. They describe their petition as "having the force of a libellus" (nostra deprecatione virtutem habente et libelli), and the result of their action was that Hormisdas admitted them to his communion. He wrote a reply (Lectis litteris) to the Syrian petitioners, and in the full text of the inscription to that reply, as given in the Greek version which was read in the presence of the papal legates 1 See p. 401. 2 Pagi, Critica, edit. 1727, ii. 515. 3 Cf. Natal. Alex. Hist. Eccl., saec. v., Dissert. xx. de caussa Euphemii et Macedonii, ed. Bing. ad Rhen., tom. ix. pp. 623, 624. See p. 419. Cf. Hormisd. Ep. xxvi. ad omnes episcopos Hispaniae, § 3, ap. Thiel, p. 794. It would be interesting to discover how it came to pass that the libellus was signed at such an early date by persons residing in the province of Syria Secunda. Unless I am mistaken, Syria Secunda was the only province outside of Europe to which the libellus penetrated before the reconciliation between Rome and Constantinople in 519. Collect. Avellan. Ep. cxxxix. § 10, p. 568. 66 at the Council of Constantinople in 536, he implies that the petitioners, who certainly were not in the Roman communion when they wrote their petition, are now abiding in the communion of the apostolic see.”1 These events occurred before the reconciliation between Rome and Constantinople, which took place in 519. Similarly, in the year 521, after that reconciliation had taken place, it can be shown that Hormisdas was ready to receive into his communion certain persons at Jerusalem on the basis of a profession of faith composed by themselves, a profession which Hormisdas had not yet seen. All that he required was, that on investigation it should turn out that this profession was orthodox on the subjects of the Incarnation and of the Trinity. We may be perfectly certain that a formulary drafted at Jerusalem did not contain any such statement of the Roman claims as is to be found in the libellus of Hormisdas. No Eastern of the first six centuries, very few Easterns of any century, would dream of inserting such a statement into a document drawn up by themselves, or of committing themselves to it in any way, unless they were acting under compulsion ; and there seems to be no reason for supposing that these people at Jerusalem were acting under compulsion. They may very possibly have been among the signatories of the Preces, addressed to the Emperor Justin in 519 or 520, which begin with the words Haurite aquam, and which express a great desire for reunion, but contain nothing resembling the more papalist clauses of Hormisdas' libellus.3 It is evident, from what has been said, that Hormisdas was ready both before and after the reconciliation of 519 to waive in the interests of reunion the requirement that his libellus should be signed. He required that some document should be signed, and insisted that certain points should be safeguarded in it, but his irreducible minimum did not include the papalist clauses of his own libellus. Quite independent of the question of the signature of the libellus was the question of expunging from the diptychs the names of the orthodox Eastern bishops who had continued up to the time of their death in communion with the name and memory of Acacius. It is admitted by Natalis Alexander and by Pagi, and it is not denied by Dr. Rivington, that in a large portion of the Eastern empire the names of these bishops were retained without any break on the diptychs of the churches. Now, I have shown that all these bishops died under the anathema of Rome. Hormisdas tried hard at first to insist on an acceptance of this anathema 1 Collect. Avellan. Ep. cxl. § 1, p. 573. The full forms of the inscriptions are found sometimes in the Latin, sometimes in the Greek, sometimes in both, sometimes in neither. They were often curtailed by the scribes. 2 Cf. Collect. Avellan. Ép. ccxxxvii. §§ 8, 9, 10, 11, pp. 728, 730. 3 Cf. Collect. Avellan. Ep. ccxxxii. a, pp. 703-707. The inscription shows that these preces were signed at Jerusalem as well as at Antioch and in some other parts of Syria. But the reader must be cautioned against identifying this document with the confession of faith mentioned by Hormisdas in his letter to Epiphanius of March 26, 521. The pope had received from the Emperor a copy of the preces in November, 520; but in March, 521, he was still without a copy of the confession of faith. On the independence of these two questions, see p. 413, note 2. by all Eastern bishops who applied to be admitted to his communion. In 519 he had to give up the attempt, and to be content with the expunging of their names from the diptychs. Finally, he had to give way again and to admit to his communion large numbers of bishops who retained on their diptychs the names of these excommunicated persons.2 The fact that such a considerable number of Eastern churches insisted on continuing to communicate with the names and memories of so many bishops, who had remained to the end of their lives under the anathema of Rome, is another proof of the falsity of the notion that in ancient times Catholics believed that communion with the Church is dependent on communion with the pope. APPENDIX M. On the Principle of Development (see p. 406). WHEN the question is raised, whether the principle of development has a legitimate sphere of action in connexion with the Christian religion, it appears to me to be very necessary that certain distinctions should be kept in mind. For example, one ought to consider separately whether development can be rightly applied to (1) discipline, and again to (2) theological science, and finally to (3) obligatory dogma. Among the rules of discipline, which are enforced by the Church, there are some which rest immediately on the foundation of divine revelation, and which consequently can neither be abrogated nor changed. But outside of this somewhat restricted sphere rules of discipline are the creation of the Church, and she is free to develop them according to the exigencies of time and place, either in the direction of simplicity or of complexity, of rigour or of relaxation, of centralized authority or of local self-government. And even as regards divinely revealed discipline, the Church is empowered to vary within wide limits its mode of application. 1 See p. 413. No doubt, when we take a large view of the pontificate of Hormisdas, we must admit that with the aid of the civil power the Roman Church won a great victory under his guidance. But the triumph was not unalloyed. And the hard necessity of allowing so many Eastern bishops to retain on the diptychs the names of so many persons, who had braved to the end the anathemas of Rome, must have been very mortifying to the pope. But it was not so mortifying as it would have been, if Dr. Rivington had been correct in his theory that "the insertion of a bishop's name in the sacred diptychs was a sort of canonization and involved the invocation of his intercession (see Dublin Review, vol. cxiv. p. 374). I cannot afford space for a refutation of this theory, which is absolutely inconsistent with the witness of the Fathers and of the old Church historians. It will be sufficient to refer the reader to the disquisitions of two learned Ultramontanes, namely to the Capuchin, Hieremias a Bennettis (Privilegia Rom. Pont. vindic., (pars ii. art. x. § ii., edit. 1758, tom. iv. pp. 592, 593), and to Christianus Lupus Synodorum Generalium ac Provincialium Lecreta, Dissert. de Quinta Synodo, cap. viii., ed. 1673, pars i. pp. 751, 752). |