The Emperor's Bishop

The Temporal Power of the Popes was not yet. The spiritual supremacy of the Roman See was unquestioningly recognised throughout the Christian world.

"When it is a question of a fault," wrote St. Gregory, "I know of no bishop who is not subject to the Apostolic See." In his letters, "the Apostolic See is the head of the faithful," because its ruler "holds the place of Peter, Prince of the Apostles." Hence the bishop who disobeys the Pope "is separated from the peace of Blessed Peter," and "no acts of any Council are of force to bind, without the consent and authority of the Apostolic See."

All, the Churches acknowledged the claim and found it to their advantage. "I defend my own rights," wrote St. Gregory to Dominic of Carthage, "and I am just as careful to maintain the rights of other bishops." He reminded Peter the Subdeacon, his businessman in Sicily, "Just because all the Churches show such reverence to the Apostolic See, it behooves us to show solicitude where their interests are concerned."

We have watched him at work in his own episcopal city. We have noted his care to leave the bishops in his Western Patriarchate a free hand in the government of their Churches; only if "the hungry flock looked up and were not fed," did the Shepherd of shepherds intervene. We have now to consider him as "a very wakeful shepherd and governor "to his fellow-patriarchs in the East.

Originally there were three patriarchal Sees: Jerusalem, founded by St. James the Less; Alexandria, St. Mark's diocese; Antioch, where St. Peter at one time set up his chair. The patriarch of Jerusalem was the only one without bishops and metropolitans under his jurisdiction; the others regulated matters of discipline and adjusted differences in the provinces subject to their sway. Only in questions of faith, or in cases of grave scandal, did the Roman Pontiff come in contact with the dioceses in the East.

But every bishop in the Christian world had the right of appeal to the Holy See. Thus we find St. Gregory at first sifting the case of Adrian, Bishop of Thebes, and then writing sternly to Adrian's primate, John, Bishop of Prima Justiniana:

"We have quashed your decrees and annulled your sentence. And now, by the authority of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, we forbid you Holy Communion for the space of thirty days, which we wish you to spend in penance and contrition, craving forgiveness of God. If we learn that you are remiss in carrying out our sentence, we shall, by the help of the Lord, punish still more severely not only Your Fraternity's injustice but also your contumacy."

In the early centuries Byzantium was a suffragan See in the province of Heraclea. It only reached patriarchal rank in 381, when the Eastern bishops met in synod at Constantinople and anathematized its bishop, Macedonius, who denied the divinity of the Holy Ghost. A curious occasion, one would think, for raising the status of the See which he had thus disgraced.

This synod of Constantinople ranks as the third General Council of the Church, solely because its decision on dogma was ratified later by Rome and the West. Its regulations affecting local discipline have not ecumenical value.

The fifth General Council also, which met at Chalcedon in 451, consisted mainly of Eastern prelates. But Pope St. Leo the Great sent his legates to preside, and they took precedence of all present, as a matter of course. The divinely-given primacy of St. Peter was acknowledged in plain terms, and the title "ecumenical bishop" suggested, to differentiate the Pope from the rest of the hierarchy.

St. Leo refused the new title. He formally rejected also the 28th Canon inserted in the Acts of the Council, without the knowledge of his legates:

"The patriarch of Constantinople is to enjoy a similar primacy to that of imperial Rome—for Constantinople is New Rome—and shall be mighty in Church affairs as she is, and shall be second after her."

From this date onward, however, the Popes recognised Constantinople as a patriarchal see. But they refused to consider seriously its claim to control ecclesiastical affairs all over the East.

With the other patriarchs St. Gregory was always on friendly terms. On one occasion he testified to the purity of faith in the Church of Jerusalem. On another, he interposed as peace-maker between its patriarch and a certain abbot. "I know that you are both of you mortified men, both humble, both salt of good savour in the preaching of the word. . . . I love you both, and am much afraid lest the sacrifice of your prayers be marred by any dissension."

Anastasius of Antioch, and Eulogius of Alexandria, were his personal friends. Anastasius found in him an effective champion when unjustly in disgrace with the emperor.

"Lo, in your old age," wrote the Pope, "Your Blessedness labours under many tribulations. But remember in whose chair you sit. Is it not his to whom it was said, 'When thou art old, another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldst not? '

"There is a peculiar tie between Rome and Alexandria," he wrote to Eulogius, "which compels us to love it in a very special way. Whatever good I hear of you I impute it to myself. And if you hear anything good of me, impute that to your merits."

He often consulted this patriarch on points of doctrine, for Eulogius was a ripe scholar, well read in the writings of those Fathers of the Church who praised God in Greek.

It was to safeguard the rights of Antioch and Alexandria that Pelagius II had lodged his formal protest against the title universal (or ecumenical) bishop, which a local synod in 588 conferred upon John the Faster.

This monk of mortified life, but arrogant in his pretensions, and very rigid towards his underlings, became patriarch of Constantinople while St. Gregory was there as apocrisarius. We have already quoted from the friendly letter in which our saint announced to John his own election to the Holy See. He wrote again, and in terms of stinging sarcasm, when two priests appealed to Rome against the cruel treatment meted out to them in Constantinople:

"I have written several letters to my most holy brother, the Lord John, but I am utterly mistaken in the opinion I have formed of him, if he really wrote the letter I received in reply . . . "

For the priest Athanasius had been beaten with rods in Santa Sofia, and John said he knew nothing about it.

"My brother John must know what goes on in his own Church," St. Gregory continues. "If he tells me he knoweth not, what answer am I to give? Most holy brother, is this the outcome of your fasting, that you pretend to be ignorant of the injury done to your brother? Would it not be better that meat should enter your mouth than that falsehood should issue therefrom? . . . But God forbid that I should believe this evil of your holy heart. Those letters indeed were signed with your name, but I think they must have been written by that young man of yours, who neither trembles before God nor blushes before man, who is accused of heinous crimes. . . . If you listen to him, I know that you cannot live in peace with your brethren . . . .

"As for the scourging you inflicted I need say no more. For I have sent on business, to the court of our Sovereign, Sabinian the deacon, my beloved son; and he will discuss the matter with you thoroughly. I trust that he, at all events, will find in my Lord John, the man whom I knew when I myself was in the royal city."

In one of the letters connected with this case John styled himself "almost in every line," ecumenical or universal patriarch. To keep silence would imply consent, and in Gregory's conscience "to admit this degrading title would be to sin against the Faith." For the title was intended to bring the other patriarchs under the jurisdiction of Constantinople, and to prevent the Pope from intervening in the affairs of the Eastern Churches.

He wrote at once to the offender: "My brother, love humility, and do not try to raise yourself by lowering your brethren. Refrain from using this rash name, this word of pride and folly which is disturbing the whole Church. . . . I have endeavoured once or twice, through my delegates, to correct by humble words. Now I write myself. And if my correction is treated with contempt, it remains for me to employ the Church. . . . "

This letter was enclosed in another to Sabinian, with orders to give it into the patriarch's own hand:

"I marvel how you could so easily be deceived, my friend, as to suffer our Lord the Emperor to write admonishing me to live in peace with the patriarch. You should have explained that there would be peace between us at once, if he would but drop the proud title. You have no idea, I can see, of the crafty way in which our brother John has contrived to put me in a dilemma. Either I must defer to the emperor's wish and so confirm the patriarch in his vanity, or not defer to it and so rouse the emperor's anger against myself. But we shall steer a straight course in the fear of God alone. Do you likewise, dear friend, fear no man. You have full authority to do whatever has to be done in this affair."

His letter to the emperor is perhaps the most moving he ever penned. The peace of the State, he argues, depends upon peace within the Church.

"What might of fleshly arm would dare to attack your dominions and put your subjects to the sword, if all the priests strove with one accord, as they ought, to win God's favour for you by their prayers and virtuous life. But while we, unworthy bishops, neglect what befits us and are absorbed in what befits us not, we make our sins the allies of the Avars. Our bodies are worn away with fasting, our hearts are fat with pride. We lie on ashes and yearn for the things that are above us. We clothe ourselves in humble garb, but in arrogant conceit we surpass those who go clad in purple. We teach humility and our behaviour belies our words. We hide the teeth of a wolf behind the face of a sheep. We may indeed deceive men, but our iniquity is manifest in the sight of God. Therefore, He hath inspired our Most Religious Lord to re-knit the hearts of bishops in true concord. . . .

"Behold all Europe is under the heel of the Barbarians. Cities are destroyed. There are no peasants left to till the fields. Idolatry is rampant. And yet the bishops who ought to be weeping, stretched in ashes upon the ground, devise for themselves names of vanity, and glory in vain titles!

Most Religious Lord, am I defending my own cause? Am I avenging a wrong done to myself alone? No. It is the cause of God, it is the cause of the universal Church. We know, for a certainty, that bishops of Constantinople have fallen into the whirlpool of heresy. Nestorius and Macedonius are become not merely heretics but heresiarchs. If these were universal bishops, the universal Church would have been overthrown when they fell. . . . Far from all Christian hearts be that blasphemous title by which cue bishop madly arrogates all honour to himself. It is true this title was offered to the Roman Church at the Council of Chalcedon, but none of the Roman Pontiffs ever consented to use it, lest all other bishops be deprived of the honour which is justly their due.

"I, for my part, am the servant of all priests so long as they behave like priests. But as for the man who puffed with vain-glory, arches his neck against Almighty God and against the ordinances of the Fathers, I trust in God's help, that he shall never make me bend my neck to him, no not with swords."

By the same courier he wrote to the empress. He seemed to fear for her the glamour of the patriarch's ascetic life:

"I beseech you, let no man's hypocrisy prevail against the truth. I know that my most holy brother, John, is trying to gain the emperor's ear. But I trust my Lord will not be cajoled against reason, and hurt his own soul by suffering this man's perverse pride to pollute his reign. . . . Do not consent to this wicked title. For though the sins of Gregory deserve this treatment, the Apostle Peter does not deserve to be thus humiliated in his person."

This series of letters may have impressed the patriarch. But on John the Faster's death in 595, Cyriacus, his successor, "clung to the name of pride," and the emperor sent the Pope a peremptory order to make no further disturbance about a mere word.

"A mere word!" St. Gregory was quick to retort. "When Antichrist comes and calls himself God, that too will be a mere word, yet one exceedingly pernicious. I say it with assurance: he who lets himself be called universal  bishop forestalls Antichrist, because in his pride he sets himself above all others."

The epithet to which he objected so strongly was in Latin, universal, in Greek ecumenical. In one sense "overseer of all the bishops in Christendom," it belonged to the Pope and to him alone. But as Gregory understood it, it meant sole bishop, with the world for his diocese, and all other bishops merely his agents, without rights and responsibilities of their own. "If there be but one universal bishop (he is writing as a metropolitan), it follows that you yourselves are not bishops at all."

For the Greeks, on the other hand, it is quite possible that "ecumenical"  applied only to the "Home States," the portion of Christendom included in the Empire. It is quite possible, and even probable, that the patriarch of Constantinople merely aimed at holding with regard to the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, the same position that the Pope was acknowledged to hold with regard to the bishops of the universal Church.

Small help did the Pope receive from these patriarchs, whose battle he was fighting.

"Stand firm," he exhorted them, "never answer or sign any letter in which this lying title occurs. . . . Preserve the bishops under you from the pollution of this pride. Persecution may result. If so let us show by our union in death that we prefer the common good to our personal interests. Pray for me, as becomes your dearest Holiness, that I may prove by deeds what I thus dare to say."

Anastasius of Antioch saw no danger in the word, and told him so. "You ought not to have said that the matter is of no importance," the Pope wrote in reply. "If we endure this calmly we corrupt the faith of the whole Church. To say nothing of the injury to your own office, if one bishop is called universal, the whole Church collapses when the universal one fails in faith. And you know that heretics and even heresiarchs have before now held sway in the See of Constantinople."

Eulogius of Alexandria promised he would obey the Pope's injunction. St. Gregory was not satisfied with the wording of his letter.

"Your Blessedness has not taken the trouble to remember accurately what I tried to impress upon you when last I wrote. I said you ought not to apply the proud title to me, or to anyone else. Yet in the very first line of your reply, you address me as universal Pope! I beg your gentlest Holiness, whom I love so dearly, never to do this again. What you give so unreasonably to another you take away from yourself. I do not wish for an honour by which my brethren lose that honour which is their due. My honour is the honour of the whole Church. My honour is the united strength of my brother bishops. Then am I truly honoured when the honour due to each one is not withheld. Now if Your Holiness calls me universal Pontiff, you deny to yourself the thing [episcopal jurisdiction] about which you call me universal. Cease using words which inflate vanity and wound fraternal love."