by Eamon Duffy
Out of this continuing crisis in the East arose a closer identification than ever between Church and empire. The battles of the emperors were seen as holy wars, their victories the finger of God himself. In highly charged ceremonies in 626 and 627 the Emperor Herakleios processed with icons of Christ and the Virgin round the walls of Constantinople, and was blessed by the Patriarch Sergios with the recovered relic of the True Cross. In such rituals, the distance between Church and State disappeared, and the Emperor seemed as much priest as prince.
As priest-emperor, Herakleios had to address the question of the religious disunity of his empire. The ambivalence of Christian attitudes to the faith set out by Chalcedon persisted, and divided Christendom when it had never more desperately needed to speak and act from a single heart and mind. Imperial support for the monophysite denial of the two natures of Christ had proved a disastrous cul-de-sac, creating more division than it resolved, driving wedges not only between East and West, but within the churches of the East. Any solution to the problem of the identity of the Saviour, it was clear, must start from acceptance – or at any rate non-denial – of the teaching of Chalcedon.
Herakleios’ Patriarch Sergios came up with just such a solution. He suggested that the difficulties felt by many in confessing that Christ possessed two natures, divine and human, would be eased if it could be agreed that these two natures were united by a single energy. This ‘monoenergist’ theory was eventually refined to the notion that Christ had indeed two natures, but only one will. This divine will, shared by all the Persons of the Trinity, had dictated Jesus’ human actions. This theory had wide appeal, not least because Sergios suggested that it offered an escape from the war of words’ about Chalcedon which threatened to tear the Christian empire apart. He urged that from now on all discussion of Christ’s natures should be banned. It was a suggestion that seemed to offer peace, and men of all parties rallied to his solution.
They included the Pope, Honorius I (625–38). A gifted and energetic pro-Gregorian who took an active interest in the English mission, Honorius was also anxious to promote unity within the empire. He was a loyal supporter of the Byzantine Exarch in Italy, and followed Gregory in managing the resources of the Church’s patrimony for secular as well as strictly religious purposes, repairing aqueducts, paying for supplies of corn for the people, and helping fund the imperial army in Italy. He was a vigorous church-builder and restorer, and in an eloquent pro-imperial gesture he consecrated a church in Rome in honour of St Appolinarius, the patron saint of the exarchate at Ravenna.
Honorius was delighted by the apparent success of Sergios’ attempts to secure unity among Christians, and immensely relieved that Eastern attacks on Chalcedon would now be banned. In his enthusiasm he wrote two letters to the East approving and elaborating the ‘one energy’ formula of Sergios, and speaking of Christ as having only one will. In 638, encouraged in part by Honorius’ positive response, the Emperor issued a decree known as the ‘Ekthesis’, imposing ‘monothelite’ (one-will) teaching as the official doctrine of the empire.
The initial warm welcome for monothelitism, however, soon cooled down. It was rapidly realised by supporters of Chalcedon that the one-will doctrine, while appearing to preserve the Council’s teaching on the unity of the divine and human in Christ, in fact subverted his human nature. What sort of human being could Christ be if he lacked a human will, and therefore could not make truly human decisions, take truly human risks? How could human beings be enabled to practise virtue, how could they be purified from a crooked and sinful will, if the Saviour who was their medicine and their model himself lacked a human will?
Anti-monothelite feeling rapidly took hold in Rome and the West generally, and it became clear that Honorius had compromised the doctrinal purity of the papacy. That conviction set Rome and Constantinople once more at odds. Honorius’ successor, Pope Severinus (640), was elected in the autumn of 638, but he refused to accept the Ekthesis, and for twenty months the Emperor witheld the mandate necessary for his consecration. Roman opposition to imperial religious policy was maintained through the 640s, especially under the Greek Pope Theodore (642–9), who excommunicated and (in theory at any rate) deposed two patriarchs of Constantinople for supporting the Ekthesis. In retaliation, imperial troops looted the papal treasury in the Lateran, the papal Apocrisiary at the imperial court was arrested and exiled, and the altar of the papal residence in Constantinople was desecrated.
Theodore died in May 649. He was succeeded by a former apocrisiary in Constantinople, Martin I (649–53). Martin at once demonstrated his courage and his commitment to Theodore’s policies by refusing to apply for the imperial mandate confirming his appointment as pope: he was consecrated without it two days after his election. Preparations had begun under Theodore for a synod at the Lateran to condemn monothelitism, and Martin went ahead with it. The Lateran synod was attended by 105 Western bishops, and by a crowd of Easterners resident in Rome, mostly monks, many of them refugees from monothelite persecution. One of the largest and, thanks to the Eastern presence, one of the most theologically sophisticated councils ever held in the West, it was a deliberate and formidable repudiation of the Emperor’s religious authority. Pope Martin took steps to publicise the Synods proceedings throughout the West, and to secure subscription to them by important absentees, like the Archbishop of Milan.
Not surprisingly, all this was intolerable to the court at Constantinople. The Exarch of Italy, Olympius, was ordered to persuade the bishops of the West to support the imperial moratorium on discussion of the question of the two wills. Failing that, he was to assassinate the Pope. Olympius was able to achieve neither part of his commission, and ultimately himself led an unsuccessful revolt against the empire. In June 653 his replacement, Theodore Kalliopis, succeeded in arresting the Pope in the Lateran basilica, where Martin had had his bed placed for sanctuary in front of the altar. Chronically ill and savagely maltreated by his gaolers (at one stage, while suffering from dysentery, he was held for forty-seven days without being allowed to wash), Martin was taken to Constantinople. There he was jostled by a hostile crowd, and charged with supporting Olympius’ rebellion and even of corresponding with the forces of Islam. The real reason for Martin’s arrest, his defiance of the Emperor over the monothelite question, was kept out of the show-trial proceedings, since the regime wanted to avoid raising dangerous issues of theological orthodoxy. With the whole weight of the empire against him, only one verdict was possible, and the Pope was duly found guilty of treason. He was stripped of his vestments, dragged in shackles through the streets and publicly flogged. Separated from the small band of clergy who had travelled with him from Rome, he was deported to the Crimea where he died in September 655 from the hardships he had endured.
Nevertheless, the imperial idea remained strong in the West. One of the worst elements in Martin’s suffering was the knowledge that while he still lived the Roman Church had bowed to imperial commands, and had elected a new pope. Loyalty to the empire had been strained to the uttermost, however, and the relationship would never again be innocent or easy. Martin’s successor, Eugenius I (654–7), was a saintly nonentity chosen for his readiness to please Constantinople. Despite that, he was shouted down and threatened by his Roman congregation when he tried to accept an ambiguous declaration of faith by the Patriarch of Constantinople on the monothelite question. Pope Martin’s sufferings had not been entirely in vain, and Rome stood firm to the teaching of Chalcedon.
This underlying doctrinal hawkishness was softened by anxious deference to the Emperor’s office. In 663 the Emperor Constans II himself spent twelve days in Rome. He was received with rapture, Pope Vitalian (657–72) tactfully saying nothing about Constans’ brutal treatment of Pope Martin or the Emperor’s continuing tacit support for monothelitism. Constans’ visit was the occasion for an orgy of papal ceremonial, in which the Emperor and his soldiers were heaped with honours, and brought gifts in a candlelit procession to the tomb of Peter. The chanting in
the Roman basilicas must have been drowned out, however, by the deafening clatter of Constans’ workmen, who were busy stripping the bronze tiles and fittings from the great imperial monuments of the city, to be melted down or reused in Constantinople. This dismantling would hasten the decay of many of the noblest buildings in the city. Constans took Rome’s imperial glory with him when he sailed away Unsurprisingly, the Liber Pontificalis summarised his reign as one of oppression and disaster for the West: ‘He imposed such afflictions on the people … by tributes, poll-taxes and ship-money, as had never before been seen … [He] also took away all the sacred vessels and equipment of God’s holy churches, leaving nothing behind.’ The papal chronicler’s satisfaction in recording the Emperor’s murder in his bath in 668 is undisguised.20
Constans’ successor, Constantine IV, slowly came to recognise the futility of all this. Support for monothelitism had alienated the West, and it had not pacified the East. He decided therefore to reverse the religious policy of the last fifty years, and to abandon monothelitism. In 680 he summoned the Sixth General Council, which opened at Constantinople in November. Pope Agatho (678–81) was represented by a party of Greek clergy chosen from the many now resident in Rome. The Council was a complete victory for the Chalcedonian doctrine of two natures, and therefore for the papacy, though the victory was tempered from Rome’s point of view by the Council’s solemn condemnation of Pope Honorius among the other founding fathers of monothelitism. Rome prided itself on an unbroken record of fidelity to the truth, and papal claims gained credibility from the fact that Rome, unlike the great primatial sees of the East, had never fallen into error. Its orthodoxy was arguably partly due to sheer lack of imagination. Roman theologians were conservative, and had none of the sophistication and subtlety of their Greek counterparts, and so they were less vulnerable to the seductions of new ideas. Yet whether dullness or apostolic fidelity lay at its roots, Rome’s proud tradition of dogged adherence to the ancient faith was acknowledged even in the East: a heretic pope was therefore a bitter pill to swallow. Honorius’ condemnation was a price worth paying for the acceptance of Roman teaching in general, however, and the Council in its final address compensated by paying explicit tribute to Rome’s age-old fidelity to the apostolic preaching.
Over the next ten years the benefits of reconciliation with the empire became apparent. The claims of the church of Ravenna to independent status, which had been endorsed by Constans, were now abandoned, the archbishops agreeing to submit to consecration by the Pope. The requirement that the popes should wait for confirmation of their appointment from Constantinople before they could be consecrated was waived, the Exarch at Ravenna being empowered to issue the necessary mandate. The crippling burden of imperial taxation on Church lands was eased.
But this accord was fragile, and the benefits of Byzantine rule were often less in evidence than its drawbacks. In 692 the Emperor Justinian II summoned a council to complete the disciplinary work of the Fifth and Sixth General Councils. This new Council, oddly known as the ‘Quinisext’ or ‘Fifth-Sixth’ Council, was an exclusively Eastern affair, and the 102 canons or regulations it eventually authorised contained a series of measures based on Eastern practice but absolutely unacceptable in the West. The Eastern Church, for example, permitted priests and deacons a normal married life, while the Western Church had long insisted on celibacy. The Eastern Church did not permit fasting on Saturdays, the Western Church required it. The Quinisext Canons also outlawed a number of devotional and iconographical conventions popular in the West, such as the symbolic representation of Christ as a Lamb. Finally, the Council re-enacted the 28th Canon of Chalcedon, giving the Patriarch of Constantinople equal privileges with Rome, and precedence over all the other patriarchs immediately after Rome.
All these measures were calculated to offend Westerners, and Constantine’s successor, Justinian II, rubbed the Pope’s nose in it by sending him the Canons, demanding his signature. Pope Sergius (687–701) refused, would not permit the Canons to be read or circulated, and instituted a number of pointed devotional gestures designed to underline the Roman Church’s absolute rejection of the Council. He ordered the singing of the ‘Agnus Dei’ at the breaking of the bread at Mass. This was a series of petitions addressed to Christ as the Lamb of God, and he renovated mosaics at St Peter’s and in the apse of the church of St Cosmas and Damian near the Forum, in which Christ was portrayed in the forbidden form of a Lamb.
This was war, and the Emperor retaliated by attempting a rerun of the affair of Pope Martin. The Pope’s chief advisers were rounded up and deported to Constantinople, and Zacharias, captain of the imperial guard, was sent to Rome to arrest the Pope himself. It was a bad mistake, revealing the Emperor’s failure to grasp the growing resentment of his authority in Italy. Italian-born troops from the imperial forces at Ravenna and the Duchy of the Pentapolis (the five cities of Ancona, Senigallia, Fano, Pesaro and Rimini) were brought to Rome to arrest the Pope: instead, they mutinied in his defence. Zacharias was forced to take refuge in the Lateran, and ended up actually hiding under the Pope’s bed, while Sergius showed himself unharmed to the troops and the Roman crowds to calm their anger. Zacharias ignominiously fled the city, and soon afterwards Justinian was deposed in a palace coup. ‘Thus, by Christ’s favour’ commented the papal chronicler, ‘was God’s Church with its prelate preserved undisturbed.’21
The truth was that Byzantine rule in Italy was now virtually confined to Sicily and the south. The emperors were increasingly pinned down by the Islamic threat on their eastern borders, and Italy mattered to them only as a fiscal milch-cow. The popes still thought of Constantinople as the source of legitimate authority in Italy, and each new pope dutifully requested – and paid handsomely for – the imperial mandate for their consecration. In practical terms, however, they were independent rulers, thrown back on their own resources in maintaining their place within the peninsula. From the early eighth century onwards, that place was increasingly precarious. The Lombard King Liutprand was determined to unite his realm by gaining control of the independent Lombard duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, which flanked Rome to north and south. This expansion threatened both imperial and papal interests, and the popes struggled to reconcile their loyalty to Constantinople with the brute realities of Italian politics. Resentment was focused on the growing burden of imperial taxation, for which Italy received in return no imperial protection. Pope Gregory II (715–31), as custodian of the Church’s patrimony, was the largest contributor to the imperial revenue from Italy. He put himself at the head of this economic protest, forbidding payment of the unfair tax demands. The Lombards were now Catholics, and, though often effectively at war with them, the popes were able to exert a moral influence over them which could transcend politics. In 729 Lieutprand, acting in temporary alliance with an anti-papal exarch, besieged Rome: Pope Gregory II confronted the King and ‘brought him to such remorse’ that Lieutprand left his armour and weapons as offerings at the tomb of the Apostle, and abandoned the siege. Yet, despite a virtual breakdown in relations between papacy and empire, the popes were prepared to mobilise the prestige of Peter to buy Constantinople respite from its enemies. In 729 Gregory II helped the Exarch crush the rebellion of the pretender Tiberius Petasius, and in 743 and again in 749 Pope Zacharias negotiated Lombard withdrawals from imperial territory, and thereby saved the exarchate in Ravenna.
In 726, however, the Emperor Leo III set in motion a series of events which would snap the thin thread still connecting empire and papacy. For generations the Christian consciousness of the East had been increasingly concentrated on icons, painted images of Christ and the saints. Icons were held to mediate the abiding power and protection of the holy to the Christian community, in much the way that the relics of the saints, or the sacramental elements of bread and wine, had long been held to do. In the first year of his reign, during the Arab siege of Constantinople in 717, Leo himself had ordered the greatest miracle-working icon in Constantinople, the image
of the Virgin Hodegetria (the Virgin ‘showing the way’), to be paraded round the city walls, to comfort and reassure the people.
They needed all the comfort they could get, as the empire shrank under the Muslim advance. Theologians and preachers began to wonder aloud whether God was angry with his people, whether at the heart of the empire there lay some great sin, for which all were being punished. In 726 this speculation was given symbolic focus by a terrifying volcanic eruption: black ash settled like an omen all over the Aegean, and the Emperor acted. God was angry, he declared, because of the sin of idolatry. The Old Testament forbade the worship of images, yet the churches were full of them. He commanded the destruction of all images of Christ and his mother, and their replacement by the unadorned symbol of the cross, the sign in which Constantine, the founder of the Christian empire, had conquered.
Leo’s edict was the product of profound social panic, several generations of theological reflection by bishops and theologians, and the cumulative impact of controversy about the person and natures of Christ. Whatever its causes however, the Emperor’s attack on images, and the resulting wave of image-breaking or ‘iconoclasm’, fell like a thunderbolt in the West. The Exarch, who tried to enforce it in Ravenna, was lynched by an angry mob, and Pope Gregory II saw in it yet another example of the empire espousing heresy. Indignantly, he rejected Leo’s decree, and warned him that as a layman he had no right to interfere in theological matters. The Emperor ordered the new Exarch to depose the Pope, provoking a series of uprisings which expressed Italian resentment of imperial rule: as the Liber Pontificalis commented, ‘Romans and Lombards bound themselves together in the tie of faith, all of them willing to undergo a glorious death in the pontiff’s defence.’22
