 Chapter 47 Part 3 of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 4. The death of the Alexandrian primate, after a reign of thirty-two years, abandoned the Catholics to the intemperance of zeal and the abuse of victory. The monophysite doctrine, one incarnate nature, was rigorously preached in the churches of Egypt and the monasteries of the East, the primitive creed of Apollonarius was protected by the sanctity of Cyril, and the name of Utikies, his venerable friend, has been applied to the sect most adverse to the Syrian heresy of Nestorius. His rival Utikies was the abbot, or Archimandrite, or superior of three hundred monks, but the opinions of simple and illiterate recluse might have expired in the cell where he had slept above seventy years if the resentment or indiscretion of Flavian, the Byzantine pontiff, had not exposed the scandal to the eyes of the Christian world. When his domestic synod was instantly convened, their proceedings were sullied with clamour and artifice, and the aged heretic was surprised into a seeming confession that Christ had not derived his body from the substance of the Virgin Mary. From their partial decree Utikies appealed to a general counsel, and his cause was vigorously asserted by his godson, Chrysapheus, the reigning eunuch of the palace, and his accomplice, Deoschorus, who had succeeded to the throne, the creed, the talents and the vices of the nephew of Theophilus. By the special summons of Theodosius, the second synod of Ephesus was judiciously composed of ten metropolitan and ten bishops from each of the six dioceses of the Eastern Empire. Some exceptions of favour or merit enlarged the number to one hundred and thirty-five, and the Syrian Basumus, as the chief and representative of the monks, was invited to sit and vote with the successors of the apostles. But the despotism of the Alexandrian patriarch again oppressed the freedom of debate. The same spiritual and carnal weapons were again drawn from the arsenals of Egypt. The Asiatic veterans, a band of archers, served under the orders of Diaschorus, and the more formidable monks whose minds were inaccessible to reason or mercy besieged the doors of the cathedral. The general and, as it should seem, the unconstrained voice of the fathers accepted the faith and even the anathemas of Cyril, and the heresy of the two natures was formally condemned in the persons and writings of the most learned orientals. May those who divide Christ be divided with the sword. May they be hewn in pieces. May they be burned alive, with the charitable wishes of a Christian synod. The innocence and sanctity of Utikis were acknowledged without hesitation, but the prelates, more especially those of Thrace and Asia, were unwilling to depose their patriarch for the use or even the abuse of his lawful jurisdiction. They embraced the knees of Diaschorus as he stood with a threatening aspect on the footstool of his throne, and they conjured him to forgive the offences and to respect the dignity of his brother. "'Do you mean to raise a sedition?' exclaimed the relentless tyrant. "'Where are the officers?' "'At these words a furious multitude of monks and soldiers, with staves and swords and chains, burst into the church. The trembling bishops hid themselves behind the altar or under the benches, and as they were not inspired with the zeal of martyrdom, they successively subscribed a blank paper, which was afterwards filled with the condemnation of the Byzantine pontiff. Flavian was instantly delivered to the wild beasts of this spiritual amphitheatre. The monks were stimulated by the voice and example of Barsoomus to avenge the injuries of Christ. It is said that the patriarch of Alexandria reviled and buffeted and kicked and trampled his brother of Constantinople. It is certain that the victim, before he could reach the place of his exile, expired on the third day of the wounds and bruises which he had received at Ephesus. This second synod has been justly branded as a gang of robbers and assassins, yet the accusers of Diaschorus would magnify his violence to alleviate the cowardice and inconstancy of their own behaviour. The faith of Egypt had prevailed, but the vanquished party was supported by the same pope who encountered without fear the hostile rage of Attila and Gensiric. The theology of Leo, his famous tome or epistle on the mystery of the Incarnation, had been disregarded by the synod of Ephesus. His authority and that of the Latin Church was insulted in his legates, who escaped from slavery and death to relate the melancholy tale of the tyranny of Diaschorus and the martyrdom of Flavian. His provincial synod annulled the irregular proceedings of Ephesus, but as this step was itself irregular he solicited the convocation of a general council in the free and orthodox provinces of Italy. From his independent throne the Roman bishop spoke and acted without danger as the head of the Christians, and his dictates were obsequiously transcribed by Placidia and her son Valentinian, who addressed their eastern colleague to restore the peace and unity of the Church. But the pageant of Oriental royalty was moved with equal dexterity by the hand of the eunuch, and Theodotius could pronounce without hesitation that the Church was already peaceful and triumphant and that the recent flame had been extinguished by the just punishment of the Nestorians. Perhaps the Greeks would be still involved in the heresy of the monophysites if the emperor's horse had not fortunately stumbled. Theodotius expired. His orthodox sister, Pulcaria, with a nominal husband, succeeded to the throne. Chrysaphius was burnt, Diaschorus was disgraced, the exiles were recalled, and the tome of Leo was subscribed by the Oriental bishops. Yet the pope was disappointed in his favourite project of a Latin council. He disdained to preside in the Greek synod which was speedily assembled at Nisi in Bithynia. His legates required in a peremptory tone the presence of the emperor, and the weary fathers were transported to Chalcedon under the immediate eye of Marcian and the senate of Constantinople. A quarter of a mile from the Thracian Bosphorus, the Church of St. Euphemia was built on the summit of a gentle though lofty ascent. The triple structure was celebrated as a prodigy of art, and the boundless prospect of the land and sea might have raised the mind of a sectory to the contemplation of the God of the universe. Six hundred and thirty bishops were ranged in order in the nave of the church. But the patriarchs of the east were preceded by the legates, of whom the third was a simple priest, and the place of honour was reserved for twenty laymen of consular or senatorian rank. The gospel was ostentatiously displayed in the centre, but the rule of faith was defined by the papal and imperial ministers who moderated the thirteen sessions of the Council of Chalcedon. Their partial interposition silenced the intemperate shouts and execrations which degraded the episcopal gravity, but on the formal accusations of the legates Dioschorus was compelled to descend from his throne to the rank of a criminal, already condemned in the opinion of his judges. The Orientals, less adverse to their storiest than to Cyril, accepted the Romans as their deliverers. Thrace and Pontus and Asia were exasperated against the murderer of Flavian, and the new patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch secured their places by the sacrifice of their benefactor. The bishops of Palestine, Macedonia and Greece were attached to the faith of Cyril, but in the faith of the Synod, in the heat of the battle, the leaders with their obsequious train passed from the right to the left wing, and decided the victory by this seasonable desertion. Of the seventeen suffragons who sailed from Alexandria, four were tempted from their allegiance, and the thirteen, falling prostrate on the ground, implored the mercy of the Council with sighs and tears, and a pathetic declaration that if they yielded they should be massacred on their return to Egypt by the indignant people. Atadi repentance was allowed to expiate the guilt or error of the accomplices of Diaschorus, but their sins were accumulated on his head, he neither asked nor hoped for pardon, and the moderation of those who pleaded for a general amnesty was drowned in the prevailing cry of victory and revenge. To save the reputation of his late adherents some personal offences were skillfully detected, his rash and illegal excommunication of the Pope, and his contumacious refusal, while he was detained a prisoner, to attend the summons of the Synod. Witnesses were introduced to prove the special fact of his pride, avarice, and cruelty, and the Fathers heard with abhorrence that the arms of the Church were lavished on the female dancers, that his palace, and even his bath, was open to the prostitutes of Alexandria, and that the infamous Pan-Sophia, or Irini, was publicly entertained as the concubine of the Patriarch. For these scandalous offences Diaschorus was deposed by the Synod, and banished by the Emperor, but the purity of his faith was declared in the presence and with the tacit approbation of the Fathers. Their prudence supposed rather than pronounced the heresy of Utikis, who was never summoned before their tribunal, and they sat silent and abashed, when a bold monophysite casting at their feet a volume of Cyril challenged them to anathematize in his person the doctrine of the saint. If we fairly peruse the acts of Calcedon as they are recorded by the Orthodox Party, we shall find that a great majority of the bishops embraced the simple unity of Christ, and the ambiguous concession that he was formed of or from two natures might imply either their previous existence or their subsequent confusion, or some dangerous interval between the conception of the man and the assumption of the God. The Roman theology more positive and precise adopted the term most offensive to the ears of the Egyptians, that Christ existed in two natures, and this momentous particle, which the memory rather than the understanding must retain, had almost produced a schism among the Catholic bishops. The tome of Leo had been respectfully, perhaps sincerely, subscribed, but they protested in two successive debates that it was neither expedient nor lawful to transgress the sacred landmarks which had been fixed at Nicae, Constantinople, and Ephesus, according to the rule of scripture and tradition. At length they yielded to the impetunities of their masters, but their infallible decree after it had been ratified with deliberate votes and vehement acclamations, was overturned in the next session by the opposition of the legates and their oriental friends. It was in vain that a multitude of episcopal voices repeated in chorus, the definition of the father's is orthodox and immutable, the heretics are now discovered anathema to the Nestorians, let them depart from the Synod, let them repair to Rome. The legates threatened, the emperor was absolute, and a committee of eighteen bishops prepared a new decree which was imposed on the reluctant assembly. In the name of the Fourth General Council, the Christ, in one person, but in two natures, was announced to the Catholic world. An invisible line was drawn between the heresy of Apollinarus and the faith of St. Cyril, and the road to paradise, a bridge as sharp as a razor, was suspended over the abyss by the master hand of the theological artist. During ten centuries of blindness and servitude, Europe received her religious opinions from the oracle of the Vatican, and the same doctrine, already varnished with the rust of antiquity, was admitted without dispute into the creed of the reformers who disclaimed the supremacy of the Roman pontiff. The Synod of Calcedon still triumphs in the Protestant churches, but the ferment of controversy has subsided, and the most pious Christians of the present day are ignorant or careless of their own belief concerning the mystery of the incarnation. Far different was the temper of the Greeks and Egyptians under the orthodox reigns of Leo and Marcian. Those pious emperors enforced with arms and edicts the symbol of their faith, and it was declared by the conscience or honour of five hundred bishops that the decrees of the Synod of Calcedon might be lawfully supported even with blood. The Catholics observed with satisfaction that the same Synod was odious both to the Nestorians and the Monophysites, but the Nestorians were less angry or less powerful, and the east was distracted by the obstinate and sanguinary zeal of the Monophysites. Jerusalem was occupied by an army of monks. In the name of the one incarnate nature they pillaged, they burnt, they murdered. The sepulchre of Christ was defiled with blood, and the gates of the city were guarded into mulchuous rebellion against the troops of the emperor. After the disgrace and exile of Diascorus, the Egyptians still regretted their spiritual father and detested the usurpation of his successor who was introduced by the fathers of Calcedon. The throne of Proterius was supported by a guard of two thousand soldiers. He waged a five years war against the people of Alexandria, and on the first intelligence of the death of Marcian he became the victim of their zeal. On the third day before the festival of Easter the patriarch was besieged in the cathedral and murdered in the baptistry. The remains of his mangled corpse were delivered to the flames and his ashes to the wind, and the deed was inspired by the vision of a pretended angel, an ambitious monk who, under the name of Timothy the Cat, succeeded to the place and opinions of Diascorus. This deadly superstition was inflamed on either side by the principal and the practice of retaliation. In the pursuit of a metaphysical quarrel many thousands were slain, and the Christians of every degree were deprived of the substantial enjoyments of social life and of the invisible gifts of baptism and the holy communion. Perhaps an extravagant fable of the times may conceal an allegorical picture of these fanatics who tortured each other and themselves. Under the consulship of Venantius and Celer, says a grave bishop. The people of Alexandria and all Egypt were seized with a strange and diabolical frenzy. Great and small, slaves and freedmen, monks and clergy, the natives of the land who opposed the senate of Carcidon, lost their speech and reason, barked like dogs, and tore with their own teeth the flesh from their hands and arms. The disorders of thirty years at length produced the famous Henochicon of the Emperor Zeno, which in his reign and in that of Anastasius, was signed by all the bishops of the east, under the penalty of degradation and exile if they rejected or infringed this salutary and fundamental law. The clergy may smile or groan at the presumption of a layman who defines the articles of faith, yet if he stoops to the humiliating task his mind is less infected by prejudice or interest, and the authority of the magistrate can only be maintained by the concord of the people. It is in ecclesiastical story that Zeno appears least contemptible, and I am not able to discern any Manichean or Utichean guilt in the generous saying of Anastasius, that it was unworthy of an emperor to persecute the worshipers of Christ and the citizens of Rome. The Henochicon was most pleasing to the Egyptians, yet the smallest blemish has not been described by the jealous and even jaundiced eyes of our orthodox schoolman, and it accurately represents the Catholic faith of the Incarnation without adopting or disclaiming the peculiar terms of tenets of the hostile sects. A solemn anathema is pronounced against Nestorius and Utiches, against all heretics by whom Christ is divided or confounded or reduced to a phantom. Without defining the number or the article of the word nature, the pure system of Saint Cyril, the faith of Nici, Constantinople and Ephesus, is respectfully confirmed, but instead of bowing at the name of the Fourth Council, the subject is dismissed by the censor of all contrary doctrines, if any such have been taught either elsewhere or at Carcidon. Under this ambiguous expression the friends and the enemies of the last synod might unite in a silent embrace. The most reasonable Christians acquiesced in this mode of toleration, but their reason was feeble and inconstant, and their obedience was despised as timid and servile by the vehement spirit of their brethren. On a subject which engrossed the thoughts and discourses of men, it was difficult to preserve an exact neutrality. A book, a sermon, a prayer rekindled the flame of controversy, and the bonds of communion were alternately broken and renewed by the private animosity of the bishops. The space between Nestorius and Utiches was filled by a thousand shades of language and opinion. The Ascephali of Egypt and the Roman pontiffs of equal valour though of unequal strength may be found at the two extremities of the theological scale. The Ascephali, without a king or a bishop, were separated above three hundred years from the patriarchs of Alexandria, who had accepted the communion of Constantinople without exacting a formal condemnation of the Synod of Carcidon. For accepting the communion of Alexandria without a formal approbation of the same synod, the patriarchs of Constantinople were anathematised by the popes. Their inflexible despotism involved the most orthodox of the Greek churches in this spiritual contagion, denied or doubted the validity of their sacraments, and fermented thirty-five years the schism of the east and west, till they finally abolished the memory of four Byzantine pontiffs who had dared to oppose the supremacy of St. Peter. Before that period the precarious truce of Constantinople and Egypt had been violated by the zeal of the rival prelates. Macedonius, who was suspected of the Nestorian heresy, asserted in disgrace and exile the Synod of Carcidon, while the successor of Cyril would have purchased its overthrow with a bribe of two thousand pounds of gold. In the fever of the times the sense, or rather the sound, of a syllable was sufficient to disturb the peace of an empire. The Trissagian, thrice-holy, holy, holy, holy Lord God of Hosts, is supposed by the Greeks to be the identical hymn which the angels and cherubim eternally repeat before the throne of God, and which, about the middle of the fifth century, was miraculously revealed to the Church of Constantinople. The devotion of Antioch soon added, who was crucified for us, and this grateful address, either to Christ alone or to the whole Trinity, may be justified by the rules of theology and has been gradually adopted by the Catholics of the East and West. But it had been imagined by a monophysite bishop. The gift of an enemy was at first rejected as a dire and dangerous blasphemy, and the rash innovation had nearly cost the emperor Anastasius his throne and his life. The people of Constantinople was devoid of any rational principles of freedom, but they held, as a lawful cause of rebellion, the colour of a livery in the races, or the colour of a mystery in the schools. The Trissagian, with and without this obnoxious addition, was chanted in the Cathedral by two adverse choirs, and when their lungs were exhausted they had recourse to the more solid arguments of sticks and stones. The aggressors were punished by the emperor and defended by the patriarch, and the crown and mitre were staked on the event of this momentous quarrel. The streets were instantly crowded with innumerable swarms of men, women and children. The legions of monks in regular array marched and shouted and fought at their head, Christians, this is the day of martyrdom! Let us not desert our spiritual father, anathema to the Manichean tyrant, his unworthy to reign! Such was the Catholic cry, and the galleys of Anastasias lay upon their oals before the palace, till the patriarch had pardoned his penitent and hushed the waves of the troubled multitude. The triumph of Macedonias was checked by a speedy exile, but the zeal of his flock was again exasperated by the same question, whether one of the trinity had been crucified. On this momentous occasion the blue and green factions of Constantinople suspended their discord, and the civil and military powers were annihilated in their presence. The keys of the city, and the standards of the guards, were deposited in the Forum of Constantine, the principal station and camp of the faithful. Day and night they were incessantly busied, either in singing hymns to the honour of their god, or in pillaging and murdering the servants of their prince. The head of his favourite monk, the friend as they styled him of the enemy of the Holy Trinity, was born aloft on a spear, and the fire-brands which had been darted against heretical structures diffused the undistinguishing flames over the most orthodox buildings. The statues of the emperor were broken, and his person was concealed in a suburb, till at the end of three days he dared to implore the mercy of his subjects. Throughout his diadem, and in the posture of a suppliant, Anastasius appeared on the throne of the circus. The Catholics, before his face, rehearsed their genuine trisagion. They exalted in the offer which he proclaimed by the voice of a herald of abdicating the purple. They listened to the admonition that since all could not reign they should previously agree in the choice of a sovereign, and they accepted the blood of two unpopular ministers, whom their master without hesitation condemned to the lions. These furious but transient seditions were encouraged by the success of Vitalian, who with an army of Huns and Bulgarians, for the most part idolaters, declared himself the champion of the Catholic faith. In this pious rebellion he depopulated Thrace, besieged Constantinople, exterminated sixty-five thousand of his fellow Christians, till he obtained the recall of the bishops, the satisfaction of the Pope, and the establishment of the Council of Calcedon, an orthodox treaty reluctantly signed by the dying Anastasius, and more faithfully performed by the uncle of Justinian. And such was the event of the first of the religious wars which have been waged in the name and by the disciples of the God of Peace. Recording by Philippa Jevons Justinian has already been seen in the various lights of a prince, a conqueror, and a law-giver. The theologian still remains, and it affords an unfavorable prejudice that his theology should form a very prominent feature of his portrait. The sovereign sympathized with his subjects in their superstitious reverence for living and departed saints, his code and more especially his novels, confirm and enlarge the privileges of the clergy, and in every dispute between a monk and a layman the partial judge was inclined to pronounce that truth and innocence and justice were always on the side of the church. In his public and private devotions the emperor was assiduous and exemplary. His prayers, vigils and fasts, displayed the austere penance of a monk. His fancy was amused by the hope or belief of personal inspiration. He had secured the patronage of the virgin and St. Michael the archangel, and his recovery from a dangerous disease was ascribed to the miraculous succor of the holy martyrs Cosmas and Damien. The capital and the provinces of the east were decorated with the monuments of his religion, and though the far greater part of these costly structures may be attributed to his taste or ostentation, the zeal of the royal architect was probably quickened by a genuine sense of love and gratitude towards his invisible benefactors. Among the titles of imperial greatness, the name of Pius was most pleasing to his ear. To promote the temporal and spiritual interest of the church was the serious business of his life, and the duty of father of his country was often sacrificed to that of defender of the faith. The controversies of the time were congenial to his temper and understanding, and the theological professors must inwardly deride the diligence of a stranger who cultivated their art and neglected his own. What can you fear, said a bold conspirator to his associates, from your bigoted tyrant? Sleepless and unarmed, he sits whole nights in his closet debating with reverent gray beards and turning over the pages of ecclesiastical volumes. The fruits of these lucubrations were displayed in many a conference where Justinian might shine as the loudest and most subtle of the disputants in many a sermon which, under the name of edicts and epistles, proclaimed to the empire the theology of their master. While the barbarians invaded the provinces, while the victorious legion marched under the banners of Belisarius and Narses, the successor of Trajan, unknown to the camp, was content to vanquish at the head of a synod. When he invited to these synods a disinterested and rational spectator, Justinian might have learned that religious controversy is the offspring of arrogance and folly, that true piety is most laudably expressed by silence and submission, that man, ignorant of his own nature, should not presume to scrutinize the nature of his God, and that it is sufficient for us to know that power and benevolence are the perfect attributes of the deity. Toleration was not the virtue of the times, and indulgence to rebels has seldom been the virtue of princes. But when the prince descends to the narrow and peevish character of a disputant, he is easily provoked to supply the defect of argument by the plenitude of power, and to chastise without mercy the perverse blindness of those who willfully shut their eyes against the light of demonstration. The reign of Justinian was a uniform, yet various, scene of persecution, and he appears to have surpassed his indolent predecessors both in the contrivance of his laws and in the rigor of their execution. The insufficient term of three months was assigned for the conversion or exile of all heretics, and if he still connived at their precarious stay they were deprived under his iron yoke not only of the benefits of society, but of the common birthright of men and Christians. At the end of four hundred years the mountainists of Phrygia still breathed the wild enthusiasm of perfection and prophecy which they had imbibed from their male and female apostles, the special organs of the paraclete. On the approach of the Catholic priests and soldiers they grasped through the lacquerity the crown of martyrdom, the conventical and the congregation perished in the flames, but these primitive fanatics were not extinguished three hundred years after the death of their tyrant. Under the protection of their gothic confederates the church of the Aryans at Constantinople had braved the severity of the laws, their clergy equalled the wealth and magnificence of the senate, and the gold and silver which were seized by the rapacious hand of Justinian might perhaps be claimed as the spoils of the provinces and the trophies of the barbarians. A secret remnant of pagans, who still lurked in the most refined and most rustic conditions of mankind, excited the indignation of the Christians, who were perhaps unwilling that any strangers should be the witnesses of their intestinal quarrels. A bishop was named as the inquisitor of the faith, and his diligence soon discovered in the court and city the magistrates, lawyers, physicians and sophists, who still cherished the superstition of the Greeks. They were sternly informed that there was choose without delay between the displetor of Jupiter or Justinian, and that their aversion to the gospel could no longer be distinguished under the scandalous mask of indifference or impiety. The patrician Photeus, perhaps alone, was resolved to live and to die like his ancestors. He enfranchised himself with the stroke of a dagger, and left his tyrant the poor consolation of exposing with ignominy the lifeless corpse of the fugitives. His weaker brethren submitted to their earthly monarch, underwent the ceremony of baptism, and laboured by their extraordinary zeal to erase the suspicion or to expiate the guilt of idolatry. The native country of Homer, and the theatre of the Trojan War, still retained the last sparks of his mythology. By the care of the same bishop, seventy thousand pagans were detected and converted in Asia, Frigia, Lydia and Carrier. Ninety-six churches were built for the new proselytes, and linen investments, bibles and liturgies, and vases of gold and silver, were supplied by the pious munificence of Justinian. The Jews, who had been gradually stripped of their immunities, were oppressed by a vexatious law which compelled them to observe the Festival of Easter the same day on which it was celebrated by the Christians. And they might complain with the more reason, since the Catholics themselves did not agree with the astronomical calculations of their sovereign. The people of Constantinople delayed the beginning of their lint a whole week after it had been ordained by authority, and they had the pleasure of fasting seven days while meat was exposed for sale by the command of the Emperor. The Samaritans of Palestine were a mortally race, an ambiguous sect rejected as Jews by the pagans, by the Jews as schismatics, and by the Christians as idolaters. The abomination of the cross had already been planted on their holy mount of Garizim, but the persecution of Justinian offered only the alternative of baptism or rebellion. They chose the latter. Under the standard of a desperate leader they rose in arms, and retaliated their wrongs on the lives, the property, and the temples of a defenceless people. The Samaritans were finally subdued by the regular forces of the East, twenty thousand were slain, twenty thousand were sold by the Arabs to the infidels of Persia and India, and the remains of that unhappy nation atoned for the crime of treason by the sin of hypocrisy. It has been computed that one hundred thousand Roman subjects were extirpated in the Samaritan War which converted the once fruitful province into a desolate and smoking wilderness. But in the creed of Justinian the guilt of murder could not be applied to the slaughter of unbelievers, and he piously laboured to establish with fire and sword the unity of the Christian faith. With these sentiments it was incumbent on him at least to be always in the right. In the first years of his administration he signalised his zeal as the disciple and patron of orthodoxy. The reconciliation of the Greeks and Latins established the tome of St. Leo as the creed of the emperor and the empire. The Nestorians and Eutychians were exposed on either side to the double edge of persecution, and the four synods of Nici, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon were ratified by the code of a Catholic lawgiver. But while Justinian strove to maintain the uniformity of faith and worship, his wife Theodora, whose vices were not incompatible with devotion, had listened to the monophysite teachers, and the open or clandestine enemies of the church revived and multiplied at the smile of their gracious patroness. The capital, the palace, the nuptial bed, were torn by spiritual discord, yet so doubtful was the sincerity of the royal consorts that their seeming disagreement was imputed by many to a secret and mischievous confederacy against the religion and happiness of their people. The famous dispute of the three chapters, which has filled more volumes than it deserves lines, is deeply marked with this sotile and disingenuous spirit. It was now three hundred years since the body of Oregon had been eaten by the worms. His soul, of which he held the pre-existence, was in the hands of its creator, but his writings were eagerly perused by the monks of Palestine. In these writings the piercing eye of Justinian described more than ten metaphysical errors, and the primitive doctor, in the company of Pythagoras and Plato, was devoted by the clergy to the eternity of Hellfire, which he had presumed to deny. Under the cover of this precedent a treacherous blow was aimed at the Council of Calcedon. The Fathers had listened without impatience to the praise of Theodore of Moxvestia, but their justice or indulgence had restored both Theodore of Cirrus and Ibas of Edessa to the Communion of the Church. But the characters of these Oriental bishops were tainted with the reproach of heresy. The first had been the Master, the two others were the Friends of Nestorius. Their most suspicious passages were accused under the title of the Three Chapters, and the condemnation of their memory must involve the honour of a Synod, whose name was pronounced with sincere or affected reverence by the Catholic world. If these bishops, whether innocent or guilty, were annihilated in the sleep of death, they would not probably be awakened by the clamour which, after a hundred years, was raised over their grave. If they were already in the fangs of the demon, their torments could be neither aggravated nor assuaged by human industry. If in the company of saints and angels they enjoyed the rewards of piety, they must have smiled at the idle fury of the theological insects who still crawled the surface of the earth. The foremost of these insects, the Emperor of the Romans, darted his sting and distilled his venom, perhaps without discerning the true motives of Theodora and her ecclesiastical faction. The victims were no longer subject to his power, and the vehement style of his edicts could only proclaim their damnation and invite the clergy of the east to join in a full chorus of curses and anathemas. The east, with some hesitation, consented to the voice of her sovereign. The fifth general council of three patriarchs and one hundred and sixty-five bishops was held at Constantinople, and the authors as well as the defenders of the three chapters were separated from the communion of the saints and solemnly delivered to the Prince of Darkness. But the Latin churches were more jealous of the honour of Leo and the Synod of Calcedon, and if they had fought as they usually did under the standard of Rome they might have prevailed in the cause of reason and humanity. But their chief was a prisoner in the hands of the enemy. The throne of St. Peter, which had been disgraced by the Simoni, was betrayed by the cowardice of Vigilius, who yielded after a long and inconsistent struggle to the despotism of Justinian and the sophistry of the Greeks. His apostasy provoked the indignation of the Latins, and no more than two bishops could be found who would impose their hands on his deacon and successor Pelagius. With the perseverance of the popes insensibly transferred to their adversaries the appellation of schismatics, the Illyrian, African and Italian churches were oppressed by the civil and ecclesiastical powers not without some effort of military force. The distant barbarians transcribed the creed of the Vatican, and in the period of a century the schism of the three chapters expired in an obscure angle of the Venetian province. But the religious discontent of the Italians had already promoted the conquests of the Lombards, and the Romans themselves were accustomed to suspect the faith and to detest the government of their Byzantine tyrant. Justinian was neither steady nor consistent in the nice process of fixing his volatile opinions and those of his subjects. In his youth he was offended by the slightest deviation from the Orthodox line. In his old age he transgressed the measure of temperate heresy, and the Jacobites not less than the Catholics were scandalised by his declaration that the body of Christ was incorruptible and that his manhood was never subject to any wants and infirmities, the inheritance of our mortal flesh. This fantastic opinion was announced in the last edicts of Justinian, and at the moment of his seasonable departure the clergy had refused to subscribe, the prince was prepared to persecute, and the people were resolved to suffer or resist. A bishop of Trev, secure beyond the limits of his power, addressed the monarch of the east in the language of authority and affection. Most gracious Justinian, remember your baptism and your creed, let not your grey hairs be defiled with heresy. Recall your fathers from exile and your followers from perdition. You cannot be ignorant that Italy and Gaul, Spain and Africa already deplore your fall and anathematise your name. Unless without delay you destroy what you have taught, unless you exclaim with a loud voice, I have erred, I have sinned, anathematonastoris, anathematoeutiches, you deliver your soul to the same flames in which they will eternally burn. He died and made no sign. His death restored in some degree the peace of the church, and the reigns of his four successors, Justin, Tiberius, Morris, and Fokas, are distinguished by a rare though fortunate vacancy in the ecclesiastical history of the east. The faculties of sense and reason are least capable of acting on themselves. The eye is most inaccessible to the sight, the soul to the thought. Yet we think and even feel that one will, a sole principle of action, is essential to a rational and conscious being. When Heraclius returned from the Persian War, the orthodox hero consulted his bishops whether the Christ, whom he adored, of one person but two natures, was actuated by a single or a double will. They replied in the singular, and the emperor was encouraged to hope that the Jacobites of Egypt and Syria might be reconciled by the profession of a doctrine most certainly harmless and most probably true, since it was taught even by the Nestorians themselves. The experiment was tried without effect, and the timid or vehement Catholics condemned even the semblance of a retreat in the presence of a subtle and audacious enemy. The orthodox, the prevailing, party, devised new modes of speech and argument and interpretation. To either nature of Christ they speciously applied a proper and distinct energy, but the difference was no longer visible when they allowed that the human and the divine will were invariably the same. The disease was attended with the customary symptoms, but the Greek clergy, as if satisfied with the endless controversy of the incarnation, instilled a healing council into the ear of the prince and people. They declared themselves monatalytes, assertors of the unity of will, but they treated the words as new, the questions superfluous, and recommended a religious silence as the most agreeable to the prudence and charity of the gospel. This law of silence was successively imposed by the Ecthesis or exposition of Heraclius, the type or model of his grandson Constans, and the imperial edicts were subscribed with alacrity or reluctance by the four patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch. But the bishops and monks of Jerusalem sounded the alarm, in the language, or even in the silence of the Greeks, the Latin Churches detected a latent heresy, and the obedience of Pope Honorius to the commands of his sovereign was retracted and censured by the bolder ignorance of his successors. They condemned the exacruble and abominable heresy of the monatalytes, who revived the errors of Manny's Apollinaris, Utikis, etc. They signed the sentence of excommunication on the tomb of St. Peter. The ink was mingled with the sacramental wine, the blood of Christ, and no ceremony was omitted that could fill the superstitious mind with horror and affright. As the representative of the Western Church, Pope Martin and his latter ensign had anathematized the perfidious and guilty silence of the Greeks, one hundred and fifty bishops of Italy, for the most part the subjects of Constans, presumed to reprobate his wicked type and the impious ex thesis of his grandfather, and to confound the authors and their adherents with the twenty-one notorious heretics, the apostates from the Church, and the organs of the devil. Such an insult under the tamest reign could not pass with impunity. Pope Martin ended his days on the inhospitable shore of the Tauric Cessonesis, and his oracle, the Abbot Maximus, was inhumanly chastised by the amputation of his tongue and his right hand. But the same invincible spirit surged in their successors, and the triumph of the Latins avenged their recent defeat and obliterated the disgrace of the three chapters. The Synods of Rome were confirmed by the Sixth General Council of Constantinople in the palace and the presence of a new Constantine, a descendant of Heraclius. The royal convert converted the Byzantine pontiff and a majority of the bishops. The dissenters with their chief, Macarius of Antioch, were condemned to the spiritual and temporal pains of heresy. The east condescended to accept the lessons of the west, and the creed was finally settled, which teaches the Catholics of every age that two wills or energies are harmonised in the person of Christ. The majesty of the Pope and the Roman Synod was represented by two priests, one deacon, and three bishops. But these obscure Latins had neither arms to compel, nor treasures to bribe, nor language to persuade, and I am ignorant by what arts they could determine the lofty emperor of the Greeks to abdure the catechism of his infancy and to persecute the religion of his fathers. Thus the monks and people of Constantinople were favourable to the latter and creed, which is indeed the least reasonable of the two, and the suspicion is countenance by the unnatural moderation of the Greek clergy, who appear in this quarrel to be conscious of their weakness. While the Synod debated, a fanatic proposed a more summery decision by raising a dead man to life. The prelates assisted at the trial, but the acknowledged failure may serve to indicate that the passions and prejudices of the multitude were not enlisted on the side of the monatolites. In the next generation, when the son of Constantine was deposed and slain by the disciple of Macarius, they tasted the fear of revenge and dominion. The image or monument of the Sixth Council was defaced, and the original acts were committed to the flames. But in the second year their patron was cast headlong from the throne. The bishops of the East were released from their occasional conformity, the Roman faith was more firmly replanted by the orthodox successors of Bardenese, and the fine problems of the Incarnation were forgotten in the more popular and visible quarrel of the worship of images. Before the end of the seventh century the creed of the Incarnation, which had been defined at Rome and Constantinople, was uniformly preached in the remote islands of Britain and Ireland. The same ideas were entertained, or rather the same words were repeated, by all the Christians whose liturgy was performed in the Greek or the Latin tongue. Their numbers and visible splendour bestowed an imperfect claim to the appellation of Catholics, but in the East they were marked with the less honourable name of Melchites or Royalists, of men whose faith, instead of resting on the basis of scripture, reason or tradition, had been established and was still maintained by the arbitrary power of a temporal monarch. Their adversaries might allege the words of the fathers of Constantinople who profess themselves the slaves of the king, and they might relate with malicious joy how the decrees of Chalcedon had been inspired and reformed by the emperor Marcian and his virgin bride. The prevailing faction will naturally inculcate the duty of submission, nor is it less natural that dissenters should feel and assert the principles of freedom. Under the rod of persecution the Nestorians and Monophysites degenerated into rebels and fugitives, and the most ancient and useful allies of Rome were taught to consider the emperor not as the chief, but as the enemy of the Christians. Language, the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind, soon discriminated the sectaries of the East by a peculiar and perpetual badge which abolished the means of intercourse and the hope of reconciliation. The long dominion of the Greeks, their colonies, and above all their eloquence, had propagated a language doubtless the most perfect that has been contrived by the art of man. Yet the body of the people, both in Syria and Egypt, still persevered in the use of their national idioms. With this difference, however, that the Coptic was confined to the rude and illiterate peasants of the Nile, while the Syriac, from the mountains of Assyria to the Red Sea, was adapted to the higher topics of poetry and argument. Armenia and Abyssinia were infected by the speech or learning of the Greeks, and their barbaric tongues which have been revived in the studies of modern Europe were unintelligible to the inhabitants of the Roman Empire. The Syriac and the Coptic, the Armenian and the Ethiopic, are consecrated in the service of their respective churches, and their theology is enriched by domestic versions both of the scriptures and of the most popular fathers. After a period of thirteen hundred and sixty years, the spark of controversy first kindled by a sermon of Nestorius still burns in the bosom of the East, and the hostile Communions still maintain the faith and discipline of their founders. In the most abject state of ignorance, poverty and servitude, the Nestorians and monophysites reject the spiritual supremacy of Rome and cherish the toleration of their Turkish masters, which allows them to anatomatize on the one hand Saint Cyril and the Synod of Ephesus, on the other Pope Leo and the Council of Chalcedon. The weight which they cast into the downfall of the Eastern Empire demands our notice, and the reader may be amused with the various prospects of one, the Nestorians, two, the Jacobites, three, the Maronites, four, the Armenians, five, the Coptes, and six, the Abyssinians. To the three former the Syriac is common, but of the latter each is discriminated by the use of a national idiom. Yet the modern natives of Armenia and Abyssinia would be incapable of conversing with their ancestors, and the Christians of Egypt and Syria who reject the religion have adopted the language of the Arabians. The lapse of time has seconded the saccadotal arts, and in the East as well as in the West the deity is addressed in an obsolete tongue unknown to the majority of the congregation. End of Chapter 47 Part 4 Chapter 47 Part 5 of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 4 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Philippa Jevons 1. Both in his native and his episcopal province, the heresy of the unfortunate Nestorius, was speedily obliterated. The Oriental bishops who at Ephesus had resisted to his face the arrogance of Cyril were mollified by his tardy concessions. The same prelates, or their successors, subscribed not without a murmur, the decrees of Calcedon. The power of the monophysites reconciled them with the Catholics in the conformity of passion, of interest, and insensibly of belief, and their last reluctant sigh was breathed in the defence of the three chapters. Their dissenting brethren, less moderate or more sincere, were crushed by the penal laws, and as early as the reign of Justinian it became difficult to find a church of Nestorians within the limits of the Roman Empire. Beyond those limits they had discovered a new world in which they might hope for liberty and aspire to conquest. In Persia, notwithstanding the resistance of the Magi, Christianity had struck a deep root, and the nations of the East reposed under its salutary shade. The Catholic, or primate, resided in the capital. In his synods, and in their dioceses, his metropolitan, bishops, and clergy, represented the pomp and order of a regular hierarchy. They rejoiced in the increase of proselytes, who were converted from the Zendavester to the Gospel, from the secular to the monastic life, and their zeal was stimulated by the presence of an artful and formidable enemy. The Persian church had been founded by the missionaries of Syria, and their language, discipline, and doctrine were closely interwoven with its original frame. The Catholics were elected and ordained by their own suffragans, but their filial dependence on the patriarchs of Antioch is attested by the canons of the Oriental church. In the Persian school of Edessa, the rising generations of the faithful imbibed their theological idiom. They studied in the Syriac version the ten thousand volumes of Theodore of Mobswestia, and they revered the apostolic faith and holy martyrdom of his disciple Nestorius, whose person and language were equally unknown to the nations beyond the Tigris. The first indelible lesson of Ebas, Bishop of Edessa, taught them to execrate the Egyptians, who in the Synod of Ephesus had impiously confounded the two natures of Christ. The flight of the masters and scholars who were twice expelled from the Athens of Syria dispersed a crowd of missionaries, inflamed by the double zeal of religion and revenge. And the rigid unity of the monophysites, who under the reigns of Zeno and Anastasius had invaded the thrones of the East, provoked their antagonists in a land of freedom to avow a moral rather than a physical union of the two persons of Christ. Since the first preaching of the Gospel, the Sasanian kings beheld with an eye of suspicion a race of aliens and apostates who had embraced the religion and who might favour the cause of the hereditary foes of their country. The royal edicts had often prohibited their dangerous correspondence with the Syrian clergy. The progress of the schism was grateful to the jealous pride of Peruzes, and he listened to the eloquence of an artful prelate who painted Nestorius as the friend of Persia, and urged him to secure the fidelity of his Christian subjects by granting a just preference to the victims and enemies of the Roman tyrant. The Nestorians composed a large majority of the clergy and people. They were encouraged by the smile and armed with the sword of despotism. Yet many of their weaker brethren were startled at the thought of breaking loose from the communion of the Christian world, and the blood of 7700 monophysites or Catholics confirmed the uniformity of faith and discipline in the churches of Persia. Their ecclesiastical institutions are distinguished by a liberal principle of reason, or at least of policy. The austerity of the cloister was relaxed and gradually forgotten. Houses of charity were endowed for the education of orphans and foundlings. The law of celibacy, so forcibly recommended to the Greeks and Latins, was disregarded by the Persian clergy, and the number of the elect was multiplied by the public and reiterated nuptials of the priests, the bishops, and even the patriarch himself. To this standard of natural and religious freedom, myriads of fugitives resorted from all the provinces of the Eastern Empire. The narrow bigotry of Justinian was punished by the emigration of his most industrious subjects. They transported into Persia the arts both of peace and war, and those who deserved the favour were promoted in the service of a discerning monarch. The arms of Nusirvan and his fiercer grandson were assisted with advice and money and troops by the desperate sectaries who still lurked in their native cities of the East. Their zeal was rewarded with the gift of the Catholic churches, but when those cities and churches were recovered by Heraclius, their open profession of treason and heresy compelled them to seek a refuge in the realm of their foreign ally. But the seeming tranquility of the Nestorians was often endangered and sometimes overthrown. They were involved in the common evils of Oriental despotism, their enmity to Rome could not always atone for their attachment to the gospel, and a colony of three hundred thousand Jacobites, the captives of Apamia and Antioch, was permitted to erect a hostile altar in the face of the Catholic and in the sunshine of the court. In his last treaty, Justinian introduced some conditions which tended to enlarge and fortify the toleration of Christianity in Persia. The emperor, ignorant of the rites of conscience, was incapable of pity or esteem for the heretics who denied the authority of the holy synods, but he flattered himself that they would gradually perceive the temporal benefits of union with the empire and the church of Rome, and if he failed in exciting their gratitude he might hope to provoke the jealousy of their sovereign. In a later age the Lutherans have been burnt at Paris and protected in Germany by the superstition and policy of the most Christian king. The desire of gaining souls for God and subjects for the church has excited in every age the diligence of the Christian priests. From the conquest of Persia they carried their spiritual arms to the north, the east, and the south, and the simplicity of the gospel was fashioned and painted with the colours of the Syriac theology. In the sixth century, according to the report of a Nestorian traveller, Christianity was successfully preached to the Bactrians, the Huns, the Persians, the Indians, the Persarminians, the Medes, and the Elamites. The barbaric churches from the Gulf of Persia to the Caspian Sea were almost infinite, and their recent faith was conspicuous in the number and sanctity of their monks and martyrs. The pepper-coast of Malabar, and the isles of the ocean, Socatura and Solon, were peopled with an increasing multitude of Christians, and the bishops and clergy of those sequestered regions derived their ordination from the Catholic of Babylon. In a subsequent age the zeal of the Nestorians overleaped the limits which had confined the ambition and curiosity both of the Greeks and Persians. The missionaries of Balch and Samarkand pursued without fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar, and insinuated themselves into the camps of the valleys of Imaos and the banks of the Selinga. They exposed a metaphysical creed to those illiterate shepherds, to those sanguinary warriors they recommended humanity and repose. Yet a Khan whose power they vainly magnified is said to have received at their hands the rights of baptism and even of ordination, and the fame of Presta or Presbiter John, as long amused the credulity of Europe. The royal convert was indulged in the use of a portable altar, but he dispatched an embassy to the patriarch to inquire how in the season of Lent he should abstain from animal food, and how he might celebrate the Eucharist in a desert that produced neither corn nor wine. In their progress by sea and land the Nestorians entered China by the port of Canton and the northern residents of Sigan. Unlike the Senators of Rome who assumed with a smile the characters of priests and augers, the mandarins who effect in public the reason of philosophers are devoted and private to every mode of populacy superstition. They cherished and they confounded the gods of Palestine and of India, but the propagation of Christianity awakened the jealousy of the state, and after a short vicissitude of favour and persecution the foreign sect expired in ignorance and oblivion. Under the reign of the Caliph the Nestorian church was diffused from China to Jerusalem and Cyrus, and their numbers, with those of the Jacobites, were computed to surpass the Greek and Latin communions. Twenty-five metropolitan or archbishops composed their hierarchy, but several of these were dispensed by the distance and danger of the way from the duty of personal attendance, on the easy condition that every six years they should testify their faith and obedience to the Catholic or patriarch of Babylon, a vague appellation which has been successively applied to the royal seats of Seleucia, Ctesiphon and Baghdad. These remote branches are long since withered, and the old patriarchal trunk is now divided by the Elijahs of Mosul, the representatives almost on lineal descent of the genuine and primitive succession, the Josephs of Amida, who are reconciled to the Church of Rome, and the Simeons of Van or Ormia, whose revolt at the head of forty thousand families was promoted in the sixteenth century by the Sophies of Persia. The number of three hundred thousand is allowed for the whole body of the Nestorians, who under the name of Caldeans or Assyrians, are confounded with the most learned or the most powerful nation of Eastern antiquity. According to the legend of antiquity, the Gospel was preached in India by St. Thomas. At the end of the ninth century his shrine, perhaps in the neighbourhood of Madras, was devoutly visited by the ambassadors of Alfred, and their return with a cargo of pearls and spices rewarded the zeal of the English monarch who entertained the largest projects of trade and discovery. When the Portuguese first opened the navigation of India, the Christians of St. Thomas had been seated for ages on the coast of Malabar, and the difference of their character and colour attested the mixture of a foreign race. In arms, in arts, and possibly in virtue, they excelled the natives of Hindustan. The husbandmen cultivated the palm tree, the merchants were enriched by the pepper-trade, the soldiers preceded the naers or nobles of Malabar, and their hereditary privileges were respected by the gratitude or the fear of the king of Cochin and the Xamarin himself. They acknowledged a gentu of sovereign, but they were governed even in temporal concerns by the bishop of Angamala. He still asserted his ancient title of Metropolitan of India, but his real jurisdiction was exercised in fourteen hundred churches, and he was entrusted with the care of two hundred thousand souls. Their religion would have rendered them the firmest and most cordial allies of the Portuguese, but the inquisitors soon discerned in the Christians of St. Thomas the unpardonable guilt of heresy and schism. Instead of owning themselves the subjects of the Roman pontiff, the spiritual and temporal monarch of the globe, they adhered like their ancestors to the communion of the Nestorian patriarch, and the bishops whom he ordained at Mosul, traversed the dangers of the sea and land to reach their diocese on the coast of Malabar. In their Syriac liturgy the names of Theodore and Nestorius were piously commemorated. They united their adoration of the two persons of Christ, the title of Mother of God was offensive to their ear, and they measured with scrupulous avarice the honours of the Virgin Mary, whom the superstition of the Latins had almost exalted the rank of a goddess. When her image was first presented to the disciples of St. Thomas, they indignantly exclaimed, We are Christians, not idolaters, and their simple devotion was content with the veneration of the cross. Their separation from the Western world had left them in ignorance of the improvements, or corruptions, of a thousand years, and their conformity with the faith and practice of the fifth century would equally disappoint the prejudices of a Papist or a Protestant. It was the first care of the ministers of Rome to intercept all correspondence with the Nestorian patriarch, and several of his bishops expired in the prisons of the Holy Office. The flock, without a shepherd, was assaulted by the power of the Portuguese, the arts of the Jesuits, and the zeal of Alexis de Menezes, Archbishop of Goa, in his personal visitation of the coast of Malabar. The synod of Diamper, at which he presided, consummated the pious work of the reunion, and rigorously imposed the doctrine and discipline of the Roman Church, without forgetting oricular confession the strongest engine of ecclesiastical torture. The memory of Theodore and Nestorius was condemned, and Malabar was reduced under the dominion of the Pope, of the primate, and of the Jesuits, who invaded the Sea of Angamala or Crangano. Sixty years of servitude and hypocrisy were patiently endured, but as soon as the Portuguese Empire was shaken by the courage and industry of the Dutch, the Nestorians asserted with vigor and effect the religion of their fathers. The Jesuits were incapable of defending the power which they had abused, the arms of forty thousand Christians were pointed against their falling tyrants, and the Indian Archdeacon assumed the character of bishop till a fresh supply of Episcopal gifts and Syriac missionaries could be obtained from the Patriarch of Babylon. Since the expulsion of the Portuguese, the Nestorian creed is freely professed on the coast of Malabar. The trading companies of Holland and England are the friends of toleration, but if oppression be less mortifying than contempt, the Christians of St. Thomas have reason to complain of the cold and silent indifference of their brethren of Europe. Two. The history of the Monophysites is less copious and interesting than that of the Nestorians. Under the reigns of Zeno and Anastasius, their artful leaders surprised the ear of the Prince, usurped the thrones of the East, and crushed on its native soil the School of the Syrians. The rule of the Monophysite faith was defined with exquisite discretion by Severus, Patriarch of Antioch. He condemned in the style of the Hennotigan the adverse heresies of Nestorius, and Utikis maintained against the latter the reality of the body of Christ, and constrained the Greeks to allow that he was a liar who spoke truth. But the approximation of ideas could not abate the vehemence of passion. Each party was the more astonished that their blind antagonist could dispute on so trifling a difference. The tyrant of Syria enforced the belief of his creed, and his reign was polluted with the blood of three hundred and fifty monks, who were slain, not perhaps without provocation or resistance, under the walls of Apamea. The successor of Anastasius replanted the orthodox standard in the East. Severus fled into Egypt, and his friend, the eloquent Zenias, who had escaped from the Nestorians of Persia, was suffocated in his exile by the Melchites of Paphlegonia. Fifty-four bishops were swept from their thrones, eight hundred ecclesiastics were cast into prison, and notwithstanding the ambiguous favour of Theodora, the Oriental flocks deprived of their shepherds must insensibly have been either famished or poisoned. In this spiritual distress the expiring faction was revived and united and perpetuated by the labours of a monk, and the name of James Baradayus has been preserved in the appellation of Jacobites, a familiar sound which may startle the ear of an English reader. From the holy confessors in their prison of Constantinople he received the powers of Bishop of Edessa and Apostle of the East, and the ordination of four school thousand bishops, priests and deacons is derived from the same inexhaustible source. The speed of the zealous missionary was promoted by the flitest dromedaries of a devout chief of the Arabs, the doctrine and discipline of the Jacobites was secretly established in the dominions of Justinian, and each Jacobite was compelled to violate the laws and to hate the Roman legislator. The successors of Severus, while they lurked in convents or villages, while they sheltered their proscribed heads in the caverns of Hermits or the tents of the Saracens, still asserted as they now assert their indefesible right to the title, the rank and the prerogatives of Patriarch of Antioch. Under the milder yoke of the Infidels they reside about a league from Merdyn, in the pleasant monastery of Zafaran, which they have embellished with cells, aqueducts and plantations. The secondary, though honourable, place is filled by the Mafrian, who in his station at Mosul itself defies the Nestorian Catholic with whom he contests the primacy of the East. Under the Patriarch and the Mafrian, one hundred and fifty archbishops and bishops have been counted in the different ages of the Jacobite Church, but the order of the hierarchy is relaxed or dissolved, and the greater part of their dioceses is confined to the neighbourhood of the Euphrates and the Tigris. The cities of Aleppo and Amida, which are often visited by the Patriarch, contain some wealthy merchants and industrious mechanics, but the multitude derive their scanty sustenance from their daily labour, and poverty, as well as superstition, may impose their excessive fasts, five annual lents, during which both the clergy and laity abstain not only from flesh or eggs, but even from the taste of wine, of oil, and of fish. Their present numbers are esteemed from fifty to four-score thousand souls, the remnant of a populous church, which was gradually decreased under the impression of twelve centuries. Yet in that long period some strangers of merit have been converted to the Monophysite faith, and a Jew was the father of a bullpharagious, primate of the East, so truly eminent both in his life and death. In his life he was an elegant writer of the Syriac and Arabic tongues, a poet, physician and historian, a subtle philosopher, and a moderate divine. In his death his funeral was attended by his rival, the Nestorian Patriarch, with a train of Greeks and Armenians who forgot their disputes and mingle their tears over the grave of an enemy. The sect which was honoured by the virtues of a bullpharagious appears, however, to sink below the level of their Nestorian brethren. The superstition of the Jacobites is more abject, their fasts more rigid, their intestine divisions are more numerous, and their doctors, as far as I can measure the degrees of nonsense, are more remote from the precincts of reason. Something may possibly be allowed for the rigor of the Monophysite theology, much more for the superior influence of the monastic order. In Syria, in Egypt, in Ethiopia, the Jacobite monks have ever been distinguished by the austerity of their penance and the absurdity of their legends. Alive or dead they are worshipped as the favourites of the deity, the crosier of bishop and patriarch is reserved for their venerable hands, and they assume the government of men while they are yet reeking with the habits and prejudices of the cloister. Three. In the style of the Oriental Christians the monothelites of every age are described under the appellation of Maronites, a name which has been insensibly transferred from a hermit to a monastery, from a monastery to a nation. Maron, a saint or savage of the fifth century, displayed his religious madness in Syria. The rival cities of Apamia and Emessa disputed his relics, a stately church was erected on his tomb, and six hundred of his disciples united their solitary cells on the banks of the Orontes. In the controversies of the Incarnation they nicely threaded the orthodox line between the sects of Nestorians and Utikis, but the unfortunate question of one will or operation in the two natures of Christ was generated by their curious leisure. Their proselyte, the Emperor Heraclius, was rejected as a Maronite from the walls of Emessa. He found a refuge in the monastery of his brethren, and their theological lessons were repaid with the gift of a spacious and wealthy domain. The name and doctrine of this venerable school were propagated among the Greeks and Syrians, and their zeal is expressed by Macarius, patriarch of Antioch, who declared before the Synod of Constantinople that sooner than subscribe the two wills of Christ he would submit to be hewn piecemeal and cast into the sea. A similar or less cruel mode of persecution soon converted the unresisting subjects of the plain, while the glorious title of Madaeites or Rebels was bravely maintained by the hardy natives of Mount Lebanus. John Maron, one of the most learned and popular of the monks, assumed the character of patriarch of Antioch. His nephew Abraham at the head of the Maronites defended their civil and religious freedom against the tyrants of the east. The son of the orthodox Constantine pursued with pious hatred a people of soldiers who might have stood the bulwark of his empire against the common foes of Christ and of Rome. An army of Greeks invaded Syria, the monastery of St. Maron was destroyed with fire, the bravest chieftains were betrayed and murdered, and twelve thousand of their followers were transplanted to the distant frontiers of Armenia and Thrace. Yet the humble nation of the Maronites had survived the Empire of Constantinople and they still enjoy under their Turkish masters a free religion and a mitigated servitude. Their domestic governors are chosen among the ancient nobility. The patriarch in his monastery of Canobin still fancies himself on the throne of Antioch, nine bishops compose his synod, and one hundred and fifty priests who retain the liberty of marriage are entrusted with care of one hundred thousand souls. Their country extends from the ridge of Mount Ljubanes to the shores of Tripoli and the gradual descent affords in a narrow space each variety of soil and climate from the holy cedars erect under the weight of snow to the vine, the mulberry and the olive trees of the fruitful valley. In the twelfth century the Maronites obduring the monothelite era were reconciled to the Latin churches of Antioch and Rome, and the same alliance has been frequently renewed by the ambition of the popes and the distress of the Syrians. But it may reasonably be questioned whether their union has ever been perfect or sincere, and the learned Maronites of the College of Rome have vainly labored to absolve their ancestors from the guilt of heresy and schism. Four. Since the age of Constantine the Armenians had signalized their attachment to the religion and the empire of the Christians. The disorders of their country and their ignorance of the Greek tongue prevented their clergy from assisting at the Synod of Calcedon, and they floated eighty-four years in a state of indifference or suspense till their vacant faith was finally occupied by the missionaries of Julian of Halicarnassus, who in Egypt, their common exile, had been vanquished by the arguments or the influence of his rival Severus, the monophysite patriarch of Antioch. The Armenians alone are the pure disciples of Utikis, an unfortunate parent who has been renounced by the greater part of his spiritual progeny. They alone persevere in the opinion that the manhood of Christ was created, or existed without creation, of a divine and incorruptible substance. Their adversaries reproached them with the adoration of a phantom, and they retort the accusation by deriding or execrating the blasphemy of the Jacobites, who impute to the Godhead the vile infirmities of the flesh even the natural effects of nutrition and digestion. The religion of Armenia could not derive much glory from the learning or the power of its inhabitants. The royalty expired with the origin of their schism, and their Christian kings, who arose and fell in the thirteenth century on the confines of Cilicia, were the clients of the Latins and the vassals of the Turkish Sultan of Iconium. The helpless nation has seldom been permitted to enjoy the tranquility of servitude. From the earliest period to the present hour Armenia has been the theatre of perpetual war. The lands between Taurus and Erivan were dispeopled by the cruel policy of the Sophis, and myriads of Christian families were transplanted to perish or to propagate in the distant provinces of Persia. Under the rod of oppression the zeal of the Armenians is fervent and intrepid. They have often preferred the crown of martyrdom to the white turban of Muhammad, they devoutly hate the error and idolatry of the Greeks, and their transient union with the Latins is not less devoid of truth than the thousand bishops whom their patriarch offered at the feet of the Roman Pontiff. The Catholic or patriarch of the Armenians resides in the monastery of Ekmiassin, three leagues from Erivan. Forty-seven archbishops, each of whom may claim the obedience of four or five suffragans, are consecrated by his hand, but the far greater part are only titular prelates, who dignify with their presence and service the simplicity of his court. As soon as they have performed the liturgy they cultivate the garden, and our bishops will hear with surprise that the austerity of their life increases in just proportion to the elevation of their rank. In the foreschool thousand towns or villages of his spiritual empire the patriarch receives a small and voluntary tax from each person above the age of fifteen, but the annual amount of six hundred thousand crowns is insufficient to supply the incessant demands of charity and tribute. Since the beginning of the last century the Armenians have obtained a large and lucrative share of the commerce of the east. In their return from Europe the caravan usually halts in the neighbourhood of Erivan, the altars are enriched with the fruits of their patient industry, and the faith of Utikis is preached in their recent congregations of Barbary and Poland. Five. In the rest of the Roman Empire the despotism of the prince might eradicate or silence the sectaries of an obnoxious creed, but the stubborn temper of the Egyptians maintained their opposition to the Synod of Calcedon, and the policy of Justinian condescended to expect and to seize the opportunity of discord. The Monophysite Church of Alexandria was torn by the disputes of the corruptibles and incorruptibles, and on the death of the patriarch the two factions upheld their respective candidates. Guyane was the disciple of Julian, Theodosius had been the pupil of Severus. The claims of the former were supported by the consent of the monks and senators, the city and the province. The latter depended on the priority of his ordination, the favour of the Empress Theodora, and the arms of the eunuch Nasis, which might have been used in more honourable warfare. The exile of the popular candidate to Carthage and Sardinia inflamed the ferment of Alexandria, and after a schism of one hundred and seventy years the Guyonites still revered the memory and doctrine of their founder. The strength of numbers and of discipline was tried in a desperate and bloody conflict. The streets were filled with the dead bodies of citizens and soldiers. The pious women ascending the roofs of their houses showered down every sharp or ponderous utensil on the heads of their enemy, and the final victory of Nasis was owing to the flames with which he wasted the third capital of the Roman world. But the lieutenant of Justinian had not conquered in the cause of a heretic. Theodosius himself was speedily though gently removed, and Paul of Tarnus, an orthodox monk, was raised to the throne of Athanasius. The powers of government were strained in his support. He might appoint or displace the dukes and tribunes of Egypt. The allowance of bread which Diocletian had granted was suppressed, the churches were shut, and a nation of schismatics was deprived at once of their spiritual and carnal food. In his turn the tyrant was excommunicated by the zeal and revenge of the people, and none except his servile Melchites would salute him as a man, a Christian, or a bishop. Yet such is the blindness of ambition, that when Paul was expelled on a charge of murder he solicited with a bribe of seven hundred pounds of gold his restoration to the same station of hatred and ignominy. His successor, Apollinaris, entered the hostile city in military array alike qualified for prayer or for battle. His troops under arms were distributed through the streets. The gates of the cathedral were guarded and a chosen band was stationed in the choir to defend the person of their chief. He stood erect on his throne, and throwing aside the upper garment of a warrior suddenly appeared before the eyes of the multitude in the robes of the Patriarch of Alexandria. Astonishment held them mute. But no sooner had Apollinaris begun to read the tome of St. Leo than a volley of curses and invectives and stones assaulted the odious minister of the Emperor and the Synod. A charge was instantly sounded by the successor of the apostles, the soldiers waded to their knees in blood, and two hundred thousand Christians are said to have fallen by the sword, an incredible account, even if it be extended from the slaughter of a day to the eighteen years of the reign of Apollinaris. Two succeeding Patriarchs, Eulogius and John, laboured in the conversion of heretics, with arms and arguments more worthy of their evangelical profession. The theological knowledge of Eulogius was displayed in many a volume which magnified the errors of Uticaeus and Severus, and attempted to reconcile the ambiguous language of St. Cyril with the orthodox creed of Pope Leo and the Fathers of Calcedon. The bounteous arms of John the elemosenary were dictated by superstition or benevolence or policy. Seven thousand five hundred poor were maintained at his expense. On his accession he found eight thousand pounds of gold in the treasury of the church. He collected ten thousand from the liberality of the faithful, yet the primate could boast in his testament that he left behind him no more than the third part of the smallest of the silver coins. The churches of Alexandria were delivered to the Catholics. The religion of the monophysites was prescribed in Egypt, and a law was revived which excluded the natives from the honors and emoluments of the state. End of Chapter 47 Part 5. Chapter 47 Part 6 of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 4. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Philippa Jevons A more important conquest still remained of the patriarch, the oracle, and leader of the Egyptian church. Theodosius had resisted the threats and promises of Justinian with the spirit of an apostle or an enthusiast. Such replied the patriarch with the offers of the tempter when he showed the kingdoms of the earth. But my soul is far dearer to me than life or dominion. The churches are in the hands of a prince who can kill the body, but my conscience is my own, and in exile, poverty, or chains I will steadfastly adhere to the faith of my holy predecessors, Athanasius, Cyril, and Diascorus. Anathema to the tome of Leo and the Synod of Calcedon. Anathema to all who embrace their creed. Anathema to them now and for evermore. Naked came I out of my mother's womb. Naked shall I descend into the grave. Let those who love God follow me and seek their salvation. After comforting his brethren he embarked for Constantinople, and sustained in six successive interviews the almost irresistible weight of the royal presence. His opinions were favourably entertained in the palace and the city. The influence of Theodora assured him a safe conduct and honourable dismission, and he ended his days, though not on the throne, yet in the bosom of his native country. On the news of his death a Polinaris indecently feasted the nobles and the clergy, but his joy was checked by the intelligence of a new election, and while he enjoyed the wealth of Alexandria his rivals reigned in the monasteries of Thebaes, and were maintained by the voluntary oblations of the people. A perpetual succession of patriarchs arose from the ashes of Theodosius, and the monophysite churches of Syria and Egypt were united by the name of Jacobites and the communion of the faith. But the same faith which has been confined to a narrow sect of the Syrians, was diffused over the mass of the Egyptian or Coptic nation, who almost unanimously rejected the decrees of the Synod of Calcedon. A thousand years were now elapsed since Egypt had ceased to be a kingdom, since the conquerors of Asia and Europe had trampled on the ready necks of a people whose ancient wisdom and power ascended beyond the records of history. The conflict of zeal and persecution rekindled some sparks of their national spirit. They abdued with a foreign heresy, the manners and language of the Greeks. Every Melchite in their eyes was a stranger, every Jacobite a citizen. The alliance of marriage, the offices of humanity, were condemned as a deadly sin. The natives renounced all allegiance to the emperor, and his orders at a distance from Alexandria were obeyed only under the pressure of military force. A generous effort might have redeemed the religion and liberty of Egypt, and her six hundred monasteries might have poured forth their myriads of holy warriors, for whom death should have no terrors since life had no comfort or delight. But experience has proved the distinction of active and passive courage. The fanatic who endures without a groan the torture of the rack or the stake would tremble and fly before the face of an armed enemy. The piezolanumous temper of the Egyptians could only hope for a change of masters. The arms of costaries depopulated the land, yet under his reign the Jacobites enjoyed a short and precarious respite. The victory of Heraclius renewed and aggravated the persecution, and the patriarch again escaped from Alexandria to the desert. In his flight Benjamin was encouraged by a voice which bad him expect at the end of ten years the aid of a foreign nation marked like the Egyptians themselves with the ancient rite of circumcision. The character of these deliverers and the nature of the deliverance will be hereafter explained, and I shall step over the interval of eleven centuries to observe the present misery of the Jacobites of Egypt. The populous city of Cairo affords a residence, or rather a shelter, for their indigent patriarch and a remnant of ten bishops. Fourty monasteries have survived the inroads of the Arabs, and the progress of servitude and apostasy has reduced the Coptic nation to the despicable number of twenty-five or thirty thousand families, a race of illiterate beggars whose only consolation is derived from the superior wretchedness of the Greek patriarch and his diminutive congregation. Six. The Coptic patriarch, a rebel to the Caesars, or a slave to the Caliphs, still gloried in the filial obedience of the kings of Nubia and Ethiopia. He repaid their homage by magnifying their greatness, and it was boldly asserted that they could bring into the field a hundred thousand horse with an equal number of camels, that their hand could pour out or restrain the waters of the Nile, and the peace and plenty of Egypt was obtained even in this world by the intercession of the patriarch. In exile at Constantinople Theodosius recommended to his patroness the conversion of the black nations of Nubia from the tropics cancer to the confines of Abyssinia. Her design was suspected and emulated by the more orthodox emperor. The rival missionaries, a Melchite and a Jacobite, embarked at the same time, but the empress, from motive of love or fear, was more effectually obeyed, and the Catholic priest was detained by the president of Thebaes, while the king of Nubia and his court were hastily baptized in the faith of Diascorus. The tardy envoy of Justinian was received and dismissed with honor, but when he accused the heresy and treason of the Egyptians, the negro convert was instructed to reply that he would never abandon his brethren, the true believers, to the persecuting ministers of the Synod of Calcedon. During several ages the bishops of Nubia were named and consecrated by the Jacobite patriarch of Alexandria, as late as the 12th century Christianity prevailed, and some rites, some ruins, are still visible in the savage towns of Sena and Dongola. But the Nubians at length executed their threats of returning to the worship of idols. The climate required the indulgence of polygamy, and they have finally preferred the triumph of the Quran to the abasement of the cross. A metaphysical religion may appear too refined for the capacity of the negro race, yet a black or a parrot might be taught to repeat the words of the Calcedonian or Monophysite creed. Christianity was more deeply rooted in the Abyssinian empire, and though the correspondence has been sometimes interrupted above 70 or 100 years, the Mother Church of Alexandria retains her colony in a state of perpetual pupillage. Seven bishops once composed the Ethiopics in it, had their number amounted to ten they might have elected an independent primate, and one of their kings was ambitious of promoting his brother to the ecclesiastical throne. But the event was foreseen, the increase was denied. The Episcopal office has been gradually confined to the Abuna, the head and author of the Abasinian priesthood. The patriarch supplies each vacancy with an Egyptian monk, and the character of a stranger appears more venerable in the eyes of the people, less dangerous in those of the monarch. In the sixth century when the schism of Egypt was confirmed, the rival chiefs with their patrons, Justinian and Theodora, strove to outstrip each other in the conquest of a remote and independent province. The industry of the empress was again victorious, and the pious Theodora has established in that sequestered church the faith and discipline of the Jacobites. Encompassed on all sides by the enemies of their religion, the Ethiopians slept near a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they were forgotten. They were awakened by the Portuguese, who, turning the southern promontory of Africa, appeared in India and the Red Sea, as if they had descended through the air from a distant planet. In the first moments of their interview the subjects of Rome and Alexandria observed the resemblance rather than the difference of their faith, and each nation expected the most important benefits from an alliance with their Christian brethren. In their lonely situation the Ethiopians had almost relapsed into the savage life. Their vessels, which had traded to Ceylon, scarcely presumed to navigate the rivers of Africa. The ruins of Aksume were deserted, the nation was scattered in villages, and the emperor, a pompous name, was content both in peace and war with the immovable residents of a camp. Conscious of their own indigence the Abyssinians had formed the rational project of importing the arts and ingenuity of Europe, and their ambassadors at Rome and Lisbon were instructed to solicit a colony of smiths, carpenters, tylers, masons, printers, surgeons, and physicians for the use of their country. But the public danger soon called for the instant and effectual aid of arms and soldiers to defend an unwarlike people from the barbarians who ravaged the inland country and the Turks and Arabs who advanced from the seacoast in more formidable array. Ethiopia was saved by 450 Portuguese who displayed in the field the native valour of Europeans and the artificial power of the musket and canon. In a moment of terror the emperor had promised to reconcile himself and his subjects to the Catholic faith. A Latin patriarch represented the supremacy of the pope. The empire enlarged in a tenfold proportion was supposed to contain more gold than the minds of America, and the wildest hopes of avarice and zeal were built on the willing submission of the Christians of Africa. But the vows which pain had extorted were for sworn on the return of health. The Abyssinians still adhered with unshaken constancy to the monophysite faith. Their languid belief was inflamed by the exercise of dispute. They branded the Latins with the names of Arians and Nestorians and imputed the adoration of four gods to those who separated the two natures of Christ. Fremona, a place of worship, or rather of exile, was assigned to the Jesuit missionaries. Their skill in the liberal and mechanic arts, their theological learning, and the decency of their manners inspired a barren esteem. But they were not endowed with the gift of miracles, and they vainly solicited a reinforcement of European troops. The patience and dexterity of forty years at length obtained a more favorable audience, and two emperors of Abyssinia were persuaded that Rome could ensure the temporal and everlasting happiness of her votaries. The first of these royal converts lost his crown and his life, and the rebel army was sanctified by the Abuna who hurled an anathema at the apostate and absolved his subjects from their oath of fidelity. The fate of Zad and Gel was revenged by the courage and fortune of Susnius, who ascended the throne under the name of Segwed, and more vigorously prosecuted the pious enterprise of his kinsmen. After the amusement of some unequal combats between the Jesuits and his illiterate priests, the emperor declared himself a proselyte to the Synod of Calcedon, presuming that his clergy and people would embrace without delay the religion of their prince. The liberty of choice was succeeded by a law which imposed under pain of death the belief of the two natures of Christ. The Abyssinians were enjoined to work and to play on the Sabbath, and Segwed, in the face of Europe and Africa, renounced his connection with the Alexandrian Church. A Jesuit, Alfonso Mendez, the Catholic Patriarch of Ethiopia, accepted in the name of Urban VIII the homage and abjuration of the penitent. I confess, said the emperor on his knees, I confess that the Pope is the vicar of Christ, the successor of St. Peter, and the sovereign of the world. To him I swear true obedience, and at his feet I offer my person and kingdom. A similar oath was repeated by his son, his brother, the clergy, the nobles, and even the ladies of the court. The Latin Patriarch was invested with honors and wealth, and his missionaries erected their churches or citadels in the most convenient stations of the empire. The Jesuits themselves deplore the fatal indiscretion of their chief, who forgot the mildness of the gospel and the policy of his order, to introduce with hasty violence the liturgy of Rome and the inquisition of Portugal. He condemned the ancient practice of circumcision, which health rather than superstition had first invented in the climate of Ethiopia. A new baptism, a new ordination, was inflicted on the natives, and they trembled with horror when the most holy of the dead were torn from their graves, when the most illustrious of the living were excommunicated by a foreign priest. In the defence of their religion and liberty the Abyssinians rose in arms with desperate but unsuccessful zeal. Five rebellions were extinguished in the blood of the insurgents. Two Abunas were slain in battle, whole legions were slaughtered in the field, or suffocated in their caverns, and neither merit nor rank nor sex could save from an ignominious death the enemies of Rome. But the victorious monarch was finally subdued by the constancy of the nation, of his mother, of his son, and of his most faithful friends. Seguerd listened to the voice of pity, of reason, perhaps of fear, and his edict of liberty of conscience instantly revealed the tyranny and weakness of the Jesuits. On the death of his father Basilides expelled the Latin Patriarch and restored to the wishes of the nation the faith and the discipline of Egypt. The monophysite churches resounded with a song of triumph that the sheep of Ethiopia were now delivered from the hyenas of the west, and the gates of that solitary realm were forever shut against the arts, the science, and the fanaticism of Europe. End of chapter 47 part 6