Argument.— 1. The title 'Ecumenical' assumed by the Patriarch of Constantinople. — 2. Which councils are called ecumenical. — 3. The Pope rejects this title when offered to him. — 4. The meaning of this word. — 5. Saint Gregory's zeal in repudiating this title is defended. — 6. By what degrees the ambition of the Patriarchs of Constantinople ascended. — 7. How great it was in John. — 8. Whether he was made patriarch from a monk. — 9. The letters of Saint Gregory concerning that controversy are examined: on the first written to Maurice, and to the Empress. — 10. He writes to the patriarchs. — 11. What Eulogius of Alexandria answered. — 12. And Anastasius of Antioch. — 13. On the interpolated letters of Saint Ignatius. — 14. The substance of the letter written to John of Constantinople. — 15. Vain were the efforts of Saint...
...the Pope's efforts upon John and upon his successor. — 16. The end of this controversy. — 17. Heretics who cast Saint Gregory's modesty in the face of his successors are refuted. (Years 594 and 595.) 1. We take the beginning of this book from the controversy that flared up between Gregory and John, Patriarch of Constantinople, over the proud title of ecumenical patriarch assumed by John, and—Maurice favouring this unjust usurpation, and the other patriarchs dissembling the injury done to them by this odious appellation—asserted and preserved.
Although the insolence of this word had, long before Gregory's pontificate, stirred up disturbances and most grave offence, nevertheless the most prudent Pontiff, who was accustomed to undertake nothing except with mature counsel, did not seriously think of removing it out of the way before this year. 2. As regards the very title of 'ecumenical,' it is agreed that the general councils long before attributed it to themselves. Yet P. Gussanvillaeus relates (in his notes on ep. 32, Book IV) that before the Synod of Chalcedon no other council was endowed with this title, and that the legates of Saint Leo the Pope were the authors of this name. But whoever attentively reads the Council of Ephesus will admit that this escaped him while he was incautious and occupied with other things: for indeed, in part II, in the third session, there occurs:
'A copy of the Letter,' etc., 'the holy and great and ecumenical synod.' In the fourth session, in the letter of Cyril and Memnon to the synod: 'Against the presidents of this ecumenical synod.' In the report of the synod: 'To the most pious and most Christian Theodosius,' etc., 'the sacred ecumenical synod.' In the report concerning the subscription: 'To the most pious,' etc., 'the holy and ecumenical synod.' Ludovicus Maimbourg, in his History of the Pontificate of Saint Gregory the Great, Book II, nonetheless followed Gussanvillaeus, who thus gravely erred. 3. Saint Gregory testifies that the ecumenical title was offered to the Roman Pontiff, namely Saint Leo the Great, for the honour of blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, through the venerable Synod of Chalcedon;
'but none of them,' he says, 'ever assumed this name of singularity, nor consented to use it' (Book V, ep. 20). Indeed, in the Council of Chalcedon several petitions offered to the Pope were read, in which he is honoured with this honorific term. And in the sixth session Paschasinus, a bishop who was one of Saint Leo's legates, in a speech delivered before the holy synod, called the supreme pontiff 'ecumenical'; and since the Fathers of the synod did not object to this, they seemed to approve and ratify it, especially since these acts were recorded in the registers of the synod. 4. As regards the meaning of this word, 'ecumenical' is the same as 'universal';
and a council is called ecumenical which is convoked and gathered from all the inhabitable parts of the world to which we believe the Christian religion has reached. And although the bishops or their legates from all the Christian world may perhaps not have come together for these synods, sometimes a synod which was not universal in its convocation and assembly became general and ecumenical, namely by the subsequent consent of all the orthodox. If from this meaning we should determine what an ecumenical bishop or patriarch is, it will at once become manifest what a monster in the Christian religion a bishop of this kind would be.
For no one can properly become a universal bishop unless all the other bishops are excluded; for indeed, if some one man were bishop of the whole Christian world, what place would be left for any other? But this is expressly opposed to Sacred Scripture, which teaches us not obscurely that the Holy Spirit has set not one, but many bishops to rule the Church of God (Acts 20). There is indeed one flock of Christ, but there are many shepherds of this flock, who each undertook one portion of this flock to be fed and ruled. 5. I do not deny that in some sense not deviating from the rule of faith, the Roman Pontiffs could be called ecumenical, on account of the singular jurisdiction which they hold in the whole Church;
to which even individual bishops are subject. But since they had chosen modestly to abstain from that title, with what face did the bishops of Constantinople not fear to claim the same for themselves? As if indeed they could exercise any episcopal authority beyond the bounds of their own patriarchate, or as if the patriarchate of Constantinople could, without absurdity, be understood and taken as embracing the whole Christian world! I therefore cannot sufficiently marvel that certain writers, though professing the orthodox faith, have carped at, or even openly condemned, Gregory the Great's zeal in opposing this proud title, as though he had contended more sharply than was fitting over a mere name and not over a matter of grave importance.
To them indeed I will readily grant that some harmless senses could have been attached and accommodated to this word and appellation. But since it is liable to far more that are harmful and alien to the faith, and these obvious, while on the contrary those that are sound seem fetched from elsewhere, who but rashly would dare to disapprove so great a Pontiff for being anxious to root out a novel and insolent word, wholly foreign to episcopal modesty? Our Aristarchuses say that 'ecumenical' has the same meaning as 'general,' whose title is bestowed on so many commanders, whether military, or civil and political, or even ecclesiastical and monastic. But the meaning of 'ecumenical' extends far more widely.
Now those ministers or prefects adduced as examples are called 'general' so as to be distinguished from the 'particular' ones, whose authority is lesser. But in this sense the Patriarchs of Constantinople could by no means be called general. For I ask, who were those particular patriarchs from whom they ought to have been distinguished by this word? Moreover, since it was doubtful in what sense they boasted themselves to be ecumenical, it was to be feared that their ambition, well enough known, would assume the one that extended more widely, that is, the worst and heretical sense;
who now in his senses would blame the holy man, because, while he himself so cultivated humility in the most excellent and supreme dignity of the Church, he strove to provoke and recall the proud bishops to that virtue which Christ chiefly willed us to learn from Himself? 6. Here it is worth while to observe by what degrees the bishop of Constantinople had arrived at the summit of so great a dignity, so as to be held inferior to none other than the Roman Pontiff. First, then, being subject to the bishop of Heraclea, he afterwards exercised metropolitan and exarchic right over the bishop of Heraclea and very many others. Then he was numbered among the ancient patriarchs;
and not long after, supported by the power of the emperors, and with the bishops and even the patriarchs themselves compelled to consent—for they needed his help and favour with the Augusti in various affairs of their churches—he obtained this in the second general Council of Constantinople, and in that of Chalcedon: that he should sit in the second place after the Roman Pontiff; though Saint Leo resisted, who rejected the canon promulgated on this matter at Chalcedon as supposititious and added by fraud when the council was already concluded. Nor could the ambition of this prelate stand still and rest at this degree, flattering and exalting itself beyond measure over its throne established in the royal city which was called New Rome:
for they either of their own accord assumed the title of ecumenical, or received it offered by flatterers with both hands and retained it—John III, Epiphanius, Mennas (who was often called ecumenical patriarch by the synod held at Constantinople under him), and thereafter the other bishops of the same city—being about, perhaps, to claim for themselves universal prefecture over the whole Christian world and over the Roman Church itself, had not the Roman Pontiffs withstood their pride, which was ever ascending. 7.
But of all the bishops of Constantinople, none seemed to hunt after the appellation of ecumenical with so great a greed as John surnamed the Faster, who for this reason—though another was pretended—held a synod of the whole East at Constantinople, as not a few writers teach us, and especially Saint Gregory. 'As soon as my predecessor' (Pelagius), he says, 'recognized this, he annulled the acts of that synod by letters directed by the authority of Saint Peter the apostle. Copies of these letters, namely, I have taken care to send to your Holiness.'
'But the deacon who, according to custom, attended the footsteps of the most pious lords for the sake of making the responses of the Church, he forbade to celebrate the solemnities of Mass together with our aforesaid fellow-priest' (Book V, ep. 43). Thus Gregory, who, having been given as successor together with Pelagius, asked John through his legate Sabinian to abstain from this title. But having gained nothing by these entreaties, he attempted other remedies. 8. Before we speak of the letters written by the holy Pontiff on this matter, we must inquire who this John the Faster was. The common opinion is that he was a monk, and it rests both on the testimony of John the Deacon (Book III, ch...
...51), and on the inscription of a certain sermon on penance which is attributed to him, and which in its title bears the name of John, monk, patriarch of Constantinople, surnamed the Faster. It is added that he arranged in a better order the Liturgy which is believed to be that of Chrysostom, and that in it he designated himself by the name of 'sacred monk' or 'priest-monk.' But that discourse in which this word is read is absent from the Liturgy of Saint Chrysostom which the most learned Jacobus Goar presents. Nor is it established that this Liturgy was arranged by the work of John the Faster. Moreover, there were very many bishops of Constantinople who, having first embraced the monastic life, could be called 'sacred monks.'
According to the Greek Menaea, John the Faster was born at Constantinople, where he first practised the statuary (or better, the sculptor's) art. But on account of his outstanding virtues he was co-opted into the clergy by the patriarch of this city and made a deacon. At length, upon the death of Eutychius, he is compelled against his will to take up the patriarchal dignity, which he adorned with wondrous abstinence, generous almsgiving, and other pious works. Whether the sanctity of his life was sincere, as the Greeks contend, or feigned, as most Latins hold—since humility, the foundation of all virtues, seems to have been lacking in him—
this sanctity, I say, or appearance of sanctity, contributed not a little to conciliating to him the Emperor Maurice, whom Saint Gregory found most hostile in that whole controversy over the ecumenical title. 9. In the first letter which he wrote on this subject, he complained to Maurice Augustus of John's pride, by which the peace among the bishops had been disturbed and shaken, and by which, he says, the swords of the barbarians were being whetted against the commonwealth. He depicts him wondrously in these words: 'Our bones are worn away with fastings, and we swell in mind. Our body is covered with despised garments, and in the elation of our heart we surpass the purple. We lie in ashes, and we look down upon lofty things.'
'Teachers of the humble, leaders of pride, with a sheep's face we hide wolves' teeth.' And speaking much more plainly of the same man below: 'He therefore,' he says, 'is rather to be bent by the command of the most pious lords, who scorns to render obedience to the canonical precepts. He is to be restrained who does injury to the holy universal Church, who swells in heart, who desires to rejoice in a name of singularity, who by a private title sets himself even above the honour of your empire' (Book V, ep. 20). He sets against John's arrogance the modesty of the prince of the apostles, who, although he had received from Christ the care of the whole Church, nevertheless never willed to be called the universal apostle;
to whose example the Roman Pontiffs, heirs of that dignity, adhered. Afterwards he exclaims: 'O the times! O the manners! Behold, all things in the parts of Europe are handed over to the right of the barbarians; the cities are destroyed, the fortresses overthrown, the provinces depopulated; no cultivator inhabits the land; worshippers of idols rage and lord it daily unto the slaughter of the faithful; and yet priests, who ought to lie weeping on the pavement and in ashes, seek for themselves names of vanity, and glory in new and profane titles.' At last he batters this title with many weighty reasons, drawn especially from the depraved sense underlying it. The chief arguments with which he presses John, both in this letter and in others, are these:
the new name of ecumenical is repugnant to Christian humility, which ought to shine more in bishops; it disturbs charity, rends unity, despoils the other bishops of their dignity, so as to make one only a bishop, upon whose fall the whole Church falls. And since we read that very many bishops of Constantinople have lapsed into heresy, it would follow that the Church would more often have fallen away from the true faith. Finally, the Roman Pontiff rejected this title offered to him of its own accord. The emperor had exhorted the Pope to deal peaceably with John; to which he replied: 'Let the author of the scandal return to a right life, and all the quarrels of the priests will cease. For I am the servant of all the priests, in so far as they live in a priestly manner:'
'for as to him who against the almighty Lord, through the swelling of vain glory, and against the statutes of the Fathers, raises up his neck, I trust in the almighty Lord that he will not bend mine to himself even with swords.' Almost the same is the argument of the letter written to Constantina Augusta (ibid., ep. 21). Yet he rises up more vehemently against John, whose immense pride, he says, announces the near times of Antichrist; for he indeed imitates that one who, spurning the legions of angels in their common joy, tried to break forth to the summit of singularity, saying: 'Above the stars of heaven will I exalt my throne' (Isaiah 14:13). 10.
Since the honour of all the bishops, but especially of the patriarchs, was being assailed by this usurpation, Saint Gregory wrote a common letter to Eulogius of Alexandria and to Anastasius, Patriarch of Antioch (ibid., ep. 43), to which he attached all the documents of this dispute, and copies of the letters written to John both by Pelagius II and by himself; that they might understand that in this controversy the highest interest of the episcopate, and indeed of the whole Church, was at stake. Then he exhorts them never in their letters to name anyone universal bishop, lest they detract from what is due to themselves when they offer to another an honour that is not due.
But because the love of peace and unity might intervene to keep them from resisting John, he teaches by what principle peace is to be fostered, from the Apostle who says: 'If it be possible, as much as in you lies, having peace with all men' (Romans 12:18). 'For he saw,' he says, 'that the good cannot have peace with the wicked; and therefore, as you know, he prefaced it, if it be possible.... That peace indeed we truly hold when we pursue the faults of the proud with charity and justice together pressing on, when we love them and hold their vices in hatred.' With this mind he says that war must be declared against John's pride, and that for the defence of the honour of their churches, cast down by this pride, they must contend:
'Stand,' he says, 'strong; stand secure. Presume never either to give or to receive writings with the falsity of the universal name.... But if any adversities should follow, persevering with one mind, we ought, even by dying, to show that in condemning the name of generality, we love nothing of our own in particular.' 11. Gregory long awaited Eulogius' reply, and expostulated amicably with him about so great a delay in another letter, where he recalls that the blessed evangelist Mark was sent to Alexandria by Saint Peter the apostle, his master (Book VI, ep. 60), whence he infers that the Church of Alexandria is more closely bound to the Roman. Yet afterwards Eulogius replied to the Pope:
that, as he had been ordered, in writing to John he had abstained from the proud terms which had sprung from the root of vanity, and that he would no longer usurp them. But these words wounded Gregory's supreme modesty: 'as you commanded.' 'That word of command,' he says, 'I beg you to remove from my hearing; for I know who I am, and who you are. In place you are my brothers, in character my fathers' (Book VIII, ep. 30). He took it still more amiss that he had been called universal Pope by him in the inscription of the letter. 'Let the words depart,' he says, 'which inflate vanity and wound charity' (ibid.). 12. As regards Anastasius, the pious man did not approve so great a controversy stirred up over the ecumenical title, as is clear from another letter written to him.
But Gregory's wondrous modesty and humility shone forth in receiving this free admonition of a friend—I might almost say, this rebuke; for he begins with these words breathing charity the letter in which he answers Anastasius' admonition: 'I received the desired letter of your most sweet Holiness, brought by our common son the deacon Sabinian, in which flowed forth the words not of the tongue, but of the soul. And it is no wonder if he speaks well who lives perfectly' (Book VII, ep. 27). And although he never ceased from assailing the word 'ecumenical,' because he thought it profane and injurious to all bishops, nevertheless he did not withdraw from communion with the Patriarch of Constantinople:
and when John died, he received the synodical letter of Cyriacus his successor, in which he had styled himself ecumenical patriarch, lest he should rend the unity of the Church. For what reason Anastasius judged that this word should be patiently borne, it is not difficult to guess. For recently, upon the death of Gregory, Patriarch of Antioch, Anastasius had been recalled from exile and restored to his former see; concerning which our Gregory had congratulated him (Book V, ep. 39). Since therefore, after long wars, he was at length enjoying peace, and had recovered his see by the emperor's benefit—perhaps also with John of Constantinople exerting himself on his behalf,
the patriarch whom the emperor was accustomed to consult on ecclesiastical affairs—fearing to face dangers again, he judged it more to his advantage to interpret the ecumenical title benignly, than to make a tumult and contend over its usurpation. 13. In this letter it seems worthy of observation that these words, 'Amen, grace,' are praised as those of the holy martyr Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, and had been used earlier also by Anastasius as inserted by Ignatius into his letters: yet they are by no means found in the genuine and sincere letters of that same martyr, but only in the corrupted ones; whence it is clear that these had already then been falsified. 14.
In discussing the other letters written by Gregory on this account we do not linger; but that one by which he tried to recall John himself to a saner mind must not be passed over in silence. In it he at once complains of the peace of the Church disturbed by him, and marvels that, although he had come to the episcopate unwillingly, yet in it, after he had obtained it, he seems to conduct himself as if he had prepared his way to that sacred dignity by ambition. He recalls to mind all that had been done against him in the time of Pelagius II, and how he himself had tried first to apply gentle remedies to the growing evil through his legates, before he was compelled to proceed to strict and canonical ones.
'And because,' he says, 'wounds that must be cut away must first be handled with a gentle hand, I ask, I beseech, and with all the sweetness I can I entreat, that your Fraternity contradict all who flatter you and confer on you the name of error, and consent not to be called by the foolish and proud title' (Book V, ep. 18). I pass over the reasons by which he assails this word; for they are the same as those we have already touched upon. 15. So many efforts were in vain; for John retained the assumed title until death, which happened a little after he received this letter. For it was given on the Kalends of January of the 13th indiction, that is, of the year 595, in which year those who have written of him teach that John departed from life.
The most wise Pope did indeed receive the synodical letter of Cyriacus, given as his successor; yet he admonished him (Book VII, ep. 4) to lay aside the profane name, that seed-plot of so many scandals. In the letter written to Maurice (ibid., ep. 6), in which he gives thanks for the election of Cyriacus, he calls John a bishop of holy memory, which sufficiently proves that he was never rejected from the communion of the Apostolic See. The emperor had long deliberated about John's successor; whence it is no wonder that Cyriacus was ordained rather late, a whole year even having elapsed. 16.
A little after Saint Gregory's passing to the heavenly regions, Boniface III, who had been sent by him as apocrisiarius to the Emperor Phocas and had won his favour, obtained from him a sanction by which it was provided that in future neither Cyriacus, to whom Phocas was hostile, nor any other patriarchs of Constantinople thereafter, should profess themselves ecumenical beyond their own bounds. Yet this law did not long remain in force; for in the general synods, the sixth and the seventh, they are honoured with this title, no otherwise than the Roman Pontiffs, and the bishop of Constantinople rejoices in it even still.
With that word it happened as with many others which, on account of their novelty, at once seemed dangerous and therefore to be rejected, but gradually, once it was ascertained that they were free of poison and could be bent to a legitimate sense, men began to grow accustomed to them. Nor yet ought that zeal of Gregory to be blamed, by which he withstood a word that was doubtful, new, foreign, redolent of arrogance, and liable to many depraved senses and significations.
Surely those peevish censors, who charge him with having fought so long over a mere little word, with what great praises would they extol some bishop who should have withstood with all his might a Roman Pontiff aspiring to and pursuing this or a similar equally insolent title, and who, to defend the episcopal dignity, would gladly have exposed himself to all dangers? 17. But the heterodox, the most bitter enemies of the Apostolic See, wrongly draw to their own side the fact that Saint Gregory teaches that the name of ecumenical cannot be conceded even to the Roman Pontiff—whose primacy and most ample jurisdiction over the whole Church they contend are struck at by this opinion.
Thus from those flowers fragrant with the holy man's modesty and humility they make not honey, as bees do, but poison, as spiders do. But they do not attend to the word 'ecumenical' in the sense in which Saint Gregory interprets this term, namely, that it signifies a single bishop in the whole Church; which we freely confess does not suit the pope, and least of all accords with his supreme dignity and power. Yet they are blind who do not see that Gregory himself, though he judged so modestly concerning himself and his own authority, nevertheless exercised jurisdiction throughout the whole Church—in Africa, Egypt, and Asia, even within the very boundaries of the patriarchate of Constantinople, as is clear from the case of the monks of Isauria. In Book III, Letter 30, he says:
'The Apostolic See, by God's authorship, is established as set over all the Churches.' Book V, Letter 13: 'It has been my care,' he says, 'that which is bestowed by us upon all the Churches.' Book VII, Letter 19: 'Since the care of the solicitude enjoined upon us for all the Churches constrains us,' and so forth. Book IX, Letter 59, on the occasion of the primate of Byzacena in Africa, who professed himself subject to the Apostolic See, he writes thus to John of Syracuse: 'If any fault is found in bishops, I know not what bishop is not subject to it.' He exercised this right over bishops when he committed the case of Peter, an African bishop, to be judged by Columbus, a bishop in Numidia (Book VI, Letter 37); and the case of Ursicinus, bishop of the city of Turin, to Syagrius, bishop of Autun (Book IX, Letter 115);
and the case of Januarius, bishop of Malaga, and of another bishop named Stephen, to John the Defensor (Book XIII, Letter 45). When Paul, a bishop in Africa, had been accused by the patrician Gennadius, and had himself come to Rome to present himself for the pope's judgment, and no suitable accusers had appeared, he sent him back (Book VII, Letter 2). At the request of the bishops of the province, he by his own authority confirmed the ordination of John, bishop and primate of the First Justiniana in Illyricum, and bestowed the pallium upon him (Book II, Letters 22 and 23). Very many other examples of this jurisdiction we have already set forth, and more will occur below. Argument.—1. Gregory's solicitude for making peace.—2. He is not heard by the emperor. False accusations against him.—3. He mourns Saint