A.D. 705.

Leontius, after a reign of three years, was put down by Tiberius Apsimar, and was committed to a monastery. The Chersonites, in fear that the schemes which Justinian was undisguisedly forming for the recovery of his throne might draw on them the suspicion and anger of the new emperor, resolved to put the exile to death or to send him to Constantinople; but the design became known to him, and he sought a refuge among the Chazars of the Ukraine, where he married a sister of the reigning prince. Even among these remote barbarians, however, he found that he was in danger from the negotiations of Apsimar; and his desperation urged him to attempt the execution of the design which he had seemed to have abandoned. While crossing the Euxine in a violent storm, his companions exhorted him, as a means of obtaining deliverance, to promise that, if restored to the empire, he would forgive his enemies. "May the Lord drown me here," he replied, "if I spare one of them!" and when his daring enterprise had been crowned with success, the vow was terribly fulfilled. Leontius was brought forth from his monastery; he and Apsimar were laid prostrate in the circus, and, as the emperor looked on the games, his feet pressed the necks of his fallen rivals, while the multitude shouted the words of the 91st Psalm-" Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder." The two were then dragged about the streets of the city, and at length were beheaded. All who had taken part in the expulsion of Justinian were mercilessly punished; many of them were tied up in sacks, and were cast into the sea. The patriarch Callinicus, who had been driven by the tyrant's oppression to favour the rebellion of Leontius, was deprived of his eyes and nose, and was banished to Rome. For some unknown reason, Felix, archbishop of Ravenna, was blinded, deposed, and sent into exile in Pontus; m and Constantine of Rome -the seventh Greek refugee from the Mahometan conquests who successively filled the see "-might well have trembled when in 710 he was summoned to Constantinople. Perhaps Justinian may have required the pope's presence with a view of enforcing the Trullan Council on the west; perhaps he may have meant to secure his own authority in Italy against a repetition of such scenes as that which had taken place in the But Con

k

pontificate of Sergius.

A.D. 709. Felix was restored by Philippicus. Agnell. 1. c. 707.

The election of so many Greeks seems to indicate an influence of the exarchs. Murat. A.D. 705.

Giesel. I. ii. 488; Milman, ii. 142.

stantine's ready and courageous obedience appears to have disarmed the tyrant. Justinian received the pope as an equal; it is even said that, at the first meeting, he fell down and kissed his feet; and Constantine returned home with a confirmation of all the privileges of his Church. It has been conjectured that these favours were not obtained without the pope's consenting to the canons of the Quinisext council in so far as they were not directly contrary to the Roman traditions."

Justinian's abuse of his recovered power excited his subjects to a fresh rebellion, which began by an outbreak of the Chersonites, on whom he had intended to avenge by an exemplary cruelty the treachery which they had meditated against him during his exile." In 711 he was again dethroned and was put to death. His young son Tiberius, who had been crowned Augustus, fled to the church of the Blachernæ, hung the relics which were regarded as most sacred around his neck, and clasped the altar with one hand and the cross with the other; but a leader of the insurgents pursued him into the sanctuary, plucked the cross from him, transferred the relics to his own neck, and dragged the boy to the door of the church, where he was immediately slain. Thus ended the dynasty of Heraclius, about an hundred years after the accession of its founder.s

The revolution raised to the throne an adventurer named Bardanes, who on his accession took the name of Philippicus. Bardanes was of a Monothelite family, and his early impressions in favour of the heresy had been confirmed by the lessons of Stephen, the associate of Macarius of Antioch. It is said that, many years before, he had been told by a hermit that he was one day to be emperor; and that he had vowed, if the prophecy should be fulfilled, to abrogate the Sixth General Council." He refused to enter the palace of Constantinople until a picture of the council should have been removed; he publicly burnt the original copy of its acts, ordered the names of Honorius, Sergius, and the others whom it had condemned, to be inserted in the diptychs, ejected In 706, Justinian had sent the Trullan canons to John VII., desiring him to lay them before a council, and to accept or reject them in detail; but the pope, "humana fragilitate timidus," declined the task, and sent them back untouched. He died soon after. Anastas. in Patrol. cxxxviii. 930; Murat. A.D. 706.

P Anastas. 153. Dean Milman regards this as a western fiction, ii. 85.

Anast. 153; Pagi, xii. 220; Murat. Ann. IV. i. 292-3; Schröckh, xix.

X

514-5. As to the treatment of the council by later popes, see Hefele, iii. 317.

123.

Nic. Cpol. 29-30; Schlosser, 119

Nic. Cpol. 31; Theophanes, 583; Gibbon, iv. 408-9; Schlosser, 124-5. Agatho Diac. ap. Hard. iii. 1836; Walch, ix. 430. See p. 52.

u

Theophanes, 581.

An account of these proceedings is given by a deacon named Agatho, who

A.D. 713.

the orthodox patriarch Cyrus, and required the bishops to subscribe a Monothelite creed. The order was generally obeyed in the east, but at Rome it met with different treatment. Constantine refused to receive it; the people would not allow the emperor to be named in the mass, nor his portrait to be admitted into a church, where, instead of it, they hung up a representation of the Sixth Council; and, on the arrival of a newly-appointed commander from Constantinople, an outbreak took place, which was only suppressed by the pope's interposition on the side of authority." Philippicus, after a reign of a year and a half, during which he had given himself up to extravagance and debauchery, was deposed and blinded. His successor, Anastasius, was a Catholic; and John, who had been intruded into the patriarchate of Constantinople on the deprivation of Cyrus, now sued for the communion of Rome, professing that he had always been orthodox at heart, and that his compliance with the late heretical government had arisen from a ' wish to prevent the appointment of a real Monothelite. The pope's answer is not known; but in 715 John was deprived, and Germanus, bishop of Cyzicum, was appointed to the patriarchal chair. Anastasius was dethroned in 716 by Theodosius III., and Theodosius, in the following year, by Leo the Isaurian, whose reign witnessed the commencement of a new and important controversy.

The readiness with which the formulary of Philippicus was received by the eastern bishops and clergy, may be regarded not only as a token of their subserviency, but also as indicating that the Monothelite party at that time possessed considerable strength. The public profession of Monothelism, however, soon became extinct, its only avowed adherents being the Maronite community in Syria. A monastery, dedicated to a saint of the name of Maron, stood between Apamea and Emesa as early as the sixth century; and in the end of the seventh it was under the government of another Maron, who died in 701. The name of Maronites, which originally belonged to the members of this monastery, was gradually extended to all the inhabitants of the district of Lebanon, a population chiefly composed of refugees from the Saracen conquests. Among these the Monothelite opinions were held; and,

с

had written the original acts. Hard. iii. 1836, seqq.

y Anastas. 153; Schlosser, 127. z Hard. iii. 1837. Pagi defends the patriarch's "economy," xii. 234.

Baron. 714. 3-4; Pagi, xii. 255-261. b Giesel. I. ii. 482,

See Theodoret, Hist. Relig., 16. d Schröckh, xx. 452-4.

e

e See Walch, ix. 477. Against the identification of Maronites with Mardaites (as by Walch, ix. 485; Schröckh, xix. 44; xx. 454), see Gieseler, I. ii.

483.

while the other Christian communities of Syria had each its political attachment-the Jacobites being connected with the Mahometan conquerors, and the Catholics (or Melchites) with the emperorthe Maronites preserved their independence together with their peculiar doctrines, under the successors of Maron, who styled themselves patriarchs of Antioch. Thus the community continued until, in the age of the Crusades (A.D. 1182), they submitted to the Latin patriarch of Antioch, and conformed to the Roman church,' which in later times has been indebted to the Maronites for many learned men.

They were then about 40,000 in number. Will. Tyr. xxii. 8 (Patrol. cci.); Gibbon, iv. 383-5; Wilkins, III. ii. 204.

Of these the Assemanni are the most famous. They and other Maronites attempt to clear their ancestors

from the charge of Monothelism. But Pagi (xi. 311-3, 602-4; xii. 77; xviii. 211-2) is said to be the only considerable non-Maronite authority among the Romanists who takes this view. See Walch, ix. 476; Schröckh, xx. 454-6; Döllinger, i. 163.

CHAPTER III.

THE WESTERN CHURCH FROM THE DEATH OF GREGORY THE GREAT TO THE PONTIFICATE OF GREGORY THE SECOND.

A.D. 604-715.

I. THE relations of the papacy with the empire during the period between the first and the second Gregories may in some degree be understood from the foregoing chapter.

The Monothelite controversy for a time weakened the influence of Rome, both through the error of Honorius in favouring the heretical party and through the collisions between the papacy and the imperial power. But although Martin suffered severely in person for his proceedings in the Council of Lateran, these proceedings-the assembling of such a synod without the emperor's sanction, and the bold condemnation of his ecclesiastical measures -remained as important steps in the advance of the papal claims; and in no long time the authority of the Roman name was reestablished by the sixth general council. At that council the title of Ecumenical or Universal Bishop, which Gregory had not only denounced in others but rejected for himself, was ascribed to Agatho by his representatives, and the bishops of Rome thenceforth usually assumed it.

Agatho obtained from Constantine Pogonatus an abatement of the sum payable to the emperor on the appointment of a pope;" and the same emperor granted to Benedict II. that, in order to guard against a repetition of the inconveniences which had been felt from the necessity of waiting for the imperial confirmation, the pope should be consecrated immediately after his election. Yet the confirmation by the secular power still remained necessary for the possession of St. Peter's chair,' and disputed elections gave the exarchs of Ravenna ample opportunities of interfering in the establishment of the Roman bishops; if indeed the meaning of

Walch, ix. 292; Giesel. I. ii. 487. b Hard. iii. 1424-6.

It occurs in the profession of faith to be made by a bishop according to the Liber Diurnus,' about A.D. 682-5, c. iii. tit. 6 (Patrol. cv.); Giesel. I. ii. 487.

"Relevata est quantitas," says Ana

stasius (144)-an expression which may mean either that the payment was lessened or that it was abolished.

e lb. 146.

As appears from the Liber Diurnus. (See vol. i. p. 550.) Giesel. I. ii. 487. Milman, ii. 83.