P O P E D O M The suc cessors of Gregory. Advances made by the papacy in the West. Relations to Frank- land. The personal qualities and virtues of Gregory are thrown into stronger relief by the comparative insigni ficance of his successors in the 7th century, whose tenure of office was, for the most part, singularly brief and in glorious. His immediate successor was SABINIANUS (604- G06), who after a few months tenure of office, and an inter val of a whole year which remains entirely unaccounted for, was succeeded by Boniface III. (607). Boniface was the last apocrisiariua who had represented Gregory at the im perial court, and he appears to have been successful in completely winning the favour of Phocas, who at his sug gestion passed a decree declaring " the Apostolic Church of Rome " to be " the head of all the churches." He did this, says Paul us Diaconus, "because the church of Constan tinople had styled itself the first of all the churches." 1 In this manner the imperial veto was distinctly pronounced on the claim of the Byzantine Church to be regarded as of universal authority a claim which it now became the policy of the Church of Rome to assert on her own behalf on every possible occasion. The new and intimate relations which Gregory and his emissaries had created between the church and the great Teutonic races especially favoured these assumptions. Frankland and England alike were brought within the range of influences of incalculable after importance, the development of which in the 7th and 8th centuries may fairly be looked upon as constituting a distinct era in the history of the popedom. In Rome itself, on the other hand, the interest of the drama becomes perceptibly lessened. In the long and rapid succession of the pontiffs, most of them pliant Greeks or Syrians, the nominees of the exarch of Ravenna, and intent on winning the favour of both the emperor and his representative, scarcely one appears as actuated by more than the tradi tional views of his office and its functions. One of them, who ventured to thwart the imperial purpose, paid dearly for his conscientiousness. The Byzantine capital, at this period, was distracted by the interminable controversies carried on between the Monothelites and their opponents. The emperor, the half-insane Constans, arrogated to him self the function of mediating between the contending parties, and sought to wring from MARTIN I. (649-653) an authoritative assent to a compromise of doctrine which, to that pontiff, appeared to involve the sacrifice of ortho doxy. The latter convened a council at the Lateran and formally condemned the proposed solution. He was soon after induced to repair to Constantinople, and, having there been arraigned on a false charge of fomenting political in trigue, was deprived of his see and, although in advanced years and feeble health, banished to a gloomy prison on the Euxine, where he soon after died. But, while thus menaced and dishonoured in Italy, the papal power was making important advances in the west. In England the resistance offered by the representatives of the British Church was soon overcome, and from the time of the council of Whitby (664) the teachings and traditions of Gregory, as enforced by Augustine, Theodoras, Wilfrid, and others, found ready acceptance. The human izing influences which these representatives of the Roman culture diffused around them exercised a potent spell over the minds and wills of the English population. Monas teries were founded ; cathedrals rose, each with its school of instruction for the young, and its charity for the needy ; and a spirit of filial though far from slavish devotion to Rome was everywhere created. In Frankland, however, the Merovingian kings and the populations of Neustria and Austrasia exhibited a 1 He Gestis Lonrjolurd., hk. iv., c. 36 ; this remarkable passage is reproduced.!^ Bede, T)e Temporum Ratione, Migrie, Patrol., xc. 565; and also by Anastasius, De Vitig Rom. Pont., in life of Boniface III., Mignp. Patrol., cxxviii, 671. different spirit, and the civil power showed no disposition
- to welcome foreign interference even in connexion with
- ecclesiastical institutions. It is observed by Guizot that
from the death of Gregory the Great to the time of Gregory II. (604-715) not a single document exists which ! can be cited as proof of intercommunication between the rulers of Frankland and the papacy. The series of events which led to such different relations, enabling the Roman pontiff eventually to shake off both his fear of the Lombard and his long dependence on the Byzantine emperor, forms one of the most interesting passages in European history. In the year 715 the long succession of pliant Greeks Greg and Syrians in the papal chair was broken by the election n. of a man of Roman birfeh and endowed with much of the strength of purpose that belonged to the ancient Roman. i In GREGORY II. (715-731) men recognized no unworthy successor of his great namesake, and by Gibbon he is regarded as the true "founder of the papal monarchy." i In no respect were his care and religious sentiments more conspicuously manifested than in connexion with ! the evangelization of distant lands, and it was under his auspices that the celebrated Winfrid or Boniface first commenced his famous missionary work in Frankland. i His rapid success in the work of converting the still , heathen populations is a familiar story. From GREGORY III. (731-741) Boniface received the appointment of papal legate ; he took the oath of perpetual fidelity to the supreme pontiff, and wherever he went he preached the duty of a like submission. He enforced the theory of the Catholic unity and of the obligation of the Avhole body of the clergy to render implicit obedience to the representative of that unity, the successor of St Peter, the spiritual superior of all earthly tribunals. While bonds of union were thus being created in the Taij j West, theological differences were exercising a very differ- wj tf ent though not less important influence in the East. It tm * was in the year 731 that Gregory III., the last of the pontiffs who received the confirmation of his privileges from Constantinople, issued a sentence of excommunication against the Iconoclasts. It was the papal rejoinder to the decree of Leo the Isaurian, passed in the preceding year, commanding that all images in the churches of the empire should be forthwith removed. Although he was a Syrian by birth, orthodoxy was dearer to Gregory than political allegiance, and the sequel justified his policy. The emperor, indeed, retaliated by what could not but be deemed a disastrous blow. All the dioceses within the empire where the Roman pontiff had hitherto claimed obedience Calabria, Sicily, and Illyricum were forth with absolved from their ecclesiastical allegiance, and the revenues from their rich " patrimonies," which had before flowed into the papal treasury, were confiscated. But the tie which had hitherto bound the popedom to the empire was thus effectually broken. Under these circumstances a compact with the Lom bards, who had by this time become converts from Arianism to the Catholic faith, would have seemed the obvious policy on the part of Rome, had not the political aims of the former stood in the way. The Lombard coveted the possession of the capital, and this design, the cherished design of centuries, marked him out as perforce the foe of the popedom. In his extremity, therefore, the All Roman pontiff turned to the Frank, untainted by the w ^ heresy of Arianism, and already, as the result of the teach- . [ ing of Boniface, disposed to assent to any claims of the ^ . papacy which -did not involve the diminution of his own prerogatives or the restoration of alienated revenues. In the year 752 Pepin le Bref assumed the dignity and title of " king of the Franks." He did so, the annalists are
unanimous in assuring us, with the consent and sanction