T. W. Allies

“ Daily I feel what fulness of peace I have lost, to what fulness of cares I have been exalted. If you love me, weep for me, since so many temporal businesses press on me that I seem as if this dignity had almost excluded me from the love of God. Not of the Romans only am I bishop, but bishop of the Lombards, whose right is the right of the sword, whose favour is punishment. The billows of the world so surge upon me, that I despair of steering into harbour the frail vessel entrusted to me by God, while my hand holds the helm amid a thousand storms. ”

“ Let not a Roman prince esteem the intimation of truth in its proper sense an injury. Two, then, O emperor, there are by whom this world is ruled in chief—the sacred authority of pontiffs and the royal power. Of these that of priests weighs the heavier, insomuch as they will have in the divine judgment to render an account for kings themselves. For you know, most gracious son, that pre-eminent as you are in dignity over the human race, you nevertheless bow the neck submissively to those who preside over things divine. ”

“ The bones are wasted, the flesh consumed; all pride of secular dignities is perished out of it. The whole composition is sodden. Yet every day the sword, every day innumerable sorrows press upon us, the poor remaining remnant. So, then, this also applies: 'Set it empty upon burning coals'. For since there is no senate, since the people has died out, and yet sorrow and suffering are multiplied day by day on the few that remain, Rome is empty, and yet it burns. We apply this to men, but we see the very structures destroyed by the multiplication of ruins. ”

“ Gregory closed his exposition of the prophet Ezechiel in St. Peter's with these sorrowful words: "So far, dear brethren, by the gift of God, we have searched out hidden meanings for you. Let no man blame me if I close them here, because, as you all witness, our sufferings have grown enormous. On every side we are encircled with swords: on every side we are in imminent peril of death. Some return to us maimed of their hands; of others we hear that they are captured; of others, again, that they are slain. My tongue can no longer expound, when my spirit is weary of my life. ”

“ The Pope, behind the crumbling walls of Aurelian, shudders at the cruelties practised on his people: the bishop of Constantinople, by terming himself ecumenical, announces ostentatiously that he claims to rule all his brethren in the East—that he is supreme judge over his brother patriarchs. One only thing he does not do: he claims no power over the Pope himself; he does not attempt to revise his administration in the West. He acknowledges his primacy, seated as it is in a provincial city, pauperised, and decimated with hunger and desertion. ”

“ But in the few which have so lasted we find one sovereign bent on war, another on peace, another on accumulating treasure, another on spending it; one given up to selfish pleasures, here and there a ruler who reigns only for the good of others. But in Gregory's more than sixty predecessors there is but one idea: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," is the compendious expression of their lives and rule. For this St. Clement, who had heard the words of his master, suffered exile and martyrdom in the Crimea. ”

“ Is there any nation so ferocious as to use its sword so cruelly for the destruction of the faithful, unless our life, who are called but are not bishops, had [Pg 298] upon it the stain of the worst actions? While, deserting what belongs to us, and aiming at what is beyond us, we add our own sins to the brute strength of barbarians. Our guilt sharpens the swords of our enemies, and weighs down the strength of the State. What excuse can we make who press down the people of God, over which we unworthily preside, with the burden of our sins? Who preach with our tongues and kill by our examples? ”

“ If, in your wisdom, you consider the matter to its bottom, you will see that not only the cause carried on at Rome is concerned. In the case of other bishops, if there be any lapse, it may be restored; but if the Pope of Rome is endangered, not one bishop but the episcopate itself will seem to be shaken. You well know how we are steering the bark of faith amid storms of heresies, whose winds roar around us. ”

“ Content only with the nobility of your ancient race, you have resolved that all which could crown with glory such a rank should spring from your personal merit. If they did great things, you willed to do greater. Your answer to that nobility of your ancestors was to show your temporal kingdom; you set before your posterity a kingdom in heaven. Let Greece exult in having a prince of our law; not that it any longer deserves to enjoy alone so great a gift, since the rest of the world has its own lustre. ”

“ The theatre of Pompey and the amphitheatre of Titus still rose in their beauty; and as the Gothic king inhabited the vast and deserted halls of the Cæsarean palace, he looked down upon the games of the Circus Maximus, where the diminished but unchanged populace of Rome still justified St. Leo's complaint, that the heathen games drew more people than the shrines of the martyrs whose intercession had saved Rome from Attila. In fine, St. Fulgentius could still say, If earthly Rome was so stately, what must the heavenly Jerusalem be! ”

“ So much I seem to see in that terrible line, that the descent from father to son was hardly ever blessed, and that those who were adopted by an emperor no way related to them succeeded the best. The children of the very greatest emperors—of a Marcus Aurelius, a Constantine, a Theodosius—have only brought shame on their parents and ruin on their empire. Again, if the youth of a Nero or a Caracalla ended in utter ignominy, the youth of an Alexander Severus produced the fairest of reigns, while it ended in his murder by an usurper. ”

“ In a word, at this epoch Christianity was not only a religion but a Church. If it had not been a Church, I do not know what would have become of it in the midst of the Roman empire's fall. I confine myself to purely human considerations: I put aside every element foreign to the natural consequences of natural facts. If Christianity had only been a belief, a feeling, an individual conviction, we may suppose that it would have broken down at the dissolution of the empire and the barbarian invasion. ”

“ This is, since through you God will make your nation all His own, that you would, from the good treasure of your heart, provide the seeds of faith to the nations beyond you, lying still in their natural ignorance, uncorrupted by the germs of false doctrine. Have no shame, no reluctance, to take the side of God, who has so exalted your side, even by embassies directed to that purpose.... You are, as it were, the common sun, in whose rays all delight; the nearest the most, but somewhat also those further off.... Your happiness touches us also; when you fight, we conquer. ”

“ The Pope might be a captive at Constantinople, scorned, deceived, torn away even from the refuge of the altar, surrounded with spies, betrayed by subservient bishops and patriarchs, and, worst of all, be labouring under the stigma of an election originally enforced by arbitrary violence; a despotic emperor might do his worst, but the Pope's successors carried on his prerogatives unimpaired. The walls of Aurelian preserved Rome from the Lombard, but the Pontiff who kept guard over them was not contained in them. ”

“ And since all our realm is to be admonished to imitate the example of the imperial city, we have directed everywhere our princely commands, so great is our desire to restore the peace of the Catholic faith to our commonwealth, to gain for my subjects the divine protection. For those whom the same realm contains, the same worship enlightens, what greater blessing can they have than to venerate with one mind laws of no human origin, but proceeding from the Divine Spirit? ”

“ Heresy and schism are, in his sight, the greatest crimes against the State, as they are the greatest sins against the Church and against God. In the course of the two hundred years from Constantine to Justinian the Roman State, as understood by the Illyrian peasant who ruled it for thirty-eight years, had intertwined itself as closely with the Catholic Church as ever it had with Cicero's "immortal gods" in the time of Augustus, or Trajan, or Decius. It was the special pride and glory of Justinian to maintain intact this alliance as the palladium of the empire. ”

“ In face of all which, I, myself a Roman senator, and a Christian bishop, adjure you [Pg 141] (so may the God you worship grant prosperity to your times, and your own dignity maintain the honour of the Roman name to the universe in this collapsing world) , that the state of the Church be not less in your eyes than that of the commonwealth; that the power which God has given to you may be also for our good; and that you have not less love in your Church for the See of Peter, than in your city for the crown of the world. ”

“ No one can believe the exultation of the people, nor doubt that the Divine Hand was there, bestowing such unity on the world. We signify to you that in our presence the name of the anathematised prevaricator, Acacius, was struck out of the diptychs, as likewise that of the other bishops who followed him in communion. So also the names of Anastasius and Zeno. By your prayers peace was restored to the minds of Christians: there is one soul, one joy, in the whole Church; only the enemy of the human race, crushed by the power of your prayer, is in mourning. ”

“ Do not, I entreat, be angry with me if I love you so well as to wish you to possess for ever the kingdom which has been given to you in time, and that, having empire in the world, you should reign with Christ. You do not allow anything to perish in your own laws, nor loss to be inflicted on the Roman name. With what face will you ask of Him rewards there whose losses here you do not prevent? One is my dove, my perfect is one; one is the Christian, which is the Catholic faith. There is no cause why one should allow any contagion to creep in ”

“ Rome had ceased to be the imperial city. Did the loss of its bishop's prerogatives follow? Did they pass to Byzantium because it was become the imperial city, because the sole emperor dwelt there? Thus, about a hundred years after the repulse of the ambitious exaltation sought by Anatolius, its rejection by the provident wisdom and resolute courage of St. Leo was more than justified by the course of events. St. Leo's action was based upon the constitution of the Church, and therefore did not need to be justified by events. ”

“ Peter sits on an undisputed spiritual throne upon which a new world will be based in the West, against which the Khalifs of a false religion will exert all their rage in the East and South, and strengthen the rule which they parody. A new power, which utterly denies the Christian faith, which destroys hundreds of its episcopal sees and severs whole countries from its sway, will dash with all its violence against the Rock of Peter, and finally will have the effect of making the bishop who is there enthroned more than ever the symbol, the seat, and the champion of the Kingdom of the Cross. ”

“ Rome, and power fell into the hands of the Herule Odoacer, Pope Simplicius, directing his gaze over Africa, Spain, France, Illyricum, and Britain, would see a number of new-born governments, ruled by northern invaders, who from the beginning of the century had been in constant collision with each other, perpetually changing their frontiers. Wherever the invaders settled a fresh partition of the land had to be made, by which the old proprietors would be in part reduced to poverty, and all the native population which in any way depended on them would suffer greatly. ”

“ Gregory, who claimed kindred with the Anician race, was familiar from his boyhood, so that the desolation of Jerusalem rose before his mind as the state of his own Rome pressed on his eyes and seared his heart.
This skeleton of a city was scarcely inhabited by the remnant of a people, decimated by hunger and pestilence, and in perpetual fear to see its ill-defended gates broken into by Lombard savages. The walls of Aurelian, half demolished by Totila and hurriedly repaired by Belisarius, alone saved it year after year from the horrors which fell upon captured cities ”