Honorius I of Rome

“ When the patriarch Sophronius denounced the error and appealed to Rome and Pope Honorius in words which after twelve hundred years sound like a trumpet's call, Sergius being patriarch of Constantinople, the bosom friend and most trusted counsellor of Heraclius, holding the see of the Golden City for eight and twenty years, living and dying, too, in the greatest renown as an orthodox bishop, approached Pope Honorius with insidious language, totally disguising the real state of things in the East. ”

“ In 408 the promise of the oracle was fulfilled, for he led his troops under the walls of Rome. The feeble and timid Honorius had retired to Ravenna, where he was safe behind the marshes, the pine-woods, and the stone walls against which Alaric said that he did not fight. In 408 the wretched court filled to the full the brimming cup of its iniquities—first by a massacre of barbarian auxiliaries at Pavia, and then by the foul, ungrateful murder of Stilicho himself, at the command of Honorius. No army barred the path of Alaric, but an Italian hermit denounced on him the wrath of heaven. ”

“ In 403 he broke up from his secure retreat on the Adriatic, and burst into Italy, spreading fire and famine wherever he went. Honorius, the Emperor of the West, fled from Milan, and was besieged in Asti by the Goths. Here would have ended the imperial dynasty, some years before its time, if it had not been for the watchful Stilicho. This Vandal chief flew to the rescue of Honorius, repulsed Alaric with great slaughter, and delivered his master from his dangerous position. The grateful emperor entered Rome in triumph, and for the last time the Circus streamed with the blood of beasts and men. ”

“ Honorius dies before the heresy is presented for acceptance in Rome in the imperial Ecthesis. Ten Popes succeeding Honorius, in spite of the temporal distress which surrounds them, oppose to the utmost the Byzantine heresy and despotism [pg 191] in the midst of whom one gloriously lays down his life and is martyred by the eastern emperor as guilty of high treason. ”

“ HOW DURING THE REIGN OF HONORIUS, GRATIAN AND CONSTANTINE WERE CREATED TYRANTS IN BRITAIN; AND SOON AFTER THE FORMER WAS SLAIN IN BRITAIN, AND THE LATTER IN GAUL In the year 407, Honorius, the younger Son of Theodosius and the forty­-fourth from Augustus, being emperor, two years before the invasion of Rome by Alaric, king of the Goths, when the nations of the Alani, Suevi, Vandals, and many others with them, having defeated the Franks and passed the Rhine, ravaged all Gaul, Gratianus Municeps was set up as tyrant and killed. ”

“ The death of Stilicho removed the only capable defender of Italy and, when Honorius refused to carry out the agreement with Alaric, the latter crossed the Alps. Honorius shut himself up in Ravenna, and the Goths marched on Rome, which ransomed itself at a heavy price. As Honorius still refused to make him master of the soldiers and to give him lands and supplies for his men, Alaric returned to Rome and set up a new emperor, named Attalus. Yet Honorius, supported by troops from the eastern empire, remained obdurate, and a disagreement between Alaric and Attalus led to the latter’s deposition. ”

“ Finding Honorius in great perplexity, he told him that it was convenient to him to make some concessions, since he was so much embarrassed with the affairs of Italy, and that if he would suffer him to go back to Constantine to inform him of the circumstances in which Italy then stood, he would shortly return with all the forces in Celtica, Spain, and Britain, to the relief of Italy and Rome. ”

“ Paganism may be said to have perished in two bursts of laughter: one when in Alexandria the Christian mob burst into merriment to see the rats scurry out of the rotten head of the shattered statue of Serapis; and again when Theodosius and his soldiers laughed at the golden thunderbolts torn from the uplifted arms of the menacing statue of Jupiter. And Honorius managed to invest even the fall of Rome with ludicrous associations. ”

“ Honorius still lived his idle life at Ravenna, and the Bishop—or, as the Romans called him, Papa, father, or Pope—came back and helped them to put matters into order again. Alaric had left no son, but his wife's brother Ataulf became leader of the Goths. At Rome he had made prisoner Theodosius' daughter Placidia, and he married her; but he did not choose to rule at Rome, because, as he said, his Goths would never bear a quiet life in a city. So he promised to protect the empire for Honorius, and led his tribe away from Italy to Spain, which they conquered, and began a kingdom there. ”

“ At the same time the Romans engaged to mediate a Peace between him and Honorius: but the Emperor refusing to comply with the Terms that were proposed, though no-ways unreasonable, the Roman Senate sent Two solemn Deputations to Ravenna, where Honorius then resided, to lay before him the Danger to which he exposed the Empire, and persuade him to accept the Conditions offered him both by them and by Alaric. As the First Deputation proved unsuccessful, Innocent, thinking his Presence might give some Weight to the Negotiations, left Rome, and, together with the Deputies, repaired to Ravenna. ”

“ Honorius, a pious and peace-loving man, had seen nothing objectionable in this attempt of the Emperor Heraclius (A.D. 611 to A.D. 641) to win the numerous Monophysites back to the unity of the church by the concession of one will in the two natures of Christ, and was prepared to co-operate in the work. But the conviction grew more and more strong that the doctrine proposed in the interests of peace was itself heretical. All subsequent bishops of Rome therefore unanimously condemned as an accursed heresy (§ 52, 9) , what their predecessor Honorius had agreed to and confessed. ”

“ Have they therefore hidden it? Truth breaks out from all sides, and these things become so much the more evident, as they are the more studiously put out of sight.” [5]
With such an array of proof no conservative historian, it would seem, can question the fact that Honorius, the Pope of Rome, was condemned and anathematized as a heretic by the Sixth Ecumenical Council. ”

“ Aetius and the Huns. The imbecile Honorius, with whose name the failing sovereignty of Rome had been so disastrously linked for eight and twenty rears, died in 423. An infant nephew was his heir, and Placidia, the mother, ruled at Ravenna for a fourth of a century, in the name of her child. Her reign was far stronger than her wretched brother's had been, because she gave loyal support to a valiant and able man, who stood at her side. ”

“ It was the last Roman victory, and it was celebrated by the last Roman triumph. There had been three hundred triumphs of Roman generals, but it was Honorius who entered Rome in the car of victory and was taken to the Capitol, and afterwards there were games in the amphitheatre as usual, and fights of gladiators. In the midst of the horrid battle a voice was heard bidding it to cease in the name of Christ, and between the swords there was seen standing a monk in his dark brown dress, holding up his hand and keeping back the blows. ”

“ The date of Honorius is correct, but the invasion of Alaric is put a year too late, if Bede refers to the first siege of Rome, in 408. 69. The British army, alarmed by the inroads of barbarians, and actuated by a spirit of revolt against Roman authority, set up three local emperors in rapid succession: Marcus, Gratian, and Constantine. The first two they summarily deposed and killed, but Constantine by a great victory made himself master of Gaul and Britain and extorted from the Emperor Honorius a share in the Imperial authority. ”

“ In these games of Honorius, the inhuman combats of gladiators polluted, for the last time, the amphitheater of Rome. The first Christian emperor may claim the honor of the first edict which condemned the art and amusement of shedding human blood; but this benevolent law expressed the wishes of the prince, without reforming an inveterate abuse, which degraded a civilized nation below the condition of savage cannibals. ”

“ They render justice not so much for truth's sake as for a price.... The Roman pontiff himself becomes burdensome to all, and almost intolerable." Honorius III in 1226 acknowledged to the English bishops that this greed was a long-standing scandal and disgrace, but he ascribed it to the poverty of Rome, and proposed that in order to remove the difficulty two stalls should be given to him for nomination in every cathedral and collegiate chapter. ”

“ The experience of history will countenance the suspicion that a prince who was born in the purple received a worse education than the meanest peasant of his dominions; and the ambitious minister suffered him to attain the age of manhood without attempting to excite his courage or to enlighten his understanding. The predecessors of Honorius were accustomed to animate by their example, or at least by their presence, the valour of the legions; and the dates of their laws attest the perpetual activity of their motions through the provinces of the Roman world. ”

“ Innocent was no sooner chosen and ordained, than he writ to Anysius of Thessalonica, acquainting him with his Election, and charging him, as his Three immediate Predecessors had done, with the Care of the Churches of East Illyricum [1401] . In the End of the following Year 403. the Emperor Honorius visited the City of Rome; and, during his Stay there, Innocent went frequently to wait on him, in order to obtain, in Behalf of some Bishops, and other Ecclesiastics, an Exemption from executing certain Civil Offices hereditary in their Families. ”

“ Astonished by such examples of domestic treason, Honorius trembled at the approach of every servant, at the arrival of every messenger. He dreaded the secret enemies who might lurk in his capital, his palace, his bedchamber; and some ships lay ready in the harbour of Ravenna to transport the abdicated monarch to the dominions of his infant nephew, the emperor of the East.
But there is a providence (such at least was the opinion of the historian Procopius) that watches over innocence and folly; and the pretensions of Honorius to its peculiar care cannot reasonably be disputed. ”

“ Those in the west formed part of a force which included also Moors, Germans, and others drawn from countries outside of the Empire. The general name for these troops appears to have been Honoriani, from the emperor Honorius in whose service they were enlisted. The chief military task of the Roman armies under Honorius was to resist the Goths who were threatening to overrun his dominions. The Spanish historian Orosius, who lived in Spain at that time, calls the barbarian forces of Honorius the Honoriaci, i.e., he substitutes a Celtic form for the Latin Honoriani. ”

“ Alaric died in the same year, and in 412 Honorius concluded peace with his brother-in-law and successor, Ataulphus (Adolphus) , who married the emperor’s sister Placidia and removed with his troops to southern Gaul. A number of usurpers laid claim to the throne, the most important of whom was Constantine. In 409 Britain and Armorica declared their independence, which was confirmed by Honorius himself, and were thus practically lost to the empire. ”

“ By his advice and example, the principal officers of the State and army were obliged to swear that, without listening, in any circumstances, to any conditions of peace, they would still persevere in perpetual and implacable war against the enemy of the republic. This rash engagement opposed an insuperable bar to all future negotiation. The ministers of Honorius were heard to declare that if they had only invoked the name of the Deity they would consult the public safety, and trust their souls to the mercy of heaven; but they had sworn by the sacred head of the Emperor himself ”

“ But the Greeks paid no heed to the hint. His successor Leo II. could not do otherwise than homologate the Eastern leaders’ condemnation of heresy, even that of Honorius, hard though this must have been to him. On the other hand, the biographies of the popes from Honorius to Agatho in the Roman Liber pontificalis (§ 90, 6) help themselves out of this dilemma again by preserving a dead silence about any active or passive interference of Honorius in the Monothelite controversy. ”

“ Honorius was eager to carry out the decrees of the Lateran Council of 1215 against the Albigenses and to further the crusade proclaimed by his predecessor. He crowned Peter of Courtenay emperor of Byzantium in April 1217; espoused the cause of the young Henry III. of England against the barons; accepted the Isle of Man as a perpetual fief ”

“ As a last argument, the orthodox Fathers, who have flourished in the whole world, are proved to teach in full accordance at once Two Natures and Two Wills and Operations.”
In these words, which John IV. writes as Pope to the immediate successors of Heraclius within three years after the death of Honorius, he would seem not only to have set forth in plain language the immense importance of the doctrine itself, but to be an unimpeachable witness of the meaning of Honorius, one of whose priests he had been, and as such well acquainted with his doctrine. ”

“ The Sixth Council closes a crisis of danger to the faith of the Church than which no greater is to be found in all history. The years from 638, in which Honorius died, to 682, in which his successor St. Leo II. approved the doctrinal decision of the Council, and further, allowed the conduct of a predecessor to be condemned, are occupied by ten successors of Honorius, every one of whom with the utmost zeal condemned the heresy which was supported by two emperors, wielding absolute power, and by four successive patriarchs of Constantinople, besides patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch. ”