guished either by Imperial or by ecclesiastical persecution. It took refuge beyond the frontiers, among the Christians of Persia. It even overleaped the stern boundary of Magianism, and carried the Gospel into parts of the East as yet unpenetrated by Christian missions. The farther it travelled eastwards the more intelligible and more congenial to the general sentiment became its Eastern element, the absolute impassibility of the Godhead. Even in the Roman East it maintained, in many places a secret, in some an open resistance to authority. The great Syrian School, that of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodorus of Tarsus, the most popular of the Syrian theologians, were found to have held opinions nearly the same with those of Nestorius. Cyril and Proclus demanded the proscription of these dangerous writers; but the Eastern Prelates, those of Edessa, and the successors of Theodore, indignantly refused submission. A new controversy arose, which was not laid to rest, but was rather kept alive by the new heresy which, during the next twenty years, confused the Eastern Churches and demanded a fourth General Council-Eutychianism. ruled in Rome Sixtus, the successor of Celestine, had during these later transactions in the he was to be succeeded by one of greater name. Gibbon, at the close of his 47th chapter, has drawn one of his full, rapid, and brilliant descriptions of the Oriental conquests of the Nestorians, from Assemanni, Renaudot, La Croze, and all other authorities extant in his day. Nestorianism and its kindred or rival sects retired far beyond the sphere of Latin Christianity; it was not till the East; Portuguese conquests in the East that they came into contact and collision. The very recent works of Layard and the Rev. Mr. Badger reveal to us the present state of the settlements of the Nestorians-the latter, their creed and discipline-in the neighbourhood of the Tigris and Euphrates. CHAPTER IV. Leo the LEO THE GREAT. THE Pontificate of Leo the Great is one of the epochs in the history of Latin, or rather of universal Christianity. Christendom, wherever mindful of its divine origin, and of its proper humanising and hallowing influence, might turn away in shame from these melancholy and disgraceful contests in the East. On the throne of Rome alone, of all the greater sees, did religion maintain its majesty, its sanctity, its piety; and, if it demanded undue deference, the world would not be inclined rigidly to question pretensions supported as well by such conscious power as by such singular and unimpeachable virtue; and by such inestimable benefits conferred on Rome, on the Empire, on civilisation. Once Leo was supposed to have saved Rome from the most terrible of barbarian conquerors; a second time he mitigated the horrors of her fall, before the King of the Vandals. During his pontificate, Leo is the only great name in the Empire; it might almost seem in the Christian world. The Imperial Sovereignty might be said to have expired with Theodosius the Great. Women ruled in Ravenna and in Constantinople, and their more masculine abilities, even their virtues, reflected a deeper shame on the names of Theodosius II. and Valentinian III., the boy Sovereigns of the East and West. Even after the death of Theodosius, Marcian reigned in the East, as the husband of Pulcheria. In the West the suspected fidelity impaired the power, as it lowered the character, of Aëtius ; his inhuman murder deprived the Empire of its last support; and the Count Boniface, the friend of Augustine, in his fatal revenge, opened Africa to the desolatNov. 28. ing Vandal. Leo stood equally alone and superior in the Christian world. Two years before the accession A.D. 430. A.D. 445. of Leo, Augustine had died. He had not lived to witness the capture and ruin of Hippo, his episcopal city. The fifth year after the accession of Leo, died Cyril of Alexandria; Nestorius survived, but in exile, his relentless rival. He was succeeded by Dioscorus, who seemed to have inherited all which was odious in Cyril, with far inferior polemic ability; afterwards an Eutychian heretic, and hardly to be acquitted of the murder of his rival, Flavianus. This future victim of the enmity of Dioscorus filled the see of Constantinople. Domnus, a name of no great distinction, was Patriarch of Antioch. In the West there are few, either ecclesiastics or others, who even aspire to a doubtful fame, such as Prosper, the poet of the Pelagian controversy, and Cassianus, the legislator of the Western monasteries. a Leo, like most of his great predecessors and successors, was a Roman. He was early devoted to the service of the Church; and so and so high was the opinion of his abilities, that even as an acolyte he was sent to Africa with letters condemnatory of Pelagianism. By the great African Prelates Aurelius and St. Augustine he was confirmed in his strong aversion to those doctrines, which might seem irreconcilable with his ardent piety. He urged upon Pope Sixtus the persecution of the unfortunate Julianus. When Leo was yet only a Deacon, Cassianus dedicated to him his work on the Incarnation. At the decease of Pope Sixtus, Leo was absent on a civil mission, the importance of Election of which shows the lofty estimate of his powers. It Leo. was no less than an attempt to reconcile the two rival generals, Aëtius and Albinus, whose fatal quarrel hazarded the dominion of Rome in Gaul. There was no delay; all Rome, clergy, senate, people, by acclamation, raised the absent Leo to the vacant see. Leo disdained the customary hypocrisy of compelling the electors to force the dignity upon him. With the self-confidence of a commanding mind he assumed the office, in the pious assur b "His insidiis Sixtus Papa, diaconi Leonis hortatu, vigilanter occurrens, nullum aditum pestiferis conatibus patere permisit, et... omnes catholicos de rejectione fallacis bestiæ gaudere fecit." Prosper. in Chronic. b"Etsi necessarium est trepidare de merito, religiosum est gaudere de dono ... ne sub magnitudine gratiæ succumbat infirmus, dabit virtutem, qui contulit dignitatem."-Sermo 11. ance that God would give him strength to fulfil the arduous duties so imposed. Leo was a Roman in sentiment as in birth. All that survived of Rome, of her unbounded ambition, her inflexible perseverance, her dignity in defeat, her haughtiness of language, her belief in her own eternity, and in her indefeasible title to universal dominion, her respect for traditionary and written law, and of unchangeable custom, might seem concentered in him alone. The union of the Churchman and the Roman is singularly displayed in his sermon on the day of St. Peter and St. Paul; their conjoint authority was that double title to obedience on which he built his claim to power, but chiefly as successor of St. Peter, for whom and for his ecclesiastical heirs he asserted a proto-Apostolic dignity. From Peter and through Peter all the other Apostles derived their power. No less did he assert the predestined perpetuity of Rome, who had only obtained her temporal autocracy to prepare the way, and as a guarantee, for her greater spiritual supremacy. St. Peter and St. Paul were the Romulus and Remus of Christian Rome. Pagan Rome had been the head of the heathen world; the empire of her divine religion was to transcend that of her worldly dominion. Her victories had subdued the earth and the sea, but she was to rule still more widely than she had by her wars, through the peaceful triumphs of her faith." It was because Rome was the capital of the world that the chief of the Apostles was chosen to be her teacher, in order that from the head of the world the light of truth might be revealed over all the earth. The haughtiness of the Roman might seem to predominate over the meekness of the Christian. Leo is in C Nothing can be stronger than the Popes' declarations that even they are strictly subordinate to the law of the church. "Contra statuta patrum concedere aliquid vel mutare nec hujus quidem sedis potest auctoritas." Zos. Epist. sub "Sumus subjecti canonibus, qui canonum præcepta servamus."-Cœlest. ad Episc. Illyr. "Privilegia sanctorum patrum canonibus instituta et Nicea synodi fixa decretis nulla possunt improbitate convelli, nulla novitate violari."S. Leo. Epist. 78: compare Epist. 80. ann. 417. "Quoniam contra statuta paternorum canouum nihil cuiquam audire conceditur, ita si quis diversum aliquid decernere velit, se potius minuet, quam illa corrumpat; quæ si (ut oportet) a sanctis Pontificibus observantur per universas ecclesias, tranquilla erit pax et firma concordia."-Epist. 79. d" Per sacram beati Petri sedem caput orbis effecta, latius præsideres religione divinâ quam dominatione terrenâ."Serm. lxxxiii. dignant that slaves were promoted to the dignity of the sacerdotal office; not merely did he require the consent of the master, lest the Church should become a refuge for contumacious slaves, and the established rights of property be invaded, but the baseness of the slave brought discredit on the majesty of the priestly office." Though Leo's magnificent vision of the universal dominion of Rome and of Christianity blended the indomitable ambition of the ancient Roman with the faith of the Christian, the world might seem rather darkening towards the ruin of both. Leo may be imagined as taking a calm and comprehensive survey of the arduous work in which he was engaged, the state of the various provinces over which he actually exercised, or aspired to, supremacy. In Rome heathenism appears, as a religion, extinct; but heretics, especially the most odious of all, the Manicheans, were in great numbers. In Rome, Leo ruled not merely with Apostolic authority, but took upon himself the whole Apostolic function. He was the first of the Roman Pontiffs whose popular sermons have come down to posterity. The Bishops of Constantinople seem to have been the great preachers of their city. Pulpit oratory was their recommendation to the see, and the great instrument of their power. Chrysostom was not the first, though the greatest, who had been summoned to that high dignity, for the fame of his eloquence. From the pulpit Nestorius had waged war against his adversaries. Leo, no doubt, felt his strength; he could cope with the minds of the people, and make the pulpit what the rostrum had e "Tanquam servilis vilitas hunc honorem capiat. Duplex itaque in hac parte reatus est, quod et sacrum ministerium talis consortii vilitate polluitur, et dominorum . . . jura solvuntur."Epist. iv. Sozomen asserts that it was a peculiar usage of the Church of Rome that neither the bishop nor any one else preached in the church: os dirigoros οὔτε ἄλλος τις ἐνθάδε ἐπ' ἐκκλησίας διδασκει. H. E. vii. 19. This statement, defended by Valesius, is vehemently impugned by many Roman Catholic writers. Quesnel confines it to sermons on particular occasions. But the assertion of Sozomen is clearly general, and contrasted with the usage of Alexandria, where the bishop was the only preacher. If this be true, the usage must have been subsequent to the beginning of Arianism, perhaps grew out of it. The presumption of ignorance or error in Sozomen arises out of the generality of his statement, that there was in fact no preaching in Rome. The style of Leo's sermons, brief, simple, expository, is almost conclusive against any long cultivation of pulpit oratory. They are evidently the first efforts of Christian rhetoricthe earliest, if vigorous, sketches of a young art. Compare page 21. |