LEO THE GREAT

CHAPTER II.

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD.

The question of the relation between the Church and the State is one of the highest importance in every age, and one which is continually presenting itself for solution in fresh aspects and unforeseen conjunctions. The answer to it is of the utmost significance in the middle of the fifth century. In the West, with which we are mainly concerned, the predominance of the Church was unmistakable.

For many centuries the bishops of Rome had been comparatively obscure persons: indeed, Leo was the first really great man who occupied the see, but he occupied it under circumstances which tended without exception to put power in his hand. The emperors had left Rome; and in leaving it left to the popes all the magnificent traditions of authority, all the imaginative reverence which could not but centre in the Eternal City. Year by year, as the emperors became more and more the shadow of a name, the popes became a substance and a reality. Amid weakness and inefficiency all around, or, what was hardly less disastrous, the rivalries of powerful captains, the emperor could but look to the Church for support, for the Church showed some signs of power to control the barbarians; and the chief importance in the secular history of the Church of the age lies in the authority she was enabled to wield over those untamed hordes. It was the ecclesiastical organization which gave the framework for modern society.

It is thus that arrayed as it has come down to us in all its legendary glory the celebrated meeting of Leo and Attila is a symbol, no less than a fact. Take the narrative in its most picturesque, if least historical shape, and it speaks to us, as from the celebrated canvas of Raphael: of the Church overawing and disciplining the uncouth barbarians. The Huns, with their hideous features and grotesque appearance, the very emblems of uncivilized force, headed by their powerful and fierce monarch, Attila, are threatening Italy and Rome. The Empire is paralyzed with fear; it turns to the Church. Leo, the representative of religion, in his sacerdotal robes meets the wild conqueror before his own camp, and he whom arms could not stay trembles and bows before the peaceful priest. The great Apostles, the founders of the Church of Rome, threaten him with their majestic and supernatural presence if he refuses to withdraw, and, humbled before the forces of the spiritual world in heaven and in earth; the hideous king returns upon his footsteps.

Such is the symbolical legend, but we must return to its counterpart in history. It was not without reason that the Roman world, trembled in a panic of almost helpless dread before the advance of the Huns. Their hideous and half-human Mongol form and features, the mystery of their origin, the resistlessness of their advance combined to make them dreaded as a super­natural portent. A trustworthy historian gives us as “the marks of the race”, a stump stature, a broad chest, a big head, tiny eyes, a sparse beard, a snub nose, a hideous coloring; and Attila, their resistless king, was a true specimen of his race—“of a terrible presence, proud in his gait, rolling his eyes hither and thither, powerful in council, a lover of war but capable of controlling it, and ready to welcome and spare the suppliant”

This was the man and this was the race which carried so fully into practice their worship of the god of war and of the iron scimitar, by passing over Europe from East to West “in an almost unresisted career of victory and carnage”. They had dealt with the Eastern empire insolently and almost at will—they dominated the Gothic and Teutonic tribes. Their trembling victims, as it were acquiescing in helpless submission to the tyranny of their awful king, called him the “scourge of God”. At last he was met and defeated by Aetius in the battle of Châlons, but treating the defeat as nothing more than a check, the still terrible Hun turned southwards on Italy. Aquileia was taken and annihilated, the cities of Lombardy were ravaged, and the peninsula lay open before him. The vicious and cowardly Valentinian fled in abject terror. Aetius if not treacherous, was at least helpless. In this extremity the emperor, senate, and people entrusted the hopes of the city to a peaceful embassy, and Leo accompanied by the Consular Avienus and the Prefect Trigetius, undertook to meet the barbarian.

They found him on the shores of the lake Benacus where it receives the waters of the Mincius, with an army enervated partly, no doubt, by the unaccustomed luxuries of Italian fare and by the southern climate, partly also it would seem by dearth of food, and his own mind wrought upon by a superstitious dread of the fate of Alaric, who had not long survived the conquest of the Eternal City. Rumors, too, are said to have reached him of dangers of invasion at home, beyond the Danube. For his meeting with the ambassadors we are left to our imagination, but it may well be that with these motives for withdrawal already acting upon him, an additional impression was made upon his mind, susceptible, as it would appear, of religious impressions by the words and dignity of the Roman pontiff. At any rate the mission was successful, and he withdrew: not however tamely or without threats. He swore that Italy should suffer more than she had yet done if the Princess Honoria with her rich dowry were not sent him. This was the princess whose strange career illustrated the shameful degradation of the Empire. Among other adventures she had offered herself in marriage to the King of the Huns; and avarice and ambition, more than anything else, induced him now to claim her. He did not however survive to execute his threats, but died on his return to his Hunnic kingdom beyond the Danube while he was celebrating new nuptials; and his death dissolved his empire. His death was speedily followed by that of the general who alone had ever been able to defeat him on the field.

In a fit of contemptible jealousy the wretched Valentinian, “drawing the first sword he had ever drawn”, murdered Aetius; to quote the simple words of Marcellinus, the chronicler, “the patrician Aetius, the great defence of the Western State, and the terror of king Attila, was murdered by Valentinian in the palace with his friend Boetius: and with him fell the Empire of the West, nor has it been able over yet to be raised again”.

Meanwhile, the courage of Leo in meeting the fearful Hun had made a great impression both in the East and West, and within three years he stood out again once more as the preserver of the city. In the prosecution of his promiscuous amours the contemptible Valentinian was murdered at Rome (whither he had returned in March, 455) by the influence of a senator, Maximus, to whose wife he had offered violence. We cannot regret his death, but only its consequences. The successful Maximus compelled the Empress Eudoxia to become his wife; by confessing to her his complicity in the murder of her husband he raised in her breast a fierce desire of revenge. At her secret summons the victorious Genseric, king of the Vandals, who had passed from Africa to conquer Sicily, landed with a powerful force at the mouth of the Tiber. Maximus speedily perished in an insurrection of the populace with the followers of Eudoxia, but Genseric having set foot in Italy would not be satisfied without sacking Rome. The city was powerless. No armed force went out to meet the Vandal, but, instead, a peaceful procession of clergy, headed by their valiant bishop. In the interval of forty-five years since Rome had been taken by the Goths she had had time to recover something of her former splendor : it was not to be expected that the rapacious Vandal would have altogether abstained from pillage, and indeed it is somewhat difficult to find out what was the effect of Leo's prayers. “He induced him”, says Prosper, “to refrain from fire, slaughter, or outrage”: however this may have been, we know, on the one hand, that Leo's remarkable courage extracted some concessions from the barbarian, and on the other that the city was pillaged for fourteen days. Leo succeeded in saving but three large silver vessels from the sack of the churches; and by a curious combination of circumstances, the spoils of Titus from the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem, the golden table and the candlestick with seven branches,were carried on to Carthage from the Temple of Peace at Rome by a barbarian from the shores of the Baltic. Genseric returned with his vast spoils to Carthage, taking with him many thousand captives of both sexes, and amongst them the unfortunate empress whose invitation had brought him to Rome. This devastation may be said to have finally destroyed the pagan city, and the whole interest and glory of Rome henceforth centered in the Papacy.

We must notice that to neither of Leo’s encounters with barbarian kings do we find any allusion in his own writings; what slight allusion we have to the circumstances which caused them refer exclusively to the religious duties of enduring correction, and of gratitude for deliverance. This is both remarkable and interesting. It shows us that Leo was superior to the weakness of vanity, and if he was the savior of his country, was not inclined to boast of it.

We have seen how the State could avail itself of the services of the Church, it remains to see how the Church could make the State its instrument. Speaking generally, we may say there is no attempt in the Western Empire of this date to control the Church. There is, indeed, a rescript of Valentinian, dated in 452, which seems to be aimed at the judicial power in civil matters exercised by bishops. The importance and force of this rescript are not clear. The great Roman Catholic champion, Baronius, sees in the invasion of the Huns and the murder of Valentinian a divine judgment on this attempted invasion of the rights of the Church. Leo says nothing about it, and at any rate he had not in general any cause of complaint against the emperor on the score of resistance to Church authority.

When Leo was in conflict with Hilary of Aries (AD 448), he seems to have thought it desirable that the secular power should back up his spiritual authority. Accordingly, a rescript was obtained from the emperor, the terms of which are certainly remarkable. It speaks of the merits of St. Peter, the dignity of Rome, and the authority of a council, as conspiring to confirm the primacy of the Roman bishop, and warns men that “the peace of the Church will not be secured till with one consent it recognize its ruler”. The document goes on to condemn, wholly from Leo’s point of view, the conduct of Hilary, and to approve the pope's requirements. “His commands”, it continues, “would, of course, have been valid through Gaul, even without the Imperial sanction; for what can be beyond the authority of so great a pontiff in the affairs of the Church?” Still it is thought desirable that the Imperial authority should intervene; and “this is our perpetual injunction, that the bishops, neither of Gaul, nor any other province, be allowed contrary to ancient custom, to attempt anything without the authority of the pope of the Eternal City; but that for them, and for all, the law shall be whatever the authority of the Apostolic see has or shall have ordained”. The assistance of provincial magistrates is then promised to compel the attendance of recalcitrants at the command of Rome. Such a constitution ought to have pleaded, surely, in the eyes of Baronius to obtain for Valentinian a natural death! It is of course a purely Western document, though it bears the name of both emperors; and we regret, as we read its extravagant language, that Leo, in the hour of struggle, should not have been able to resist the temptation of extracting anything he wanted out of the feeble-minded emperor.

He was able on another occasion to use the influence of the Western Court to endeavor, though unsuccessfully, to move the Eastern, which he did not find nearly so subservient. In his relations to the Court of Theodosius, we are constantly reminded that the summoning of councils was dependent upon “the commandment and will of princes”. It was the emperor who summoned the Council of Ephesus in 449, and Leo, though he always speaks most respectfully, is inclined to complain that at least he should have been given longer notice. The occasion, the place, and the time were all decided by the emperor, and Leo sends his apologies for not attending in person. Afterwards, when the council had ended so disastrously, Leo wholly fails to obtain from the emperor permission for a new synod to be held in Italy, and the control of the emperors in this matter is only an example of the general interference in ecclesiastical matters in the East to which Leo has to give a constant practical recognition. Indeed, he constantly calls upon them to do the Church’s work, especially when he could not altogether depend upon the ecclesiastical authorities. In theory, Leo holds that the civil and ecclesiastical authority should be very closely united.

“Human affairs cannot”, he says, “be safe unless the royal and sacerdotal authority combine to defend the faith”. “Your empire”, he tells the Emperor Leo, on his accession, “is given you, not only to rule the world, but to defend the Church”. And he can give a prince no higher praise than to ascribe to him a “sacerdotal mind”. So intimate, indeed, is the relation he would have to exist between Church and State, that he would visit ecclesiastical error with civil punishment. Unlike St. Martin of Tours, and St. Ambrose, he even apologizes for the execution of Priscillian the heretic, who, for the first time in the history of Christianity, was put to death for his heresy by the secular arm; “for”, he writes, “though the forbearance of the Church, contented with a sacerdotal sentence, is unwilling to take a bloody revenge, yet at times it finds assistance in the severe commands of Christian princes, because the fear of punishment for the body sometimes drives men to seek healing for the soul”. Without approving the sentiment, we must remember that there is more justification for subjecting religious error to civil punishment in a half-barbarous age than in our own.

These remarks may be sufficient to indicate the relations of Church and State in East and West under Leo’s pontificate of twenty-one years.