SECTION XII.

PAPAL INFALLIBILITY AND THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GENERAL COUNCILS.

THE Seventh and the Eighth Ecumenical Councils, no less than the preceding, stand forth as plainly favourable to Papal Infallibility. The Seventh Synod was called by Hadrian I. against the sect of the Iconoclasts, who, in the course of one hundred and twenty years of the most cruel persecution against the worshippers of sacred images, shed more blood, and caused more evils and scandals in the Church than any of the preceding factions. Leo the Isaurian and Constantine Copronymus made up their minds that no means were to be left untried for extirpating the veneration of images, and for freeing the Church from what they termed idolatry. They spared no kind of cruelty in order to succeed in their impious purpose. Exile and confiscation were the mildest punishments which the heroes of faith could expect at the hands of those cruel tyrants. By hundreds they were cut to pieces, or cast in bags into the sea, or horribly mutilated, or condemned to die of misery and starvation. Constantine Copronymus, availing himself of the utter degradation of a great part of the Clergy in the East, convened a Synod of 338 Bishops at Constantinople, and forced them to bow, against their conscience, in servile compliance to his will. In such a state of things the Catholic portion of the Eastern Church did not see any gleam of hope except from Rome, from the Apos

tolic See. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, having steadily resisted the attempts of the Emperor, addressed himself to Pope Gregory II. for help and support. The great Pontiff, in a Letter to the Patriarch, gave a clear exposition of the Catholic dogma concerning the veneration of the sacred images, and defined what every Catholic was to believe on the subject.706 The same Pope, in two other Letters to the Emperor Leo, strongly reproached him for his cruelty and iniquity;707 stigmatised him as a heretic for having destroyed the images of Christ and of the Saints ;708 and rejected the proposal of a General Council on a subject which was already more clear than light itself.709 He strongly inculcated on him that it is a duty of the Emperors to obey the definitions of the Pontiff-not to command in matters of faith.710 He threatened him with the judgments of God, no less than with the indignation of his own subjects in the West.711 Gregory II. not only set forth the Catholic dogma for the instruction of the Eastern Church, but also, in a Synod held at Rome, solemnly condemned and anathematised the error of the Iconoclasts.712 His successors followed in his steps. Gregory III., Zachary,

706 Epist. Gregorii II. Papæ ad Germanum Patr. Const. In Act. iv., Conc. Niceni ii. (Labbe, t. viii., p. 931, seq.).

707 Epist. i. Gregorii II. ad Leonem Isaur. In Actis Conc. Nic. ii., cap. i. (Labbe, t. viii., p. 651, seq.); Epist. ii. ejusdem ad eundem (1. c., p. 667, seq.). Mgr. Maret, by mistake, ascribes these Letters to Gregory III., his successor.

708 "Expediret tibi, imperator, ut hæreticus potius quam persecutor et eversor historiarum et picturarum et imaginum et passionum Domini appellareris?" (Epist. i. Ibid., p. 959).

709 "Tu ea quæ cognita sunt et spectata ut lumen, aperte insectatus es" (Ibid.). “Scripsisti ut concilium universale cogeretur, et nobis inutilis ea res visa est" (Ibid., p. 662).

710 Epist. i. (1. c., p. 662); Epist. ii. (l. c., p. 670, seq.).

711 Epist. i. (1. c., p. 663, seq.).

712 Conc. iii. Rom. sub Greg. II. (Labbe, t. xlii., p. 191). The Greek writers, as Cedreņus, Zonaras, etc., all confirm this fact.

Paul I., Stephen II., and Stephen III., all definitively condemned the new heresy, and pronounced an anathema against those who were defiled by it.713 After the Pontifical Acts, the controversy concerning sacred images must be considered as being definitively settled as a matter of doctrine. Nevertheless, after sixty years of cruel persecution, the Oriental Church was so far thrown into confusion, and the scandals and evils had increased to so great an extent, as to require an Ecumenical Council. After the virtuous resignation of the Patriarch Paul, Tarasius courageously refused to accept the Patriarchal See of Constantinople except on the condition that the consent of the Pope were obtained to the convocation of a General Synod, and that the Oriental Church should be freed from the anathema under which it was lying, and restored to the unity of one faith and one body.714 The Emperor Constantine and his mother Irene willingly consented to the request of the newly-elected Patriarch,715 and, in pursuance of it, the Emperors joined with Tarasius in addressing their prayers to Pope Hadrian I., begging him to assemble an Ecumenical Council for the purpose of bringing back the Eastern provinces to peace and concord:716 The Patriarch at the same time forwarded to the Roman Pontiff a Catholic profession of faith, and an apology for the veneration of the sacred images.717 Hadrian I. received these Letters with heartfelt joy. He immediately dispatched his Legates to Constantinople, in

713 Hadriani Epist. ad Carolum M. (Labbe, t. viii., p. 1381, et etiam Labbe, 714 Sacra Constantini et Irenis Imp. (Labbe, t. viii., p. 698).

715 Ibid.

t.

In Synod. Nic. ii., cap. v. viii., pp. 218, 483, etc.). In Conc. Nic. ii., Act. i.

716 Sacra cit. (l. c., p. 699); Historia Miscella, 1. xxiii. (Migne, PP. LL., t. xcv., p. 1116).

717 Cedrenus, Historiarum Compendium, t. ii., p. 22 (Edit. Bonn); Hist. Misc., l. c., p. 1117.

order that they might settle, with the Emperor and the Patriarch, the easiest way of putting an end to the prevailing heresy.718 At the same time he wrote to the Emperor a very important Letter, which was read in the Second Session of the Seventh Synod. In it he accedes to the scheme of summoning an Ecumenical Council, but he requires, as a preliminary step, that the pseudoSynod which had been held against the sacred images by Constantine Copronymus should be solemnly condemned and anathematised in the presence of his Legates.719 He points out to the Emperors the sublime dignity and power of the Roman See, in which the supreme authority of the Prince of the Apostles still survived, and to which was intrusted the care of feeding the flock of Christ. He informs them that in the Roman See the Apostolical traditions had always been preserved in their integrity and perfection, and that from the same See the practical rule of faith had been spread abroad to the Faithful of every tongue and nation.720 He reminds them of the devotion with which their predecessors had always venerated the Roman Church and sincerely submitted to its Decrees.721 Accordingly he exhorts them to remain firm in their loyal obedience to the Roman Church, and to restore to honour and veneration those sacred images, which the violence of impious and heretical men had cast away through all the cities of the Empire.722 At the same time the Pope addressed another Letter to Tarasius. In this he approves of the Patriarch's Catholic profession of

718 Sacra Constantini (1. c.); Epist. Tarasii Patr. ad Hadrianum Papam (Labbe, t. viii., p. 1275).

719 Epist. Hadriani Papæ ad Imperatores (Labbe, t. viii., p. 763).

720 Ibid. (1. c., p. 747).

721 Ibid. (1. c.).

722 Ibid. (1. c., p. 761).

faith.723 He pointedly declares the doctrine of the Iconoclasts to be an error and heresy, and he gives the names of impious and heretics to its supporters; on the other side he solemnly defines the opposite doctrine to be the dogma and the tradition of all Christian antiquity.724 This being so, he authoritatively imposes on the Patriarch the duty of persuading the Emperor to declare the pseudo-Synod which had been held against the sacred images to be void of effect. "For," he goes on, "it is written- The gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church;' and again—'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I shall build My Church.'"725 Finally, the Pope intimates to the Patriarch that, unless the sacred images again received their traditional worship, and he himself faithfully adhered to the dogmatic truth, his consecration would not be recognised at Rome.726

Now Mgr. Maret and the Gallican School maintain that, though the character of the controversy was clear, the Letters of Hadrian I. did not constitute an irreformable and absolute rule of faith before they were accepted and signed by the Synod; so that the controversy could not have an end without the aid of an Ecumenical Council,727 The question recurs in the same terms at each Council. The Letters of Pope Hadrian I. were, in truth, by themselves a rule of faith, and moreover evidently supposed that the rule of faith had already been made known to the Catholic world by the dogmatical definitions of his predecessors. In fact, Hadrian expressly requires that Tarasius should "Nostræ Apos

723 Epistola Hadriani I. ad Tarasium Patr. Conc. vii. (Labbe, t. viii., p. 767, seq.).

In Act. ii.,

724 Ibid. (1. c., p. 771, seq.), et etiam Epist. ad Imp. (1. c., p. 762). 725 Ibid. (1. c.).

726 Ibid. (1. c., p. 774).

727 Du Concile Général, l. ii., ch. ix., p. vi., pp. 308, 311, seq.

T