In the December issue, Piers Paul Read reminded readers of the times when Christianity was persecuted. This is not untimely, given the re-commencement of persecution of Christians in our day and the growth of Christophobia.
But what of the days when Christianity was not persecuted but enjoyed very harmonious relations with the secular powers?
Piers skips over 17 centuries of Christianity and arrives at the French Revolution which saw the beginning of the new, modern persecution of Christianity.
But what of the intervening 1700 years? Was this a period when the Church was persecuted, marginalised and suffered.
Quite the contrary.
Once Theodosius I the Great became Roman Emperor on 19 January 379, he set about making Catholic Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire. The Emperor Constantine had prepared the way by issuing the Edict of Milan in 313, tolerating Christianity.
Thereafter, he favoured Christianity, building basilicas and making endowments. The Lateran Palace is thought to have been a gift of Constantine to the Pope.
However, it was Theodosius who replaced the pagan Pantheon making Christianity the official religion of the Empire.
On 27 February 380, a year after his accession, and not long after his baptism, Theodosius, together with his co-emperors, Gratian and Valentinian, issued the Edict of Thessalonica (titled in Latin Cunctos populos) addressed to the people of Constantinople but making Catholic Christianity the state religion of the whole Empire. From that time on, the popes were treated with great respect and given lands, property and endowments.
What is little known today is that the popes from that time onward were the temporal subjects of the Roman emperors (and later the Holy Roman emperors) whilst being their spiritual superior.
This symbiotic relationship was set down in writing by Pope St Gelasius I the Great in his humble letter of address, entitled Famuli Vestrae Pietatis (“the servants of your Piety”), to the Eastern Emperor, Anastasius I Dicorus.
In those days the Emperor was addressed as “your Piety” or sometimes “your Serenity”.
This letter, written in 494, is sometimes called Duo sunt (“there are two”) because it described the division of the two powers upon earth, spiritual and temporal, between popes and emperors.
Emperors also had to protect the Papacy from bad popes. Thus, Emperor Otto I the Great convened a synod (the Synod of Rome 963), as was his imperial right, which deposed, for high crimes, the corrupt Pope John XII who, according to Bishop Liutprand of Cremona (in his Antapodosis), had turned the Lateran Palace into a bordello.
This symbiotic system, whose blueprint was set out in Duo sunt, lasted for a thousand years from the coronation of Emperor Charlemagne, in 800, to the fall of the Holy Roman Empire at the hands of the secularist anti-Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, in August 1806.
The coronation of Charlemagne as the renewed Roman Emperor of the West on Christmas Day 800 by Pope St Leo IIIand the beginning of Western civilisation as it has come down to us
Those thousand years laid the foundation for Christendom and all the major institutions of the West that we have come to take so much for granted – art, architecture, literature, music, poetry, modern philosophy, modern legal and constitutional concepts, democracy and modern government, science, modern medicine and hospitals, charity and alms-giving, social welfare, universities, modern education, human rights, protection for minorities and so much more.
This was all achieved not because the Church and the State had an “uneasy relationship” but, on the contrary, because they had the best and most fruitful of relationships which, in effect, created Western civilisation.
The Emperor was supreme in all matters temporal and the Pope supreme in all matters of conscience and spirituality. The Emperor also had the temporal duty physically to protect the person of the Pope and the Papacy and the Pope had the spiritual duty to protect the spiritual health of the emperor, the Empire and the Catholic world.
The popes were also temporal rulers of what later came to be called the Papal States.
The popes were temporal subjects of the Eastern Emperor but invasions by the pagan (and later heretical Arian) Lombards cut off the Duchy of Rome from the Eastern Emperor’s local ruler, the Exarch of Ravenna, and the Eastern emperors began less and less to commit themselves to protecting the popes and the Papacy.
The popes thus turned to Western rulers, once again, to seek protection. They found it in King Pepin “the short”, King of the Franks, who became the champion of the popes and protected them from the Lombards and from the new Muslim invaders.
This arrangement reached its denouement with Pepin’s son, the Emperor Charlemagne, who became the prime founder of Western Christendom. The nobility, clergy and free men of the City of Rome agreed to elect Charlemagne the renewed Emperor of the West.
He was then crowned by Pope St Leo III, on Christmas Day 800, in St Peter’s Basilica, as Caesar semper Augustus Imperator Romanorum – “Caesar ever august, Emperor of the Romans”, later shortened in Italian to “Cesare” (“Caesar”), in German to “Kaiser” and in the Slavic languages to “Czar”, all originally Catholic titles.
At some stage, the emperors chose, as their patron, the black Egyptian, St Maurice, the Knight Commander of the Theban Legion, martyred in 287 by the pagan Emperor Diocletian.
St Maurice (250-287), Knight Commander of the martyred Theban Legion and later the black Patron of the Holy Roman emperors.
What is little understood by modern secularist historians, is the true nature of the relationship between popes and emperors. It was the first modern example of the constitutional division of powers.
Just as modern judges have no compunction in calling to account recalcitrant political leaders who stray from the path of legality, so, too, did the popes, in times past, call to account Catholic kings and emperors when they strayed from the path of virtue and Christian law.
In 390, St Ambrose, Bishop of the Western imperial capital of Milan, despite being a subject of the Emperor Theodosius, imposed upon the Emperor semi-public penance for failing to stop the massacre in the Hippodrome at Thessalonica, and denied him Holy Communion until the penance was fully completed. Theodosius duly complied, despite being the supreme temporal ruler.
Conversely, just as our King (on the advice of a minister who himself is advised by the judicial appointments commission) appoints judges so, too, did the emperors have rights (ultimately, a veto) over the election of popes. However, popes also had rights (also a veto) over the election of emperors.
It is often forgotten that Ecumenical Councils of the Church could not be convoked without the consent of the Emperor and the first 8 Councils (and several thereafter) were called solely by emperors and not by popes (American web-sites frequently omit this fact). However, the decrees only became “ecumenical” once ratified by the reigning pope.
Modern historians sometimes misunderstand a pope’s remonstrances against an emperor as the beginning of a major political rift. They were no more so than are the decisions of a High Court judge today striking down the act of a minister.
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