the central kingdom of Italy by Austrian and French troops(o) did obviously disturb the equilibrium of Europe. It was, indeed, on this principle that, some years ago, French troops occupied Ancona, when Austrian troops were marched into the Roman States. All States, whatever be their Established Church, are equally interested in maintaining this equilibrium. May then Prussia, England, Russia, and Spain send an armed force to Rome? There is this answer, that the Pope invites the Austrians and French. This is true; and it has been shown that circumstances may justify foreign nations in intervening at the request of either party in a civil war; but what would have been the confusion in Europe and the world, if other States had been invited by the other party in this civil war to intervene on their behalf, and had accepted the invitation,-if Prussia and England had intervened in the centre, as Sardinia had done in the North of Italy? [*448] Lastly, it is not only Roman Catholic States that were interested in events affecting the status of the Pope. Prussia and England have millions of Roman Catholic subjects. But a little while ago, as we have seen, an Apostolic Letter threw England into a ferment, which to be believed must have been witnessed. In 1849, during the civil wars in Italy, the English Minister for Foreign Affairs carried on a very important correspondence with our ambassador abroad, in which he made the following, among other obsertions : 1. That England would not, on account of her Roman Catholic subjects, view with indifference what was passing in the Roman States.(p) 2. That she desired that the Pope should occupy an independent temporal position, in order that he might not become the political instrument of any one European Power.(1) 3. That there was, nevertheless, a great difficulty in making the Roman States an exception to the general rule of noninterference between any foreign people and their Sovereign. 4. That the position of the Pope differed from that of other Sovereigns, as he was elected by the College of Cardinals, a body neither national in its constitution nor in its membership. 5. That the Pope ought to give his subjects securities for good government. 6. That for that object a separation should be made between the spiritual authority and the temporal powers and institutions of the State. (0) It is true that England was consulted before this took place. Lord Normanby writes from Paris to Lord Palmerston (July 23, 1849,)" He (M. de Tocqueville) took this opportunity of again repeating what he had said to me upon former occasions, that though England, for reasons given by your Lordship, had declined to take any active part in the present negotiations when invited by the Pope, he hoped she would, nevertheless, in some shape, give to such an arrangement as she had formerly wished to see effected, the moral support of her advice and counsel, either at Gaeta or at Rome. The active interest she might show upon this subject, would be an additional security that whatever reforms were promised would be sincerely executed."-Correspond. respecting the Affairs of Rome, 1849, presented to Parliament 14 April, 1851. (p) Vide ante, vol. i. p. 443. (9) See the opinion of Portalis, Discours sur l'Organization des Cultes. Discours, &c., par le Vicomte F. Portalis, s. 33. (Paris: 1845.) 7. That an armed intervention to assist the Pope in retaining a bad Government would be unjustifiable.(r) [*449] CHAPTER XI. 383 THE INTERNATIONAL STATUS OF THE PATRIARCHATE OF CONSTAN of Grace. - Relations & boren the heck and Anglican Churches. 4 TINOPLE (a) The Church in the Fling? me + + CCCCXLI. IN the time of Pope Gregory the Great(b) (A. D. 595,) and while Maurice was Emperor of Constantinople, John, the Patriarch of Constantinople, openly assumed the title of Universal Bishop, claiming thereby apparently a spiritual supremacy over the whole Christian world.(c) The letters written by Gregory to the Emperor, to the Patriarch, and to certain Bishops, are among the most valuable monuments of Ecclesiastical History, and, indeed, of Ecclesiastical International Law. These letters of this illustrious(d) prelate, in which he denies the right of any Patriarch or Bishop to arrogate to himself the title of Universal Bishop, and denounces the usurper of this foolish, offensive, and unchristian appellation as the precursor of Antichrist, (e) will well repay the perusal of all who take an interest in those events, [*450] which combine the most remarkable features of civil and ecclesiastical history.(f) CCCCXLII. More than a century passes away between the Pontificate of Gregory I. (the Great) and that of Gregory II.(g) But both Popes (r) Correspondence between Viscount Palmerston, the Marquis of Normanby, and Prince Castalcicala, laid before Parliament, June 15, 1849. (a) Walter's Kirchenrecht, ss. 168-173. Verfassung der Morgenländischen Kirche. (b) His Pontificate lasted from A. D. 590 to A. D. 604. (c) Vide ante, p. 292. (d) The blot upon his character in his adulatory letter to the wretch Phocas; but even Gibbon says that "Gregory might justly be styled the Father of his Country."-Decline and Fall, vol. iii. p. 176, (ed. Milman.) (e) L. vii. ep. xxxiii.: "Eundem verò fratrem et coepiscopum meum studiosè admonere curavi, ut si habere pacem omnium concordiamque desiderat ab stulti vocabuli se appellatione compescat." (6 Ego autem fidenter dico, quia quisquis se Universalem Sacerdotem vocat, vel vocari desiderat, in elatione suà antichristum præcurrit, quia superbiendo se cæteris præponit." Ep. xxxi.: "Ut verbum superbiæ, per quod grave scandalum in Ecclesiis generatur, auferre festinetis." Some expressions of the kind occur in most of the ten letters. (f) The reader is referred to :- Liv. v. ep xviii. (Ad Johannem Episcopum) Ep. xix. (Ad Sabinianum Diaconum.) Ep. xx. (Ad Mauricium Augustum.) Ep. xxi. (Ad Constantinam Augustam.) Ep. xliii. (Ad. Eulogium et Anastasium Episcopos.) Lib. vii. ep. xxvii. (Ad Anastasium Episcopum.) Ep. xxxi. (Ad Cyriacum Episcopum.) Lib. viii. ep. xxxiii. (Ad Mauricium Augnstum.) Lib. viii. ep. xxx. (Ad Eulogium Episcopum Alexandrinum.) Lib. xiii. ep. xl. (Ad Cyriacum Patriarcham Constantinopol. Sancti Gregorii Papæ I. Cognomento Magni Opera Omnia, t. ii. (Parisiis: Sumptibus Claudii Rigaud, 1705.) were brought into especial contact with the Patriarchate of Constantinople. According to the opinion of Gibbon, certainly important on this point, the Patriarchs of Rome and Constantinope were at this time nearly equal in ecclesiastical rank and jurisdiction.(h) But the Greek Patriarch was under the immediate yoke of a tyrannical Prince, which the distant Roman Patriarch had been long striving to shake off. When the imperial iconoclast, Leo, was making that assault upon the devotional use of images, which-trifling as it seems to the infidel philosopher-was fraught with serious consequences to the future peace of Christendom, he received from Gregory II. a letter, which contains a passage bearing upon the present subject:- Are you ignorant" (Gregory writes) "that the Popes are the bond of union, the mediators of peace between the East and West ?"(i) When the *iconoclast had ceased to reign, the power of the Byzantine Emperor in Italy [*451] had dwindled into the Exarchate of Ravenna, and was practically confined within the walls of that city. The restoration of the Western Empire by Charlemagne, which has been mentioned in the preceding pages,(k) was followed by the separation of the Latin and Greek Churches. In what degree a difference of religious opinion upon the most inscrutable of mysteries, national animosity, and arrogance on the part of Rome contributed to produce that schism, which the lapse of ten centuries finds unhealed, it is not within the compass of this work to consider. In the turbulent period between A. D. 857-886, Pope Nicholas I. and the Patriarch Photius had mutually denounced and deposed each other. But it was not until A. D. 1054 that the Pope sent his legates to excommunicate formally the Church of Greece and the Patriarch of Constantinople in his own metropolis, and to deposit the Latin anathema on the altar of Saint Sophia. The failure of the attempt to reunite the two Churches at the Council of Florence (A. D. 1439) has been previously noticed.(1) The conquest of Constantinople by the Turks (A. D. 1453) was followed by that long and cruel oppression of the Greek Church, from which she has been, during the last few years, partially relieved and her complete emancipation from which appears, so altered is the state of things, to be no impossible result of the war which is now being waged for the protection of the Ottoman Power. CCCCXLIII. The Patriarch of the East has not renewed that claim to the title of Universal Bishop which drew down upon him the just rebuke of the Patriarch of the West. It is not easy to define the existing relations of the Patriarchate *of Constantinople to the Russian Church. (m) The Patriarch, (h) Decline and Fall, vol. ix. p. 131. [*452] (i) Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 136. At p. 134, he has this note: "The two epistles of Gregory II. have been preserved in the Acts of the Nicene Council, t. viii. pp. 651-674. They are without date, which is fixed by Baronius in 726; by Muratori (Annal. d'Italia, vi. p. 120,) in 720; by Pagi in 730." (k) Vide ante, pp. 294-7. (7) Vide ante, p. 336. (m) Strahl, Beytrage zur Russischen Kirchengeschichte. (Halle, 1827.) Neale, History of the Holy Eastern Church, vol. i. p. 55. + R. de Tr. Sameer 1.421; - De Martens (MR), xii, 588 (1833) 米 1850 Samwer, 11.423, llun d. 3. M. 1857-52, p. 965: - Samover iv. partie 2, p. 2o7. PHILLIMORE Emper Arch, D.pl 29863, 112141 MORE ON INTERNATIONAL LAW. 206. Samover 494, 501 508, W. Wi. Jetzt, 1864 while these pages are being written, is reported to have rebuked the ror of Russia for the schismatic condition of the Church in that country, and to have refused his proffered protectorate for the Greek Church.(n) The Patriacch of Constantinople has recently entered into a Concordat with the Crown of Greece. The ministers of that Crown sent a formal letter to the Patriarch, accompanied by an unanimous decree of the Holy Synod of Greece, dated May 30, 1850. This document contained the following among other propositions:-"That the Synod of Greece holds as a most solemn obligation the duty of piously conceding the primacy guaranteed by the sacred canons to the oecumenical Throne of Constantinople, as the first Chair of the Catholic Apostolic Orthodox Church, and to commemorate first, him who sits thereon, in the sacred diptychs, according to the established order of the Church. In addition to this, whereever spiritual questions may arise which require united deliberation and action, for the greater edification and confirmation of the Orthodox Church, they recognise it to be a duty that reference should first be made to that Chair."(o) * + This and the other propositions of the letter were formally ratified and confirmed by the Patriarch of Constantinople, his associate Synod and Suffragans, in a Synodical decree.] [*453] *CCCCXLIV. It is remarkable, that not long before the Papal aggression in England, which has just been discussed, Pius IX. made an attack of a similar character upon the Eastern Church. On the 6th of January, 1848, he issued "an Encyclical Letter of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church to the Orthodox in all parts," in modern Greek, "to the Easterns," containing some very unfortunate errors, among others, a reference to the Council of Carthage, instead of Chalcedon ;(p) but neither this mistake nor the modern Greek appears to have been the cause of the great irritation and offence caused by this memorable epistle, of which it is now not easy to obtain a copy: it was the assumption of authority, the implicit denial of the Greek Episcopate, which roused this long-oppressed Church, and caused it to return, in classical Greek, "an answer, which will never be forgotten, of the Orthodox Eastern Church to the Encyclical Epistle of His Holiness the Pope of (o) "The Greek Patriarch at Constantinople, M. Anthimos, had addressed a remarkable circular to his co-religionists. Hearing that some Greeks manifested hostile sentiments towards the allies of Turkey, the Patriarch censured their conduct, and passed a high encomium on the noble disinterestedness with which the Western Powers defend the cause of the weak against the strong. In conclusion, he pronounced a solemn anathema, in the name of the Eastern Church, against the schism, calling itself orthodoxy, which has transferred to St. Petersburg the spiritual authority in religious matters."-Times, August 31st, 1854. (n) These documents were printed in a modern Greek journal called the Air, and are translated in the April number of the Scottish Ecclesiastical Journal for 1851. (p) The mistake is singular, for Gregory the Great thus speaks of the compliment paid to Rome by the Council of Chalcedon: "Si enim universalem me Papam vestra Sanctitas decit, negat se hoc esse, quod me fatetur universum. Sed absit hoc. Recedant verba quæ vanitatem inflent et caritatem vulnerant. Et quidem in Sanctâ Chalcedonensi Synodo, atque post a subsequentibus Patribus hoc decessoribus meis oblatum vestra Sanctitas novit. Sed tamen nullus eorum uti hoc unquam vocabula voluit: ut dum in hoc mundo honorem Sacerdotum diligerent omninm, apud omnipotentem Deum custodirent suum."-L. viii. ep. xxx. A hall-prafe & references on the subject of I The more recent allemmest of the Poke to monce the Patriarch to actmonleif the recrmencity of the U.C. an the authority of the I. has been equally unsuccessful A list of Dreuments cited: Also Appendix referverts by PATRIARCHATE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 297 Rome lately sent to the Easterns." This answer corrected the historical *We have already considered the claim of the Emperor of Rus- It only remains to add that the great Powers of Europe, who, in (2) Scottish Ecclesiastical Journal, January, 1851. Neale, History of the Holy Eastern Church, vol. ii. pp. 1192-1202. The Signatures to the Eastern Encyclic are as follows: "Anthimus, by the mercy of God, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch, in Christ our God a beloved brother and bedesman." "Hierotheus, by the mercy of God, Patriarch of Alexandria and of all Egypt, in Christ," &c. "Methodius, by the mercy of God, Patriarch of the great city of God, Antioch, and of all the East, in Christ," &c. "Cyril, by the mercy of God, Patriarch of Jerusalem and of all Palestine, in Christ," &c. (r) Vide ante, vol. i. pp. 470-483. INTERVENTION ON THE GROUND OF RELIGION. (t) Ann. Reg. vol. xcv. NOVEMBER, 1855.-20 |