An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

In France, and especially in Italy, the rule of the heretical power was much less oppressive; Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, reigned from the Alps to Sicily, and till the close of a long reign he gave an ample toleration to his Catholic subjects. He respected their property, suffered their churches and sacred places to remain in their hands, and had about his court some of their eminent Bishops, since known as Saints, St. Cæsarius of Arles, and St. Epiphanius of Pavia. Still he brought into the country a new population, devoted to Arianism, or, as we now speak, a new Church. "His march," says Gibbon [Note 6], "must be considered as the emigration of an entire people; the wives and children of the Goths, their aged parents, and most precious effects, were carefully transported; and some idea may be formed of the heavy luggage that now followed the camp by the loss of two thousand waggons, which had been sustained in a single action in the war of Epirus." To his soldiers he assigned a third of the soil of Italy, and the barbarian families settled down with their slaves and cattle. The original number of the Vandal conquerors of Africa had only been fifty thousand men, but the military colonists of Italy soon amounted to the number of two hundred thousand; which, according to the calculation adopted by the same author elsewhere, involves a population of a million. The least that could be expected was, that an Arian ascendency established through the extent of Italy would provide for the sufficient celebration of the Arian worship, and we hear of the Arians having a Church even in Rome [Note 7]. The rule of the Lombards in the north of Italy succeeded to that of the Goths,—Arians, like their predecessors, without their toleration. The clergy whom they brought with them seem to have claimed their share in the possession of the Catholic churches [Note 8]; and though the Court was converted at the end of thirty years, many cities in Italy were for some time afterwards troubled by the presence of heretical bishops [Note 9]. The rule of Arianism in France lasted for eighty years; in Spain for a hundred and eighty; in Africa for a hundred; for about a hundred in Italy. These periods were not contemporaneous; but extend altogether from the beginning of the fifth to the end of the sixth century.

5.

It will be anticipated that the duration of this ascendency of error had not the faintest tendency to deprive the ancient Church of the West of the title of Catholic; and it is needless to produce evidence of a fact which is on the very face of the history. The Arians seem never to have claimed the Catholic name. It is more remarkable that the Catholics during this period were denoted by the additional title of "Romans." Of this there are many proofs in the histories of St. Gregory of Tours, Victor of Vite, and the Spanish Councils. Thus, St. Gregory speaks of Theodegisilus, a king of Portugal, expressing his incredulity at a miracle, by saying, "It is the temper of the Romans, (for," interposes the author, "they call men of our religion Romans,) and not the power of God." [Note 10] "Heresy is everywhere an enemy to Catholics," says the same St. Gregory in a subsequent place, and he proceeds to illustrate it by the story of a "Catholic woman," who had a heretic husband, to whom, he says, came "a presbyter of our religion very Catholic;" and whom the husband matched at table with his own Arian presbyter, "that there might be the priests of each religion" in their house at once. When they were eating, the husband said to the Arian, "Let us have some sport with this presbyter of the Romans." [Note 11] The Arian Count Gomachar, seized on the lands of the Church of Agde in France, and was attacked with a fever; on his recovery, at the prayers of the Bishop, he repented of having asked for them, observing, "What will these Romans say now? that my fever came of taking their land." [Note 12] When the Vandal Theodoric would have killed the Catholic Armogastes, after failing to torture him into heresy, his presbyter dissuaded him, "lest the Romans should begin to call him a Martyr." [Note 13]

6.

This appellation had two meanings; one, which will readily suggest itself, is its use in contrast to the word "barbarian," as denoting the faith of the Empire, as "Greek" occurs in St. Paul's Epistles. In this sense it would more naturally be used by the Romans themselves than by others. Thus Salvian says, that "nearly all the Romans are greater sinners than the barbarians;" [Note 14] and he speaks of "Roman heretics, of which there is an innumerable multitude," [Note 15] meaning heretics within the Empire. And so St. Gregory the Great complains, that he "had become Bishop of the Lombards rather than of the Romans." [Note 16] And Evagrius, speaking even of the East, contrasts "Romans and barbarians " [Note 17] in his account of St. Simeon; and at a later date, and even to this day, Thrace and portions of Dacia and of Asia Minor derive their name from Rome. In like manner, we find Syrian writers sometimes speaking of the religion of the Romans, sometimes of the Greeks [Note 18], as synonyms.

7.

But the word certainly contains also an allusion to the faith and communion of the Roman See. In this sense the Emperor Theodosius, in his letter to Acacius of Berœa, contrasts it with Nestorianism, which was within the Empire as well as Catholicism; during the controversy raised by that heresy, he exhorts him and others to show themselves "approved priests of the Roman religion." [Note 19] Again when the Ligurian nobles were persuading the Arian Ricimer to come to terms with Anthemius, the orthodox representative of the Greek Emperor [Note 20], they propose to him to send St. Epiphanius as ambassador, a man "whose life is venerable to every Catholic and Roman, and at least amiable in the eyes of a Greek (Græculus) if he deserves the sight of him." [Note 21] It must be recollected, too, that the Spanish and African Churches actually were in the closest union with the See of Rome at that time, and that that intercommunion was the visible ecclesiastical distinction between them and their Arian rivals. The chief ground of the Vandal Hunneric's persecution of the African Catholics seems to have been their connexion with their brethren beyond the sea [Note 22], which he looked at with jealousy, as introducing a foreign power into his territory. Prior to this he had published an edict calling on the "Homoüsian" Bishops (for on this occasion he did not call them Catholic), to meet his own bishops at Carthage and treat concerning the faith, that "their meetings to the seduction of Christian souls might not be held in the provinces of the Vandals." [Note 23] Upon this invitation, Eugenius of Carthage replied, that all the transmarine Bishops of the orthodox communion ought to be summoned, "in particular because it is a matter for the whole world, not special to the African provinces," that "they could not undertake a point of faith sine universitatis assensu." Hunneric answered that if Eugenius would make him sovereign of the orbis terrarum, he would comply with his request. This led Eugenius to say that the orthodox faith was "the only true faith;" that the king ought to write to his allies abroad, if he wished to know it, and that he himself would write to his brethren for foreign bishops, "who," he says, "may assist us in setting before you the true faith, common to them and to us, and especially the Roman Church, which is the head of all Churches." Moreover, the African Bishops in their banishment in Sardinia, to the number of sixty, with St. Fulgentius at their head, quote with approbation the words of Pope Hormisdas, to the effect that they hold, "on the point of free will and divine grace, what the Roman, that is, the Catholic, Church follows and preserves." [Note 24] Again, the Spanish Church was under the superintendence of the Pope's Vicar [Note 25] during the persecutions, whose duty it was to hinder all encroachments upon "the Apostolical decrees, or the limits of the Holy Fathers," through the whole of the country.

8.

6. Ch. 39.

7. Greg. Dial. iii. 30.

8. Ibid. 20.

9. Gibbon, Hist. ch. 37.

10. De Glor. Mart. i. 25.

11. Ibid. 80.

12. Ibid. 79.

13. Vict. Vit. i. 14.

14. De Gub D. iv. p. 73.

15. Ibid. v. p. 88.

16. Epp. i. 31.

17. Hist. vi. 23.

18. Cf. Assem. t. i. p. 351, not. 4, t. 3, p. 393.

19. Baron. Ann. 432, 47.

20. Gibbon, Hist. ch. 36.

21. Baron. Ann. 471, 18.

22. Vict. Vit. iv. 4.

23. Vict. Vit. ii. 3-15.

24. Aguirr. Conc. t. 2, p. 262.

25. Aguirr. ibid. p. 232.