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Alexandria on the basis of this concluded a treaty, in consequence of which most of the Severians attached themselves again to the national church. Honorius of Rome also was won over. But the monk Sophronius, who soon thereafter in A.D. 634 became patriarch of Jerusalem, came forward as the decided opponent Of this union, which led back to Monophysitism. The conquest of Jerusalem, however, soon after this, A.D. 637, by the Saracens put him outside of the scene of conflict. In A.D. 638 the emperor issued an edict, the
Ecthesis, by which it was sought to make an end of the strife by substituting for the offensive expression ἐνέργεια the less objectionable term θέλημα, and confirming the Monothelite doctrine as alone admissible. Now the monk Maximus (§ 47, 12) entered the lists as the champion of orthodoxy. He betook himself to Africa, where since Justinian’s time zeal for the maintenance of the Chalcedonian faith was strongest, and here secured political support in Gregorius [Gregory] the imperial governor who sought to make himself independent of Byzantium. This statesman arranged for a public disputation at Carthage in A.D. 645 between Maximus and the ex-patriarch Pyrrhus of Constantinople, the successor of Sergius, who, implicated in a palace intrigue, deposed from his office and driven from Constantinople, sought refuge in Africa. Pyrrhus willingly submitted and abjured his error. An African General Synod in A.D. 646 unanimously condemned Monothelitism, renounced church fellowship with Paulus, the new patriarch of Constantinople, and demanded of Pope Theodorus, A.D. 642–649, a fulmination against the heresy. In order to give this demand greater emphasis, Maximus and Pyrrhus travelled together to Rome. The latter was recognised by the pope as legitimate patriarch of Constantinople, but, being induced by the exarch of Ravenna to recant his recantation, he was excommunicated by the pope, with a pen dipped in the sacramental wine, returned to Constantinople and was, after the death of Paulus, reinstated in his former office. Maximus remained in Rome and there won the highest reputation as the shield of orthodoxy.—The proper end of the union, namely the saving of Syria and Egypt, was meanwhile frustrated by the Mohammedan conquest of Syria in A.D. 638, and of Egypt in A.D. 640. The court, however, for its own honour still persevered in it. Africa and Italy occupied a position of open revolt. Then emperor Constans II., A.D. 642–668, resolved to annul the Ecthesis. In its place he put another enactment about the faith, the
Typus, A.D. 648, which sought to get back to the state of matters before the Monothelite movement; that neither one nor two wills should be taught. But Martin I. of Rome at the first Lateran Synod at Rome in A.D. 649 condemned in the strongest terms the Typus as well as the Ecthesis along with its original maintainers, and sent the Acts to the emperor. The exarch of Ravenna, Olympius, was now ordered to take the bold prelate prisoner, but did not obey. His successor sent the pope in chains to Constantinople. In A.D. 653 he was banished for high treason to the Chersonese, where he literally suffered hunger, and died in A.D. 655 six months after his arrival. Still more dreadful was the fate of the abbot Maximus. At the same time with Martin or soon after he too was brought to Constantinople a prisoner from Rome. Here for a whole year every effort imaginable was made, entreaties, promises, threats, imprisonment, hunger, etc., in order to induce him to acknowledge the Typus, but all in vain. The emperor then lost all patience. In a towering rage at the unparalleled obstinacy of the monk’s resistance he doomed him, A.D. 662, to dreadful scourging, to have his tongue wrenched out and his hand hewn off, and to be sent into the wildest parts of Thrace, where he died a few weeks after his arrival at the age of 82 years. Such barbaric severity was effectual for a long time. But under the next emperor Constantinus Pogonnatus, A.D. 668–685, the two parties prepared for a new conflict. The emperor resolved to make an end of it by a General Council. Pope Agatho held a brilliant Synod at Rome in A.D. 679, where it was laid down that not one iota should be abated from the decisions of the Lateran Synod. With these decisions and a missive from the pope himself, the papal legates appeared at the
Sixth Œcumenical Council at Constantinople in A.D. 680, called also
Concil. Trullanum I., because it was held in the mussel-shaped vaulted hall Trullus in the imperial castle, under the presidency of the emperor. As at Chalcedon the Epistle of Leo I., so also here that of Agatho lay at the basis of the Council’s doctrinal decrees: δύο φυσικὰ θελήματα ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀμερίστως, ἀσυγχύτως, οὐχ ὑπεναντία, ἀλλὰ ἑπόμενον τὸ ἀνθρώπινον καὶ ὑποτασσόμενον τῷ θείῳ. The Synod even condescended to grant the pope a report of the proceedings and to request his confirmation of its decisions. But the Greeks, finding a malicious pleasure in the confusion of their rivals, contrived to mix in the sweet drink a strong infusion of bitter wormwood, for the Council among the other representatives of Monothelite error ostentatiously and expressly condemned pope Honorius as an accursed heretic. Pope Leo II. in a letter to the emperor confirmed the decisions of the Council, expressly homologating the condemnation of Honorius, “
qui profana proditione immaculatam fidem subvertere conatus est.”—Henceforth Dyothelitism prevailed universally. Only in one little corner of Asia, to which the arm of the state did not reach, a vestige of Monothelitism continued to exist. Its scattered adherents gathered in the monastery of St. Maro in Lebanon, and acknowledged the abbot of this cloister as their ecclesiastical head. They called themselves Maronites, and with sword in hand maintained their ecclesiastical as well as political independence against Byzantines and Saracens (§ 72, 3).
§ 52.9. The Case of Honorius.—The two Roman Synods, A.D. 649 and 679, had simply ignored the notorious fact of the complicity of Honorius in the furtherance of Monothelite error, and Agatho might hope by the casual statement in his letter, that the Roman chair never had taken the side of heretical novelties, to beguile the approaching œcumenical Synod into the same obliviousness. But the Greeks paid no heed to the hint. His successor Leo II. could not do otherwise than homologate the Eastern leaders’ condemnation of heresy, even that of Honorius, hard though this must have been to him. On the other hand, the biographies of the popes from Honorius to Agatho in the Roman Liber pontificalis (§ 90, 6) help themselves out of this dilemma again by preserving a dead silence about any active or passive interference of Honorius in the Monothelite controversy. In the biography of Leo II. for the first time is Honorius’ name mentioned among those of the condemned Monothelites, but without any particular remark about him as an individual. So too in the formulary of a profession of faith in the Liber diurnus of the Roman church made by every new pope and in use down to the 11th century (§ 46, 11). From the biography of Leo in the Pontifical book was copied the simple name into the readings of the Roman Breviary for the day of this saint, and so it remained down to the 17th century. It had then been quite forgotten in the West that by this name a pope was designated. Oftentimes it had been affirmed that even Roman popes might fall and actually had fallen into error; but only such cases as those of Liberius (§ 46, 4), Anastasius (§ 46, 8), Vigilius (§ 52, 6), John XXII. (§ 110, 3; 112, 2) were adduced; that of Honorius occurred to nobody. It was only in the 15th century, through more careful examination of Acts of Synods that the true state of matters was discovered, and in the 16th century when the question of the infallibility of the pope had become a burning one (§ 149, 4), the case of Honorius became the real Sisyphus rock of Roman Catholic theology. The most laborious attempts have been made by most venturesome means to get it out of the way. The condemnation of Honorius by the sixth œcumenical Council has been described as merely a spiteful invention of later Greeks, who falsified everything relating to him in the Acts of the Council; so, e.g. Baronius, Bellarmine, etc.—The condemnation actually took place but not at the œcumenical first, but at the schismatical second, Trullan Council of A.D. 692 (§ 63, 2), and the record of procedure has been by the malice of later Greeks transferred from the record of the second to that of the first.—Forged epistles of Honorius were laid before the sixth œcumenical Council, by means of which it was misled into passing sentence upon him.—The condemnation of the pope did not turn upon his doctrine but upon his unseasonable love of peace.—The pope meant well, but expressed himself so as to be misunderstood; so e.g. the Jesuit Garnier in his ed. of the Liber diurnus, the Vatican Council, and Hefele in the 2nd ed. of his Hist. of the Councils.—In the epistles referred to he spoke as a private individual and not officially, ex cathedra.—It is, however, fatal to all such explanations that the infallible pope Leo II. solemnly denounced ex cathedra his infallible predecessor Honorius as a heretic. Besides the only other possible escape by distinguishing the question
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