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CHAPTER IV.

THE CHURCH AND THE HERESIES OF THE

SIXTH CENTURY.

IN the theological history of the sixth century one distinct and prominent feature is to be observed-the influence of Constantinople. This is evident from the time of the negotiations of the Emperor Anastasius with Pope Hormisdas in 515, to the consecration of Gregory the Great as bishop of Rome in 590. This period, with some short intervals, is a period of reunion between East and West, on the basis of the acceptance both of the Tome of Leo and of the decisions of Chalcedon. The reunion of the Churches

was actually accomplished in 519, and it led

up to the great work of the united Church. under the political leadership of Justinianthe central fact of the century. This again led, through the reconquest of Italy, the growth of monasticism, and the conversion of the Lombards, to the triumph of the Roman See, which was inaugurated by Gregory the Great. Four divisions naturally suggest themselves in the treatment of the period, according as the history of theological development is concerned with (1) Arianism, (2) Monophysitism, (3) the Origenists, (4) the controversy of the Three Chapters.

(1) Arianism had long ago received its death-blow, but it died hard. So long as the East Goths ruled in Italy, the West Goths in Spain, and the Vandals in Africa, it was a State religion over a large part of the Roman world, enforced, as by the Vandals, with great severity. But even then the

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greatest of Arian rulers had to choose his ministers from among the Catholics: if Theodoric slew Symmachus and Boethius, Cassiodorus stood at his right hand. As an opinion Arianism was dying; the Church had formally condemned it, and no opinion long survived the formal condemnation of the Church. And the political forces of the age completed its destruction. On the one side the growth of the Frankish power, on the other the restoration of the imperial authority under Justinian, reduced it from an arrogant supremacy to extinction or a rare and secret survival. The Catholic population looked everywhere to the Roman Emperor. "His conquests, for which he had to thank in no small degree the Church and her bishops, destroyed not only the Goths and Vandals, but also the Arian creed."1

Arianism was indeed already a religion of

1 Dr. P. Jörs, op. cit., p. 16.

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