might learn by his example that freedom from error in the setting forth of doctrine was assured to them only on condition of their taking proper counsel, which he had neglected to do.1 Cardinal Orsi also has fully recognised the untenableness of the efforts to save the orthodoxy of Honorius, and the openings for attack which were thus exposed by shortsighted theologians. He withdraws, therefore, back to the point of view, that Honorius spoke only as a private teacher, neither as pope, nor in the name of the Roman Church giving a solemn decision after the necessary taking of counsel (ex cathedra). Cardinal Luzerne has subjected these tenets to a sharp 2 criticism. One cannot say, he justly remarks, that Honorius gave his opinion on the Monothelite question not as pope, but only as a private teacher. The question was put to him as pope, and he answered as pope, in the same tone and style in which his predecessors, Celestine and Leo, had answered on dogmatic questions. Orsi, however, is quite right on his side, when he argues that Honorius gave his decision without a council and on his own

1 Collectio Judiciorum de Novis Erroribus. Paris, 1724, T. I., præf., p. 4. And in his Variæ Disputationes theol. ad Opera. M. Grandin, Paris, 1712, ii., 220.

2 Sur la Déclaration du Clergé. Euvres, Paris, 1855, ii., 42, and 190 sq. [On decisions" ex cathedrâ," see Appendix E.]

responsibility; without troubling himself about the doctrine held by the Churches of the West, which from the first had always believed in a duality of wills; without even giving the Roman Church itself the opportunity of making known its creed as regards this question. If the idea of a decision ex cathedra be duly expanded, and only those dogmatic announcements be reckoned as ex cathedra which a pope issues, not in his own name and for himself, but in the name of the Church, with full consciousness of the doctrine prevailing in the Church, and therefore after previous inquiry or discussion by a council— then, and only then, can one say that judgment about Honorius was not given1 ex cathedra. Neither the Roman Church, nor the Western, nor the greater part of the Eastern Church, has ever been Monothelite. Nevertheless, Honorius sent letters to the Eastern Church, about the Monothelite meaning of which assuredly not a doubt would ever have been raised, but for the fact that the author was a pope. Accordingly, the old Roman breviary designates him simply as a Monothelite. 2

1 [With this interpretation one would readily admit that not only the pope, but every bishop is infallible, when he speaks ex cathedrâ.] 2 Hefele, in his Conciliengeschichte, and in the discussion in the T bingen Quartalschrift, year. 1857, has treated the question of Honorius with philosophic impartiality, accuracy, and thoroughness. [See also four letters to Monseigneur Deschamps, archbishop of Malines, by A. Gratry, priest of the Oratory. Paris, 1870.]

IX. POPE GREGORY II. AND THE EMPEROR

LEO THE ISAURIAN.

ACCORDING to later historians, who have been eagerly followed by many theologians, Gregory II. deprived the iconoclast emperor Leo of the kingdom of Italy, and induced the Italians to throw off their allegiance to him, because he attempted to carry his edict against the use of images into effect in Italy as well as in the East. Baronius, Bellarmine, and others have made this supposed fact a main support of their system with regard to the authority of popes over the temporal power.

Of the biographers of popes in the Middle Ages, Martinus Polonus is the only one who, while he makes a confusion by transferring the matter to Gregory III., asserts that the pope, recognising in the emperor Leo an incorrigible iconoclast, induced Rome, Italy, Spain, and the "whole of the West" to throw off their allegiance to the emperor, and forbade all payment of taxes to him. We have here another proof of the incredible ignorance of Martinus Polonus, in representing Spain-Gothic and even Saracen Spain—as throwing off their allegiance. And besides that, what we are

to understand by the "whole of the West," he himself would have had some difficulty in showing. The other papal biographers, Amalrich, Guidonis, Leo of Orvieto, and others, know nothing of the secession of Italy from the empire. But before Martinus Polonus, Sigebert of Gemblours, Otto of Freysingen, Gottfried of Viterbo, Albert of Stade, and the so-called Landulf, the late compiler of the Historia Miscella, had already accepted the statement that pope Gregory induced the Italians to revolt from Leo. All of these, as well as the Byzantines Zonaras, 1 Cedrenus, and Glykas, received the statement from one and the same single source. This source is the chronicler Theophanes, who wrote the history of this period eighty years after it (he died not earlier than A.D. 819); and his work, in the abbreviated Latin translation of Anastasius Bibliothecarius, was used by the above-mentioned Latin chroniclers either directly or indirectly.

It is altogether futile, therefore, to pile up names of witnesses to this supposed fact (after the manner of Bianchi 2), and add to these Nauclerus, and Platina also. All these witnesses resolve themselves into one; and the investigator has merely to show (1) that

1 [Zonaras and Michael Glykas bring their chronicles down to the death of the emperor Alexis I., Comnenus, 1118; Cedrenus, to 1057.]

2 Della Potestà e della Polizia della Chiesa. Rom., 1745, i., 382.

Theophanes1 is a late authority, very little acquainted with Italian affairs; (2) that the two contemporary Italian witnesses, Paulus Diaconus, and the anonymous biographer of Gregory in the Pontifical book, state just the opposite of what Theophanes says; and (3) that Zonaras, in the twelfth century, and certainly Cedrenus (both of whom merely copied Theophanes) are here utterly unworthy of consideration. The special object of Zonaras, moreover, is to throw the blame of the loss of its Italian possessions by the Greek empire on the papacy. Accordingly he decorates the erroneous statement of Theophanes with the further statement that Gregory made an alliance with the Franks, who hereupon got possession of Rome, a statement which he thrice repeats. That is, he transfers events, which first took place under Pepin and Charles the Great, to the time of Gregory II. and Charles Martel.

The truth of the matter is, then, that, according to the accounts of the two Italian contemporaries and

1 [Theophanes was born about A.D. 750. He was a most zealous advocate of the use of images at the second council of Nicæa in 787. Leo the Armenian made him an object of persecution for his support to the cause of image-worship, imprisoned him for two years, and finally banished him to Samothrace, where he died almost immediately, March, 818. His chronicle is a continuation of that of his friend Syncellus, commencing with the accession of Diocletian in 284, and going down to 813.]