Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Number of quotes: 180
Book ID: 191 Page: 22
Section: 4B
The emperors lost sight of the republican origins of their office and with lavish oriental ceremony surrounded their persons with the mystique of divine kingship. Furthermore, the Empire itself was divided by Diocletian, since it had grown beyond the powers of government by any one man, even by a man who arrogated something of godhead to his office, and Constantine founded his city, the new Rome, at Byzantium to serve the East. Here still the model of the city on the Tiber was retained; the new Rome had its senate and its city magistrates, and some inconspicuous rises were promoted to the status of Seven Hills.
Quote ID: 4223
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 191 Page: 23
Section: 3D2
The rejoicing which Fulgentius saw upon his arrival in Rome was nonetheless sincere among all sections of the population; they and their city now enjoyed a peace and prosperity that had long been lacking. But the ruler they welcomed was no Roman emperor; he was a king - but a king of a barbarian nation, the Ostrogoths - and an illiterate and a murderer. His name, like that of his younger contemporary Arthur, was to live in legend as Dietrich of Bern; it was Theodoric.Pastor John notes: John’s note: This is what happened
Quote ID: 4224
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 23
Section: 3D2
The provinces of Gaul passed out of direct imperial administration and were settled and ruled by Franks and Burgundians. Ephemeral emperors, sponsored by the generals and ministers, rose and fell until the last, a boy, was placed on a meaningless throne by his father Orestes who - such were the revolutions of the times - had once served as Attila’s secretary. This was Romulus, fittingly nicknamed Augustulus, the Little Emperor. He did not last long; an army commander, Odoacer, chieftain of the Rugian tribe in imperial pay, held an emperor to be superfluous for the diminished West and in 476 deposed him settling him with a pension in a comfortable villa near Naples.Pastor John’s Note: Odoacer ruled wisely in Italy, and the population as a whole regarded him highly (esp. the senate!), but Zeno, emperor of the eastern half of the Roman Empire, wanted Italy restored to the emperor’s control, and in 489 commissioned Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, to accomplish his will.
Pastor John’s note: Peace in the West until.....
Quote ID: 4225
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 24
Section: 3D2
So Theodoric marched, defeated Odoacer and pinned him behind the walls of Ravenna. There he was held for three years until a compromise solution, the sharing of the rule of Italy, was agreed upon. At a celebratory banquet, Theodoric ended an unworkable partnership by murdering his new colleague. Henceforth he too ruled alone, although with the qualified support of persons of great influence.When Fulgentius [an exile from north Africa, as the Arian Vandals had taken his father’s land and persecuted Trinitarians] saw him in Rome, he had been sole ruler for seven years. The odds had been against him achieving a peaceful government. As an illiterate barbarian he might have met opposition from the custodians of culture, the senate; as an Arian heretic, distrust from the Church.
Quote ID: 4226
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 24/25
Section: 3D2
.... the Vandal kings were also Arian and were continuously hostile to their Catholic subjects. In 496 King Thransamund initiated a persecution in north Africa; all Catholic churches in Africa were closed, the consecration of bishops was forbidden and the existing bishops exiled to Sardinia, a backward, uncivilized and pagan island, notoriously unhealthy and for long used as a penal settlement.
Quote ID: 4227
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 25
Section: 3D2
Theodoric As a boy he had been sent as hostage for his nation to Constantinople and been brought up at the imperial court. He joined the imperial service, bringing his tribe within the confines of the Empire, rose higher in rank but remained a restless, ambitious danger in the manoeuvres of the warlords.
Quote ID: 4228
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 26
Section: 3D2
Throughout the whole of Italy Theodoric made no gates for any city, and what gates there were to the cities were never closed. Anyone with business to transact could do it at any time of night as safely as by day.
Quote ID: 4229
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 27
Section: 3D2
The Romans, as Procopius noted later, were distinguished by a passionate antiquarianism, especially in anything that concerned their own city, an antiquarianism that expressed itself in their literature and their adherence to the forms of their ancestors. The closely-knit families that composed it were proud and ancient; they held the consulships and the greater magistracies, sources of pride and prestige if now actually meaningless.
Quote ID: 4230
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 28
Section: 3D2
There were two notable Roman families, the Anicii and the related Symmachi. Their influence was “empire-wide”. Their family traditions went back to the days of the Republic. They had provided many of the previous emperors. They represented the “old international order” of the pre-Christian Roman Empire, and had “provided the last stronghold for the pagan religion, cults, and associations.”
Quote ID: 4231
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 28
Section: 3A1B,4B
....the senator Symmachus “left in his letters the abiding monument of a great aristocrat, secure, snobbish, and dilettante. He hopelessly led against St. Ambrose the fight for the preservation of the traditional cults of the senate’s meeting, the reverence to the statute of Victory.”----
But the families [Anicii and Symmachii] in their turn became Christian and made Christianity fashionable, taking its management and patronage into their care, as they maintained at great cost the civic amenities, the games in the circus, the city services and the senate. They stood out beyond the confines of Theodoric’s Italian dominions and interests; they represented still, after its effective disappearance as a political unit, the old international order; their ties of family and connection matched their wide culture, their patronage of learning and education.”
Quote ID: 4232
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 191 Page: 29
Section: 3D2
Strongly orthodox and traditionally opposed alike to Arianism and the unorthodoxies of the East, the Anicii, like others of their class, had nevertheless a legacy of co-operation with the new rulers in the West as well as an instinctive and sentimental accord with the imperial hegemony in the East. An Anicia, Faltonia Proba had been suspected of opening the gates of Rome to the Visigoths in 410 in furtherance of better relations between Romans and barbarians.
Quote ID: 4233
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 30
Section: 3E
In the East there was a corresponding interest and pride in the West, nostalgic but real. The Emperor Justinian was himself proud to be sprung from a Latin-speaking province and was Latin-speaking by birth.Note: This would mean trouble for the Goths ruling in Italy.
On Magistracy in the middle of the century, regarded the decision taken after the publication of Justinian’s Code to promulgate all future laws in Greek, and the abandonment of Latin as the official language effected early in the fifth century, as disastrous to the imperial idea.
Quote ID: 4234
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 31
Section: 3A4C,4B
The Gothic occupation did not interrupt their traditional enjoyment of the prestigious republican offices but rather reinforced it. ’Happy man’, wrote the king’s secretary Cassiodorus to a nominee to the consulship, ’who has all the honour of supreme power and yet leaves to others the drudgery of affairs.’Pastor John’s note: Pg. 25 A Roman
NOTE: This can only be seen as a rationalization, a means for a Roman spirit to maintain its exalted self-image in the face of an irreversible change in the empire. Can anyone seriously doubt that Cassiodorus would have been disappointed to have a pure-bred Roman reigning authoritatively again as Emperor of an expansive empire, or that he would have resisted a revival of Rome’s ancient system of government led by Roman consuls and a purely Roman senate?
The Lucullanum monastery near Naples, under the abbacy of Eugippius and the patronage of Rome, became a centre for the dissemination of Augustinian theology and literature. Indeed it was familiarity with letters and the classical education in philosophy and rhetoric which for Cassiodorus distinguished the Roman from the barbarian: ’Let others bear arms, but the Romans be armed forever only with eloquence.’
PJ Note: More sour grapes
Quote ID: 4235
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 191 Page: 32
Section: 3D2
Occasional crises of harvest or maladministration apart, Ostrogothic Italy was prosperous and peaceful. Furthermore, under Theodoric Italy had again assumed the leadership of the western Mediterranean; a network of marriage alliances, of one sister to the Vandal king, another to the heir of Burgundy, and his daughter to the heir to the Visigothic throne, assured him a patriarchal status in Europe. His rule was firm over southern France and extended into modern Austria and Yugoslavia. Rome could, vicariously, again regard itself as ruler of the West after the humiliations of the previous century. To the city itself Theodoric showed favour, through the agency of the senate, by maintaining its monuments and its amenities, by keeping in constant repair its drainage system, its water-supply and the river embankment, and by providing circus games and ensuring the corn-supply.
Quote ID: 4236
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 32
Section: 3D2
Life as yet was uninterrupted. Thomas, the leading charioteer of the hippodrome of Constantinople, found it worthwhile to move to Rome and perform there; he was granted a public salary for, as Cassiodorus remarked, he was ’the first in his art’.
Quote ID: 4237
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 32
Section: 3D2
Cassiodorus himself, Theodoric’s Roman secretary, most fully represented this co-operation between king and senate.
Quote ID: 4238
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 33
Section: 3D2
Of modest family and modest wealth, as the senate estimated it, circumstances had soon put the young Cassiodorus in the role of adviser-general to the German king. It was a role that suited his talents for, although erudite and well-read, he was not an original or critical thinker; his tastes turned towards the elegant framing of correspondence and the preservation of what he felt was in danger of being lost--the whole learning of the ancient world. His writing was encyclopaedic and forced: ’Speech, ’he declared, ’is the common gift of all mankind; it is embellishment alone that distinguishes the learned from the unlearned.’
Quote ID: 4239
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 33
Section: 4B
He did have a wider vision of the need to preserve and foster learning. In 536 he urged upon Pope Agapetus the need to found a university at Rome, equipped with libraries, to continue both ancient and Christian traditions.----
....to collect subscriptions and to have Christian rather than secular schools in the city of Rome, with professors, just as there had been for so long in Alexandria.’
Quote ID: 4240
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 34/35
Section: 3D2
Theodoric himself frowned on the attempt to make Goths into Romans by education, a prejudice shared by most of his people. Cassiodorus, following the collapse of all his hopes for the Romano-Gothic state, retired to his home in Squillace in Calabria where he founded the ’Vivarium’, a monastic community devoted to effecting his projects for the correct edition and production of literary, historical and educational works.----
The other figure of Ostrogothic Rome who towered above his surroundings and whose influence was to sustain Europe in the succeeding centuries was an Anicius, the philosopher Manlius Severinus Anicius Boethius. His inclinations were primarily academic and philosophical; he had entered public life only, he states in the Consolations of Philosophy, in accordance with the dictate of Plato that ’States would be happy if either philosophers ruled them or their rulers turned philosopher.’
Quote ID: 4241
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 35
Section: 3D2
He too, like Cassiodorus, was concerned for Western education, but his concern lay in constructing an adequate bridge to keep the West in contact with the founts of philosophy in the East. His death - the result of a welter of theological, political and personal interest at Rome and Ravenna - gave him the status in Western Europe of a martyr and a father of the church.Rome, a city with no industrial or commercial but only social and traditional justification, retained one prerogative of civilization, the formation of factions to occupy the inhabitants.
Quote ID: 4242
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 36
Section: 3A1,4B
The Bishop of Rome, wielder of the authority of the princes of the apostles, and now being acknowledged as the prime pope or father of the Western Christian communities, with a vast moral authority in the East, was also head of a powerful and rich corporation, based on the endowments of emperors and the achievements of his predecessors. The senatorial class had, as it had attempted with paganism, assumed some right of patronage over the established religion. The churches of Rome had been founded by the first Christians among the senate in their private houses and named after their founders; their maintenance and that of the small domestic monasteries of the city was largely in their hands. They had also tried to place themselves squarely within the history and tradition of the dominant religion by utilizing the new legends of the saints that were now acquiring a wide popularity. So the account of the martyrdom of SS. Rufina and Secunda, and of St. Marius and his companions whose cults centred around Boccea, a few miles north of Rome, evidently appear to have been inspired by the pretensions of the family of Asterius Turcius, consul in 504; an ancestor figures as the magistrate presiding at the saints’ trials. Similarly the Anicii appear to have adopted into their family St. Melania, wife of Pinianus, .........
Quote ID: 4243
Time Periods: 167
Book ID: 191 Page: 41
Section: 3A2B,3A4A
On 22nd November 498 both men were consecrated pope. A virulent pamphlet warfare broke out and clashes in the street followed. The supporters of Symmachus [PJ: not the earlier Symacchus] sought to prove with pamphlets purporting to describe incidents in the papacy’s history, none true, that the senate had always shown itself obdurate in the face of the Church’s interests; that senatorial charges of avarice against Symmachus were dispelled by his generosity; and that the pope was above judgment even by a synod of bishops, for ’the disciple is not above his master’; and that any bishop, of however historic a see other than that of Rome, of course, was subject to trial and sentence by Rome‘s bishop.
Quote ID: 4245
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 191 Page: 41/42
Section: 3A2A
The riots continued; Symmachus took refuge outside the city, across the river by St. Peter’s, and a chronicler favouring his side reported on the disorder:“Then Festus, the ex-consul and leader of the senate, and Probus the ex-consul, began brawling in the streets with other senators, in particular with the ex-consul Faustus, and in their hatred began to commit slaughter and murder on the clergy who correctly were in communion with the blessed Symmachus; with swords and publicly, they killed any they could find in the city.”
Quote ID: 4246
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 191 Page: 42
Section: 3D2
*John’s Note: When Fulgentius [PJ: Latin writer and grammarian (late 5th–early 6th century) had first come to Rome as a refugee from the Arian Vandals, he was deeply impressed at the welcome an Arian king, Theodoric, received from the Roman clergy. Apparently, this tolerant, or at least cooperative attitude in religious matters guided his course in the following years. By negotiations, he helped to end the present crisis.At a synod, this Symmachus was named Pope and Lawrence was given the compensation of a bishopric in Nocera.*
Quote ID: 4247
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 191 Page: 43
Section: 2D1
Pope Gelasius: (c. 495). . . “God no doubt consented to the affairs of men being settled by men; He reserves for Himself the passing of judgment upon the pontiff of the supreme see.”
Quote ID: 4248
Time Periods: 35
Book ID: 191 Page: 46
Section: 3D2
Leader of the senate Boethius was summoned before Theodoric at Ravenna. Boethius’s exposure of corruption in Campania had already made him enemies within the Arian Theodoric administration. He had played a leading part in controverting Arianism, and further charges of witchcraft and of holding secret assemblies were thrown in to give added strength to the case.Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Some Italians’ renewed contact and interest in Constantinople angered Theodoric.
Quote ID: 4249
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 46
Section: 3D2
In his cell in Pavia, Boethius resumed his philosophy and wrote the Consolations before being bludgeoned to death.
Quote ID: 4250
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 47
Section: 3D2
In August, 523, Pope Hormisdas, who had been in Theodoric’s confidence, died. His successor was Pope John, from Tuscany, a firm opponent of Arianism who, to Theodoric’s great anger, set out to re-dedicate to Catholic use the Arian churches in Rome. He was associating with Rome with men of known imperialist sympathies, while in the East the persecution of Arians and the confiscation of their property was stepped up.
Quote ID: 4251
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 47/48
Section: 3D2
His Pope John’s welcome was royal; officials, including Justinian, met him at the twelfth milestone from the capital, ’for since the days of the blessed Pope Sylvester in the time of Constantine, they had wished to be accounted worthy to receive the Vicar of St. Peter in Greece’. John arrived on the 19th of April, Easter Day, and celebrated the feast in the capital with full imperial splendour; then, as a climax, he crowned Justin. A month later he was back in Ravenna Italy, worn out by his mission, and was immediately imprisoned by the king; in prison, mercifully, on the 18th May, he died.----
....at his burial senators snatched pieces from his vestments as relics of one dead in their cause.
Quote ID: 4253
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 49
Section: 3D2
The same year, at the end of August, 526, Theodoric died of a stroke. He had failed in his ambition to “break the religious sympathy of a united Catholicism in East and west as he had thought to break the civil solidarity.” (Pg.47)
Quote ID: 4254
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 49
Section: 3D2
When Felix IV John’s successor died in 530 there was a double election. The majority of the Roman clergy supported Dioscorus, a deacon originally from Alexandria who had a high reputation in the East, having spent some years in Constantinople, and perhaps only seven out of nearly seventy supported the Gothic candidate, Boniface. Again two consecrations were made, Dioscorus within the Lateran basilica and Boniface in a hall of Lateran palace. For a month the dispute raged and it was only ended by Dioscorus’s premature death on 14th October. Even then Boniface had difficulty in asserting his authority; Constantinople had already been in communication with Dioscorus and now Boniface demanded a written declaration of loyalty from the clergy. This did not end his difficulties in securing a clear succession of policy in Gothic favour.
Quote ID: 4255
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 49
Section: 3E
When Justinian succeeded his uncle in the East in 527 events were already moving as he wished to recreate the unity of the Empire.
Quote ID: 4256
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 49
Section: 3E
After more than a century through the military victories of Justinian’s general Belisarius, the Vandals were defeated and the provinces of north Africa were reunited to the Empire.
Quote ID: 4257
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 50
Section: 3E
Although the sympathy and support of an imperial party in Italy was uncertain--Amalasuntha’s murder Theodoric’s daughter who most ardently valued both Gothic and Roman cultures, elevated her cowardly cousin Theodahat to be king–actually married him–who then arrested and murdered her had been the occasion for the retirement of many Romans, such as Arator, from the Gothic service--the northern Franks had been approached and, being orthodox Christians, were ready to accept imperial subsidies to act as allies.
Quote ID: 4258
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 191 Page: 51
Section: 3E
Above all, in his Justinian’s search for ecclesiastical and religious unity to underpin the Empire in the East he desperately required the authority and support of the papacy. Within the struggle for the old capital, therefore, lay the fight to secure a pliant papacy so that Justinian, with all founts of religious authority subservient to him, might fully dominate the church.Pastor John notes: John’s Note: The following notes concern the “Gothic Wars” of Justinian, which were his attempt to reunite Italy (Rome esp.) with Constantinople.
Quote ID: 4259
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 54
Section: 3E
The strength of the eastern army which he led into Italy lay above all in the abilities of its commander. Belisarius was still young; he was born in Thrace, the same province as Justinian, perhaps in 505.
Quote ID: 4260
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 54
Section: 3E
He had brought King Gelimer in chains to Constantinople with vast booty and had been rewarded with the last triumph to be celebrated. Coins were struck in his honour as the ’glory of the Romans’, and he was given a consulship. His talent for quick decisive handling of cavalry, through a series of bugle calls devised by himself, was matched by his personal skill in arms and a singular inventiveness and ability in expedients. Personally he was a man of honour and principle; he had married Antonina, the friend and confidante of the Empress Theodora, who used him to further her own desires, but he himself remained aloof from palace intrigue. His wife was persistently unfaithful to him but he forgave and remained loyal to her.
Quote ID: 4261
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 59
Section: 2E3
Gothic warriors were disgusted with Theodahat’s incompetence and willingness to trade the Gothic kingdom to Justinian for “eastern ease and wealth.”
Quote ID: 4262
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 60
Section: 3E
Only Leuderis remained in honour-bound at his post and was captured, to be sent with the keys of the city to Constantinople as another living trophy to Belisarius’ success. After sixty years Rome was once more united to her Empire.Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Not so fast! Not all in Italy had been. Vitigis was still commanding an army.
Quote ID: 4264
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 64
Section: 3E
Roman anxiety and opposition to the war was growing and superstitions were seized on for comfort. A group of old-fashioned senators tried to open the doors of the temple of Janus, traditionally left open when the republic was at war, but the hinges were stuck fast and the doors could not be moved. The Sybilline books were consulted; they revealed, falsely, that the danger would be over by July.
Quote ID: 4265
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 64
Section: 3E
When Pope Silverius refused to submit to Justinian (so that he could rule the Catholic church), “Theodora took action on his refusal, sending back to Rome the papal representative at Constantinople, the deacon Vigilius who had been Pope Boniface’s own nominee as his successor and whom, as a political cleric, she hoped would be more malleable with adequate funds and orders for his immediate appointment as archdeacon, the executive right-hand man to the pope.”----
Belisarius followed the queens orders to find some reason to depose Silverius. The Pope was exiled to the East.
Quote ID: 4266
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 65
Section: 3E
The new pope was, naturally, Vigilius. The son of a consul and the brother of a senator, his niece married to a consul, he was a man of the Roman nobility.
Quote ID: 4267
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 68
Section: 3E
....Vitigis was sent to Constantinople and, with the Gothic kingdom in disruption, Belisarius was recalled to the Persian front.----
The Gothic kingdom had been overthrown in a masterly campaign; now, to Justinian’s cold mind, it must be paid for. During the next three years, from 538 to 541, Italy did just that.
Quote ID: 4268
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 68
Section: 3E
The new financial officer Alexander, who had already won the nickname ’Clippings’ from his expedient of shaving the edges of coins issued by the imperial treasury, began his mission by drastically cutting military expenditure--especially the ration allowances--and so driving the troops to further appropriations from the Italians.----
Worse, the Gothic war had not been finally ended in the north. Count Ildibades held out around Verona with a small force; the imperial commanders, otherwise occupied and already quarrelling among themselves, did not think it worthwhile to eliminate him.
----
Over the years Ildibades’s [Goth] following grew with the miscontent of Italy and early in 541 the imperial generals realized the necessity for action.
Quote ID: 4269
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 69
Section: 3E
After Ildibades’s murder in 542, his nephew Totila hailed as the new Gothic king. He led the Goths to immediate victories over the divided and quarreling imperial forces.
Quote ID: 4270
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 69
Section: 3E
Justinian took certain measures to restore the situation. A commander-in-chief, the praetorian prefect Maximinus, was appointed and provided with a fleet and an army of Thracians, Armenians and a few Huns. But he was inexperienced in war and timid; he delayed in Epirus while the Italian situation worsened.
Quote ID: 4271
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 70
Section: 3E
The walls of Naples were razed by the victorious Totila, so that the imperial armies could count on no sure base for operations and the war would be fought in the open field where Gothic superiority in numbers would tell.
Quote ID: 4272
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 70
Section: 3E
Totila wrote to the senate in Rome, accusing it (with its nostalgia for the old ways) of destroying the prosperity of Theodoric’s peaceful reign. He made a distinction between the Greeks (East) and Italians (West) and claimed that the false conception of identity with the East had led to Italy’s ruin.----
The Imperial General John refused to allow the message to be delivered, so Totila resorted to the time-honored Roman practice of posting the terms of his letter on the city walls by night.
Quote ID: 4273
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 191 Page: 71
Section: 3E
Totila tightened his blockade of Rome. Famine.
Quote ID: 4274
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 71
Section: 3E
Bishop Valentine attempting to bring relief supplies to Rome was taken to Totila who in an access of savagery had both his hands cut off.
Quote ID: 4275
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 72
Section: 3E
Famine in Rome Boethius’s widow Rusticiana spent freely from her fortune for the common good, and so did the deacon Pelagius, now the leading cleric in the city. It was Pelagius who was chosen by the Romans to lead a delegation to Totila to urge that both Sicily, the prime source of Rome’s provisioning, and the walls of Rome itself should be spared. Totila rejected both pleas; these alone had made Rome invulnerable and were responsible for the previous Gothic defeat, and Italy could not be held without Rome. Pelagius bore himself sternly and resolutely before the king and Totila was impressed by his firmness.
Quote ID: 4276
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 72/73
Section: 3E
the time of the Roman siege, either late in 545 or early in 546----
The failure to break the blockade was a final blow to Rome.
Quote ID: 4277
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 73
Section: 3E
Bessas and those senators who had most to fear from Totila, the patricians Decius and Basil, fled to Civitavecchia; others, including the senators Maximus, Olybrius and Orestes, took refuge in St. Peter’s. In all Rome only five hundred males had survived the famine, the plague and the fighting, and these also took refuge in the churches.
Quote ID: 4278
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 73
Section: 3E
Soldiers moved in on St. Peter’s and began to slaughter the pitifully few survivors--some eighty were killed before Pelagius could intervene. Totila exulted at the proud deacon’s supplication but conceded his pleas.
Quote ID: 4279
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 73/74
Section: 3E
The dismantling of the walls was ordered so that the imperial army should have no stronghold, but here Belisarius intervened. Writing from Porto he urged on Totila the antiquity and nobility of the city and the name history would give him if responsible for its destruction. Reluctantly and with the greater part of the wall still standing, Totila agreed, but the senators and their families were removed under guard to Campania and the city abandoned. For forty days Rome lay empty.
Quote ID: 4280
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 74
Section: 3E
Belisarius was recalled to the East.
Quote ID: 4281
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 74
Section: 3E
At once the garrison in Rome mutinied and murdered their commander Conon: their pay was long in arrears, they suspected Conon of trafficking in grain and they trusted no one but Belisarius.
Quote ID: 4282
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 74
Section: 3E
Totila’s first attack was beaten off, but . . . Totila was saved the necessity of a siege since the lowered morale of the imperial army readily produced traitors. Once more it was Isaurians who offered to admit him by the Ostia gate.
Quote ID: 4283
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 75
Section: 3E
Vast slaughter. “Totila now had his capital, and . . . his full title of kingship.” There was no longer any question of Rome’s destruction, his tenure was secure and he concentrated on the resettlement of the ravaged city.
Quote ID: 4284
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 75
Section: 3E
However, Rome was no longer to be left entirely to the Romans for Totila planned to leaven the city population with a trustworthy stiffening of Goths. Meanwhile as a sign of return to normality and of his endeavour to rule Rome fittingly, he gave circus games, the last ever held.
Quote ID: 4285
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 75
Section: 3E
Before the departure of Pope Vigilius to face humiliation and surrender in Constantinople there had been under his aegis one last flicker of the leisured literary life that Rome had cultivated in the days of peace. The subdeacon Arator, a pupil in Milan of Ennodius, had during Totila’s last siege of Rome been captured and held prisoner in the Gothic camp; remembering the fate of Bishop Valentine he had vowed that if he escaped with his life he would write in the apostle’s honour a metrical version of the Acts of the Apostles.
Quote ID: 4286
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 75/76
Section: 3E
But Totila could not linger in his new-found capital; his kingdom would not be secure until Sicily was finally subject. A fleet of four hundred vessels was prepared and the island, hitherto untouched, was ransacked.----
Once more Justinian searched for a commander. . .
Quote ID: 4287
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 77
Section: 4B
Narses, the imperial commander “under the patronage of Our Lady, marched through Dalmatia and Istria into Italy.
Quote ID: 4288
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 191 Page: 77
Section: 3E
For nearly ten years Totila had fought his war with success in the open field; distrusting towns, he had sought to prevent the war being dominated by them.
Quote ID: 4289
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 77
Section: 3E
Each side was anxious for a speedy encounter; Narses realized that the army he had gathered was the last effort of a bankrupt state, and Tortila feared an imminent Italian revolution. Early 552----
Totila killed in the rout of his army. Gothic power was virtually at an end. The kingdom of Theodoric was, after long resistance, “extinguished.” “Italy lay exhausted, devastated but liberated.”
Quote ID: 4290
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 85
Section: 3A1
Rome was under siege when the reigning Pope Benedict I, died, and his successor Pelagius II was elected without the customary imperial confirmation. The new pope, himself of Germanic origin, was a vigorous man who determined to find an end to the wars devastating Italy. Early in 580 he wrote to Bishop Aunacharius of Auxerre to negotiate a Frankish intervention: the Franks were ’the divinely appointed neighbors and helpers of this city’; ’we urge you to hasten, as far as you can, free from the pollution of the gentiles the shrines of those saints whose merits you seek.’ New ambassadors from the pope and the senate had already been sent to Tiberius, now reigning as Emperor; representing the pope was a former prefect of the City, and aristocrat who had become a monk, the deacon Gregory [PJ: next Pope, Gregory I].
Quote ID: 4291
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 85/86
Section: 1B,4B
Part of the message delivered by Gregory follows. It was from Pope Pelagius to Tiberius (reigning as emperor in Constantinople:“May God bid the Emperor come to our aid at the earliest possible moment, in the perils that are now closing in upon us, before the army of that impious nation, the Lombards, shall have seized the lands that still form part of the Empire.”
Rome was still part of the Empire, and still felt itself, although neglected, an essential if despairing element in the constitution of the entire civilized world. Something of the anguish felt at the blows inflicted against the state are seen in the inscriptions incorporated in the few works of adornment that Pelagius could afford to St. Peter’s:
“May the Roman sceptre be guided by the divine hand so that under the Empire the true faith may have liberty;”
“May the enemies of the Roman name be vanquished throughout the entire world by the virtue of St. Peter, and peace be assured to the nations and to the Catholic faith.”
Quote ID: 4292
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 87
Section: 2A3
. . . Now in the fifteenth year of King Childebert, a deacon arrived from the city of Rome with relics of the saints and reported that in November of the previous year the waters of the Tiber had overflowed Rome in such a flood that the ancient buildings had been destroyed and the granaries of the Church wrecked, containing some thousands of bushels of wheat, which had been lost.
Quote ID: 4293
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 191 Page: 87
Section: 3A1,3F
Gregory was of an illustrious Roman family, perhaps connected with the Anicii, that for a century had served the city well in both civil and ecclesiastical office. His grandfather, Pope Felix III who had died in 492, was himself the son of priest Felix of the present SS. Nero et Achilleo, who had converted the temple of Romulus on the Via Sacra into a church dedicated to the Arabian doctors SS. Comas and Damian - the first Christian building in the old city, and the first dedication to non Roman saints.
Quote ID: 4294
Time Periods: 567
Book ID: 191 Page: 88
Section: 2E2,4B
Gregory showed considerable aptitude for administration and for justice, and by 573 had risen to the highest civil post in Rome, that of prefect of the city. But that same disillusion with the continuance of normal conditions which sent so many of his relations and contemporaries into the contemplative or monastic life affected him also, and about 578 he abandoned the civil career and formed in his parents’ house a monastic community.To the Roman nobility this was nothing strange. Before the Gothic wars the monasteries of Italy were frequently under the patronage, as centres of learning, of the great men of the city. But this class was dying out, their estates had no heirs, and the last members of the families were turning themselves to the service of religion. Gregory himself described such an occasion when Galla, one of the noblest women in Rome--the daughter of the murdered Symmachus and sister of Boethius’ widow Rusticiana-- made this decision although she was the last heiress of an ancient family.
Quote ID: 4295
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 89
Section: 2E1,4B
The dioceses and the monasteries to the north of Rome, Nepi, and St. Andrew on Monte Soratte, ascribed to her [Galla’s] endowment from her vast family estates the foundation of many of the churches around Ponzano, on both sides of the Tiber Valley in the Sabine Hills, and on the Tregia.Galla’s example was followed, as we have seen, by other leading members of Roman families. Gregory’s decision to abandon his civil career and embrace the religious life was not unusual, therefore: his family estates, in Sicily and around Tivoli, were handed over to the Roman Church, and with a few companions he retired to the monastery he founded in his parent’s house on the Coelian.
Quote ID: 4296
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 191 Page: 91
Section: 3F
Gregory returned to Rome in the spring of 586, to his monastery on the Coelian, and there, while acting as Pelagius’s secretary, conceived the design of converting the northern world into a new unity under Rome, the unity of the Church.
Quote ID: 4297
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 93
Section: 2C,3D1,3G
As pope, he is remembered above all for the English mission, when the Roman church first stepped outside the contracted bounds of the Empire into contact with peoples who had never been subject to its ecclesiastical jurisdiction; for writing the Regula Pastoralis, the key to a bishop’s life, and so to civilization in the succeeding centuries; for welcoming the conversion of the Spanish Visigoths from Arianism to Catholicism; for his defence of Roman primacy against the pretensions of the see of Constantinople; for making himself pope of the emerging nations. But in Rome and Italy he was ’God’s consul’, under whose management came the whole care and preservation of the population of war-torn Italy - a frontier province since the Lombard invasions. The imperial authorities had no resources to spare for Rome in its almost isolated situation. The decimated senatorial families had vanished into exile in the East and had given their possessions to the Roman church, or - their estates, bankrupt, existed on charity.
Quote ID: 4298
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 94
Section: 3G,4B
c. AD 600 the Roman church, drawing the best elements into its service, was also drawing upon their patrimonies. These were windfalls of capital. . . .
Quote ID: 4299
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 94
Section: 4B
Pelagius II, Gregory I, Boniface IV and Honorius I all turned family properties in Rome to religious or charitable uses which indicate that their families were without lay successors. One has to wait until Gregory II, in the eighth century, to find once more a pope with an established home in Rome. During the seventh century there was no great family in the city except for the familia pontificis, the household of the pope.
Quote ID: 4300
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 191 Page: 94
Section: 3G
c. 600 As the invaders Lombards swept the surrounding countryside, ancient towns fell abandoned and provision had to be made for spiritual and temporal needs. In the first year of his pontificate, Gregory wrote to Bishop Balbinus of Rosella: ’We have learned that the church of Populonia is so entirely destitute of clergy that the confessions of the dying cannot be heard or baptism given to infants. We therefore charge your fraternity, by the authority of these letters, to visit that church and to ordain there one cardinal-priest and two deacons, with three priests in the attached parishes’.
Quote ID: 4301
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 95
Section: 3A3
The inhabitants displaced in the upheavals that made these changes necessary poured into Rome as their only refuge to becomes a charge on the Church, the only body with the administrative capacity to deal with the problem.
Quote ID: 4302
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 191 Page: 95
Section: 3G
Gregory?Also, early on Easter morning he used to sit in the basilica of Pope Vigilius, which was near his residence, to exchange the kiss of peace with the bishops, priests, deacons and other notables, and on these occasions he gave to each of them one aureus. On the feast of the Apostles, and on the anniversary of his own consecration, he gave them a sum of money and clothes of foreign material and make.
Quote ID: 4303
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 96
Section: 2C,3A3B
Pigments and other more delicate articles of commerce were offered by him as marks of respect to citizens of rank, and so the Church came to be regarded as a source of supply for the whole community. “To 3,000 handmaids of God (called by the Greek name nuns) he gave 15 lb. of gold for bed-clothes and bestowed upon them for their daily support 80 lb. in gold.”
Quote ID: 4304
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 191 Page: 96
Section: 3A3B
To those of higher rank who were ashamed to beg he sent a dish from his own table to be delivered at their doors as a present from St. Peter; and this he did before he sat down to dine himself. So not one of the faithful in Rome was without experience of this bishop’s kindness in most tenderly providing for the wants of all.
Quote ID: 4305
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 96
Section: 3A3B
It was a charitable undertaking to protect the individuals of a class whose position had been shattered and could no longer protect its own. Under the papal aegis came not only direct charity but also the safeguarding of inheritances and legacies.
Quote ID: 4306
Time Periods: 567
Book ID: 191 Page: 97
Section: 3A1,3A4C
Other charges pressed heavily upon the Church: Pope Gregory was forced to buy peace from Agilulf with 500 lb. in gold, and even to provide pay for the few scattered imperial garrisons in the towns of the west coast of Italy.
Quote ID: 4307
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 98
Section: 2E2,4B
He then relates the wonders of the great upsurge of the monastic life that had overtaken Italy in the sixth century, an upsurge that embraced all walks of life from the nobles who gave estates and patronage to the religious houses to the peasants and Goths who turned to the service of God in a crumbling world - an upsurge whose dominant representative was St. Benedict.The Dialogues and the histories they present point to the changes in Roman thinking.
Quote ID: 4308
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 100
Section: 3G
Gregory was a realist; the Dialogues and his sermons testify to his grasp of the need to build up a strong Christian faith as the basis of society when the Empire - and with it, economic prosperity and military security - was fading in the West.
Quote ID: 4309
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 102
Section: 3G
Traditional social distinctions were also passing, as Gregory felt. He wrote that the regular use of the pallium by Archbishop John of Ravenna was not only contrary to ecclesiastical custom, it was also a civil and social distinction from which church-men should be entirely free. The world that cared for Ciceronianisms, where a bishop was a politician and a social lion, the world of the Gallic bishops of his diplomatic experience in Constantinople, was passing; in speech and churchmanship the essentials alone remained.
Quote ID: 4310
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 103
Section: 3G,4A
This attitude prevailed: Pope Honorius in the seventh century, embroiled by the easterners in the questions of Christ’s will, declared that the whole debate was one for grammarians, and his own answers show a parable-like approach, one that was pastoral and not purely academic. He, or his secretary John, later Pope John IV, compared philosophers to croaking frogs.
Quote ID: 4311
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 103
Section: 2C
. . .the pope forbade the ordination of unlettered priests, and he found deacons were being appointed for their fine voices rather than for their knowledge.
Quote ID: 4312
Time Periods: 567
Book ID: 191 Page: 103/104
Section: 3G
The clergy of Rome were a corporation closely and traditionally connected with city social life; young lectors and chamberlains of the Lateran still lived in their family houses, and it was only gradually that this dependence died out.
Quote ID: 4313
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 191 Page: 104
Section: 3A3
His administrative achievements made possible the survival of Rome itself, by employing the vast wealth that the Church still retained to feed, maintain and defend the city. From the large quantity of his surviving Correspondence, the whole process of the Church’s utilization of its estates and properties can be realized.
Quote ID: 4314
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 105
Section: 3A3B,3A4B
It was to the great properties under direct papal administration that Rome looked for sustenance.The estates were divided into units called ’patrimonies’ and were administered overall by a Roman cleric, normally a subdeacon called the ’rector’.
Quote ID: 4315
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 106
Section: 3A3B,3A4B
The central administration of the papacy was also tightened. The notaries were formed into a college under a primicerius (the chief clerk or chancellor) and a deputy (the secundicerius), and officials were appointed, as the treasurer and the accountant. All were, nominally at least, to be clergy; laymen appointed were to be tonsured and formally enrolled among the clergy. All were directly under the pope’s vigilance.The purposes behind this vast organization were the maintenance of Rome, the provision of funds for charity, and the payment of subsidies to imperial troops and peace-offerings to the Lombards.
Quote ID: 4316
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 107
Section: 3A1,3G
Pope Gregory established the pattern that the papacy was to retain in the succeeding centuries, shaping the Roman Church as the de facto authority of Italy in the provision of the essentials for Rome’s continuance, ready and able to supplement the imperial administration itself in the preservation of a Roman Italy. His reign also marks the spread and intensification of the influence of St. Peter and of the Roman See.
Quote ID: 4317
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 107
Section: 3G
The papacy towered in Italy, finding itself isolated from a social and political context in which it had first acquired its preeminence. It was therefore free of any stifling associations, and able to evolve its expression of moral authority standing apart from its milieu. Gregory himself was not fully aware of this; he lamented the passing of a whole society in Rome, although he emphasized the advantages that lack of trammels brought for the service of religion.
Quote ID: 4318
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 108
Section: 1A,3A4,4B
The resources of the papacy, material and moral, represented the sole hope of Rome’s survival and fashioned the shape of its future.
Quote ID: 4319
Time Periods: 567
Book ID: 191 Page: 109
Section: 2C,3A4
The civil administration of Rome in the years subject to the East was overshadowed in prestige, in quality and in effectiveness by the Church’s own administration which through its management of charity, of its great estates and of a wide diplomacy, determined Rome’s survival in the declining years of Byzantine power in the West. The Roman clergy formed a tight corporation with a common identity, a common interest and common privileges - the word ’cleros’ retained its Greek connotation of a chosen group apart. Entry into the clerical ranks provided the sole opportunity for the realization of talent and ambition - whether spiritual or secular - and for learning.
Quote ID: 4320
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 109
Section: 2E1
Their corporate nature was emphasized by their distinctive privileges. Chief among these was the use of the mappula, a white, fringed saddlecloth, the campagi, flat, black slippers, and the udones, white stockings, all inherited from the imperial senate. These distinctions were jealously guarded; in 593 the clergy of Ravenna claimed the privilege of the mappula for themselves and Gregory the Great, hesitating at first to allow it, finally conceded its use only to the senior deacons of that see.
Quote ID: 4321
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 110
Section: 3A1
These modes of entry and training tended to reinforce the corporate sense of the clergy who on several occasions were capable of closing their ranks to avoid any dilution of their unique status.
Quote ID: 4322
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 112
Section: 3A3B
Institutions throughout the city - and especially the orphanages, which were closely protected by the Lateran - were combed for boys with suitable voices; of future popes, Sergius II, who was orphaned of both parents at the age of twelve, was brought up in the schola.
Quote ID: 4324
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 113
Section: 2E6
As the mappula was the especial insignia of the papal service in its closer sense, so the tonsure was the mark that set a man apart for a purely ecclesiastical career. Here there was a distinction to be made since the Roman style was to wear hair short, in contrast to the Merovingian Franks or the Lombards - Gregory I refers to tenants of the Roman Church in Sicily as tonsoratores. In the eighth century when the inhabitants of the Lombard duchy of Spoleto commended themselves in loyalty to Pope Hadrian I, they symbolized this by cutting their hair off, in the Roman mode. But the tonsure proper, a patch completely shaven, was the mark of the clergy distinct from the laity or the military.
Quote ID: 4325
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 191 Page: 114
Section: 3A4B
The seven deacons, each in charge of one of the seven regions into which Rome had been ecclesiastically divided. . .
Quote ID: 4326
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 114
Section: 2E1,4B
Here pride in a formal Latin was longest preserved. The deacon John, a leader of the ninth century resurgence of Roman pride and antiquarianism, exaggerated when he wrote in his Life of Gregory I that in the Lateran (the ’palace of Latium’ in his play on words) everyone spoke good Latin and wore the toga, but a fresco of the most articulate and stylistically flexible of the Latin Fathers. . . .
Quote ID: 4327
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 124
Section: 2E1,3A1
Other expressions of the papacy’s sovereignty in the West were adopted in the latter part of the seventh century: the use of the phrygium or camelaucon, a tall white head-dress from which the tiara was to develop and which, in legend, had been accepted by Sylvester from Constantine I in lieu of a temporal crown which would obscure his clerical tonsure; the laudes, the acclamations from the people, adopted from the court ceremonial of appointment; and the service of the suburbicarian bishops in the Lateran.
Quote ID: 4329
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 129
Section: 2E1,2E6
The synod of 721, for example, besides condemning Hadrian, son of Exhiliratus, who had eloped with the deaconess Epiphania, laid down that the clergy were not to go out of doors without wearing the opitergum, a great all-enveloping mantle; while the distinctive mark of clerical status was not to be abandoned in the dictates of fashion: ’If any cleric allows his hair to grow, let him be condemned.’
Quote ID: 4330
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 130
Section: 3A1A,2A4
. . .and in 743 the synod banned the celebration of cappodanno: ’None shall presume to celebrate the first of January, nor hold the pagan winter rites; nor prepare tables for feasts in their houses; nor prance through the streets and piazzas with songs and choruses, for it is a very great evil in the sight of God.’
Quote ID: 4331
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 130
Section: 2C,3A1
. . . the election of the pope. This was not yet confined to the clergy, but as the choice of their chief magistrate as well as spiritual father, was something in which the whole city, sometimes too vigorously, participated. First the death of the pope was formally announced to the emperor and exarch by the regents, the archpriest, archdeacon, and primicerius of the notaries; and following the election, a formal request was made for permission to consecrate.
Quote ID: 4332
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 131
Section: 2C,3A1,3A4C
At its most formal, the mode of election may best be seen in 769 when, following the usurpation of Constantine, the authorities were scrupulously legal in the election of Stephen III; the participants were the priests ’and all the clergy, the leaders of the army and the army itself, the more substantial of the citizens, and the general populace itself’.
Quote ID: 4333
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 132
Section: 3A2A
This was the last occasion of attempted force in an election until in 768 the landed nobility of the duchy of Rome invaded the city to foist one of their number, Constantine, on to the papal throne.
Quote ID: 4334
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 132
Section: 2C
His consecration took place on the Sunday, following receipt of imperial approval; accompanied for the first time by the singing of the papal choir and with the ceremonial candles carried before him. . . .
Quote ID: 4335
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 132
Section: 2C
When finally the archdeacon placed the symbol of supreme authority, the pallium, upon him, the pope rose and reseated himself on his throne. . . .
Quote ID: 4336
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 132/133
Section: 3A4
The Church to which he had been elected was a large organization. Its universal commitments in spiritual and temporal matters made necessary participation in affairs throughout Europe and the East as well as the protection of Italy and Rome.
Quote ID: 4337
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 135
Section: 4B
The monasteries of Rome were originally small, independent foundations, created in the houses of those Roman families - such as that of Gregory I - whose members entered the church.
Quote ID: 4338
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 191 Page: 137
Section: 3A4C
They may not have been at first purely charitable organizations; their connection may rather have been initially with the quartermastering needs of the imperial militia which in the time of Gregory I was already beholden to papal resources - of the twentyfour diaconiae at the end of the eighth century, nine were dedicated to Eastern military saints.
Quote ID: 4339
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 138
Section: 3A4
The resources of the papacy - which paid for city charities, for the upkeep of crumbling buildings and aqueducts, for tribute and levies to the Lombards, and for the stipends to its own clergy - cannot be accurately assessed.
Quote ID: 4340
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 191 Page: 140
Section: 4B
The active expression of Roman life during the seventh century was focused solely through the agency of the Roman Church whose institutions and functions supplied the prime and central means of civic activity and representation. The secular life of Rome continued but was muted in comparison with the growing power and splendour of the papacy; the senatorium in the church, still so called, was no longer occupied by senators but simply by the archium, the authorities. The civilian population, more localized than it had been in the sixth century, was drawn into the orbit of the Church as it forgot its original connection with the Empire and saw the papacy increasingly as the proper leader of the city. In the eighth century the nobility was to grow again, drawing strength from its association with papal offices in the city, and with the ending of formal imperial rule in the countryside. Contact with Lombard influence was to weaken the city’s hold on the countryside and to redevelop a new scheme for politics, with the papacy and papal offices as the prize. The Roman Church alone, with its corporate officials, had survived to transmit the ideas of the ancient city to the kingdoms of the north.
Quote ID: 4341
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 145
Section: 2E1
The Avars had broken through the Danube frontier, and in the East the Persian King Khosroes overran Syria in 611; Damascus was captured two years later, and Jerusalem followed in May 614 when, to the horror of Christendom, the True Cross preserved there was removed in triumph to Ctesiphon.
Quote ID: 4342
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 156
Section: 3A4C
c. 600, the army “was emerging as a distinct stratum of Roman society; its officers were in receipt of papal grants or leases of land, and it took its part in purely domestic issues - in the formulae of notification of a papal election the army magnates signed with the clerical regents. A generation after the arrest of Pope Martin, the army was taking a full and influential initiative in the elections themselves.”
Quote ID: 4343
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 160
Section: 3A4C
The swing of the now thoroughly naturalized army towards Italian and papal interests, and resistance to pressure from its nominal master the Emperor Justinian II [PJ: 668–711] summoned a synod to Constantinople to enact severe measures to control the Church. . . .
Quote ID: 4345
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 163
Section: 3A4
The meeting was successful; Justinian exhibited every reverence and courtesy to the pope, attended his Mass and received communion from him, and confirmed once more the privileges of the Roman Church.Pastor John’s Note: In these pages, Justinian’s incredible efforts to seize and control the Western church is described.
Quote ID: 4346
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 166
Section: 2E1
[c. 700] The Iconoclast movement, which lasted for more than a century from Leo’s first decree in 727, split the Empire; rebellion accompanied the first decrees in the island province of the Aegean and in Italy.
Quote ID: 4347
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 166
Section: 3A1
Pope Gregory II condemned Iconoclasm, following the example of the patriarch of Constantinople. Leo wrote sternly to him, claiming an absolute power in both Church and State: ’I am both king and priest.’
Quote ID: 4348
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 168
Section: 3A1
In 729 Emperor Leo III took the final step heavy taxes that was equivalent to abandoning Rome and excluding it from the Empire.
Quote ID: 4349
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 168/169
Section: 3A1
The rebellions that broke out were as much in protest against these heavy taxes as against Iconoclasm, and Gregory, appalled by the inequity they involved, issued general instructions forbidding their payment. In reprisal and to buttress imperial authority where it could be maintained, Leo responded with a drastic confiscation of all the papacy’s holdings in Southern Italy and Sicily, then estimated at a value of 252,000 solidi, while Sicily and Illyricum, admittedly now predominantly Greek in complexion, were transferred from the Roman to the Constantinopolitan patriarchate.Since the first major endowments to the Roman Church by Constantine I these properties had provided the bulk of the papacy’s income [Sicily especially, oil, wine, wheat].
Quote ID: 4350
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 169
Section: 3A1,4B
But in practice and spirit Leo had cast Rome out of her Empire, and Sicily was to be a barrier rather than a channel for communication. The common tradition and continuity of the Roman towns was to survive, materially and politically, through the efforts of the papacy alone.
Quote ID: 4351
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 173
Section: 3A1
By the beginning of the seventh century Rome, the communis patria of the legal and political world, had ceased to exist.
Quote ID: 4352
Time Periods: 17
Book ID: 191 Page: 174
Section: 2A3
. . .but within a century Gregory had issued his Dialogues, with an inordinate amount of the fabulous, for Gregory was a pragmatic who saw that the world had left behind the appreciation of scholarship and that the faith and morals of Christendom must be sustained by less sophisticated means. And for that, not deliberately but in the spontaneous acceptance of the new primacy of Rome, the cult of St. Peter grew as a new imperial theme.The awe in which the apostles and saints of Rome were held is testified by Gregory the Great; writing to the Empress Constantina, wife of Maurice, he told her of the impact of their shrines. ’The bodies of the apostles Peter and Paul glitter with such great miracles and awe that no one can go to pray there without considerable fear. When my predecessor of blessed memory wished to change the silver which covers the sacred body of the blessed apostle Peter, although this is fifteen feet away from the body he received an apparition of considerable horror. I myself in the same way wished to carry out some repairs near the most sacred body of the apostle St. Paul; as it was necessary to dig to some depth near his tomb the foreman found some bones, which had no connection with the tombs. He dared to lift them and move them elsewhere; he died suddenly with horrifying symptoms. Again, my predecessor of holy memory wished to make some improvements not far from the body of St. Lawrence, whose burial place was unknown; excavations were undertaken in search of it and suddenly his tomb was uncovered. Those working there, monks and servants of the church, saw the martyr’s body which, indeed, they did not dare touch; all died within ten days.
Quote ID: 4353
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 191 Page: 175
Section: 4B
But although these were visible reminders scattered throughout Europe of the loyalty and devotion owed to the new founders of Rome, they were only substitutes for a visit to the city of the apostles and to the possession if possible of some tangible association with them and their confreres, the martyrs, the new heroes of Europe’s past.
Quote ID: 4354
Time Periods: 4567
Book ID: 191 Page: 176
Section: 2E1
A later pope was to send them miracle-working gold keys to Peter’s tomb area to a Frankish king in appeal for the liberation of Rome from the Lombards. Other relics, too, were sought, above all filings from the chains worn by St. Peter in prison. . . .
Quote ID: 4355
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 176
Section: 2A3
Rome was prepared for visitors and a whole organization of hostels and guide books grew up to meet their needs. From the time of the persecutions, the Roman Church had been concerned to preserve the bodies and memories of the saints. The greatest work had been undertaken in the mid-fourth century by Pope Damasus who had collected the bodies of the martyrs in the catacombs and clearly marked in verse of his own composition the names and facts of each; notaries had also been instructed, in each ecclesiastical region, to compile the Acts of the martyrs from official records or tradition.
Quote ID: 4356
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 191 Page: 176
Section: 4B
But the literary record soon became contaminated; too many external influences, the love of the amazing, parallels with secular stories or names, and the pride of the great families who wished to incorporate themselves in the Christian as well as imperial past of Rome, intervened.
Quote ID: 4357
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 191 Page: 182
Section: 1B
. . .a faith that was built largely upon patristic commentaries to its text,...
Quote ID: 4358
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 191 Page: 183/184
Section: 2A3
Devotion to the saints of Rome gave rise to another traffic, which grew in popularity as a result of the more settled conditions following the establishment of Carolingian power and the growth of the French and German Churches. This was the acquisition of whole bodies of the Roman saints, translated to old or new foundations, to grant an added lustre by their presence. Gregory I had frowned on the removal of saints’ bodies; and supernatural fates followed archaeological research. There was also danger of false ascription - Gregory himself supplied one instance: ’Certain Greek monks who came here more than two years ago dug up in the silence of the night, near St. Peter’s church, the bodies of dead men . . . and kept their bones in their own possession until their departure. But they were arrested and examined with care on their reasons for this, and they confessed that they were going to transport these bones to Greece, to pass off as relics of the saints. The reality of the saint’s power in the vicinity of its remains was strongly held, and something more than symbolism dictated men’s attitudes to them. For instance, in the ninth century Pope Paschal received a vision of St. Cecilia which at first he refused to credit, since it was believed in Rome that Cecilia’s body had been removed fifty years before by the Lombards and taken to Pavia - she could not appear at such a distance. The saint insisted and her body was found where she indicated and where it had been hidden.
Quote ID: 4359
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 191 Page: 184/185
Section: 2E1
The monk Radoin, sent in 826 by Abbot Hilduin of Soissons in search of relics, ran directly into a political controversy.To them Radoin presented his letters and made his request - for no less than the body of St. Sebastian. The two ministers paled; they told Radoin that St. Sebastian was, after St. Peter and St. Paul, the third patron of Rome, that he had been named by Pope Gaius as defensor of the Roman Church and that the transfer was therefore impossible.
Quote ID: 4360
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 185/186
Section: 2A3
. . .but in private conversation with Quirinus and Theophylact, Radoin was able to put to them the advantage of pleasing the Emperor.. . . .a violent argument broke out in the pope’s very chamber.
However, political pressures proved too strong, and Eugenius sent Bishop John of Silva Candida to obtain the body for Radoin. John brought the body to the Lateran to be sealed with the pope’s personal signet, the normal guarantee of authenticity; it was then taken temporarily to St. Peter’s. There the Romans made a last attempt to save their patron; gathering together they taunted the pope with exceeding his predecessors in cruelty in allowing so great a saint to be taken from them, and persuaded him to remove the body from its casket, leaving only one arm. Abbot Ingoald of Farfa, a strong Frankish supporter, foiled the attempted fraud and Eugenius, with no room for further manoeuvre, could not prevent the saint’s removal to Soissons, to redound to the glory of that town. But perhaps the Romans succeeded in part; a few years later, in the time of Gregory IV, at least some relics of Sebastian were still in Rome.
Eight years later, in 834, Bishop Hitto of Freising came to Rome on a similar relic-collecting expedition. Pope Gregory IV showed him his storehouse of immediately available relics but none of these was sufficiently impressive for the bishop of an increasingly important see, and the pilgrim offered the Pope a ’noble and weighty pile of precious things’ in return for the remains of the Pope St. Alexander and the Roman priest Justin. The request was unpopular: ’The citizens at once came running together in amazement, for the rumour had quickly stirred up the city, especially concerning St. Alexander. . . .
Quote ID: 4361
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 186
Section: 2A3
Although the papacy attempted to control the unpopular wholesale translation of relics, the documents of authentication which were carried away with the relics increased still further the place of Rome in the European consciousness of its past.
Quote ID: 4362
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 186
Section: 2A3
But inevitably there was abuse and lack of proper documentation; a priest of Mainz, Liutolf, writing in about 860 of St. Severus’s translation there, said ’There was at that time a cleric from the Gallic regions called Felix (though whether he was happy in deed is not for me to judge). I can remember seeing him when I was a boy. It was his custom to wander through the various provinces in search of any relics, which he stole whenever he could.’ In fact he stole some relics from the monastery of St. Severus in Ravenna and the monks instituted a hue and cry throughout Italy for him, alerting all magistrates to secure his arrest.
Quote ID: 4363
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 196
Section: 2E3
The ancient buildings that were preserved owed their survival to their adaptation to Christian uses. The Pantheon was granted to Boniface IV by the Emperor Phocas in 608 and was dedicated by that pope as the church of S. Maria ad Martyres; its roof was stripped by Constans II but its use as a church saved it from utter decay - Gregory II re-roofed it with lead. It may have been dedicated on 1st November 609, an ancient feast of Isis and the later feast of All Saints.
Quote ID: 4364
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 191 Page: 197
Section: 2B2
From the sixth century onwards there was a proliferation of new dedications as the cults of saints originally strangers to Rome were introduced by successive immigrants or outside influences. At this time the presence of large numbers of foreign troops in the city was responsible for the cult of soldier-saints, especially SS. Theodore, Hadrian, George, Boniface, Sergius and Bacchus.
Quote ID: 4365
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 191 Page: 197
Section: 2B2
Other churches adopted the pagan associations of their site and neighbourhood; in the seventh century, S. Maria Antica which stood close to the former site of the temple of Castor and Pollux, a frequent pagan resort for healing, celebrated in its frescoes the doctor saints of the East. . . .
Quote ID: 4366
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 197
Section: 2B2
On Tiber Island the church of St. Bartholomew carried on the reputation of the ancient temple of Aesculapius as a hospital, the name finding its way ultimately to London.
Quote ID: 4367
Time Periods: 07
Book ID: 191 Page: 200
Section: 3A1
730s Gregory was only able to save it by paying subsidies to duke Transamund, Faroald’s son, but an indication of the increasing withdrawal from the concept of Empire was shown when Gregory ordered the redeemed town to be incorporated into the ‘holy republic and body of the beloved army of Christ’.
Quote ID: 4368
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 201
Section: 3A3A
The renewed Lombard threat also prompted Gregory to undertake repairs to the walls of Rome, supplying the lime needed and the mason’s pay from his own resources; the walls of Civitavecchia, the main port for the north and the west, were also put into repair.
Quote ID: 4369
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 202
Section: 3A2A
So we exhort your Goodness Charles Martel [PJ: 668–741]. . . that you may support the Church of St. Peter and its special people, that you at once refute these kings, drive them away from us and force them to return to their own territory. Do not despise my appeal or turn deaf ears to my entreaty, that the Prince of Apostles may not shut the heavenly kingdom against you.
Quote ID: 4371
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 204
Section: 3A1B
This last was a Roman legal claim Pope Zachary, a by-the-book kind of guy, for under Roman law barbarian squatter’s rights to uncultivated land became absolute after thirty years’ uninterrupted tenure.
Quote ID: 4372
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 209
Section: 3A2A
The king himself took the bridle of the pope’s horse, like a groom, and led him to the palace. There Stephen addressed his appeal to Pepin for aid against the Lombards and for the protection of the Church and St. Peter’s special people.PJ: cp. page 202.
Quote ID: 4374
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 210
Section: 3A4C
Pepin the Short, left sole ruler of France, in 750 sent to Pope Zachary asking formal permission for a change of dynasty; for whoever held the power should also hold the title. Zachary approved and commissioned Boniface to anoint Pepin as king. Traditional Frankish ceremony was added to the new church rite by the hoisting of Pepin on the warriors’ shields.
Quote ID: 4375
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 210/211
Section: 3A1
. . . Pepin’s answer, in which he swore to force full restitution of all Lombard conquests . . .But this promise of Pepin’s was, in the course of the following two generations, to be hardened in the mind of Lateran clergy until, as the Donation of Constantine, it was to be provided with a full historical and legal background to form the basis of papal government throughout the Middle Ages. In its fullest developed form, the Donation maintained that Constantine I, in return for his cure from leprosy by Pope Sylvester and for his baptism, had granted the pope the Lateran palace, wide estates and sovereignty over the whole Western Empire; the pope and his clergy were to receive the insignia of the imperial senate and court and Constantine himself withdrew from the West to his new capital named after him.
Quote ID: 4376
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 211
Section: 2C,3A1
On this occasion Stephen, who had repeated the anointing of Pepin and his two sons as kings of the Franks, conferred upon them a new title, that of Patrician of the Romans. This was strictly speaking a high grade of the Byzantine court nobility whose owners were normally invested by the Emperor with the insignia of their rank and acclaimed as patrician by the people. It had frequently been held by barbarian chiefs, as had other imperial honours; Odoacer and Theodoric had been patricians, Clovis of the Franks had received the insignia of consulship.
Quote ID: 4377
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 224
Section: 3A2A
Waldipert was then accused of conspiring with the duke of Spoleto and some Romans to murder Christopher and regain control of Rome in Lombard favour; when Christopher set out with a posse to his house, he fled for sanctuary to S. Maria ad Martyres but was dragged out still clutching the image of the Virgin and locked up under strictest custody in the Ferrata prison. A few days later he was taken out and in the piazza before the Lateran was viciously blinded and mutilated. He was then sent to the Valeria hostel where he soon died of his injuries.
Quote ID: 4378
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 225
Section: 3A4B,3A4C
’So we decree under sanction of anathema that no layman or person of any other status shall presume to attend a papal election in arms; but the election shall be in the hands of the known priests and leaders of the Church and of all the clergy. And when the election is made and the elect conducted to the patriarchal palace, the leaders of the militia and the whole army, the leading citizens and the whole population of this city of Rome shall go to greet him as their Lord.
Quote ID: 4379
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 230
Section: 3A1
But while the nobility resented the papacy’s insistence on resuming full legal claims and a strict Roman legal system of government, they remained conscious and proud of their distinction as Romans and of their particular place in the old imperial city.
Quote ID: 4381
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 234
Section: 3A4C
Further south, the unity of the kingdom had already collapsed; the leading men of the duchy of Spoleto spontaneously surrendered to the Roman Church.
Quote ID: 4384
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 235
Section: 3A1
There on the steps of the apostolic hall, Pope Hadrian [PJ: d. 795] waited with his clergy; Charles approached him, kissing each step out of reverence for the apostle, and at the top embraced the pope.
Quote ID: 4385
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 239
Section: 2A4
In May 778 Hadrian set the tone in a letter to Charles asking for a complete fulfilment of all promises made:’As for all the rest, all in the regions of Tuscany, Spoleto, Benevento and Crosica, and in the Sabine patrimony, which had been granted to God’s holy and apostolic Church and to the blessed apostle Peter by so many emperors, patricians and other God-fearing persons for mercy to their souls and pardon their sins, and which. . . .’
Quote ID: 4386
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 247
Section: 3A1
Within four years of his election rebellion broke out. On 25th April 799 Leo left the Lateran for S. Lorenzo in Lucina to conduct the major litanies and, as the papal procession passed the monastery of SS. Sylvester and Stephen, it was attacked by two of Pope Hadrian’s nephews - Paschal and Campulus.Leo was thrown from his horse and dragged into the monastery; an attempt to blind him and cut out his tongue failed - possibly it was not wholehearted - and that night he was smuggled to the monastery of S. Erasmo on the Coelian where he was kept under guard. The conspirators did not put forward an anti-pope; it was Leo’s secular activities that they were determined to check. But Leo was rescued that night by the chamberlain Albinus . . . [Leo went West to Charles and returned with a strong escort.]
Quote ID: 4390
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 250
Section: 3A4C
Then the Christmas ceremonies began which Charles attended as he had promised. While in prayer before the confession of St. Peter he was startled when Leo suddenly appeared to place a crown on his head, and he was acclaimed by pope and Romans as Emperor of the Romans. The historical and legendary parallels had long been drawn between the Christian emperors of the West and the new Christian dynasty of the Franks, and the territorial extent of Charles’s dominions could only stand comparison with the old Empire.
Quote ID: 4393
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 251
Section: 3A2A
In 814, on the death of Charlemagne, the Romans revolted once more; Leo promptly and in accordance with the legal powers of a Roman sovereign, had the leaders executed for lese majeste - a significant advance from Hadrian’s method.
Quote ID: 4394
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 252
Section: 3A2A
The pope Leo III also had control of the judicial machinery which denied redress to the victims.Pastor John’s Note: Leo II died in 816. Stephen dies in 817. Then Paschal is elected.
Quote ID: 4395
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 253
Section: 2A3
817+ As abbot, Paschal’s activities were marked by a devotion to the care of foreign pilgrims in Rome, and as pope he was distinguished by his care and concern for the preservation of the relics of the saints, exhumed from the suburban cemeteries and brought into the city churches. The prosperity brought to Rome by these relics, by pilgrims come to venerate them and churchmen to buy them, is seen in a new outburst of building and decoration in the city....
Quote ID: 4396
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 254
Section: 3A2A,3A2B
Two prominent Romans Theodore and his son-in-law Leo, protested the rapacious land-grabbing claims of the papacy. They were arrested for lese-majeste and were either summarily executed or murdered by papal servants.
Quote ID: 4397
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 263
Section: 3A2A
In the first years of his pontificate he prepared his [PJ: Leo IV] campaign; the shock of the sack temporarily secured the support of the maritime cities of the south and, with a foretaste of the indulgences later granted to crusaders, spiritual benefits were promised to all who fought.
Quote ID: 4398
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 265
Section: 3A3A
Leonine extension of city walls to protect the Vatican. 40 feet high. 44 towers. Completed 852. First definite additions to the shape of the city made by a pope. Leo IV.
Quote ID: 4400
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 266
Section: 2A3
“The adventures that befell the body of St. Magnus. . .”When the city in which he was buried fell to the marauding Arabs, a certain Plato took the corpse of the dead Christian saint to Veroli .for safe-keeping. Alas, the Arabs attacked Veroli. Musa, commander of the Arabs used the Christian church as a stable for his horses, not realizing that the body of St,. Magnus had been hidden beneath the pavement of the church. Its miraculous powers killed the Arabs’ horses that stood upon his hiding place, compelling the Arabs to ask that it be removed to another town.
Quote ID: 4402
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 191 Page: 269
Section: 2C
Louis . . . ’we have taken this name and dignity from the Romans among whom this highest of styles and appellations first arose’; it was conferred by ’imposition and unction at the hands of the highest bishop and by the judgment of the Church’ for the defense and glorification of the mother of all God’s churches’.
Quote ID: 4405
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 269
Section: 3A1
Leo IV continued his program of reform of the clerical life in the papal states. At the synod of 853 which deposed Anastasius he sought to withdraw the clergy from too close an involvement in secular life. Except to avoid injustice, and then only with episcopal assent, priests were not to act as witnesses or recognizers in secular business, nor could they act as advocates. The politician-bishops were reminded of their prime duties . . .
Quote ID: 4406
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 269/270
Section: 3A3B
Leo IV The educational system needed revision: ‘It has been brought to our notice that some places have neither teachers nor provision for pious study in letters. Therefore in every cathedral and in the subordinate parishes and elsewhere, as need may dictate, full care and diligence must be taken to establish masters and teachers who shall conscientiously instruct in letters and the liberal arts, for in these above all are manifest and made clear the divine commands.’
Quote ID: 4407
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 272
Section: 3A4
Obedience to the Christian law was the hall-mark of the pontificate of Nicholas. To Boris of Bulgaria he laid down the details of every aspect of the Christian life; he attempted to control the private morals of the Western kings; he induced into the Greek Church a sense of Rome’s authority.
Quote ID: 4409
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 273
Section: 3A1
c. 870 Anastasius . . . As papal librarian and secretary to Nicholas, he drafted the letters to patriarchs and kings that hammered home Nicholas’s conception of the Roman Church as the fount of all authority; in his program of translations of Greek spiritual writings, he made the Western world aware of the full extent of Christianity.
Quote ID: 4410
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 279
Section: 3D2
But Charles accepted with alacrity and his journey through Italy in the autumn of 875 was unimpeded; on Christmas Day 875 he was crowned Emperor in St. Peter’s having, a German chronicler noted bitterly, ‘like Jugurtha, corrupted the senate and the whole Roman people with money’.
Quote ID: 4411
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 292
Section: 2A3
Stephen’s vengeance - directed by Spoleto - turned on the memory, reputation and remains of Formosus and on his followers. In February or March 897 a synod was assembled in the presence of the Emperor Lambert and his mother. The tomb of Formosus was broken open and his corpse, dressed in full pontificals, was placed in a chair as defendant before the synod; a deacon stood by as his advocate. The grisly scene was fully played out. Pope Stephen shrieked his accusations at the corpse - of usurping as Bishop of Porto the papal throne, of his enmity against John VIII, of his ambition and of his re-entry into Rome while ban still ran against him. The wretched deacon offered no defense for his principal and Formosus was condemned. Three fingers of his right hand, the hand of benediction, were cut off, his vestments stripped from him, and his corpse thrown into the river.
Quote ID: 4412
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 297
Section: 2C
c. 900+ Theophylact rose steadily in the official cursus of honors:
Quote ID: 4413
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 297
Section: 2C
Other titles were gloriosissimus dux, and in 915 ‘senator of the Romans’ . . .Theophylact was ’lord of one city but that city comprised the whole world’.
Quote ID: 4414
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 302
Section: 3A4C
In 903, Arab. The allies, with Alberic and Pope John himself fighting in the front-rank, decisively defeated them; the few who escaped were rounded up and destroyed.
Quote ID: 4415
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 314
Section: 1A,4B
But that Rome had survived through four and a half centuries was the work of the papacy.
Quote ID: 4417
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 314
Section: 1A,4B
All Rome’s rulers, from Theodoric and Justinian to the younger Alberic and Otto, were conscious that Rome remained a capital, unique in the world, in descent from Romulus and Peter: no passive influence or inert and antiquarian reminder of the ancient world, a phantom preserving the shape without substance, but a power which had in the eight, and would again in the eleventh, reach out and refashion the world.
Quote ID: 4418
Time Periods: 17
Book ID: 191 Page: 319
Section: 1A,4B
I have referred to this period, to the mid-sixth century, as a ’petrine’ period, by that suggesting a Roman Church that had adapted local urban traditions to itself, and had substituted Peter (and Paul) for Romulus and Remus and the twin consulship.
Quote ID: 4419
Time Periods: 16
Book ID: 191 Page: 325
Section: 3A2A
(Leo III d. 716) His predecessors, Hadrian included, had not exercised the ultimate test of independence, the execution of traitors, but had deferred to Constantinople. Leo was not so reticent; he ordered executions just as he ordered buildings in the imperial style.
Quote ID: 4420
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 47b
Section: 3D2
Early in 526, Theodoric sent the elderly and feeble Pope John to Constantinople to deal with various matters. He also told John that he was to tell the Emperor Justin, “to bring back to Arianism those whom he forced to accept the Catholic faith.” John resolutely refused to promise to fulfill that part of Thoedoric’s mission. Still, the king sent him.Pastor John notes: John’s note: Pope John entangled
Quote ID: 4252
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 232b
Section: 3A2A
Pope Leo III orders the execution of a personal enemy even before becoming Pope, without informing Hadrian. A shadow of things to come.
Quote ID: 4383
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 191 Page: 246b
Section: 3A4
Established safely, Leo cruel and arrogant appears to have insisted on the full sovereign rights of the papacy under Roman law with no such restraint and tact as Hadrian had shown. (Note: cp. p 245 top)
Quote ID: 4389
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 191 Page: 265b
Section: 3A4
The work of Rome’s defense was completed later in the century when Pope John VIII built a wall around the basilica of St. Paul . . .
Quote ID: 4401
Time Periods: 7
End of quotes