§ 26. THE EMPEKOE-PAPACY AND THE HIEBAKCHY. 13d
tf" tlie latter/ But internal and external liere vitally inter penetrate and depend on each other, as soul and body, anu frequent reciprocal encroachments and collisions are inevitable upon state-church ground. This becomes manifest in the period before us in many ways, especially in the East, where the Byzantine desj)otism had freer play, than in the distant West.
The emperors after Coustantine (as the popes after them) summoned the general councils, bore the necessary expenses, presided in the councils through commissions, gave to the decisions in doctrine and discipline the force of law for the whole Roman empire, and maintained them by their authority. The emperors nominated or confirmed the most influential metropolitans and patriarchs. They took part in all theological disputes, and thereby inflamed the passion of parties. They protected orthodoxy and punished heresy with the arm of power. Often, however, they took the heretical side, and banished orthodox bishops from their sees. Thus Arianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, and Monophysitism successively found favor and protection at court. Even empresses meddled in the internal and external concerns of the church. Justina
* Justinian states the Byzantine theory thus, in the preface to the 6th Novel : " Maxima quidem in hominibus sunt dona Dei a superna collata dementia Sacerdotium et I>nj>eriu7n, et illud quidem divinis ministrans, hoc autem humanis prtesidens ao diligentiam exhibens, ex uno eodemque principio ntraque procedentia, humanam exornant vitam." But he tlien ascribes to the Imperium the supervision of the Sacerdotium, and " maximam solUcitudinem circa vera Dei dogmata et circa Sacerdoturn honcstatem." Later Greek emperors, on the ground of their anointing, even claimed a priestly character. Leo the Isaurian, for example, wrote to Pope Gregory IL in 730: BaatAehs Kal kpfvs fl/xi (Mansi xii. 976). This, however, was contested even in the East, and the monk Maximus in 655 answered negatively the question put to him : "Ergo non est omnis Christianus imperator etiam sacerdos?" At first the emperor's throne stood side by side with the bishop's in the choir; but Ambrose gave the emperor a seat next to the choir. Yet, after the ancient custom, which the Concilium Quinisext., a.d. 692, in its 69th canon, expressly confirmed, the emperors might enter the choir of the church, and lay their oblations in person upon the altar — a privilege which was denied to all the laity, and which implied at leasl ft half-priestly character in the emperor. Gibbon's statement needs correction accordingly (ch. XX.): " The monarch, whose spiritual rank is less honorable than that of the meanest deacon, was seated below the rails cf the sanctuary, and confounded with the rest of the faithful multitude."
136 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
endeavored with all her miglit to introduce Ariauisin in Milan, but met a successful opponent in bisliop Ambrose. Eudoxia procured the deposition and banishment of the noble Chrysostom. Theodora, raised from the stage to the throne, ruled the emperor Justinian, and sought by every kind of intrigue to promote the victory of the Monophysite heresy. It is true, the doctrinal decisioriS proceeded properly from the councils, and could not have maintained themselves long without that sanction. But Basiliscus, Zeno, Justinian I., IlcracliuSj Oonstans II., and other emperors issued many purely ecclesiastical edicts and rescripts without consulting the councils, or through the councils by their own influence upon them. Justinian opens his celebrated codex with the imperial creed on the trinity and the imperial anathema agauist Nestorius, Eutyches, Apollinaris, on the basis certainly of the apostolic church and of the four oecumenical councils, but in the consciousness of absolute legislative and executive authority even over the faith and conscience of all his subjects.
The voice of the catholic church in this period conceded to the Christian emperors in general, with the duty of protecting and supporting the church, the right of supervision over its external affairs, but claimed for the clergy, particularly for the bishops, the right to govern her wdthin, to fix her doctrine, to direct her worship. The new state of things was regarded as a restoration of the Mosaic and Davidic theocracy on Clu'istian soil, and judged accordingly. But in respect to the extent and application of the emperor's power in the church, opinion was generally determined, consciously or unconsciously, by some special religious interest. Hence we find that catholics and heretics, Athanasians and Arians, justified or condemned the interference of the emperor in the develupnient of doctrine, the appointment and deposition of bishops, and the patronage and persecution of parties, according as they th(?mselves were afi^'ected by them. The same Donatists who first appealed to the imperial protection, when the decision went against them denounced all intermeddling of the state with the church. There were bishops who justified even the most arbitrary ex «csses of the Byzantine despotism in religion by reference to