Peter's Rock in Mohammed's Flood, from St. Gregory the Great to St. Leo IIIAllies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Islamic
Peter's Rock in Mohammed's Flood, from St. Gregory the Great to St. Leo III
Allies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Christianity and other religions -- Islam; Church history -- Middle Ages, 600-1500; Papacy; Papacy -- History
documents (_i.e._, the Ecthesis) attached to the narthex of the great
church in our imperial city, which contain the questions above mentioned,
to be removed. Now those who transgress these commands will first be
subject to the judgment of Almighty God, and then to the severe imperial
indignation for contempt. If it be a bishop or clerk, he shall be deposed
from his particular rank; if a monk, he shall be banished; if noble or
military, he shall be deposed. If they be private persons, when of rank,
their property shall be confiscated; when of low degree, they shall be
scourged and banished for ever. So that all shall be restrained by the
fear of God, and seeing the punishments respectively threatened, shall
maintain unshaken and undisturbed, the peace of God’s holy Churches.”
As(31) one Bishop of Constantinople, Sergius, composed the Ecthesis, so
another, his second successor, Paul, composed the Typus, but as Sergius
did not give to his work the fitting form of an imperial decree, but the
theological form of a creed, Paul showed himself more skilful, and dressed
his Typus in imperial clothing. Constans himself says that he meant to
restore the peace of the Church by this new decree. There is no reason to
doubt this, since, in tearing down the Ecthesis from the wall of Sancta
Sophia, he plainly purposed to quiet the minds of the Westerns and those
who held with them. It is further clear that while the Ecthesis forbade
contention concerning One or Two Operations, it inconsistently proclaimed
One Will, that is Monothelism. But the Typus consistently rejected not
only One Operation, but One Will. It wished in this to be impartial. This
apparent impartiality is likewise the chief distinction between the Typus
and the Ecthesis, for they are like each other in the main thought, which
is, that the development of doctrine should remain at the point to which
it had come in the five general councils, and that further questions
should not be entered into. However, that impartiality is but a false _via
media_, for it puts the true doctrine of the Two Wills upon the same
footing with the heresy, and forbids both one and the other. Another
distinction between the Ecthesis and the Typus lies in this, that the
Ecthesis only required obedience in general. Constans, on the contrary,
threatened every transgressor of his Typus with the severest civil
punishments, and these he executed with the utmost cruelty.
The Typus is the fifth specimen of doctrinal despotism proceeding from the
Byzantine emperors since the time of St. Leo. In all these the effort was
the same. So far as the relation between the emperor and the Pope is
concerned, the principle at issue is whether the Byzantine emperor, with
the Byzantine patriarch as his chief agent, should dictate the creed and
direct the government of the Church, or the Pope and the bishops.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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