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To this decree attaches not only
the necessary importance and interest which belongs to any ecumenical decision
upon a disputed doctrinal question with regard to the incarnation of the Son of
God, but an altogether accidental interest, arising from the fact that by this
decree a Pope of Rome is stricken with anathema in the person of Honorius. I
need hardly remind the reader how many interesting and difficult questions in
theology such an action on the part of an Ecumenical Council raises, and how all
important, not to say vital, to such as accept the ruling of the recent Vatican
Council, it is that some explanation of this fact should be arrived at which
will be satisfactory. It would be highly improper for me in these pages to
discuss the matter theologically. Volumes on each side have been written on
this subject, and to these I must refer the reader, but in doing so I hope I
may be pardoned if I add a word of counsel--to read both sides. If one's
knowledge is derived only from modern Eastern, Anglican or Protestant writers,
such as "Janus and the Council," the Pere Gratry's
"Letters," or Littledale's controversial books against Rome, one is
apt to be as much one-sided as if he took his information from Cardinal
Baronius, Cardinal Bellarmine, Rohrbacher's History, or from the recent work on
the subject by Pennacchi.(1) Perhaps the average reader will hardly find a more
satisfactory treatment than that by Bossuet in the Defensio. (Liber VII., cap.
xxi, etc.)
It will be sufficient for the
purposes of this volume to state that Roman Catholic Curialist writers are not
at one as to how the matter is to be treated. Pennacchi, in his work referred
to above, is of opinion that Honorius's letters were strictly speaking Papal
decrees, set forth auctoritate apostolica, and therefore irreformable, but he
declares, contrary to the opinion of almost all theologians and to the decree
of this Council, that they are orthodox, and that the Council erred in
condemning them; as he expresses it, the decree rests upon all error in facto
dogmatico. To save an Ecumenical Synod from error, he thinks the synod ceased
to be ecumenical before it took this action, and was at that time only a synod
of a number of Orientals! Cardinal Baronius has another way out of the
difficulty. He says that the name of Honorius was forged and put in the decree
by an erasure in the place of the name of Theodore, the quondam Patriarch, who
soon after the Council got himself restored to the Patriarchal position.
Baronius moreover holds that Honorius's letters have been corrupted, that the
Acts of the Council have been corrupted, and, in short, that everything which
declares or proves that Honorius was a heretic or was condemned by an
Ecumenical Council as such, is untrustworthy and false. The groundlessness, not
to say absurdity, of Baronius's view has been often exposed by those of his own
communion, a brief but sufficient summary of the refutation will be found in
Hefele, who while taking a very halting and unsatisfactory position himself,
yet is perfectly clear that Baronius's contention is utterly indefensible.(2)
Most Roman controversialists of
recent years have admitted both the fact of Pope Honorius's condemnation (which
Baronius denies), and the monothelite (and therefore heretical) character of his
epistles, but they are of opinion that these letters were not his ex cathedra
utterances as Doctor Universalis, but mere expressions of the private opinion
of the Pontiff as a theologian. With this matter we have no concern in this
connexion.
I shall therefore say nothing
further on this point but shall simply supply the leading proofs that Honorius
was as a matter of fact condemned by the Sixth Ecumenical Council.
1. His condemnation is found in the
Acts in the xiiith Session, near the beginning.
2. His two letters were ordered to
be burned at the same session.
3. In the xvith Session the bishops
exclaimed "Anathema to the heretic Sergius, to the heretic Cyrus, to the
heretic Honorius, etc."
4. In the decree of faith published
at the xviijth Session it is stated that "the originator of all evil ...
found a fit tool for his will in ... Honorius, Pope of Old Rome, etc."
5. The report of the Council to the
Emperor says that "Honorius, formerly bishop of Rome" they had
"punished with exclusion and anathema" because he followed the
monothelites.
6. In its letter to Pope Agatho the
Council says it "has slain with anathema Honorius."
7. The imperial decree speaks of
the "unholy priests who infected the Church and falsely governed" and
mentions among them "Honorius, the Pope of Old Rome, the confirmer of
heresy who contradicted himself." The Emperor goes on to anathematize
"Honorius who was Pope of Old Rome, who in everything agreed with them,
went with them, and strengthened the heresy."
8. Pope Leo II. confirmed the
decrees of the Council and expressly says that he too anathematized
Honorius.(1)
9. That Honorius was anathematized
by the Sixth Council is mentioned in the Trullan Canons (No. j.).
10. So too the Seventh Council
declares its adhesion to the anathema in its decree of faith, and in several
places in the acts the same is said.
11. Honorius's name was found in
the Roman copy of the Acts. This is evident from Anastasius's life of Leo II. (Vita Leonis II.)
12. The Papal Oath as found in the
Liber Diurnus(2) taken by each new Pope from the fifth to the eleventh century,
in the form probably prescribed by Gregory II., "smites with eternal
anathema the originators of the new heresy, Sergius, etc., together with
Honorius, because he assisted the base assertion of the heretics."
13. In the lesson for the feast of
St. Leo II. in the Roman Breviary the name of Pope Honorius occurs among those
excommunicated by the Sixth Synod. Upon this we may well hear Bossuet:
"They suppress as far as they can, the Liber Diurnus: they have erased
this from the Roman Breviary. Rave they therefore hidden it? Truth breaks out
from all sides, and these things become so much the more evident, as they are
the more studiously put out of sight."(3)
With such an array of proof no
conservative historian, it would seem, can question the fact that Honorius, the
Pope of Rome, was condemned and anathematized as a heretic by the Sixth
Ecumenical Council.
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