he would have been defeated; for the answer of Delphi was the same with that of Olympia.Art. AGESIPOLIS.

66

PAPAL PORTRAITS.

(Gregory 1.)

THE morals of this pontiff concerning the chastity of ecclesiastics were very rigid. In the business of choosing a bishop, he principally recommended it to the electors to inform themselves, whether the person proposed were guilty of adultery, or mere fornication. Nay, he would have them to ask him in private whether he had been guilty of that sin, admonishing him that, if he were guilty of it, though nobody knew it, and there was no proof to convict him, yet he could not in conscience receive orders; that, nevertheless, they should be given him, if he protested that he was free from that vice; but, if he confessed it, it should be gently represented to him, that he ought rather to think of a cloister to do penance, than of the priesthood, of which his crime, though secret, made him unworthy." This chaste pontiff understanding* "That some ecclesiastics of Sardinia had committed that sin, after they had received orders, ordered not only that they should be deposed, without any hopes of being ever restored to the functions of their ministry, but also that, to prevent so great an evil, none should be admitted to sacred orders, and especially to episcopacy, without assurance that they had always lived chastely, and even preserved their continency many years after they were separated from their wives, in the oracle," Is what I have in my hand alive or not?" His design was to have killed the sparrow, if the oracle had answered "It is alive."

* Maimbourg, from New Letters against Maimbourg's Hist. of Calvinism, page 351.

order to be admitted to the priesthood." The suffrages being divided at Naples in the election of a bishop, this pope, without more ado, declared plainly that he could not approve John the deacon,* " "because he had been well informed he had a very little daughter. What presumption, added he, is this in him, to aspire to episcopacy, when he is manifestly convicted by this little child, of the small space of time he has preserved his continence?" He caused it to be inviolably observed, according to the canons, "that every ecclesiastic and beneficed man, whether sub-deacon, deacon, priest, abbot, or bishop, who should be guilty of impurity, if there were proofs of his crime, should be deposed, and put to penance in a monastery, and incapacitated to be ever restored to his order and dignity. Hearing that the abbot Secundinus, who was a very wicked man, had committed horrible crimes, he said, that without seeking proofs for a judicial conviction, it sufficed that he himself, perhaps boasting of what this sort of debauchees call good fortune, had confessed that he had sported with women, which had not hindered him from being an abbot; whereupon he caused him to be depased. He treated in the same manner the Bishop of Docleatina, a city of Illyricum, at present called Cataro; and he gave order to his metropolitan, "that, if this wicked man, who had been justly deposed for having stained his character by this infamous vice, durst ever pretend, or even intimate by a single word, that he had still some thoughts of being a bishop, he should be confined to a monastery to do penance all his lifetime, and be deprived of the communion till his death. What is very observable herein is, that the bishop of Tarentum not being accused, but only suspected, of keeping a concubine since he was a bishop, he advises him very seriously that, if he is conscious of

Maimbourg, ibld. page 353.

this crime, though it were in secret, and he denied it, and there were no convincing proof against him, yet he is obliged in conscience to depose himself, and to forbear all sacerdotal functions. This will seem the more strange, because this bishop having committed another crime, which in the eyes of the world seems to be much greater, he inflicted a much less punishment on him. The same angry prelate having been disobliged by one of the poor old women, that were kept at the expense of the church, caused her to be beaten at such a rate that she remained half dead. It is certain that if she had died a few days after she had been so cruelly beaten, he had been most severely punished, according to the rigour of the canons, as guilty of murder: however, because she died not till eight months after, St Gregory did not think that her death was to be ascribed to the blows she had received, and contented himself with suspending him for two months. But for the sin of incontinence, which, by the laws of human justice, should be punished less rigorously than that other action so unworthy of a bishop, he declared to him, that if he had committed it, though it could not be proved, it was absolutely necessary, for the satisfaction of his conscience, that he should leave his bishopric."*

Maimbourg does not leave this subject without saying, "that the rigour of the canons upon this point is not at present in use, and that a man is not obliged to follow St Gregory's opinion upon this case of conscience."

Gregory was also very severe with respect to caJumny. All that Maimbourg says upon this subject seems so good to me, that finding nothing useless in it, I shall not abridge it. He observes first, "that there is a very subtle oppression, and the more dangerous, because it is most difficult to be discovered, viz. calumny, which the wisest of men, and even those Maimbourg, ibid. page 355, et seq.

*

who glory in suffering joyfully the first, find so barbarous and intolerable, that they cannot hinder their constancy from being shaken, be their minds ever so strong." After which he goes on thus:-"I know that the civil and canon laws appoint punishments for this crime, so much complained of in the world; but they are not always well observed with respect to ecclesiastics, as St Gregory testifies, and especially in the communities, where calumny hardly meets with any rebuke, under pretence that the punishing of a false accusation would take away the liberty of bringing true ones, and discovering punishable faults to the superiors. Now this is what St Gregory could in no wise bear with, as appears by many of his letters. Hilary, sub-deacon of the church of Naples, having brought a false accusation against John, deacon of the same church, which could not be maintained against many witnesses, who attested the deacon's innocence, the holy pontiff was very much offended that Paschasius, their bishop, had not as yet punished the slanderer. Whereupon he gave order to the defender, Anthemius, to tell him from him, that he would have him first deprived of his office of subdeacon, of which he was unworthy: secondly, that he should be publicly whipped; for this sort of correction was in use at that time to chastise clerks, as may be seen in St Augustin, though this custom has been since abolished; and lastly, that having been thus chastised, he be sent into exile, that is, either into a monastery to do penance, or by the order of the magistrate, to whom alone it belonged to punish a criminal with banishment by the law of the state. As he manifested his abhorrence of calumny by punishing it so severely, so he kept strictly upon his guard, that he might not be overreached; and never believed any informer till, having examined the least circumstances of the accusation and exactly heard both sides, he could not in the least doubt of the truth of it. He

was moreover so much afraid of being deceived by the artifices of calumniators, that, when he could, he forbore giving his judgment about an accusation, referring himself to some other person, on whose sufficiency and probity he entirely depended."

"Gregory cannot be excused for prostituting his praises, to insinuate himself into the favour of a usurper. The emperor Maurice's army, having revolted against him at the instigation of Phocas, marched towards Constantinople, and took it without any difficulty. The emperor was delivered to Phocas, who by an unheard of cruelty, caused five little princes, Maurice's children, to be murdered in his presence, before their father's eyes, whom that unfortunate father could not save. The nurse of the youngest had cunningly withdrawn him from the massacre, and substituted her own in his place; but Maurice, who perceived it, caused his own child to be returned to the executioners. After this, the tyrant, more cruel than the wildest beasts, being no ways moved with so brave and generous an action, which melted all the assistants into tears, commanded this poor little innocent to be killed, and the bloody sacrifice to be perfected, by laying Maurice upon the bodies of his five children, as upon an altar, where he was inhumanly butchered. The eldest son of Maurice had been, a little before, sent to the king of Persia; but he was taken at Nicæa, and beheaded. The cruel Phocas put also to death almost all the relations and friends of the emperor Maurice, and even the empress Constantina and her three daughters, contrary to the promise he had made to the patriarch Cyriacus, that he would suffer them to live quietly in a monastery where they were. In fine, there never was so much innocent blood shed, nor so many miseries and misfortunes, as in his reign...... And, indeed, there never was a more infamous tyrant than this wretched man; without virtue, birth, honour, and merit, hor