PELAGIUS
603
PELAGIUS
the possessions and revenues of the Church which the
Gothic war, and the long absence of the popes from
Rome, had thrown into great confusion.
But Pelagius was not so successful in extinguishing in Italy the schism which the condemnation of the Three Chapters had excited in the West, as he was in winning the confidence of the Romans. The ■wacilla- tion of \'igiUus, and his submission to the will of Jus- tinian, the persecution to which he had been exposed, and the final adhesion of Pelagius himself to his pred- ecessor's decree confirming the Council of Constanti- nople, embittered the minds of many of the Westerns against the East. They were too angry at the emper- or's conduct to realize that with both VigiUus and Pe- lagius the whole question was rather one of pohcy and expediency than of religion. Pelagius did all in his power to convince the bishops of Northern Italy, where the schism had taken the deepest hold, that he accepted the first four General Councils as unreserv- edly as they did, and that the decrees of the recent Council of Constantinople were in no way in real op- position to those of Chalcedon. He pointed out clearly to them that the differences between the two Councils were only on the surface, and not real, and that even if it was not advisable, under the circum- stances, to condemn the writings of Theodoret, Theo- dore, and Ibas, still, as they were de facto heretical, there could be no harm in officially declaring that they were such. But the feelings of many had been so aroused that it was impossible to get them to Usten to reason. The pope grew impatient, especially when Paulinus, Bishop of Acjuileia, had in synod renounced communion with Rome, and excommunicated the great genera! Narses, the hope of Italy. In several letters he exliorted the "patrician" to use his military power to suppress the schism, and to seize Paulinus. Narses, however, probably on account of the political difficulties with which he was beset, did not move, and it was not till the seventh century that the schism caused in Italy by the condemnation of the Three Chapters was finally healed.
Pelagius, however, in the matter of the Council of Constantinople was more successful in Gaul than in Italy. In reply to a request from the Prankish King Childebert, he sent him a profession of faith, in which he proclaimed his entire agreement with the doctrines of Leo I, and trusted that no untruths about himself might cause a schism in Gaul. Further, in response to a request from the same king, and from Sapaudus, Bishop of Aries, he granted the latter the pallium, and constituted him his vicar over all the churches of Gaul, as his predecessors had been in the habit of BO honouring the See of Aries. By these means he prevented any schism from arising in Gaul.
Making use of the "Pragmatic Sanction", which Justinian issued in August, 554, to regulate the affairs of Italy, thrown into hopeless disorder by the Gothic war, Pelagius was able to remedy many of the evils which it had caused. Fragments of a number of his letters, which were brought to light by E. Bishop com- paratively recently, give us an insight into his extraor- dinary activity in this direction. They reveal him organizing ecclesiastical tribunals, suppressing abuses among clerics, to which the disorders of the times had given rise, putting the patrimonies of the Church on a new footing, and meanwhile gathering money and clothes for the poor from Gaul and from "distant islands and countries". Before he died his regulations for the management of the ecclesiastical estates had begun to bear fruit, and we read of revenues beginning to come in to him from various quarters. This "Fa- ther of the poor and of his country" was buried in St. Peter's the day after his death, in front of the sacristy.
Liber Ponlificalis. ed. Duchesne. I (Pari.i, 188fi). Vil. Vigilii el Pelagii: Libebatos. BrenaHum, c. xxii etc. in P. /,., LXVIIl; VirTOB Tlinnensis, Chronicon, ibid.: Pbocopius. De hello Gothico, ed. DiNDOBF (Bonn, 1833): or in Latin. Mdbatori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptorea, 1, pt. I ; Facundus. De defens. trium
capit. in P. L., LXVII; the letters of Pelagics in P. Z... LXIX;
Man. Uerm. Hist.: Epistola, III (Berlin, 1892); jAPrf, Regesta, I
(2nd ed., Leipzig, 1888). Modern works: especially Diehl,
Jualinien (Paris, 1901). 340 etc.; Grisab, Hist, de Rome et dea
Papes (Paris. 190tj), I. pt. II. passim; HooGKlN. Italy and her
Invaders, IV, V (London, 1895). An account of E. Bishop's dis-
covery will be found in Mann, Lives of the Popes in the early
Middle Ages, III, 233.
Horace K. Mann.
Pelagius II, date of whose birth is unknown, seem- inf;ly a native of Rome, but of Gothic descent, as his father'.s name was Winigild, d. in Rome, 7 Feb., 590. He succeeded Benedict I, when the Lombards were besieging Rome, but his consecration was delayed in the hope of securing the confirmation of the election by the emperor. But the blockade of Rome by the Lombards, and their control of the great thorough- fares was effective and, after four months, he was consecrated (26 Nov., 579). The most important acts of Pelagius have relation to the Lombards, or to the Istrian schism of the Three Chapters (q. v.). Moved, it would seem, by the words of the new pope, and probably still more by his money and that of the emperor, the Lombards at length drew off from the neighbourhood of Rome. Thereupon, Pelagius at once sent an embassy (in which the deacon Gregory was apparently included) to Constantinople to ex- plain the circumstances of his election, and to ask that succour should be sent to save Rome from the barbarians. But not very much in the way of help for Italy was forthcoming at this period from the ex- hausted Eastern Roman Empire. Emperor Maurice, it is true, sent somewhat later (c. 584) a new official to Italy with the title of exarch, and with combined civil and military authority over the whole peninsula. But, when he came to Ravenna, this new functionary brought with him only an insufficient military force, and meanwhile both emperor and pope had turned to the Franks.
Towards the beginning of his pontificate (Oct., 580 or 581) Pelagius wrote to Aunacharius (or Aunarius), Bishop of Auxerre, a man of great influence with the different Frankish kings, and begged him to give a practical proof of the zeal he had professed for the Roman Church, by urging them to come to the assist- ance of Rome. "We believe", he wrote, "that it has been brought about by a special dispensation of Divine Providence, that the Frankish Princes should profess the orthodox faith; like the Roman Emperors, in order that they may help this city, whence it took its rise. . . . Persuade them with all earnestness to keep from any friendship and alliance with our most unspeakable enemies, the Lombards." At length either the prayers of Pelagius, or the political arts of the emperor, in- duced the Franks to attack the Lombards in Italy. But their zeal for the papal or imperial cause was soon exhausted, and they allowed themselves to be bribed to retire from the peninsula. The distress of the Italians deepened. Pelagius had already sent to Constanti- nople the ablest of his clergy, the deacon Gregory, afterwards Gregory I, the Great. As the pope's apoc- risiary, or nuncio, the deacon had been commissioned to haunt the imperial palace day and night, nSver to be absent from it for an hour, and to strain every nerve to induce the emperor to send help to Rome. To him Pelagius now dispatched letter after letter urging him to increased exertion. He also implored the new Exarch of Ravenna, Decius (584), to succour Rome, but was told that he was unable to protect the exarchate, still less Rome.
Failing to get help from Ravenna he sent a fresh embassy to Constantinople and exhorted Gregory to act along with it in endeavouring to obtain the desired help. "Here", he wrote, "we are in such straits that unless God move the heart of the emperor to have pity on us, and send us a Master of the soldiery {magister militum) and a duke, we shall be en- tirely at the mercy of our enemies, as most of the dis-
