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An Uncertain Future: the Beginning of Papal Sovereignty, 476-510 ______

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AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE: THE BEGINNING OF PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY, 476-510 ____________________________________ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Fullerton ____________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in History ____________________________________ By Andrew Braun Thesis Committee Approval: Professor Maged Mikhail, Chair Professor Jonathan Markley, Department of History Professor James O’Connor, Department of History Fall, 2015 ABSTRACT The period between 472 A.D. and 510 A.D. was one of institutional uncertainty for the Catholic Church. The Western Roman Emperor was deposed and the position left vacant. The governing of Italy fell on Germanic warlords, both subordinate to and independent of the Emperor in Constantinople whose attentions were focused on political intrigue and wars, both civil and foreign. A schism in the Church further reduced his influence. This left a void of leadership for the people of Rome. The remaining Emperor was now far away, and the secular leadership of Italy in the hands of foreigners and not members of the Catholic Church. The bishops of Rome began to fill that void, though not without controversy and resistance. He was able to use his moral authority, and his important political position to form the beginnings of independent political authority. The temporal reality of this independence would vanish with the end of the Acacian Schism and the conquest of Rome by Emperor Justinian in 536AD. Only the rhetorical innovations, pushing for temporal authority remained, to be used in the ensuing centuries with the formation of the Papal States. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................. iv MANUSCRIPT TO BE SUBMITTED ......................................................................... 1 Background and Historiography ........................................................................... 1 Pope Gelasius ........................................................................................................ 14 The Laurentian Schism ......................................................................................... 20 REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 29 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank David and Cheryl Braun for their unending support and faith without which this project would never have been completed. Michael Tang and Ricky Qi spent countless hours as sounding boards for my ideas and frustrations. Finally I would like to thank Dr. Jonathan Markley for the advice that actually got this paper started and Dr. Maged Mikhail for the continual advice and support, even with my many disappearing acts. iv 1 Background and Historiography The mid-fifth century was a time of chaos in the Western Roman Empire. The last emperor was deposed in 476AD and much of Italy fell under Ostrogoth rule first Odoacer then Theodoric. The Ostrogoths, however, only controlled Italy. Other Germanic tribes, like the Visigoths, controlled other portions of the former Western Empire. This political fragmentation posed a problem for papal and Christian ideology. Since the days of Eusebius and Constantine, Christian political ideology had viewed the Empire and the Christian realm as an indivisible whole, with the Emperor as the leader of a Christian Roman Empire. Without an emperor, there was a hole at the top of this hierarchical chain that needed to be filled. The emperor in the east was too distant and the Ostrogoths were Arians and so unfit to act as a unifying force in a catholic Empire. The standard understanding of this portion of Papal history is that only a rhetorical papal supremacy was offered, along with the understanding that this supremacy only involved religious affairs.1 This is an oversimplification of the religious and political dynamics of papal ideology. Odoacer and Theodoric, outside of actual force, could not impose duties on the Pope since they were Arians, and the Popes did not recognize in them any authority to effect church decisions. The Emperor in Constantinople was too far away, and much of the later fifth century, sympathetic to 1 Jeffrey Richards, The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages, 476-752, (London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 20; Patrick Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489- 554, (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 197; George Demacopoulos, The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity, (Philidelphia: University of Philidelphia Press, 2013), 74. 2 schismatic ideas that the Popes had resoundingly rejected.2 This power vacuum made the Popes the de facto rulers of the city of Rome. It was during this brief period, from 483- 520, that not only were the ideological origins for the future Papal monarchy given their most aggressive form, but also the first real attempt at creating a physical place, under the rule of the Pope, that was as much as possible, free from outside influence. The Popes of this time would be able to combine the legal and social power they already possessed as judges whose decisions had state sanction and their support of the poor with their new freedom of political movement to create an unwitting, half-realized papal polity that would not come into its full potential for another 250 years. The historiography on this subject is complicated and varied, with scholars analyzing the time period from Byzantine, Germanic or Catholic perspectives. Walter Ullman maintained a strong view of ideological papal power. The church had precedence in matters of religion, but Christianity encompassed all of man's actions, and could not be divided into separate spheres.3 If realized, this position would reduce the secular power to tax collection and military enforcement of the Churches’ will.4 Many historians focus on whether there was a substantial break between the Papacy and the Eastern Empire at this time. Patrick Amory and Jeffrey Richards take the position that most Romans at the time saw no break with Byzantium, with Richards going so far as to call the idea that the 2 Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489-554, 199; the harsh tone of Pope Anastasius’ biography in the Liber Pontificalis was primarily based on the rumor that he was going to sign Zeno’s Henotikon and end the Acacian Schism. Thomas F.X. Noble, “Theodoric and the Papacy,” Teoderico il Grande e I Goti d'Italia: atti del XIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull'alto. (1992): 403. 3 Walter Ullman, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages: A Study in the Ideological Relation of Clerical to Lay Power (London: 1955), 11. 4 This teleological view of papal history was common among historians of the 19th and early 20th centuries as they could look forward to the apogee of papal power in the high Middle Ages under Innocent III and trace the ideological support for a powerful papacy to late antiquity. 3 Papacy was seeking to free itself from eastern control as “mythological”.5 Others find in Byzantine policy something akin to salutary neglect of the papacy. W.H.C. Frend and F.K. Haarer argued that Emperor Anastasius I focused most of his attention on the Eastern borders of the Empire, with the Papacy low on his list of priorities.6 A.H.M. Jones takes this neglect to an extreme by arguing that Italy was no longer part of the Empire.7 These perspectives cause a different interpretation of papal power. Those who focus on the Catholic Church view the strength (or weakness) of its authority as a result of its own agency. Those who view the period from Byzantine or Germanic perspectives see the popes as more passive or reactionary figures. The most important split between the Byzantine Empire and the Western Church during the late fifth and early sixth century was the Acacian Schism which lasted from 484-519. In 482 Acacius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, in an attempt to heal the division caused by competing views on the nature of Christ, wrote the Henotikon, whereupon Emperor Zeno attempted to cajole the Church patriarchs into affirming the 8 document. This represented secular interference in ecclesiastical concerns which 5 Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489-554, 197; Richards, The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages, 476-752, 17. Richards also sees the papacy as the bulwark of the empire, seeking above all else to maintain the status-quo against a rising Monophysite faction in the east. 6 W.H.C. Frend, Rise of the Monophysite Movement, (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 191-92; F.K. Haarer, Anastasius I: Politics and Empire in the Late Roman World, (Cambridge: Francis Cairns, 2006), 130. 7 A.H.M. Jones, “Constitutional Position of Odoacer and Theodoric,” in Journal of Roman Studies 52, no. 1 & 2 (1962): 128. 8 Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History, III.14 contains a translation of the Henotikon. Frend’s Rise of the Monophysite Movement remains an important source for the Henotikon in its Christological context, while Richard’s The Popes and the Papacy gives a good summary of the Western Catholic Church’s reaction to the document. 4 “weakened the compromise on the respective responsibilities of emperors and bishops,”9 Pope Felix III sent two bishops with a letter to the
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