The Popes and the Emperors

As is not entirely unprecedented, I recently came across an historical fact about monarchy that is, evidently, somewhat controversial and I had no idea that it would be. This came up in response to my listing of a few facts about the history of Christianity and the Roman emperors, some of which I have talked about here before as a way of illustrating how central the imperial power was to the early Church. I was surprised, however, to receive some “push back” on the last fact I listed which was that for the first roughly six hundred years of Church history, every pope was the subject of the Roman emperors. I was told that I was “dreaming” this up but, rest assured, I am not. Evidently, this is something that needs to be talked about as, upon reflection, I think I might have an idea of where denial of this fact comes from, specifically for Catholics.

In the first place, you can check pretty much any historical source and find that the basic fact is just that; a fact. Starting with St Peter, every Bishop of Rome up to Pope Stephen II in 756 was, officially, a subject of the (later East) Roman Emperor. St Peter and the earliest bishops of Rome were all direct or indirect subjects of the Roman emperors. This was true whether they liked it or not but the fact of the matter is that they never made any objections to this. They were bound by Roman law and obeyed it so long as it did not force them to do anything contrary to Christian doctrine. They were loyal to the Roman emperors and never taught Christian people to be rebellious or called for a revolution to overthrow the Roman emperors. They did, as was written in the Bible, call for everyone to love their community, be good Romans, “fear God and honor the emperor”.

During the reign of Emperor Claudius, as had happened before and would happen again, the Jews were expelled from Rome and mention is made of this in the book of Acts concerning St Paul. Originally, the Romans considered Christians to be a sect of Judaism and St Paul, who was ethnically a Jew and a Roman citizen, became frustrated in trying to convert them and decided to accept their rejection and direct his efforts towards the Greeks and Romans. Later, in the reign of Emperor Nerva, we can see more evidence that the Christians submitted to imperial authority by the fact that they petitioned the emperor to stop forcing them to pay the tax that Jews had to pay as they were a different religion. At that time, the state still did not recognize Christianity as a valid religion but Emperor Nerva did order that Christians not be forced to pay the tax since they were not Jews. Official recognition of the Christian religion would not come until the issuing of the Edict of Milan by Emperor Constantine the Great. Later, Emperor Theodosius the Great would make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

However, even during the reign of Emperor Constantine the Great, the emperor played an important part in Church life and it is hard to imagine this would have been the case if the Bishop of Rome rejected his authority as emperor. One could also look to the Emperor Gratian who handed his title of ‘Supreme Pontiff’ over to the pope which, again, he hardly would have done if the pope was objecting to his authority. In fact, it would make no sense for the pope to accept such a title unless he first recognized that the emperor lawfully possessed it and thus could hand it over to him. Indeed, in the early days of the Church, before rules had been standardized for such a process, the Roman emperors played a part in the selection of popes. Much of the history in this period is sparse and often debated but some argue that Pope Julius I was, for all intents and purposes, appointed by Emperor Constantine the Great. It is more widely conceded that the imperial power played at least some part in the selection of subsequent popes and in efforts to resolve disputes over who the pope should be.

The underlying point though is that the bishops of Rome were by virtue of being born in the Roman Empire or, later, baptized as Christians, subjects from birth of the Roman emperors and that did not change with their election or selection for the papal throne. When the last remnants of the Western Roman Empire fell with the forced abdication of Romulus Augustulus, this did not legally change. With no emperor in the west, quite understandably, the Eastern Roman Emperor assumed sole authority for the whole Roman world and still regarded the popes as his subjects in the temporal sphere and as shepherds in the spiritual sphere (though the East Roman Emperor never recognized Romulus so that the exiled Julius Nepos was regarded in the east as the “last” West Roman Emperor until his death). This culminated in an era which I have previously heard plenty of Catholics complain about but never deny which was the so-called “Byzantine Papacy”.

This term has been used to describe the period dating from the time that the East Roman Emperor Justinian set out to take back the territory of the Western Roman Empire from the various Germanic tribes which had conquered it. Emperor Justinian, during this time, basically came to Rome, fired Pope Silverius and appointed Vigilius to take his place. As you can imagine, this caused some controversy but, while many have little positive things to say about him, Pope Vigilius is regarded as a valid pope, included on every list of the bishops of Rome. Subsequent papal elections were confirmed by the Byzantine emperors which, I can imagine, some may find an intolerable idea but this is probably due simply to ill-will generated by the eventual east-west schism since this idea never really went away. After all, in the Roman Catholic west, ultimately a number of monarchs held the power to veto papal candidates they found objectionable, meaning that whoever was chosen must have been passively approved of (otherwise his election would have been vetoed). In fact, this imperial veto was used for the last time in the conclave of 1903 when the first choice, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, was vetoed by Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph, resulting in the election of Pope St Pius X.

The so-called “Byzantine Papacy” did not end until the reign of Pope Stephen II in 756. Prior to that time, the gains of Emperor Justinian had been rolled back and what was referred to as the Duchy of Rome (legally part of the [eastern] Roman Empire) was under threat from the Lombards of northern Italy. Constantinople was unable to help and the Pope turned to the King of the Franks, Pepin, son of the famous Charles Martel, to come to his rescue. He did so, the Lombards were defeated and in the subsequent peace treaty, only the “Romans, Franks and Lombards” were signatories, the Byzantines being left out completely. After the Lombards broke the treaty, attacked again and were defeated again, the King of the Franks ceded territory he had conquered from the Lombards to Stephen II which subsequently became the Papal States. Legally speaking, and this is why I warn Catholics about always trying to play the “legitimist” game, all of this territory was still part of the empire, having been basically stolen from the Byzantine emperors as the last Roman emperors still standing.

Their power, however, was gone and would not be coming back. From that time on, the popes would look to the west rather than to the east. However, that they had previously been imperial subjects cannot be argued against. Into the reign of Pope Stephen II, if not slightly longer, records were still dated by imperial years and imperial coins were still minted and dated according to the East Roman Empire. The ultimate change, of course, came when Pope St Leo III crowned another Frankish monarch, Charlemagne, “Emperor of the Romans” on Christmas day in the year 800. Again, if one chooses to play the strictly “legitimist” game, this was out of order as it had never been up to the Bishop of Rome to decide who the Roman emperor should be. This is, however, all I have been able to come up with in determining the root reason of why anyone would deny that the popes prior to this time had all been subjects of the Roman emperors in spite of the obvious history. I shall relate my theory and you may comment below as to whether you think it holds any water.

In the east, Church and State were firmly united. In the west, they were united as well but also fairly consistently at odds with each other and I think the perception of this has grown worse in modern times. The idea developed in the west of the “two swords” approach with the emperor (this being the German emperor) having the secular sword and the pope having the spiritual sword. However, the popes maintained that their sword was bigger than the emperor’s sword and that they could take away his sword if they wanted to because they had given it to him in the first place. I think this is magnified in our time because, basically, *everything* is or can be argued from moral grounds so that any issue can be considered a moral issue and thus falling under papal jurisdiction. All I have been able to come up with, to put it another way, is that there is a revulsion by some Catholics to the idea that the Bishop of Rome could ever, even in temporal terms only, be “subject” to a higher power, again, even if that power is only higher in terms of worldly power and nothing at all to do with spiritual power.

The Church was born into the preexisting Roman Empire. As such, the Roman emperors came and went and the earliest Christians and Christian bishops, had nothing to say about the matter. When the Pope crowned Charlemagne, this created a new western empire, which eventually became the German empire (First Reich) under the magnificent Kaiser Otto the Great, and a sort of “new world order” of which I am rather fond. However, it also led to a succession of troubles, most famous being the “Investiture Dispute” as the popes and the German emperors quarreled over where their powers began and ended. This is because this new imperial system had been handed down by the pope and what the pope gave, naturally, the pope felt he could take away. This is something no pope could or ever tried to do with the east because the eastern imperial succession predated his own, going all the way back to the first Augustus who was the Augustus before Christ was born. The Byzantine (East Roman) emperors had to be converted, confronted or submitted to, they could not simply be dismissed or overruled by the popes.

I think, at least this has so far been all I can come up with, the underlying reason for any denial that the popes were ever subjects of the Roman emperors which, like it or not, is an objective fact. It seems to me that some have become too attached to the idea of the popes being temporal sovereigns as they were in the era of the Papal States and since the recognition of the State of Vatican City because this has been so heavily emphasized as being absolutely essential to the independent function of the papacy as an institution, that it would be impossible for Catholicism to function without the popes being a power unto themselves. Personally, I do not think this view an incontestable one. Certainly it did not prevent any and all secular influence and I cannot be the only one who was outraged at the number of clerics implicated in child sex abuse crimes who escaped justice by being transferred to the Vatican establishment and thus beyond the reach of any secular government. However, the fact is that the papacy did exist for quite a few centuries without any secular power of their own, as subjects of the Roman emperors and it did not mean that they were simply the tools of Rome or Constantinople. What it did mean was that they had only their personal piety and courage to rely on. Those who were persecuted, exiled or martyred, I think, shows that such devotion was not unknown just as, I think, the amount of secular praise heaped on the current pontiff shows that independent sovereignty does not prevent a pope from giving in to popular trends or influence from beyond the Vatican walls.

For Further Reading:
Centrality of the Roman Empire
Church and Empire
Christian Empire
The Tiburtine Sybil & Imperial Prophecy
Christ and the Emperor Tiberius
The Story of the Byzantine Empire

Lessons from the Western Imperial Past

Once again the city of New York has been the victim of another attack by an Islamic terrorist, an immigrant from Uzbekistan running down people in a rented truck, a tactic seen before in Europe several times. As usual, the Democrats have responded to this in the exact opposite way they respond to events like the mass shootings in Las Vegas or Charleston, after which they quickly blamed the right and called for national reflection and change whether it be banning guns or flags. No, in the case of a mass killing by a Muslim immigrant the Democrats say change absolutely nothing, do not think too much about it, this is no time to be political, keep calm and carry on. The neoconservatives, on the other hand, also respond the way they always do, calling for more surveillance (of everyone) and more military intervention overseas as if dropping more bombs on Syria or sending more special forces to central Africa will prevent someone from Uzbekistan from coming to America and running people down in his car. We have now moved beyond being predictable with the response to these events to the point of just being damn monotonous.

As I have probably said before, I think both Democrat and Republican establishments are wrong on this one. No amount of U.S. soldiers in Iraq would have stopped this terrorist from doing what he did and no amount of surveillance will do the trick either. The American public is already living under greater surveillance than any time in history and attacks such as these still go on, partly because the NSA, so as not to show any hint of prejudice, is spying on Marge in South Dakota as well as the Muslim man from Uzbekistan with the ISIS flag in his truck. The Democrats are wrong because, yes, this does have something to do with Islam and, obviously, if the man from Uzbekistan had not been allowed into the country, he would not have been able to kill anyone here. That is so simple and self-evident that the strenuous efforts by our elites to deny it never ceases to amaze me. Islamic terrorists are a radical fringe (albeit a sizable one) and they have no air force or navy so the only way they can kill *any* Americans is if the Americans come to them or allow them to come to America. That is a blatant, obvious, unalterable fact.

We also have here a lesson in what our leaders like to call the “strength of diversity”. This man, obviously, did not identify as an American, despite being granted permanent residency in this country thanks to a “diversity visa” (an absurd program approved by both Democrats and Republicans). He came to America, lived in America for years, no doubt had a vastly better life than he had had in Uzbekistan, yet he felt he had more in common as a Central Asian Muslim with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria than he had with the American people who surrounded him. This is not new and when it comes to learning from history, if you do not wish to take the trouble of learning the entire history of the world, learning the history of the Roman Empire will generally suffice. Be it brilliant or idiotic, glorious or horrific, honorable or vicious, the Romans did it first and did it to a greater extreme. The Roman Empire, originating in Italy, was mostly an Italian thing for most of its history. The imperium covered many lands and non-Italians could become Roman citizens but it was by and large the Italians who were in charge. They were confident that they could make other people into Romans and in places such as Gaul (France) or Britain, there was reason to think they could.

However, over time, the Romans began to suffer from decay in their integrity, ambition and self-confidence. They stopped priding themselves on their large families and the legacy of their ancestors and devoted themselves to pleasure. Who then would defend the empire? No problem, they simply hired barbarians to fill out the Roman legions and these “good” barbarians would hold the frontier against the “bad” barbarians across the river. Were they not basically all Romans anyway? No, they were not and the barbarians hired by the Romans did not suddenly stop feeling any kinship to those other barbarians across the river. The Romans had many ingenious and valuable things, the Roman Empire was a desirable place to live but the Romans themselves were decadent, corrupt and generally viewed with contempt by the barbarians and many Romans themselves for that matter, which of course is part of the reason why so few thought their civilization was worth defending. Then, when the barbarians struck, the Romans decided it would be better to accommodate them instead of confronting them.

In 378AD the Roman frontier was permanently breached for the first time when the Goths defeated a Roman army at the Battle of Adrianople, killing Emperor Valens of the East Roman Empire in the process. The result was a peace agreement that allowed the Goths to settle within the borders of the Roman Empire. However, that was to prove not a permanent solution. Then, in 406AD the Rhine River froze over and a flood of barbarians charged across looking for relief in more southerly climates. The Vandals and Visigoths were at the forefront and, again, the Romans would often start by trying to avoid trouble and grant the barbarians lands to settle on within the empire only for trouble to break out later and end with the barbarians going on the rampage. The Visigoths came to dominate much of France and Spain while the Vandals moved all the way down into north Africa. The Goths even sacked the city of Rome itself in 410AD but things settled down and the Romans still managed to convince themselves that things were not so bad and that these barbarians were not all that different from them.

The barbarians were, indeed, quite familiar with Roman ways and often tried to imitate them after having spent so many years living just outside or just inside the borders of the empire. Most had even taken up the Roman religion of Christianity, albeit generally in one of the heretical forms that were quite common at the time. However, history would show that only the Romans could be Romans and while the barbarians actually often had much to recommend them and could often be more admirable characters than the decadent Romans, the society they would build would not be the same as that which the Romans had built. Still, perhaps it would not be so bad? Actually, it would and it would because of another barbarian force that was nothing like the northern Europeans the Romans had experienced so far. It was never simply the weather that was pushing the Goths, Vandals and others up to and across the Roman frontier. Rather, it was another, particularly fierce barbarian invasion force which was not European or western at all and certainly not Christian. These were the Huns who appeared from far distant lands in Asia and swept across Europe driving all before them.

Pushed out of the Far East by the Emperor of China, the Huns found the Roman Emperors to be easier pickings. In the Eastern Empire, Emperor Theodosius II paid them off to keep the peace while he built new and bigger walls around Constantinople. When Roman forces were sent to Sicily in an aborted effort to deal with the Vandals taking over there, the Huns saw their opportunity and seized control of extensive territory in the Balkans before turning west under their formidable leader Attila. They seemed to be invincible and, indeed, were only stopped, not destroyed but stopped at least, at the pivotal Battle of the Catalaunian Plains by a Roman-Gothic coalition led by General Flavius Aetius and King Theodoric I. After that, they invaded Italy and met practically no opposition until finally turning back after a meeting with Pope Leo I. It was only with the death of Attila not long after that the Hunnish empire broke up on its own.

Petronius Maximus

That was 452 and only a few years later in 455 the Vandals were at the gates of Rome, again, partly due to clumsy efforts to gain their favor. Emperor Valentinian III, who had reigned during the Hunnish crisis, was assassinated and his place taken by Emperor Petronius Maximus. He married Valentinian’s wife, newly single again, and broke off the proposed marriage between her daughter and the son of King Geiseric of the Vandals. This all the pretext Geiseric needed to put his army onto ships and set sail for Italy. The Romans had no army to speak of and efforts by Emperor Petronius to enlist the Goths on his side failed, added to which he was never recognized as legitimate by the Eastern Roman Emperor in the first place so that no help could be expected from that quarter. When the Vandals arrived, Petronius Maximus decided not to even try to defend the city but simply to escape and save his own life. He was unsuccessful, his own guards abandoned him and he was stoned to death by an angry mob. This left only Pope Leo as a figure of any great authority in Rome and he did persuade the Vandals not to be quite so destructive as was normal, though they still sacked the city for two weeks the damage was mostly confined to looting rather than mass murder and burning down everything.

Petronius was succeeded by Emperor Avitus who embodied many of the problems the Roman Empire still faced. He was a Gallic Roman rather than an Italian and was not well received by the public. Emperor Avitus counted on his friendship with King Theodoric II of the Visigoths as the foundation of his reign but, surprise, surprise, the Visigoths were more interested in securing their own domination of Spain than in doing any favors for Avitus in Rome. And, just as Theodoric II chose his tribe over his friendship with Avitus, so too did the Romans choose to rid themselves of their Gallic master and his Gallic officials. Avitus was forced from power and fled to Gaul (France), replaced by Emperor Majorian who mounted a famous, last-minute, effort to restore the Western Roman Empire. He defeated the Vandals who were bedeviling Italy, smashed the Goths in Spain and the Germans in Burgundy. The old, glory days of Rome seemed to be back again as Emperor Majorian put things in order and went back on the offensive and was victorious. However, the Romans proved to be their own worst enemy.

Emperor Majorian

The same class of Roman elites who had turned on Petronius for leaving them defenseless against the Vandals and who grumbled at Avitus and his Gothic alliance, turned against Emperor Majorian who had defeated both of these enemies because his reforms cut into their life of idle luxury. He was also betrayed by Ricimer, a German, who had helped Majorian in the overthrow of Avitus. By this point, most of the Roman army was not Roman at all in the west and the leadership became a succession of Roman figureheads dominated by their barbarian military commander until, with the fall of Romulus Augustulus, all appearances were dropped and the Western Roman Empire came to an end.

I shall not point out every similarity between the declining years of the Roman Empire and today because they should be obvious and, as such, many others have pointed them out before. That is because it is so striking. I will say though, in defense of even the latter Western Roman Empire, that they were still more rational than our own political leadership in Western Europe and America today. They at least deluded themselves on being able to master a worsening situation by military and political means, playing off one faction against another. Our own elites seem to be in total denial of the actual problem or trusting in slogans like they were magic words to, somehow, solve our problems. The Romans thought their weaknesses could be managed, which they could not, but even they were not so delusional as to believe their weaknesses were strengths.

Church and Empire

Today, liberals love to talk about the “separation of church and state” as being something great, something which ended religious wars in the western world and which they take sole credit for. The more atheistic liberals think this is good because it prevents the state being dominated by organized religion and the religious liberals like it because it prevents the churches from being dominated by the government. In this regard, the religious liberals have a powerful arsenal to defend their case by pointing to the state churches of northern Europe which preach a pale, so watered down as to barely qualify as Christian form of Christianity and which practically no one attends as opposed to the United States where, while still rapidly declining, church attendance is comparatively robust. However, the problem with both arguments, though the atheistic liberals in particular, is that no separation of church and state really exists in the western world, even in America. To go even further, such a thing has rarely existed even from the beginnings of Christianity.

In virtually every major religion, church and state have almost always been very closely linked if not, in some cases, one and the same. This is true in Confucianism, Shinto in Japan, Buddhism in places from Mongolia and Tibet to Thailand and of course it is also true in Islam. Traditionally, it was true of Judaism, in a way even more so than in Islam as it was a religion, a way of life and a people. For Christianity the proponents of the separation of church and state usually point to Christ’s command to, “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” as some sort of “proof” that Christianity uniquely requires a separation of church and state. Of course, that is both silly and nonsensical as religion tends to be about setting standards for what is right and wrong, what is good and evil and obviously no one is going to be okay with thinking that the way they do things is good but that the way the government does things is evil. In historical terms, Christianity did not remain separate from the state in the slightest for very long at all.

Emperor Constantine the Great

Christianity first became a legal religion, recognized and tolerated by the state, when Emperor Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan in 318AD. One only had to wait until 380AD for Christianity to become the official state religion of the Roman Empire by the order of Emperor Theodosius I. Yet, even before that happened and to be a Roman was to be a Christian, church and state were not kept separate at all. Emperor Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, saw Church “interference” in the state with the Emperor changing Roman laws to reflect Christian morality such as by abolishing death by crucifixion, ending gladiatorial games and making Sunday a day of rest. Likewise, the Emperor also intervened in religious matters, most significantly by calling the First Council of Nicaea which famously produced the Nicene Creed which provided a simple definition of what Christianity was and what all Christians were expected to believe. It is also important to remember that all of this was done well before Emperor Constantine had actually been baptized as a Christian himself (something he waited to do until he was on his deathbed).

It is evidence of how far modern Christianity has drifted from its original, traditional, roots that all of this is mostly unknown to modern Christians but the Roman emperor was seen as an extremely significant, even essential, figure for the Christian religion. The early Christians and Medieval Christians certainly understood this which is proven by the long tradition, today almost completely unknown, of prophecies, visions and other miraculous events concerning the Roman emperors. Regular readers will know as I have talked about these before such as the Emperor Augustus being revealed a vision of the birth of Christ, the Emperor Tiberius being moved to forbid any persecution of the Christians or the Emperor Marcus Aurelius putting a halt to such persecutions after witnessing a miracle in battle called down by Christians within his army. There was even a legend in the Middle Ages that Pope St Gregory the Great had momentarily resurrected Emperor Trajan in order to baptize him and spare this model ruler from the torments of Hell.

Emperor Basil I

As I have said before, whether one believes these stories or not is irrelevant to the central point. If you do believe them, obviously the Roman emperors had a spiritual significance for Christians from the very beginning, of both the Roman Empire and the Christian religion. However, even if you do not believe them and think they were invented later, that they were invented still shows just how significant the Christians of the early Church and Middle Ages considered the imperial line to be. The emperors were not seen as purely secular figures with no connection to religious matters. It is worth remembering that, after the Council of Jerusalem, the first seven Ecumenical Councils of the Church were called not by the Pope or some eminent Patriarch but by the Roman Emperor, indeed, all seven were called by the Eastern Roman Emperor. Likewise, the eighth Ecumenical Council was called by Emperor Basil I as well as the Pope, the ninth (Lateran I), called by the Pope after the “Investiture Dispute”, dealt with the imperial role in appointing bishops so that, even when church-state relations had been bad, there was still no getting around the fact that the emperors were major figures in the Christian religion. Lateran I was also attended by the King of France whose position, likewise, was inseparable from the faith of his country.

The fact that the Investiture Dispute happened in the first place is evidence of the fact that church and state were not separate and that no one could imagine them fully being so. This occurred during the imperial reign of the Salian Dynasty but was to come up again, in a way, during the subsequent reign of the Hohenstaufen Dynasty. Emperor Frederick I (Frederick Barbarossa), feeling himself affronted by Pope Alexander III, earned the eternal wrath of the Catholic Church by taking the side of Anti-Pope Victor IV against him. However, he had initially tried to remain neutral, advised the bishops in his lands to do the same and refused to recognize either papal claimant, calling for a council to be summoned to decide the matter. When Alexander III refused on the grounds that the pope cannot be subject to the decisions of a council (and being rather unpopular likely fearful of the outcome), it was only then that Emperor Frederick gave his support to Victor IV. He did this because of the long history, again, going back to Constantine, of the Emperor being so significant a figure in the Church. In his view, if the Church could not sort out its own problems, the Emperor must step in to decide the issue.

The coronation of Charlemagne

This was the root of the problem, however, as the popes did not wish to be subject to a council or any other authority, nor did the emperors wish to agree to the idea that they owed their crown to the pope who could then take it from them if the pope so wished. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, such disputes, were effectively political and not of a religious nature really. In the earlier times when councils were called by the Roman Emperor, and when even the popes were regarded by the eastern emperors as being one of their subjects in secular terms, these councils dealt with heresies or other questions of a religious nature. For the Roman Pontiffs and the German monarchs of the “Holy Roman Empire”, on the other hand, politics was usually at the root of the issue. That being said, any political dispute could always be cast in a religious light even if for no other reason than that it came down to a question of authority and as the pope could always cite that the law of God was above the law of man and that he was the sole arbiter of the law of God, his ruling on any matter at all had to prevail and so he made any issue a religious issue simply by being involved in it.

Although doctrinal disputes certainly exist, it is also true that a major foundational reason for the very existence of two distinct versions of the Christian religion, one eastern and one western, is due to the fact that the Western Roman Emperor was eliminated and only the Pope remained whereas, in the east, the Emperor carried on being the one expected to maintain discipline in the Church, summon councils and so on as had been the case before. When a new version of the empire was revived in the west, with the coronation of Charlemagne, it was initiated by the pope and later disputes arose because what the pope had given, the pope felt entitled to take away, in addition to the fact that he had gained land, subjects and political power and was thus a political player for the first time. The popes, though they tried, could never have the same sort of disputes with the eastern emperors given that their reign extended back to the original Roman Empire, predated the papacy and was not therefore in the gift of the pope to give or to take away. What neither ever did was to presume you could have one or the other and still have traditional Christianity as it had been handed down to them.

Emperor Justinian

Even when Pope Gelasius I (492-6) first tried to define the limits of the two powers, “which govern the world: the sacred authority of the bishops and the imperial power” it was at a time when the western half of the Church was displeased with the eastern half and while this was later used in the Middle Ages to bolster the papal case against the German rather than Byzantine emperors and could be considered a prototype of the ‘separation of the church and state’ argument, the fact which should be most obvious is that the pope was admitting that the imperial authority was a given, that it had its limits as he saw them, but it was there nonetheless and could not be denied or disregarded. Not long after, the issue of imperial authority was at the root of one of the earliest, if not the very first, contested papal elections with one faction more loyal to the Emperor in Constantinople and wanting reconciliation and the other more comfortable with the Gothic kings and wishing to maintain their ground in the east-west dispute. Many of the Roman/Italian nobility wanted to reconcile with the east while the lower classes tended not to. This was all the more noticeable when the Latin and westward-looking Justin came to the throne in 518, followed by his nephew Justinian in 527, who brought back the flavor of the old Roman Empire and served to highlight the Germanic origins and habits of the Gothic kings.

This period, specifically because it was so troubled, inadvertently highlights the importance that the imperial monarchy had for the Church. Whereas the Gothic west had largely fallen under the sway of the Arian heresy, King Theodoric the Great being an Arian, the east remained more solidly of the old faith. Pope John I, though old and frail, was dispatched to Constantinople to persuade the Emperor to stop being so harsh and discriminatory toward the Arians. Imagine that for a moment, the Roman Catholic Pope went to the Byzantine Emperor to plead the case of the Arian heresy! How successful he was seems to be somewhat in dispute, some accounts saying he did get the Emperor to back off the Arians somewhat, others saying Justinian committed to nothing substantial and sent him home. In any event, it did Pope John little good for King Theodoric had him arrested soon after returning, fearing that he had been plotting with the Emperor against him to retake Italy and the frail, old pope died in captivity. Nonetheless, there was some balance, there was recourse if one side got out of line.

Coronation of Emperor Otto the Great

The benefits of this arrangement were certainly seen in the time leading up to and around the year 1000 when the Church, certainly in the west, had become infamous for its corruption and depravity, yet this was also when great monarchs provided an impetus to change. It was the time of High King Brian Boru of Ireland, King St Stephen of Hungary, Emperor Otto the Great of Germany, St Vladimir the Great the Grand Prince of Kiev who converted the Russians, King Canute the Great of Denmark and King St Olaf II of Norway. At a time when the papacy had sunk to its lowest point, it was the pressure of Emperor Otto III which brought a pious and determined man to the Petrine Throne (Sylvester II, also the first French pope). Had it been left solely up to the clerical leadership of the time, Christendom would likely not have survived as so many of them had become far too weak and corrupted. Some may, perhaps, find something familiar about this situation.

I have said before and will go on saying that for the majority of Christian history none of the faithful would have been able to imagine having Christianity without an emperor as an integral part of the picture. I am also firmly convinced that it is no coincidence that Christianity is in such a sad state today when an emperor or even anything of the sort has been absent for so long. The enemies of all I hold dear about western civilization certainly recognized that taking down the imperial power would aid in taking down the spiritual power as well. This is not, however, to say that they are solely responsible. If everything had been working as it should have been, I don’t think they would have stood a chance. In the west, the papacy certainly did a great deal of damage to the traditional hierarchy for the sake of politics only to find that not long after the empire ceased to exist in any way other than a name the papacy itself no longer had much real influence either, having frittered it away by constantly shifting positions. Now the spiritual authority of Christianity is, I think, in real danger of being lost and there is no emperor to come to the rescue as in the days of Otto III.

Emperor Valentinian II

Hopefully, the above will demonstrate one more reason why Christians should take monarchy seriously and not see it as something set apart from religion. Even if your monarch is far from the Christian ideal (as most are these days), rest assured that this is nothing new. Even when Julian “the Apostate” tried to restore Rome to paganism, it did not cause Christians to abandon the idea of having an emperor. Christianity was a product of the Roman Empire, Christ was born in the reign of Augustus, died and was resurrected in the reign of Tiberius, and so it went with His followers. St Paul preferred to appeal to Nero rather than place his fate in the hands of the Jews and, according to Josephus at least, Nero’s wife may have been a Christian. The religion won recognition under Constantine and became the official religion of the empire under Theodosius. For some, reading the funeral oration of St Ambrose of Milan for Emperor Theodosius or Emperor Valentinian II may be enough. We can see there and in numerous other ways that from the beginning, Christianity, born of the empire, was seen as being inseparable from it and the empire inseparable from the faith. If those early Christians were right, it can only then mean that the majority today are very wrong to say otherwise.

More along these lines:
The Tiburtine Sybil & Imperial Prophecy
Christ and the Emperor Tiberius
Christian Empire

The Imperial Roots of Ferragosto

Today is Ferragosto, a holiday unique to Italy (and the Republic of San Marino) today identified with the mid-August vacation period. It is made to coincide with the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, however, it has a much wider significance which includes but is not limited to this particular feast day which is so important to Catholics. The roots of Ferragosto go back to at least the year 18BC though, even then, it built upon an already long established custom of a holiday period in mid August after the local harvest period. However, it became an officially period of celebration to mark the occasion on which Octavian (Julius Caesar's heir and nephew) was given the title of Augustus by the Roman Senate, "Augustus" meaning 'exalted' and used as the official imperial title. In other words, it was on this occasion that Augustus Caesar officially became the first Emperor of Rome. Thus, the already existing post-harvest holiday period was expanded and upgraded to be an official, practically month-long, celebration of the exaltation of the first Roman Emperor. This was known as the Feriae Augusti or the 'festivals of the Emperor Augustus'.

Later, in the Christian period, this came to coincide with the Feast of the Assumption and rather beautifully illustrates the way in which the peoples of Europe did not abandon their own culture and customs with their conversion to Christianity. Rather than ban everything that had pagan roots (which would have meant eradicating practically everything, including democracy which liberals claim to be so fond of), pagan customs were folded into the Christian experience. Obviously, these customs would vary from nation to nation as the Germans or Celts had extremely different customs from those of the Greeks and Romans. It is for this reason that Ferragosto is a uniquely Italian holiday. In time it came to be the start of the vacation period in Italy and this was reinforced by the Kingdom of Italy during the Fascist Era. In an effort to encourage Italians to get out of their small towns and see more of the country, the trains would offer discounts on tickets to enable working class people to take a vacation to famous cities or resort towns. The desire of the regime was to foster greater nationalism and social unity in this way by having the people see more of their own country and to allow people other than the upper class to take vacations too.

It says something about the success of this policy of embracing the whole of European culture and not setting Christianity against it that for quite some time the celebration of Ferragosto was legally mandatory in the Papal States.

Monarch Profile: Queen Mavia of the Tanukh

One of the results of the triumph of the feminist movement has been the rediscover and emphasis on significant female leaders of ancient history. Female leaders of more recent centuries have not been emphasized in the same way because, figures like Queen Victoria, Empress Maria Theresa or Queen Isabella of Castile, had very traditional and non-feminist worldviews. In the ancient world, however, figures like Boudicca in Britannia or Queen Zenobia of Palmyra were more attractive to them since they were pagans, they were rebels against the existing Imperial Roman power structure and they were far enough distant that some degree of mystery still surrounds them and so modern feminists can fill in the gaps of their stories with speculation that fits their narrative. All of that is also why you have probably never heard of another dynamic female leader of Roman times, Queen Mavia of the Tanukh, sometimes also referred to as the “Queen of Syria” though the people she ruled over were fairly recent arrivals to that part of the world and lived only in and around what is today southern Syria.

Perhaps even more than Boudicca or Zenobia, much about Queen Mavia remains a mystery and our accounts of her come from only a couple of ancient sources. Nonetheless, though she was a strong leader who fought successfully against the dominant power of the Roman Empire, the rest of her story makes her a subject that most modern writers would not want to touch. In the first place, she was an Arab, which would not in itself be a problem but she was an Arab from the pre-Islamic era and an Arab woman ruling over Arab men is something likely to offend modern Islamic sensibilities. To make matters worse for the modern, politically correct types, she was an Arab Christian, a convert from paganism and a very staunch, Orthodox/Catholic (before those were different) Christian at that. Moreover, the military campaign she fought against the Romans was a rebellion that was not a rebellion. She did not fight to bring down Rome or usurp Roman power, but rather she was fighting a war in defense of her faith and that is something the modernists simply cannot handle. She was not anti-Roman, she was pro-Christian.

We do not know exactly when or where she was born, her given name in Arabic is usually rendered as “Mawiyya” and she came to prominence through her marriage to one al-Hawari, the King of the Tanukhids, a confederation of Arab tribes who had left the Arabian peninsula and eventually settled in southern Syria. She and her husband had no sons and when King al-Hawari died in 375 it was Queen Mavia who took over the leadership of the Tanukhids. They were a sort of subsidiary national group within the Roman Empire and, early on, there was no trouble about this. The Romans were seen by the Arabs as protectors or allies against the Sassanian empire of Persia (Iran). However, a problem arose over the matter of religion, even though the Roman Empire was not yet officially a Christian empire at this point, it was largely Christian and, with a notable exception, the Roman emperors had been Christian for some time. However, this was also the period when the Arian heresy held sway and the Emperor Valens, while a Christian, was also an Arian. Queen Mavia was not and she would not have Arianism for her people and requested an orthodox bishop be appointed over them.

Emperor Valens, however, insisted on an Arian bishop and so Queen Mavia left Aleppo for the deep desert and began preparing for war. She showed considerable diplomatic skill as she gained the support of numerous other nomadic tribes in the area to join her coalition. However, she also sent word to the Romans that this rebellion was about having an orthodox bishop and nothing more. Mavia told them that as soon as a proper bishop was given to them, her resistance would end and the former, cordial relations could be immediately restored. This was not a struggle for power but a struggle for what Queen Mavia regarded as the true faith. By the spring of 378 AD all was prepared and the war began. Historical accounts agree that the campaign of Queen Mavia was quite successful and that she was leading it personally, ‘from the front’ and was quite a formidable military commander.

The Arab forces Mavia commanded had been used extensively by the Romans in their fight to suppress the previous uprising in Syria led by Queen Zenobia and as such the Tanukhids were very familiar with Roman tactics and were able to counter them and make use of them for their own side. The local Roman governors proved unable to mount an effective defense. Their own forces were quite limited and whereas in the past they had been able to organize the loyal elements of the local population to increase their numbers, this time it was those very tribes that they were fighting against and so the Romans were quite isolated. Queen Mavia and her armies swept south and east, driving the Romans from southern Syria, Palestine and finally all the way to the Egyptian border. Being hard pressed in other areas and with no hope of victory in sight, Emperor Valens finally had no choice but to relent before the vital province of Egypt was invaded and he agreed to appoint the orthodox, non-Arian cleric Moses as the first Bishop of the Arabs. According to Socrates of Constantinople, Bishop Moses was a “Saracen” (Arab) himself and was quite a successful and well regarded churchman.

Emperor Valens

With this, as promised, Queen Mavia suspended her campaign and reverted back to the previous relationship her people had had within the Roman Empire. To bond the two sides together, Queen Mavia gave her daughter, Princess Chasidat, in marriage to a prominent Roman commander in the area named Victor, also a Christian, a Catholic of course, and a man who had been appointed Consul in 369 AD. In fact, he had confronted Emperor Valens himself because of the imperial preference for Arianism so this would seem to have been a good match. However, the ending of the story of Queen Mavia was not entirely a happy one though Emperor Valens certainly had the worst of it. Once peace had been restored, the Emperor quickly called on Queen Mavia to assist him in his war against the Goths who were rampaging into the heart of the Eastern Roman Empire. Queen Mavia dispatched forces to aid the Romans as required but they were less successful in Europe. Along with the Romans, they were defeated, pushed back and finally wiped out at the Battle of Adrianople where Emperor Valens himself was killed. Few Tanukhids survived to return to their homeland.

There was another revolt by the Tanukhids against the Romans but it is unknown and perhaps unlikely that Queen Mavia was involved at all with it. This revolt was swiftly crushed and the Romans abandoned the Tanukhids as an ally and made a new alliance with the Salih, a rival Arab tribe. All that remains known of Queen Mavia after her assistance to the doomed Emperor Valens is that she died in Anasartha, east of Aleppo, sometime in 425 AD. Today, she is remembered by few due to the nature of her exploits and the fact that her story does not fit the preferred narrative of today. Nonetheless, she was a significant figure of some admirable qualities who deserves to be better known.

A Look Back at Emperor Claudius II

This is an appropriate occasion to take a look back at the Roman Emperor Claudius II, also known as "Claudius Gothicus". Read to the end to see why.

A Short Look at the Life of Marcus Aurelius Valerius Claudius Augustus, Emperor Claudius II

Monarch Profile: Emperor Valentinian II

The history of the Roman imperial monarchy is complete with stories of every kind; dramatic, bizarre, occasionally comic and tragic. The story of Emperor Valentinian II is one of the tragic ones. To set the scene, a good place to establish the background of this unfortunate monarch is with the glorious reign of Emperor Constantine the Great. As most know, it was Emperor Constantine who reunited the Roman Empire under one emperor, built the second capital city of Constantinople, established a policy of religious freedom for Christians and who was, at the end of his life, the first Christian Emperor of Rome. He also established a dynasty that carried on into the 360’s with his last male descendant being Emperor Julian, better known as “Julian the Apostate” who tried to revert Rome back to paganism rather than Christianity. A new imperial dynasty was then established, in the west, by Emperor Valentinian I, a man who rose from humble origins in Pannonia in what is today Croatia. He was a staunch Christian, a military-minded man who established the Valentinian dynasty, ruling the west himself while his younger brother Valens ruled as Emperor of the East.

Emperor Valentinian I

Valentinian I was succeeded by his son, Emperor Gratian, the man who would hand over the title of “Supreme Pontiff” to the Bishop of Rome. However, Emperor Gratian ruled only from 367 to 383 AD when he was assassinated at Lyons with most of the empire north of the Alps left in the hands of a renegade general named Magnus Maximus. However, he died in 388, a year after invading Italy. The young man who was in charge, or at least who was supposed to be, was Emperor Valentinian II. The son of Valentinian I by his second wife, Justina, he was only four years old when he came to the throne on November 22, 375 AD and had inherited a perilous position. The generals loyal to his father had proclaimed him emperor immediately upon the death of his father, taking no account of his half-brother Gratian or his uncle Valens. It is often assumed that the Frankish commander of the Roman forces in Pannonia, Merobaudes, intended to disregard Gratian, whom many in the military distrusted, in favor of Valentinian II who was, obviously, too young to rule and could not oppose them.

Emperor Gratian was thus left with what is now France, Britain and Spain while the nominal Emperor Valentinian II reigned over Italy, most of the Balkans and Africa. His imperial court was in Milan but tensions were thick. The most influential figure in his life was his mother Justina, an adherent of the Arian heresy, who clashed with the preeminent religious authority, St Ambrose, Bishop of Milan and prefect of Liguria and Emilia who was an adamant opponent of Arianism. This was a dangerous combination as the young Valentinian II became the pawn of those wishing to push their own agendas. Justina used his authority to try to suppress the orthodox Christians in favor of the Arians, though St Ambrose had the local populace on his side. Magnus Maximus, who was trying to claim the throne for himself, also used Arianism as his tool, casting himself as a champion of orthodoxy in order to take power from Valentinian II or, more precisely, those who ruled in his name. After Emperor Valens in the east came the reign of Emperor Theodosius the Great who was also opposed to Arianism and so would be of no help.

Emperor Valentinian II

When Maximus crossed the Alps into Italy, Justina and the teenage Emperor Valentinian II fled to Thessalonica (Greece) from which they obtained the support of Emperor Theodosius to restore Valentinian II in the west by offering in marriage his sister Princess Galla. In 388 AD Emperor Theodosius dutifully launched a military campaign that saw Maximus defeated and Valentinian II restored and though he would begin to establish his own dynasty through his sons Arcadius and Honorius, Emperor Theodosius remained faithful to his agreement with the last of the Valentinian dynasty. However, the young monarch’s troubles were far from over. While Theodosius held court in Milan, Valentinian II was installed in Vienne (in France) with Emperor Theodosius acting as his guardian since Justina had died around 391. As the East Roman Emperor had plenty to keep himself busy, he delegated his duties as guardian to his Frankish general Arbogast.

Emperor Valentinian II occupied himself with peaceful pursuits in Vienne while Arbogast marched off to fight the Germans along the Rhine in his name. However, it was clear that Arbogast was the real ruler in the west, not Valentinian II who he jealously guarded. Though nominally answerable to Emperor Theodosius, it is likely that the Eastern Emperor would not have approved of his tyrannical treatment of Valentinian. Anyone who became too close to the isolated young man could be expected to meet an unhappy end, always with the justification that the person had been guilty of some crime. Harmonius, for example, was a friend of Valentinian who was murdered by Arbogast personally and in the presence of the young emperor himself. Arbogast justified this by asserting that Harmonius had been guilty of taking bribes, but then as now many suspected that he simply wished to keep Valentinian isolated and under his power.

All of this, naturally, greatly disturbed Valentinian who was, by then, certainly more than old enough to be ruling on his own without a “guardian”. He saw an opportunity when word came that barbarians were preparing to attack Italy. Valentinian II planned to lead an army into Italy himself, no doubt hoping that he could establish a source of military strength for himself that would enable him to stand on his own. However, Arbogast could see where that might lead as well as anyone and refused to allow the Emperor to leave. Valentinian II then attempted to simply dismiss Arbogast from imperial service but Arbogast openly defied him on the grounds that he had been appointed by Emperor Theodosius and Valentinian II had no authority to relieve him of his command. Emperor Valentinian II was still little more than a prisoner but did manage to write for help, appealing to St Ambrose in Milan and Emperor Theodosius that he was being overruled by a barbarian general. He also requested to get right with the Church and for St Ambrose to come to Vienne to baptize him in rejection of the Arianism of his mother.

St Ambrose of Milan

However, none of that was to happen and it may be that Arbogast was informed of what had been written in those letters for on May 15, 392 Emperor Valentinian II was found dead, hanging in his palace in Vienne. He was only twenty-one years old. Arbogast said that he had committed suicide and certainly his life had been one to encourage depression and despair. However, many people, then as now, believe that Arbogast had the young emperor murdered, with many accepting this as a matter of fact. Given what he had just written to Theodosius and St Ambrose, it does seem that, while in despair, Valentinian still held out hope for redress of his situation. The timing of his sudden death certainly points to Arbogast being the guilty party. We also know that St Ambrose eulogized him and praised him highly as a virtuous, young monarch, a Christian Roman emperor who should be an example to others. It seems highly unlikely he would have done so if he had harbored any suspicion that the Emperor had killed himself.

So it was with that air of mystery and suspicion that the reign of Emperor Valentinian II came to an end. His body was carried, with full imperial Roman pomp and ceremony, to Milan where his remains were met by St Ambrose and his weeping sisters Justa and Grata. He was buried alongside Emperor Gratian in the Basilica of San Lorenzo. Arbogast, though first claiming to remain loyal to Theodosius by proclaiming his son Arcadius emperor, eventually set up his own puppet usurper in the person of Eugenius. Emperor Theodosius came west, defeated Eugenius and Arbogast and placed his son Honorius on the throne as Western Roman Emperor.

Emperor Valentinian II

As for Emperor Valentinian II, his tragic death marked the end of his dynasty and its replacement with the Theodosian. His all too short life had been spent dominated by others, often treated as a rather well kept prisoner but thanks to St Ambrose, when he is remembered at all, he is generally remembered well, as a good-hearted young man who could have made for a great emperor if he had truly been given a chance. The account of St Ambrose is convincing given that he had no reason to distort the truth and would have gained nothing by it. During the young of Valentinian II, the two had often been at odds. Influenced by his Arian mother, orders given in his name were defied by St Ambrose and he also met Church opposition when Valentinian wished to preserve the monuments of pagan Rome, an act which caused the pagans to try to gain more, such as the restoration of the Altar of Victory in the Senate but to this Valentinian II could not agree. His eventual renunciation of Arianism seems to have been genuine and under different circumstances he may well have become one of the great lights in the twilight era of the Roman Empire. That he was not is unfortunate but, according to St Ambrose, he nonetheless set a worthy example in his own tragic life of strength of character in the face of great adversity. Seemingly drawn to tragedy perhaps, I've always had a soft spot for him.

Christ and the Emperor Tiberius

Although largely ignored or forgotten today, there was existed in Christianity a strong tradition of reverence for the imperial throne and a deeply held belief that the Roman emperor was, while not divine himself (as many were held to be by the pagans) but certainly part of God’s divine plan for the world and the Christian religion. This can be seen in the retention of certain Roman imperial traditions by the Germans, the emphasis placed on the baptism of Emperor Constantine, the reverence for his mother St Helena of the Cross and popular myths such as that Pope St Gregory the Great resurrected the pagan Emperor Trajan in order to baptize him into the Christian faith. It can be seen, as was discussed here this past August, in the stories surrounding the prophecies of the Roman sybils concerning the birth of Christ and Emperor Augustus, going all the way back to the very beginning of Christianity, or even slightly before in that regard. Again, today, none of this is talked about and doubtless very, very few Christians are even aware of these traditions or would consider them significant if informed about them. However, I find them fascinating and, in all honesty, an integral part of what I would consider the ideal for western civilization. So, I will talk about them and today the focus will be on the often notorious Roman Emperor Tiberius Caesar.

History has not been terribly kind to Emperor Tiberius. He is generally regarded as a cold, cruel man at best, a “bloody tyrant” at worst and one who ended his life in a self-indulgent pool of unspeakable depravity. As usual, I will be a contrarian on this point as I have always had a much more positive opinion of Emperor Tiberius than most people, thanks in no small part to the late papal Latinist Father Reginald Foster who, while admitting that Tiberius got “a little nasty” toward the end, repeatedly asserted that, “he was not a bloody tyrant, he was a hard man” who had plenty of good points. Christians, in centuries past anyway, would likely have agreed. I first discovered this long lost tradition when writing up a long article on the “Popes and Caesars” and that tradition was that Emperor Tiberius was considered to be something of a crypto-Christian by what we might today call the pop-culture of early Christendom. For people who are familiar only with the version of Tiberius seen in movies and on television, this would certainly come as a shock and yet, for a very long time there was a widely held belief that the second Emperor of Rome was almost a Christian in his conscience.

The story, handed down from historians such as Eusebius Pamphilius and Tertullian is that the Roman governor Pontius Pilate sent reports to the Emperor about the activities of Jesus Christ and His disciples. Tiberius was, of course, the emperor when Christ conducted His ministry, was crucified, died and resurrected and it was Tiberius whom Christ referred to when He said, “render unto Caesar” and so on. According to these Christian historians, when Emperor Tiberius learned about Jesus, his heart was rather moved by the accounts and he raised the issue of deifying Christ and including him among the Roman pantheon. This, however, was refused by the Roman Senate which held that it was only by their vote that someone could become a god and this worked perfectly well with the Christians who, of course, held that the divinity of Christ was not dependent on a vote by Roman politicians. That having failed, Emperor Tiberius still insisted that the Christians not be persecuted, nor even “accused” and, these historians assert, it was this decision which enabled Christianity to grow and spread in its early, formative years when it could have most easily been suppressed.

We can see then, an assertion by these early Roman, Christian historians that a divine plan was at work, involving the Roman Emperor, by which God touched the heart of Caesar in order that Christianity could flourish and eventually convert the Roman Empire and, by that body, the whole of western civilization, to the true Faith. Later, secular, historians, of course, have a very different view. While most agree that Pontius Pilate did report on the life of Christ to Emperor Tiberius, as such would have been perfectly normal procedure, they do not agree that there is any significant evidence that Tiberius Caesar was at all sympathetic to the Christians or tried to champion their cause. The lack of initial persecution of Christians is explained away, by these secular historians with the, admittedly reasonable, assertion that in those early days the Christian religion was simply too inconsequential for the Roman authorities to bother with, a sort of passing religious trend that would come and go as others had before. Again, such a view is not unreasonable but, personally, I prefer the Christian version of events. Taken on its own, this story can certainly be discounted but, as mentioned in the previous article about the sybils, when seen in the wider context, I think it becomes much more difficult to dismiss as entirely fanciful. One could just as easily see evidence of a divine plan at work.

Eusebius Pamphilius summarized it this way:

“Tiberius, therefore, under whom the name of Christ made its entry into the world, when this doctrine was reported to him from Palestine, where it first began, communicated with the Senate, making it clear to them that he was pleased with the doctrine. But the Senate, since it had not itself proved the matter, rejected it. But Tiberius continued to hold his own opinion, and threatened death to the accusers of the Christians. Heavenly providence had wisely instilled this into his mind in order that the doctrine of the Gospel, unhindered at its beginning, might spread in all directions throughout the world.”

Today, as mentioned, all of this is discounted, however, even if one does, it still makes a very powerful point about what Christians considered important in the days of and immediately following the original, Christian, Roman Empire. Whether true or not, this story illustrates the centrality of the imperial monarchy in Christian thinking. Romans, after all, remained Romans even after becoming Christian and their loyalty to the empire and to Caesar did not change, nor could it have been expected to since both Christ Himself and His apostles commanded obedience to the imperial authorities. The story of the Tiburtine Sybil foretelling the birth of Christ to Emperor Augustus, the story of Emperor Tiberius being sympathetic to Christianity, the story of Emperor Marcus Aurelius and the “Thundering Legion”, the story of Emperor Commodus and his Christian mistress, the story of Emperor Constantine’s vision before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, dismiss them all as a pack of fables if you like but the very fact that they were once so widely told makes a very profound point about the priorities and the ideals of the original Christians.

This is part of an entire tradition that Christians today are totally ignorant of and I think that is a shame. Christians today have forgotten that the earliest church councils were called by the Emperor rather than a churchman, that the imperial coronation was often referred to as “the eighth sacrament” or that the custom of anointing monarchs with holy oil at their coronation is a custom that goes back to the Eastern Roman Empire, drawing upon even more ancient traditions dating all the way back to the anointing of King Saul by the Prophet Samuel. The climax of the ceremony was the Roman Emperor taking communion and all the assembled senators and clergymen bowing prostrate before him. The imperial monarchy was thus so central to Christianity that, putting historical accuracy aside, it would have been perfectly natural for Christians to interpret events in terms of a divine plan involving the Roman emperors, the monarchs of western civilization, all the way back to the very origins of the faith and to interweave the history of the Roman emperors with the overall unfolding conversion of the west from paganism to Christianity, incorporating the figures of the pagan past into the Christian present and future rather than trying to forget everything that had come before.

In practical terms, this can also allow one to better understand why there was such an emphasis placed on the sacred nature of the imperial monarchy in the east, all the way up to the end of the Russian Empire in 1917 as well as helping to explain the often contentious relationship between the popes and the German emperors in the west. The more important something is, the more likely that it will be fought over. This was a tradition so central in fact that it survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire, was imitated by the First German Empire and by other monarchies that grew up in western Europe such as in England (where more of these traditions survive than anywhere else) and in France where the tragic King Louis XVI, heir to his own sacred royal traditions, called for, “one King, one law, one faith”, he was hearkening back, wittingly or not, to that original, united and finally Christian imperial realm with a Roman Caesar at its head. So, in the end, whether Emperor Tiberius was truly sympathetic to the cause of Christ or whether modern-day Christians would even wish to claim him (I would, but I recognize the vast majority would be horrified by the very idea), is not finally the point. The point is that such stories are either true and thus illustrate the divine guidance of the imperial monarchy from the beginning, or they are not true and thus illustrate how important the imperial monarchy was to early Christians who wished them to be so. Either way, we are inevitably drawn back to the fact, the idea and the ideal of The Empire.

The Tiburtine Sybil & Imperial Prophecy

In the old days of Christendom, one could mention the Tiburtine Sybil and the prophecies regarding the Roman emperors and many people, certainly educated people, would know immediately what was being talked about. Today that is certainly not the case and so some background information must be provided as, aside from experts in this particular field or, perhaps, art history aficionados, no average person will know what this is all about. First of all, we have the figure of the Sybil. The sybils were women who acted as oracles, usually associated with a particular holy site in pagan times. The custom originated in ancient Greece but soon spread to Italy, Asia Minor and other areas. The Oracle of Delphi is probably the most well known example of a sybil. These women were often sought out for prophecy and divine guidance as it were by powerful people. In the time of the Roman Empire one of the most prominent was the Tiburtine Sybil, known as such because she resided at the town of Tibur, an old Etruscan town, which is today the Italian city of Tivoli. Many stories grew out of this particular sybil later on among Christians concerning the Roman emperors.

Emperor Augustus & the Tiburtine Sybil

One thing to clarify at the outset was that the sybils were, obviously, not Christian religious figures but were associated with paganism. However, once upon a time, this did not cause Christians to discount stories about their prophecies. They knew from their Bible stories that the pagan priests of Pharaoh were able to perform seemingly miraculous deeds or that the witch of Endor had been able to summon up the spirit of Samuel for King Saul, for example. It was taken for granted that people who were not worshippers of the Christian God could still possess amazing gifts and that God could use such people for His own purposes. Later examples of such things might include the Native American shamans who, according to various stories, made prophecies about the coming of the Spanish or had visions of the Blessed Virgin to prepare them to receive the Gospel when Christian missionaries later arrived. There was also, it must be said, an effort by the Christians of the “Ages of Faith” to look back at classical history and to incorporate it into their new, Christian, world view. The story of Pope St Gregory the Great, momentarily resurrecting the Roman Emperor Trajan in order to baptize him, is an example of this. Virtually everyone discounts this story now but it reflects the wish of people to see so great a man, such a revered emperor, saved from eternal damnation for not having been a Christian.

Emperor Augustus & the Tiburtine Sybil

The first recorded instance of the Tiburtine Sybil crossing paths with a Roman emperor came in the time of Augustus Caesar. The story goes that Emperor Augustus approached the Tiburtine Sybil, Albunea, at the Temple of Vesta to ask if he should be worshipped as a god. This meeting was once a very common thing to see depicted in art. An Archbishop, Jacobus de Voragine, later recorded this story, stating that it had been handed down to him by Pope Innocent III, that Augustus met the Sybil and that the Sybil revealed to him one who would come after him, greater than he, and showed him a vision of the birth of Christ, referring to the Blessed Virgin as “the Altar of Heaven” where a church was later built and dedicated as such. According to Virgil, the Cumaean Sibyl also made such a prophecy about the birth of Christ and stories such as these, which became widespread, explain why the sybils were included in Renaissance works of art, such as by Michelangelo, alongside Old Testament prophets in foretelling the coming of the Christian era. These would also coincide with other stories, once popular, about the early Roman emperors taking a “hands off” approach to Christ. Stories circulated, for example, that Emperor Tiberius, who did not exactly have a reputation for kindness, ordered that Christians not be persecuted or accused and even talked of including Jesus Christ in the pantheon of Roman gods.

If such stories were true, the prophecies of the Tiburtine Sybil to Emperor Augustus might help explain why such an attitude was taken or why someone like St Paul would prefer to put his fate in the hands of the Emperor Nero rather than his own Jewish countrymen of the Sanhedrin. There were actually a great many such accounts of miraculous events and Christian prophecies concerning the pagan Roman emperors before the more famous events after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and the baptism of Emperor Constantine the Great. There was the story of Pope St Clement I being a cousin of the Emperor Diocletian (in all likelihood he was a freedman who had been in his employ), Emperor Antoninus Pius condemning any illegal attacks on the Christian community, the dramatic story of Emperor Marcus Aurelius and the “Thundering Legion” or his son Emperor Commodus having a Christian mistress which is often pointed to as a reason for this fairly irascible Caesar refraining from persecuting Christians. She is also credited with influencing Emperor Commodus to release Pope St Calixtus I from prison. A revelation, passed down the imperial line, originating in a pagan source that they would not question, would be a possible explanation for such behavior.

Emperor Constans

However, other than foretelling Emperor Augustus of the birth of Christ, the most famous prophecy of this sort from the Tiburtine Sybil concerning an apocalyptic vision about a certain Emperor Constans. This prophecy foretold of a Greek king who would rise to become “king of the Romans and the Greeks” or, in other words, the Roman Emperor of East and West alike again, who would be very tall, very handsome, very wealthy, will destroy the enemies of Christianity, end all pagan worship, convert the Jews and defeat the massive, mysterious powers of Gog and Magog, after which he will retire to the Holy City of Jerusalem, abdicate his throne and hand the empire over to God. At that point, the Sybil describes what we would recognize as the rise of the Anti-Christ, coming from the tribe of Dan, who will win the people over by miraculous acts, who will destroy the Roman Empire and only then reveal himself as the agent of evil from the Temple of Jerusalem. This, of course, is very similar to other prophecies concerning “the Final Emperor” or the “Great Catholic Monarch” who will lead a last revival of Christian power before the end of the world.

An interesting point in the prophecy of the Tiburtine Sybil is that this monarch is named as Emperor Constans and that the prophecy was made, as near as we can tell, around the year 380 AD, a few decades after Rome had already had the reign of the historic Emperor Constans, the son of the Christian Emperor Constantine the Great, who came to the throne in 337 and ruled until he was assassinated in 350. If we were to be skeptical and presume that the Sibyl was trying to tailor her message for the audience, or that the story was invented later to appeal to Christian sensibilities, naming this future Christian hero after Emperor Constans would not make much sense. He was not known for being a terribly nice man or a terribly good emperor, though he too was part of a prophecy of his own concerning his grandmother, the Christian Empress St Helena. The prophecy said he would die in the arms of his grandmother and when he was assassinated it was after being cornered in a military post named Fort Helena.

Emperor Tiberius

So, what is the point of all this? I will be the first to admit it is largely just an act of indulgence on my part since I am interested in this sort of stuff. As with anything of this nature, some people will be inclined to believe and others will be inclined to disbelieve it and there really isn’t anything that anyone can say to prove either side right or wrong. I will say, at the very least, the existence of these stories and that they were passed on for so long reveals something to us about the people and the faith of Christendom. Sources of revelation were not rejected for being pagan, the people of the time recognizing that God can use anyone to participate in His plan. It shows also the centrality of the Roman Empire and the Roman emperors in the hearts of minds of Christian people and how central that Roman imperial tradition was to Christendom itself. The Christians of the late Roman Empire, even with all that was going on around them, did not cease to believe that their ‘realm’ on earth was something special, that Christianity had sprang up in that empire was no accident and that the Roman Empire was something that others would strive to bring back, that they hoped ultimately would come back, with all Christian, European peoples united under one divinely ordained Caesar.