The Sower and the Virgin – Third Period, 627 A.D.

Continued from Historical Retrospect.—S. Patrick

HISTORICAL RETROSPECT.—THIRD PERIOD, 627 A.D.

GIBBON, the historian (ix. ch. 50, p. 258), gives the following description of the century upon which we are now just entering: “The Christians of the seventh century had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of paganism. Their public and private vows were addressed to the relics and images that disgraced the temples of the East. The throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs and saints and angels, the objects of popular veneration; and the Collyridian heretics, who flourished in the fruitful soil of Arabia, invested the Virgin Mary with the name and honours of a goddess.”

As if to mark on the papal Caesarism, which in that day was fast rising to universal power, the distinctive character of the pagan Caesarism of the Roman emperors, the Pope dedicated, in 607 A.D., the temple of the infamous Cybele—the goddess always represented with towers on her head—and of all the pagan gods and goddesses, to the Virgin Mary—the papal goddess designated as “Turris eburnea”—and all the saints.

In two or three years, Pope Boniface III. persuaded Phocas, Emperor of Byzantium—a usurper who had attained the throne by murdering his master, the Emperor Mauricius—to take the title of Universal Bishop from the Patriarch of Constantinople, and to confer it upon him and his successors on the papal throne (Baronius, An. 606). Anastasius the Librarian (De vitis Pont.) says that Phocas “constituted the see of Rome as the head of all the Churches.” Paulus Diaconus (De rebus gestis Longobard., iv. cap. 37) and Muratori (Script. rerum Italic., 1, pt. i. p. 465) assert that Phocas decreed the primacy to the Roman Church, which had before been assumed by the Patriarch of Constantinople. The words of Paulus Diaconus, and those of Anastasius—which differ but slightly—are these:

(“At the request of Pope Boniface, Phocas decreed that the See of the Roman and Apostolic Church is the head of all churches—this because the Church of Constantinople styled itself the first of all churches.”)

In 623 A.D. Isidorus, Hispalensis Episc. (De Vita et Obitu Sanctorum), says of Mary that she did not die by a material sword; but that her soul was killed by the sword of doubt. Again (lib. i., Sententiarum, cap. 12): “From the first man, sin was propagated in all his posterity. For, as from the first sin, death came into the world from Adam; so sin also was handed down from Adam to all men.”

In a sermon on the Nativity, he said: “Because our first parent fell, and so spread the root of sin in all his posterity, so the Son of God took upon Him human nature without sin,—taking on Him that which He was not, that He might free that which He had made.”

In 639 Pope John IV. implicitly denied the Immaculate Conception of Mary, as indeed Pope Boniface III. himself had done. A quotation is given by Wolfius, in his Memorabilia (I. 188), from the ecclesiastical historian Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopulus (lib. xv. cap. 28), to the following effect:

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During the patriarchate of Peter Grapheus, therefore, mariolatry was actually commenced in Antioch, as a novelty which had been unknown in the primitive Church.

The following from S. Ildephonsus, Bishop of Toledo, in 640 A.D., is a specimen of the arguments upon which the notion of the holiness of the Virgin Mary at her conception was founded (De Virginitate B. M.):

“Unless the Holy Virgin had been sanctified in the womb of her mother, her nativity could not at all have been an object of worship. But, as it is celebrated by the authority of the Church, it follows that her holy birth must have been free from all Original Sin. And therefore, after her birth, she could not have been guilty of any sins; nor could she even have contracted the stain of Original Sin in her birth, as she had been already sanctified in her mother’s womb.”

In 681 A.D. a council was held in Constantinople during the reign of Pope Agatho. Among the Acts of that Council (Actio xii. No. 7, Mansi xi. 875) we find the words: “Christ took flesh, and was born of our most holy and unpolluted Lady, the mother of God, and ever-virgin Mary.” On reference to the Jesuit Harduin’s edition of Labbé and Cossart, it appears that the original for the word “impolluta” was ἄχραντος, which means “undefiled” or “a virgin.” It has not all the sense of “immaculate.” Moreover, the words were not adopted or decreed by the council, but merely occur in an interpretation by a bishop of Cyprus.

We have not as yet, therefore, got to more than the mere beginning of the doctrine. Moreover, no actual precedents can be found for prayers to the Virgin Mary until the eighth century. The prayers to saints, at this time, were founded on little more than a vague notion that saints go straight to heaven when they die, and there employ themselves in praying for any persons that ask them to do so.

Pope Gregory II. indeed acknowledged that the departed are bound among the dead; but he decreed (Causa xiii., quæst. 2, cap. 22) that the souls of the dead may be loosed in four ways: by the offering of masses; by the prayers of saints; by the alms, to the Church, of their friends; and by the fastings and mortifications of their relatives. The Pope did not trouble himself with the thought that his decree was in utter contradiction to the plain assertions of S. Paul.

In 720, the Venerable Bede (Comm. in Luke ii.) acknowledged that a sword of doubt had pierced and killed the soul of Mary; so that he virtually denied her immaculate conception, and contradicted the doctrine that she never sinned. In his Homily on John, he says:

“And John His forerunner, when he recognised Christ, rightly called him the Lamb; for Christ differed from all mortals by this peculiarity, that He alone was innocent and clear from all sin.”

In his Homily on the Octave of the Epiphany, he wrote:

“Behold the Lamb of God! That was as much as saying: Behold the innocent Lamb who is free from all sin; because He inherited no taint of sin from the sinful flesh of His mother.”

Further (on Luke i.):

“For the Son of God took on Him flesh and soul; but they were not burdened by any weight of sin; and He issued like a bridegroom from a virgin womb. Therefore it was said: The holy thing that shall be born of thee, etc. The angel said that Jesus should be born holy; so distinguishing Him from the holiness of any or all of mankind. We may be made holy; but not one of us is born holy. Because we are under the condition of our corruptible nature; so that every one of us must, sighing, declare with the prophet: Lo! in sin hath my mother conceived me. He alone can truly be said to have been born holy, who was not conceived by any carnal commingling… This is My Son, in whom I am well pleased. He meant that every one, by sorrowing for some sinful deed that he has done, acknowledges, by the very act of sorrowing and mending his ways, that he has displeased God. And the Almighty Father, in order to be understood by men, spoke as a man, and said: I repent Me that I have made man; meaning that He was not well-pleased with the sinners whom He had created. So, in respect of His only-begotten Son, our Lord, and Him alone, God was well-pleased, and He did not repent when He looked on Him alone of all mankind; because in Him alone He found no sin.”

Lastly (Homily on Missus est):

“The Holy Spirit overshadowing the Virgin, cleansed her mind from the pollution of every vice; and from the lust of carnal concupiscence, He purified her heart.”

This latter passage was thought worthy of being put in the Glossa Ordinaria. It must be observed that, although Bede seems to admit that the Virgin was purified, yet he expressly asserts that it was only at the moment that she conceived Jesus. Moreover, Bede does not say that she remained pure; on the contrary, he tells us that the sword of doubt had killed her soul. Lastly, by his admission, he expressly denies that she had been made pure before. He never dreamt of her having been purified when she herself was conceived by Anna.

Among the incredible, ridiculous, and palpably false quotations alleged by the Benedictine Zoller to prove the Immaculate Conception, there is one which he pretends to have taken from the works of S. John Damascene (Orat. i., De Nativ. B.V.):

“Oh! blessed loins of Joachim, husband [text orig. wife] of Anna, from these verily flowed the immaculate seed! Oh! most eminent womb of Anna, in which, by slow degrees, there grew and was formed by her, that most holy child Mary! Oh! most blessed body of Anna, which bore the living Heaven (Mary), which was greater than the heavens.”

If John Damascene, or Zoller, imagined that such a rhodomontade, such a farrago of words, could prove anything, they were greatly mistaken. Nay! I err; the one thing it proved was how utterly baseless and ridiculous is the whole system of mariolatry, which is put to such a hard shift for arguments as to be compelled to adduce such stuff as that. But I believe the quotation was an outrageous fraud of the Benedictine himself.

First, because in the year 740 A.D., when S. John Damascene wrote, such balderdash concerning Mary would not have been uttered.

Secondly, because that writer expressed thoughts concerning her in no way differing from those of the Venerable Bede. For example (Sententiarum, liber iii.):

“The Holy Spirit overshadowed the Virgin, purging her from sin, and giving her power to receive the Word of God, and to generate a Son.”

That is: Mary was a sinful woman until the Holy Spirit overshadowed her, when she conceived the Lord Jesus. Again, in his Sermon on the Assumption:

“The Father predestined this virgin Mary; the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit overshadowed her, purged her from her sins, and made her holy. But Thou, O Word of God the Father! didst take from her Thy body and soul without sin; and, granting redemption to the whole human race, Thou wast made the Mediator between God and men. Thou didst take away the enmity. Thou didst dispel false thoughts, and didst illuminate obscure thoughts concerning God, and didst make those who were burdened with their sins to be partners in Thy glory.”

Pope Adrian, in 772 A.D., intimated to us that not only the Virgin Mary and saints were worshipped in his day, but that the people and priests, in their eagerness to leave the living God and worship other gods, had revived the early heresy of angel worship. For, in the epitome of the canons which he presented to Charlemagne, he wrote: “Cursed be he that shall leave the Church by presuming to worship angels.”

The Capitularies of Charlemagne, of 789 A.D., furnish us with much insight into the condition of the Roman Church.

First (Capit. Aquisgran., cap. 68): the bishops are required to see that the priests do not neglect to baptize; that they understand the prayers of the Church, and particularly the Lord’s Prayer; and so forth. Evidently, the priests were in the lowest depths of ignorance, and therefore very likely to accept any form of idolatry. The bishops could not have been much better, or they would not have required Charlemagne to instruct them in their most obvious duties.

Secondly: (c. 76) there is a chapter against legends and fables: “De pseudographiis et dubiis narrationibus.”

In the Capitularies of Frankfort, of 794 A.D. (cap. 40), we read this decree of Charlemagne:

“No newfangled saints may be worshipped nor invoked; nor may memorials of them be set up by the roadsides. Only those may be venerated, and that in the Church, who have been rightly selected by reason of their sufferings, or the holiness of their lives.”

So pure was Charlemagne’s religion that books have been written—as for example the books of Christopher Nifanius, published in Frankfort in 1670 and 1679—to show that Charlemagne was by no means a Roman Catholic in the modern acceptation of the term. Yet fables of the most ridiculous kind were still manufactured, and tons of pseudo-relics were brought from the East and from Rome, and the ignorant people believed that those old relics possessed the power of working miracles. (See a catalogue of such legends in Mabillon, Act. Ord. Benedicti, Sæc. iv. pt. 1, p. 114.)

In 813 A.D. the Festival of the Nativity of the Virgin, on Sept. 8th, was added to the festivals of the Roman Church. The Capitularies (lib. i. c. 158) thus enumerate the Church Festivals: Christmas, St. Stephen, St. John the Evangelist, The Innocents, the Octave of Christmas, Epiphany, the Octave of the Epiphany, the Purification of St. Mary, eight days of Easter, the Greater Litany, the Ascension, Pentecost, St. John the Baptist, St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Martin, and St. Andrew. The Council of Mayence in 813 (Canon 36) added the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The day of All Saints was instituted by Gregory IV., according to Durandus. He was, says Platina, an extremely bad man, who began to disgrace the papal throne in 827 A.D.

Alcuin, the great master of Charlemagne, wrote in 790 A.D. (Sentent., lib. i. cap. 18):

“Although the flesh of Christ was derived from the flesh of the Virgin, who was corrupt through Original Sin; yet His conception was not effected by carnal concupiscence, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. For it is not called Original Sin because the flesh is derived from a flesh corrupted by sin; because then Christ would have had Original Sin. But a person is said to have inherited Original Sin, because he was generated by libidinous propagation.”

Again (lib. iv. cap. 8):

“The flesh which is now the flesh of Christ, was infected by sin, before it became the flesh of Christ; but the flesh of Christ was not infected by sin, because it was purified from sin before Christ took it on Him. Nor was it only the flesh, which Christ took on Him, that was purged at His conception, but also the remainder of the Virgin’s flesh, in which the lust of sin was extinguished, so that she could not afterwards commit sin.”

At earlier periods, nothing was thought about the purification, or even holiness of the Virgin; but the period of Bede and Alcuin evinced that phase which attributed to her a purification from sin as taking place at the time that the Virgin conceived our Lord, but not before.

S. Nicephorus, indeed, wrote in 795 A.D. (Ep. ad Leonem III., in Baronius):

“He dwelt in the womb of the most holy and uncorrupted virgin mother of God, who had been beforehand cleansed by the Spirit, both in soul and body.”

Nicephorus agreed with the other theologians of the time that Mary was polluted with sin, and was cleansed before she conceived our Lord. The only difference was a fervour towards Mary which caused Nicephorus to call her “most holy and uncorrupted,” and would have caused him, had he lived a thousand years later, to fall into all the extravagances of mariolatry.

Rabanus Maurus, Abbot of Fulda, flourished in 825 A.D., and wrote (on Matt.):

“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. With the first man I was displeased; but with this Man, and with Him alone of all mankind, I am well pleased; because in Him alone I have found no sin.”

At the same time, John Scotus wrote (in Sentent., iv. dist. 45, q. 4):

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The metaphysical Irishman is clear only on this point, that saints, even if they be in heaven, cannot know anything of any prayers offered to them by men on earth. If that be true, there is an end to hagiology.

The great and renowned commentator, Haymo, Bishop of Halberstadt in 840 A.D., writing on the Apocalypse (lib. ii.), said:

“Christ alone is truly called Holy, because He did no sin. For, although there are many who are called saints, yet, in comparison with Him who was without sin, all men are unrighteous. Although some might have been saints, yet, as they were merely men, they could not have been without sin. Christ alone is holy; because He had no sin, neither was any guile found in His mouth.”

Again (lib. i. on Apoc. i. 13):

“That angel, who represented Christ, was not the Son of man, but was like the Son of man; because, although Christ took on Him our flesh, yet He had no sin, but appeared in the likeness of sinful flesh. It is the property of man not to be without sin. Therefore, as Christ had no sin, He said, by the mouth of the prophet (Ps. xxii. 6): I am a worm, and no man.”

Pope S. Leo IV. came to the throne in 847 A.D. Anastasius (Vita S. Leonis IV.) declares that he decreed that the Octave of the Assumption should be observed in the Roman Church, which it had never yet entered the heads of the Roman prelates to do: “quæ minimè Romæ antea colebatur.” (“which was not at all practiced in Rome before.”) Pope Leo also granted plenary indulgences to every one who should visit the church of the Carmelites on each of the following days: Christmas, Easter, the Feast of S. Peter and S. Paul, Whit-Sunday, the Assumption, the Nativity of the Virgin, the Annunciation, the Purification of the Virgin, S. Michael the Archangel, All Saints, the two Feasts of the Holy Cross, the Nativity of John the Baptist, the Feast of Fabian and Sebastian, and Good Friday. This grant of indulgences is rehearsed in the bull of 1477 by Sixtus IV. It will be observed that the Feast of the Immaculate Conception had not then been thought of.

It was in 849 A.D. that the Glossa Ordinaria on the Bible was composed. For centuries it was regarded by the Church of Rome as of absolute authority in the interpretation of all passages of Scripture. What then is the gloss on Ecclesiastes vii. 28?—“One man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found”? It is as follows: “That is, there never was a woman without sin.”

Pope Nicholas I., “the Great,” received the tiara in 858 A.D., just after the publication of the false Isidorian decrees; and that pope did not fail to quote them at once, as undoubted authorities, to the bishops of Gaul and Britain, although he took care not to refer to them when addressing any of the more learned bishops of Italy. We have seen how Scripture stood in the way of the evil practice of mariolatry. What did Pope Nicholas do? He put (Dist. xix. cap. 1) the decrees of the Popes on the same level of authority with the words of Holy Scripture. Pope Leo IV. had already done the same in part (Dist. xx. cap. 1); while Gregory the Great had not ventured to go further than to declare that he reverenced the Canons of the first four Councils as much as he did the four Gospels.

According to Nicephorus Callistus (Hist. Eccl., xvii. c. 28), who wrote at this time, the Emperor Mauritius commanded the celebration of the κοίμησις τῆς Θεοτόκου, the Dormitio, or death of the Virgin, on the 15th of August in every year. Bede (De Locis Sanctis, c. 7) believed that there was, in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, a church dedicated to Mary, in which there was an altar over a vacant tomb, in which Mary was supposed to have been buried, for a few days, until she was “assumed” into heaven. Bede honestly added: “sed à quo, vel quando sit ablata Maria, nescitur?”—“No one knows who took her body out of that tomb, nor yet when it was done.” Nevertheless, the mere report or suggestion that such was the case was considered quite proof enough that it was so in that superstitious and ignorant age.

The Carmelite Order, or Confraternity of S. Mary of Mount Carmel, had taken its rise in the East. The Carmelite writers protested that it was founded by Elijah when he slew the prophets of Baal! They had already received indulgences from Pope Leo IV. In 867 A.D., Pope Adrian II. conceded more indulgences to them; as did also Stephen V. in 885 (see bull of Sixtus IV. in 1477). We shall see presently how many million years of indulgences every one of the confraternity, and every one who wears a scapula, may gain. At least so they fondly imagine.

The fatuous superstition of that age is perhaps more fitly illustrated by the third Canon of the eighth General Council, which was held at Constantinople in 870 A.D.:

“We decree that the holy image of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Liberator and Saviour of all men, shall be adored equally with the book of the holy gospels. For as, by uttering the syllables which are found written in that book, we all attain our eternal salvation; so also by the operation on the imagination, of the colours of the image, we all, learned and unlearned, derive an equal advantage. Every one, therefore, who does not adore an image of our Saviour, shall not behold Himself when He comes in His glory to be glorified with and to glorify all His saints; but such a one shall be debarred from all communion with Him and His glory. The same rule applies to the image of Mary, His pure mother and the mother of God. So it does also to images of the holy angels… and also to images of the most praiseworthy apostles, and prophets, and martyrs, and holy men; and to the images of all the saints. We must honour and adore all those images also; and if any one should omit to adore them all let him be anathema from the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (Harduin, vol. v. p. 900 B).

That universal idolatry of images, commanded by an infallible Pope under pain of damnation, is enough to prepare us for any wickedness and absurdity which the superstitious brains of monkdom could invent. Yet here is another specimen for the special information of those who deny that the Roman Church is an idolatrous harlot. It is exhibited by the Benedictine Zoller, who pretends that it is a quotation from the works of St. Georgius, Archiep. Nicomediensis (Homily, In present. V. M.), who flourished in 880 A.D.; although it is extremely doubtful whether there are any genuine writings of his. None were known until the year 1648, when some documents were published under his name. This is the extract:

“O our Lady! nothing can withstand thy power; nothing can resist thy strength; all things obey thy command; all things are subservient to thy power. Without any effort, thou dost compass all thy desires.”

Yet Odo Gallicus, Abbas Cluniacensis, in 923 A.D., wrote (Sermon on the Virgin):

“Three births are celebrated by the Church, viz., those of John the Baptist, of the Blessed Virgin, and of our Saviour. But the conception of the Blessed Virgin, and that of every other saint, excepting only our Saviour’s, is not celebrated; because the Blessed Virgin, in her conception, inherited both sin and the punishment of sin; although, indeed, she was sanctified in her mother’s womb, at some time of which we are altogether ignorant. That she afterwards could commit venial sins, we believe; but did she actually sin? We know not. However, when conceiving our Saviour, the Holy Spirit so overshadowed her that she could not afterwards sin.”

So also (Hom. Super Evang.):

“As the Virgin had contracted Original Sin, she was cleansed from it, by sanctification, in her mother’s womb, and was sinless ever afterwards.”

Joannes de Cervo (III. Sent. Dist. iii.) says just the same. Here, then, we are landed in the new phase of opinion concerning Mary. The immaculate conception of her is denied; but her sanctification while yet in her mother’s womb is affirmed. Œcumenius, Bishop of Tricca (950 A.D.), also denies the Immaculate Conception.

(To be continued.)

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