Adolf Harnack · 13 of 20

Introduction

We have already described in Vol. III. of our present work, as far as it bore on the history of dogma, the part taken by the West during this period in the Christological controversies of the East, the great impetus given to the papacy by the successors of Damasus, and further by Leo I. and his successors. We have shown how the papal power was in the sixth century embroiled, and (under Justinian) almost perished, in the East Gothic and Byzantine turmoils; how the fifth Council produced a schism in the West, and shook the position of the papacy, and how on the other hand the latter regained and strengthened its importance through the instrumentality of Gregory I. We also reviewed the important work, in which Vincentius of Lerinum standing on Augustine’s shoulders, described the antiquitas catholicæ fidei, i.e., the Catholic conception of tradition. The whole West was agitated in our period by the storms of the tribal migrations. The ancient world received its final blow, and the Church itself, so far as it was composed of Romans, seemed to run wild under the horror and pressure of the times. The young peoples which streamed in were Christian, but Arian. In the kingdom of the Franks alone there arose a Catholic, German nation, which began slowly to be fused with the ancient Roman population; but the Church, with its cultus, law, and language, remained Latin: victus victori legem dat. The Franks were at the outset in the Latin Church, as at the present day the Mongolian tribes of Finland are in the Greek Church of Russia. This Latin Church, which, however, had parted in Franconia with the Roman Bishop, or was only connected with him by respect for him, preserved its old interests in Gaul and Spain, and continued its former life until the end of the sixth century. Even up till that time the old civilisation had not wholly perished in it, but it was almost stifled by the barbarianism, which resulted from fusion with the invading populace. In North Africa, in spite of dreadful sufferings, Catholic Latin ecclesiasticism held its ground till on into the seventh century. But the Church, once so independent in its relations with Rome, found itself compelled more than once in this period to turn for succour to Rome for its self-preservation. The position of Italy, i.e., of the Roman Bishop, was wholly peculiar, for the Church of Middle and Lower Italy never played any part in Church history. So far as a Catholic Church still existed in the West in the German Empire, it represented the remnant of the shattered Western Roman Empire, and therefore lay in the sphere of power of the Roman Bishop, even if this relationship might not take any definite shape for the moment. But this Roman Bishop was himself fettered to the East, and political and ecclesiastical ties compelled him to look more to the East than the West. The fact that he nevertheless did not lose his connection with the latter, he, in the sixth century, owed more to his past, and his impregnable position in Rome, than to a deliberate policy.

Under the Catholic Bishops who had survived in Gaul and North Africa as representatives of the Roman Empire, a not altogether unimportant part of the history of dogma was enacted in our period, viz., the fight for and against complete Augustinianism. The Roman Bishop, though much more concerned with the Christological and political questions of the East, intervened also in this matter. At the close of our period, when absolute darkness had settled on the West, the great monachist Pope and “father of superstitions” introduced the ecclesiastical world to the Middle Ages in the form required by uncivilised peoples. In doing so, he had not to do violence to his own convictions; for the civilisation that was passing away inclined to barbarianism.

We have only therefore to consider, in what follows, the conflict waged round Augustinianism, and the position of Gregory the Great in the history of dogma.