Letter from Italian, probably Milanese, clerics to a group of Frankish envoys on their way to Constantinople describing how Pope Vigilius took refuge in a church of *Peter (the Apostle, S00036) in Constantinople in 551, when he was pressured by Justinian to condemn the Three Chapters. Written in Latin, probably in Milan, 551/2.
E08318
Documentary texts - Letter
'Letter from the church of Milan to the Frankish envoys'
The letter has just described how Vigilius had threatened to excommunicate anyone who assented to the emperor Justinian's edict condemning the Three Chapters.
De qua re adcensa est contra beatissimum papam et contra Datium episcopum iracundia principalis, et tanta contra eos agere coeperunt, ut nisi ad sanctorum basilicas confugissent, et ad interitum uitae peruenerant. attamen beatissimus papa Vigilius nec in basilica beati Petri sedem securam habere meruit, in tantum ut illic praetor, ad quem fures et homicidae tantummodo pertinent, mitteretur, qui cum multitudine militum spathas nudatas et arcus tensos portantium supra dictam basilicam introiuit. quo viso sanctus papa columnas altaris amplexus est, sedille ferocitate et animo concitatus primo diaconos <de> altari eius et clericos a capillis tentos eiecit, postea uero ipsum sanctum papam alii a pedibus, alii a capillis et barba tentum crudeliter abstrahebant. sed cum ille altaris columnas non dimitteret, cecidit altare et columnae aliquae fractae sunt, et quantum ad ipsos, ibi super ipsum altare in partibus mitti habuit. sed deus, qui in talibus angustiis semper adesse dignatur, tam aliquorum ex ipsis militibus quam populi, qui ad tumultum uenerant, animos ad misericordiam provocauit et coeperunt uoces atque stridores mittere, et sic contigit ut iudex iniquitatis supra dictus praetor cum ministris crudelitatis suae territus fugiendo disccderet. postea tamen sacramenta accepit beatissimus papa et sanctus Datius episcopus uel omncs qui cum ipsis ad loca sancta confugerant, quia eis nemo ultra violentiam faceret nec inuitis de ecclesiastica causa aliquid extorqueret et sic interim sunt egressi.
'For this reason the prince’s anger was incensed against the most blessed pope and against Bishop Datius [of Milan], and they [Justinian's officials] began to take such steps against them that, if they had not fled to the churches of the saints, they would have lost their lives. Even so, the most blessed pope Vigilius could not find a safe haven even in the church of St Peter, to the extent that the praetor, who deals only with thieves and murderers, was sent there, and with a host of soldiers carrying naked blades and drawn bows entered the aforesaid church. Seeing him, the holy pope grasped onto the columns of the altar; but the praetor, incited by raging anger, first had his deacons and clerics pulled by the hair and ejected from the sanctuary; and then most cruelly they tried to drag away the holy pope himself, some pulling at his feet, others at his hair and beard. But when he did not let go of the columns of the altar, the altar collapsed and some of the columns shattered, and as far as lay with them he would have been torn to pieces on the very altar. But God, who in such straits always vouchsafes his presence, moved to pity the minds of some of the soldiers themselves and of the people who had come to witness the commotion and who began to emit cries and shrieks; and so it happened that this iniquitous official, the aforesaid praetor, together with the assistants of his cruelty panicked and departed in flight. Afterwards, however, the most blessed pope, the holy bishop Datius, and all who had fled with them to the holy place, because no one was doing violence to them any more or extorting anything out of them over a church matter against their will, accepted oaths and so departed for the time being.'
Text: Schwartz 1940, 21-22.
Translation: Price 2009, 168.
Cult building - independent (church)
Rejection, Condemnation, SceptisismDestruction/desecration of saint's shrine
Non Liturgical ActivitySeeking asylum at church/shrine
Oath
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - Popes
Ecclesiastics - bishops
Officials
Soldiers
Crowds
Source
This is one of four related letters by or associated with Pope Vigilius (537-555), preserved as a group in a single manuscript, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Phillipps 1743 (8th c.), a late-Merovingian codex containing papal letters and acts of church councils, originally from the cathedral library at Reims (Schwartz 1940, 26). The letter of excommunication and a badly truncated version of Dum in sanctae Euphemiae are preserved in a few other manuscripts (Schwartz 1940, 27), but the full text of the latter, and the entirety of the other two documents, are unique to this manuscript. Schwartz 1940, 31, suggests that the entire group of documents was brought back from the East by the Frankish embassy whose members are addressed in Letter 4, hence its survival in a Gallic manuscript.The letters date from 551-552, a period when Pope Vigilius, who had been in Constantinople since 547, was under intense pressure from the emperor Justinian to accede to Justinian's condemnation of the so-called 'Three Chapters' (for explanation of this term, see discussion in E08275).
In manuscript order, followed by Schwartz in his edition, the documents are:
1) An encyclical letter from Vigilius, dated 5 February 552, explaining why he had taken refuge in the church of Euphemia at Chalcedon. This is often referred to, from its opening words, as Dum in sanctae Euphemiae ('while in St Euphemia's'). Translated Price 2009, 170-79. See E08275 and E08326.
2) A letter from Vigilius, dated 14 August 551, excommunicating two of Justinian's leading clerical supporters, Menas, patriarch of Constantinople, and Theodore Ascidas, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. Translated Price 2009, 161-5.
3) What seems to be a covering letter sent with a copy of the letter of excommunication. This is not dated but internal evidence shows that it dates from February 552. Not translated by Price. See E08329.
4) A letter written by some clerics from the church of Milan to a group of Frankish envoys on their way to Constantinople, informing them about the harassment of Pope Vigilius and other opponents of the condemnation of the Three Chapters. This is also not dated, but can be dated by internal evidence to late 551 or early 552. Translated Price 2009, 165-70. See E05616 and E08318.
The letter of the church of Milan to the Frankish envoys
This is Letter 4 in Schwartz's edition (Letter 2 in Price's translation, which renumbers the letters in chronological order). The letter has no heading in the manuscript: the title given here is the one used by Price. There is no doubt about its addressees: explicit statements in the letter show that it was addressed to a group of Frankish envoys on a mission to Constantinople (Schwartz 1940, 28, identifies the embassy as one from the Frankish king Theudebald, mentioned by Procopius, Wars 8.24.30), to inform them about the persecution by Justinian and his officials of Pope Vigilius and other western opponents of the condemnation of the Three Chapters who were in Constantinople. The authors of the letter were not in Constantinople themselves, but say (Schwartz 1940, 24; Price 2009, 170) that they received their information from 'trustworthy persons coming from Constantinople' (fidelissimae personae de Constantinopoli uenientes). It is generally assumed that the letter was written by clerics from the church of Milan, on the basis of the concern expressed in it over the long absence in Constantinople of Bishop Datius of Milan and the problems that this caused for the Milanese church, though Claire Sotinel has suggested that it could have been sent by a group of North Italian bishops, after 'a more or less informal council' (Sotinel 2007, 92). The letter has no date, but since it contains a detailed account of how Pope Vigilius sought asylum in the church of St Peter in Constantinople in August 551 (see E08318), but does not mention that he did so again in the church of St Euphemia in Chalcedon that December, it must have been written between the two events, or rather (as pointed out by Price 2009, 165, n. 12) between news of the two events reaching Milan: thus at some point from the autumn of 551 to the spring of 552.
Discussion
The incident described in this passage took place in August 551 (not given in the letter but known from other sources).Vigilius had been in Constantinople since 547 (for detailed accounts see Sotinel 1992; Price 2009, 42-58), and throughout his residence had been under pressure from Justinian to accede to the emperor's condemnation of the Three Chapters. By 551 it had been agreed to hold a church council to try to resolve the issue (eventually held in 553 as the Second Council of Constantinople), but in July 551 Justinian angered Vigilius by issuing a new edict condemning the Chapters (On the Orthodox Faith, translated Price 2009, 129-59), thus seemingly pre-empting the council. In the passage of the letter preceding this one, the authors describe how Vigilius, supported by Bishop Datius of Milan, responded by threatening to excommunicate anyone who assented to the edict. Hence, as the quoted passage claims, 'the prince’s anger was incensed' and Vigilius and Datius, fearing for their lives, took refuge in a basilica dedicated to St Peter, followed by the incident in which Justinian's men attempted to seize Vigilius as he took refuge at the altar and drag him out of the church.
Apart from a number of more or less garbled versions in historical sources (see discussion in E08275), we are fortunate to have Vigilius' own account of the incident in his letter Dum in sanctae Euphemiae (E08275), dated 5 February 552. The two accounts agree with each other in their essentials, but some details only appear in one or the other. Among the information given only by Vigilius is the date when he took refuge in the church (14 August 551 – it is not clear whether the attempt to remove him was on the same day), and that the church was the basilica of Peter in the Hormisdas district. This topographical detail indicates that the basilica in question – even though both Vigilius and the letter to the Frankish envoys refer to it simply as a basilica of Peter – was actually the basilica of Peter and Paul which had been founded by Justinian himself during the reign of his uncle Justin I (see E00551, E00615, E00616, E00617, E04332). Vigilius gives a more detailed account of the circumstances leading up to his seeking of sanctuary in the basilica, from which it is evident that this was more of a calculated gesture than the spontaneous response to the emperor's anger depicted in the letter to the envoys. A final detail given by Vigilius is that the oaths sworn by Justinian's men to protect his safety before he left the church, mentioned here with no further detail, were made on relics of Peter.
Conversely, some information appears only in the letter to the envoys, including the significant detail that the attempt to remove Vigilius was abandoned because of signs of opposition from the crowd that had gathered, and even some of the soldiers themselves (tam aliquorum ex ipsis militibus quam populi). The involvement of Datius of Milan is also mentioned only in the letter to the envoys, which states that he and Vigilius entered and left the basilica together, while his presence goes unmentioned in Vigilius' own account.
Bibliography
Edition:Schwartz, E., I, Vigiliusbriefe. II, Zur Kirchenpolitik Justinians (Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Abteilung. Jahrgang 1940, Heft 2; Munich, 1940).
Translation:
Price, R., The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553 with related texts on the Three Chapters Controversy (Translated Texts for Historians 51; Liverpool, 2009). All references are to vol. 1 unless otherwise stated.
Further reading:
Sotinel, C., "Autorité pontificale et pouvoir impérial sous le règne de Justinien: le pape Vigile," Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome. Antiquité 104:1 (1992), 439-463.
Sotinel, C., "The Three Chapters and the Transformation of Italy," in: C. Chazelle and C. Cubitt (eds.), The Crisis of the Oikoumene: The Three Chapters and the Failed Quest for Unity in the Sixth-Century Mediterranean (Turnhout, 2007), 85-120.
David Lambert
20/08/2022
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00036 | Peter, the Apostle | Petrus | Certain |
|---|
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