Thomas Allies - Peter's Rock in Mohammed's Flood, from St. Gregory the Great to St. Leo III

But it may be said that from the time Nestorius is deposed as guilty of heresy made by himself from the see of the capital in 431, to the publication of the imperial Ecthesis as a rule of faith in 638, the eastern patriarchates have been swaying backwards and forwards between the two opposing heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches: Syria is the parent of one: Egypt of the other. Through these two centuries the bishop of Byzantium has pursued under the emperor's never-failing patronage a uniform course of self-aggrandisement. In this he was greatly helped by the extinction of the western emperor, when his master at Constantinople became the sole representative of the Roman name – that Christian king and Roman prince to whose honour so many Popes from Felix III. onward so vainly appealed. That very prince became step by step their most dangerous enemy. The first act immediately upon the extinction of the western emperor – who was the natural defender of the Holy See – was that a Byzantine bishop, Acacius, set himself up as the leader of the whole eastern episcopate. Pope Gelasius told the bishop of the day that he had no rank in the episcopate except that he was bishop of the capital: that a royal residence could not make an apostolic See. The new family of Justinian, ascending the eastern throne, was compelled by the internal state of the east, to acknowledge the Roman Primacy. Justinian never broke from that acknowledgment, but he termed his own bishop ecumenical patriarch in his laws: and every Byzantine bishop clung to the title given by an absolute sovereign. In the time of Pope Gregory the Great, a hundred years after the decree of Pope Gelasius, recording the pre-eminent rank and order of the three original Petrine Sees, of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, the Byzantine bishop is allowed to be a patriarch, Alexandria and Antioch have fallen under him. They themselves have been throughout all the intervening time the seats of violent party spirit, the spirit of the two conflicting heresies, striving for masterdom, disturbing succession in the sees, and ready by any obsequious act to get on their side the bishop of the capital, who dispenses the smiles of the emperor. Against all primitive order that bishop is found to consecrate his subordinate patriarchs at Alexandria and Antioch: to put down one and to raise another. When his usurpation was fresh and still incomplete, the patriarch Theophilus could persecute St. Chrysostom for the wrong done to Alexandria; but the patriarch Cyrus, made for his subserviency to Heraclius and Sergius to sit in the seat of St. Athanasius, addresses Sergius as “My Lord, the thrice-blessed Father of fathers, the ecumenical patriarch, Sergius, the least of his servants,” and his acts are as humble as his words.

It is clear that the eastern patriarchal system had fallen from intrinsic corruption before the joint operation of Byzantine despotism and the ambition of the bishop of the capital, who bought every accession to his own power and influence by acting in ecclesiastical matters as the instrument of the imperial will. This fall was complete before the events which mark the last ten years of the reign of Heraclius as a time of unequalled and irretrievable disaster both to the Church and to the State.

Yet something must still be added to portray that civil condition of the State which led on to this disaster. In all this time the city of the emperor's residence had been exhausting of their wealth – by the terrible severity of the imperial taxation – the provinces subject to it. Egypt and Syria lived under a perpetual oppression no less than Italy and Rome. Every distinction, every favour, which Antioch, when Queen of the east, may have brought to Syria, had long migrated to the banks of the Bosphorus. All the national feeling of Egypt was aggrieved by the ruler who treated the dower of Cleopatra – the imperial gem of Augustus – as a storehouse to be plundered at pleasure. And the national spirit was intensified to fever heat by the hatred of Byzantium on the part of the Eutychean population, forming the vast majority in the whole country.

Thus the wide eastern empire instead of worshipping in union of heart and gladness of spirit that transcendent mystery in which is throned the grandeur and the mercy of the Christian dispensation, instead of falling in prostrate adoration before that vision of condescending love which the angels desire to look into, broke itself into endless conflicts in disputing about it, until the mystery of grace became a rancorous jarring of ambitious rivals. During more than 200 years this suicidal conflict was engaged in ruining the resources of a vast dominion, which in the hands of a Constantine or a Theodosius, with the spirit of a St. Leo to guide them, would have been impregnable to every enemy. Had emperor and people been faithful to the Council of Chalcedon, and to the authority which they admitted to be based on a divine promise made to St. Peter, neither the disunited hordes of the North, nor the far inferior savages of the South, nor even the impact of the great Sassanide empire would have availed to overcome the Roman power. This last and greatest enemy Heraclius had subdued. He went forth in the name of the Crucified One whom Chosroes had called upon him to disavow, and won the fight. Yet even as he was carrying back the Cross and entering the Holy City in triumph, Heraclius had become a traitor to him whom he was professing to honour. He had already conceived, under an evil influence and by the inspiration of the patriarch at his right hand, a compromise of doctrine which he thought would induce the rebellious Egyptian people to return to his allegiance. He hoped also that the same compromise would exorcise the Nestorian spirit at Antioch. They who did not agree were to be drawn into an appearance of agreement by an ambiguous formula. And the See of the Apostle Peter, last and greatest witness of the true doctrine, was to be forced into accepting the deceit, and ratifying it for the old truth by submitting to an imperial decree, which, independent of the heresy contained in it, was a violation of the Church's liberty.

The fifty years which run from 628 to 678 contain the various acts of one prolonged attempt by the Byzantine emperors to enforce their religious despotism on the Pope in the shape of the Monothelite heresy. The two standard-bearers of the heresy are two patriarchs, Sergius at Constantinople, and Cyrus at Alexandria. Precisely at this time the Mohammedan power appears upon the scene. While Heraclius is brooding over the compromise of Sergius for reuniting an empire dislocated by heresy, Mohammed is purposing the foundation of an empire resting on material force. While Heraclius is assuming the right to define the doctrine of the Church in virtue of his imperial power, Mohammed is constructing a claim to prophetic rank from which imperial power itself shall emanate. The Mohammedan claim is the exact antithesis of the Byzantine usurpation: the rise of a false prophet punishes the attempt among Christians to rule the spiritual by the civil power.

Upon the death of Mohammed in 632, his companions took counsel together and elected Abu Bekr to carry on the dominion based upon religion which Mohammed had invented. They gave him the title of “Chalif of God's Apostle”. As the vicar of the new prophet, he was to exert the absolute power which belonged to the prophet's office, and of which the civil sovereignty was an offshoot. This power was rooted in the belief that Mohammed had been sent by God. The quality therefore of every act exercised by the first chalif, and by every successor, depended on the truth of such a mission.

By the choice of Abu Bekr, father of Aischa, the favourite wife of Mohammed, it was resolved that the succession to the chalifate should be elective, not hereditary. The most stirring principle of the new power was that everyone who died for its extension, which was called the Holy War, should pass at once to paradise. Paradise had been drawn by Mohammed after his own sensual imagination to suit the taste of a most sensual people. The empire sought by Mohammed and his followers was to be imposed by force. Abu Bekr stirred up the sons of the desert to this Holy War, proclaiming that he who fought for God's cause should have 700 good works counted for each step, 700 honours allotted to him, and 700 sins forgiven.