Although the exarchs maintained imperial control over the corridor between Ravenna and Rome, the inherent weakness of this narrow link between the two parts of the exarchate left it vulnerable and reflected the precarious nature of imperial power in Italy. Opponents of the Fifth Oecumenical Council of 553 further challenged its effectiveness.
In these disturbed conditions Pope Gregory I, later universally acknowledged as Gregory the Great, was elected bishop of Rome on 3 September 590, when he was about fifty years old. His life spans a decisive period in the Christianization of Roman senatorial families, symbolized by the transformation of his family palace into a monastery in about 573. He retired from secular life into this monastery and, in 579, Pope Pelagius II ordained him a deacon and included him in the papal team sent on a major diplomatic mission to Constantinople. There he remained as papal ambassador until 586. During these crucial seven to eight years in the eastern capital Gregory witnessed the power of the city of Constantine and the imperial court at the centre of the Roman world. Through his friendship with emperors Tiberios and Maurice, he gained an experience of imperial administration and was integrated into the ruling family, acting as godfather to Maurice’s son Theodosios. However, he preferred to maintain a monastic routine in the Palace of Placidia, which served as the papal residence in the eastern capital, where he prepared some of his most important commentaries on the Old Testament Book of Job, as well as other spiritual writings. He was also drawn into theological debates with Patriarch Eutychios (restored to his office between 577 and 582) and became very familiar with the problems raised by the Fifth Universal Council that had condemned the Three Chapters.
Leaving Constantinople in 586, Gregory returned to his monastery in Rome, extended his skill as an exegete, manifested in many later commentaries on the Gospels and the Book of Ezekiel, and wrote sermons and studies of local saints including St Benedict, which became the famous book of Dialogues. After his election as bishop of Rome in October 590, a promotion confirmed by imperial support, he held the see for nearly fourteen years. His pontificate is particularly well documented by over 850 letters on all manner of topics, his Book of Pastoral Care (Regula pastoralis) – a guide for bishops – and many other writings connected with his administration. While he regularly complained of the weight of secular duties attached to the position and longed for the peaceful monastic environment, his skills as a leader of western Christianity and the initiatives he took to expand and deepen the spiritual traditions of the western Church make his pontificate especially significant in the development of the medieval papacy. It is also the period when a more distinct separation between the churches of the East and West begins to emerge.1
One of Gregory’s first tasks was to deal with the schism over the Three Chapters within the western Church. With vigorous determination Gregory set out to convince the Aquileians of their errors, writing letters, arranging meetings, focusing all his persuasive powers on the issue. In 590–91, when Gregory summoned a council to judge the schismatics, the north Italian bishops who had remained under Lombard control formed one group, while the coastal cities (that is, Ravenna, Rome and Naples, which were under imperial control) formed another. Both wrote letters to the emperor, as did Severus, patriarch of Aquileia. The north Italian bishops’ letter includes a complaint against the exarch’s efforts to convert them. They argue that they will not appear at Pope Gregory’s council because they have renounced his communion, and if they are forced back into it their churches will be less loyal to the emperor. While Gregory went on to condemn the north Italians in absentia, he was ordered by Emperor Maurice to stop putting such pressure on them. In subsequent letters to the exarch and archbishop in Ravenna, Gregory had to tell them not to use force in their efforts to persuade the schismatics.2 He appointed a papal official to reside in Ravenna and continued to send the north Italians theological arguments to induce them to condemn the Three Chapters.3 He also criticized Archbishop John the Roman for sending help to Severus of Aquileia after a fire destroyed the city. Gregory argued that Severus was in Constantinople, where he would misuse the funds in his efforts to win imperial support.4
After the death of John the Roman in 595, Pope Gregory sent firm instructions to Castorius, his official notary residing in Ravenna, about the correct procedure to be adopted in electing a successor. Acknowledging the tradition of Ravennate autonomy, he suggested that five senior presbyters and five leading citizens should bring their choice to Rome. But when the Ravenna clergy sent their nomination to the pope for his approval, Gregory rejected both their first candidate and their second. Instead, he insisted on another cleric from Rome, Marinianus, who was a nephew of John the Roman. When Marinianus expressed no enthusiasm to take up a position where he would clearly be unwelcome, he had to be persuaded by Gregory, who dedicated his Book of Pastoral Care to him.5 The pope then wrote to the clergy and people of Ravenna on their duty to honour their new archbishop, who correctly venerated the four universal councils of the church.6 Here he makes a clear reference to the Council of Chalcedon and pointedly ignores the Fifth Council of 553. In this way, he tried to ensure a strictly pro-Roman position in Ravenna.
Agnellus the historian knew that Marinianus had held the see of Ravenna during the pontificate of Gregory, and reports ‘He humbly held the metropolitan see, taught by apostolic dogma’, possibly a reference to Gregory’s Regula pastoralis dedicated to the archbishop.7 To fill out the Life, Agnellus includes bits of sermons and tirades against bishops of his own time, clerics who buy and sell offices, run up debts, bribe officials, corrupt others and generally behave like avaricious civilians.8 Marinianus, he says, was not like these ninth-century bishops. Agnellus did not mention the beautiful ambo that Marinianus commissioned from Constantinople for the church of Sts John and Paul in 596/7, which can now be admired in the Archiepiscopal Museum, but he copied the long epitaph on Marinianus’ tomb at S. Apollinare in Classe, which now became the designated resting place of Ravenna’s archbishops. All subsequent leaders of the church were buried there, some in sarcophagi that survive and many with inscriptions that describe their achievements.
Even after Pope Gregory had imposed his own choice for the archbishopric of Ravenna, and instructed Castorius to keep him informed about ecclesiastical life in the city, relations between Rome and the imperial capital were not always peaceful. The pope received reports from junior clergy, such as Adeodatus, a deacon of the church of Ravenna, who told him that bishops in the Ravenna archdiocese wore the pallium on many more occasions than the four or five ceremonies when it was permitted. In a letter to Castorius, Gregory complains that the exarch, prefect and other noble men of Ravenna have requested this enhanced use of the pallium, and insists that the regulations must be observed.9 Local abbots, such as Claudius, of the monastery of Sts John and Stephen at Classis, also appealed to Gregory against Marinianus’ abusive behaviour: the archbishop had usurped the monastery’s properties, tried to impose his own candidate for abbot, and removed monks to serve in other churches. When he came to visit the monastery he insisted on lengthy and lavish entertainment, which reduced it to poverty. In response, the pope ordered Archbishop Marinianus to perform his visitation of the monastery in one day. (Claudius had also attended Gregory’s oral exposition of several books of the Old Testament, and later the pope wrote to John, subdeacon of the church of Ravenna, asking him to check if Claudius had left any written records.)10
Through his own network of administrative officials, Gregory learned that even the saddle bags used when the archbishop rode out to visit his suffragans were a subject of serious dispute. Horse trappings and harness decoration was one of many issues regulated according to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and this use of special saddle bags probably overstepped the permitted status. The underlying cause, however, was a distinct rivalry between Ravenna, the imperial capital of Italy, and the older capital of Rome, now transforming itself into the centre of leadership over the Christian West. The political superiority of the new centre of secular power had to confront a greater ecclesiastical authority held by the representatives of St Peter, who sought to exercise a titular primacy of control over all churches. Tensions were therefore inevitable. In the long construction of Roman claims, Gregory the Great played a vital role, drawing on his experience in Constantinople to insist on the subordination of Ravenna.
Under the leadership of Exarch Romanus, imperial troops had regained considerable territory from the Lombards, including key cities and castles in the Apennines that controlled one of the main routes from Ravenna to Rome. According to the Roman Book of the Pontiffs, Romanus came to Rome when Gregory was pope, and went from there to Ravenna, retaking the cities of ‘Sutrium, Polymartium, Horta, Tuder, Ameria, Perusia, Lucioli and many others’. These were on the Via Amerina, the trans-Apennine route via Perugia, which had to be secure for effective communication between the exarch and his subordinate, the duke of Rome.11 In this all-important city Romanus left the Lombard Duke Maurisius in charge, who had come over to the imperial side.
In retaliation, the Lombard king Agilulf marched from Pavia to Perugia and besieged the city. He killed Maurisius and then moved south to threaten Rome, where Pope Gregory was so terrified that he negotiated a truce with the king, and for this he was roundly criticized by Romanus. Through the intervention of Queen Theudelinda, the Catholic wife of the Arian king, a peace was agreed in 598/9; Paul the deacon quotes Gregory’s letter to her, thanking her for her help, and to Agilulf. In this example of papal diplomacy, the authority of Constantinople, represented by the exarch, was outflanked by the bishop of Rome.
After the death of Romanus, his successor Callinicus (596–602) sent an army to attack Parma, where it captured the (unnamed) daughter of King Agilulf and her husband Gudescalc, and brought these valuable hostages to Ravenna.12 They remained there after the death of Callinicus, who was replaced as exarch by Smaragdus, returning on his second tour of duty in 603. But Agilulf was furious at the capture of his daughter and, in July 603, he left Milan to attack Cremona with the assistance of Slavs sent by the king of the Avars. By 21 August, he had razed Cremona to the ground and went on to Mantua, where he broke through the walls on 13 September, and advanced to Vulturina (Valdoria), which surrendered to the Lombards rather than suffer the same treatment. The troops that had defended Mantua were permitted to return to Ravenna, where presumably they told Exarch Smaragdus what was happening further north. Smaragdus then agreed to release King Agilulf’s daughter and she returned to Parma with her husband, children and all her property. A truce was agreed on 1 April 605 and Pope Sabinian (604–6), Gregory’s successor, continued to respect the terms of the peace treaty with the Lombards.13
Exarchs were regularly instructed to contain Lombard power without being given sufficient troops or funds to do so effectively. This remained the crux of Ravenna’s problems throughout the seventh century and into the eighth. Smaragdus preferred to make a truce with the Lombards rather than fight, and in November 605 when Constantinople sent 12,000 solidi as tribute to Agilulf, the exarch negotiated for him to keep cities in Tuscany that he had seized: Balneus Regis (the King’s bath, Bagnarea) and Urbs vetus (Orvieto). But the peace lasted for only three years, until 610, and the Lombards continued their attacks.14
In these, sometimes fraught, circumstances, the exarchs tried to resolve ecclesiastical disagreements and to maintain cordial relations with the pope. Callinicus intervened in a dispute between Gregory and the bishops of Salona, on the eastern shore of the Adriatic. Gregory had been angered by reports that Bishop Natalis had been selling off the liturgical vessels of his church and thoroughly neglecting his ecclesiastical duties. When Natalis held a synod at which he deprived Honoratus of his position as archdeacon of the see, Gregory objected forcefully. Although Honoratus was eventually reinstated, and then elected to succeed Natalis as bishop, other factions schemed against him and his rival, Maximus, gained control of the church of Salona. The pope identified him as someone who had obtained the see by simony and supported heretical views.
At this point Callinicus tried to persuade the pope to recognize Maximus. While Gregory insisted that Maximus should come to Rome so that these issues could be resolved, at one point demanding his presence within thirty days, Callinicus found a way to end their quarrel. In July 599 he arranged a ceremony of submission at Ravenna, where Maximus was formally readmitted to communion with the pope in the presence of Archbishop Marinianus.15 As well as resolving the dispute in a symbolic act, the exarch’s ceremony confirmed Ravenna’s centrality in the political and military affairs on both shores of the Adriatic.
Despite Pope Gregory’s efforts, the ecclesiastical division in Italy continued with coastal cities under imperial influence and mainland bishops living in Lombard territory, and often influenced by Lombard kings, remaining fiercely independent, although not always united. When Severus of Aquileia died in 606/7, two patriarchs were elected, one in favour of the 553 Council and one against. This reflects the high state of tension and mistrust over Lombard support for the schismatic bishops. The theological dispute over the Three Chapters could not be resolved while the north Italian bishops maintained their separate ecclesiastical community under Lombard suzerainty. And, as none of the exarchs proved capable of destroying the Lombards’ military hold on the area, theology and politics combined to frustrate both Constantinople and Rome.
The schism over the Three Chapters persisted until 698, when the Lombard king Cunincpert abandoned opposition to Constantinople’s policy in a council that celebrated reunion with the other churches of the West, with no reference to the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret and Ibas. Instead, Paul the deacon’s account stresses the title Mother of God, given to the Virgin Mary by the Council of Ephesus in 431, as if this was the decisive novelty.16 By the end of the seventh century the Marian feasts were celebrated throughout western Christendom and Ravenna had five churches dedicated to her cult, including S. Maria in Cosmedin, previously the Arian baptistery, and S. Maria ad Blachernas. Agnellus proudly explains the name Cosmedin, saying that this is not from the Greek for world, kosmos, but from the Latin cosmi meaning ornate. Since he was also the abbot of S. Maria ad Blachernas, he knew it was modelled on the Blachernai church in Constantinople, another reminder of the city where the Three Chapters dispute had originated.17