Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/280

252 We can trace, in different but conspicuous ways, the effect of this force in Africa, in Britain, in Spain, and in Gaul, in Istria and Dalmatia, as well as nearer home. In Africa there was a period of revival since the imperial reconquest from the Vandals. For more than half a century the Church, diminished in power no doubt and weakened in its organisation, had been re-established, and Arianism had been successfully extirpated, if we may judge from the silence of the pope's letters. The imperial officials were ready to accept his advice, or even authority. Side by side with the bishops of Numidia and Carthage, we find Gennadius the exarch entending the influence of the papal see; and appeals to Rome seem to have been recognised and encouraged. On the other hand Gregory was careful to make no practical encroachment on the power of the bishops and even to encourage their independence, while he asserted the supremacy of Rome in uncompromising terms: "I know of no bishop who is not subject to the Apostolic See, when a fault has been committed." His intervention was chiefly invoked in regard to the still surviving Donatism of Numidia. Against the Donatists he endeavoured to encourage the action of both the secular and the ecclesiastical power. "God," he said to the praetorian praefect Pantaleo, "will require at your hand the souls that are lost." In one city even the bishop had allowed a Donatist rival to establish himself; and Church and State alike were willing to let the heretics live undisturbed on the payment of a ransom-rent. To Gregory it seemed that the organisation of the Church was defective and her ministers were slothful.

The primacy in northern Africa, except the proconsular province, where the bishop of Carthage was primate, belonged to the senior bishop, apart from the dignity of his see or the merits of his personal life; and it was claimed that the rule went back to the time of St Peter the Apostle and had been continued ever since. Gregory accepted the historic account of the origin of the African episcopate, as is shewn by a letter to Dominicus, bishop of Carthage. On it he based an impressive demand for stedfast obedience, and he appointed a bishop named Columbus to act as his representative, though he was not formally entitled Vicar Apostolic. A council in 593 received his instructions; but they do not seem to have been carried out. A long correspondence shews the urgency of the need for action against the Donatists, and the difficulty of getting anything done. By the toleration of the imperial government they had been enabled to keep their churches and bishops; they conducted an active propaganda, they secured the rebaptism of many converts. For six years, from 591 to 596, Gregory's letters shew the vehemence of the contest in which he was engaged. In 594 a council at Carthage received an imperial decree stirring Church and State to action; but the State did not abandon its tolerant attitude: still there was great slackness, and Gregory wrote urgently to the Emperor on the