Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/152

 130 THE DECLINE AND FALL sacraments,^'' and fomented, thirty-five years, the schism of the East and West, till they finally abolished the memory of four Byzantine pontiffs, who had dared to oppose the supremacy of St. Peter."" Before that jieriod, the })recarious truce of Con- stantinoj)le and Egy})t had been violated by the zeal of the rival prelates. Macedonius, who was suspected of the Nestoi'ian heresy, asserted, in disgrace and exile, the synod of Chalcedon, while the successor of Cyril would have purchased its overthrow with a bribe of two thousand pounds of gold. Th«Tri- In the fever of the times, the sense, or rather the sound, of re5^o'u» war, a Syllable was sufficient to disturb the peace of an empire. of AnastasiM The Trisagion ""^ (thricc holy), " Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts ! " is supposed by the Greeks to be the identical hymn which the angels and cherubim eternally repeat before the throne of God, and which, about the middle of the fifth century, was miraculously revealed to the church of Constantinople. The devotion of Antioch soon added " who was crucified for us ! " and this grateful address, either to Christ alone or to the whole Trinity, may be justified by the rules of theology, and has been gradually adopted by the Catholics of the East and West. But it had been imagined by a Monophysite bishop ; "'** the gift of an enemy was at first rejected as a dire and dangerous blasphemy, and the rash innovation had nearly cost the emperor Anastasius his throne and his life.*" The people "*> De his quos baptizavit, quos ordinavit Acacius, majorum traditione confectam et veram, pragcipue religiosse soHcitudini congruam prasbemiis sine difficultate medicinam (Gelasius, in epist. i. ad Euphemium, Concil. torn. v. p. 286). The offer of a medicine proves the disease, and numbers must have perished before the arrival of the Roman physician. Tillemont himself (M^m. Eccl^s. tom. xvi. p. 372, 642, &c. ) is shocked at the proud uncharitable temper of the popes: they are now glad, says he, to invoke St. Flavian of Antioch, St. Elias of Jerusalem, &c. to whom they refused communion whilst upon earth. But cardinal Baronius is firm and hard as the rock of St. Peter. ~ Their names were erased from the diptych of the church : e.x venerabili diptycho, in quo pia^ memoriae transitum ad caelum habcntium episcoporum vocabula continentur (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1846). This ecclesiastical record was therefore equivalent to the book of life. ™ Petavius (Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. 1. v. c. 2, 3, 4, p. 217-225) and Tillemont (Mi^m. Eccl&. torn. .xiv. p. 713, &c. 799) represent the history and doctrine of the Trisagion. In the twelve centuries between Isaiah and St. Proclus's boy, who was taken up into heaven before the bishop and people of Constantinople, the song was considerably improved. The boy heard the angels sing " Holy God ! Holy strong ! Holy immortal ! " ^ Peter Gnapheus, the fuller (a trade which he had e.xercised in his monastery), patriarch of Antioch. His tedious story is discussed in the Annals of Pagi (a.d. 477-490) and a dissertation of M. de Valois at the end of his Evagrius. ^''The troubles under the reign of Anastasius must be gathered from the Chronicles of Victor, Marcellinus, and Theophanes. As the last was not published