In AD 519,
Pope Hormisdas issued a libellus and required the signatures of the eastern
bishops. Part of the libellus stated:
The first condition of salvation is to keep
the rule of the true faith, and not to deviate in any way from the tradition of
the Fathers. And because the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be
overlooked, which says: ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I shall build my
Church,' these things that have been said have been proven by the events, because in this Apostolic See the Catholic
religion has always been preserved inviolate.
Such has
been appealed to in support of evidence for the infallibility of the Roman See
and Bishop thereof in the sixth century. Commenting on this, F.W. Puller wrote:
This was a dangerous argument to use. It may
be doubted whether Hormisdas would have inserted this clause if he could have
foreseen that one of his successors, S. Leo II, would in the year 683 write to
the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus concerning Pope Honorius as follows, “We
anathematize Honorius, who, instead of labouring to keep the apostolic Church
pure by the teaching of apostolic tradition, suffered it, the immaculate, to be
polluted through is profane betrayal,” or, as the last words run in the Latin
form of the epistle, “attempted to subvert the immaculate faith by a profane
betrayal” (Coleti, vii. 1156). The same Pope S. Leo II., having included his predecessor
Honorius in a list of heretics, says, “All
these, preaching one will and one operation in the Godhead and Manhood of
our Lord Jesus Christ, imprudently
attempted to defend heretical doctrine” (Ep., Leonis Papae II., ad
Ervigium regem Hispaniae, ap. Coleti, vii. 1462). It is important to
remember that, according to the teaching of the popes, they themselves are liable
“to defend heretical doctrine in an impudent manner.” This teaching was faithfully
handed down in the Roman see; so we find that Pope Adrian VI. in his Quaestiones de Sacramntis in quartum
Sententiarum librum (fol. xxvi. coll. iii., iv.), when treating of the
minister of Confirmation, discusses the question, “Utrum papa possit errare in
his quae tangent fidem”? He replies, “Dico primo quod si per ecclesiam Romanam
intelligat caput ejus, fidem, haeresim per suam determinationem aut decretalem
asserendo. Plures enim fuerunt potifices Romani haeretici.” I quote from the
edition published by Pope Adrian in 1522 during his pontificate, under his own
eye at Rome. It must be remembered that Acacius had never explicitly “defended
heretical doctrine,” as Honorius did, nor asserted heresy in a decretal, as
other popes did. (F.W. Puller, The Primitive
Saints and The See of Rome [London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1893], 307-8
n. 1)
