Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Excerpt from "Excursus on the Condemnation of Pope Honorius"

 

 

Many Roman controversialists of recent years have admitted both the fact of Pope Honorius’s condemnation (which Baronius denies), and the Monothelite (and therefore heretical) character of his epistles, but they are of opinion that these letters were not ex cathedra utterances as Doctor Universalist, but mere expressions of the private opinion of the Pontiff as a theologian. With this matter we have no concern in this connexion.

 

I shall therefore say nothing further on this point but shall simply supply the leading proofs that Honorius was as a matter of fact condemned by the Sixth Ecumenical Council.

 

1. His condemnation is found in the Acts in the xiiith Session, near the beginning.

2. His two letters were ordered to be burned at the same session.

3. In the xvith Sessoin the bishops exclaimed: “Anathema to the heretic Sergius, to the heretic Cyrus, to the heretic Honorius, etc.”

4. In the decree of faith published at the xviijth Session it is stated that “the originator of all evil . . . found a fit tool for his will in . . . Honorius Pope of Old Rome, etc.”

5. The report of the Council to the Emperor says that “Honorius, formerly bishop of Rome” they had “punished with exclusion and anathema” because he followed the monothelites.

6. In its letter to Pope Agatho the Council says it “has slain with anathema Honorius.”

7. The imperial decree speaks of the “unholy priests who infected the Church and falsely governed” and mentions among them “Honorius, the Pope of Old Rome the confirmer of heresy who contradicted himself.” The Emperor goes on to anathematize “Honorius who was Pope of Old Rome, who in everything agreed with them, went with them, and strengthened the heresy.”

8. Pope Leo II confirmed the decrees of the Council and expressly says that he too anathematized Honorius.

9. That Honorius was anathematized by the Sixth Council of mentioned in the Trullan Canons (No. j.)

10. So too the Seventh Council declares its adhesion  to the anathema in its decree of faith, and in several places in the acts the same is said.

11. Honorius’s name was found in the Roman copy of the Acts. This is evident from Anastasius’s life of Leo II. (Vita Leonis II.)

12. The Papal Oath as found in the Liber Diurnus taken by each new Pope from the fifth to the eleventh century, in the form probably prescribed by Gregory II, “smites with eternal anathema the originators of the new heresy, Sergius, etc., together with Honorius because he assisted the base assertion of the heretics.”

13. In the lesson for the feast of St. Leo II. in the Roman Breviary the name of Pope Honorius occurs among those excommunicated by the Sixth Synod. Upon this we may well hear Bossuet: “They suppress as far as they can, the Liber Diurnus: they have erased this from the Roman Breviary. Have they therefore hidden it? Truth breaks out from all sides, and these things become so much the more evident, as they are the more studiously put out of sight” (Bossuet, Def. Cleri Gal., Lib. vii, cap. xxvi.) (NPNF2 14:351-52)