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)
