Saint Sergius I

Italian pope (687-701)

• Born: 635
• Birthplace: Palermo, Sicily (now in Italy)
• Died: September 8, 0701
• Place of death: Rome (now in Italy)

During his time as pope, Sergius greatly strengthened relations between Rome and the churches in the Anglo-Saxon west and maintained the western church’s independence from the emperors of Constantinople. He introduced the Agnus Dei into the Mass and was responsible for the restoration and embellishment of churches throughout Rome.

Early Life

The father of Sergius (SAHR-jee-uhs), a merchant named Tiberius, migrated from the Syrian town of Antioch to Sicily. It was on this island, in the town of Palermo, that the young Sergius received his early education. Little else is known of this part of his life, except that he journeyed to Rome and entered the priesthood under the papacy of Adeodatus II. During his training for the priesthood, Sergius revealed an enthusiasm for music and was allowed to study under the head cantor. His interest in music would persist throughout his papacy. In either 682 or 683, he was ordained by Pope Leo II and became the titular priest of the town of Santa Susanna, located on the Quirinal. As a priest he developed a reputation for his love of saying Mass in the catacombs, a practice that, though once common, had become rare by his time. In 687, Pope Conon died after a long illness, and a bitter struggle for the papal successor ensued. It was out of this struggle that the humble priest from Santa Susanna emerged as leader of the Church.

Life’s Work

While Pope Conon was still on his deathbed, his archdeacon Paschal had offered a bribe of one hundred pounds of gold to the new Byzantine imperial exarch John Platyn, in order to guarantee the papal chair for himself. John Platyn was at Ravenna at the time and proved to be more than obliging in this request. When the pope finally died, Platyn managed to secure the nomination of Paschal for the papal succession. Platyn was successful in this because the faction that nominated Paschal was composed of officials whom Platyn himself had earlier appointed to govern Rome.

Such treachery would probably have passed unnoticed and Paschal would have become pope had not a larger rival faction nominated the archpriest Theodore as Conon’s successor. That created a stalemate. In fact, the opposing factions barricaded themselves in separate parts of the Lateran Palace, each refusing to back down. The group backing Theodore occupied the interior section of the Lateran Palace that contained the private apartments of the pope, while the group backing Paschal occupied the exterior sections.

In the midst of this turmoil, a meeting of leading civic authorities, army officers, and clergy was held in the Palatine Palace with the aim of selecting a third candidate to break the deadlock. The priest of Santa Susanna was unanimously chosen by this group to become the pope. On the nomination of Sergius, the gates of the Lateran were stormed and the rival groups ousted. When Sergius himself entered the palace, Theodore immediately renounced his pretensions to the throne. Paschal, too, renounced his designs and recognized the legitimacy of Sergius, but he did so grudgingly and only under compulsion. In fact, Paschal continued with his machinations against Sergius and offered more money to John Platyn if the latter would come to Rome and overturn the election.

Platyn went secretly to Rome. Probably to the surprise of Paschal, however, Platyn gave his approval to Sergius when he realized that the installment in power had been carried out regularly and enjoyed massive popular support. Unfortunately, Platyn demanded of Sergius the money that had been promised him by Paschal. Sergius refused on the grounds, first, that he had not been partner to any such deal and, second, that he simply did not have the money. Nevertheless, Platyn insisted on being paid, and Sergius offered to pledge as payment the candelabra and crowns that stood in front of the altar of Saint Peter. This offer did not satisfy Platyn, and he refused to permit Sergius to be consecrated until the money had actually been raised and paid. Sergius relented, paid Platyn, and was finally consecrated on December 15, 687. Paschal continued, however, to intrigue against the new pope until he was finally arraigned, deprived of the position of archdeacon, and imprisoned. Paschal remained unrepentant and died in prison five years later.

The first noteworthy act of Sergius in his position as leader of the Catholic Church was of a housekeeping nature. He had the remains of Leo the Great moved from their relatively inconspicuous burial ground and housed in a newly constructed ornate tomb in the basilica.

The reign of Pope Sergius I was primarily noteworthy for his refusal to endorse the Second Trullan Synod (also known as the Quinisext Council), called in 692 by the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian II. This meeting, of more than two hundred bishops of the eastern church, was convened by Justinian II with the ostensible purpose of supplementing the work of the Fifth (held in 553) and Sixth (held in 680) general councils. However, though the Trullan Synod legislated for the entire Church, only one bishop of the west was present, and the 102 disciplinary and ritual canons enacted by the council were actually motivated by a degree of hostility toward and defiance of the western church.

The canons banned practices that were established in the west (such as the celibacy of the clergy and fasting on Saturdays in Lent), ignored western canon law, and reestablished the Twenty-eighth Canon of Chalcedon, which granted patriarchal status to Constantinople (second only to Rome). The latter canon had been vigorously and continuously resisted by Rome. Representatives of the pope in Constantinople were forced to sign the acts of the council, and in the year after the synod Justinian II sent the canons to Sergius for his signature and approval. Sergius not only refused to sign the acts, he even refused to let them be read out loud. Justinian II responded by arresting two of the pope’s councillors stationed in Constantinople and by sending the commandant of his personal bodyguard, Zacharias, to Rome to arrest Sergius and bring him back to Constantinople.

Zacharias arrived in Rome to an extremely inhospitable welcome. Before Zacharias’s arrival, Sergius had appealed to the exarch for assistance, and troops were sent from Ravenna to Rome. Though Zacharias managed to corner the pope in the Lateran, he in turn became the hunted. The troops from Ravenna, aided by the Pentapolis and Roman citizens, stormed the Lateran and pursued Zacharias. The commandant of the bodyguard fled in terror from his pursuers and ended up hiding under Sergius’s bed in the papal apartments. Sergius was then forced to plead with the people for the life of Zacharias, who was arrested and forced to leave the city. This humiliating defeat for Justinian II would have precipitated serious consequences for Sergius, but the former was himself deposed within two years by Leontius. The major result of the incident was that it served to deepen the existing gulf between the eastern and western churches. Since that time, the only response of the Papacy to the Trullan Synod has been tacit approval of the canons for the eastern church.

Sergius promulgated relations of an entirely different ilk with the western church. The first major event in the papacy of Sergius concerning the western churches occurred in 689 on the vigil of Easter. On that date he baptized Caedwalla, the once-pagan king of the West Saxons. Caedwalla, “the strong-armed,” had been converted the year before by Saint Wilfrid, whereupon he abandoned his kingship and made the royal pilgrimage to Rome. Caedwalla died only ten days after his baptism by Sergius, who ordered the remains of this notable convert to be buried on the grounds of Saint Peter’s itself.

Another well-known Englishman who visited Sergius was the abbot Aldhelm, who was later appointed bishop of Sherburne by Sergius. Aldhelm was the founder of Malmesbury Abbey and had visited Sergius in order to gain a charter of privilege for the abbey. The charter, which placed the monasteries of Malmesbury and Frome under the immediate jurisdiction of Rome, was granted by Sergius and greatly fortified the power of Rome over the English churches. Sometime around 700, Sergius ordered Saint Wilfrid to be restored to the See of York as bishop. Sergius also approved of the appointment of Brithwald, as the successor of Saint Theodore, to be bishop of Canterbury.

Connections between Rome and England were further strengthened by Sergius when he authorized the missionary work to the Continent of Saint Willibrord. Willibrord had trained at the monastery of Saint Wilfrid in Ireland and went as a missionary in 691 to Frisia, a country that lay between the Rhine and the Elbe. After four successful years in that country he was sent to Rome and was consecrated bishop of the Frisians by Sergius. Inspired by the achievements of Willibrord, Sergius sent Saint Chilian and Saint Swibert to do further missionary work in Germany.

Toward the end of his tenure as pope, Sergius was active in rectifying the schism of Aquileia . This schismatic group, in existence since the condemnation of the “Three Chapters” by Vigilius in 553, consisted of a collection of suffragan bishops under the leadership of the patriarch of Aquileia, in northern Italy. To bring about a rectification of the schism, the king of the Lombards, Cunibert, invited the schismatic bishops to a synod at Pavia. The council was an overwhelming success, and the renegade sect was brought back into the Catholic fold. After the reunion, Sergius commanded that all the works of the schismatic sect be burned to ward off the possibility of ideological contamination.

During the closing days of Sergius’s reign, monks were sent to him by Saint Ceolfried from the monasteries of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (of Wearmouth in England) to secure yet another charter for English monasteries. The pope gave his approval to the monasteries and, more important, learned from these men of the great erudition of their fellow monk Bede. Bede would later become known as the greatest historian of early England. Sergius later requested Bede’s presence in Rome to help solve certain problems. Unfortunately, Sergius died shortly afterward and Bede never made the pilgrimage.

Sergius’s early musical talent was not wasted during his reign as pope. An alumnus of the Schola Cantorum, he was an accomplished singer. Most important, he was responsible for the introduction of the singing of the Agnus Dei into the Mass. He also introduced the practice of making processions to the various churches on the feasts of the Virgin Mary (the Nativity, the Annunciation, the Purification, and the Assumption).

Throughout his tenure as pope, Sergius was active in restoring the churches of Rome, including Saint Peter’, Saint Paul’, and his own church of Santa Susanna. He is reported to have discovered a small silver box hidden in the sacristy of Saint Peter’s that contains a portion of the “true cross,” embedded on a jeweled cross. This relic is used in the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, initiated by Sergius himself.

Significance

Sergius died in 701 and was buried in Saint Peter’. The cult of his sainthood began shortly after his death, and his life is celebrated by Catholics on September 8. During his lifetime, he developed a reputation for exceptional piety. Though Sergius was ineffective in bringing the eastern and western churches together, he was important in extending the influence of the Church in the west, especially in England. In addition, he was successful in helping to bring about an end to the schism that had split the church of Italy. Most important, however, was his successful resistance to the attempts of the eastern emperors to achieve hegemonic control of the Church.

It has often been argued that the popes of this time acquired temporal power through the strength of their own vaulting ambitions. This claim is clearly false where Sergius is concerned. He could hardly have been ambitious to become pope in the first place; indeed, one almost gets the impression that he became pope against his will.

Bibliography

Coppa, Frank J., ed. Encyclopedia of the Vatican and Papacy. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. An encyclopedia of the popes. Lists antipopes and ecumenical councils. Bibliography and index.

Duffy, Eamon. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. 2d ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001. A general history of the popes, with information on Saint Sergius I.

Mann, Horace K. The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages. Vol. 2. Reprint. Wilmington, N.C.: Consortium Books, 1980. Contains a chapter devoted to the life of Sergius. Very important for an understanding of the general era in which Sergius lived and of the lives of the popes who came immediately before and after him.

Ullmann, Walter. A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. 1972. Reprint. New York: Routledge, 2003. A general study by the foremost authority in the field. Focuses primarily on the Papacy, very little on individual popes. Good discussion of the influence of the Papacy throughout Europe. Enormous bibliography.