Pope Vigilius and Papal Infallibility

Pope Vigilius

During the mid-6th century, the Monophysite controversy was coming to a close after many decades of argument and disputes between four major theological groups (Monophysites, Dyophysites, Cyrillian Chalcedonians, and the Origenists). 

The Emperor Justinian I was a key figure in helping resolve this major controversy. He issued in an edict in the year 544 condemning the Three Chapters (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrus, and Ibas of Edessa) in an attempt to appease the Dyophysites. He demanded that the church would submit to this decision. One person who would not submit to the condemnation of the Three Chapters was the bishop of Rome, Pope Vigilius. Justinian proceeded to kidnap Vigilius, take him to Constantinople, and ended coercing him into producing the Judicatum, a condemnation of the Three Chapters from Vigilius. However, he ended up withdrawing later on. Leo Donald Davis, in his work on the history of the councils, gives a description of this situation:

"On the basis of this information, the pope drew up his decision — the Judicatum — which he sent to the Patriarch Menas in April, 548. Vigilius thereby condemned the Three Chapters but with reservations, keeping intact the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon. His action brought a storm of protest from the West, even less tempered than before, since the powerful Monophysite-sympathizing empress Theodora had died in June of the same year. His own papal entourage opposed him; protests poured in from Italy, Dalmatia, Illyria, Africa, even from Gaul. To recoup his authority, the pope reprimanded and suspended members of his entourage, including his own nephew, the deacon Rusticus who broke with him publicly at Christmas Mass in 549. Matters began to move beyond mere protest. In Illyria, the bishops in synod deposed a metropolitan who accepted the Judicatum; Aurelian of Arles, vicar apostolic for Gaul, sent one of his priests to investigate the situation at Constantinople; the priest returned strongly opposed to acceptance of the imperial edict against the Three Chapters. More forcefully, Reparatus of Carthage presided over a council of African bishops who excommunicated the pope himself, until he would withdraw the Judicatum. In the face of such opposition, the emperor allowed the pope to retract his Judicatum and explain to the West the need for a council to examine the reasoning of the East on the subject." (Fr. Leo Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787): Their History and Theology, pgs. 236-237)

The fact that an African synod excommunicated a pope is evidence in and of itself against the Vatican I doctrine of the papacy in church history, but there is a lot more to this particular episode in history. 

Vigilius then withdrew the Judicatum, and he (and Justinian) agreed that council needed to take place to resolve these issues. Later on, Vigilius issued the first Constitutum. There, he rejected certain Nestorian-sounding passages from Theodore of Mopsuestia and  Theodoret of Cyrus, but said nonetheless that their destiny/status in the church should be left up to God since both of them had already died. The more significant thing in the first Constitutum would be his resolved refusal to condemn the letter of Ibas, appealing to the council of Chalcedon in the process. At the end of the first Constitutum, Vigilius says the following:

"But if in the name of anyone with ecclesiastical dignity and rank there has been, or will have been, done, said and written, by whomsoever and wheresoever it so transpire, anything in breach of what we have here declared and enacted concerning these Three Chapters, this we totally annul with the authority of the apostolic see over which by the grace of God we preside" (Fr. Richard Price, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553, Vol. 2, pg. 211)

This sounds like ex cathedra language. It sounds as if the this document is irreformable (though he later on did write a second Constitutum), by saying that "anything written against what has been declared here is annulled by the authority of the Apostolic See" (paraphrase). 

After Constantinople II, Vigilius issued a second Constitutum, in which he declared the following things:

1) A full condemnation of the three chapters

2) A maintaining of the orthodoxy of Chalcedon by asserting that letter to Mari the Persian (which was read at the council) was not actually from Ibas but rather from someone else. 

A general loophole for Romanists would be to say that the first Constitutum was not irreformable, and in sense it was, but it in another sense it was not. It was by virtue of the fact that it was reformed eventually, after the Council of Constantinople II. But it was not in the sense that Vigilius clearly said that anything in breach of the first Constitutum is annulled by the authority of the apostolic see. An interesting question for RC apologists to ponder would be this: What was the status of the first Constitutum before Vigilius the second Constitutum? Was it reformable or not at that point in time?