- Honorius was condemned by the sixth oecumenical Council as "the former pope of Old
Rome," who with the help of the old serpent had scattered deadly error.^631 This anathema was
repeated by the seventh oecumenical Council, 787, and by the eighth, 869. The Greeks, who were
used to heretical patriarchs of New Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, felt no surprise, and perhaps
some secret satisfaction at the heresy of a pope of Old Rome.
Here again ultramontane historians have resorted to the impossible denial either of the
genuineness of the act of condemnation in the sixth oecumenical Council,^632 or of the true meaning
of that act.^633 The only consistent way for papal infallibilists is to deny the infallibility of the
oecumenical Council as regards the dogmatic fact.^634 In this case it would involve at the same time
a charge of gross injustice to Honorius.
- But this last theory is refuted by the popes themselves, who condemned Honorius as a
heretic, and thus bore testimony for papal fallibility. His first success or, Severinus, had a brief
pontificate of only three months. His second successor, John IV., apologized for him by putting a
forced construction on his language. Agatho prudently ignored him.^635 But his successor, Leo II.,
who translated the acts of the sixth Council from Greek into Latin, saw that he could not save the
honor of Honorius without contradicting the verdict of the council in which the papal delegates
had taken part; and therefore he expressly condemned him in the strongest language, both in a letter
to the Greek emperor and in a letter to the bishops of Spain, as a traitor to the Roman church for
trying to subvert her immaculate fate. Not only so, but the condemnation of the unfortunate Honorius
was inserted in the confession of faith which every newly-elected pope had to sign down to the
eleventh century, and which is embodied in the Liber Diurnus, i.e. the official book of formulas of
the Roman church for the use of the papal curia.^636 In the editions of the Roman Breviary down to
the sixteenth century his name appears, yet without title and without explanation, along with the
rest who had been condemned by the sixth Council. But the precise facts were gradually forgotten,
and the mediaeval chroniclers and lists of popes ignore them. After the middle of the sixteenth
century the case of Honorius again attracted attention, and was urged as an irrefutable argument
against the ultramontane theory. At first the letter of Leo II. was boldly, rejected as a forgery as
well as those of Honorius;^637 but this was made impossible when the Liber Diurnus came to light.
(^631) Mansi, XI. 622, 635, 655, 666
(^632) Baronius (Ad ann. 633 and 681), and Pighius (Diatribe de Actis VI. et VII. concil.).
(^633) As a condemnation, not of the heresy of Honorius, but of his negligence in suppressing heresy by his counsel of
silence (ob imprudentem silentii oeconomiam). So the Jesuit Garnier De Honorii et concilii VI. causa, in an appendix to his
edition of the Liber diurnus Romanorum pontificum, quoted by Hefele (III. 175), who takes the trouble of refuting this view
by, three arguments.
(^634) An error not in the dogmatic definition, but in facto dogmatico. It is argued that an oecumenical council as well as a
pope may err in matter, de facto, though not de fide and de jure. This view was taken by Anastasius, the papal librarian, Cardinal
Turrecremata, Bellarmin, Pallavicino, Melchior Canus, Jos. Sim. Assemani, and recently by Professor Pennachi. See Hefele,
III. 174, note 4.
(^635) Or rather he told an untruth when be declared that all popes had done their duty with regard to false doctrine.
(^636) In this Confession the popes are required to anathematize "Sergium ... una cum Honorio, qui pravis eorum assertionibus
fomentum impendit." Lib. Diurn. cap. II. tit. 9, professio 2. The oath was probably prescribed by Gregory II. at the beginning
of the eighth century.
(^637) Baronius rejects the letter of Leo II. as spurious, Bellarmin as corrupted. Bower (History of the Popes) remarks:
"Nothing but the utmost despair could have suggested to the annalist (Baronius) so desperate a shift."