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In the theological crisis of 448-451 which draws to a head in the
Council of Chalcedon, the rivalry of Alexandria and Constantinople
again plays its part. For the third time in less than forty years the
Egyptian primate is to sit in judgment on the "primate of honour. " But
while the Alexandrian is, this time, as much in the wrong as was
Theophilus in 407, the issue is not merely personal. As in 431 it is a
question of the faith, and it is the successor of Theophilus and St.
Cyril who now patronises the heresy.
This time it was the Bishop of Constantinople who was the Catholic, and
when, worsted, and obstinate to the last in his heresy, Dioscoros of
Alexandria fell, his people, save for a tiny minority of court
officials and imperialists, chose to follow him out of the Church. Not
that they would so describe their action, nor Dioscoros himself. They
were the Catholics, the rest were Nestorians, and Nestorian too that
Council of Chalcedon which condemned Dioscoros; while, for the
orthodoxy of their faith, the Egyptians appealed to the theology of St.
Cyril ! The story of the events of which the Council of Chalcedon in
451 is the centre, offers many points of very high interest. Its
definitions brought to a finish the debate on the fundamental theology
of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and the council’s proceedings were
the occasion of the clearest testimony to the Roman Primacy as a
primitive Christian tradition, which the collective eastern episcopate,
acting freely, ever made. On the other hand, the circumstances in which
the definition was adopted by the council produced effects which
reacted on the relations between Church and State for centuries. The
last long stage now began in the struggle between Rome and the Catholic
Emperor for the control of the Church within the Empire -- the struggle
which only ended with the destruction of the Church there, with its
transformation into a State institution from which, actually, Rome was
excluded. Chalcedon is incidentally an important stage in the long road
that leads from the Council of 381 to the schism of 1054. We can note,
once more, in the history of the intrigues and debates which preceded,
accompanied and followed the council, all the features that appeared
twenty years earlier at Ephesus. Not one of them is missing: the
innovator with his theory, the bishops, condemnation, the appeal to the
emperor, the court's policy of expediency, the pope defining the Faith,
the definition disregarded so long as the court bishops are in the
ascendant; finally comes the council -- which is not a means of the
pope's choosing, but of the emperor's -- and, resulting from the
accidental circumstances of the council, a long aftermath of religious
feud and civil disorder.
At Ephesus St. Cyril had been the great figure. Twenty years later that
role fell to his one time adversary Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus.
Theodoret has his place in ecclesiastical history and a great place
again in the history of Catholic theology. Theodore of Mopsuestia had
been his tutor, as he had been the tutor of Nestorius, but Theodoret
had revised his master's theories, expurgated them of their errors and
heretical tendencies, and if ever he had leaned to Nestorianism he was
by this time most assuredly Catholic. His terminology, judged by the
more exact use of later times, is, like that of all these pioneer
thinkers, loose and faulty. But he was a more exact scholar than St.
Cyril, and if he lacked St. Cyril’s intellectual power and depth, he
was a useful counterbalance to the Alexandrians, as he was also a
barrier against the heretical tendencies of some of his own associates.
He was, too, a great bishop, a true shepherd to the vast diocese he
ruled for so long, a model of pastoral zeal and charity. St. Cyril’s
death in 444 left Theodoret the greatest personality in the Eastern
Church.
Such was the man whose opposition a monk of Constantinople, Eutyches,
now drew down on himself. Eutyches was himself a highly influential
person in the religious life, not of the capital only but of all the
Eastern Empire. He was the head of one of the city's largest
monasteries -- it counted three hundred monks -- and by reason of his
great age, and the repute of his ascetic life, a kind of patriarch of
the world of monks, while at the court the all-powerful official of the
moment was his godson, the eunuch Chrysaphius. Eutyches, then, had the
means to impress his ideas on a very large world indeed and in theology
his ideas were Apollinarian. Whence bitter opposition to Theodoret and
all who shared his opinions, and a long campaign of mischief-making
throughout the East designed to undo the union of 433, to destroy the
remaining chiefs of the Antiochian school and to impose on all, not
only the Alexandrian theology as alone patient of an orthodox meaning,
but also the heresy that Our Lord was not truly a human being. To this
Theodoret replied in a work -- Eranistes (The Beggar-man) -- in which,
in dialogue form, without naming Eutyches he exposed and attacked the
peculiar form of Apollinarianism he professed. At the same time the
Bishop of Antioch, Theodoret's superior, appealed to the emperor to
suppress the new heresy.
How great was the influence of Eutyches at court was revealed
immediately. An edict appeared snubbing the Bishop of Antioch for his
intervention, while Irenaeus, Bishop of Tyre, another of the party, was
deposed and ordered to resume his lay status-an unprecedented
usurpation on the part of the State; whereupon, heartened by these
signs of imperial patronage, the intrigues spread ever more widely. One
of the most notable of the Antiochian survivors of the crisis of 431
was the Bishop of Edessa -- Ibas. He, too, had been a pupil of Theodore
of Mopsuestia and a friend of Nestorius. He had turned from Nestorius
in irritation and disgust, upon his refusal to accept the Theotokos
unreservedly, but, true disciple of Theodore, Ibas, while himself
orthodox enough, remained the sworn enemy of the Alexandrian mode of
theologising in what concerned the Incarnation. Towards Ibas, too, the
intrigues were then directed, as they were directed, once more, against
Theodoret and against the bishop who was their superior and the nominal
leader of their party, Domnus of Antioch.
In this new offensive Eutyches found a powerful ally in the new Bishop
of Alexandria, Dioscoros. Dioscoros comes down to us painted in the
darkest of colours, a kind of ecclesiastical brigand and blackmailer,
to whom no crime came amiss if it furthered his immediate ambition and
greed for money. When, later, Flavian of Constantinople died as the
result of the injuries received at the council where Dioscoros
presided, tongues were not lacking to say that he died at the
patriarch's own hands ! Be that as it may, he had already, in the four
years since he succeeded St. Cyril, won a name for carrying things with
a high hand, with a cruelty and unscrupulousness that seemed to show a
complete absence of heart. For some time, now, this sinister personage
had been in close relation with Eutyches. The monk had done him good
service at court. Now it would be for him to return the obligation; and
how eagerly he welcomed the opportunity !
He began by an imperious letter to Domnus questioning the orthodoxy of
Theodoret, and that of Domnus for tolerating Theodoret. Theodoret
received an order from the court to confine himself in Cyrrhus.
Everything seemed to threaten a crusade of Eutyches against the
Catholics of Syria and Asia Minor. Eutyches had even taken the step of
seeing what Rome would do for his party, representing his Catholic
victims as Nestorians, of course, when (November 8, 448) the whole
situation suddenly shifted. Eutyches was formally denounced to his own
bishop, Flavian, for the heretic he undoubtedly was. The tables were
turned. The hunter was now himself in the toils.
But a much more anxious man than Eutyches was the Bishop of
Constantinople! He had much to fear if he betrayed the faith, but more
-- in this world -- if he condemned the all-powerful monk. So far, all
through the crisis, he had striven to ignore the crisis. Now he must
act, particularly since the denunciation was the work of the bishop who
had been the first to denounce Nestorius, and who made every sign that,
once again, he would hold on, Eusebius of Dorylaeum.
Eutyches was cited to answer to the charge. He refused to come,
repeatedly. His health, his age, his vows, his holy rule, all were
alleged in turn, and when at last he did appear it was with a letter of
protection from the Emperor and with the highest officers of the court
for escort. He refused to give up his theory. There were not, in God
Incarnate, two natures, for a humanity such as ours Christ Our Lord had
not. And he quoted as his defence the formula dear to St. Cyril "One
incarnate nature of God the Word. " He had taken this formula in its
monophysite sense, and had developed it in his own way, for whatever
the consequences of St. Cyril’s use of the term physis, the substantial
error of Eutyches is his own. It finds no warrant in St. Cyril, nor did
the Egyptians who, after Chalcedon, broke away in the name of St. Cyril
claim Eutyches, too, as a patron. They were indeed as anxious to
condemn him as was Chalcedon itself.
Flavian's council -- thirty-two bishops in it -- made short work of
Eutyches once they had forced him into the open. Since he would not
consent to admit the two natures they deposed him, from his office and
from his orders, and declared him excommunicated. Given the
circumstances it was an act of very high courage. Flavian was to pay
for it with his life.
Eutyches of course appealed, first to Alexandria and then, the emperor
also writing on his behalf, to Rome. Dioscoros acted immediately.
Without even the formality of an enquiry, beyond the reading of
Eutyches' exposition of his belief, he declared the sentences passed on
him null and received him into communion. With the court, too,
Eutyches' good favour continued. He petitioned for a council to try his
appeal, the emperor consented. The council was summoned (March 30, 449)
to meet at Ephesus for the following first of August. Dioscoros was
summoned to it, and the pope was invited also.
It was the good fortune of the Church that at this moment the Roman See
was ruled by one of the only two of its bishops whom all later history
has agreed to style "the Great. " This was St. Leo I. He had, at this
time, been pope a matter of nine years and was a man close on fifty
years of age. He was gifted in the handling of men, and possessed of a
vast experience. For years before his election he had been employed in
important diplomatic missions by the emperor as well as by the popes.
He was the traditional Roman character at its best, the natural
instinctive ruler, and he added to this the less usual happy
circumstance that he was a skilled theologian, and for knowledge of the
merits and the history of this latest question in no way dependent on
the learning of others. But here, too, the Roman genius showed itself
in his leaning towards simple formulae to express what could be
expressed, and in his silence about matters which lay beyond human
powers of elucidation. It is also worth recalling that St. Leo wrote a
Latin of singular strength and clearness in which the whole man is
admirably mirrored. Of Eutyches he had already some knowledge, from the
attempt to trick him into patronising the heresy in the preceding year.
Now he had the monk's account of the trial, and the emperor's
recommendations too. Finally, but very tardily, as the pope reprovingly
noted, he received a report from Flavian.
St. Leo fell in with the emperor's plan for a council and appointed
three legates to represent him. To them he entrusted a series of
letters (June 13, 449). To the emperor he wrote that in a letter to
Flavian he was going to expound " what the Catholic Church universally
believes and teaches" on the matter. To Flavian he wrote the dogmatic
letter ever since famous as the Tome of St. Leo. It is written with all
his own vigorous clearness, and marked by that consciousness of his
office that is so evident in every action of his twenty-one years,
reign. Our Lord, it states, is only one person but possesses two
natures, the divine and the human. These natures are not confused, not
mixed, though the singleness of personality entails a communion in the
acts and properties of each distinct nature, the only Son of God having
been crucified and buried as the Creed declares. There is, in this
historic document, nothing whatever of speculative theology, nothing of
ingenious philosophical explanations to solve difficulties. The pope
shows no desire to explain the mystery, none at all to discuss rival
theories. He makes a judgment, gives a decision, re-affirms the
tradition, and all in his own characteristic style which fitted so well
the office and the occasion.
The council met -- a week late -- and in the same basilica which had
seen the condemnation of Nestorius in 431. There were a hundred and
twenty bishops present, and, by command of the emperor, Dioscoros
presided. St. Leo, to judge from his letters, although he had consented
to take part in the council had not expected very much from it. But
there developed immediately such a transformation that in the end the
pope could not see the council for the episcopal bandits who composed
and directed it--- in illo Ephesino non synodo sed latrocinio to quote
his own lapidary phrase. And as the Latrocinium, the den of thieves, of
Ephesus it has gone down to history.
The Latrocinium lasted a fortnight, the second session being held on
August 22. The first move of Dioscoros was to exclude forty-two of the
bishops, some because they had been judges in the previous trial of
Eutyches, others because they were suspected of being unfavourable to
his theories. What little opposition threatened to show itself
Dioscoros quelled with terrible threats of punishment to come,
deposition, exile, death; and to give the threats reality paraded the
soldiery placed at his disposal.
The pope's letters were ignored, the legates, Julius of Pozzuoli weakly
making no protest. [ ] Next Eutyches was allowed to make a vague
profession of faith in which there was no sign of his heresy. His
accuser was not allowed to speak, and the sentences on Eutyches were
all annulled. He was rehabilitated and restored to his monastery.
Finally there came what might be called the trial of Flavian. It could
only end in the way Dioscoros and Eutyches had planned when they worked
the summoning of the Council. He was deposed, condemned and marched off
to prison. All the bishops present signed the acquittal of Eutyches and
the sentence on Flavian, except St. Leo's legatees. In the second
session it was the turn of the Antiochian theology. St. Cyril’s famous
propositions, which had slept since the peace of 433, were brought out
once more, and confirmed and officially accepted as Catholic doctrine.
Ibas and Theodoret, like Flavian, were deposed and excommunicated -- in
their absence, for, needless to say, they had been most carefully kept
away from Ephesus. Luckily for themselves, perhaps, for such was the
ill-treatment to which Flavian was subjected that he died from it. The
legates managed to escape.
Once more in the East, then, heresy was supreme, the heresy of a
faction, of a small minority, and it was supreme because the
heresiarchs had the emperor's ear, and because that influence seemed to
a group of bishops themselves not heretical (as yet) an instrument for
the subjection of a rival group. The days when Eusebius of Nicomedia
“managed" Constantine seemed for the moment to have returned.
There remained, however, Rome, and St. Leo. Flavian, before he died,
had managed to draw up an appeal. Theodoret also wrote one in truly
magnificent style as became the great stylist of his time. There was,
too, the report of the legates when, ultimately, they had made their
way back. St. Leo did not lack for details. This was his opportunity to
write to the emperor, October, 449, protesting vigorously against the
mockery of the recent council, "an insult to the faith, a blow to the
entire Church” and demanding a truly general council in which bishops
from all over the world should sit, and in which Flavian's appeal could
be heard. He wrote also to the sister of Theodosius, the Empress
Pulcheria. From the emperor, two months later even, the pope had had
neither reply nor acknowledgement. At Christmas therefore he wrote once
more, and in the February of 450, at his urgent request, the emperor's
western colleague Valentinian III wrote, too, and Valentinian's mother
the Empress Galla Placidia. Finally, March 17, St. Leo himself wrote
yet again, and once more to Pulcheria. In April the emperor at last
replied. His letter is a defence of what was done at Ephesus, pointedly
ignoring the fact of the appeals from its victims to the pope,
ignoring, too, the reminders of Valentinian III's letters that the
Roman See is supreme in all matters of religion. Theodosius more or
less suggests that the East can regulate its own disputes in these
matters. Let the most revered Patriarch of Rome -- a new title he coins
for the Roman Bishop -- keep to the things that really concern him.
Meanwhile a " successor " to Flavian had been appointed, one of the
Bishop of Alexandria's henchmen, and had sent to St. Leo notice of his
election. It gave the pope a last opportunity to plead with Theodosius.
The pope explained that he could not enter into communion with “him who
now presides over the Church of Constantinople" until he is satisfied
of his orthodoxy. Such satisfaction he can give by notifying his assent
to the letter recently sent to Flavian -- the Tome. The two bishops who
bear the letter will receive his submission. This letter bears the date
of July 16, 450. Whether or not it would have had any more success than
the previous appeals no one can say, but before the two bishops reached
Constantinople the long deadlock was ended. Theodosius II was dead,
killed by a fall from his horse.
The situation changed immediately. The new ruler was the devotedly
Catholic Pulcheria, and the man she married shortly afterwards and
associated with herself in the Empire, Marcian, was Catholic too. The
exiled bishops were immediately recalled, the body of Flavian brought
back to Constantinople with all manner of solemnity. Eutyches was
placed in retirement, and gradually, one by one, the bishops of the
Latrocinium went back on their acclamations and votes. In all they had
done, they now explained, they had yielded only to fear. The council
for which St. Leo had pleaded, a truly universal council, would be
summoned and St. Leo was asked himself to preside (August to November,
450). The edict convoking the council is dated May 17, 451, and the
place and date are Nicea for September I following. St. Leo had already
decided how the servile bishops of the Latrocinium should be dealt
with. The rank and file were to be received back on easy terms, if they
acknowledged their wrongdoing. The case of the leaders, Dioscoros
notably, he reserved to himself. Now, accepting the plan of a new
council, St. Leo named four legates to represent him. One of the
legates is to preside. The council is not to discuss the matter of
faith involved. It is simply to accept the letter to Flavian and the
definition of faith it contains.
There were the usual delays. There was a change in the place of
meeting. The council finally opened at Chalcedon on October 8, 451,
with between five and six hundred bishops present -- so far as mere
numbers went it was easily the greatest council of antiquity, and the
greatest of all councils until that of the Vatican fourteen hundred
years later. Among the members of the council the Roman legates had the
first place. With them lay the initiative. They led the council. But
the actual presidency was in the hands of a body of eighteen high
officials of the court. Upon them lay the responsibility for
maintaining order within the Council. They were, compositely, the
Speaker of its discussions. The council’s first care was to revise the
proceedings of the Latrocinium. Dioscoros was removed from the seat he
occupied as Bishop of Alexandria, and, as one of those to be judged,
placed in the middle of the floor. Theodoret, reinstated by St. Leo's
orders, was next introduced and his appearance gave rise to the
council’s first "scene. " Curses and execrations from the Alexandrians,
cheers and acclamations from his own supporters, greeted him as he took
his place. Then the minutes of the Latrocinium, amid further
demonstrations of emotion, were read out by the notaries and the
question being put by the presiding officials the council declared
Flavian's condemnation of Eutyches in 448 to have been in accord with
the traditional faith, and its own.
But the emperor's representatives were not content with this. They
asked the council for a new declaration of faith. Upon which the
bishops declared that the Tome of St. Leo was sufficient. The Tome was
then read, in company with the creed of Nicea and St. Cyril’s two
letters to Nestorius. The bishops cheered and cheered again the
successive declarations, and the perfect accord between the two
theologians, Roman and Alexandrian, between the Tome and the
definitions of Ephesus 431. When the Tome itself was read their
enthusiasm broke all bounds. "Behold the faith of the Fathers! the
faith of the Apostles! So do we too, all of us, believe, all who are
orthodox believe the same! Anathema to whoever believes otherwise! Thus
through Leo has Peter spoken! "
Dioscoros, in the next session, was tried and deposed. He had protected
the heretical Eutyches, had suppressed at the Council of 449 St. Leo's
message to the council, and, latterly, had excommunicated St. Leo
himself. St. Leo had left it to the council to sentence Dioscoros, and
the council now left it to St. Leo's representatives. " Then,
Paschasinus, with his fellow legates, Lucentius and Boniface ' holding
the place of Leo the most holy and blessed Patriarch of Great Rome and
Archbishop' solemnly recited a summary of the crimes of the Bishop of
Alexandria and concluded: ' Wherefore the most holy and most blessed
archbishop of great and elder Rome, by us and the present most holy
synod, together with the thrice- blessed and praiseworthy Peter the
Apostle, who is the rock and base of the Catholic Church, and the
foundation of the orthodox faith, has stripped him of the episcopal and
of all sacerdotal dignity; wherefore this most holy and great synod
will vote what is in accordance with the canons against the aforesaid
Dioscoros. ' " [ ]
In 431 Rome had deposed the Bishop of Constantinople, and a General
Council had carried out her decision. Now, twenty years later, Rome had
similarly deposed a Bishop of Alexandria and a second General Council
had once more, unanimously, accepted the decision because of the see
whence it came.
The fifth session was marked by a striking protest against imperial
interference in matters of Church discipline. "We are all of the same
opinion, " the council made known to its lay presidents "that
government of the Church by imperial edicts must cease. The Canons are
there. Let them be followed. Upon you lies the responsibility. "
The work of the council was now finished, the Tome of St. Leo solemnly
accepted, the outrage of 449 made good, the chief criminal punished.
The bishops might have dispersed, but the emperor still wished for a
declaration of faith, a new creed, a new rule by which to measure
orthodox and heretic. To this the council objected; the Tome of St.
Leo, the bishops declared, was a sufficient statement of the true
doctrine. As for the legates, it was in their instructions that they
were not to consent to a reopening of the discussion about the point of
faith. But the emperor's representatives insisted, and a profession of
faith was drafted, and put to the council at its sixth session, October
22, 451. Most of the bishops liked it well enough, but the bishops of
the East -- the Antioch group -- protested; so, also, did the papal
legates. The draft had, in fact, omitted all reference to the Tome of
St. Leo, and in place of the Roman formulary, "in two natures", it
contained the ambiguity favoured by Dioscoros, "of two natures". The
new creed was, seemingly, as carefully ambiguous as all the creeds of
State manufacture since the days of Constantine. It was designed no
doubt as a statement of Catholic doctrine, but designed also to avoid
any provocation of Monophysite [ ] opposition, a creed which Catholic
and Monophysite might sign together. St. Leo's legates would have none
of it. Either the Tome of St. Leo -- or they would go back to Rome, and
another council there would decide the matter. Whereupon a tremendous
eagerness to conciliate the legates, and a commission to arrange a
compromise. Finally there came forth a lengthy formulary indeed. The
creeds of Nicea and Constantinople (381) to begin it, then an
acceptance of the letters of St. Cyril to Nestorius so that no
Alexandrian could say that Chalcedon in condemning the heresy of St.
Cyril’s successor had condemned St. Cyril himself, and finally, for the
theological dispute which had occasioned the Council, an explicit
acceptance of the Tome of St. Leo, now declared to be “in harmony with
the confession of the great apostle Peter, a barrier against all evil
thinkers, the bulwark of orthodox faith. " Then followed the formulary
stating the faith -- it was in the terminology of St. Leo's letter.
Rome then, in St. Leo, had triumphed once more, the faith over heresy,
thanks to Rome; and it was in the clarity of the Roman phraseology that
the belief was proclaimed. But this had not been achieved easily, nor
was the majority in the council wholeheartedly enthusiastic about the
last part of the business-which involved the victory of a
non-Alexandrian manner of speech over the terminology dear to St.
Cyril. The greater part of the bishops had been, for a lifetime, too
sympathetic to St. Cyril’s way of describing the mystery to accept
another way easily or wholeheartedly -- even though they accepted that
it was a true way of describing it. Already during the very council, in
this spirit in which so many of the bishops accepted the formulary of
the faith, the dissension was evident that was presently to inaugurate
two centuries of acute disturbance and the loss of whole races to the
Church. It was only at the emperor's insistence, that these bishops had
finally consented to promulgate, in a terminology so repugnant to them,
the faith which they held in common with the rest. Had it not been for
the emperor, the question would never have arisen; the doctrinal work
of the council would have ended - - as the pope intended -- with its
acceptance of the Tome as the Catholic faith.
In a lengthy letter to St. Leo the council gave an account of its work.
Our Lord, they said, had commissioned the Apostles to teach all
nations. “Thou then hast come even to us. To us thou hast been the
interpreter of the voice of the blessed Peter, to 211 thou hast brought
the blessing of his faith.” Five hundred and twenty bishops were met in
Council; “Thou didst guide us, as doth the head the body's limbs. "
Dioscoros has been fitly punished. Who more criminal than he, who, to
the wickedness of reinstating Eutyches, “dared in his folly to menace
him to whom the Saviour made over the care of His vineyard, Your
Holiness we mean, to excommunicate him whose charge it is to unite the
Church's body.”
St. Leo had seen orthodoxy vindicated and the privilege of his see
proclaimed as never so strikingly before. But not all the council’s
proceedings were likely to please him. And the council knew it. The
council had, once more, following the unhappy precedent of 381, set
itself to heighten the prestige of the see where now the imperial
capital was established. To the famous “primacy of honour" voted
Constantinople in 381 Chalcedon recognised considerable extensions. By
its ninth, seventeenth and twenty-eighth canons the council gave legal
consecration to all the jurisdiction which had accrued to
Constantinople, since 381, though the illegal usurpations of its
bishops. The bishops of Constantinople had for seventy years been the
spiritual pirates of the Eastern Church. One after another the
different metropolitan sees had seen their rights of jurisdiction
invaded and captured. Now Chalcedon ratified all that had been done,
blessed the spoiler, and gave him, for the future, the right to spoil
as he would. The new rights, too, would develop; and to Constantinople
would accrue, on this unecclesiastical principle of the city's worldly
importance, such an importance in the Church that, by the side of it,
the ancient traditional apostolic prestige of Alexandria and Antioch
would be as nothing, and the Roman See, in appearance, hardly be more
than an equal.
It had clearly been law since 381 that suits between a bishop and his
metropolitan should be judged by the primate of the civil diocese in
which the litigating prelates lived. The innovation was now made that
the judge was either the primate or the Bishop of Constantinople. This
was to hold good for the three (civil) dioceses of Thrace, Pontus and
Asia. The "primacy of honour " was now recognised as one of
jurisdiction in all those regions where the perseverance of the
capital’s bishops had already established this as a fact.
The twenty-eighth canon begins by confirming the canon of 381. It goes
on to say that Rome owes its traditional primacy to the city's one-time
civil importance, and that Constantinople being now the imperial city,
to that see too certain privileges are due. Wherefore the council
grants to the see of Constantinople the right to ordain the
metropolitans of the (civil) dioceses of Pontus, Asia and Thrace, and
of all the missionary bishops depending on them. Constantinople is to
be in these regions what Alexandria is in Egypt, what Rome is in the
West, the effective supervisor of all the other sees. The Roman legates
protested, but the council approved, and in its synodal letter to St.
Leo made a special request for the confirmation of the novelty. The
emperor wrote in the same sense, and the Bishop of Constantinople too.
But St. Leo held firm. In a series of letters to the emperor and to the
empress, to the Bishop of Constantinople too, he complained sadly of
the spirit of ambition which bade fair to trouble anew the peace of the
Church, and suggested that the Bishop of Constantinople should be
content that his see, "which no power could make an apostolic see", was
indeed the see of the empire's capital. The new canons are contrary to
the only rule the pope knows, that of Nicea, and he will not consent to
any innovation so injurious to the rights of ancient, undoubted
apostolic sees such as Antioch and Alexandria. Let the Bishop of
Constantinople obey the Law as he knows it, or he too may find himself
cut off from the Church. The innovations then are void, of no effect
and "by the authority of blessed Peter the Apostle, in sentence
altogether final, once and for all, we quash them. "
Nor was this the end of the pope's protests. To safeguard ancient
rights against further encroachment on the part of the parvenu
authority at Constantinople, and to keep himself informed as to the
reception of the faith of his Tome throughout the East, St. Leo now
installed at the imperial court a permanent representative. This was
Julian, Bishop of Kos, skilled in both Latin and Greek, Italian by
birth, Roman by education, Bishop of a Greek see.
Finally March 21, 453, St. Leo replied to the synodal letter of the
council. He notes the work accomplished by the council as twofold.
First of all the acceptance of the defined faith and the revision of
the outrages of 449. This was the purpose for which the council had
been called and to the council’s proceedings in this respect the pope
gives all possible confirmation and praise. But the council had gone
further, taken upon itself to make other decisions and regulations. Now
no matter what the authority invoked to sanction these proceedings, no
matter what the council, anything in them that contravenes the canons
of Nicea is null and void. Of these canons as implying a derogation
from the rights of his own see, there is not in all these letters a
word: not a hint that St. Leo so construed the innovations. But such
innovations are inspired by worldly ambition, and this, if not checked,
must open the way to endless new troubles among the bishops. Therefore
St. Leo stands by the old order, the traditional rule. The emperor
assented, and finally, by a disavowal of his own share in the measure,
and by a letter which implied submission to the papal ruling, the
Bishop of Constantinople, too, made his peace. " Better certainly had
the Bishop of Constantinople said plainly 'We'll say no more about the
decision of Chalcedon which the Apostolic See will not confirm. ' He
does not say it. He contents himself with the protestation that he has
done nothing in this matter to deserve the reproach of insincerity or
ambition. St. Leo believed the cause safe for which he had battled so
gallantly, so tenaciously: he asked nothing more, neither of the Bishop
of Constantinople whose disavowal seemed to suffice, nor of the emperor
whose sincerity was beyond doubt. " [ ]
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