Luke Rivington, The Primitive Church and the See of Peter

(London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1894)

Chapter XXVI

The Byzantine Plot

Electronic version Copyright © 1997, Classica Media, Inc.

It had been well for the Church if the council had now dispersed. But it was not to be. The bishops who remained now engaged in a project which had long agitated the minds of a few leading spirits.

For more than eighty years Constantinople had nursed a thought which was destined to change the course of ecclesiastical history, and plunge her into a permanent schism. Photius, who consummated the schism between the East and West in the ninth century, claimed for the Bishop of Constantinople the title and position of ‘Universal Bishop.’ The Bishop of Rome had been such, according to his theory, until the capital of the empire passed from Rome to Byzantium. But the position of universal bishop was based, according to Photins, on the secular grandeur of the city; so that when Constantine left Rome it was only a matter of time for Byzantium to succeed to the honours of the original capital.

The difference between this theory and that which obtained in the fifth century involved the whole question of the property attributed to the Church in the Nicene Creed under the title ‘Apostolic.’ Under that title, in the mind of the early Church, was included the government of the Church by the Apostles and their successors; understanding by ‘the Apostles,’ as the primitive Church did, a body of men who were associated together by our Lord under a visible head. ‘It has been known to all ages,’ so it was said at Ephesus, ‘and it is doubtful to none, that the blessed Apostle Peter, the Prince and head of the Apostles, the rock and foundation of the Catholic Church, received from our Saviour the keys of the Kingdom.’ And the see of that Apostle, consecrated by the blood of the two Apostles, himself and St. Paul, became, in the words of St. Irenæus and St. Cyprian, the principal or ruling Church, that which, according to St. Ignatius of Antioch, writing in the second century, ‘presided over the Covenant of love,’ and in which, according to St. Augustine, ‘the principalship had ever been in force,’ and was designated in the terminology of the whole Church, East and West, in the fifth century, ‘the Apostolic See.’

The chasm between the teaching of the schismatic Bishop of Constantinople, Photius, in the ninth century, and his predecessor in the see in the fifth century at Chalcedon, is exactly expressed in the words of the latter when he said to Leo ‘The see of Constantinople has for its parent your own Apostolic See, having specially joined itself thereunto [1].’

But although Anatolius thus expressed the true relation between Rome and Constantinople, his action at Chalcedon prepared the way for the unhappy schism into which the East eventually plunged, under the guidance of the miserable Photius, with his claim to be ‘universal bishop.’ The term ‘universal bishop’ is one which might be properly used to express the relation of the Apostolic See to the rest of the Church, but even so it needed a certain care lest it should be thought to mean that other bishops were but legates or vice-bishops of the one universal bishop. In fear of this meaning being attached to the term, St. Gregory repudiated it. It was, however, freely used at the Council of Chalcedon. And there is no fear of any Catholic nowadays giving it such an unorthodox interpretation as St. Gregory detected in John’s use of the term, and so there is no ground for refusing it to the occupant of the See of Rome. But on the lips of a bishop of Constantinople it necessarily implied a heresy, for it also implied the idea that the government of the Church was not apostolic but Erastian. The earthly emperor, according to this theory, by moving his capital, moved the centre of the Church’s unity. So Photius argued. Neither he nor his predecessors were really prepared to carry out their theory to its logical issue, for, as a Sovereign Pontiff asked of his predecessors, were they prepared to call Ravenna, or Gangra, or Sirmium, the centre of the Church’s government when the emperor made these, as he did, the centre of his rule?

The attack on the original constitution of the Church, which culminated, under favourable political circumstances, in the schismatic action of the East under Photius, was commenced in fact at the Council of Constantinople. There the bishops assembled under Nectarius had decreed a certain precedency of honour to the ‘New Rome,’ as Byzantine pride delighted to call the city of Constantine.

But they had not so much as ventured to send their canon to the West. It was a purely local arrangement, not sanctioned even by the rest of the East [2]. But it was continually being acted upon, and the titular precedency presently grew into a very real jurisdiction. Constantinople, being the centre of political and commercial interests, continually saw bishops from various parts staying in ber midst, and convenience led to the custom of settling many an ecclesiastical dispute in meetings [3] composed of the Bishop of Constantinople and those bishops who happened to be in the imperial city. It came also to be sometimes a matter of convenience and sometimes a matter of secular advantage for bishops to be consecrated at Constantinople. And what began as an occasional practice attained in course of time to the rank of a regular custom, attended, as such customs usually are, with pecuniary advantages to the see that thus became an increasing centre [4].

The lust of power, so infectious in an imperial centre, and sometimes a certain immediate disciplinary gain to the Church, had thus led to claims in the way of jurisdiction which found no countenance even in the third canon of the Council of Constantinople. Large provinces of the Church in the East had come under the practical jurisdiction of the Bishop of Constantinople, though not without struggles and alternations of submission and resistance.

Had Constantinople remained satisfied even with this, her relations to the autonomous eparchies of Asia Minor and Pontus and Thrace might have been capable of adjustment. But she was continually being brought into contact with the ‘greater sees,’ as they were called, of Alexandria and Antioch. And their position of recognised superiority stood in the way of that programme of universal domination in the East which was now looming before her mind. She had made an enormous stride in the third canon of the Council of Constantinople. By the arrangement there proposed she took honorary precedence of Alexandria and Antioch. But this canon, having received no ecclesiastical sanction, had done no more than keep before the minds of the Eastern bishops her ideal of Church government.

It must not, however, be supposed that that ideal as at present conceived included any real equality of jurisdiction with Rome herself. Constantinople wished to be in the East what Rome was as patriarch of the West. [Patriarchias klerousthe] was St. Gregory of Nazianzus’ condemnation of the East. The relation of Rome to the whole Church as the See of St. Peter—as in a peculiar and inalienable sense, the Apostolic See—was too firmly rooted in the mind of the Christian world for any idea of subverting that to enter as yet into even Byzantine schemes of exaltation; that was an after-thought. To be the Patriarch of the East over Alexandria and over Antioch was the summit of Constantinople’s present ambition. And, as we shall see, Constantinople did not dream of the possibility of really securing this object of her ambition, except with the permission of Rome, as representing the blessed Apostle Peter [5].

Now, Constantinople had met with more than one serious rebuff at the Council of Chalcedon. In discussing the complaint of Photius of Tyre a matter had come before the Fathers which touched the influence of Constantinople in her most sensitive part. The question had arisen whether the meetings of the Bishop of Constantinople and the other bishops resident or sojourning in the city could be called a synod, and the bishops at Chalcedon had refused to say that they could. This was throwing a serious slight on Constantinople’s method of action at its very core.

Again, the bishops of Asia had desired that the bishops of Ephesus should not be ordained at Constantinople, and the council had refused to support Constantinople in this her growing custom.

Once more, the bishops bad refused to give a definite sanction to Constantinople’s custom of ordaining a bishop for Basilinopolis.

The time had therefore come for Constantinople to make one desperate effort to gain a quasi-synodical sanction for the position which she claimed as second only to Rome. Everything favoured her ambitious project. The bishops had left Chalcedon by the hundred, and amongst those that were left there was not one that might not be counted on for either assent or silence.

Of the two ‘greater sees’ Alexandria was vacant, and Antioch was occupied by a partisan of Anatolins, who owed to him his irregular elevation, which had been pardoned by Rome only (as Leo said) ‘for the sake of peace.’ [6]

Constantinople, therefore, had nothing to fear from these. She only needed a lack of scrupulous fairness on her own part to enable her to press the matter to a successful issue under these favourable circumstances. But further, she could count upon at least the silence of another leading prelate, viz. Juvenal of Jerusalem, who had himself just gained the object of his ambition for the last twenty years in the compromise by which he had wrested three provinces from Antioch. He at any rate was not in a position to complain of any illicit stretch of jurisdiction on the part of another. And Juvenal and Anatolius had a further bond in that both had come under the influence of Dioscorus and coquetted with Eutychianism. Then the Bishop of Heraclea, the Primate of Thrace, was absent, and he was very closely concerned in the project that Constantinople had before her of extending her actual jurisdiction as well as securing the semblance of synodical sanction for titular precedence. This primate was represented by Lucian, who was so friendly to Anatolius that he was sent by him to Rome on this very matter. Ephesus, again, of supreme importance, as one of the exarchies to be robbed of its autonomy, was vacant, Bassian and Stephen having been deposed. Thalassius of Csesarea was there, but did not subscribe. The Illyrians were not there, not even Thessalonia, neither was Ancyra, Corinth, Nicomedia, Cos, or Iconium, all of them important centres. In fact, the little knot of bishops whom Constantinople gathered round herself by various means could not by any stretch of language be called a representative ecclesiastical body. Moreover they had no leave from Rome to discuss the question now forced upon the bishops by Constantinople; it was no part of the council’s programme. It was simply a plot against the Church’s order, with hardly a name that would command the confidence of the Church except Eusebius of Dorylium. The imperial commissioners were asked to assist at the session, but they refused. The legates also withdrew. There was not a single Western bishop present. But these ‘astute’ Orientals, as the African bishop Facundus called them, drew up a canon which flung the Nicene settlement as to precedence to the winds, and assigned, on the one hand, the first place in the East to Constantinople, and on the other hand gave her jurisdiction over Asia Minor, Thrace, and Pontus Their metropolitans were to be deprived of their position as left to them by the Nicene Fathers, and Constantinople was to be not only New Rome in the civil order, but in the ecclesiastical hierarchy she was to stand second to Rome in point of titular precedence, and at the same time to receive an enormous extension of her jurisdiction in the East. She had hoped and tried to gain the confirmation and ordination of the provincial bishops as well as of the metropolitans, but owing to the opposition of some metropolitans she failed in this part of her project.

On the following day the Papal legates demanded an explanation of what had been done in their absence. They had absented themselves on the technical ground that after the definition of faith had been drawn up, and the matter of the lapsed bishops dealt with, their commission ended. But it turned out that they had also received orders from Rome to oppose any attempt at altering the relations of bishops on the ground of the civil status of their sees. Leo was already well aware of the ambitious projects of Constantinople.

Aetius, the archdeacon, now did his best to purge the action of the bishops of its irregularity. He said that it must be owned that the matters of faith had been decided in a fitting way, but pleaded that it was customary to take in hand other necessary matters; that they had asked the legates to be present, but without success, and that they had received the permission of the imperial commissioners to proceed with the business. The legates, however, maintained, and were probably justified in maintaining, that the bishops had signed in fear; that the proposed canon contravened the Nicene settlement; that it was professedly grounded on canons which had not been enrolled amongst those of the Church [7]; and, lastly, that if they had been benefiting by the said canon up till now, what need of anything further?—and if they had not, why do they now apply for sanction for that which is an infringement of the canons?—reasoning which was unanswerable.

In consequence of this mention of the canons, the commissioners requested that each side should read the canons on which they relied. The legates accordingly read the sixth canon of Nicæa, in which Alexandria and Antioch, and not Constantinople, come after Rome. Aetius is then supposed to have read first a slightly different version of the same canon, and then the third of Constantinople. But this is in the highest degree improbable, since his supposed reading of that version makes nothing for the point at issue. The rise of Constantinople took place after the Council of Nicæa; no one pretends, or pretended, that the Nicene canons in any way assisted Constantinople in its present aims. It was then an inferior see, and left so by the Nicene Fathers. It was on the third canon of Constantinople that these bishops took their stand, as their resolution in the previous session shows. The Nicene canon was their difficulty. Indeed, in one of the oldest versions of the Acts of Chalcedon that we possess, this recitation of the sixth canon by Aetius does not appear [8]. There are also other indications that the text has been tampered with here; for between the supposed recitation of the sixth canon and that of the third of Constantinople occurs the statement that ‘the same secretary read from the same codex the synodicon of the second synod,’ which Mansi rightly transfers to the margin, as an impossible statement to have occurred in the original. The Council of Constantinople was not called ‘the second synod’ until after the Council of Chalcedon had placed it in that rank. The expression, therefore, belongs to a later period than the original of the Council of Chalcedon. Accordingly, Rusticus, who had before him very early manuscripts, omits this expression, although the sixth canon appears in his manuscript. The insertion, therefore, had been made belore his time, doubtless, as has been suggested above, by a Greek scribe, who, seeing a Greek version of the sixth canon in the margin, put it into the text, and some after copyist inserted the remark about the second synod. Dr. Bright refers to the expression ‘œcumenical,’ used by the council of 382 of the council of 381 [9]; but this could at that date only mean that it was a council of all the East, and it is certain that it had not yet been reckoned by the Church in general as the second synod. It would have been a simple impertinence to call it the second synod before it had received such a designation from the whole Church. Hefele seems to have misunderstood the Ballerini’s argument, in urging that it was at Chalcedon that the Council of Constantinople took its place as second in the general councils. This is, of course, true; but the original of this Act could hardly have started the phrase [10].

What, however, is of greater importance is the conclusion which the imperial commissioners now drew from the whole discussion. The legates had quoted the sixth Nicene canon, beginning ‘Rome has always held the primacy,’ and had read onwards about Alexandria and Antioch. The Archdeacon of Constantinople had read the third Canon of Constantinople. Several of the bishops had taken the side of Constantinople, and expressed their perfect willingness to subordinate their sees to that of the imperial city; Eusebius of Ancyra, however, whilst he proclaimed his willingness to do the same, protesting against the pecuniary exactions with which this subordination had been accompanied. The commissioners decided that two things were plain from the Acts and depositions—first, that the primacy ([proteia]—the very word used in the sixth Nicene canon, as cited by the Papal legate) belonged to Old Rome. About this there had been no question, and it is obvious that the imperial commissioners could decide nothing about that. But, secondly, they decided that New Rome ought to have—not a primacy such as Rome had, which the whole history of the council proves to have involved jurisdiction in the minds of all the bishops—but the same honorary privileges, as Rome, besides her primacy, and as a consequence of it, also possessed. Rome, they had said, possessed two things—honorary precedence and primacy; Constantinople ought to possess in the East that honorary precedence which Rome possessed over the whole Church [11].

Thus Constantinople laid the foundation of her desired patriarchate over the East, and supplied the premiss from which Photius was one day to draw the conclusion in claiming universal jurisdiction.

It is difficult to understand how Mr. Gore could manage to see ‘Rome’s self-assertion’ at the bottom of all this. Canon Bright also reproduces with approval the sentence in which Mr. Gore makes the strange statement, that it is ‘more than probable [sic] that the self-assertion of Rome excited the jealousy of the East, and thus Eastern bishops secretly felt that the cause of Constantinople was theirs.’ It must have been very ‘secretly’ felt, for there is not a solitary allusion in their speeches to such an idea, whilst they are from end to end of the council brimful of acknowledgments of the service which Leo had rendered to the Church of God. So far as the records go, the bishops, whatever they ‘secretly felt,’ were open in their avowals that, to use their own words, ‘God has given the synod a champion against every error in the person of the Roman bishop, who, like the ardent Peter, desires to lead everyone to God.’ (Synod’s letter to Marcian.) St. Nicolas said to Photius, of the crisis which arose in con-sequence of the Latrocinium, ‘If the great Leo had not been divinely moved to open his mouth, the Christian religion would have perished outright.’

Mr. Gore’s suggestion bears, indeed, no serious relation to the facts. It may be fairly said of it, as Canon Bright has said of a contention of the Ballerini, mentioned above, that ‘nothing but an intelligible bias could account for a suggestion so futile.’ [12] The ‘self-assertion’ was all on the part of Constantinople.

The legates entered their protest on the technical ground that the Apostolic See had not been consulted as to the discussion of this question [13], and that the proposal was a violation of the Nicene canons. They ask that the proceedings of the previous day be cancelled, or else that their opposition be recorded, ‘so that we may know what we ought to report to the Apostolic man, the Pope of the Universal Church, so that he himself may pass sentence on the injury done to his see or on the overthrow of the canons’—the injury done to the Holy See by debating the question without its consent, and the overthrow of the canons by displacing Alexandria in favour of Constantinople.

In spite, however, of the legates’ protest the bishops voted the canon.

The matter could not, of course, stand there. Comparatively speaking, as we have seen, they were but a handful of bishops [14], most of them of sees grouped round Constantinople, and their leaders far from enjoying the esteem of the Catholic world. Their canon was the work ‘rather of Greek sophists than of Fathers of the Church.’ [15] They had adroitly tacked on their new claim over three large metropolitanates (which by the Nicene Council had been left autonomous) to the third canon of Constantinople, so that the new and old parts read like one, in which, as Canon Bright remarks, they were more ‘astute than candid.’ It was not true, as they asserted, that the Fathers (if the Nicene Fathers were meant) ‘gave’ her (patriarchal [16]) privileges to the See of Rome; they only recognised what was already ancient. It was not true that what the Nicene Fathers recognised as ancient custom was due to the secular position of the See of Rome. Her privileges were settled by herself as See or St. Peter. It was not true that the Fathers of Constantinople had bestowed anything in the way of jurisdiction, but merely the second rank in the way of honorary precedence. It was not true that Constantinople had any right over Pontus, Thrace, and Asia Minor. The bishops, moreover, enunciated a principle, which had its natural sequel in the present subservience of the Greek schism to the Czar on the one hand and to the Sultan on the other [17]. It so mixed up the movements of the Church and the State as to secularise the former and ensconce the latter in the position of the real determinant of the Church’s jurisdiction. No wonder that only about 150 bishops out of the original 600 could be induced to sign [Note: Rivington made an error here. The correct number is 192 signatories.], and that St. Leo could fearlessly call it an ‘extorted subscription,’ even after some few at the session had denied that they were compelled to subscribe. St. Leo knew that his legates were right in their estimate of the kind of influence that had been brought to bear upon these subservient bishops.

The matter, then, could not rest there. Indeed these bishops themselves did not entertain the idea that their act was final; and accordingly they set to work to gain a favourable decision from Leo, in spite of his legates’ protest. They had the emperor on their side, and the game was worth pursuing; for even if they lost in the present, they had taken a step forward for the future.

It is certainly astonishing that writers who are so full of Rome’s supposed ‘self-assertion’ and ‘exorbitant claims’ should not only pardon but defend these arrogant pretensions of Constantinople. Yet it is the case that the most universally accepted writers amongst Anglicans have for the last three centuries taken their stand on this canon, and seen in it an acceptance, by the Church, of the principle that Rome owed all her privileges, not to her relationship to the Apostle Peter, and through him to our Lord’s institution, but to her secular position as the capital of the Roman Empire. How, it may be asked, can the Church be identified with these Eastern adventurers, men whose antecedents were in almost every case sufficiently suspicious to deprive their judgment on such a matter of half its value? Anatolius, originally secretary to Dioscorus, and wavering in the Eutychian troubles; Juvenal, one of the leaders at the Robber Synod, and himself involved in an ambitious scheme for the stretch of his jurisdiction; Maximus, who had been irregularly ordained by Anatolius himself, his ordination only sanctioned by Leo for the sake of peace; Mexandria vacant; and the rest, most of them, in no position to withstand the pressure which the legates asserted had been put upon them by Constantinople-how can these be taken to represent the Church?

It may be asked, how did the Emperor Marcian come to second Constantinople’s ambition? Perhaps the true answer is, that he saw in the proposed arrangement certain conveniences which commended it to his mind from a political point of view [18]. And it was undoubtedly the case that the proposed arrangement had something in its favour, and might have passed muster had it not conflicted with a higher principle of action. As things then stood, Constantinople having become the actual centre of life in the East, it was certainly a natural position for a politician to adopt, that the ecclesiastical apparatus should adapt itself to the new circumstances, and that the London of the East should become the root and womb of the Church in the future. But Marcian did not see that another principle was being introduced, which, if admitted, must have been subversive of the Church’s spiritual and supernatural order, as, indeed, it proved to be under Peter the Czar. When Marcian saw this—indeed, as soon as he found that St. Leo was opposed to the arrangement—-he dropped his patronage of the scheme [19]. But the bishops braced themselves to the work of persuading Leo that their canon was harmless and worthy of his necessary sanction.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE EASTERNS’ RECOGNITION OF PAPAL SUPREMACY

No one will deny the incomparable importance of the letter which was now addressed to Leo by the remnant of the synod concerning their new proposal. The twenty-eighth Canon of Chalcedon is really the sheet-anchor of the Anglican position. Relying as that position does on the first four general councils, it is maintained that the judgment of the Council of Chalcedon, supposed to be expressed in this canon, is sufficient to establish the theory that the primacy of the Bishop of Rome was considered in the East to be due, not to his relation to St. Peter, but to the imperial position of the city of Rome. The belief in any real relationship to St. Peter postulates a divine origin for the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, for it involves the belief that our Lord included that primacy in His words to the Apostle [20]. And if the primacy be in any sense divine, it is indispensable. No amount of misconduct on the part of its representatives can justify us in altering the lines laid down by our Divine Lord Himself. But this twenty-eighth canon proves, so it is confidently asserted, that the Bishop of Rome only held a certain primacy by reason of his being Bishop of the Imperial City. He was, so it is said, only primus inter pares. Constantinople (it is urged) was placed by this canon in the second position on a principle which proves that Rome’s primacy was one of mere presidency, of honour ‘without definite powers’—in a word that the Bishop of Rome was only the ‘First Patriarch.’

Now it is important to remember that the Bishop of Rome was the first patriarch, and this canon recognises him as such. There is no dispute about this. Leo XIII. is to-day not only Bishop of Rome, but Patriarch of the West. The fault of the so-called twenty-eighth canon, therefore, did not lie in its recognition of Rome’s patriarchal position; its mistake lay in attributing even that position purely to her connection with the imperial city, whereas the matter really stood thus:—St. Peter selected Rome, and Rome was the capital of the empire. His successors reaped the fruit of his wise choice, and utilised, as they were meant to do, the advantages of a natural centre. Ecclesiastical Rome was able to be what she was because she was the See of Peter; she was also able to do her work at first as she did because her influence radiated from the metropolis of the empire. Her patriarchal sway was subordinate to her apostolical jurisdiction; but it was a reality. It is difficult to draw the line between the apostolical and patriarchal elements of her position, for the latter is necessarily overshadowed, and coloured, and informed by the former; but her relationship to Peter, the prince and head of the Apostles, is clear, and occupied an unmistakable place in the thoughts of the bishops at Chalcedon. It was expressed emphatically and in the most precise terms by the comparatively few bishops who passed this canon in favour of Constantinople. The terms which they use in their letter to Leo cannot, without doing violence to the laws which govern men’s minds, be attributed simply to flattery or general Eastern courtesy. This, which is the favourite Anglican explanation of these bishops’ statements, is excluded by the circumstances which produced the letter [21].

The bishops were, it is true, concerned to flatter St. Leo if possible; they wanted to gain something from him. But what they wanted to gain was of that nature that the particular terms used by them were the last in the world that they would have dreamt of addressing to him at this juncture, merely with a view to flatter, even if they supposed that Leo was the man to be seduced by honeyed words in a matter of such supreme importance. Consider the circumstances under which they wrote. Leo had shown himself above all things zealous for the canons of the Church. It was this trait which the Emperor Marcian singled out for praise in his encomium of the Pontiff during this whole transaction. And the bishops at Chalcedon who passed the twenty-eighth canon were, as the African bishop Facundus described them in the next century, ‘astute as serpents.’ Is it to be supposed that these astute bishops would give away their case by telling St. Leo that he was in precisely that position which their canon, according to the Anglican interpretation, was concerned to deny or ignore? If they admitted that St. Leo was their ‘head,’ they were admitting that their position next after him was secondary in the sense of subordinate, and that their canon was valueless without his sanction. If they asserted that St. Leo was the instrument whereby the teaching of the Prince of the Apostles was made known to them, they were giving away the whole position which Anglicans consider essential to their own security. Complimentary terms which expressed, in plain Greek and Latin, a truth which Leo had all along maintained and acted upon, cease to be complimentary in the ordinary sense of the term; they denote the acceptance of the position.

Now the bishops did tell St. Leo that ‘he was their head, and they but members.’ What could be their idea in using, by way of compliment, such an expression as that? Did they suppose that Leo would not take them at their word and treat them as members and act as their head?

Then, again, they did tell St. Leo that he was their ‘leader’ in the council, through his legates. They used the very word which our Lord used to His Apostles when He told them that there should be a leader amongst them, and that their leader should be as He Himself was in their midst—‘Even as I am amongst you’—not lording it over them, but teaching, guiding, governing. Did they suppose that Leo would smile at the term and take no advantage of it?

Again, they did tell St. Leo that he had been to them ‘the interpreter or the voice of Peter.’ It was, on the Anglican supposition, exactly the wrong occasion to say that. They were not Eastern heathens addressing heathen rajahs, or Hindu suppliants before their conquerors. They were Christian bishops—not, it is true, the best specimens; but still, all Eastern as they were, they had not lost all Christian sense of truth in spite of their Eastern cunning. On the other hand, they knew that it was the teaching of Leo that he was the successor of Peter, and as such the ruler of the Christian Church. And they were not so utterly devoid of all sense of truth, and of ordinary common sense, as to suppose that in putting such a weapon into Leo’s hand as their own recognition of his position as successor of Peter, they would advance the cause of Constantinople. Whereas if the Christian world held that Leo was their head, their language was natural, for then they lost nothing by saying so.

Again they did tell St. Leo that ‘the vineyard had been entrusted to him by the Saviour,’ in a way which implied that he stood in a different relation to that vineyard from the rest of the bishops. And they did tell him that he was the ‘father’ of Constantinople, and trusted that he would ‘extend his wonted care over that part of the vineyard.’ In fact they as much as said there is no such thing as an independent national Church. Although we are the East, and under one emperor, and you are in the West and under another, still you have responsibilities towards the East, and a paternal relation to it, and you acted as our ruler in the council, and were the interpreter to us of the Prince of the Apostles, and we apply to you for that sanction without which our canon can never be the voice of the Catholic Church. This was what they said.

Indeed, they said more than this; for they told St. Leo that their own delivery of the truth to the children of the Church was but as the flowing forth of a stream from him as its apostolic source. ‘Thou wast constituted the interpreter of the voice of blessed Peter to us all, and didst bring to all the blessing of his faith. Whence we also show the inheritance of truth to the children of the Church.’ [22] And hence unity of teaching is secured through what they distinctly state as the mediatorial position of their head.

Of Eutyches, who, be it remembered, was deposed by the Synod of Constantinople, the Acts of which were sent to Leo, these bishops say that ‘his dignity was taken away by your Holiness’ which is the result arrived at above from a consideration of the facts. (Cap. 2.)

And of Dioscorus they say that he meditated an excommunication ‘against thee, when thou wast all eager to unite the Church,’ and ‘he repudiated the letter of your Holiness.’

They speak also of being eager to ‘confirm’ the mercy of the Saviour towards him (which was what Leo had desired them to do)—not as if ‘confirming’ necessarily implies the action of a superior court, but in obedience to their Saviour’s words. (Cap. 3.)

They speak of the actual help derived from St. Euphemia ‘God was with us and Euphemia was with us’—on whose altar we know they placed their definition.

And then they ask that Leo will ‘accept and confirm’ their canon.

When they mention the legates’ opposition to their canon, they profess to ascribe that opposition to the idea in the legates’ minds that everything ought to originate with his Holiness, ‘so that even as the right settlement of the faith is set down to your account, so also should that of good discipline.’ They in fact acknowledge that the matter of faith was settled by Leo, but they thought that they might initiate a matter of discipline, which they had now brought before his Holiness for his acceptance and confirmation. ‘Therefore, we entreat thee, honour the decision with your favourable judgment, and as we have introduced harmony with the head in the things that are excellent, so the head would supply to the children that which is becoming.’

They have (they say) sent the Acts to Leo, and they expressly state that ‘the force of all’ rests with his confirmation and ordering.

Now these are, many of them, positive statements of doctrine. Is sentence after sentence to be dismissed as mere compliment? Could anything but the exigencies of controversy have led Dr. Bright and Mr. Gore to disregard all these definite statements on the part of the bishops on the ground that they were mere compliments?

If they were ‘compliments,’ they were those of men who found themselves compelled to couch their compliments in terms which, if they wished to be independent of Rome, cut the ground from under their feet, sentence after sentence. They are not in the place in which compliments would come, nor are they of the nature of honorific expletives. They form the substance of the letter.

If insincerely used, they testify to the necessity under which these bishops found themselves, of crouching at the feet of a master in order to gain the object of their desires. If used in sincerity, they are the testimony of witnesses, naturally the most unwilling, to the position of headship which the East recognised in the occupant of the See of Peter. We cannot claim for them the authority of the council, for these men were not the council; but we are compelled to see in these terms the strongest possible evidence that the idea of the connection between Rome and St. Peter, and of such a consequent ‘headship’ of Rome over Constantinople that the latter could not arrange its own relations with other sees in the East without the acquiescence of Rome—we are compelled, I say, to acknowledge that this was so deeply rooted in the mind of the Eastern Church that it was simply useless to ignore it, and that the only thing to be done was to admit it plainly and to win the adhesion of Rome to their projected canon.

But side by side with this letter of the bishops is another written by Anatolius himself, not less emphatic in its witness to the Constantinopolitan conviction as to the Pope’s supremacy. Anatolius speaks of the bishops at Chalcedon having confirmed ‘the faith of the blessed and venerable Fathers’ of Nicæa, ‘and also your Holiness’ letter agreeing with them’—showing that the attitude of the synod towards the Tome was the same as towards the Nicene faith, and that their confirmation of it was an acceptance of an authoritative statement. He then says that Bishop Lucentius is bringing the Acts of the synod, since ‘it was a matter of necessity that all things should be brought to the cognisance of your Holiness.’ [23] But beside these things, since some matters were transacted which specially concerned themselves [24], and these must also of necessity be brought to the knowledge of his Holiness, Anatolius says that he sent these letters by the same messengers, to receive an answer concerning them. He then mentions the acts in order. First came Dioscorus’ excommunication, which he feels sure will obtain his Holiness’ assent. Next (Cap. 8) he speaks of the reception of the Tome in exact accordance with what we have seen above. He says that it was needful that the understanding of all should agree with the meaning of your orthodox faith,’ and that this was the end for which the emperor convened the council-words which are completely corroborative of the view of the matter taken in chapter xv. Anatolius’ words express the object of the session held after Dioscorus’ excommunication, as that of obtaining an intelligent adhesion to the faith as propounded by Leo—ut in rectæ vestræ fidei sensum omnium conveniret intelligentia. Consequently, Anatolius says, that with prayers and tears, and with the help of Leo himself, assisting in spirit and co-operating by means of the well-beloved men whom his Holiness sent to the council, and under the protection of St. Euphemia, he and those with him had devoted themselves to the work—in allusion to the ‘instruction’ given in Anatolius’ house to the Illyrian bishops. And when the time had come for all to issue an harmonious definition, they had done so, in spite of some contentious opposition from the first, and for the confirmation of their definition ‘in accordance with that holy epistle of yours,’ they placed it on the holy altar. This latter remark explains the statement of the bishops that their definition was offered by Euphemia to her divine Spouse.

So that Anatolius, writing thus publicly an account of the synod, emphasises (1) the necessity of agreement with the definition of faith issued by Leo, and (2) the necessity of reporting to the Pontiff whatever was done at the synod; and (3) describes the confirmation of their acts by Leo as at once necessary for them and free on his part [25].

Having thus described the relation of a council to the Pope, in exact accordance with the present teaching of Leo XIII., Anatolius proceeds to introduce the subject of the canon. He describes it as having for its object the confirmation of the canon of the 150 Fathers, who decreed that the Bishop of Constantinople should have honour and precedence (not [proteia], primacy) next after the most holy throne of Rome, by reason of her being ‘New Rome.’ And, he says it decided (i.e. the canon drawn up at Chalcedon) that the ordi nation of the metropolitans of the diocese of Pontus, of Asia, and of Thrace, should rest with Constantinople; but that the bishops under them should not be ordained, as had been the case for sixty or seventy years, by the latter, but by their own metropolitans.

He then complains of the legates’ opposition to all this, and speaks of the sanction of the emperor. He says that they paid all possible respect to the legates, but that they have now reported their decision to his Holiness, in hope of gaining his assent and confirmation, which they entreat him to give. ‘For the throne of Constantinople has your Apostolic throne as its Father, having specially attached itself to you.’ And so he asks for the ratification of the canon. Later on [26], the archbishop tells the Pope that ‘all the force and confirmation of what was thus done was reserved for the authority of your Blessedness.’

Now after these two letters—the one from the enacting bishops at Chalcedon, and the other from the Archbishop of Constantinople himself, it is idle to talk of the ‘self-assertion’ of Rome as having anything to do with the twenty-eighth canon. St. Leo doubtless knew how to magnify his office. But, indeed, there was no need to do that here; it was already done for him. He was recognised publicly and unmistakably by these bishops of the Eastern part of the Church as the natural, and, indeed, the necessary guardian of the canons of the whole Church, and this, too, in virtue of his relationship, through his see, to the blessed Apostle Peter. To attribute all this plain dogmatic and public exposition of the relationship of the Holy See to the rest of the Church to mere courtesy can only be the shift of those who find themselves driven hard to explain untoward facts. The facts are that the bishops who drew up the twenty-eighth canon did avow their entire dependence on Rome as the See of St. Peter, and that the Arch-bishop of Constantinople himself counted the proposal canonically null and void without the subsequent confirmation of the Bishop of Rome. The explanation proposed and adopted by those writers who are out of communion with Rome, and have drawn up canons independently of her, is that all this plain speech was mere pretence. But something more than a mere conjecture is needed to set aside the plain facts of the case.

The letters of St. Leo in regard to all this are full of Christian royalty. Majestic, uncompromising, and tender, they would by themselves be sufficient to establish his claim to the title which Christendom has accorded to him—Leo the Great.

To Anatolius he wrote [27], reminding him of the suspicion which had originally attached to his orthodoxy, praising the faith which he now exhibited, but regretting that he had allowed himself to be influenced by the lust of honour and power. He blames him for endeavouring to use a council, assembled for the matter of faith, for his ambitious projects, and for imagining that any number of bishops could override the Nicene settlement (cap. 2). He considers that Anatolius’ blame of the Papal legates is their commendation, for they were bound to oppose any infringement of the Nicene canons (cap. 8). He says he is sure that Anatolius will please the royalties more by self-restraint than by ambition. The decision of ‘some bishops,’ sixty years ago, ‘never transmitted to the Apostolic See,’ is no support whatever. (In other words, the third canon of Constantinople is of no account.) Alexandria ought not to suffer because of Dioscorus, nor Antioch, where Peter first preached, be degraded (cap. 5). The Pontiff concludes with most earnestly and lovingly entreating Anatolius to cultivate humility and charity.

Already [28] Leo had written to the emperor, severely blaming Anatolius for not being content with being bishop of the royal city, but aiming at the rank of an apostolic see, which Constantinople can never become. And he tells the emperor that the Nicene arrangement cannot thus be set aside, and that in their defence, by the help of Christ, it is necessary for him to be a faithful servant unto the end, ‘since a dispensation has been entrusted to me’ (‘dispensatio mihi credita est’), ‘and the guilt will be mine if the rules sanctioned by the Fathers in the Synod of Nicæa, for the government of the whole Church, by the assistance of the Spirit of God, should be violated with my connivance, which God forbid.’

But as Leo’s passing over the ordination of Maximus of Antioch by Anatolius might seem to be negligence, he adds that he has not rehandled that, out of love for the recovery of the faith and desire for peace.

To Puicheria he writes [29] in the same strain, saying tbat he renders null and void (‘in irritum mittimus’) what the bishops agreed to contrary to the Nicene regulations, and that he does so by the authority of the blessed Apostle Peter.

In the following year the emporor wrote to St. Leo, telling him that he was unwilling to resort to extreme measures with the monks in Palestine until he could show them his (Leo’s) confirmation of the Chalcedonian definition. He says that the Eutychianisers had thrown doubts on that confirmation [30]. The emperor, in this letter, yields the point of the twenty-eighth canon, and expresses his warm sympathy with the Pope for the stand he had made on behalf of historical veracity and the ancient ways. ‘For assuredly,’ wrote his Imperial Majesty,’ ‘your Holiness did excellently well, as became the Bishop of the Apostolic See, in so guarding the canons of the Church, as not to suffer any innovation on ancient custom or the order settled of old, and inviolably observed to this day.’ Considering what Leo had written to Marcian, this public acknowledgment of the position of the Apostolic See as guardian of the canons, from an Eastern emperor who had his desires as to a rise in dignity for his imperial city, and had for a moment been led away by the Bishop of Constantinople, is at once a tribute to his real goodness and a witness, if further witness were needed, to the ingrained conviction of Christendom that the Holy See had a special dispensation committed to it, and that its charge was nothing less than the government of the universal Church.

St. Leo left Julian, Bishop of Cos, as his legate at Constantinople (‘vice meâ functus’), ‘lest either the Nestorian or the Eutychian heresy should revive, since there is not the vigour of a Catholic in the Bishop of Constantinople.’ [31] And he wrote to the bishops who had been at Chalcedon to say that they could have had no doubt about his approval of what had been done at Chalcedon in regard to the faith, had Anatolius only shown the letter he had received, which he had kept back because of what concerned himself. And he says, wherefore ‘if anyone shall dare to hold the perfidy of Nestorius or Eutyches and to defend the impious dogma of Dioscorus, let him be cut off from the communion of Catholics.’ At the same time they will see from his letters to Anatolius with what reverence the Apostolic See deals with the reguiations of the Nicene Fathers, and that he (Leo) is guardian of the faith of our fathers and the canons of the Church [32].

As it is the duty of a king to guard the laws, and himself to set an example of their observance, so Leo, as the divinely instituted governor of the Christian Church, whilst, for the sake of peace, he allowed Maximus, though otherwise uncanonically ordained, to remain in his episcopate, would not allow the ambition of a prelate in the imperial city to oust Alexandria and Antioch from the position assigned to them by the Nicene Fathers, on a principle fatal to the spiritual character of the Church, viz. that civil dignity could of itself, apart from the action of the See of Peter, raise a see to the rank which Alexandria and Antioch then held.

ENDNOTES [Numbering differs from original]

[1] ‘Anatolius ad Leonem’ (Ep. ci.).

[2] Mr. Gore says (Dict. of Chr. Biog., art. ‘Leo,’ p.663) that ‘Leo’s statement that this canon had never taken effect is entirely untrue.’ What St. Leo said was that the canon was null and void so far as the sanction of the West was concerned, and this was strictly true.

[3] Called the [sunodos endemousa].

[4] Cf. Conc. Chalced. Act xvi.

[5] Letter of the bishops to Leo.

[6] ‘Studio pacis’

[7] ‘Non conscripti.’

[8] The Codex Julianus, now called Parisiensis. Baluze first noticed this, and has been followed by the Ballerini.

[9] Notes on the Canons, &c., 1892, p.228. The reader must not suppose that the reference to Theodoret which Dr. Bright gives contains any expression of that writer in favour of his opinion; it only contains the letter of the council of 382.

[10] Ballerini, De Antiq. Collect. Canonum, Part I. cap. vi. 5.

[11] [pro panton men ta proteia kai ten exaireton timen kata tous kanonas to tes presbutidos Romes theophilestato archiepiskopo phulattesthai.] I do not see how, in view of this undisputed original, it can be maintained, as it is by so many Anglican writers, that the legates’ version was a forgery. I may mention Canon Bright, Canon Carter, Mr. Puller, and the Bishop of Lincoln, as amongst recent writers who lay great stress on this imaginary forgery. The Council clearly accepted the Papal legate’s quotation as accurate.

[12] Bright’s Notes on the Councils, p.148.

[13] This seems to be the meaning of the legates’ words, which are obscure. It is most in accordance with what Leo says in his letters on the subject.

[14] And yet Mr. Puller says that ‘the Council, as a whole, passed it’ (Primitive Saints, p.20). Canon Bright more correctly speaks of the difference in number between these bishops and those who signed the Tome as ‘significant.’

[15] Rohrbacher, Hist. vol. iv. p.539.

[16] There is no indication that these bishops at Chalcedon were professing to deal with anything but the patriarchal rights of Rome: her primacy was left as it was.

[17] Cf. Rohrbacher, Hist. loc. cit.

[18] Cf. Hefele, in loco.

[19] Cf. infra, p.459.

[20] Cf. Lanfranc’s argument at the Council of Windsor, which assumed that the commission to Peter included his successors—an assumption accepted on both sides, i.e. by the whole English Church.

[21] Leonis Ep. xcviii.

[22] ‘Unde et nos . . . ecclesiæ filiis hæreditatem sortemque veritatis ostendimus’ (Leon. Ep. xcviii. c. 1).

[23] [edei hapanta anagkaios]. Leon. Ep. ci. cap. 1.

[24] [dia to idikos hemin peprachthai tina]—called ‘negotia privata’ in Pelagius II.’s letter to the Istrian bishops.

[25] Cf. Leonis Ep. ci., ed. Ballerini, note.

[26] Ep. cxxxii. c. 4: ‘Cum et sic gestorum vis omnis et confirmatio auctoritati vestræ beatitudinis fuerit reservata.’

[27] Ep. cvi.

[28] Ep. civ.

[29] Ep. cv.

[30] ‘Whether your Blessedness has confirmed the things decreed ([tupathenta]) in the synod,’ i.e. on the matter of faith and excommunication of Dioscorus.

[31] Ep. cxiii.

[32] Ep. cxiv. c. 1.