CANON III.

THE Bishop of Constantinople, however, shall have the prerogative of 

honour after the Bishop of Rome; because Constantinople is New Rome.

NOTES.

ANCIENT EPITOME OF CANON III.

The bishop of Constantinople is to be honoured next after the bishop of 

Rome.

It should be remembered that the change effected by this canon did not 

affect Rome directly in any way, but did seriously affect Alexandria and 

Antioch, which till then had ranked next after the see of Rome. When the 

pope refused to acknowledge the authority of this canon, he was in 

reality defending the principle laid down in the canon of Nice, that in 

such matters the ancient customs should continue. Even the last clause, 

it would seem, could give no offence to the most sensitive on the papal 

claims, for it implies a wonderful power in the rank of Old Rome, if a 

see is to rank next to it because it happens to be "New Rome." Of course 

these remarks  only refer to the wording of the canon which   is 

carefully guarded; the intention doubtless  was to exalt the see of 

Constantinople, the chief see of the East, to a position of as near 

equality as possible with the chief see of the West.

ZONARAS.

In this place the Council takes action concerning Constantinople, to 

which it decrees the prerogative of honour, the priority, and the glory 

after the Bishop of Rome as being New Rome and the Queen of cities. Some 

indeed wish to understand the preposition     meta    here of 

time and not of inferiority of grade. And they strive to confirm this 

interpretation by a consideration of the XXVIII canon of Chalcedon, 

urging that if Constantinople is to enjoy equal honours, the preposition 

"after" cannot signify subjection. But on the other hand the hundred and 

thirtieth novel of Justinian,(1) Book V of the Imperial Constitutions, 

title three, understands the canon otherwise. For, it says, "we decree 

that the most holy Pope of Old Rome, according to the decrees of the 

holy synods is the first of all priests, and that the most blessed 

bishop of Constantinople and of New Rome, should have the second place 

after the Apostolic Throne of the Elder Rome, and should be superior in 

honour to all others." From this therefore it is abundantly evident that 

"after" denotes subjection (    upobibasmon   ) and diminution. 

And otherwise it would be impossible to guard this equality of honour in 

each see. For in reciting their names, or assigning them seats when they 

are to sit together, or arranging the order of their signatures to 

documents, one must come before the other. Whoever therefore shall 

explain this particle     meta    as only referring to time, and 

does not admit that it signifies an inferior grade of dignity, does 

violence to the passage and draws from it a meaning neither true nor 

good. Moreover in Canon xxxvj of the Council in Trullo, 

    meta    manifestly denotes subjection, assigning to 

Constantinople the second place after the throne of Old Rome; and then 

adds, after this Alexandria, then Antioch, and last of all shall be 

placed Jerusalem.

HEFELE.

If we enquire the reason why this Council tried to change the order of 

rank of the great Sees, which had been established in the sixth Nicene 

canon, we must first take into consideration that, since the elevation 

of Constantinople to the Imperial residence, as New Rome, the bishops as 

well as the Emperors naturally wished to see the new imperial residence, 

New Rome, placed immediately after Old Rome in ecclesiastical rank also; 

the rather, as with the Greeks it was the rule for the ecclesiastical 

rank of a See to follow the civil rank of the city. The Synod of Antioch 

in 341, in its ninth canon, had plainly declared this, and subsequently 

the fourth General Council, in its seventeenth canon, spoke in the same 

sense. But how these principles were protested against on the side of 

Rome, we shall see further on in the history of the fourth General 

Council. For the present, it may suffice to add that the aversion to 

Alexandria which, by favouring Maximus, had exercised such a disturbing 

influence on Church affairs in Constantinople, may well have helped to 

effect the elevation of the See of Constantinople over that of 

Alexandria. Moreover, for many centuries Rome did not recognize this 

change of the old ecclesiastical order. In the sixteenth session of the 

fourth General

Council, the Papal Legate, Lucentius, expressly declared this. In like 

manner the Popes Leo the Great and Gregory the Great pronounced against 

it; and though even Gratian adopted this canon in his collection the 

Roman critics added the following note: Canon hic ex iis est, quos 

Apostolica Romana Sedes a principio et longo post tempore non recepit. 

It was only when, after the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins, a 

Latin patriarchate was founded there in 1204, that Pope Innocent III, 

and the twelfth General Council, in 1215, allowed this patriarch the 

first rank after the Roman; and the same recognition was expressly 

awarded to the Greek Patriarch at the Florentine Union in 1439.

T. W. ALLIES.(1)

Remarkable enough it is that when, in the Council of Chalcedon, appeal 

was made to this third Canon, the Pope St. Leo declared that it had 

never been notified to Rome. As in the mean time it had taken effect 

throughout the whole East, as in this very council Nectarius, as soon as 

he is elected, presides instead of Timothy of Alexandria, it puts in a 

strong point of view the real self-government of the Eastern Church at 

this time; for the giving the Bishop of Constantinople precedence over 

Alexandria and Antioch was a proceeding which affected the whole Church, 

and so far altered its original order--one in which certainly the West 

might claim to have a voice. Tillemont goes on: "It would be very 

difficult to justify St. Leo, if he meant that the Roman Church had 

never known that the Bishop of Constantinople took the second place in 

the Church, and the first in the East, since his legates, whose conduct 

he entirely approves, had just themselves authorized it as  a thing 

beyond dispute, and Eusebius of Dorylaeum maintained that St. Leo 

himself had approved it." The simple fact is, that, exceedingly 

unwilling as the Bishops of Rome were to sanction it, from this time, 

381, to say the least, the Bishop of Constantinople appears uniformly as 

first bishop of the East.

Cardinal Baronius in his Annals (A.D. 381, n. 35, 36) has disputed the 

genuineness of this Canon! As already mentioned it is found in the 

Corpus Juris Canonici, Decretum, Pars I., Dist. XXII, c. iij. The note 

added to this in Gratian reads as follows:

NOTE IN GRATIAN'S "DECRETUM."

This canon is of the number of those which the Apostolic See of Rome did 

not at first nor for long years afterwards receive. This is evident from 

Epistle LI. (or LIII.) of Pope Leo I. to Anatolius of Constantinople and 

from several other of his letters. The same thing also is shewn by two 

letters of Leo IX.'s, the one against the presumptuous acts of Michael 

and Leo (cap. 28) and the other addressed to the same Michael. But still 

more clearly is this seen from the letter of Blessed Gregory (xxxj., 

lib. VI.) to Eulogius of Alexandria and Anastasius of Antioch, and from 

the letter of Nicholas I. to the Emperor Michel which begins 

"Proposueramus." However, the bishops of Constantinople, sustained by 

the authority of the Emperors, usurped to themselves the second place 

among the patriarchs, and this at length was  granted to them for the 

sake of peace and tranquillity, as Pope Innocent III. declares (in cap. 

antiqua de privileg.).(2)

This canon Dionysius Exiguus appends to Canon 2, and dropping 5, 6, and 

7 he has but three canons of this Synod.