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Among the bishops who gave their
answers at the last session to the question whether their subscription to the
canons was voluntary or forced was Eusebius, bishop of Doryloeum, an Asiatic
bishop who said that he had read the Constantinopolitan canon to "the holy
pope of Rome in presence of clerics of Constantinople, and that he had accepted
it" (L. and C., Conc., iv. 815). But quite possibly this evidence is of
little value. But what is more to the point is that the Papal legates most
probably had already at this very council recognized the right of
Constantinople to rank immediately after Rome. For at the very first session
when the Acts of the Latrocinium were read, it was found that to Flavian, the
Archbishop of Constantinople, was given only the fifth place. Against this the
bishop protested and asked, "Why
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did not Flavian receive his
position?" and the papal legate Paschasinus answered: "We will,
please God, recognize the present bishop Anatolius of Constantinople as the first
[i.e. after us], but Dioscorus made Flavian the fifth." It would seem to
be in vain to attempt to escape the force of these words by comparing with them
the statement made in the last session, in a moment of heat and indignation, by
Lucentius the papal legate, that the canons of Constantinople were not found
among those of the Roman Code. It may well be that this statement was true, and
yet it does not in any way lessen the importance of the fact that at the first
session a very different thing from the sixteenth) Paschasinus had admitted
that Constantinople enjoyed the second place. It would seem that Quesnel has
proved his point, notwithstanding the attempts of the Ballerini to counteract
and overthrow his arguments.
It would be the height of absurdity
for any one to attempt to deny that the canon of Constantinople was entirely in
force and practical execution, as far of those most interested were concerned,
long before the meeting of the council of Chalcedon, and in 394, only thirteen
years after the adoption of the canon, we find the bishop of Constantinople
presiding at a synod at which both the bishop of Alexandria and the bishop of
Antioch were present.
St. Leo made, in connexion with
this matter, some statements which perhaps need not be commented upon, but
should certainly not be forgotten. In his epistle to Anatolius (no. cvi.) in
speaking of the third canon of Constantinople he says: "That document of
certain bishops has never been brought by your predecessors to the knowledge of
the Apostolic See." And in writing to the Empress (Ep. cv., ad Pulch.) he
makes the following statement, strangely contrary to what she at least knew to
be the fact, "To this concession a long course of years has given no
effect!"
We need not stop to consider the
question why Leo rejected the xxviijth canon of Chalcedon. It is certain that
he rejected it and those who wish to see the motive of this rejection
considered at length are referred to Quesnel and to the Ballerini; the former
affirming that it was because of its encroachments upon the prerogatives of his
own see, the latter urging that it was only out of his zeal for the keeping in
full force of the Nicene decree.
Leo can never be charged with
weakness. His rejection of the canon was absolute and unequivocal. In writing
to the Emperor he says that Anatolius only got the See of Constantinople by his
consent, that he should behave himself modestly, and that there is no way he
can make of Constantinople "an Apostolic See," and adds that
"only from love of peace and for the restoration of the unity of the
faith" he has "abstained from annulling this ordination" (Ep.
civ.).
To the Empress he wrote with still
greater violence: "As for the resolution of the bishops which is contrary
to the Nicene decree, in union with your faithful piety, I declare it to be
invalid and annul it by the authority of the holy Apostle Peter" (Ep.
cv.).
The papal annulling does not appear
to have been of much force, for Leo himself confesses, in a letter written
about a year later to the Empress Pulcheria (Ep. cxvi.), that the Illyrian
bishops had since the council subscribed the xxviiith canon.
The pope had taken occasion in his
letter in which he announced his acceptance of the doctrinal decrees of
Chalcedon to go on further and express his rejection of the canons. This part
of the letter was left unread throughout the Greek empire, and Leo complains of
it to Julian of Cos (Ep. cxxvij.).
Leo never gave over his opposition,
although the breach was made up between him and Anatolius by an apparently
insincere letter on the part of the latter (Ep. cxxxii.). Leo's successors
followed his example in rejecting the canons, both the IIId of Constantinople
and the XXVIIIth of Chalcedon, but as M. l'abbe Duchesne so admirably says:
"Mais leur voix fut peu ecoutee; on leur accorda sans doute des
satisfactions, mais de pure ceremonie."(1) But
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Justinian acknowledged the
Constantinopolitan and Chalcedonian rank of Constantinople in his CXXXIst
Novel. (cap. j.), and the Synod in Trullo in canon xxxvj. renewed exactly canon
xxviij. of Chalcedon. Moreover the Seventh Ecumenical with the approval of the
Papal Legates gave a general sanction to all the canons accepted by the Trullan
Synod. And finally in 1215 the Fourth Council of the Lateran in its Vth Canon
acknowledged Constantinople's rank as immediately after Rome, but this was
while Constantinople was in the hands of the Latins! Subsequently at Florence
the second rank, in accordance with the canons of I. Constantinople and of
Chalcedon (which had been an hulled by Leo) was given to the Greek Patriarch of
Constantinople, and so the opposition of Rome gave way after seven centuries
and a half, and the Nicene Canon which Leo declared to be "inspired by the
Holy Ghost" and "valid to the end of time" (Ep. cvi.), was set
at nought by Leo's successor in the Apostolic See.
From the Acts of the same Holy
Synod concerning Photius, Bishop of Tyre, and Eustathius, Bishop of Berytus.
The most magnificent and glorious
judges said:
What is determined by the Holy
Synod [in the matter of the Bishops ordained by the most religious Bishop
Photius, but removed by the most religious Bishop Eustathius and ordered to be
Presbyters after (having held) the Episcopate]?
The most religious Bishops
Paschasinus and Lucentius, and the Priest Boniface, representatives of the
Church(1) of Rome, said:
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