"The Legates,[[96]] being informed of what had passed, demanded that the Council should assemble again, and the magistrates be present. On the morrow, therefore, being Thursday, the 1st November, the twelfth sitting[[97]] was held. The magistrates were there with the Legates, and the Bishops of Illyria, and all the rest. After they had taken their seats, Paschasinus spoke, having asked permission of the magistrates, and said, that he was astonished that so many things had been done the day before in their absence, which were contrary to the Canons and the peace of the Church, for which the Emperor was labouring with so much application and zeal. He demanded the reading of what had passed the day before. And Aetius, (Archdeacon of Constantinople,) having said that it was the Legates themselves who had refused to be present at the deliberation, presented the Canon which had been drawn up with the signatures of the Bishops. After the signatures had been read, Lucentius said the Bishops had been surprised, and compelled to sign. This is what St. Leo repeated often in the letter which he wrote concerning this twenty-eighth Canon, accusing Anatolius of having extorted the signatures of the Bishops, or of having surprised them by his artifices. Nevertheless, upon the reproach of Lucentius, all the Bishops cried out that no one had been forced. They protested again afterwards, both all in common, and the principal by themselves, that they had signed it of their full consent. Anatolius also maintains to St. Leo, that the Bishops took this resolution of their own accord.
"The Legates continued to oppose the Canon, and showed that they had an express order of the Pope to do so. They alleged that the Canon was contrary to the Council of Nicea, of which they read the sixth Canon, with the celebrated heading—'The Roman Church has always had the primacy,' which is also found added in the ancient Roman code. The same Canon was afterwards read as it is in the original Greek, and the Canon of the second Ecumenical Council, to which the Legates answered nothing.
"The magistrates having next begged the Bishops who had not signed the day before, to give their opinion, Eusebius, of Ancyra, represented with much gentleness and modesty, that it was better for the Church that ordinations should be made upon the spot by the Council of the province. Thalassius then spoke a single word, but I know not his meaning."
Thereupon "the magistrates[[98]] said,—'It appears, from the depositions, first of all, that the primacy and precedency of honour (τὰ πρωτεῖα, καὶ τὴν ἐξαίρετον τιμήν) should be preserved according to the Canons for the Archbishop of Old Rome, but that the Archbishop of Constantinople ought to enjoy the same privileges, (τῶν αὐτῶν πρεσβείων τῆς τιμῆς,) and that he has a right to ordain the Metropolitans of the Dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Thrace, in the manner following. In each metropolis, the clergy, the proprietors of lands, and the gentry, with all the Bishops of the province, or the greater part of them, shall issue a decree for the election of one whom they shall deem worthy of being made a Bishop of the metropolis. They shall all make a report of it to the Archbishop of Constantinople, and it shall be at his option either to enjoin the Bishop elect to come thither for ordination, or to allow him to be ordained in the province. As to the Bishops of particular cities, they shall be ordained by all, or the greater part, of the comprovincial Bishops, under the authority of the Metropolitan, according to the Canons, the Archbishop of Constantinople taking no part in such ordination. These are our views, let the Council state theirs.' The Bishops shouted, 'This is a just proposal: we all say the same: we all assent to it, we pray you dismiss us:' with other similar acclamations. Lucentius, the Legate, said,—'The Apostolic See ought not to be degraded in our presence; we, therefore, desire that yesterday's proceedings, which violate the Canons, may be rescinded; otherwise let our opposition be inserted in the Acts, that we may know what we are to report to the Pope, and that he may declare his opinion of this contempt of his See, and subversion of the Canons.' The magistrates said,—'The whole Council approves of what we said.' Such was the last Session of the Council of Chalcedon."
The remarks of Tillemont on this Canon are significant, and worth transcribing.[[99]] "It seems," he says, "to recognise no particular authority in the Church of Rome, save what the Fathers had granted it, as the seat of the empire. And it attributes in plain words as much to Constantinople as to Rome, with the exception of the first place. Nevertheless I do not observe that the Popes took up a thing so injurious to their dignity, and of so dangerous a consequence to the whole Church. For what Lupus quotes of St. Leo's 78th (104th) letter, refers rather to Alexandria and to Antioch, than to Rome. St. Leo is contented to destroy the foundation on which they built the elevation of Constantinople, maintaining that a thing so entirely ecclesiastical as the Episcopate ought not to be regulated by the temporal dignity of cities, which, nevertheless, has been almost always followed in the establishment of the metropolis, according to the Council of Nicea.
"St. Leo also complains that the Council of Chalcedon broke the decrees of the Council of Nicea, the practice of antiquity, and the rights of Metropolitans. Certainly it was an odious innovation to see a Bishop made the chief, not of one department, but of three; for which no example could be found save in the authority which the Popes took over Illyricum, where, however, they did not claim the power to ordain any Bishop."
Now I suppose any Roman Catholic would observe that this Canon is entirely opposed to the present Papal theory: he would say that St. Leo and the West for that very reason refused to receive it. The opposition, beyond all question, is such, that it is quite impossible to reconcile them. Let any one, then, read through the 104th letter of St. Leo to the Emperor Mauricius, the 105th to the Empress Pulcheria, and the 106th to Anatolius himself, and he will see that St. Leo bases his opposition to it throughout on its being a violation of the Nicene Canons: there is not a word in all the three letters about any violation of the rights of St. Peter. May we not quote, alas! St. Leo's words, in these letters, to St. Leo's successor. "He[[100]] loses his own, who lusts after what is not his due.... For the privileges of the Churches, instituted by the Canons of the holy Fathers, and fixed by the decrees of the venerable Nicene Synod, cannot be plucked up by any wickedness, or changed by any innovation. In the faithful execution of which work, by the help of Christ, I am bound to show persevering service; since the dispensation has been entrusted to me, and it tends to my guilt, if the rules of the Fathers' sanctions, which were made in the Nicene Council for the government of the whole Church, by the teaching of God's Spirit, be violated, which God forbid, by my connivance; and if the desire of one brother be of more weight with me than the common good of the whole house of the Lord." This to the Emperor. To the Empress, thus:—"Since no one is allowed to attempt[[101]] anything against the statutes of the Fathers' Canons, which many years ago were based on spiritual decrees in the city of Nicea; so that if any one desires to decree anything against them, he will rather lessen himself than injure them. And if these are kept uninjured, as it behoves, by all Pontiffs, there will be tranquil peace and firm concord through all the Churches. There will be no dissensions concerning the degree of honours; no contests about ordinations; no doubts about privileges; no conflicts about the usurpation of another's right; but under the equal law of charity, both men's minds and duties will be kept in the due order; and he will be truly great, who shall be alien from all ambition, according to the Lord's words, 'Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister, &c.'" But to Anatolius, thus:—"Those[[102]] holy and venerable Fathers, who in the Nicene city established laws of ecclesiastical Canons, which are to last to the end of the world, when the sacrilegious Arius with his impiety was condemned, live both with us and in the whole world by their constitutions; and if anything anywhere is presumed upon contrary to what they appointed, it is without delay annulled, &c."
But what the violation was he likewise states: it is not any wrong done to his own see personally. He says to the Empress: "But[[103]] what doth the prelate of the Church of Constantinople desire more than he hath obtained? Or what will satisfy him, if the magnificence and glory of so great a city satisfy him not? It is too proud and immoderate to go beyond one's own limits, and, trampling on antiquity, to wish to seize on another's right. And, in order to increase the dignity of one, to impugn the primacy of so many Metropolitans; and to carry a new war of disturbance into quiet provinces, settled long ago by the moderation of the holy Nicene Council," &c.
To Anatolius himself he says: "I grieve—that you attempt to infringe the most sacred constitutions of the Nicene Canons; as if this were a favourable opportunity presented to you, when the See of Alexandria may lose the privilege of the second rank, and the Church of Antioch its possession of the third dignity; so that when these places have been brought under your jurisdiction, all Metropolitan Bishops may be deprived of their proper honour."[[104]] "I oppose you, that with wiser purpose you may refrain from throwing into confusion the whole Church. Let not the rights of provincial Primacies be torn away, nor Metropolitan Bishops be deprived of their privileges in force from old time. Let no part of that dignity perish to the See of Alexandria, which it was thought worthy to obtain through the holy Evangelist Mark, the disciple of blessed Peter; nor, though Dioscorus falls through the obstinacy of his own impiety, let the splendour of so great a Church be obscured by another's disgrace. Let also the Church of Antioch, in which first, at the preaching of the blessed Apostle Peter, the name of Christian arose, remain in the order of its hereditary degree, and being placed in the third rank never sink below itself."
So then it was not St. Peter's Primacy, nor his own proper authority in the Church, which St. Leo conceived to be attacked by this Canon; but he refused to be a party to "treading under foot the constitution of the Fathers"—to disturbing "the state of the universal Church, protected of old by a most wholesome and upright administration."[[105]] So the Emperor Marcian, Anatolius, Julian of Cos, beseech Leo to grant this, without so much as imagining that they are injuring his rank by asking it. I see not how it is possible to avoid the conclusion, that the power of the First See, even as its most zealous occupant viewed it, was quite different from that power which was set up in the middle ages. This is only one of a vast number of proofs which distinguish the Primacy from the present Supremacy. And it is the more valuable, because St. Leo certainly carries his notion of his own rights as universal Primate further than any Father of his time. I shall have occasion to make a like remark presently in the matter of St. Gregory's protest.