When this document reached Gaul, the bishops there, being unable to hold a council through the division of the country under different princes, commissioned St. Avitus, bishop of Vienne, to write in his name and their own, and we have from him the following letter addressed to Faustus and Symmachus, senators of Rome:[87]
"It would have been desirable that we should, in person, visit the city which the whole world venerates, for the consideration of duties which affect us both as men and as Christians. But as the state of things has long made that impossible, we could wish at least to have had the security that your great body should learn from a report of the assembled bishops of Gaul the entreaties called forth by a common cause. But since the separation of our country into different governments deprives us also of that our desire, I must first entreat that your most illustrious Order may not take offence at what I write as coming from one person. For, urged not only by letters, but charges from all my Gallic brethren, I have undertaken to be the organ of communicating to you what we all ask of you. Whilst we were all in a state of great anxiety and fear in the cause of the Roman Church, feeling that our own state was imperilled when our head was attacked, inasmuch as a single incrimination would have struck us all down without the odium which attaches to the oppression of a multitude, if it had overturned the condition of our chief, a copy of the episcopal decree was brought to us in our anxiety from Italy, which the bishops of Italy, assembled at Rome, had issued in the case of Pope Symmachus. This constitution is made respectable by the assent of a large and reverend council: yet our mind is, that the holy Pope Symmachus, if accused to the world, had a claim rather to the support than to the judgment of his brethren the bishops. For as our Ruler in heaven bids us be subject to earthly powers, foretelling that we shall stand before kings and princes in every accusation, so is it difficult to understand with what reason, or by what law, the superior is to be judged by his inferiors. The Apostle's command is well known, that an accusation against an elder should not be received. How, then, is it lawful to incriminate the Principate of the whole Church? The venerable council itself providing against this in its laudable constitution, has reserved to the divine judgment a cause which, I may be permitted to say, it had somewhat rashly taken up; mentioning, however, that the charges objected to the Pope had in no respect been proved, either to itself or to king Theodorick. In face of all which, I, myself a Roman senator, and a Christian bishop, adjure you (so may the God you worship grant prosperity to your times, and your own dignity maintain the honour of the Roman name to the universe in this collapsing world), that the state of the Church be not less in your eyes than that of the commonwealth; that the power which God has given to you may be also for our good; and that you have not less love in your Church for the See of Peter, than in your city for the crown of the world. If, in your wisdom, you consider the matter to its bottom, you will see that not only the cause carried on at Rome is concerned. In the case of other bishops, if there be any lapse, it may be restored; but if the Pope of Rome is endangered, not one bishop but the episcopate itself will seem to be shaken. You well know how we are steering the bark of faith amid storms of heresies, whose winds roar around us. If with us you fear such dangers, you must needs protect your pilot by sharing his labour. If the sailors turn against their captain, how will they escape? The shepherd of the Lord's sheepcot will give an account of his pastorship; it is not for the flock to alarm its own pastor, but for the judge. Restore, then, to us if it be not already restored, concord in our chief."
Even after this synod at Rome, the opponents of Symmachus did not cease their attempts. Clergy and senators sent in a new memorial to the king Theodorick, in favour of the anti-pope Laurentius, who returned to Rome in 502; and it was four years, during which several councils were held, before the schism was finally composed. Theodorick then commanded that all the churches in Rome should be given up to Pope Symmachus,[88] and he alone be recognised as its bishop.
Against the attacks made upon the fourth synod, which had dismissed the consideration of the charges against the Pope as beyond its competence, Ennodius, at that time a deacon, afterwards bishop of Pavia, wrote a long defence. This writing was read at the sixth synod at Rome, held in 503, approved, and inserted in the synodal acts. We may, therefore, quote one passage from it, as the doctrine which it was the result of all this schism to establish.[89] "God has willed the causes of other men to be terminated by men; He has reserved the bishop of that one see without question to His own judgment. It was His will that the successors of the Apostle St. Peter should owe their innocence to heaven alone, and show a spotless conscience to that most absolute scrutiny. Do not suppose that those souls whom God has reserved to His own examination have no fear of their judges. The guilty has with Him no one to suggest excuse, when the witness of the deeds is the same as the Judge. If you say, Such will be the condition of all souls in that trial; I shall reply,[90] To one only was it said, Thou art Peter, &c. And further, that the dignity of that see has been made venerable to the whole world by the voice of holy pontiffs, when all the faithful in every part are made subject to it, and it is marked out as the head of the whole body."
From the whole of this history we deduce the fact, that the enmity of the eastern emperor was able by bribing a party at Rome to stir up a schism against the lawful Pope, which had for its result to call forth the witness of the Italian and the Gallic bishops respecting the singular prerogatives of the Holy See. They spoke in the person of Ennodius and Avitus. We have, in consequence, recorded for us in black and white the axiom which had been acted upon from the beginning, "the First See is judged by no one".
Let us see on the contrary what the same emperor was not only willing but able to do in the city which had succeeded to Rome as the capital of the empire, in which Anastasius reigned alone.
In the year 496, Anastasius had found himself able, as we have seen, to depose, by help of the resident council, Euphemius of Constantinople. As his successor was chosen Macedonius, sister's son of the former bishop, Gennadius, and like him of gentle spirit, "a holy man,[91] the champion of the orthodox".[92] However much the opinion was then spread in the East that a successor might rightfully be appointed to a bishop forcibly expelled from his see, if otherwise the Church would be deprived of its pastor—an opinion which Pope Gelasius very decidedly censured—Macedonius II. felt very keenly the unlawfulness of his appointment. When the deposed Euphemius asked of him a safe conduct for his journey into banishment, and Macedonius received authority to grant it, he went into the baptistry to give it, but caused his archdeacon first to remove his omophorion, and appeared in the garb of a simple priest to give his predecessor a sum of money collected for him. He was much praised for this. Yet Macedonius had to subscribe the Henotikon. Hence he experienced a strong opposition from the monks, who, in their resolute maintenance of the Council of Chalcedon, declined communion with him; so the nuns also. Macedonius sought to gain them by holding a council in 497 or 498, which condemned the Eutycheans and expressed assent to the Council of Chalcedon.
Macedonius was by no means inclined to give up the lately won privileges of his see as to the ordination of the Exarch of Cappadocian Cæsarea, but he would willingly have restored peace with Rome, and have accepted the invitation from Rome to celebrate with special splendour the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul. The emperor would not let him send a synodical letter to Rome.
Macedonius could not be induced by threat or promise of the emperor to give up to him the paper in which at his coronation by Euphemius he had promised to maintain the Council of Chalcedon. The emperor, after concluding peace with the Persians, more and more favoured the Eutycheans, and seemed resolved either to bend or to break Macedonius. The people were so embittered against Anastasius that he did not venture to appear without his life-guards even at a religious solemnity, and this became from that time a rule which marks the sinking moral influence of the emperors. The suspicion of the people against Anastasius was increased because his mother was a Manichean, his uncle, Clearchus, devoted to the Arians, and he kept in his palace Manichean pictures by a Syropersian artist. The Monophysite party had at the time two very skilful leaders, the monk Severus from Pisidia and the Persian Xenaias. Xenaias had been made bishop of Hierapolis by Peter the Fuller, was in fierce conflict with Flavian, patriarch of Antioch, and raised almost all Syria against him. He carried the flame of discord even to Constantinople. There a certain fanatic, Ascholius, tried to murder Macedonius, who pardoned him and bestowed on him a monthly pension. Presently large troops of monks came under Severus to Constantinople, bent upon ruining Macedonius. The state of parties became still more threatening. Macedonius showed still greater energy; he declared that he would only hold communion with the patriarch of Alexandria and the party of Severus if they would recognise the Council of Chalcedon as mother and teacher. But Anastasius, bribed by the Alexandrian patriarch John II. with two thousand pounds of gold, required that he should anathematise this council. To this Macedonius answered that this could not be done except in an ecumenical council presided over by the bishop of Rome. The emperor in his wrath violated the right of sanctuary in the Catholic churches and bestowed it on heretical churches. The Eutycheans supplied with money broke out against the Catholics. They had sung their addition to the Trisagion on a Sunday in the Church of St. Michael within the palace. They tried to do it the next Sunday in the cathedral, upon which a fierce tumult broke out, and they were mishandled and driven out by the people. Now the party of Severus, favoured by the emperor and many officials, broke out into loud abuse of Macedonius. Thereupon the faithful part of his flock rose for their bishop, and the streets rung with the cry, "It is the time of martyrdom; let no man forsake his father". Anastasius was declared a Manichean and unfit to rule. The emperor was frightened; he shut the doors of his palace and prepared for flight. He had sworn never again to admit the patriarch to his presence, but in his perplexity sent for him. On his way Macedonius was received with loud acclaim, "Our father is with us," in which the life-guards joined. He boldly reproved the emperor as enemy of the Church; but the emperor's hypocritical excuses pacified the patriarch. When the danger was passed by Anastasius pursued fresh intrigues. He required Macedonius to subscribe a formula in which the Council of Chalcedon was passed over. Macedonius would seem to have been deceived, but afterwards insisted publicly before the monks on his adherence to its decrees. Then Anastasius tried again to depose him. All possible calumnies were spread against him—immorality, Nestorianism, falsification of the Bible; all failed. Then the emperor demanded the delivering up of the original acts of Chalcedon, which the patriarch steadily refused. Macedonius had sealed them up and placed them on the altar under God's protection; but the emperor had them taken away by the eunuch Kalapodius, economus of the cathedral, and then burnt. After this he imprisoned and banished a number of the patriarch's friends and relations; then he had the patriarch seized in the night, deported from the capital to Chalcedon, and thence to Euchaites in Paphlagonia, to which place he had also banished Euphemius. Macedonius lived some years after his exile. He died at Gangra about 516, and was immediately counted among the saints of the eastern Church.
It cost Anastasius fifteen years to depose Macedonius, that is, from 496 to 511, and this was the way he accomplished it. Thus he succeeded in overthrowing two bishops of his capital—Euphemius and Macedonius—neither of whom lived or died in communion with Rome, because, though virtuous and orthodox in the main, they would not surrender the memory of Acacius. They had, moreover, one grievous blot on their conduct as bishops. They submitted themselves to subscribe an imperial statement of doctrine and to permit its imposition on others. This was a use of despotism in the eastern Church introduced by the insurgent Basiliscus, carried out first by Zeno and then by Anastasius, tending to the ruin both of doctrine and discipline. During the whole reign of Anastasius the patriarchal sees of Alexandria and Antioch, which had built up the eastern Church in the first three centuries, which Rome acknowledged as truly patriarchal under Pope Gelasius in 496, and the new sees which claimed to be patriarchal, Constantinople and Jerusalem, were in a state of the greatest confusion, a prey to heresy, party spirit, violence of every kind. Anastasius was able to disturb Pope Symmachus during the first half of his pontificate by fostering a schism among his clergy, with the result that he brought out the recognition of the Pope's privilege not to be judged by his inferiors. But he was enabled to depose two bishops of the imperial see, his own patriarchs, blameless in their personal life, orthodox in their doctrine, longing for reunion with Rome, yet stained by their fatal surrender of their spiritual independence, subscription to the emperor's imposition of doctrine. They were not acknowledged by St. Peter's See, and they fell before the emperor.