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(XX.) THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON.

At last we come to the Fourth General Council. At the end of the trial of Eutyches in Flavian's Council of Constantinople (November, 448), it seems that, after the assembly broke up, the condemned abbot, in a low voice, appealed to certain foreign "synods." What were they? According to the "patrician" Florentius, to whom he had spoken, "the synods of Rome, and of Egypt, and of Jerusalem." [1]

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Mr. Rivington ingeniously recasts this: "to an Egyptian and Jerusalemite, as well as to a Roman Council;" and then sets himself to minimise the reference to the two former, and, with regard to the latter, to sink the "Council" in the "Pope." We know nothing, he argues, of any letter from Eutyches, except the one to Leo: therefore, we may practically treat the application to Leo as standing alone (p. 366). This is a "short and easy method," indeed; but it happens that Eutyches, in 449, charged Flavian with ignoring his appeal to a General Council. [2] Then as to Leo's correspondence with Flavian; he naturally thought that Flavian "ought to have written" to him as soon as Eutyches did. Flavian's first letter was, in fact, somehow delayed, but in his second he gives a full account. [3] Mr. Rivington

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grandiloquently describes him as "invoking St. Leo's prerogative;" acting as a "judge of first instance," and "bringing Eutyches before Leo" for a "final peremptory judgment;" and the heading of page 369 runs, "Flavian prefers a Papal Brief" - something, we presume, in the style of documents sealed with "the Fisherman's ring," and menacing the disobedient with the "indignation of Almighty God, and of His Apostles Peter and Paul." He makes the bishop of Constantinople say, "Deign to give your decision by means of briefs, in accordance with the canonical deposition of Eutyches" at Constantinople. How many of his readers will turn to the original? Those who do so will find Flavian in no such humble attitude; he says, "Be so good as to give assent, [4] by a letter of your own, to the deposition which has canonically taken place;" and he adds that nothing now is wanted save Leo's "impulse and assistance" to tell on the mind of Theodosius, and to stop the mischievous scheme for a new Council. [5] This is natural

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on the theory of a precedency of position and influence; but no rotundity of phrase in a modern Papalist comment can puff it out into a recognition of Papal monarchy. Nor is there in the last paragraph of that famous and inestimable letter to Flavian, which is known as Leo's "Tome," anything like a claim of real supremacy; while, even had the language been stronger, the oecumenical acceptance of the Tome had reference to its magnificent exposition of the great doctrine on which Christianity is based.

In Leo's letter to the unhappy Council which he afterwards, with excusable exaggeration, branded as "a meeting of robbers," the object in view is described: "that all error may be done away with by a fuller judgment" [6] Mr. Rivington forthwith glosses: "the sentence of the Pope was to swell out and be completed by its synodical proclamation, as the sufferings of Christ are completed by those of His followers" (p. 377). By aid of this most gratuitous and

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hardly reverent illustration, a Council intended to be oecumenical is degraded into a mere Papal consistory; and while Leo's account of the pledge given by Eutyches, "per omnia nostram se secuturum sententiam," is translated into a promise to obey the Holy See," the part to be taken by the Council is thus described: "His legates were to determine with the holy assembly of the episcopal brotherhood 'what things will be pleasing to the Lord.'" Is "with" here intended as an adequate representation of communi vobiscum sententia?

That Leo, alike in his high official position, and in his force of character and religious earnestness, [7] was the man to stand forward amid this Eutychian peril, will be admitted by all who believe in the One Christ as "perfect God and perfect Man," with gratitude due to him for that firm theological equipoise whereby, while the error of the time being is exposed, no advantage is given to its Nestorian opposite. He went much too far, we believe, in magnifying his own bishopric, by consolidating

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and formulating the "Petrine" ideas which had long grown up among its clergy; [8] but let us not underrate the significance of his words when, in attempting to work upon the Eastern court for the redress of wrongs done by the "Latrocinium," he speaks as the mouthpiece of "omnes nostrarum partium ecclesiae, omnesque sacerdotes" (even as afterwards he speaks of writings of his as sent to Constantinople "non solum apostolicae sedis auctoritate, sed etiam sanctae synodi, quae ad nos frequens convenerat, unanimitate"). [9] This, according to Mr. Rivington, refers merely to such bishops as happened to be in Rome, whose authority, when sitting with him in synod, was due to him alone - as if they were but a sort of cabinet council to the Sovereign of the entire Church. But Leo means Theodosius to understand that he has the Western Church at his back; one is reminded of Cyril's care to

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insist that Celestine and his legates represent the Western hierarchy. It was on this occasion that he repeated the claim of Nicene authority for a Sardican canon; and if Zosimus and Boniface had made that claim in good faith, Leo made it in the face of evidence which had been in the possession of his Church for thirty years. Yet all the urgency of Leo, [10] supported by the Western emperor [11] and princesses, fails utterly with a pious but feeble prince bred up under the influences of Eastern Christianity. [12] Readers of Gibbon will recollect

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his sly allusion to the "fortunate stumbling of the emperor's horse." [13] Theodosius dies; Pulcheria and her "nominal husband," Marcian, ascend the Eastern throne; and Marcian writes to Leo as having "oversight and rule in regard to the divine faith," [14] and offers a new Council in which, sou auqentountos (Lat. te auctore) peace may be settled among Catholic bishops. [15] These phrases by no means warrant the gloss that at the future synod Leo's authority should be all-decisive; and in the correspondence which followed we see clearly that when Leo intimated that he did not want a new council, unless it was to be held in Italy, Marcian held to his resolution that a council should be held, and not in Italy, but near Constantinople. Leo had to make the best of it, though he did not conceal

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his annoyance: he could not use Marcian as he had used the wretched Valentinian. [16] Even before Theodosius died, Leo had written to him about the new bishop of Constantinople, whom he had reason to regard with suspicion, and he wished his own Tome to be a test. Be it remembered that on Vatican principles, as Mr. Rivington expressly says (p. 415), the Tome "was already of faith." Yet Leo speaks here with remarkable moderation: Anatolius should study the Fathers' writings, and with them Cyril's letter to Nestorius, and the minutes of the Ephesian Council; and "let him not disdain to peruse my letter also, which he will find to be in full accord with the pious mind of the Fathers." [17] Can words be

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plainer as against the assertion that the Tome, qua Leo's, was deemed infallible? No doubt as to the bishops who had yielded to the tyranny of Dioscorus, Leo commissions Anatolius to act with his envoys, and entrusts him with the carrying out of his dispositio [18] - a word which suggests to Mr. Rivington the parenthetical hint, "cf. the use of dispositio for an imperial edict," so that Leo may be thus represented as nothing less than a spiritual emperor; which, indeed, is the position in effect assigned by authentic Roman teaching to his present namesake.

At the opening of the Council of Chalcedon, the "legates" objected to the presence of Dioscorus. Let us hear our author: "The imperial commissioners wished to resist the decision of the legates [that he should have no seat in the Council], but in vain. They had to obey 'the head of all Churches,' and cause Dioscorus to

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leave his place. His presence, however, was required, and he was therefore allowed to sit in the middle, without, that is to say, a seat as a constituent member, which was the gist of the legates' demand" (p. 401).

But Mr. Rivington omits (one is really weary of having so often to use this verb) the original insistence of the "legates," "Let him go out, or else we will go out;" and the remark of the commissioners, "If you represent a judge, you must not be an accuser as well." The arrangement come to was in the nature of a compromise; [19] but Dioscorus was treated as bishop of Alexandria until his final act of contumacy. [20] The title of Oecumenical Patriarch," employed in the Alexandrian petitions to Leo as president, and to the Council, was obviously put in to please Leo; and it must not be inferred from the Council's silence that such a phrase received its sanction, [21] or, indeed, that the memorialists

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expected to be understood literally. Again, when Dioscorus is condemned, the dictum of the "legates," that Leo "by them and by the Council" deposed him, is to be read with the successive speeches of bishops. [22] Anatolius, who had his own reasons for wishing to stand well with Leo, professes to be "altogether of one

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mind with the Apostolic see;" out of the other prelates, a few combine Leo's name with that of Anatolius; still fewer combine it with the Council's; a large number associate the names of both prelates with the Council's; one adds the name of the bishop of Antioch, but the great majority refer to the Council or "the fathers" simply. In the missives to Dioscorus and to his clergy, the sentence is grounded on his previous offences plus his contumacy towards the Council; and instead of accepting, even constructively, the position of being Leo's minister, the Council repeatedly describes the deposition as its own act. [23] No doubt, in the letter to the Emperor we read that Dioscorus might have been pardoned if he had not "barked against the Apostolic see itself, and attempted to excommunicate the Pope [24] Leo." But Mr. Rivington stops just short of the momentous

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words, "He has been fittingly deprived of his episcopate by the Universal Council." [25]

And now as to the treatment of the Tome. The commissioners propose that the Council should frame a doctrinal formulary. This is objected to, on the ground of the Ephesian Council's "rule" against compiling "another Creed." [26] "We dare not make another exposition, for we have in writing those made by the Fathers" - meaning the Nicene and "Constantinopolitan" forms of the Creed, [27] to which the contmissioners had referred. One bishop remarks, however, that Eutychianism has required some new statements of truth, that Leo has given a "type" or formulary, and that "we follow him and have signed his letter," as,

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indeed, many bishops had done before the Council met. [28] The bishops exclaim, "We all say this; the expositions given are sufficient; it is not lawful to make another." Clearly, "this" refers to what they had said before; and Mr. Rivington ought to have recognised that the "expositions" mean the Creed, and do not, as he imagines (p. 409), include the Tome, for the Ephesian "rule," which is referred to as an authority, would not have excluded any addition to documents like the Tome, which did not profess to be a Creed. [29] The Creed was read in both forms, followed by Cyril's two chief letters, and by the Tome, the last three documents being hailed with acclamations. But the subject was postponed until a subsequent session, when the Tome was solemnly accepted by the Council; but in what terms? The remark that the Council "no more sat in judgment on the Pope and St. Cyril, as superiors, than a man acts as

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superior to St. James and St. Paul" when he propounds a "Harmonia Apostolica" (p. 411), is absolutely gratuitous. The Fourth Council did not "judge" of Cyril's teaching, because it had been solemnly adopted by the Third; but did it not, in any true sense, "judge" Leo's? Let us see. The bishops at Ephesus, in their individual affirmations, had approved of Cyril's teaching as expressed in his second letter to Nestorius, because (as many of them said) they "found," or "saw," or "recognised," or "understood," or "ascertained" it to be consonant to the Creed. [30] They thus "judged" it, and thereupon erected it into a standard. It was so regarded when Leo's Tome was dealt with at Chalcedon. Now, here are some of the phrases in which the bishops adhere to a document proceeding from the Roman chair, and, according to Mr. Rivington, "already irreversible," being "an ex-cathedra pronouncement," [31] obligatory on all Christian consciences from the moment of its promulgation by Leo, simply because it was he who promulgated it: "I have ascertained - I judge -

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I am fully persuaded - we find - we have found - that it is in accordance with the Creed," and, as many bithops add, "with the teaching of the Council of Ephesus" or "of Cyril." Or, "as far as I have been able to perceive," or "to understand, it agrees - I perceive that it no way differs - we have proved by examination that it no way differs - I find in it nothing divergent - I have found that it agrees - your Splendours [the commissioners] see that it agrees," etc. [32] Are we to say that such language implies a real "judgment" when applied to a writing of Cyril's, but, when applied to one of Leo's, means only that the speakers now appreciate the grounds of a teaching which, independently of such appreciation, had a divine right to their submissive acceptance? Nothing in the Acts could warrant a distinction prima facie so arbitrary. If words on a solemn occasion mean anything, here is a series of declarations in which individual bishops, members of the Oecumenical Council, accept the Tome because they personally believe it to be conformable to Church standards, just as their predecessors had dealt

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with Cyril's letter; and thus by their act it acquires a place among Church standards. [33] The series in question, including the statements of those prelates who had found a few difficulties in the Tome (as if it tended to Nestorianism) and had been satisfied by explanations, extends (with the Latin rendering) over nearly thirty-seven columns of Mansi's seventh volume. Was it fair in Mr. Rivington to refrain from giving any samples of this language? One may ask another question: was it quite prudent? [34]

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Coming to the "Definitio Fidel" as ultimately adopted by the Council, Mr. Rivington makes the commissioners "ask practically whether the bishops were prepared to withdraw themselves from the Supreme Pontiff" (p. 421). We need not say that there is nothing like "Supreme Pontiff" in the original, which reads, "from the most holy Leo," a title by no means, in those days, equivalent to the "Holy Father" among Romanists. [35] Our author has, indeed, a good right to emphasise the great service rendered by Leo's envoys in prevailing on the Council to substitute "in two natures" for the ambiguous

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"of two natures," which at first stood in the "Definitio." But the commissioners, in giving full support to this request, relied, not on any "Papal prerogative," but on the argument from consistency. By accepting the Tome, which pointedly affirmed that "in the complete nature of very Man was born very God, whole in what was His own, and whole in what was ours," the Council had committed itself to "in." [36] And the "Definitio," as revised and promulgated, has nothing of Papalism in it, and classes the Tome with Cyril's letter, "inasmuch as it is accordant with Peter's confession." [37] Mr. Rivington mentions the address to Marcian, but slurs over a critical part of the case. The Council there defends the letter of "the admirable prelate of Rome" from the charge of "innovation" by precedents from earlier dogmatic letters, and then says, "If it is not accordant with the Scriptures, and with previous Fathers, and if it is not manifestly an advocacy of the Nicene creed, let them confute it." [38]

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Theodoret's case is very unsatisfactorily treated by our author. [39] The injured bishop of Cyrrhos unquestionably uses the technical term epikaloumenw in this application for Leo's help, and undertakes to abide by Leo's judgment whatever it may be. But in the

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letter to the Roman priest Renatus [40] (of whose death he was not aware), he hopes that the "archbishop" of Rome will bid him take refuge with "your council," and promises to accept what "you" (umwn) may decide. This "council," Mr. Rivington insists, would be the mere "machinery" of the purely "Papal judgment;" but in another letter Anatolius (a "patrician" to whom Theodoret wrote seven letters) is asked to obtain leave for Theodoret to "go to the West and be judged by the bishops who dwell in it;" [41] so that the Council was somehow to represent the Western Church, which a bishop wronged in the East would naturally wish to enlist on his side. As Theodoret must have expected, Leo, and doubtless some assembly of Westerns, pronounced in his favour. This, on Vaticanist principles, should have been amply sufficient to place him, as a matter of

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course, among the constituent members of the Council of Chalcedon. But it was by no means deemed sufficient. The commissioners found that in face of strong opposition, he could only take his seat in the midst as a competent accuser capable also of being accused. He did not vote, "except on such business as was connected with his own justification," i.e. as was properly doctrinal. [42] In the eighth session he was called upon explicitly to anathematise Nestorius. Mr. Rivington (applying the Vatican "principles") thinks that this did not prejudice the previous Roman judgment, chiefly because "the legates" themselves "actually gave the" synodical "decision" in his favour (p. 432). But the fact remains that the bishops vehemently and persistently imposed on him a test which Leo had not imposed; that he tried to satisfy them by something short of it; that he was not pronounced "worthy of his see" until he submitted. [43] The "legates" did not "give the decision," but simply took the lead in giving a vote; six bishops followed, of whom five made no allusion referring to Leo's action, while a

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sixth seems to include him among "archbishops;" [44] then all the prelates assented by acclamation, and the commissioners pronounced that Theodoret "should regain the Church of Cyrrhos, according to the judgment of the Council" - words not exhibited by our author. [45]

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Lastly, as to the twenty-eighth canon. Mr. Rivington moralises (in a manner which suggests some reflections) on the "lust of power" which possessed the see of Constantinople. This passion, it seems, is, very "infectious in an imperial centre." Not at all, we suppose, in a centre which emperors had left open to bishops like Leo! But to proceed. "Constantinople," says out author, "wished to be in the East what Rome was as patriarch of the West. Patriarxias klhrousqe was St. Gregory of Nazianzus's condemnation of the East" (p. 440). The words, in one of his autobiographical poems, have nothing to do with technical patriarchates;

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nor do they "condemn the East" at large: they refer (as Mr. Rivington would have seen had he looked them up) to ambitious prelates who wanted promotion to grander sees. [46] As for the "rebuffs which Constantinople had met with" at Chalcedon, the Council had not refused to call the "Sojourning Synod" a synod, but had simply blamed it for condemning a bishop unheard [47] and when it declined to sanction Constantinople's custom as to the consecration of bishops for a town in Bithynia, the commissioners added that "whatever was fitting for the see of Constantinople, with regard to consecrations within the provinces, should be considered in due order at the Council." [48] The Roman envoys were present so that they and any Eastern prelates interested had fair warning. [49] There was nothing like stealing a march or springing a mine. When,

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at the close of the next day's session, Aetius, the archdeacon of Constantinople, announced that his Church had some business to bring forward, the commissioners "directed the Council to examine it" without their presence, [50] but the "legates" said that "they had no instructions about such a matter." Their game (if such a phrase may be used) was obvious: they wanted to avoid being outvoted, and afterwards to come in and protest against what might have been resolved upon in their absence; but as Mr. Rivington says, "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" (p. 442). He means that on the next day, a "legate," on being challenged, produced some instructions from Leo to that effect. [51] Their former reply, then, was a falsehood which had served its purpose. However, the Council could not have its action stopped by the withdrawal

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of those who professed to be its presidents; and the canon ranked as twenty-eighth was passed in a form which afterwards received a not unimportant modification. Unquestionably, there was more of ingeniousness than of ingenuousness in the wording, which endeavoured to make the newly sanctioned patriarchal jurisdiction in the "Asiatic," Pontic, and Thracian dioeceses (i.e. groups of provinces), a logical consequence of the precedency conferred on Constantinople in 381. [52] We are not concerned to defend, as a complete statement of the facts, the assertion that "the fathers with good reason assigned its privileges to the see of Old Rome, because that city was imperial," although undoubtedly it was a main element in the case. [53] Nor is it our business to hold a brief for the see of the Eastern capital; its prelates and clergy were just as open to the temptation of self-aggrandisement as those of Rome; but three points must it, fairness be remembered. First, between 381 and 451 Constantinople had been practically allowed in several cases to exercise authority in Asia; secondly, the ninth and seventeenth canons of this very Council had allowed an

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appeal from primates [54] in Asia Minor to "the see of Constantinople;" thirdly, "Rome herself," in Tillemont's phrase, was probably "a cause of this canon which she opposed so strongly," for some dissatisfaction at "the legates' presidency" appears to have been exhibited in the Council, and it may well be "that the Easterns were glad to augment the power of Constantinople, as being most likely to hinder that of Rome from raising itself higher and higher;" [55] so that thus "the canons passed with the consent even of the principal bishops of Asia" - including those of Antioch and Jerusalem, and a number of metropolitans, with the deputy of him of Heraclea, - and several bishops present abstained from voting, but apparently did not oppose. [56] Next day both commissioners

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and legates reappeared: the former asked for an explanation of what was said to have been done. The new canon was accordingly read, whereupon one "legate," with a truly Roman intrepidity of assertion as to what had taken place in his absence, affirmed that the signatures had been given under constraint. It does not in the least surprise one that, in spite of the evidence that "the bishops exclaimed, 'No one was forced,'" that the commissioners expressly asked the "Asian and Pontic" signataries whether they had signed of their own free will, that thirteen successively replied in the affirmative, and that "the rest exclaimed, 'We signed voluntarily,'" Mr. Rivington (without evidence) restricts the disclaimer of coercion to "some few," thinks the assertion of the legate "probable," and gravely adduces in its favour the "fearless" assertion of Leo to the same effect (pp. 443, 447), as if Leo would hesitate about repeating "fearlessly" whatever his legates reported to him on such a matter. [57] But now see how Mr. Rivington deals

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with the Acts when they speak of a reading of certain earlier canons. "The legates read the sixth canon of Nicaea, ... quoted the sixth Nicene canon, beginning, 'Rome has always held the primacy' [58] (pp. 443 ff). Here, let us remark in passing, it is clearly intended to prepossess the reader in favour of the genuineness of what they read. But "Aetius is then supposed to have read first a slightly different version of the same canon, and then the third of Constantinople." (It was not Aetius, but Constantine, an imperial secretary, to whom Aetius had handed the codex.) "But this is in the highest degree improbable," because the Nicene canonp could not throw light on the claims of the see of Constantinople, which was then only the see of Byzantium, and the Church of Constantinople now relied on the third canon of Constantinople,

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the Nicene canon being its "difficulty." [59] But if it was ad rem for a legate to quote his version of a Nicene canon, why was it irrelevant for a Constantinopolitan to read its Greek text? Then as to the "slight difference": Mr. Rivington does not give the Latin version here in parallelism with the Greek; but he more than suggests (as he had done before) that the Latin represents the true text, and therefore that the Greek was at least erroneous. He relies on a subsequent speech by the "commissioners," that they "perceived that by the canons the first place (ta prwteia) and distinguished honour were

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reserved for the archbishop of Old Rome." [60] But so they were, in effect, by the third canon of Constantinople; and the commissioners at once go on, "but that the archbishop of New Rome ought to enjoy the same privileges of honour" (meaning, ought to rank next to the bishop of Rome, and before all others); and they propose some changes in the wording of the canon, intended to safeguard the rights of local Churches. But enough has been already said about the false Latin version; and one is past being surprised at finding that "the legates' protest," at the end of the proceedings, is given (p. 446) without the commissioners' humiliating rebuff: "All that we have proposed [61] has been sanctioned by the whole Council."

Yet the letter of the Council to Leo is claimed by Mr. Rivington as recognising to the full his universal supremacy, and therefore as nullifying "the Anglican interpretation" of the canon

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which was thus enacted in the teeth of his envoys' protest. Now, first, the canon must be taken in its grammatical sense, and not explained away on the score of any expressions in the letter. Then look at the expressions: [62] the bishops call Leo their "head," because by his legates he was their president, and, as first among bishops, might fairly be addressed as their "father." [63] He had "held the position of interpreting the words of blessed Peter," inasmuch as they had accepted his Tome expressly on the ground that it truly represented the purport of Matt. xvi. 16; and by publicly affirming the true faith they had "used him as an originator of what was good." "To him had been committed by the Saviour the guardianship of the Vine": to him conspicuously and eminently, as holding a primary place, but certainly not in a sense generically unique; for they themselves had "received authority both to root up and to plant, and they treated the "definition" as their own. They requested him to "honour the decision by adding his own vote" (yhfois), and so to "confirm and assent to " what had been

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done by "the Oecumenical Council" and, as they do not shrink from adding, "under the guidance of a Divine command"; and accordingly they "make known to him the whole purport (dunamin) of their proceedings." [64] Our author has thus exaggerated in the Papal interest the force of language which is otherwise sufficiently explained, especially by the light of acts which say more than words. Mr. Rivington himself would not deny that Oriental fluency of "compliment" appears in that curious passage which assumes that the legates only resisted the new canon that Leo might have the pleasure of approving it. Was it not also intelligible and inevitable that Leo, as president, should be asked to confirm a canon which, although it did not interfere with his own patriarchate or with Western Church administration, and therefore had no relation to Western Church law, did expressly mention his see, and expressly assign a cause for the "privileges" which had been

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"given" to it? Then as to Anatolius' letter: it says that the Council was summoned to "confirm the faith of the fathers and the letter of Leo;" [65] but Mr. Rivington himself knows how to put different senses on "confirming," and the synod had met, by imperial order, to secure the right faith, of which Anatolius could truly say that Leo's letter was in full "accord" with it. But we have seen in the Acts of the Council an essential difference between the treatment of the Creed and the treatment of the Tome; and if, as Anatolius says, the bishops "laid on the altar their definition drafted for the confirmation of the fathers' faith, in accordance with" the Tome, he means that the Tome was solemnly approved as a true expression of that faith. Anatolius quotes the authoritative statement of the commissioners, that "the oros" (meaning here the Canon) "of the holy Council [66] was established and it is honoris gratia, as the Latin version puts it, that Leo is requested to give it his "approval and confirmation." And, lastly, as to Leo's letter on the subject, Mr. Rivington had formerly made him by implication the Church's "Emperor;" he now explicitly makes him the Church's

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"King," [67] but he will not admit what is implied in the particular line of objection which Leo through several letters [68] takes up and maintains. No doubt, in these "majestic and tender" epistles, he reiterates such dulcet terms as ambitionis spiritus, improbi desiderii, illicito appetitu, praesumptio, intemperanti cupiditati, prava cupiditas, vanitatis elatio. But although his real motive may be discerned through this copious vituperation, and although he professes to "annul it by the authority of Peter," he never takes up a properly Papal ground of objection as to its merits: [69] he poses, throughout,

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as the champion of Nicene rules, as guarding the interest of Alexandria and Antioch, of the privileges or "primacies of provinces," and of metropolitical sees. [70] Being a statesman, and, so far, a diplomatist, and having to address, not his own Western, but an Eastern Emperor and Eastern ecclesiastics, he forbears to rest on the Papal claim as such, and falls back on the lower but safer line which might have been taken up by an Egyptian or Syrian prelate who looked with jealousy on Constantinople. [71] The inference is too obvious

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to need statement; nor need we dwell on the fact stated by Tillemont after Liberatus, that "Ce canon subsista et fut exécuté, malgré l'opposition de S. Leon et de ses successeurs, parceque les empereurs l'appuyoient. [72]

Notes