280 THIRD PEKIOD, A.D. 311- 590.
Oonstautinoplo trie second rank amonsjj the patriarchs, and ia simply a repetition and confirmation of the third canon of the council of Constantinople ; the second part goes farther, and Ranctious the supremacy, already actually exercised by Chrys ostom and his successors, of the patriarch of Constantinople, not only over the diocese of Thrace, but also over the dioceses of Asia Minor and Pontus, and gives him the exclusive right to ordain both the metropolitans of these three dioceses, and all the bishops of the barbarians ' within those bounds. This gave him a larger district than any other patriarch of the East. Subsequently an edict of the emperor Justinian, in 530, added to him the special prerogative of receiving appeals from the other patriarchs, and thus of governing the whole Orient.
The council of Chalcedon in this decree onl}^ followed consistently the oriental principle of politico-ecclesiastical division. Its intention was to make the new political capital also the ecclesiastical capital of the East, to advance its bishop over the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch, and to make him as nearly as possible equal to the bishop of Rome. Thus was imposed a wholesome check on the ambition of the Alexandrian patriarch, who in various ways, as the aiFair of Theophilus and Dioscurus shows, had abused his powder to the prejudice of the church.
But thus, at the same time, was roused the jealousy of the bishop of Rome, to whom a rival in Constantinople, with equal prerogatives, was far more dangerous than a rival in Alexandria or Antioch. Especially offensive must it have been to him, that the council of Chalcedon said not a word of the primacy of Peter, and based the power of the Roman bishop, like that of the Constantinopolitan, on political grounds ; which was indeed not erroneous, yet only half of the truth and in that i-espeet unfair.
Just here, therefore, is the point, where the Eastern church
' Among the barbarian tribes, over whom the bishops of Constantinople eiercised an ecclesiastical jurisdiction, were the Huns on the Bosphorus. whose king, Gorda, received baptism in the time of Justinian ; the Herulians, who received the Christian faith in 627 ; the Abasgians and Alanians on the Euxine sea, who about Vhe same time received priests from Constantinople. Comp. Wiltsch, i. 144 and 145
§ 56. SYNODICAL LEGISLATION, ETU. 281
entered into a conflict with tlie Western, which continues tc this day. Tlie papal delegates protested against the twenty eighth canon of the Chalcedonian council, on the spot, in the sixteenth and hist session of the council ; but in vain, though their protest was admitted to record. They appealed to tha sixth canon of the Nicene council, according to the enlarged Latin version, which, in the later addition, ^^ Ecclesia Romana sertiper hahuit jprinofiatutn^'' seems to assign the Koraan bishop a position above all the patriarchs, and drops Constantinople from notice ; whereupon the canon was read to them in its original form from the Greek Acts, without that addition, together with the first three canons of the second ecumenical council with their express ackr.owledgraent of the patriarch of Constantinople in the second rank.' After the debate on tliis point, the imjierial commissioners thus summed up the i-esult : "From the whole discussion, and from what has been brought forward on either side, we acknowledge that the primacy over all (tt^o TrdvTcou ra TrpcoTela) and the most eminent rank (/cat rr]v e^aiperov Ti/xip) are to continue with the archbishop of old Rome ; but that also the archbishop of l^Tew Rome should enjoy the same precedence of honor {ra -Trpea^ela T7]<i Ttyu-^9), and have the right to ordain tlie metropolitans in the dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Thrace," &c. Now they called upon the council to declare whether this was its opinion ; whereupon the bishops gave their full, emphatic consent, and begged to
' This coiTection of the Roman legates is so little to the taste of the Roman Catholic historians, especially the ultramontane, that tlie Ballerini, in their edition of the works of Leo the Great, torn. iii. p. xxxvii. sqq., and even Hefele, Conciliengesch. i. p. SS5, and ii. p. 522, have without proof declared the relevant passage in the Greek Acts of the council of Chalcedon a later interpolation. Hefele, who can but concede the departure of the Latin version from the original text of the sixth canon of Nice, thinks, however, that the Greek text was not read in Chalcedon, because even this bore against the elevation of Constantinople, and therefore i7i favor of the Roman legates. But the Roman legates, as also Leo in his protest against the 28th decree of Chalcedon, laid chief strerid upon the Roman addition, Ecdesia Romana $empcr liahult primatum, and considered the equalization of any other patriarch vith the bishop of Rome incompatible with it. Since the legates, as is conceded, appealed to the Nicenc canon, the Greeks had first to meet this appeal, before they passed to the canons of the council of Constantinople. Only tlie two together formo ) a sufficient answer to the Roman protest.