286 THIKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
mt^* 2)a/re8, and has never exercised a papal supremacy ovei Lis colleagues in the East, like that of the pope over the metroplitans of the West ; still less has he arrogatccl, like hii rival in ancient Rome, the sole dominion of the entire church. Toward the bishop of Rome he claimed only equality of rights and coordinate dignity.
In this long contest between the two leading patriarchs ot Christendom, the patriarch of Rome at last carried the day, The monarchical tendency of the hierarchy was much stronger in the West than in the East, and was urging a universal monarchy in the church.
The patriarch of Constantinople enjoyed indeed the favor of the emperor, and aU the benefit of the imperial residence. ]^ew Rome was most beautifully and most advantageously situated for a metropolis of government, of commerce, and of culture, on the bridge between two continents ; ana it formed a powerful bulwark against the barbarian conquesis. It was never desecrated by an idol temple, but was founded a Christian city. It fostered the sciences and arts, at a time wdieu the "West was whelmed by the wild waves of barbarism ; it })reserved the knowledge of the Greek language and literature through the middle ages ; and after the invasion of the Turks it kindled by its fugitive scholars the enthusiasm of classic studies in the Latin church, till Greece rose from the dead with the New Testament in her hand, and held the torch for the Reformation.
But the Roman patriarch had yet greater advantages. In him were united, as even the Greek historian Theodoret concedes,' all the outward and the inward, the political and the spiritual conditions of the highest eminence.
In the first place, his authority rested on an ecclesiastical and spiritual basis, reaching back, as public opinion granted, through an unbroken succession, to Peter the ajiostle ; while Constantinople was in no sense an apostolica sedets^ but had a purely political origin, though, by transfer, and in a measure by usurpation, it had possessed itself uf the metropolitan rights
' Epist. 113, to Pope Leo L
§ 57. THE KIVAL IATRIAECH8 OF OLD AND NEW ROME, 287
of Epliesus.' Hence the popes after Leo appealed almost exclusively to the divine origin of tlieir dignity, and to the primacy of the prince of the apostles over the whole church.
Then, too, considered even in a political point of view, old Rome had a far longer and grander imperial tradition to show^ and was identified in memory with the bloom of the empire ; while New Kome marked the beginning of its decline. When tlie Western empire fell into the hands of the barbarians, the Roman bishop was the only surviving heir of this imperial past, or, in the well-known dictum of Hobbos, " the ghost of the deceased Roman empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof."
Again, the very remoteness of Rome from the imperial court was favorable to the development of a hierarchy independent of all political influence and intrigue ; while the bishop of Constantinople had to purchase the political advan tages of the residence at the cost of ecclesiastical freedom. The tradition of the donatio Constantijii, though a fabrication of the eighth century, has tluis much truth : that the transfer of the imperial residence to the East broke the way for the temporal power and the political independence of the papacy.
Further, amidst the great trinitarian and christological controversies of the Nicene and post-Nicene age, the popes maintained the powerful prestige of almost nndeviating ecnmenical orthodoxy and doctrinal stability ; ^ while the gee of Constantinople, with its Grecian spirit of tlieological restlessness and disputation, was sullied with the Arian, the Nestorian, the Monophysite, and other heresies, and was in general, even in matters of faith, dependent on the changing humors of the
' That the apostle Andrew brought the gospel to the ancient Byzantium, is an entirely unreliable legend of later times.
" One exception is the brief pontificate of the Arian, Felix II., whom the emperor Constantius, in 365, forcibly enthroned during the exile of Liberius, and who ia regarded by some as an illegitimate anti-pope. The accounts respecting him arc, however, very conflicting, and so are the opinions of even Roman Catholic lustorians. Liberius also, in 357, lapsed for a short time into Arianism, thxt he might be recalled from exile. Another and later exception is Pope Honorias, whom even the sixth ecumenical cour.cil of Constantinople, 681, anathem?ti2ed fcii Monothelit* heresy