§ 64. THE PAPACY FKOM LEO 1. TO GEEGOEI I. 329
He came, it is true, with more modest claims than Leo, wlic sm'passed him in boldness, energy, and consistency. He even solemnly protested, as his predecessor Pelagius O. had done, against the title of universal bishop, which the Constantinopolitan patriarch, John Jejunator, adopted at a council in 587 ; ' he declared it an anthclirislian assumption, in terms which quite remind us of the patriarchal equality, and seem to form a step in recession from the ground of Leo. But when we take his operations in general into view, and remember the rigid consistency of the papacy, which never forgets, we are almost justified in thinking, that this protest was directed not so much against the title itself, as against the bearer of it, and proceeded more from jealousy of a rival at Constantinople, than from sincere humility.^ From the same motive the Koman bishops avoided the title o^ patriarchy as placing them on a level with the Eastern patriarchs, and preferred the title of pope, from a sense of the specific dignity of the chair of Peter. Gregory is said to have been the first to use the humble-proud title : " servant of the servants of God." His successors, notwithstanding his protest, called themselves "the universal bishops " of Christendom. What he had condemned in his oriental colleagues as antichristian arrogance, the later popes considered but the appropriate expi-ession of their official posi tion in the church universal.
' Even Justinian repeatedly applied to the patriarch of Coustantinople officially the title olKovfxeviKhs iraTpiapxri^, U7iiversalis patriarcha.
" Bellarmine disposes of this apparent testimony of one of the greatest and best popes against the system of popery, which has frequently been urged since Calvin by Protastant controversialists, by assuming that the term episcopus universalis is used in two very difl'erent senses. "Respondeo," he says (in his great controversial work, De controversiis christians fidei, etc., de Romano pontifice, lib. ii. cap. 31), "duobus modis posse intelligi uomeu universalis episcopi. Uno mode, ut ille, qui dicitur universalis, intelligatur esse solus episcopus omnium urbium Christianarum, ita at caeteri non sint episcopi, sed vicarii tantum illius, qui dicitur episcopus imiver- Balis, et hoc modo nomen hoc est vere profanum, sacrilegum et antichristianum. . . . . Altero modo dici potest episcopus universalis, qui habet cu-am totiua ecclesiae, sed generalem, ita ut non excludat particulares episcopos. Et hoc mode Domen hoc posse tribui Romano pontifici ex mente Gregorii probatur."
330 THIED PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
§ 65. The Synodical System. The EcuTnenitil GouiigIU,
I. The principal sources are the Acts of the Councils, the best and most
complete collections of which are those of the Jesuit SuaioND (Rom. 1608-1612, 4 vols, fol.) ; the so-called Collectio regia ;,Paris, 1644, 37 vols. fol. ; a copy of it in the Astor Libr., New York) ; but especially those of the Jesuit HARDOUiN(t 1729): Collectio maxima Conciliorura generaliiim et provinoialium (Par. 1715 sqq., 12 vols, fol.), coming down to 171-1, and very available through its five copious indexes (torn. i. and ii. embrace the lirst six centuries ; a copy of it, from Van Ess's library, in the Union Theol. Sem. Library, at New York) ; and the Italian Joannes Dominious Mansi (archbishop of Lucca, died 1769) : Sacrorura Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, Florence, l759-'98, in 31 (30) vols. fol. This is the most complete and the best collection down to the fifteenth centuiy, but unfiuished, and therefore without general indexes; tom. i. contains the Councils from the beginning of Christianity to a. d. 304; tom. ii.-ix. include our period to a. d, 590 (I quote from an excellent copy of this rare collection in the Union Theol. Sem. Libr., at New York, 30 t. James Darling, in his Cyclop. Bibliographica, p. 740-756, gives the list of the contents of an earlier edition of the Councils hy Nic. C'oleti, Venet., 1728, in 23 vols., with a supplement of Mansi, in 6 vols. 1748- '52, which goes down to 1727, while tlie new edition of Mansi only reaches to 1509. Brunet, in the "Manuel du Libraire," quotes the edition of Mansi, Florence, 1759-1798, with the remark: "Cette collection, dont le dernier volume s'arrete a Fannee 1509, est peu commune a Paris ou elle revenait a 600 fr." Strictly speaking it stoi)s in the middle of the 15th century, except in a few documents which reach further.) Useful abstracts are the Summa Conciliorum of Bakth. Caranza, in many editions ; and in the German language, the Bibliothek der Kirchenversammlungen (4th and 5th centuries), by Fuohs, Leipz., 1780-1784, 4 vols.
II. Che. Wilh. Fuanz Walcu (Luth.) : Entwurf einer voUstiindigen His-
torie der Kirchenversammlungen, Leipz., 1759. Edw. II. Landon (Anglic.) : A manual of Councils of the Holy Catholick Church, comprising the substance of the most remarkable and important canons alphabetically arranged, 12mo. London, 1846. C. J. Hefele (R. 0.) . Conciliengeshichte, Freiburg, 1855-1863, 6 vols, (a very valuable work, not yet finished ; vol. v. comes down to a. d. 1250). Comp. my Essay on Oekumenische Concilien, in Dorner's Annals of Ger, Theol. vol viii. 826-346.
Above the patriarchs, even above the patriarch of Kome, stood the ecumenical or general councils,' the highest repre-
' The name aiiuoSos olKov/j.fviKii (cot cilium universale, s. gonerale) occurs first in the sixth canon of the council of Cougtautiuople in 381. The oJ«oi'm«»'t? (sc. 7^) is.