§ 66. LIgT OF ECUMENICAL COUNCILS. 351
four councils, as it stands lowest also in moral character. It is entirely rejected by tlie Nestorian or Chaldaic Christians. Its six canons relate exclusively to Nestorian and Pelagian affairs, and are wholly omitted by Dionysius Exiguus in his collection.
4. The CoNciLiUAi Chalcedonense, a. d. 451 ; summoned by the emperor Marcian, at the instance of the Roman bishop Leo ; held at Chalcedon in Bithynia, opposite Constantinople ; and composed of five hundred and twenty (some say six hundred and thirty) bishops.' Among these were three delegates of the bishop of Rome, two bishops of Africa, and the rest all Greeks and orientals. The fourth general council fixed tho orthodox doctrine of the person of Christ in opposition to Eutychianism and l^estorianism, and enacted thirty canons (according to some manuscripts only twenty-seven or twentyeight), of which the twenty-eighth was resisted by the Roman legates and Leo I. This was the most numerous, and next to the Nicene, the most important of all the general councils, but is repudiated by all the Monophysite sects of the Eastern church.
5. The Concilium Constantinopolitanum II. was assembled a full century later, by the emperor Justinian, A. d. 553, without consent of the pope, for, the adjustment of the tedious Monophysite controversy. It was presided over by the patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople, consisted of only one hundred and sixty-four bishops, and issued fourteen anathemas against the three chapters,^ so called, or the christological views of three departed bishops and divines, Theodore of Mopsueste, Theodoret of Cyros, and I has of Edessa, who were charged with leaning toward the IS'estorian heresy. The fifth council was not recognized, however, by many Western bishops, even after the vacillating Pope VigiHus gave in his assent to it, and it induced a temporary schism between Upper Italy and thfc,
' The synod itself, in a letter to Leo, states the number as only five hundred and twenty; Leo, on the contrary (Ep. 102), speaks of about sux hundred membersand the usual opinion (Tillemont, Memoires, t. xv. p. 641) raises t> » whole number of mejnbei-3, including deputies, to six hundred and thirty.
' Tria capitula, Ki<pa\(ia.
Ci.
352 THEED PERIOD, A.D. 311-590.
Roman see. As to importance, it stands tar below the four previous councils. Its Acts, in Greek, with the exception of the fourteen anathemas, are lost.
■ Besides these, there are two later councils, which have attained among the Greeks and Latins an undisputed ecumenical authority : the thikd council of Constantinople, under Constantine_ Progonatus, a. d. 680, which condemned Monothelitismjand Pope Honorius, f G38),' and consummated the old Catholic christology ; and the second council of N^icsla., under the empress Irene, a. d. 787, which sanctioned the image-worship of the Catholic church, but has no dogmatical importajice^ ""
Thus ]Srie'c\3a — now the miserable Turkish hamlet Is-nik" — has the honor of both opening and closing the succession of acknowledged ecumenical councils.
From this time forth the Greeks and Latins part, and ecumenical councils are no longer to be named. TJie Greeks considered the second Trullan^ (or the fourth Constantinopolitan) council of 692, which enacted no symbol of faith, but canons only, not an independent eightli council, but an appendix to the fifth and sixth ecumenical councils (hence called the Quinisexta sc. synodus) ; against which view the Latin church has always protested. The Latin church, on the other hand, elevates the fourth council of Constantinojtle^ a. d. 869,* which deposed the pati-iarch Photius, the champion of the Greek church in her contest with the Latin, to the dignity of an eighth ecumenical council ; but this council was annulled for the Greek church by the subsequent restoration of Photius. The Poman church also, in pursuance of her claims to exclusive catholicity, adds to the seven or eight Greek councils
' The condemnation of a departed pope as a Iieretic by an ecumenical council ifl BO inconsistent with the claims of papal infallibility, that Romish historians have tried their utmost to dispute the fact, or to weaken its force by sophistical pleading.
^ Ef'r NtKoiaf. Nice and Nicene are properly misnomers, but sanctioned by th« use of Gibbon and other great English writers.
' Trnllmn was a saloon with a cupola in the imperial palace of Constantinople.
* The Latins call it the fourth because they reject the fourth Constantinopolitan (the second Trullan) council of G92, because of its canons, and the fifth of 764 b^ cause it condemned tlie worship of images, which was subsequently sanctioned bj the second council of Nicaea in 787.