508 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
Rinotmetos,1 one of the most heartless tyrants that ever dis graced a Christian throne. He ruled from 685-695, was deposed by a revolution and sent to exile with a mutilated nose, but regained the throne in 705 and was assassinated in 711.2
The supplementary council was purely oriental in its com position and spirit. It adopted 102 canons, most of them old, but not yet legally or oecumenically sanctioned. They cover the whole range of clerical and ecclesiastical life and discipline, and are valid to this day in the Eastern church. They include eighty-five apostolic canons so called (thirty-five more than were acknowledged by the Roman church), the canons of the first four oecumenical councils, and of several minor councils, as Ancyra, Neo-Csesarea, Gangra, Antioch, Laodicea, etc. ; also the canons of Dionysius the Great of Alexandria, Peter of Alex andria, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of JSTazianzum, Amphilochius of Iconium, Timothy of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria, Gennadius of Constantinople, and an anti-Roman canon of Cyprian of Carthage. The decretals of the Roman bishops are ignored.
The canons were signed first by the emperor; the second
c, from />/f, nose, in allusion to his mutilation. 2 Gibbon (ch. 48) gives the following description of his character : " After the decease of his father the inheritance of the Roman world devolved to Justinian II. ; and the name of a triumphant law-giver was dishonored by the vices of a boy, who imitated his namesake only in the expensive luxury of building. His passions were strong ; his understanding was feeble ; and he was intoxicated with a foolish pride that his birth had given him the com mand of millions, of whom the smallest community would not have chosen him for their local magistrate. His favorite ministers were two beings the least susceptible of human sympathy, a eunuch and a monk : to the one he abandoned the palace, to the other the finances ; the former corrected the emperor's mother with a scourge, the latter suspended the insolvent tributaries, with their heads downward, over a slow and smoky fire. Since the days of Commodus and Caracalla the cruelty of the Roman princes had most com monly been the effect of their fear ; but Justinian, who possessed some vigor of character, enjoyed the sufferings, and braved the revenge of his subjects about ten years, till the measure was fall of his crimes and of their patience."
2 114. CONCILIUM QUINISEXTUM, A.D. G92. 509
place was left blank for the pope, but was never filled ; then follow the names of Paul of Constantinople, Peter of Alexan dria, Anastasius of Jerusalem, George of Antioch (strangely after that of the patriarch of Jerusalem), and others, in all 211 bishops and episcopal representatives, all Greeks and Orientals, of whom 43 had been present at the sixth oecumenical council.
The emperor sent the acts of the Trullan Council to Sergius of Rome, and requested him to sign them. The pope refused because they contained some chapters contrary to ecclesiastical usage in Rome. The emperor dispatched the chief officer of his body guard with orders to bring the pope to Constantinople. But the armies of the exarch of Ravenna and of the Pentapolis rushed to the protection of the pope, who quieted the soldiers ; the imperial officer had to hide himself in the pope's bed, and then left Rome in disgrace.1 Soon afterwards Justinian II. was dethroned and sent into exile. When he regained the crown, with the aid of a barbarian army (705), he sent two metropolitans to Pope John VII. with the request to call a council of the Roman church, which should sanction as many of the canons as were acceptable. The pope, a timid man, simply returned the copy. Subsequent negotiations led to no decisive result.
The seventh oecumenical Council (787) readopted the 102 canons, and erroneously ascribed them to the sixth oecumenical Council.
The Roman church never committed herself to these canons except as far as they agreed with ancient Latin usage. Some of them were inspired by an anti-Roman tendency. The first canon repeats the anathema on Pope Honorius. The thirtysixth canon, in accordance with the second and fourth oecumenical Councils, puts the patriarch of Constantinople on an equality of rights with the bishop of Rome, and concedes to the latter only a primacy of honor, not a supremacy of
1 This is related by Anastasius, Bede, and Paulus Diaconus. See Mansi, XII. 3, Baronius ad a. G92, and Hefele, III. 346.