Sermons & Letters 246 part 4/4

And, accusations having been brought forward in public on behalf of each party — concerning how far Anastasius had usurped the metropolitan's right to himself, by withdrawing himself from subordination to the bishop of Nicomedia — and the fourth canon of the Council of Nicaea having been read (by which it had been established that a bishop should be ordained by all the bishops of the province), together with the law of Valentinian made on behalf of the Nicomedians, it was at length judged that Nicaea, being subject to Nicomedia, had been granted by the edict of Valentinian an honor, not the metropolitan right; and that, according to the Nicene Council, there should be only one metropolis in each single province. 3. In the fourteenth session a contention arose concerning the episcopate of Perrhe.

Athanasius — who, being accused by his own people, and repeatedly summoned to judgment by Panolbius, and besides by his successor, and finally by Domnus the patriarch of Antioch as he was holding a council, refused to appear — was for that reason deposed, and Sabinianus was ordained in his place, [Athanasius] having been driven from his see by Dioscorus. The cause, therefore, having been discussed in the synod, was remitted to Maximus of Antioch and the council that is with him, on this condition however: that within eight months counted from the present day an examination should be made. If Athanasius were guilty, he should be punished by [loss of] his see; if innocent, he should be restored.

But Sabinianus should retain the honor of bishop, not the right [of the see], and 'let him be supported (they say) according as the most reverend Maximus, bishop of the Antiochenes, shall dispose for the most holy Church of Perrhe according to its means.' 4. In utmost peace, and with the din of all contentions set aside, all the causes proposed in the synod were reviewed and dispatched. But when the Constantinopolitan clergy, at the suggestion of Bishop Anatolius, were drawn by ambition to enlarge the honor of their Church, the Fathers were asked to deign to enact something. The judges took counsel to guard themselves against pronouncing sentence, and affirmed that the cause pertained to the synod, and with no delay interposed they withdrew, and the legates of the apostolic see followed them. Nevertheless, however, the Fathers

— the survivors who were then present — issued various canons: thirty, as the Greek codices have them, which Gentianus Hervetus translated, as appears at page 508 in Labbé's collection; but the Latins reckon twenty-eight, of which the last is concerning the see of Constantinople, in which was renewed and confirmed what under the elder Theodosius, in the time of Nectarius, had been established in an ecumenical council concerning its patriarchate. When the pontifical legates had learned of this, on the following day — that is, on the Kalends of November — wishing to render void the unjust efforts of Anatolius, they petitioned, as the deacon Liberatus says, that they might again meet with the judges at the council. When these inquired of the council what had been ordained the day before, the acts having been read, they came to know it.

It was therefore ordered that the decree ratified the day before should be read; after the reading of which, the subscription of the bishops attached to it was recited, and in the first place was set Anatolius. By the right of the apostolic see the legates protested, and before the rest Lucentius thus addressed the judges: 'First let your Glory weigh by what circumvention it was contrived with the holy bishops, that they were compelled to subscribe to canons not written down, of which they made mention.' And then, in order to render utterly void the efforts of Anatolius and of the Constantinopolitan clergy — who, setting aside the Nicene sanctions, were striving to make prevail the Constantinopolitan canon established by the hundred and fifty Fathers nearly eighty years before — he adds the following:

'If, then, in those times they enjoyed this privilege, why do they now demand it? If they never enjoyed it, why do they demand it?' After which the legates, being required to produce the mandate which they had received from St. Leo, Boniface recited it: 'Suffer not (it reads) the constitution of the holy Fathers, once promulgated, to be violated by any rashness or diminished, preserving in all ways the dignity of our person in you, whom we have sent in our stead. And if any, perchance trusting in the splendor of their cities, attempt to usurp anything for themselves, repel this with such firmness as is fitting.' Who does not perceive that St. Leo the Great had, even from afar, sniffed out the enormous ambition of Anatolius and indeed of the Constantinopolitan clergy?

5. Meanwhile appeal was made by both parties to the canons; and Paschasinus recited the fifth Nicene [canon] concerning the distinction of dioceses, whose opening is this: 'That the Roman Church has always held the primacy.' But when another codex of the Nicene canons was produced, Aetius the deacon of the Constantinopolitan see lopped it off, and, that opening having been deleted, the sixth canon, drawn up in other words and order, was inserted, and immediately there was subjoined the canon of the Council of Constantinople under Nectarius. But when at length, on account of the suborning and the circumventions of the judges, it had come to a decision in favor of Anatolius's view, Lucentius interposed the following protest: 'The apostolic see, which has charge over us who are present, ought not to be humiliated.'

'And therefore whatever was done yesterday in prejudice of the canons or rules, in our absence, we ask Your Sublimity to order to be set aside; but otherwise let our contradiction remain attached to these acts, that we may know what we ought to report to the apostolic man, the pope of the universal Church, so that he himself may be able to pronounce sentence either concerning the injury to his see or concerning the overthrow of the canons.' Baronius described this history more amply and in a fuller style, whom the readers may consult, for refuting what Pascasius Quesnel fabricated concerning the privileges of the Roman Church, contending that 'these were derived from the Fathers on account of the Roman empire':

'the hundred and fifty Fathers gathered at Constantinople under Nectarius granted equal privileges to the Constantinopolitan [Church]; because New Rome is adorned with empire and senate just as the old.' Nevertheless, lest we pass over this Quesnellian assertion — which is contrived to undermine and overthrow by degrees the foundation of the Catholic hierarchy and society — without due censure, we judge it necessary to compare it with the preceding protestation made by Bishop Lucentius. For Lucentius has two points in it: the one, that by that twenty-eighth canon the apostolic see is humiliated and an injury is inflicted upon it; the other, that the canons are overthrown — concerning which sentence was to be pronounced by the apostolic man, the pope of the universal Church.

To some, however, who do not diligently scrutinize the force and aim of this canon, it might seem that by it neither could the Roman Church be humiliated nor suffer injury, but that both rather redounded to the detriment of the Alexandrian and Antiochene bishops — of whom the one had obtained the second place, the other the third among the patriarchs by peaceful and long-established possession. Since, then, the ancient privileges were adjudged to the Roman pontiffs safe and entire, without any trace whatever of injury, it does not appear why the legates of the apostolic see should have been so vehemently moved, and have so strongly resisted a decree which regarded only the Eastern patriarchs as agreeing among themselves.

Thus indeed might those reason to whom the rights of the apostolic see lay wholly hidden, and who did not grasp the force, order, and rationale of the said decree. And first, the force of that decree consisted in this: that from the splendor and magnificence of cities, from the glory of princes and magistrates, the honor, dignity, and privileges of episcopal sees should be derived, with no regard at all had either to divine institution or to the apostles who founded those very Churches; for this the pontifical legates could not grant without injury to the apostolic see.

For neither did that see's primacy over all bishops, and its governance over the universal Church, derive from any ecclesiastical arrangement and sanction of canons, but from the Lord himself, who constituted Peter his vicar and the head of the whole ecclesiastical body — the prerogatives of whose power remain by the legitimate right of succession in the Roman Church and will remain forever. This divine and apostolic right they plainly and with much study passed over in silence in that canon, as though it were something to be slighted — although in the prior, third, and sixth sessions, and elsewhere here and there, they had ascribed it to Leo the Roman bishop, and likewise in the synodal letter, as we shall note a little later. Therefore Lucentius, perceiving thoroughly that the Roman pontiff was being defrauded of his legitimate rights,

and that that order of ecclesiastical hierarchy derived from Christ the Lord was being abolished, with no other arrangement preserved than that which arose from the civil administration of the Roman empire — to which they contended the Church's canons had had regard; therefore he rightly protested, saying that the apostolic see ought not to be humiliated, nor could it suffer this grave injury. 6. But if, then, we consider the order and rationale of that canon, who does not see that it inflicted force and injury upon the Roman pontiff and the other patriarchs? For it was not permitted to the Fathers of the council to define anything which in any way disagreed with the Nicene canons:

For what disagrees with their rules and constitution will never obtain the consent of the apostolic see. Therefore in this respect too a grave wound was being inflicted upon the pontifical authority, since the Nicene canons were being overthrown, whose observance the Roman pontiffs were necessarily bound to ensure with their whole effort of mind. As they never allowed the rights of their own see to be infringed, so neither ought they to have permitted the rights of others to be filched away by the ambitious.

But if, in the rules of the canons concerning the granting of indulgence to the lapsed and the relaxation of penalties, the Fathers of synods could not dispense without consulting the Roman bishop, as we have seen, how much more ought this to have been provided for when there was question of abolishing the sixth Nicene canon and overthrowing the rights of the Alexandrian and Antiochene patriarchate? 7. And as regards the Alexandrian patriarchate, let us attend to the all too fraudulent manner of acting of the Constantinopolitan clergy and of Anatolius himself.

Dioscorus having already been deposed as bishop — he who most fiercely contended always for the defense of his see's privileges, even against the rules of right, as we saw in the sixth, seventh, and eighth chapters of the prior book — there was no one present at the last session who could repel the ambition of the Constantinopolitans and oppose himself to their efforts. For that Church was still deprived of a lawful pastor. And although in the sixth session it had been ordered that the Egyptian bishops should not depart from Chalcedon, but should await the election of a new bishop, this [election] was at length deferred so long until the council should be dissolved, and there was no one present who might profess himself aggrieved by the usurpation of rights.

How gravely thereafter the rights of the Antiochene see were wounded in those matters which pertained to the ordinations of the bishops of the provinces of Asia, Pontus, and Thrace, there is no one who is ignorant. For Anatolius, under the color of guarding against schism in the future, was eager to claim for himself and his see the honor of holding these ordinations — although the Thracians resisted, and not a few of the other provinces, who could not be circumvented, protested that the rules anciently handed down and their order ought not to be changed. More copiously, and with the erudition in which he excelled, the most learned Christian Lupus described and illustrated this whole controversy in the appendix to the Council of Chalcedon, at page

page 1011 in my [edition], to which we refer the readers. We add only that the words of the cited canon 28 can be examined by all in the collectors of the Councils; and we, meanwhile, by a more orderly method, will proceed to those things which were done by St. Leo for the abolishing of that canon.