Roman claims. In the interest of the deposed Athanasius and of the Nicene orthodoxy it decreed:

(1) That a deposed bishop, who feels he has a good cause, may apply, out of reverence to the memory of the apostle Peter, to the Roman bishop Julius, and shall leave it with him either to ratify the deposition or to summon a new council.

(2) That the vacant bishopric shall not be filled till the decision of Rome be received.

(3) That the Roman bishop, in such a case of appeal, may, according to his best judgment, either institute a new trial by the bishops of a neighboring province, or send delegates to the spot with full power to decide the matter with the bishops.'

2

Thus was plainly committed to the Roman bishops an appellate and revisory jurisdiction in the case of a condemned or deposed bishop even of the East. But in the first place this authority is not here acknowledged as a right already existing in practice. It is conferred as a new power, and that merely as an honorary right, and as pertaining only to the bishop Julius in person. Otherwise, either this bishop would not be expressly named, or his successors would be named with him. Furthermore, the canons limit the appeal to the case of a bishop deposed by his comprovincials, and say nothing of other cases. Finally, the council of Sardica was not a general council, but only a local synod of the West, and could therefore establish no law for the whole church. For the Eastern bishops withdrew at the very beginning, and held an opposi

⚫ Can. 3, 4, and 5 (in the Latin translation, can. 3, 4, and 7), in Mansi, iii. 23 sq., and in Hefele, i. 539 sqq., where the Greek and the Latin Dionysian text is given with learned explanations. The Greek and Latin texts differ in some points.

"So the much discussed canones are explained not only by Protestant historians, but also by Catholic of the Gallican school, like Peter de Marca, Quesnel, Du-Pin, Richer, Febronius. This interpretation agrees best with the whole connection; with the express mention of Julius (which is lacking, indeed, in the Latin translation of Prisca and in Isidore, but stands distinctly in the Greek and Dionysian texts: 'Iovλíç Tŷ ¿zionómy "Pauns, Julio Romano episcopo); with the words, "Si vobis placet" (can. 3), whereby the appeal in question is made dependent first on the decree of this council; and finally, with the words, "Sancti Petri apostoli memoriam honore. mus,” which represent the Roman bishop's right of review as an honorary matter What Hefele urges against these arguments (i. 548 sq.), seems to me very insuff cient

tion council in the neighboring town of Philippopolis; and the city of Sardica, too, with the præfecture of Illyricum, at that time belonged to the Western empire and the Roman patri archate it was not detached from them till 379. The council was intended, indeed, to be ecumenical; but it consisted at first of only a hundred and seventy bishops, and after the secession of the seventy-six orientals, it had only ninety-four; and even by the two hundred signatures of absent bishops, mostly Egyptian, to whom the acts were sent for their approval, the East, and even the Latin Africa, with its three hundred bishoprics, were very feebly represented. It was not sanctioned by the emperor Constantius, and has by no subsequent authority been declared ecumenical. Accordingly its decrees soon fell into oblivion, and in the further course of the Arian controversy, and even throughout the Nestorian, where the bishops of Alexandria, and not those of Rome, were evidently at the head of the orthodox sentiment, they were utterly unnoticed.' The general councils of 381, 451, and 680 knew nothing of such a supreme appellate tribunal, but unanimously enacted, that all ecclesiastical matters, without exception, should first be decided in the provincial councils, with the right of appeal-not to the bishop of Rome, but to the patriarch of the proper diocese. Rome alone did not forget the Sardica, decrees, but built on this single precedent a universal right. Pope Zosimus, in the case of the deposed presbyter Apiarius of Sicca (A. D. 417-418), made the significant mistake of taking the Sardican decrees for Nicene, and thus giving them greater weight than they really possessed; but he was referred by the Africans to the genuine text of the Nicene canon. The later popes, however, transcended the Sardican decrees, withdrawing from the provincial council, according to the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, the right of deposing a bishop, which had been 1 Baronius, Natalis Alexander, and Mansi have endeavored indeed to establist for the council an ecumenical character, but in opposition to the weightiest ancient and modern authorities of the Catholic church. Comp. Hefele, i. 596 sqq.

It is also to be observed, that the synodal letters, as well as the orthodox ecclesiastical writers of this and the succeeding age, which take notice of this council, like Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Basil, make no mention of those decrees concerning Rome.

allowed by Sardica, and vesting it, as a causa major, exclu sively in themselves.

Finally, in regard to the four great ecumenical councils, the first of NICE, the first of CONSTANTINOPLE, that of EPHESUS, and that of CHALCEDON: we have already presented their position on this question in connection with their legislation on the patriarchal system. We have seen that they accord to the bishop of Rome a precedence of honor among the five officially coequal patriarchs, and thus acknowledge him primus inter pares, but, by that very concession, disallow his claims to supremacy of jurisdiction, and to monarchical authority over the entire church. The whole patriarchal system, in fact, was not monarchy, but oligarchy. Hence the protest of the Roman delegates and of Pope Leo against the decrees of the council of Chalcedon in 451, which coincided with that of Constantinople in 381. This protest was insufficient to annul the decree, and in the East it made no lasting impression; for the subsequent incidental concessions of Greek patriarchs and emperors, like that of the usurper Phocas in 606, and even of the sixth ecumenical council of Constantinople in 680, to the see of Rome, have no general significance, but are distinctly traceable to special circumstances and prejudices.

It is, therefore, an undeniable historical fact, that the greatest dogmatic and legislative authorities of the ancien church bear as decidedly against the specific papal claims of the Roman bishopric, as in favor of its patriarchal rights and an honorary primacy in the patriarchal oligarchy. The subsequent separation of the Greek church from the Latin proves to this day, that she was never willing to sacrifice her independence to Rome, or to depart from the decrees of her own greatest councils.

Here lies the difference, however, between the Greek and the Protestant opposition to the universal monarchy of the papacy. The Greek church protested against it from the basis of the oligarchical patriarchal hierarchy of the fifth century; in an age, therefore, and upon a principle of church organiza

1 Comp. § 56.

tion, which preceded the grand agency of the papacy in the history of the world. The evangelical church protests against it on the basis of a freer conception of Christianity, seeing in the papacy an institution, which indeed formed the legitimate development of the patriarchal system, and was necessary for the training of the Romanic and Germanic nations of the middle ages, but which has virtually fulfilled its mission and outlived itself. The Greek church never had a papacy; the evangelical historically implies one. The papacy stands be tween the age of the patriarchal hierarchy and the age of the Reformation, like the Mosaic theocracy between the patriarchal period and the advent of Christianity. Protestantism rejects at once the papal monarchy and the patriarchal oligarchy, and thus can justify the former as well as the latter for a certain time and a certain stage in the progress of the Christian world.

$63. Leo the Great. A. D. 440-461.

I. ST. LEO MAGNUS: Opera omnia (sermones et epistolæ), ed. Paschas. Quesnel., Par. 1675, 2 vols. 4to. (Gallican, and defending Hilary against Leo, hence condemned by the Roman Index); and ed. Petr. et Hieron. Ballerini (two very learned brothers and presbyters, who wrote at the request of Pope Benedict XIV.), Venet. 1753-1757, 3 vols. fol. (Vol. i. contains 96 Sermons and 173 Epistles, the two other volumes doubtful writings and learned dissertations.) This edition is reprinted in Migne's Patrologia Cursus completus, vol. 54-57, Par. 1846. II. ACTA SANCTORUM, sub Apr. 11 (Apr. tom. ii. p. 14-30, brief and unsatisfactory). TILLEMONT: Mem. t. xv. p. 414-832 (very full). BUTLER: Lives of the Saints, sub Apr. 11. W. A. ARENDT (R. C.): Leo der Grosse u. seine Zeit, Mainz, 1835 (apologetic and panegyric). EDW. PERTHEL: P. Leo's I. Leben u. Lehren, Jena, 1843 (Protestant). FR. BÖHRINGER: Die Kirche Christi u. ihre Zeugen, Zürich, 1846, vol. i. div. 4, p. 170–309. PH. JAFFE: Regesta Pontif. Rom., Berol. 1851, p. 34 sqq. Comp. also GREENWOOD: Cathedra Petri, Lond. 1859, vol. i. bk. ii. chap. iv.-vi. (The Leonine Period); and H. H. MILMAN: Hist. of Latin Christianity, Lond. and New York, 1860, vol. i. bk. ii, ch. iv.

In most of the earlier bishops of Rome the person is eclipsed by the office. The spirit of the age and public opinion rule the bishops, not the bishops them. In the preceding period,

Victor in the controversy on Easter, Callistus in that on the restoration of the lapsed, and Stephen in that on heretical baptism, were the first to come out with hierarchical arrogance, but they were somewhat premature, and found vigorous resist ance in Irenæus, Hippolytus, and Cyprian, though on all three questions the Roman view at last carried the day.

In the period before us, Damasus, who subjected Illyria to the Roman jurisdiction, and established the authority of the Vulgate, and Siricius, who issued the first genuine decretal letter, trod in the steps of those predecessors. Innocent I. (402-417) took a step beyond, and in the Pelagian controversy ventured the bold assertion, that in the whole Christian world nothing should be decided without the cognizance of the Roman see, and that, especially in matters of faith, all bishops must turn to St. Peter.'

But the first pope, in the proper sense of the word, is Leo I., who justly bears the title of "the Great" in the history of the Latin hierarchy. In him the idea of the papacy, as it were, became flesh and blood. He conceived it in great energy and clearness, and carried it out with the Roman spirit of dominion, so far as the circumstances of the time at all allowed. He marks the same relative epoch in the development of the papacy, as Cyprian in the history of the episcopate. He had even a higher idea of the prerogatives of the see of Rome than Gregory the Great, who, though he reigned a hundred and fifty years later, represents rather the patriarchal idea than the papal. Leo was at the same time the first important theologian in the chair of Rome, surpassing in acuteness and depth of thought all his predecessors, and all his successors down to Gregory I. Benedict XIV. placed him (A. D. 1744) in the small class of doctores ecclesiæ, or authoritative teachers of the catholic faith. He battled with the Manichæan, the Priscilli

1

Ep. ad Conc. Carthag. and Ep. ad Concil. Milev, both in 416. In reference to this decision, which went against Pelagius, Augustine uttered the word so often quoted by Roman divines: "Causa finita est; utinam aliquando finiatur error." But when Zosimus, the successor of Innocent, took the part of Pelagius, Augustine and the African church boldly opposed him, and made use of the Cyprianic right of protest. "Circumstances alter cases."