Church History (Vol.1-3). J. H. Kurtz
of Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch, had failed to discover. On the outbreak of the Nestorian controversy (§ 52, 3) two opponents again sued for the favour of the Roman league; first of all, Nestorius of Constantinople, because he professed to have given particular information about the Pelagian-minded bishops driven from Italy who sought refuge in Constantinople (§ 53, 4) and had immediately made a communication about the error of confounding the two natures of Christ which had recently sprung up in the East. The brotherly tone of this writing, free from any idea of subordination, found no response at Rome. The letters of Cyril of Alexandria proved more acceptable, filled as they were with cringing flatteries of the Roman chair and venomous invectives against the Constantinopolitan see and its occupier. Cœlestine unreservedly took the side of Cyril, commanded Nestorius under threat of deposition and excommunication within ten days to present to a Roman Synod, A.D. 420, a written retractation, and remitted to Cyril the carrying out of this judgment. To his legates at the Council of Ephesus, A.D. 431, he gave the instructions: Auctoritatem sedis apostolicæ custodire debere mandamus. … Ad disceptationem si fuerit ventum, vos de eorum sententiis judicare debetis, non subire certamen. The Council decided precisely according to Cœlestine’s wish. The proud Alexandrian patriarch had recognised Rome as the highest court of appeal; a Western educated at Rome, named Maximian, thoroughly submissive to Cœlestine, was, with the pope’s hearty approval, raised to the patriarchal see of Constantinople as successor of the deposed Nestorius; only John of Antioch opposed the decision. Cœlestine’s successor Sixtus III., A.D. 432 to A.D. 440, could already boast in A.D. 433 that he had put himself superior to the decrees of the Council, and in commemoration of the victory dedicated a beautiful church newly built to the mother of God, now called S. Maria Maggiore.131
§ 46.7. From Leo the Great to Simplicius, A.D. 440 to A.D. 483.—Leo I., A.D. 440 to A.D. 461 (comp. § 47, 22), unquestionably up to that date the greatest of all the occupants of the Roman chair, was also the most powerful, the worthiest and most successful vindicator of its authority in the East as well as in the West; indeed he may be regarded as properly the founder of the Roman papacy as a universal episcopate with the full sanction of the civil power. Even the Western Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries, such as Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine, as also Innocent I., had still interpreted the πέτρα of Matt. xvi. 18 partly of the confession of Peter, partly of the Person of Christ. First in the time of Cœlestine an attempt was made to refer it to the person of Peter. The legates of Cœlestine at the Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 had said: ὅστις, ἕως τοῦ νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ ἐν τοῖς αὐτοῦ διαδόχοις καὶ ζῇ καὶ δικάζει. Thus they claimed universal primacy as of immediately Divine authority. Leo I. adopted this view with all his soul. In the most determined and persistent way he carried it out in the West; then next in proconsular Africa which had so energetically protested in the times of Innocent and Cœlestine against Romish pretensions. When news came to him of various improprieties spreading there, he sent a legate to investigate, and in consequence of his report addressed severe censures which were submitted to without opposition. The right of African clerics to appeal to Rome was also henceforth unchallenged. In Gaul, however, Leo had still to maintain a hard struggle with Hilary, archbishop of Arles, who, arrogating to himself the right of a primacy of Gaul, had deposed Celedonius, bishop of Besontio, Besançon. But Leo took up his case and had him vindicated and restored by a Roman Synod. Hilary, who came himself to Rome, defied the Pope, escaped threatened imprisonment by secret flight, and was then deprived of his metropolitan rights. At the same time, in A.D. 445, Leo obtained from the young Emperor of the West, Valentinian III., a civil enactment which made every sort of resistance to the divinely established universal primacy of the Roman see an act of high treason.—In the East, too, Leo gained a higher position than had ever before been accorded to Rome on account of his moderation in the Eutychian controversy (§ 52, 4). Once again was Rome called in to mediate between the two conflicting parties. At the Robber-Synod of Ephesus in A.D. 449, under the presidency of the tyrannical Dioscurus of Alexandria, the legates of Leo were not, indeed, allowed to speak. But at the next œcumenical Council at Chalcedon in A.D. 451 his doctrine won a brilliant victory; even here, however, much objection was raised to his hierarchical pretensions. He demanded from the first the presidency for his legates, which, however, was assigned not to them, but to the imperial commissioners. The demand, too, for the expulsion of Dioscurus from the Synod, because he dared Synodum facere sine auctoritate sedis apostolicæ, quod mumquam licuit, numquem factum est, did not, at first at least, receive the answer required. When, notwithstanding the opposition of the legates the question of the relative ranks of the patriarchs was dealt with, they withdrew from the session and subsequently protested against the 28th canon agreed upon at that session with a reference to the 6th Nicene canon which in the Roman translation, i.e. forgery, began with the words: Ecclesia Romana semper habuit primatum. But the Council sent the Acts with a dutiful report to Rome for confirmation, whereupon Leo strictly repudiated the 28th canon, threatening the church of Constantinople with excommunication, and so finally gained his point. The emperor annulled it in A.D. 454, and Anatolius, patriarch of Constantinople, was obliged to write a humble letter to Leo acquiescing in its erasure; but this did not prevent his successor from always maintaining its validity (§ 63, 2).—When the wild hordes of Attila, king of the Huns, spread terror and consternation by their approach, Leo’s priestly form appeared before him as a messenger of God, and saved Rome and Italy from destruction. Less successful was his priestly intercession with the Arian Vandal chief Genseric, whose army in A.D. 455 plundered, burnt and murdered throughout Rome for fourteen days; but all the more strikingly after his withdrawal did the pope’s ability display itself in restoring comfort and order amid scenes of unutterable destitution and confusion.
§ 46.8. From Felix III. to Boniface II., A.D. 483 to A.D. 532.—Under Leo’s second successor, the Rugian or Scyrrian Odoacer put an end to the West-Roman empire in A.D. 476 (§ 76, 6). As to the enactments of the Roman state, although himself an Arian, after seventeen years of a wise rule he left untouched the orthodox Roman church, and the Roman bishops could under him, as under his successor, the Ostrogoth Theodoric, also an Arian, from A.D. 493 to A.D. 526, more freely exercise their ecclesiastical functions than under the previous government, all the more as neither of these rulers resided in Rome but in Ravenna. Pope Felix III., A.D. 483 to A.D. 492, in opposition to the Byzantine ecclesiastical policy, which by means of the imperial authority had for quite a hundred years retarded the development of the orthodox doctrine (§ 52, 5), began a schism lasting for thirty-five years between East and West, from A.D. 484 to A.D. 519, which no suspicion of disloyal combination with the Western rulers can account for. On the appointment of Felix III. Odoacer assumed the right of confirming all elections of Popes, just as previously the West Roman emperors had claimed, and Rome submitted without resistance. The Gothic kings, too, maintained this right.—Gelasius I., A.D. 492 to A.D. 496 (comp. § 47, 22), ventured before the Emperor Anastasius I., in A.D. 493, to indicate the relation of Sacerdotium and Imperium according to the Roman conception, which already exhibits in its infant stage of development the mediæval theory of the two swords (§ 110, 1) and the favourite analogy of the sun and the moon (§ 96, 9). His peaceable successor Anastasius II., A.D. 496 to A.D. 498, entered into negotiations for peace with the Byzantine court; but a number of Roman fanatics wished on this account to have him cast out of the communion of the church, and saw in his early death a judgment of heaven upon his conduct. He has ever since been regarded as a heretic, and as such even Dante consigns him to a place in hell. After his death there was a disputed election between Symmachus, A.D. 498 to A.D. 514, and Laurentius. The schism soon degenerated into the wildest civil war, in which blood was shed in the churches and in the streets. Theodoric decided for Symmachus as the choice of the majority and the first ordained, but his opponents then charged him before the king as guilty of the gravest crimes. To investigate the charges brought against the bishop the king now convened at Rome a Synod of all the Italian bishops, Synodus palmaris of A.D. 502, so called from the porch of St. Peter’s Church adorned with palms, where it first met. As Symmachus on his way to it was met by a wild mob of his opponents and only narrowly escaped with his life, Theodoric insisted no longer on a regular proof of the charges against him. The bishops without any investigation freely proclaimed him their