The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I. T. W. Allies
patriarchs, and was compelling all other bishops to sign under pain of deprivation; when, behold, St. Leo's third successor called him to account in exactly the same terms as St. Leo would have used, and required him to meet at Rome the accusation brought against him by John Talaia, a duly elected patriarch of Alexandria, just as St. Julius, a hundred and forty years before, had invited the accusing bishops at Antioch to meet St. Athanasius before his tribunal. He who resided in a state only second to the emperor in the real capital of the empire to go to a city living in durance under the northern barbarians, and submit to the judgment of one whose own tribunal was in captivity to such masters!
But, on the other hand, Pope Felix spoke to the emperor as none but popes have ever spoken. He called him his son, but he required from him filial obedience. Above all he spoke in one character, and in one alone—as the heir of that St. Peter whom the voice of the Lord had set over His Church; he spoke from Rome, not because it was or had been capital of the empire, but because it was St. Peter's See, and precisely because he succeeded St. Peter in his apostolate.
The respective action, therefore, of Pope Felix on one side, and of Acacius on the other, brought to an issue the most absolute of contradictions. The Pope claimed obedience, as a superior, from Acacius. When that obedience was refused, he exerted his authority as superior, and degraded Acacius both from his rank as bishop, and from Christian communion. And a special token of that sentence was to order his name to be removed from the diptychs, and to enjoin the people of his own diocese to hold no communion with him, on pain of incurring a like penalty with him. Acacius answered by practically denying the Pope's authority to do any such act. He asserted himself to be his equal by removing the Pope's name from the diptychs. There could be no more striking denial of any such authority as the claim to inherit Peter's universal pastorship, than to treat the Pope himself as, in virtue of that pastorship, he had treated Acacius.
Even apart from this, the conduct of Acacius carried with it a double denial of the Pope's authority: a denial that he was the supreme judge of faith; and a denial that he was the supreme maintainer of discipline in its highest manifestation, the order of the hierarchy itself.
He denied that the Pope was the supreme judge of faith, by drawing up a formulary of doctrine, which he induced the emperor to promulgate by imperial decree; and this independently of what doctrine that formulary might contain. Further, he did this by supporting two persons judged to be heretical by the Holy See—Peter the Fuller at Antioch, Peter the Stammerer at Alexandria. He denied that the Pope was the supreme maintainer of discipline, by making the two great sees of the East and South subordinate to himself. As the Pope expressed it in his sentence, he had done "nefarious things against the whole Nicene constitution," of which the Pope was special guardian. In fact, his conduct was an imitation of that pursued in the preceding century by Eusebius of Nicomedia, by Eudoxius, and all their party. It was even carried out to its full completion. The emperor was made the head of the Church, on condition of his leading it through the bishop of Constantinople. Acacius put together the canon of the Council of 381, which said that the bishop of New Rome should hold the second rank in the episcopate, because his city is New Rome, with the canon attempted to be passed at Chalcedon, and cashiered by St. Leo, that the fathers gave its privileges to Old Rome because it was the imperial city. Uniting the two, he constructed the conclusion, that as Old Rome had ceased to be the imperial city, which New Rome had actually become, the privileges of Old Rome had passed to the bishop of New Rome.
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