judgment which had been rendered. If the confirmation of the Bishop of Rome had been necessary, would the decree of Chalcedon have been a judgment, a promulgated decision before that confirmation?
St. Leo did not understand the letter from the Council of Chalcedon as do our Romish theologians. He refused — not to confirm it by his authority — but simply to admit it. "This decree shall never obtain our consent," he said.[1] And why did he refuse his consent? Because the decree of Chalcedon took from the Bishop of Alexandria the second rank, and the third from the Bishop of Antioch, and was in so far forth contrary to the sixth canon of the Council of Nicea, and because the same decree prejudiced the rights of several primates or metropolitans.[2] In another letter addressed to the Emperor Marcianus,[3] St. Leo reasoned in the same manner: "The Bishop of Constantinople, in spite of the glory of his church, cannot make it apostolic; he has no right to aggrandize it at the expense of churches whose privileges, established by canons of the holy Fathers and settled by the decrees of the venerable Council of Nicea, cannot be unsettled by perversity nor violated by innovation."
The Church of Rome has too well forgotten this principle of one of her greatest bishops.
In his letter to the Empress Pulcheria,[4] St. Leo declares that he has "annulled the decree of Chalcedon by the authority of the blessed Apostle St. Peter," These words seem at first sight to mean that he claimed for himself a sovereign authority in the Church in the name of St. Peter; but upon a more careful and an unbiased examination of his letters and other writings, we are convinced that St. Leo only spoke as the bishop of an
