much as it was contrary to the decrees of Nicea. "Now," he adds, "universal peace can only subsist upon the condition that the canons be respected."
Modern Popes would not have written thus, but would have substituted their personal authority for the language of the canons.
Anatolius of Constantinople wrote to St. Leo that he was wrong in attributing the twenty-eighth canon of the Council of Chalcedon to his influence; that the Fathers of the council had enjoyed full liberty; and that as far as he himself was concerned, he did not care for the privileges that had been conferred upon him. Nevertheless, these privileges remained in spite of the opposition of the Bishop of Rome, and were recognized even in the West. Let us give one proof among a thousand. It is a letter from an illustrious Galilean bishop — St. Avitus, metropolitan Bishop of Vienne — to John, Bishop of Constantinople.[1] At the same time we can perceive in the struggles between the bishops of Rome and Constantinople respecting the canon of Chalcedon, the origin of the dissensions which afterward led to an entire rupture. In principle, Leo was right to defend the canons of Nicea; but he could not deny that one œcumenical council had the same rights as another that had preceded it; especially while it adhered to the spirit that had directed it. The Nicene Council, in consecrating the usage by which the Bishop of Rome was regarded as the first in honour in the Church, had in view not so much the apostolic origin of his see, as the splendour which he acquired from the importance of the city of Rome; for many other churches had an equally apostolic origin, and Antioch, as a church founded by St. Peter, had priority over Rome. Why, then, should not the Bishop of Constantinople have been received as second in rank, Constantinople having become the second capital of the empire; since the Bishop
- ↑ Works of St. Avitus, in the miscellaneous works of P. Sirmond.
