Eusebius of Nicomedia represented the Eastern Arians, and it was the Bishop of Rome who represented the Western bishops. That bishop was Julius. He assumed the defence of the persecuted bishops, sustained them against the Eastern bishops, and, using thus the prerogatives of his see,[1] recognized as legitimate bishops those whom the Arians had unjustly deposed. The latter assembled at Antioch, and addressed a letter to Julius, in which they sharply told him that it was no more his business to meddle with those whom they had expelled than it had been theirs to concern themselves with the affair of Novatus, whom he had driven from the Church. Sozomen[2] gives further particulars of this letter. We learn from him that the oriental bishops said, "That the Church of Rome was glorious, because it had been the abode of the Apostles, and that from the beginning, she had been the metropolis of piety, although the teachers of the faith had come to her from the East. Yet it did not appear just to them, that they (the Eastern churches) should be regarded as inferior, because they were surpassed in number and in magnificence by a church to whom they were superior in virtue and courage."
Julius did not reply to them that he was chief of the Church by divine right, but he reminds them of the ecclesiastical rule already quoted, in virtue of which he had the right to he summoned and consulted. Sozomen adds,[3] that "this prerogative, due to the dignity of his see, gave him the right to take care of all those who had appealed to him, seeking refuge from the persecutions of the Arian faction of the East, and that he should restore to each one his church."
The pretensions of the Bishop of Rome did not extend beyond an ecclesiastical prerogative. The Eastern
