gradually extended his influence over the entire west, two prefectures, the Italian and the Gallic, with all their dioceses and provinces.* The patriarchal system had reference primarily only to the imperial church, but indirectly affected also the barbarians, who received Christianity from the empire. Yet even within the empire several metropolitans, especially the bishop of Cyprus in the eastern church, and the bishops of Milan, Aquileia, and Ravenna in the western, during this period maintained their autocracy with reference to the patriarchs, to whose dioceses they geographically belonged. In the fifth century, the patriarchs of Antioch attempted to subject the island of Cyprus, where Paul first had preached the gospel, to their jurisdiction; but the ecumenical council of Ephesus, in 431, confirmed to the church of Cyprus its ancient right to ordain its own bishops.† The North African bishops also, with all respect for the Roman see, long maintained Cyprian's spirit of independence, and in a council at Hippo Regius in 393, protested against such titles as princeps sacerdotum, summus sacerdos, assumed by the patriarchs, and were willing only to allow the title of primae sedis episcopus. When, in consequence of the Christological controversies, the Nestorians and Monophysites split off from the orthodox church, they established independent schismatic patriarchates which continue to this day, shewing that the patriarchal constitution answers most nearly to the oriental type of Christianity. The orthodox Greek church, as well as the schismatic sects of the east, has substantially remained true to the patriarchal system down to the present time; while the Latin church endeavoured to establish the principal of monarchical centralisation so early as Leo the Great, and in the course of the middle age produced the absolute papacy. SYNODICAL LEGISLATION ON THE PATRIARCHAL POWER AND JURISDICTION. To follow now the ecclesiastical legislation respecting this patriarchal oligarchy in chronological order. The germs of it already lay in the anti-Nicene period, when the bishops of Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome, partly in virtue of the age and apostolic origin of their churches, partly on account of the political prominence of those three cities, as the three capitals of the Roman empire, steadily asserted a position of pre-eminence. The apostolic origin of the churches More of this below. Sixth Canon of the Council of Nice. 27 of Rome and Antioch is evident from the New Testament. Alexandria traced its Christianity, at least indirectly, through the evangelist Mark to Peter, and was politically more important than Antioch, while Rome from the first had precedence of both in church and in state. This pre-eminence of the oldest and most powerful metropolitans acquired formal legislative validity and firm establishment through the ecumenical councils of the fourth and fifth centuries. The first ecumenical council of Nice, in 325, as yet knew nothing of five patriarchs, but only the three metropolitans above named, confirming them in their traditional rights.* In the much-canvassed sixth canon, probably on occasion of the Meletian schism in Egypt, and the attacks connected with it on the rights of the bishop of Alexandria, that council declared as follows: "The ancient custom which has obtained in Egypt, Libya, and the Pentapolis, shall continue in force, viz., that the bishop of Alexandria have rule over all these [provinces], since this also is customary with the bishop of Rome [that is, not in Egypt, but with reference to his own diocese]. Likewise also at Antioch and in the other eparchies the churches shall retain their prerogatives. Now it is perfectly clear, that if any one has been made bishop without the consent of the metropolitan, the great council does not allow him to be bishop."+ The Nicene fathers passed this canon, not as introducing anything new, but merely as confirming an existing relation on the basis of church tradition, and that with special reference to Alexandria, on account of the troubles existing there. Rome was named only for illustration; and Antioch and all the other eparchies or provinces were secured their admitted rights. The bishoprics of Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch were placed substantially on equal footing, yet in such tone, * Accordingly Pope Nicholas, in 866, in a letter to the Bulgarian Prince Bogoris, would acknowledge only the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch as patriarchs in the proper sense, because they presided over apostolic churches, whereas Constantinople was not of apostolic founding, and was not even mentioned by the most venerable of all councils, the Nicene. Jerusalem was named indeed by these councils, but only under the name of Elia. + In the oldest Latin Cod. canonum (in Mansi vi. 1186), this canon is preceded by the important words, Ecclesia Romana semper habuit primatum. These are, however, manifestly spurious, being originally no part of the canon itself, but a superscription, which gave an expression to the Roman inference from the Nicene canon. Comp. Gieseler, i. 2, sect. 93, not. 1; and Hefele, History of Councils, vol. i. 284, sqq. So Greenwood also views the matter, Cathedra Petri, 1859, vol. i. p. 181 : "It was manifestly not the object of this canon to confer any new jurisdiction upon the church of Alexandria, but simply to confirm its customary prerogative. By way of illustration it places that prerogative, whatever it was, upon the same level with that of the two other eparchal churches of Rome and that Antioch, as the third capital of the Roman empire, already stands as a stepping-stone to the ordinary metropolitans. By the "other eparchies" of the canon are to be understood, either all provinces, and therefore all metropolitan districts, or more probably, as in the second canon of the first council of Constantinople, only the three eparchates of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, Ephesus, and Asia Minor, and Heraclea in Thrace, which, after Constantine's division of the east, possessed similar prerogatives, but were subsequently overshadowed and absorbed by Constantinople. In any case, however, this addition proves that at that time the rights and dignity of the patriarchs were not yet strictly distinguished from those of the other metropolitans. The bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, here appear in relation to the other bishops simply as primi inter pares, or as metropolitans of the first rank, in whom the highest political eminence was joined with the highest ecclesiastical. Next to them, in the second rank, come the bishops of Ephesus in the Asiatic diocese of the empire, of Neo-Cæsarea in the Pontic, and of Heraclea in the Thracian; while Constantinople, which was not founded till five years later, is wholly unnoticed in the Nicene council, and Jerusalem is mentioned only under the name of Elia. Between the first and second ecumenical councils arose the new patriarchate of Constantinople or new Rome, built by Constantine in 330, and elevated to be the imperial residence. The bishop of this city was not only the successor of the bishop of the ancient Byzantium, hitherto under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan of Heraclea, but, through the favour of the imperial court and the bishops who were always numerously assembled there, it placed itself in a few decennia among the first metropolitans of the east, and in the fifth century became the most powerful rival of the bishop of old Rome. This new patriarchate was first officially recognised at the second ecumenical council, held at Constantinople in 381, and was conceded "the precedence in honour, next to the bishop of Rome," the second place among all bishops, and that on the purely political consideration, that New Rome was the residence of the emperor.* At the same time, the imperial Antioch. Moreover, the words of the canon disclose no other ground of claim but custom, and the customs of each eparchia are restricted to the territorial limits of the diocese or eparchia itself. And though within those limits the several customary rights and prerogatives may have differed, yet beyond them no jurisdiction of any kind could, by virtue of this canon, have any existence at all." * Conc. Constant. i. can. 3, Τον μέντοι Κωνσταντινουπόλεως ἐπίσκοπον ἔχειν τὰ Constantinopolitan Encroachments. 29 city and the diocese of Thrace (whose ecclesiastical metropolis hitherto had been Heraclea) were assigned as its district.* Many Greeks took this as a formal assertion of the equality of the bishop of Constantinople with the bishop of Rome, understanding "next" or "after" (urá) as referring only to time, not to rank. But it is more natural to regard this as conceding a primacy of honour, which the Roman see could claim on different grounds. The popes, as the subsequent protest of Leo shews, were not satisfied with this, because they were unwilling to be placed in the same category with the Constantinopolitan fledgling, and at the same time assumed a supremacy of jurisdiction over the whole church. On the other hand this decree was unwelcome also to the patriarch of Alexandria, because this see had hitherto held the second rank, and was now required to take the third. Hence the canon was not subscribed by Timotheus of Alexandria, and was regarded in Egypt as void. Afterwards, however, the emperors prevailed with the Alexandrian patriarchs to yield this point. After the council of 381, the bishop of Constantinople indulged in manifold encroachments on the rights of the metropolitans of Ephesus and Cæsarea, in Cappadocia, and even on the rights of the other patriarchs. In this extension of his authority, he was favoured by the fact that, in spite of the prohibition of the council of Sardica, the bishops of all the districts of the east continually resided in Constantinople, in order to present all kinds of interests to the emperor. These concerns of distant bishops were generally referred by the emperor to the bishop of Constantinople and his council, the oúvodos vonuotoa, as it was called, that is, a council of the bishops resident (vonuoúvrov) in Constantinople, under his presidency. In this way his trespasses, even upon the bounds of other patriarchs, obtained the right of custom by consent of parties, if not the sanction of church legislation. Nectarius, who was not elected till after that council, claimed the presidency at a council in 394, over the two πρεσβεῖα τῆς τιμῆς μετα τὸν τῆς Ῥώμης ἐπίσκοπον διὰ τὸ εἶνα αὐτὴν νέαν Ρώμην, This canon is quoted also by Socrates, v. 8, and Sozomen, vii. 9, and confirmed by the council of Chalcedon (see below), so that it must be from pure dogmatical bias that Baronius (Anal. ad ann. 381, n. 35, 36) questions its genuineness. The latter is not indeed expressly said in the above canon, which seems to speak only of an honorary precedence; but the canon was so understood by the bishops of Constantinople, and by the historians, Socrates (v. 8) and Theodoret (Epist. 86 ad Flavianum), and so interpreted by the Chalcedonian council (can. 28). The relation of the bishop of Constantinople to the metropolitan of Heraclea, however, remained for a long time uncertain, and at the council ad quercum 403 in the affair of Chrysostom, Paul of Heraclea took the presidency, though the patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria was present. Comp. Le Quien, tom. i. p. 18, and Wiltsch, i. p. 139. patriarchs who were present, Theophilus of Alexandria, and Flavian of Antioch, decided the matter almost alone; and thus was the first to exercise the primacy over the entire east. Under his successor, Chrysostom, the compass of the see extended itself still further, and, according to Theodoret,* stretched over the capital; over all Thrace, with its six provinces; over all Asia (Asia proconsularis), with eleven provinces; and over Pontus, which likewise embraced eleven provinces; thus covering twenty-eight provinces in all. In the year 400, Chrysostom went, "by request, to Ephesus," to ordain there Heraclides of Ephesus, and, at the same time, to institute six bishops, in the places of others deposed for simony. His second successor, Atticus, about the year 421, procured from the younger Theodosius a law that no bishop should be ordained in the neighbouring dioceses without the consent of the bishop of Constantinople. This power still needed the solemn sanction of a general council, before it could have a firm legal foundation. It received this sanction at Chalcedon. The fourth ecumenical council, held at Chalcedon in 451, confirmed and extended the power of the bishop of Constantinople, by ordaining in the celebrated twenty-eighth canon: "Following throughout the decrees of the holy fathers, and being acquainted with the recently read canon of the hundred and fifty bishops [i. e. the third canon of the second ecumenical council of 381], we also have determined and decreed the same in reference to the prerogatives of the most holy church of Constantinople or New Rome. For with reason did the fathers confer prerogatives (rà geoßeîa) on the throne (the episcopal chair) of ancient Rome, on account of her character as the imperial city (dià rò Baoiλsúeiv); and, moved by the same consideration, the hundred and fifty bishops recognised the same prerogatives (rà oa geoßeia) also in the most holy throne of new Rome; with good reason judging that the city, which is honoured with the imperial dignity and the senate [i. e. where the emperor and senate reside], and enjoys the same [municipal] privileges as the ancient imperial Rome, should also be equally elevated in ecclesiastical respects, and be the second after her (δευτέραν μετ' ἐκείνην). "And [we decree] that of the dioceses of Pontus, Asia [Asia proconsularis], and Thrace, only the metropolitans, but in such districts of those dioceses as are occupied by barbarians, also the [ordinary] *H. E., lib. v. cap. xxviii. † According to Sozomen it was thirteen, according to Theophilus of Alexandria at the council ad quercum seventeen, bishops whom he instituted; and this act was charged against him as an unheard of crime. See Wiltsch, i. 141. Socrates, H. E., 1. vii. cap. xxviii., where such a law is incidentally mentioned. The inhabitants of Cyzicus, in the Hellespont, however, transgressed the law, on the presumption that it was merely a personal privilege of Atticus. |