by bishops from various regions, which reversed the original judgment of the synod of Tyre which had condemned Athanasius. A much larger synod at Antioch, gathered only from the East, on the other hand, confirmed that judgment. This last synod did something to systematize the criminal procedure of the Church, and its legislation has been always received.
This legislation marks another step forward. Deposition of a bishop by a synod, or of a priest or deacon by his bishop, is to take effect even pending an appeal, and a cleric continuing his functions after sentence in first instance is to lose all right of appeal. The appeal given by Nicaea I. to clerics and laymen from episcopal excommunications is extended. The synod may restore them if convinced of the justice of their cause (and not merely in cases of ἀηδία). A bishop may appeal to a great assembly of bishops. Any bishop, priest or deacon “importuning” the emperor, instead of exerting his right of appeal to synods, is to lose all right of appeal and never to be restored or pardoned. If a provincial synod be divided as to the guilt of a bishop, the metropolitan is to convene bishops from the neighbouring provinces to decide the cause jointly with the bishops of the original province.
A few years later, in 347, the council of Sardica, a council of practically the whole West save Africa, reversed Tyre and acquitted St Athanasius after a full judicial inquiry. This council endeavoured to set up a system of appeals in the case of bishops, in which the see of Rome was made to play a great part. “Out of honour to the memory of St Peter,” a condemned bishop may ask the intervention of Rome. If this be done, the synod of first instance is to send letters to Julius, bishop of Rome. If that prelate think the cause should be heard again, he is to appoint judges; if otherwise, the original judgment is to be confirmed. Pending appeal, the appellant’s see is not to be filled up. The judges appointed by the bishop of Rome to hear the appeal are to be from the neighbouring provinces. The appellant may, however, request that bishop to send priests from his side to sit with the synod of appeal. If such priests are sent, they are to preside in the court of appeal. These canons were always repudiated in the East, and when, sixty years afterwards, they were, for the first time, heard of in Africa, they were repudiated there also.
A rescript of Gratian in 378 empowered the bishop of Rome to judge bishops with the assistance of six or seven other bishops or, in the case of a metropolitan, of fifteen comprovincial bishops. A bishop refusing to come to Rome was to be brought there by the civil power. The rescript, however, was not incorporated in the Codes and perhaps was only a temporary measure.
The tendency to give pre-eminence to Rome appears again in an imperial letter to St Flavian, who, in the judgment of the East, was bishop of Antioch, but who was rejected by the West and Egypt, summoning him to Rome to be there judged by the bishops of the imperial city—a summons which St Flavian did not obey (Tillemont, Mém. Ecc.). In Africa in the beginning of the 5th century Apiarius, a priest who had been deposed by the bishop of Sicca for immorality, and whose deposition had been affirmed by the “provincial synod,” instead of further appealing to a general synod of Africa, carried his appeal to Pope Zosimus. The pope received the appeal, absolved him and restored him to the rank of priest, and sent a bishop and two priests as legates to Africa with instructions to them to hear the cause of Apiarius anew and for execution of their sentence to crave the prefect’s aid; moreover, they were to summon the bishop of Sicca to Rome and to excommunicate him, unless he should amend those things which the legates deemed wrong. The upshot of a long conflict was that the papal claim to entertain appeals from Africa by priests and deacons was rejected by the African bishops, who in their final synodical epistle also repudiate in terms any right of appeal by African bishops to “parts beyond the seas” (see Hefele, Councils, bk. viii.).
The story of the administrative development of the Church in the 5th century is mainly the story of the final emergence and constitution of the great “patriarchates,” as authorities superior to metropolitans and provincial synods. In consequence of the occupants of the thrones of Constantinople and Alexandria falling successively into opposite heresies, the question arose how “patriarchs” were to be judged. In both cases, as it seems, an attempt was made by the bishop of Rome to depose the erring patriarch by his authority as primate of Christendom, acting in concert with a Western synod. In both cases, apparently, an oecumenical synod ignored the Roman deposition and judged the alleged offences of the respective patriarchs in first and last instance. The third and fourth oecumenical synods (Ephesus, 431; Chalcedon, 451) were primarily tribunals for the trials of Nestorius and Dioscorus; it was secondarily that they became organs of the universal episcopate for the definition of the faith, or legislative assemblies for the enactment of canons. Nothing is more remarkable than their minute care as to observance of rules of procedure. In both cases, imperial assessors were appointed. At Ephesus the Count Candidian was commissioned to maintain order, but took little part in the proceedings. At Chalcedon, on the other hand, the imperial commissioners decided points of order, kept the synod to the question, took the votes and adjourned the court. But the synod alone judged and pronounced sentence. No oecumenical synod has tried a patriarch of Old Rome while yet in the flesh. The fifth oecumenical council came nearest to so doing, in the case of Vigilius. That pope, although in Constantinople, refused to attend the sittings of the council. He was cited three times, in the canonical manner, and upon not appearing was threatened in the third session with anathema (Hefele, Councils, sect. 268 ad fin.). He was not, however, charged with direct heresy, as were Nestorius and Dioscorus, and the synod seems to have hesitated to deal stringently with the primate of Christendom. In the seventh session it accepted the suggestion of Justinian, merely to order the name of Vigilius to be removed from the liturgical prayers, at the same time expressing its desire to maintain unity with the see of Old Rome (Hefele, sect. 273). After the council, Justinian banished the pope to Egypt, and afterwards to an island, until he accepted the council, which he ultimately did (ib. 276). The sixth oecumenical synod decreed that the dead pope Honorius should be “cast out from the holy Catholic Church of God” and anathematized, a sentence approved by the reigning pope Leo II. and affirmed by the seventh oecumenical synod in 787.
The constitution of the patriarchal system resulted in the recognition of a certain right of appeal to Rome from the larger part of the West. Britain remained outside that jurisdiction, the Celtic churches of the British islands, after those islands were abandoned by the Empire, pursuing a course of their own. In the East, Constantinople, from its principality, acquired special administrative pre-eminence, naturally followed, as in the case of “old Rome,” by judicial pre-eminence. An example of this is found in the ninth canon of Chalcedon, which also illustrates the enforcement upon a clerical plaintiff in dispute with a brother cleric of that recourse to the arbitration of their ecclesiastical superior already mentioned. The canon provides that any clerk having a complaint against another clerk must not pass by his own bishop and turn to secular tribunals, but first lay bare his cause before him, so that by the sentence of the bishop himself the dispute may be settled by arbitrators acceptable to both parties. Any one acting against these provisions shall be subject to canonical penalties. If any clerk have a complaint against his own bishop, he shall have his cause adjudicated upon by the synod of the province. But if a bishop or clerk have a difference with the metropolitan of his province let him bring it before the exarch of the “diocese” (i.e. the larger district answering to the civil “diocese”), or before the royal see of Constantinople, who shall do justice upon it. An “exarch” means properly a superior metropolitan having several provinces under him. In the next century Justinian (Nov. 123, c. 22) put the other patriarchates on the same footing as Constantinople. In c. 21 he gives either plaintiff or defendant an appeal within ten days to the secular judge of the locality from the bishop’s judgment. If there be no appeal, that judge is to give execution to the episcopal award. The growth of a special “original” jurisdiction at Constantinople, which perhaps
