decrees, and its decisions mingled with those of the Council of Nicea in the formula of the creed; moreover, it changed the order of the ecclesiastical hierarchy by giving to the Bishop of Constantinople the second place in the Church, and by placing after him the Bishops of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. It enacted besides a great number of disciplinary canons which were adopted by the whole Church.[1]
The year following the Council of Constantinople, the Emperor Gratianus assembled another at Rome. Paulinus of Antioch was there. He was there sustained in his opposition to St. Flavianus, who was nevertheless recognized as the legitimate bishop by the majority of the provinces that depended upon the patriarchate. The West had raised an outcry against the East, for having decided important matters without the concurrence of the West. But aside from the legitimacy of Flavianus, all the other acts of the Council were now concurred in, and the Council of Constantinople was universally considered as œcumenical, although neither convoked, nor presided over, nor yet confirmed by the Bishop of Rome.
In view of such facts, what becomes of the pretensions of the Bishop of Rome to an absolute autocracy in the Church? He claims, to-day, that all jurisdiction comes from him, and here is a council presided by a holy bishop with whom Rome is not in communion promulgating dogmatic and the most important disciplinarian decrees; and this council is one of those which St. Gregory the Great revered as one of the four gospels.
The third œcumenical council held at Ephesus (431) was convoked by the Emperor Theodosius II. and his
- ↑ See the Acts of the Council in Father Labbe's Collection; Ecclesiastical Histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret; the Works of St. Gregory of Nyssa and of St. Gregory Nazianzen, etc.
- ↑ See Ecclesiastical Histories of Sozomen and of Theodoret; the Letters of St. Jerome and of St. Ambrose; the Collection of the Councils by Labbe.
