himself disposed to exaggerate his prerogatives, in proportion as Acacius became more influential in the direction of the affairs of the Eastern Church; he became more angry as the Bishop of Constantinople treated him with more arrogance. Acacius despised the sentence of the Bishop of Rome, and even refused to receive it. Some bishops having declared against him, he caused them to be deposed; and Rome, on her part, excommunicated his adherents. After the death of Acacius, in 489, the dissension respecting him continued. If one could doubt the share that the jealousy of Rome had in her opposition to Acacius, such doubt would not survive the perusal of what Pope Gelasius wrote on this subject in 495. Having received a letter from the bishops of Dardania, in which he was informed that the partisans of Acacius relied principally, upon the irregularity of the sentence passed against him by the Italian Council, Gelasius replied to them, justifying himself by the Council of Chalcedon, which, he claimed, condemned in advance those who should oppose it.[1] But this was precisely the question — whether Acacius had failed in the respect due to the Council of Chalcedon, by endeavouring to quiet the troubles raised in the East respecting that assembly. One evident fact is, that Acacius, in his efforts to settle these troubles, and in showing himself tolerant toward men, had sacrificed nothing of the Catholic doctrine defined at Chalcedon. No less clear is it that the men condemned first at Constantinople, afterward at Rome, had never been heard face to face with their accusers; that they had numerous supporters; that they had been condemned, banished, and persecuted through the imperial power, from which
- ↑ It was therefore under the false pretext of his opposition to the Council of Chalcedon that Rome had deposed Acacius, which belies the assertion contained in the work already cited, that no dogmatic question was pending between Rome and Constantinople under Acacius. Part I. ch. 3.
