place after Rome.[1] The Council held altogether twenty-one sessions[2] lasting till November 1. Of these only the first eight[3] have œcumenical authority (October 8–25). Altogether about 630 bishops attended; we have noted that Chalcedon is considerably the largest synod of antiquity. All were Easterns, except the legates and two Africans.
The Papal legates presided, as representing the chief Patriarch. There is no doubt at all about this. They sit in the first place, open the Council, and sign the acts first. The Council writes to the Pope: "You, as being the head, presided in the person of those who represented you."[4] Leo himself says of his legates: "They presided over the Eastern Synod in my place."[5] The Emperor sent a number of commissioners to keep order and to arrange practical details.[6] They had, of course, no vote. The Council says of them: "The Emperor ruled for the sake of order."[7] The Papal legates were Paschasinus Bishop of Lilybæum, Lucentius Bishop of Ascoli, and the Roman priest Boniface. Julian, Bishop of Cos in the Cyclades, had an additional commission from the Pope; he acts with the others as supplementary legate. But he had not been named with the others in Leo's original letters; he was an Eastern bishop, under the jurisdiction of John of Rhodes, so he sat, not with the legates, but among the bishops.[8] After the legates sat Anatolius of Constantinople. This place, higher than that to which he had a right, has something to do with his obtaining it permanently by the 28th Canon. He should have sat below the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch. But Dioscor of Alexandria had already been condemned by the Pope. He appeared at the Council only as a culprit to be judged. Maximus of Antioch was a mere creature of Anatolius who was not likely to insist on his rights.[9]
Paschasinus as Papal legate opened the Council in Latin. He
- ↑ Ib. 37–42.
- ↑ See the corrected table in Hefele-Leclercq, ii. (2), pp. 655–656.
- ↑ Generally numbered as six, the fourth having three parts.
- ↑ Mansi, vi. 148.
- ↑ Ep. 103 (P.L. liv. 988).
- ↑ Their names in Hefele-Leclercq: op. cit. ii. (2), 665.
- ↑ Βασιλεὺς δὲ πρὸς εὐκοσμίαν ἐξῆρχον, Mansi, vi. 147.
- ↑ For the reasons of his rather anomalous position see Hefele-Leclercq: ii. (2), 667, n. 1.
- ↑ Orth. Eastern Church, pp. 35–36.
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