108 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE West, and gave the Papacy a chance to assert its supremacy by interfering in those quarrels. Leo in especial was inclined to make his influence so felt, as we may see illustrated in the story of two church councils. An abbot condemned for heresy by the Patriarch of Constantinople appealed both to the Eastern emperor and The "Rob- to the P°P e - It is to be noted that the Western ber Council" emperor had no part in the affair. Contrary to Council of Leo's wish the Eastern emperor called a council Chalcedon at Ephesus under the presidency of the Patri- arch of Alexandria. Leo, however, wrote out his decision in favor of the Patriarch of Constantinople and sent it to the council by his three representatives. The council did not deign even to read Leo's Tome, but deposed the Patri- arch of Constantinople, and further treated him with such violence that he soon died from the effects, while one of the papal legates who protested against the council's action was lucky to escape with his life. Leo had no intention of allowing such proceedings to pass unchallenged; he induced the members of the imperial house in the West to write to Constantinople in his support; and finally secured another council at Chalcedon, near Constantinople, to reconsider tin action of "the Robber Council," as Leo termed the recent assembly at Ephesus. Now the Patriarch of Alex- andria who had presided at Ephesus was driven from his see, and the questions in dispute were settled on the basis of Leo's Tome. Leo, however, was very much offended by the twenty-eighth canon of the Council of Chalcedon, which he regarded as an attempt to raise the see of Constanti- nople to an equality with that of Rome. This canon may be taken as marking a growing breach between the Eastern Church and the Western, which was Schisms in increased in 482 when the Emperor Zeno issued a letter called the Henoticon. It was intended to l»'"ide a common meeting-ground for all the religions fai dona in the East; but it was not at all acceptable to the pope at Rome, who finally excommunicated the Patrij ari h of Constantinople and thus instituted a schism of
