ctrines. The so-called "Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed," which has
almost universally been ascribed to this council, is certainly not the
Nicene creed nor even a recension of it, but most likely a Jerusalem
baptismal formula revised by the interpolation of a few Nicene
test-words. More recently its claim to be called "Constantinopolitan"
has been challenged. It is not found in the earliest records of the acts
of the council, nor was it referred to by the council of Ephesus (431),
nor by the "Robber Synod" (449), although these both confirmed the
Nicene faith. It also lacks the definiteness one would expect in a creed
composed by an anti-Arian, anti-Pneumatomachian council. Harnack
(Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopaedie_, 3rd ed., s.v. "Konstantinopolit.
Symbol.") conjectures that it was ascribed to the council of
Constantinople just before the council of Chalcedon in order to prove
the orthodoxy of the Fathers of the second ecumenical council. At all
events, it became the creed of the universal church, and has been
retained without change. Save for the addition of _filioque_.

Of the seven reputed canons of the council only the first four are
unquestionably genuine. The fifth and the sixth probably belong to a
synod of 382, and the seventh is properly not a canon. The most
important enactments of the council were the granting of metropolitan
rights to the bishops of Alexandria, Antioch, Thrace, Pontus and
Ephesus; and according to Constantinople the place of honour after Rome,
against which Rome protested. Not until 150 years later, and then only
under compulsion of the emperor Justinian, did Rome acknowledge the
ecumenicity of the council, and that merely as regarded its doctrinal
decrees.

See Mansi iii. pp. 521-599; Hardouin i. pp. 807-826; Hefele, 2nd ed.,
ii. pp. 1 sqq. (English translation, ii. pp. 340 sqq.); Hort, _Two
Dissertations_ (Cambridge, 1876); and the article Creeds.

2. The council of 553, the fifth ecumenical, grew out of the controversy
of the "Three Chapters," an adequate account of which, up to the time of
the council, may be found in the articles JUSTINIAN and VIGILIUS. The
council convened, in response to the imperial summons, on the 4th of May
553. Of the 165 bishops who subscribed the acts all but the five or six
from Egypt were Oriental; the pope, Vigilius, refused to attend (he had
made his escape from Constantinople, and from his retreat in Chalcedon
sent forth a vain protest against t