hop of Alexandria, and Arcadius, sent from Italy; the holy
Council of Chalcedon, held under the emperor Marcian and Anatolius, bishop
of Constantinople, in which the Nestorian and Eutychean heresies were
condemned, with Dioscorus and his accomplices."[67]

Thus, twelve years after the attempt of Acacius to set himself up
independent of Rome, and while his next two successors were soliciting the
recognition of Rome, but at the same time were refusing to surrender his
person to condemnation, a Council at Rome pulled down the whole scaffolding
on which the pretension of Acacius had been built.

For while this council omitted from the list of councils acknowledged to be
general that held at Constantinople in 381, it likewise proclaimed the
falsity of the ground alleged in the canon passed in that council, which
gave to Constantinople the second rank in the episcopate because it was New
Rome, which canon again was enlarged by the attempt at the Council of
Chalcedon to put upon the world the positive falsehood asserted in the
rejected 28th canon, that the fathers had given its privileges to the Roman
See because it was the imperial city.

The significance of this decree at such a time cannot be exaggerated. While
the emperor's own Church and bishop are separated by a schism from the
Pope, while the Pope recognises the emperor as the sole "Roman prince," and
in that capacity speaks of him as "pre-eminent in dignity over the human
race," he states at the head of a council, in the most peremptory terms,
that the Principate of Rome is of divine institution, _not_ the
constitution of any council. The decree thus passed is a formal
contradiction of the 28th canon which St. Leo had, forty years before,
rejected.

When we come to the termination of the schism this fact is to be borne in
mind as being accepted voluntarily by those whom it specially concerned,
and whose actions during a hundred years immediately preceding it
condemned. For the decree, besides, does not acknowledge the see of
Constantinople as patriarchal. Acacius had been appointing those who were
really patriarchs: here his own pretended patriarchate is shown to be an
infringement on the ancient order of the Church. Here the Pope in synod, as
before in his letter to the Illyrian bishops, declares of the see of
Constantinople that "it holds no rank among bishops".

And, again, the Roman Council, in all its wording, censures the bishops who
had been so weak as to ac