Page:Guettée papacy.djvu/121

Rh neither in his right to convoke it, nor to terminate the discussions himself, by virtue of his authority. His letters to Marcianus, to Pulcheria, and to the Fathers of the council, leave no doubt of this.

This preliminary fact is of great importance.

Leo had requested that the council should take place in Italy; but the Emperor refused this, and convoked it at Nicea and afterward Chalcedon. In nearly all its sessions the council recognizes having been convoked by the most pious Emperors, and never mentions the Bishop of Rome in this connection. A Roman council, under Pope Gelasius, asserts that the Council of Chalcedon was assembled by the intervention of the Emperor Marcianus, and of Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople. The original conception was in fact theirs; yet, as St. Leo consented to it, his prerogatives as first bishop were allowed him, as they should have been. Consequently, he sent to Chalcedon his legates, who were, Boniface, one of his fellow-priests of the city of Rome — as he says in several of his letters to Marcianus — Paschasinus, Bishop of Sicily, Bishop Julian, and Lucentius.

"Let the brethren," said he, in his letter to the Fathers of the council, "believe that by them I preside in the council. I am present amongst you in the persons of my vicars. You know from ancient tradition what we believe; you cannot therefore doubt what we wish."

As this shows, St. Leo appeals to the old traditions, and leaves the council to judge all questions without interposing his pretended doctrinal authority.

But does he use the word preside in its strictest sense?

If we attentively examine the Transactions of the Council, we see that the delegates of the Emperor occupied the first place; that the assembly had several presidents; that the legates of the Bishop of Rome and Anatolius of Constantinople acted simultaneously as ecclesiastical presidents. Such was the case in the twelfth