Page:Guettée papacy.djvu/194

190 V.

OF THE AUTHORITY OF THE BISHOPS OF ROME DURING THE SIXTH, SEVENTH, AND EIGHTH CENTURIES.

We have already seen that the œcumenical councils of Constantinople and Chalcedon had given to the Bishop of Constantinople the second place in the Catholic episcopacy, and that St. Leo, Bishop of Rome, had opposed this law, as changing the hierarchal order established at the first Œcumenical Council of Nicea.

We may believe that St. Leo was indeed only moved to this opposition by his respect for the canons. But his successors, probably, had another motive. They feared lest the Bishop of Constantinople should soon supplant them in the primacy. Such fears were the more reasonable that the Council of Chalcedon had only given as the reason of the primacy the dignity of the city of Rome, the capital of the empire. Now Rome was daily growing less influential. The Roman empire in the West had fallen under the blows of the barbarians; Rome was passing successively through the hands of various tribes, who destroyed every thing — even to the signs of her former greatness. Constantinople had become the only centre of the empire, and increased in splendour in proportion as Rome was humbled. On the other hand, the emperor added daily to the prerogatives of the Bishops of Constantinople, thus increasing their influence, while they quite