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198 the Roman bishops were incessantly demanding severity, as their letters show. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that Acacius, even after his death, should have been regarded in the East as a great and holy bishop, and that the sentence of the Italian Council should have been considered as null and void. Gelasius is not happy in his answer to the objection of the bishops of Dardania to the illegality of this sentence. In return, he shows a great deal of temper when he tries to confute the argument drawn in favour of Acacius from the importance of the Byzantine see. "We laughed," he says, "at the prerogative that they (the Eastern bishops) claim for Acacius because he was bishop of the imperial city. Did not the Emperor reside for a long time at Ravenna, Milan, Sirmium, and Trèves? Have the bishops of these cities exceeded, on this account, the limits that antiquity has prescribed to them? If the question be upon the dignity of cities, the bishops of a second or third-rate see have more dignity than the bishops of a city which is not even a metropolis. The power of the secular empire is one thing, and the distribution of ecclesiastical dignities quite another. However small a city may be, it does not diminish the greatness of the prince who dwells there; but it is quite as true that the presence of the emperor does not change the order of religion; and such a city should rather profit by such an advantage to preserve the freedom of religion by keeping peaceably within its proper limits."

But what, then, was the foundation of the dignity of the Roman Church? Gelasius could indicate none other but the Council of Nicea. Now has not one œcumenical council the same rights as another? If at Nicea the Church had so ruled the hierarchal rank that Rome and Alexandria should be superiour to Antioch and