Page:Orthodox Eastern Church (Fortescue).djvu/478

436 simply one more compendium of anti-Latin controversy, not even well composed. And it is the only way he thinks fit to answer the Pope. Nor do false accusations ever fail in such compendia; in this one there is a monstrous travesty of the Papal claims, ending in the assertion that the Pope requires not only spiritual but also temporal supremacy over the whole Church, that he pretends to be the only representative of Christ on earth, and the only source of all grace. The tone of the letter is perhaps even more striking than the fact that Anthimos thinks such controversy a suitable answer to what Leo had said. In the first place he gives the Pope the title that is the correct one for just any bishop or metropolitan. According to his own Orthodox Church the Roman Bishop is the successor of St. Peter and the first Patriarch, but he thinks it decent to address him just as he would address the lowest of his suffragans. He even affects to doubt that St. Peter was the first Bishop of Rome—a fact that the Orthodox liturgy con-