Page:Orthodox Eastern Church (Fortescue).djvu/69

Rh his lordly place over broad lands. In 394 there was a quarrel between two rival claimants to the See of Bostra in Arabia, NE. of Jerusalem. Nectarius settled in favour of one claimant, in defiance of the rights of Antioch, in whose patriarchate Bostra lay. After Nectarius came St. John Chrysostom (397–407). It is with great regret that one remembers the fact that the most sympathetic of the Greek Fathers also on one occasion used jurisdiction outside his province. He put down a number of bishops in Asia, who had been simoniacally elected, and his judgement was entirely just and right. Only the right person to give sentence was the Exarch of Ephesus. Under Atticus, his second successor († 425), began the dispute about Illyricum. The whole of the Roman Prefecture of Illyricum (p. 22) belonged to the Western Patriarchate. Atticus got the Emperor Theodosius II (408–450) to publish a law cutting off East Illyricum from the rest and joining it to his jurisdiction (421). But this first time the plan did not succeed. Illyricum became afterwards a very fruitful source of dispute between Rome and Constantinople. We shall come back to it later (p. 44). The same Theodosius forbade any bishops to be ordained in Thrace or Asia without the consent of the Patriarchate at Constantinople. This means jurisdiction over Asia. There was some opposition to the law, but from this time Constantinople gradually absorbs first Asia, then Pontus, and then the whole of what we now call Asia Minor. The Exarchs of Ephesus and Cæsarea, who, as we said (p. 25), under other circumstances might have evolved into great Patriarchs, were too poor, too weak, and too near the capital, to offer any effectual resistance. They now sink back to the position of ordinary metropolitans, and we must already reckon Thrace and Asia Minor as making up the Patriarchate of Constantinople, while both the Patriarch and the Emperor have designs on Illyricum. Things were in this state at the time of the Council of Chalcedon (451), whose 28th Canon was the most important step of all this development. The time was ripe for a bold stroke. The rivals of Constantinople were too weakened to be able to resist. Dioscur of Alexandria