Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/137

Rh Zeno fled to his old home beyond the mountains. Basiliscus leaned on the support of the Monophysites, and even dared to issue a circular letter condemning the council of Chalcedon—the first instance of an emperor on his own authority presuming to reverse the decision of a general council. It carries the State's interference with the Church a stage further.

the patriarch of Constantinople stoutly resisted this imperial favouring of Monophysitism; he draped the cathedral and the clergy in black in sign of mourning for the calamity that had come on the Church. , the greatest of the Stylites then living, came down from his pillar, entered the city, and preached to the awestruck populace. Crowds assembled at the gates of the cathedral in protest against the doings of the emperor. Meanwhile the reign of Basiliscus had been disgraced by disorderly and violent scenes in the court. Thus another revolt was provoked which issued in the deposition of the usurper and the return of Zeno to power. This man was the very last person who should have ventured to interfere with the creed of the Church. What could an ignorant debauchee know of such abstract mysteries as it involved? in what spirit could such a man handle them? The very idea of such a thing is shocking to the Christian conscience. But Zeno was a weak creature who lent himself as a tool for abler hands. It is an ominous sign of the settled subservience of the Church to the State, that a great ecclesiastic should have condescended to make use of so unclean an instrument. Nothing could more forcibly demonstrate the immense contrast between the condition of the Church in the East and its condition in the West than a comparison of the policy of Acacius the patriarch of Constantinople with Leo of Rome who had died but a few years earlier ( 461). Soon after the Roman pontiff had proved himself the most powerful personage in the West, saving the empire, saving civilisation, by his courage, energy, and ability, his brother in the Eastern capital was to be seen cringing before the throne of a low, semi-barbarous sensualist in