Later (in 453) the monks of Cappadocia gave trouble; and the monks and other supporters of the deposed Dioscorus at Alexandria entered upon a far graver agitation, and murdered their new archbishop. The pious Marcian, to make matters worse, died (457), and, by one of those strange intrigues which disgraced the Eastern court, Leo the Isaurian, an astute peasant, mounted the golden throne. On this man Leo's diplomatic mixture of courtly language and high sacerdotal pretensions made little impression. In spite of Leo's protests[73] he called another General Council, and Leo had to be content to send Legates to inform the assembled bishops what is "the rule of apostolic faith"; which he again set forth in a long dogmatic epistle.[74] To the last year, Leo maintained, serenely and unswervingly, his calm assumption of jurisdiction over the East. Whether he wrote to the patriarch of Antioch,[75] or the patriarch of Constantinople,[76] or the patriarchs of Jerusalem and Alexandria, he spoke as if his sovereignty had never been questioned. "The care of all the churches" lies on his shoulders. He disdains diplomacy and argument. His tone is arrogant and dogmatic in the highest degree, yet no man can read reflectively those long and imperious epistles and not realize that he spoke, not as the individual Leo, demanding personal prestige, but as the successor of Peter, obeying a command which, he sincerely believed, Christ had laid upon him. So the Papacy was built up. Leo went his way on November 10, 461, and was buried, fitly, in the vestibule of St. Peter's. He had formulated for all time the Papal conception that the successor of Peter had the care of all the churches of the world. A bishop shall not buy his seat in Numidia: a rabble of monks shall not rebel in Syria: a prelate shall not harshly treat his clergy in Gaul, but the Bishop of Rome must see to it. How that gaunt frame of duty was perfected in the next two centuries, and how the prosperity of later times hid the austere frame under a garment of flesh, is the next great chapter in the evolution of the Roman Pontificate. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 47: _Ep._, xii.] [Footnote 48: _Ep._, vi.] [Footnote 49: _Ep._, xiv.] [Footnote 50: Sermon xvi.] [Footnote 51: See the author's _Saint Augustine and His Age_, p. 409.] [Footnote 52: _Ep._, clxvii.] [Footnote 53: _Ep._, x., 3.] [Footnote 54: _Ep._, x.] [Footnote 55: _Ep._, xi., in Migne.] [Footnote 56: _Ep._, xv.] [Footnote 57: XVI. and xvii.] [Footnote 58: XIX.] [Footnote 59: _Ep._, ix.] [Footnote 60: _Ep._, xxiii.] [Footnote 61: _Ep._, xxvi.] [Footnote 62: The "Tome of Leo," _Ep._, xxviii.] [Footnote 63: _Ep._, xcv.] [Footnote 64: _Ep._, xliii. and xlv.] [Footnote 65: _Ep._, lxxxii. and lxxxiii.] [Footnote 66: Hefele's _History of the Councils of the Church_, iii., 411.] [Footnote 67: Hefele, iii., 425.] [Footnote 68: _Ep._, xcviii.] [Footnote 69: _Ep._, cx.]