For I said that you should not write any such thing _either to me or to any one else_, and lo! in the heading of your letter, directed to me, the very person who forbad it, you set that haughty appellation, _calling me Universal Pope_. Which I beg your Holiness, who are most agreeable to me, to do no more, because _whatever is given to another more than reason requires is so much taken away from yourself_. It is not in appellations, but in character, that I wish to advance. Nor do I consider that an honour by which I acknowledge that my brethren lose their own. For my honour is the honour of the Universal Church. My honour is the unimpaired vigour of my brethren. Then am I truly honoured, when the true honour is not denied to each one in his degree. _For if your Holiness calls me Universal Pope, you deny that you are yourself what you admit me to be, Universal._ But this God forbid. Away with words which inflate vanity, and wound charity. Indeed, in the holy Synod of Chalcedon, and by the Fathers subsequently, your Holiness knows this was offered to my predecessors. Yet none of them chose ever to use this term; that, while in this world they entertained affection for the honour of all Priests, in the hands of Almighty God they might guard their own." As to what Gregory says about the Council of Chalcedon offering this title, Thomassin says,[143] "It authorized at least by its silence the title of Ecumenical (Patriarch), which was given to Pope Leo in several requests there read." It appears these requests really were the complaints of two Alexandrian Deacons against Dioscorus.[144] How very different it was to pass over without reprobating a title bestowed in documents which came before it, from itself conferring that title, is plain at once. In just the same way it had been given at the Latrocinium to Dioscorus. However, the title Ecumenical has been constantly since, and is now, borne by the Patriarch of Constantinople; no doubt a very innocent meaning may be given to it. The remarkable thing is, that Gregory has pointed out in such precise unmistakeable language a certain power and claim, which he inferred, rightly or wrongly, would be set up on this title Ecumenical, and which he pronounces to be a corruption of the whole constitution of the Church.