The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory IAllies, T. W. (Thomas William)
History
The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I
Allies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600
the Church; but the emperor's hypocritical excuses pacified the patriarch.
When the danger was passed by Anastasius pursued fresh intrigues. He
required Macedonius to subscribe a formula in which the Council of
Chalcedon was passed over. Macedonius would seem to have been deceived, but
afterwards insisted publicly before the monks on his adherence to its
decrees. Then Anastasius tried again to depose him. All possible calumnies
were spread against him--immorality, Nestorianism, falsification of the
Bible; all failed. Then the emperor demanded the delivering up of the
original acts of Chalcedon, which the patriarch steadily refused.
Macedonius had sealed them up and placed them on the altar under God's
protection; but the emperor had them taken away by the eunuch Kalapodius,
economus of the cathedral, and then burnt. After this he imprisoned and
banished a number of the patriarch's friends and relations; then he had the
patriarch seized in the night, deported from the capital to Chalcedon, and
thence to Euchaites in Paphlagonia, to which place he had also banished
Euphemius. Macedonius lived some years after his exile. He died at Gangra
about 516, and was immediately counted among the saints of the eastern
Church.
It cost Anastasius fifteen years to depose Macedonius, that is, from 496 to
511, and this was the way he accomplished it. Thus he succeeded in
overthrowing two bishops of his capital--Euphemius and Macedonius--neither
of whom lived or died in communion with Rome, because, though virtuous and
orthodox in the main, they would not surrender the memory of Acacius. They
had, moreover, one grievous blot on their conduct as bishops. They
submitted themselves to subscribe an imperial statement of doctrine and to
permit its imposition on others. This was a use of despotism in the eastern
Church introduced by the insurgent Basiliscus, carried out first by Zeno
and then by Anastasius, tending to the ruin both of doctrine and
discipline. During the whole reign of Anastasius the patriarchal sees of
Alexandria and Antioch, which had built up the eastern Church in the first
three centuries, which Rome acknowledged as truly patriarchal under Pope
Gelasius in 496, and the new sees which claimed to be patriarchal,
Constantinople and Jerusalem, were in a state of the greatest confusion, a
prey to heresy, party spirit, violence of every kind. Anastasius was able
to disturb Pope Symmachus during the first half of his pontificate by
fostering a schism among his clergy, with the result that he brought out
the recognition of the Pope's privilege not to be judged by his inferiors.
But he was enabled to depose two bishops of the imperial see, his own
patriarchs, blameless in their personal life, orthodox in their doctrine,
longing for reunion with Rome, yet stained by their fatal surrender of
their spiritual independence, subscription to the emperor's imposition of
doctrine. They were not acknowledged by St. Peter's See, and they fell
before the emperor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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