The malice of Acacius largely led to this result. His attack was the prelude to the sifting of the Pope's prerogative during thirty-five years: its sifting by a rival at Constantinople, by the eastern bishops, by the eastern emperor, who had now also become the sole Roman emperor; and the sifting was followed by a full acknowledgment. Nothing but this hostile conduct would have afforded so indubitable a proof of the thing impugned. While the ancient patriarchates which had formed the substructure of the triple dais on which the Apostolic See rested were falling into irretrievable confusion, while the new State-made patriarch at Constantinople was trying to nominate and, if he could, to consecrate his elders and superiors at Alexandria and Antioch, who descended from Peter, the essential prerogative of the Apostolic See itself came forth into full light. The bishops at Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and every other city in the world would be great or small in influence according to the greatness or smallness of their city. If the city fell altogether, the see would fall. Its life was tied to the city. But it was not so with that pontificate on which the Church was built. There and there only the living power was given by Christ to a man: not local, nor limited, nor transitory. This was the great truth which the Acacian schism helped to establish in the minds of men, and which was proclaimed in that Nova Roma where Acacius had refused the judgment of Pope Felix, and had tried to put himself on an equality. As a result, in the terms of union which have been above recited, the action of Acacius has had the honour to condemn the rebellion of Photius three hundred years before it arose, and every other rebellion which has imitated that of Photius.