CHALCEDON
556
CHALCEDON
cian and Pulcheria were opposed to the new teaching
of Dioscurus and Eutyches; and Marcian at once
informed Leo I of his willingness to call a new council
according to the previous desire of the pope. In the
meantime conditions had changed. Anatolius of
Constantinople, and with him many other bishops,
condemned the teaching of Eutyches and accepted
the dogmatic epistle of Pope Leo. Any new dis-
cussions concerning the Christian Faith seemed
therefore superfluous. Western Europe, moreover,
was in a state of turmoil owing to the invasion of the
Huns under Attila, for which reason most of the
Western bishops could not attend a council to be held
in the East. Leo I therefore protested repeatedly
against a council and wrote in this sense to the Em-
peror Marcian, the Empress Pulcheria, Anatolius of
Constantinople, and Julian of Cos; all these letters
bear the date of 9 June, 451. Meanwhile, 17 May,
451, a decree was issued by Marcian — in the name
also of the Western Emperor Valentinian III (425-55)
— ordering all metropolitan bishops with a number
of their suffragan bishops to assemble the following
September at Nictea in Bithynia, there to hold a
general council for the purpose of settling the ques-
tions of faith recently called in doubt.
Though displeased with this action, the pope never- theless agreed to send his representatives to Niccea. He appointed as legates Paschasinus, Bishop of Lily- bseum (Marsala) in Sicily, Lucentius, also a bishop, Julian, Bishop of Cos, and two priests, Boniface and Basil; Paschasinus was to preside over the coming council in the pope's place. On 24 and 26 June, 451, Leo I wrote letters to the Emperor Marcian, to his legate Paschasinus, to Anatolius of Constantinople, to Julian of Cos, and to the synod itself, in which he ex- pressed the desire that the decrees of the synod should be in conformity with his teaching as contained in the aforesaid dogmatic epistle. A detailed in- struction was also given to the papal legates, which contained directions for their guidance in the council ; this document, however, has perished, with the ex- ception of two fragments preserved in the Acts of the council. In July the papal legates departed for their destination. Many bishops arrived at- Niccea during the summer, but the opening of the council was postponed owing to the emperor's inability to be present. Finally, at the complaint of the bishops, who grew weary of waiting, Marcian requested them to come to Chalcedon, in the near vicinity of Con- stantinople. This was done, and the council opened at ( 'halcedon 8 October.
In all likelihood an official record of the proceedings was made either during the council itself or shortly afterwards. The assembled bishops informed the pope that a copy of all the "Acta" would be transmitted to him ; in March, 453, Pope Leo commissioned Julian of Cos, then at Constantinople, to make a collection of all the Acts and translate them into Latin. Very ancient versions of the Acts, both in Creek and Latin, are still eMant. Most of the documents, chiefly the minutes of the sessions, were written in Greek; others, e. g. the imperial letters, were issued in both languages; others, again, e. g. the papal letters, were written in Latin. Eventually nearly all of them were translated into both languages. The Latin version, known as the " versio antiqua .", was probably made about 500, perhaps by Dionysius Exiguus. About the middle of the sixth century the Roman deacon Rusticus, then in Constantinople with Pope Vigilius (537-55), made numerous corrections in the "versio antiqua", after comparison with Greek manuscripts of the Acts, chiefly with those of the "Acoemeta> mona terj either at Constantinople oral ('halcedon. As to the number of sessions held by the Council of Chalcedon there is a great discrepancy in the various texts of the
,V i , also in the ancient historians of the council.
Either the respective manuscripts must have been in-
complete ; or the historians passed over in silence sev-
eral sessions held for secondary purposes. Accord-
ing to the deacon Rusticus, there were in all sixteen
sessions; this division is commonly accepted by
scholars, including Bishop Hefele, the learned his-
torian of the councils. If all the separate meetings
were counted, there would be twenty-one sessions;
several of these meetings, however, are considered as
supplementary to preceding sessions. All the ses-
sions were held in the church of St. Euphemia, Martyr,
outside the city and directly opposite Constantinople.
The exact number of bishops present is not known.
The synod itself, in a letter to Pope Leo, speaks of 520,
while Pope Leo says there were 600; according to the
general estimate there were 630, including the repre-
sentatives of absent bishops. No previous council
could boast of so large a gathering of bishops, while the
attendance at later councils seldom surpassed or even
equalled that number. The council, however, was not
equally representative as to the countries whence came
so many bishops. Apart, from the papal legates and
J two African bishops, practically all the bishops belongedl to the Eastern Church. This, however, was well repre-l sented; the two great civil divisions (prefectures), of' the Orient and of Illyricum, comprising Egypt, the Orient (including Palestine), Pontus, Asia, Thrace, Dacia, and Macedonia, sent their contingents. The more prominent among the Eastern bishops were Anatolius of Constantinople, Maximus of Antioch, Dioscurus of Alexandria, Juvenal of Jerusalem, Thalassius of Cassarea in Cappadocia, Stephen of Ephesus, Quintillus of Heraclea, and Peter of Corinth. The honour of presiding over this venerable assembly was reserved to Paschasinus, Bishopof Lilybseum, the first of the papal legates, according to the intention of Pope Leo I, expressed in his letter to Emperor Mar- cian (24 June, 451). Shortly after the council, writ- ing to the bishops of Gaul, he mentions that his legates presided in his stead over the Eastern synod. Moreover, Paschasinus proclaimed openly in presence of the council that he was presiding over it in the name and in the place of Pope Leo. The members of the council recognized this prerogative of the papal legates. When writing to the pope they pro- fessed that, through his representatives, he presided over them in the council. In the interest of order and a regular procedure the Emperor Marcian appointed a number of commissioners, men of high rank, who received the place of honour in the council. Their jurisdiction, however, did not cover the ecclesiastical or religious questions under discus- sion. The commissioners simply directed the order of business during the sessions; they opened the meetings, laid before the council the matters to be discussed, demanded the votes of the bishops on the various subjects, and closed the sessions. Besides these there were present several members of the Senate, who shared the place of honour with the imperial commissioners.
At the very beginning of the first session, the
papal legates, Paschasinus at their head, protested
against the presence of Dioscurus of Alexandria. Formal accusations of heresy and of unjust actions committed in the Robber Council of Ephesus were preferred against him by Eusebius of Doryiaeum; and at the suggestion of the imperial commissioners he
was removed from his seat among the bishops and deprived of his vote. In order to make a full investi- gation Of bis case the .Vets nl I he Robber ( 'oiiucil, with
those of the synod held in 448 by Flavian of Constan- tinople, were read in full; this occupied the whole first session. At the end the imperial commissioners de- clared that since Flavian of Constantinople and other bishops hail been unjustly deposed by the Robber Council it would be just that Dioscurus and the lead ers in that synod should now suffer the same punish- ment. A number of bishops agreed, but finally all
