acts of a council which receive the Pope's assent have the force of law for Catholics.[1]
We will consider, first, the five remaining councils, and then the second and fifth.
The First Council of Nicæa (325) was summoned by Constantine. This fact, which is not in dispute, is vouched for by all the historians of that time[2] and by the synodal letter of the council itself.[3] The only question, then, is whether the Emperor was asked or commissioned to do so by the Pope (Sylvester I, 314–335). The matter is uncertain. Rufin says he acted "according to the judgement of the bishops (ex sacerdotum sententia)," and it may be urged that at least one of the bishops concerned was the first Patriarch. The sixth general council (Constantinople III, 680) says so explicitly: "Constantine and Silvester summoned the great Synod of Nicaea,"[4] so does the Liber Pontificalis.[5] The Emperor had a sort of honorary precedence at the council; but he did not preside. He opened the first session with a speech, and then left the discussion to "the presidents of the synod."[6] Who were these presidents? In all lists of the members, and especially in the still extant list of subscribers, Hosius, Bishop of Cordova, signs first, then two Roman priests who were with him, Vitus and Vincent.[7] Alexander of Alexandria and Eustathius of Antioch were present; yet this local Spanish bishop and his two priests sign before the great Patriarchs. It would be a mystery, did not Hosius himself give the explanation. He signs expressly "In the name of the Church of Rome, the Churches of Italy, Spain, and all the West.[8] He and the two priests are
- ↑ The Council of Constance (1414–1418) in its first thirteen sessions was a schismatical assembly, from the fourteenth to the forty-first a legitimate provincial synod, from the forty-second to the forty-fifth the sixteenth œcumenical council.
- ↑ Eusebius: Vita Const. iii. 6; Socrates, H.E. i. 8; Sozomen, H.E. i. 17; Theodoret, H.E. i. 7; Rufin. i. 1.
- ↑ Socrates, H.E. i. 9.
- ↑ Actio 18. Hardouin, iii. 1417.
- ↑ "Factum est concilium cum eius (Sylvestri) præceptum (sic) in Nicea Bithiniæ (aliter: cum eius consensu)." Duchesne: Lib. Pont. (Paris, 1886), i. 171.
- ↑ Eus. Vita Const. iii. 13.
- ↑ Mansi, ii. 692, 697, 882, 927.
- ↑ Ibid. 882, 927.
