Page:Orthodox Eastern Church (Fortescue).djvu/128

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
92
THE ORTHODOX EASTERN CHURCH

refused her communion while alive."[1] But the action of Lucifer, and of Rome in supporting him, had been a deplorable mistake. There were other cases of the same kind. At Laodicea all the East acknowledged Pelagius, Rome Apollinaris,[2] the future heretic († c. 385). In these and similar cases the Pope (St. Damasus, 366–384) knew of Eastern affairs almost entirely through Peter, Patriarch of Alexandria, who was in exile at Rome, and who, of course, described everything from his own point of view. It was not always quite a fair one. Peter had suffered much from Arians and semi-Arians; he was very loyal to the old friends in Syria who, with him, had borne the long persecution, he was inclined to look rather askance on the new school of bishops, who, although they were now defending the faith of Nicaea, had been the pupils of a suspect tradition. It was from the school of such people as Basil of Ancyra, Eustathius of Sebaste, Macedonius, all semi-Arians, that the great Cappadocians, St. Basil and the two Gregories had come,[3] and it was owing to the old hatred of Alexandria for those semi-Arians that Peter and even Damasus were disposed to look somewhat coldly upon the great Greek Fathers, whose orthodoxy was really as untarnished as their own. Indeed, the traditional close alliance between the two first sees, Rome and Alexandria, often caused friction between Rome and the other Eastern Churches. Continually one sees that Antioch and Constantinople on the one side are opposed to Alexandria on the other: and Rome was nearly always for Alexandria.

Gradually another cause of resentment grew up against the Latins. Although the Greeks generously did their part in spreading the Gospel on all sides they always had a feeling that the full perfection of the Christian Church involved the Roman Empire. Optatus of Milevis († 400) had said so in Africa: "The Commonwealth is not in the Church, but the Church is

  1. For all this story see Socrates: H.E. ii. 43; iii. 9, 25; v. 5, 9, 15. Sozomenos: H.E. iv. 25; vii. 3, 10, seq.; viii. 3. Theodoret: H.E. iii. 2, 8; V. 23, 25.
  2. St. Basil, Ep. 131, 2; 224, 2 (M.P.G. xxxii. 568, 836, seq.).
  3. Cf. Duchesne: Églises séparées, pp. 85, seq.