simply one more compendium of anti-Latin controversy, not even well composed.[1] And it is the only way he thinks fit to answer the Pope. Nor do false accusations ever fail in such compendia; in this one there is a monstrous travesty of the Papal claims, ending in the assertion that the Pope requires not only spiritual but also temporal supremacy over the whole Church, that he pretends to be the only representative of Christ on earth, and the only source of all grace. The tone of the letter is perhaps even more striking than the fact that Anthimos thinks such controversy a suitable answer to what Leo had said. In the first place he gives the Pope the title that is the correct one for just any bishop or metropolitan.[2] According to his own Orthodox Church the Roman Bishop is the successor of St. Peter and the first Patriarch, but he thinks it decent to address him just as he would address the lowest of his suffragans. He even affects to doubt that St. Peter was the first Bishop of Rome—a fact that the Orthodox liturgy con-
- ↑ See Mgr. Duchesne: Églises séparées, pp. 59–112: L'encylique du Patriarche Anthime, p. 75, for a misquotation of Anthimos, &c. The Patriarch drags in once more a list of our customs that are different from his, and again seems to think that the one standard for the whole world is his own patriarchate. This has been their attitude ever since Cerularius, "the state of mind of an inexperienced traveller in foreign countries who thinks everything bad that is not the same as in his own home" (ibid. pp. 83–89). If it were worth while to retaliate their everlasting accusation of Papic novelties, one could make a catalogue of their innovations too. By what right, for instance, do they change the form of baptism left by our Lord and interlace it with superfluous Amens? Why are practically all their bishops metropolitans? Why does the Patriarch of Constantinople arrogate to himself the sole right of consecrating chrism? They put hot water into the chalice, anoint people who are not sick, forbid fourth marriages, never make a secular priest a bishop, hide their altars, change their Patriarch every year or two, &c., &c. Above all, what about the crowning innovation of holy directing synods instead of a graduated hierarchy? One could find many more such novelties. But no one wishes seriously to retaliate in this way. Catholic theologians in their controversy insist on the real issue, the Primacy, and leave such mean quibbles to the Orthodox.
- ↑ Μακαριώτατος. The manners of the Œcumenical Patriarch inevitably remind one of the insolence of the parvenu. For all his pompous title he knows that he is the successor of the little Byzantine bishop who obeyed the Metropolitan of Heraclea, and that had it not been for a pure accident, and then for the interference of emperors in ecclesiastical affairs, that is presumably all he would be now.
