Patriarchate. In 649 Pope Martin I (649–655) suspends the Metropolltan of Thessalonica, and says in his letter that this Church is "subject to Our Apostolic See," meaning clearly to his patriarchate. St. Gregory the Great (590–604) has left among his letters no less than twenty-one written about the affairs of Illyricum, and he sends the Pallium to the Illyrian Metropolitans. Now it should be noticed that, whereas in the East patriarchal jurisdiction is expressed by the right of ordaining, in the West the corresponding symbol is the sending of a Pallium. The Popes have never made a point of ordaining all their archbishops; on the other hand, they did not send Pallia to Eastern Metropolitans. In 545 Justinian put into his Authenticum a law about the Bishop of Nea Iustiniane (see p. 49); he is to have jurisdiction over a great part of Illyricum, but only as "holding the place (τὸν τόπον ἐπέχειν = representative) of the Apostolic See of Rome."[1] And yet, inconsistently, the Codex contains a law of Theodosius II (408–450) placing Illyricum under Constantinople, and of course with the everlasting explanation "because that city rejoices in the privileges of Old Rome"; and on the strength of this law the Œcumenical Patriarchs continually put forth a claim to Illyricum.
One must say that the question was never agreed upon till the great schism. Old Rome had on her side antiquity (she had ruled over Illyricum before any one had ever heard of a patriarchate at Constantinople), custom and the sentiment of the Illyrian bishops themselves. New Rome appealed to a Civil Law made by her Emperor. At the time of the schism this question was one of the chief ones (p. 152); since then there has been unhappily no possibility of settling it. The Illyrian Christian is now, of course, either Catholic or Orthodox, and so obeys either the Latin Vicar Apostolic or the Orthodox Metropolitan.[2] A like case was that of Magna Græcia, the old greater Greece, that is, Sicily and the south of Italy (Calabria, Apulia, &c.). The people here were nearly all Greeks by blood and language. Politically, these lands belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire
