F
firstNicholas12
Guest
We can at least be certain that some of those at Chalcedon did refuse to adopt the 381 creed. This attitude was particularly strong in Egypt where the earlier silence of Cyril and Dioscorus concerning the Council of Constantinople and their rejection of any creed other than Nicaea remained highly influential. When Diogenes of Cyzicus in the passage quoted earlier from the first session condemned Eutyches for failing to recognize the clarification of Nicaea provided in 381, the Egyptian bishops immediately defended Eutyches and appealed to canon 7 of 431, exclaiming ‘No one admits any addition or subtraction. Confirm the work of Nicaea’ (Acts I. 161). The 13 Egyptian bishops in the fourth session who asked to remain outside the debates until Dioscorus, who had been condemned in the third session, was replaced likewise refer in their petition only to the creed of 325 (Acts IV. 25) and omit any reference to the creed 381 as a symbol of orthodoxy. The strength of Egyptian feeling on this question was apparently recognized by the Emperor Martian who in his Letter to the Monks of Alexandria in 454 (Documents after the Council 14) appeals solely to the faith of 325 and not (as in his other writings after Chalcedon) to the creeds of both 325 and 381.
The Egyptian hostility to the council of 381 was also shared in Rome. An important motive for the emphasis placed by the imperial commissioners at Chalcedon on the Council of Constantinople was that the exaltation of the earlier council reinforced the famous decree, later known as the 28th canon of Chalcedon, which proclaimed the privileges of Constantinople as ‘New Rome’.24 This decree was approved in the sixteenth session of Chalcedon25 and led to immediate tension with Rome, where Pope Leo appears to have had no more knowledge of the council of 381 than the majority of his eastern contemporaries. Anatolius of Constantinople, in his efforts to justify the contentious decree, felt the need to identify the council of 381 and its leaders in his Letter to Leo in December 451 (Documents after the Council 8). Leo contemptuously replied that 'your persuasiveness is in no way whatever assisted by the subscription of certain bishops given, as you claim, sixty years ago, and never brought to the knowledge of the apostolic see by your predecessors’ (Leo, Letter to Anatolius, Documents after the Council 10).
(The Council of Chalcedon and the Definition of Christian Tradition, David M. Gwynn)
The Egyptian hostility to the council of 381 was also shared in Rome. An important motive for the emphasis placed by the imperial commissioners at Chalcedon on the Council of Constantinople was that the exaltation of the earlier council reinforced the famous decree, later known as the 28th canon of Chalcedon, which proclaimed the privileges of Constantinople as ‘New Rome’.24 This decree was approved in the sixteenth session of Chalcedon25 and led to immediate tension with Rome, where Pope Leo appears to have had no more knowledge of the council of 381 than the majority of his eastern contemporaries. Anatolius of Constantinople, in his efforts to justify the contentious decree, felt the need to identify the council of 381 and its leaders in his Letter to Leo in December 451 (Documents after the Council 8). Leo contemptuously replied that 'your persuasiveness is in no way whatever assisted by the subscription of certain bishops given, as you claim, sixty years ago, and never brought to the knowledge of the apostolic see by your predecessors’ (Leo, Letter to Anatolius, Documents after the Council 10).
(The Council of Chalcedon and the Definition of Christian Tradition, David M. Gwynn)