VIGILIUS & the FIFTH ECUM - 7TH SESSION

[mardukm]

Hi folks,

Due to the mention of this topic in another thread, I thought I would start another one to clarify matters.

Those who do not agree with the Catholic teaching on the papacy often use this event (the 7th session of the 5th Ecumenical Council) to downplay the importance of the head bishop of the Church universal in the early Church. Some use this event to claim that the Council is above its head.

Before launching into a discussion on the topic, I would first like to re-present some fine points of the official (High-Petrine) Catholic teaching on the primacy as it relates to the Ecumenical Council/College of bishops (remember that the Ecumenical Council is merely a more formal representation of the College):
(1) The Ecumenical Council has a collegial infallibility. The head and body together are infallible only as a single unit, neither the head apart from the body, nor the body apart from the head.
(2) During an Ecumenical Council, the Pope judges ALONG WITH his brother bishops, not that the Pope judges his brother bishops, nor his brother bishops judging him. The head bishop does not judge the Faith of his brother bishops, but rather confirms their common Faith; his brother bishops do not judge the Faith of the head bishop, but rather exhibits consensus in their common Faith. Thus unanimity in the Truth will be evident to the world and God will be glorified (see Apostolic Canon 34).
(3) In defining dogma, the whole college during an Ecumenical Council exercises the infallibility of the EXTRAordinary Magisterium; in distinction, during an exercise of “papal” infallibility, the Pope exercises the infallibility of the EXTRAordinary Magisterium, while his brother bishops exercise the infallibility of the ordinary, universal Magisterium (i.e., it is an utterly false notion that only the Pope is infallible during the process of formulating an ex cathedra decree).
(4) The supreme authority of the College/Ecumenical Council springs from the consensus of the head and body together; the supreme authority of the head only exists in the context of the College, not outside or above it - i.e., it exists only in communion with his brother bishops, and never apart from them.
(5) The correction that a head bishop gives to his brother bishops, or the correction that the bishops give to their head, signifies a normal dynamic of the College as a single, whole unit. It is not that the head sits apart from or above the College, nor that the College sits apart from or above its head.
(6) The College always exists, and the Pope can no more act apart from communion with the College, as if a head could exist without its body (against the Absolutist Petrine view of some Catholics and the SSPX).
(7) Similarly, as the College always exists, the body can no more act apart from communion with its head, as if a body could exist without a head (against the Low Petrine view of some Eastern Orthodox).
(8) The College/Ecumenical Council is not above the head bishop, for it cannot act without its head; neither is the head bishop above the College/Ecumenical Council, for he is always a member of it.

With that in mind, permit me to present some facts about the Fifth Ecumenical Council.

(1) The Acts of the Fifth Ecum come down to us only in Latin. There are three primary sources:
(i) Baluze (AKA Codex Parisiensis, published in Mansi 1758-1798; “Paris Codex” or “Paris Manuscript”)
(ii) Surius (published 1567), based on a Roman original.
(iii) Beauvais (AKA Codex Sellovacensis)
(ii) and (iii) are in basic agreement, while the Paris Codex differs from them, at times considerably.
NOTE 1: Some trace the origins of Gallicansm to the late 13th century, with the promulgation of Unam Sanctam. However, others trace it much earlier, and we can see the tension between the Gallican Church and Rome as early the time of St. Hilary. The relevance of the foregoing will be made evident later. The Paris Codex contains an episode during the Council particularly important for our topic, an episode that is not contained in the other two source manuscripts - this will be described in more detail in (13) below.
NOTE 2: Labbe is often mentioned as a source. Labbe had used the three sources on the 5th Ecum, but agrees with Surius and Beavais on the important matter to be described in (13) below.

(2) Most head bishops, and other bishops besides, from the East prior to the Council had sent letters to Pope Vigilius, confessing that their signing on to the condemnation of the Three Chapters was made under duress.

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[mardukm]

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(3) The Pope issued a Judicatum prior to the Council, but withdrew it due to strong protests from the Latin bishops.

(4) The Fifth Ecum was called upon the initiative of Pope Vigilius.

(5) Pope Vigilius wanted the Council to meet in Italy or Sicily, to ensure a fair representation of bishops from East and West. Emperor Justinian disagreed and wanted it to meet somewhere in the East, in order to ensure victory for his interests. The Emperor convened the Council in Constantinople, and the Pope thus refused to attend (but was eventually forced to do so).

(6) The forced attendance of the Pope, and his subsequent imprisonment, was an act of the Emperor, not the Council Fathers. Non-Catholics who use these incidents to claim that an Ecum Council had authority over the Pope are not honest with the historical facts.

(7) During the Council, the Pope promised to issue a judgment (with other bishops in attendance with him), independent from the Eastern Fathers of the Council. This resulted in the Constitutum (signed by him, and other bishops from Italy, Africa and Illyricum who were at the Council). It was based not on the investigations of the Eastern Council Fathers, but on his own, independent investigation with the aid of the other bishops.
NOTE: the criticism of the Emperor that the Pope of Rome made the Constitutum on his own is false.

(8) The issue of the Three Chapters consisted of the condemnation of:
(a) the writings of Theodore;
(b) Theodore himself;
(c) the writings of Theodoret;
(d) the letter of Ibas;

The Constitutum admitted a condemnation of only (a) and (c), and also condemned 5 heretical propositions attributed to Nestorius. Condemnation of (b) and (d) were not admitted because the Pope’s investigation of the Acts of the 3rd and 4th Ecum revealed that:
(a) Theodore was not condemned by the 3rd Ecum - in the explicit words of Pope St. Cyril himself - though his writings were. Pope Vigilius simply wanted to follow the course set by the 3rd Ecum;
(b) the letter of Ibas had come before the 4th Ecum and was not condemned, because even though the letter makes statements against Pope St. Cyril, Ibas had explicitly retracted such statements at the 4th Ecum, had asserted that he made his statements against Pope St. Cyril only because he misunderstood Cyril’s anathematisms, had himself communed with Pope St. Cyril after the 3rd Ecum, and the letter itself commends the 3rd Ecum and accepts the confession of Faith of the 3rd Ecum. All this was noted in the Constitutum.

(9) The Pope sent him the Constitutum, but the Emperor would not accept it, and did not even read it.

(10) The events related in (9) above are the subject of the Extract of the Acts of the Seventh Session given in NPNF. This Protestant version, along with its opinion that Pope Vigilius was anathematized by the Council, is the basis for every interpretation of the matter by non-Catholics, so its merit needs to be assessed.

(11) The NPNF version makes it seem as though the Emperor’s request to remove the Pope’s name from the diptychs was a natural part of the quaestor’s address to the Council. In fact, the portion relating the Emperor’s (supposed) request is actually a separate event. The Council Fathers had heard the quaestor’s address, had letters that the quaestor presented read before the Council, made approving comments, then actually intended to close the 7th Session. However, the quaestor then (supposedly) made an intervention, and at that point related the Emperor’s request to have the Pope’s name removed from the diptychs in a letter which he read to the Council Fathers – after which point the Fathers stated: “Let us preserve unity to the Apostolic See of the most holy Church of ancient Rome, carrying out all things according to the tenor of what has been read.” The NPNF also fails to mention the very important fact in (12) below.

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[mardukm]

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(12) The date of the letter mentioned in (11) is July 14. However, Session 7 of the Council occurred on May 26. This is a very important fact of which many are probably not aware.

(13) Of the three source manuscripts mentioned in (1) above, only the Paris Codex contains the quaestor’s request by Justinian to remove the Pope’s name from the diptychs, as well as the letter supposedly read to the Council Fathers that contained that request.

(14) The Ballerini have claimed that Justinian’s letter is spurious because of the discrepancy in date. Hefele (rightly, imo) affirms the genuineness of the letter, along with the dates. Hefele opines that the discrepancy in dates could be attributed to the notion that the letter was publicly published on July 14, though it was read to the Council Fathers on May 26. The Council ended on June 2.

(15) The Fathers of the Council gave their decision on the matter in the 8th Session, not once casting any doubt on the orthodoxy of Pope Vigilius.

(16) There are only two possible conclusions that can be drawn from the facts mentioned in (12) - (15) above, both of which utterly refutes the non-Catholic theory that the Council Fathers threatened Pope Vigilius with excommunication - much less that he was actually excommunicated, and much, much, less that he was anathematized (as the NPNF claims):
(a) The Paris Codex contains an interpolation into the 7th Session, possibly introduced by an adherent of Gallicanism. The whole episode of the quaestor’s relation of Justinian’s letter that contained a request to remove the Pope’s name from the diptychs did not occur during the Council, but over a month after it. Thus, it was never part of the Acts of the Council, and the Council as such took no part in any attempt to remove the Pope’s name from the diptychs.

(b) The Paris manuscript contains a correct account of the 7th Session(with the extra detail of the quaestor’s relation of Justinian’s request to have the Pope’s name removed from the diptychs). However, this actually proves much more damaging to the non-Catholic position. For the fact that the letter was published over a month and a half after the Council, and was not dated and published with the other Council documents, demonstrates that once the Fathers heard the request and the letter, they actually rejected it, and would not entertain it as part of its Acts. It is easy to surmise that the letter came down to us as part of the Acts of the Council because a future copyist inserted it in there, simply to indicate what was read to the Council Fathers. But that the letter was not originally part of the Acts of the Council is plainly evident from its actual dating.

If the Fathers of the Council had read the Constitutum, they would have known that the Pope’s reasons for not condemning points (b) and (d) (mentioned in (8) above) was without reproach - the Pope was simply adhering to what went before. As it is, the Fathers recognized that they really had no grounds to remove Pope Vigilius’ name from the diptychs – there was absolutely no hint of heterodoxy in the Pope’s intentions (according to the Constitutum). The Fathers of the Fifth Ecum recognized the Pope’s orthodoxy in their Sentence, avoiding any deprecatory statement against the Pope.

Further, a careful reading of the Council’s response after the relation of Emperor Justinian’s letter indicates that, far from actually conceding to the Emperor’s demands, the Fathers did not intend to actually follow it to the letter – the response does not say “carrying out all things according to what has been read,” but rather, “carrying out all things according to the tenor of what has been read.” The Council Fathers were well aware that any obvious refusal to follow the Emperor’s demands would result in either imprisonment or banishment. Their response was rather sly and round-about (no doubt taking to heart our Lord’s own exhortation, “be wise as serpents but innocent as doves”)

IMPORTANT NOTE: It would be dishonest to claim that the Fathers of the 5th Ecum made their judgment in the 8th Session in specific rejection of Pope Vigilius’ Constitutum, because the Constitutum never actually came before the Council. As related in the Acts of the 7th Session, though the Pope wanted to give it to the Emperor to be presented to the Council, the Emperor refused. The orthodoxy of the Consitutum is beyond question, and it is impossible to surmise whether the Council Fathers would have softened their position had they been given an opportunity to read and investigate its contents.

In any case, the Pope accepted the correction of his brother bishops, and, after he confirmed the proceedings of his brother bishops, it finally could be regarded as “Ecumenical,” consensus between the head and body having finally been achieved.

Blessings,
Marduk