Canons of the VII Ecumenical Councils

Interpretation.

It has been written in Act 4 of the present Council that after the deposition of Dioscorus, the Patriarch of Alexandria, ten (or, as others say, thirteen) bishops of the same Patriarch of Alexandria anathematized Eutyches and Dioscorus himself, and their dogmas; but they could not be prevailed upon to subscribe to the letter of St. Leo, the Pope of Rome, which he had sent to the Patriarch of Constantinople St. Flavian (and which, as we have said, was called a pillar of Orthodoxy because it contained all the Orthodox belief of the faith), not because he was opposed to the Orthodox dogma which it contained, but because they asserted that it was a custom in the diocese (or see) of Alexandria’s Patriarch for his bishops[114] not to make any move without first consulting him and obtaining his consent and approval. Yet the prelates in the Council would not believe these things even after they had heard them asserted by the Alexandrians, but, on the contrary, they even suspected the latter to be heterodox heretics and sought to depose them. But the ruler and the Senate, having conceived something more humane as regarded these men, advised the Council not to depose them, but to give them time within which to remain as they were, undeposed, that is to say, in the Imperial City until another Archbishop of Alexandria could be ordained (for, as we have said, the Archbishop of Alexandria Dioscorus had previously been deposed). Yielding to the advice of the rulers, the Council decreed that they should remain as they were and demanded security that they would not leave the city of Constantinople until the Archbishop of Alexandria had been ordained. The one who became ordained Archbishop of Alexandria as the successor of Diocorus was Apolinarius (though this name is commonly spelled Apollinaris in English), and the latter was succeeded by Proterius (see p. 241 of the second volume of the Collection of the Councils.[115] See also Ap. cc. XX and XXXIV.

Notes

[114] See also Ap. c. XXXIV and c. VI of the First Ec. C.

[115] Note that these two Canons, the Twenty-ninth and the Thirtieth, were issued by this Council only as evulgations written into its Act 4; but later either interpreters of the Canons or someone else before the times of these interpreters recapitulated or summarized these evulgations and interlocutions and made them into Canons and Definitions. Hence, seeing in the present Thirtieth Canon that Paschasinus, the legate of the Pope, which is as much as to say the entire Council speaking through him, consented to let the ten bishops of the Egyptians merely give others as sureties for themselves to serve as a pledge that they would not leave the city of Constantinople without first subscribing to the letter, while, on the other hand, the secular rulers of the Emperor, actuated by the civil law, added the recommendation that if they could not furnish sureties they might take an oath that they would not leave the city: — seeing, I say, these things, we included in the Canon the securities which the sacred Council demanded through Paschasinus, while, on the other hand, we left out the oath on the ground that it was not demanded by the Council, but by the imperial rulers, and was merely a requirement of the civil law, and not of the divine Canons (for nowhere do the divine Canons require anyone to take an oath, either to God or to the Emperor, as such a requirement would be contrary to the holy Gospels), though the Council for the present kept silent and did not care to gainsay the rulers, for fear of causing them confusion.