llected
according to the divisions which shall now be described.

The group which, above the rest, attracts our attention, is the
deputation from the Church of Egypt. Shrill above all other voices,
vehement above all other disputants, "brandishing their arguments," as
it was described by one who knew them well, "like spears, against those
who sate under the same roof and ate off the same table as themselves,"
were the combatants from Alexandria, who had brought to its present pass
the question which the council was called to decide. Foremost in the
group in dignity, though not in importance or in energy, was the aged
Alexander, whose imprudent sermon had provoked the quarrel, and whose
subsequent vacillation had encouraged it. He was the bishop, not indeed
of the first, but of the most learned, see of Christendom. He was known
by a title which he alone officially bore in that assembly. He was "the
Pope." "The Pope of Rome" was a phrase which had not yet emerged in
history. But "Pope of Alexandria" was a well-known dignity. _Papa_, that
strange and universal mixture of familiar endearment and of reverential
awe, extended in a general sense to all Greek presbyters and all Latin
bishops, was the special address which, long before the name of
patriarch or of archbishop, was given to the head of the Alexandrian
Church.

In the Patriarchal Treasury at Moscow is a very ancient scarf or
_omophorion_, said to have been given by the bishop of Nicaea in the
seventeenth century to the czar Alexis, and to have been left to the
Church of Nicaea by Alexander of Alexandria. It is white, and is rudely
worked with a representation of the Ascension; possibly an allusion to
the first Sunday of their meeting. This relic, true or false, is the
nearest approach we can now make to the bodily presence of the old
theologian. The shadow of death is already upon him; in a few months he
will be beyond the reach of controversy.

But close beside the pope Alexander is a small insignificant young man,
of hardly twenty-five years of age, of lively manners and speech, and of
bright, serene countenance. Though he is but the deacon, the chief
deacon, or archdeacon, of Alexander, he has closely riveted the
attention of the assembly by the vehemence of his arguments. He is
already taking the words out of the bishop's mouth, and briefly acting
in reality the part he had before, as a child, acted in name, and that
in a few months he will be called to act b