er Synod
were examined; fraud, violence and coercion were charged against it; its
entire proceedings were annulled, and, at the third session, its leader,
Dioscurus, was deposed and degraded. The emperor requested a declaration
of the true faith; but the sentiment of the council was opposed to a new
symbol. It contented itself with reaffirming the Nicene and
Constantinopolitan creeds and the Ephesine formula of 431, and
accepting, only after examination, the Christological statement
contained in the _Epistola Dogmatica_ of Leo I. (q.v.) to Flavianus.
Thus the council rejected both Nestorianism and Eutychianism, and stood
upon the doctrine that Christ had two natures, each perfect in itself
and each distinct from the other, yet perfectly united in one person,
who was at once both God and man. With this statement, which was
formally subscribed in the presence of the emperor, the development of
the Christological doctrine was completed, but not in a manner to
obviate further controversy (see MONOPHYSITES and MONOTHELITES).

The remaining sessions, vii.-xvi., were occupied with matters of
discipline, complaints, claims, controversies and the like. Canons were
adopted, thirty according to the generally received tradition, although
the most ancient texts contain but twenty-eight, and, as Hefele points
out, the so-called twenty-ninth and thirtieth are properly not canons,
but repetitions of proposals made in a previous session.

The most important enactments of the council of Chalcedon were the
following: (1) the approval of the canons of the first three ecumenical
councils and of the synods of Ancyra, Neo-Caesarea, Changra, Antioch and
Laodicea; (2) forbidding trade, secular pursuits and war to the clergy,
bishops not even being allowed to administer the property of their
dioceses; (3) forbidding monks and nuns to marry or to return to the
world; likewise forbidding the establishment of a monastery in any
diocese without the consent of the bishop, or the disestablishment of a
monastery once consecrated; (4) punishing with deposition an ordination
or clerical appointment made for money; forbidding "absolute ordination"
(i.e. without assignment to a particular charge), the translation of
clerics except for good cause, the enrolment of a cleric in two churches
at once, and the performance of sacerdotal functions outside of one's
diocese without letters of commendation from one's bishop; (5)
confirming the jurisdiction of bishop