nons in favour of the see of
Constantinople, which, at the end of the Council of Chalcedon, the Court,
the clergy, and above all Anatolius, the bishop of the imperial city,
desired to be passed, and with that intent overbore the resistance of the
Papal legates, the race of Theodosius was still reigning both at Old and at
New Rome. The eastern sovereigns, Marcian and Pulcheria, by becoming whose
husband Marcian had ascended the throne, had acted with conspicuous loyalty
towards the Pope. The mistakes of Theodosius II. were repaired, and the
cabals of his courtiers ceased to affect the stronger minds and faithful
hearts of his successors. In the West, Galla Placidia, during all the
reign, since the death, in 423, of her brother Honorius, with which her
nephew Theodosius II. had invested her, was also faithful to St. Peter's
See; the same spirit directed her son Valentinian, and his empress-cousin,
the daughter of the eastern emperor. The letters of all exist, in which
they strove to set right their father, or nephew, Theodosius II., in the
matter of Eutyches. All had supported St. Leo in the annulling that
unhappy Council which compromised the faith of the Church so long as it was
allowed to count as a Council. But not for any merit on the part of
Pulcheria and Marcian would St. Leo allow the mere grandeur of a royal
city, because it was the seat of empire, to dethrone from their original
rank, held since the beginning of the Christian hierarchy, the two other
Sees of St. Peter--the one of his disciple St. Mark, sent from his side at
Rome; the other, in which he had first sat himself. St. Leo could not the
least foresee that the course of things in less than a generation would
justify by the plainest evidence of facts his maintenance of tradition and
his prescience of future dangers. He had charged Anatolius with seeking
unduly to exalt himself at the expense of his brethren. The exaltation
consisted in making himself the second bishop of the Church. His see, a
hundred and twenty years before, had, if it existed at all--for it is all
but lost in insignificance--been merely a suffragan of the archbishop of
Heraclea. Leo saw that Anatolius, under cover of the emperor's permanent
residence in Nova Roma, sought to make its bishop the lever by which the
whole episcopate of the East should be moved. We are now to witness the
attempt to carry into effect all which St. Leo feared by a bishop who was
next successor but one to Anatoli