ee, which he subscribed himself first as the first of the
patriarchs, and was compelling all other bishops to sign under pain of
deprivation; when, behold, St. Leo's third successor called him to account
in exactly the same terms as St. Leo would have used, and required him to
meet at Rome the accusation brought against him by John Talaia, a duly
elected patriarch of Alexandria, just as St. Julius, a hundred and forty
years before, had invited the accusing bishops at Antioch to meet St.
Athanasius before his tribunal. He who resided in a state only second to
the emperor in the real capital of the empire to go to a city living in
durance under the northern barbarians, and submit to the judgment of one
whose own tribunal was in captivity to such masters!

But, on the other hand, Pope Felix spoke to the emperor as none but popes
have ever spoken. He called him his son, but he required from him filial
obedience. Above all he spoke in one character, and in one alone--as the
heir of that St. Peter whom the voice of the Lord had set over His Church;
he spoke from Rome, not because it was or had been capital of the empire,
but because it was St. Peter's See, and precisely because he succeeded St.
Peter in his apostolate.

The respective action, therefore, of Pope Felix on one side, and of Acacius
on the other, brought to an issue the most absolute of contradictions. The
Pope claimed obedience, as a superior, from Acacius. When that obedience
was refused, he exerted his authority as superior, and degraded Acacius
both from his rank as bishop, and from Christian communion. And a special
token of that sentence was to order his name to be removed from the
diptychs, and to enjoin the people of his own diocese to hold no communion
with him, on pain of incurring a like penalty with him. Acacius answered by
practically denying the Pope's authority to do any such act. He asserted
himself to be his equal by removing the Pope's name from the diptychs.
There could be no more striking denial of any such authority as the claim
to inherit Peter's universal pastorship, than to treat the Pope himself as,
in virtue of that pastorship, he had treated Acacius.

Even apart from this, the conduct of Acacius carried with it a double
denial of the Pope's authority: a denial that he was the supreme judge of
faith; and a denial that he was the supreme maintainer of discipline in its
highest manifestation, the order of the hierarchy itself.

He denied