ristian
faith, and become its patron saints. In all that time Gregory had seen the
hierarchy founded by the bearer of the keys fill the earth. Peter, as a
token of his Principate, had put his name in the three chief sees, sitting
himself as bishop in Antioch for seven years; sitting also himself in Rome,
as bishop, and dying there; sending also his disciple Mark from Rome to
Alexandria. Our Lord's gift and charge to Peter was the source of unity in
His Church. He Himself being mediator between God and man united His Church
with the Divine Trinity in unity. Then He gave the keys of His kingdom to
Peter, in whom unity was secured through the three patriarchs and the other
bishops. Such was the constitution which stood without a break before St.
Gregory from the Apostles to the Nicene Council. From St. Sylvester to his
own time the Popes had been maintaining that constitution. But now the
claim of the bishops of Constantinople was directly against this
constitution. Pope Gelasius, his predecessor, had told that bishop in his
day that he had no rank above that of a simple bishop.[191] For all their
adventitious rank they rested, not upon God, not upon Jesus Christ, not
upon St. Peter, but upon the residence of the emperors in their city. That
was the ground upon which they called themselves ecumenical, a title which
Gregory interpreted universal. Their first step in moving beyond the
position of simple bishop was when the 150 bishops at Constantinople in 381
attempted to give them the second place in rank. And this they did not upon
any ground of apostolic descent, but because Constantinople was Nova Roma.
As to their act in doing this Gregory writes to Eulogius: "The Roman Church
up to this time does not possess, nor has received, the canons or the acts
of that council; it has received that council so far as it condemned
Macedonius".[192] Their next step was at the Council of Chalcedon to
attempt passing a canon, to the effect that the Fathers had given its rank
to Rome because it was the capital, that the 150 Fathers had therefore
given the second rank to Constantinople, because it was the _new_ capital;
and that, therefore, the Pontic, the Arian, and the Thracian exarchs of
Caesarea, Ephesus, and Heraclea should be subjected to it. This canon St.
Leo had absolutely rejected, and the emperor Marcian had accepted his
rejection. In the 130 years from St. Leo to himself, St. Gregory had seen
the assumptions of the bishops of Co