one
to his own see personally. He says to the Empress: "But[103] what doth the
prelate of the Church of Constantinople desire more than he hath obtained?
Or what will satisfy him, if the magnificence and glory of so great a city
satisfy him not? It is too proud and immoderate to go beyond one's own
limits, and, trampling on antiquity, to wish to seize on another's right.
And, in order to increase the dignity of one, to impugn the primacy of so
many Metropolitans; and to carry a new war of disturbance into quiet
provinces, settled long ago by the moderation of the holy Nicene Council,"
&c.

To Anatolius himself he says: "I grieve--that you attempt to infringe the
most sacred constitutions of the Nicene Canons; as if this were a
favourable opportunity presented to you, when the See of Alexandria may
lose the privilege of the second rank, and the Church of Antioch its
possession of the third dignity; so that when these places have been
brought under your jurisdiction, all Metropolitan Bishops may be deprived
of their proper honour."[104] "I oppose you, that with wiser purpose you
may refrain from throwing into confusion the whole Church. Let not the
rights of provincial Primacies be torn away, nor Metropolitan Bishops be
deprived of their privileges in force from old time. Let no part of that
dignity perish to the See of Alexandria, which it was thought worthy to
obtain through the holy Evangelist Mark, the disciple of blessed Peter;
nor, though Dioscorus falls through the obstinacy of his own impiety, let
the splendour of so great a Church be obscured by another's disgrace. Let
also the Church of Antioch, in which first, at the preaching of the blessed
Apostle Peter, the name of Christian arose, remain in the order of its
hereditary degree, and being placed in the third rank never sink below
itself."

So then it was not St. Peter's Primacy, nor his own proper authority in the
Church, which St. Leo conceived to be attacked by this Canon; but he
refused to be a party to "treading under foot the constitution of the
Fathers"--to disturbing "the state of the universal Church, protected of
old by a most wholesome and upright administration."[105] So the Emperor
Marcian, Anatolius, Julian of Cos, beseech Leo to grant this, without so
much as imagining that they are injuring _his_ rank by asking it. I see not
how it is possible to avoid the conclusion, that the power of the First
See, even as its most zealous occupant viewed it,