Book Three: On the Interpretation of the Word of God

Chapter Seven: the Same is proved by the Testimonies of Pontiffs and Emperors

There are added, in fourth place, the testimonies of the ancient Pontiffs and Emperors, that is, of the authors of each Right. Damasus in epist.3 to Stephen, Innocent I in epistles to the Councils of Carthage and Milevis, that are in Augustine numbers 91 and 93, Leo I in epist.84 to Anastasius, and epist.89 to the Bishops of the Province of Vienne, Gelasius in his epistle to the Dardanian Bishops, Gregory bk.4 epist.25 to the Bishops of France (as also later Popes) teach that the graver causes, and especially in cases of faith, pertain to the judgment of the Apostolic See, and Julius in epist.2 cites the decree of the Nicene Council for this.

The Emperors thought the same thing. At the time of the Emperor Aurelian, since there was a question between the Catholics and the heretic Paul of Samosata about a house of the Church, the Emperor, though a Gentile, replied and ordered the Church to be given to him whom the priests of Italy and the Roman Bishop should prescribe; he was no doubt taught by his advisers that the Roman Bishop was supreme judge of Christian causes. So does Eusebius write Hist. bk.7 ch.26.

Constantine, on the evidence of Eusebius Life of Constantine bk.3, did not sit down at the Council of Nicea until the Bishops agreed he should sit. By which sign he sufficiently indicated that he was not president of the Council. Next, at the end of the Council, he wrote a letter to all the Bishops, the whole of which Eusebius puts in the same place; the end of the letter reads, “Since these things are so, with glad hearts we embrace this decree of the Council as a gift of God and a command truly sent down from heaven. For whatever is decreed in the holy Councils of Bishops should be wholly attributed to the divine will.”

About the same Blessed Ambrose thus speaks epist.32, “Constantine set down no laws beforehand, but gave his free judgment to the Bishops.” About this Augustine too in epist.162 testifies that when the Donatists wanted their cause to be judged by Constantine, he sent them back to their own proper judge, that is, to Pope Melchiades, and when they appealed from the sentence of the Pontiff to the emperor himself, “he gave them,” says Augustine, “the other judgment from Arles (namely from other Bishops), not because it was now necessary, but yielding to their perversities.” For the Christian Emperor never dared to take up their tumultuous and false quarrels, so as to be judge himself of the judgment of the Bishops who sat at Rome.

The Emperor Gratian speaks thus in epistle to the Bishop of Aquileia, which was read in the Council of Aquileia, “nor can controversies, doubts, opinions be more rightly resolved than if we place judgment about the dispute that has arisen with the priests as themselves the interpreters, so that those by whom teaching and doctrine advance should be the same as those by whom the conflicting discords of learning are solved.” Which words Ambrose himself in this Council thus interprets. “Behold,” he says, “what the Emperor has established as Christian. He refused to inflict injury on the priests, he made Bishops to be the interpreters.”

Theodosius the younger in his epistle to the Synod of Ephesus, which is also cited by Nicolas I in his epistle to Michael, says, “Candidianus, a magnificent companion in domestic labors, has been deputed to pass over to your most holy Synod, and in no way indeed, as regard what is to be done, to confer with you in questions about pious doctrines; for it is illicit for him who is not of the order of the most holy Bishops to involve himself in Ecclesiastical business.”

The Emperor Martianus, I ‘Nemo’, Chapter on the Supreme Trinity and the Catholic Faith, says, “He commits injury to the judgment of the most venerable Synod who strives to go over again and dispute what has once been judged.”

Valentinian the elder, as Sozomen writes Hist. bk.6 ch.7, when asked to permit a Synod to meet to explain certain dogmas of faith, responded thus, “It is not lawful for me, who belong with the people, to examine such things more curiously; let the priests, whose those cares are, come together among themselves in what place they wish.”

The Emperor Basil in the eighth Synod spoke thus. “As to you laymen,” he says, “both those in positions of dignity and those who live absolved from them, I have nothing more to say than that it is in no way licit for you to speak on Ecclesiastical causes; nor to resist at all the integrity of the Church and to oppose a universal Synod. For to investigate and seek out these things belongs to Patriarchs, Pontiffs, and priests, who have been allotted the office of rule, who have obtained the Ecclesiastical keys, and not to us who need to be fed, to be sanctified, to be bound, or to be loosed from bonds.” The same Emperor says in the same place that the other Emperors, his predecessors, Constantine, Theodosius, Marcianus and others never subscribed their names in Synods, save after all the Bishops.

Finally about Theodoric, King of the Goths, although an Arian, we read as follows in the Fourth Roman Synod under Pope Symmachus, “To these things the most serene King, God inspiring him, replied on this wise, that he prescribed that the Synodal decision on so great a business should be followed, and that nothing pertained to himself besides reverence for Ecclesiastical business.”

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