Volume 1

A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood.

Date:: [between 1890 and 1899?]

Credit: A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

989/1096 (page 969)

$corded ia its minutes; the legate Philip then declared its proceedings to have been in confor- mity with them, and in the name of the see of Rome pronounced the condemnation and deposi- tion of Nestorius, “ according to the formula which the holy pope Celestinus had committed to his care.” Arcadius and Projectus signified their assent. Cyril then caused the papal ratifi- cation to be recorded in the terms in which it had been conveyed to them (Greenwood, p. 339 f.). These may suffice as instances of the employ- ment of legates to represent the Roman see in the great councils. One or two examples may be given of legates sent from Rome to England, as having a special interest of their own. At the council of Hatfield (a.d. 680) John the Roman precentor was present, having come from Rome under the guidance of the English Bene- dict Biscop, to introduce the Roman manner of saying the offices in his new monastery at Wear- mouth. It is said of him that he joined with the rest in confirming the decrees of the Catholic faith (pariter Catholicae fidei decreta firmabat), i.e. in receiving the decrees of the first five general councils, and declaring the orthodoxy of the English church in respect of the Monothe- lites ; but nothing is said of any precedence granted to him ; the council was summoned by command of the English kings, and presided over by the English archbishop Theodore (Bede, H. E. iv. 17, 18; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 141 ffi). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ad an. 785) relates that in that year there was a contentious synod at Calcyth [probably Chelsea], and also that in that year messengers were sent from Rome by pope Adrian to England, to renew the faith and the peace which St. Gregory had sent us by Augustine the bishop, and they were worship- fully received. The head of this legation was George, bishop of Ostia. These legates, in fact, were pre.sent at two councils, one in the north and one in the south of England, probably at Einchale and Chelsea respectively, but as to the extent of the authority they claimed we know nothing, except that they made application to the Mercian and Northumbrian kings respec- tively for the assembling of the councils. Their names do not appear' among the subscriptions (Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 443-461). The bearers of the letters sent by pope John iv. (a.d. 640) to the Irish bishops and abbats about the Pelagian heresy were in some sort legates, as two of them at least — Hilary, the arch-presbyter, and John, the primicerius — are described as vicegerents of the apostolic see (serv'ans locum sanctae sedis apostolicae). (Bede, H. E. ii. 19, p. 100.) And it may be observed generally that in the earlier ages of the church papal legates in councils by no means took the position which a later age assigned to them, after Gregory VII.’s vigorous assertion of the privileges of his see. Thus the legate Faustinas, at the council of Carthage, took his place below the bishop of that see, Aurelius; Eusebius of Vercelli, legate a.s he was, yielded precedence at Alexandria to Athanasius. At Chalcedon [I. 334] the lay dignitaries occupied the place of honour, and controlled the proceedings of the council through- out ; on their left were the Roman legates, on their right Dioscorus of Alexandria and Juvenal of Jerusalem. Julianus, who was rather a legate to the emperor than to the council, took his place after the first twenty bishops. Cyril took the first place among the bishops in the third general council at Ephesus, but this precedence was probably due as much to his rank as patri- arch of Alexandria, as to the fact that on this occasion he was vicegerent of the pope [Ephesus, I. 615]. Moreover, legates did not (in the period with which we are concerned) attempt to set themselves above the sovereign power, but ad- dressed themselves to kings and emperors re- specting the summoning of councils and other ecclesiastical business. As the claims of papal legates simply represent the claims of the papacy', the further account of them must be referred to the article Pope. 2. The Apocrisiarii or Responsales were so called, as being the persons through whom the Besponsa or judgments of their principal were communicated to the court to which they were accredited. Hincmar says that Apo. risiarii were instituted when Constantine removed the seat of empii’e from Rome to Byzantium, from which time agents (responsales) both of Rome and of other chief sees were maintained at the imperial coui't; a statement probable in itself, though the authority is late. Hosius, bishop of Coi-dova, certainly acted as a kind of ecclesiastical minister at the court of Constan- tine, but there is no evidence whatever that he represented the see of Rome there, or that he held any definite office under Constantine (Stan- ley, Eastern Church, p. 112, 3rd edition). Petrus de Marca (^De Concord. Sacerd. et Imp. v. 16) places the formal institution of Apocrisiarii at a later date. Referring to the letter of Leo the Great to Julianus, bishop of Cos {Epist. 86), in which the pope gives him a general commission to act on behalf of the Roman see at the court of Constantinople in the repression of the Nes- torian and Euty'chian heresies, he says, “ this gave occasion to the sending of agents or apocri- siarii (re>ponsales) of the apostolic see to the capital city, especially after the time of Justinian ; ... for at that time there were constantly in the court dinconi responsales, who both took charge before the emperor of cases in which the Roman church was peculiarly interested, and kept watch over matters of faith and discipline. At the same time they' were as it were hostages of the public faith, guai-anteeing the obedience due to princes.” Several legates of the Roman see at the court of Constantinople are known to history. Thus Liberatus records {Breviarium, c. 22) that pope Agapetus made the deacon Pelagius his apocri- siary at the imperial court; and Gregory the Great relates that he himself, when a deacon, acted as apocrisiary of Pelagius II. with the cmperov, using the expression, “ tempore quo exhibendis responsis ad Principem ipse trans- missus sum ” (^Dialogus, iii. 23). Justinian {Novel. 6, c. 2; 123, c. 25) desires bishops not to come in person to court, but to transact their business there by the agency of apocrisiarii. After the 6th Oecumenical Council we find Constantine Pogonatus writing to Leo II. to send him an apocrisiary, who in all ecclesiastical matters should not only I’epresent his person but actually possess his power, in emergentibua sive dogmaticis sive canonicis et prorsus in omni-$