Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Olivier Clément (EO) on the Tome of Leo and the Council of Chalcedon

  

Pope Leo considered null and void the hijacking of Ephesus in 449, but he was aware that he could not annul his council on his own authority. This is why he proposed that the emperor convoke a new council (which he would have liked to have seen held in Italy, but failed to achieve). It is clear that Leo, despite his trenchant assertions, was not an autocrat. He took his decisions in agreement with the Roman synod. In his letter of confirmation of Chalcedon he called the members of the Council “his brothers and co-bishops.” (Leo the Great, Epistula 69, PL 54, 892) He always sought a consensus from the college of bishops and from the universal Church. His representatives certainly affirmed that the church of Rome “is the head of all the churches” (A[cta]C[onciliorum]O[ecumenicorum] II/I, 65) and its bishop the ”archbishop of all the churches”—in Latin: “Pope of the universal Church.” (ACO II/I, 2, 93) But this title is easily misunderstood, for Leo never claimed the right to govern as bishop each of the individual churches. Rather he understood his authority as bearing an essential witness to the truth, which he himself said, did not belong to him: it was the faith of the Church as the apostle Peter first proclaimed it. (Leo the Great, Epistula 69, PL 54, 892) That is why he was pleased that his “Tome” was acknowledged by the council, “confirmed,” he wrote, “by the undisputed accord of the entire assembly of brethren.” (Leo the Great, Epistula 120, PL 54, 1046-1047) (Olivier Clément, You Are Peter: An Orthodox Theologian’s Reflection on the Exercise of Papal Primacy [trans. M. S. Laird; Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 2003], 46-47)