Friday, February 16, 2024

William A. Jurgens (RC) on Canon 3 of the First Council of Constantinople

  

It was, of course, Constantine himself who had moved the seat of his government from Rome to Byzantium, which city he then re-named in his own honor. He seems himself to have referred to his newly named Constantinople also as New Rome. If the previous canon made no mention of prerogatives, patriarchal in nature, of the Bishop of Rome, certainly it is because the Council was concerning itself only with the East. As noted in the introduction to the present section, First Constantinople was not intended to be an Ecumenical Council, and was purely Eastern in its convocation and its sessions.

 

However, it is also a fact that by the time of First Constantinople there was a certain amount of jealousy of Rome among the Bishops of the East. The present canon claims only a primacy of honor, and after that of Rome. Nevertheless, the reasoning behind the canon is political in nature, and suggests in some way that ecclesiastical authority can be gained or lost with empires. Certainly this is a canon which Rome must look upon with a jaundiced eye. Moreover, the canon is prejudicial to Alexandria and Antioch, which by the sixth canon of Nicaea, were ranked in second and third place after Rome. Of course, Rome, when it recognized Constantinople as an Ecumenical Council, accepted only its dogmatic pronouncement that the Creed of Nicaea must remain, an otherwise rejected the canons. The 28th canon of Chalcedon, which affirmed the 3rd Canon of Constantinople and declared that it meant the Bishop of New Rome held an honor equal to that of the Bishop of Old Rome was likewise rejected in Old Rome.

 

When in 869 A.D., the 21st Canon of the Eighty Ecumenical Council, the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, again reiterated the list of those sees which by that time was patriarchal in the proper sense, and again placed Constantinople immediately after Rome and ahead of Alexandira, Antioch, and Jerusalem, the papal legates made no objection. This was the first time Rome had accepted in theory that Constantinople was second to Rome. This same canon, however, treated the matter in a much different context, and was directed to protecting Rome and the other Patriarchates from civil encroachments. But even though Rome accepted in theory in 869 A.D. that the Bishop of Constantinople was second in honor to the Bishop of Rome, it was not until the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215 A.D. that the second place was ever actually given to a Bishop of Constantinople,--and then it was given to the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople! Only in 1439 A.D., at the Council of Florence, was a second place of honor given to the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople. (William A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, 3 vols. [Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1970], 1:400-1 n. 12)