Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

the church and the papacy 543
of primatial sees established at the Council of Nicaea in 325, however much
the eastern episcopate might acclaim Constantinople’s ‘honorary seniority’
at later councils. 84
The division of the empire in 395 exacerbated these tensions between
Rome and Constantinole. To a pope like Leo I, the removal of the imperial
presence from Rome only served to highlight God’s plan for the
Christian greatness of the city, and efforts to give Constantinople a status
similar to that of Rome met with strong opposition. 85 In this climate,
conflict, when it came, was severe. In 484, pope Felix III excommunicated
bishop Acacius of Constantinople because of his communion with anti-
Chalcedonian, Monophysite clergy such as Peter Mongus, patriarch of
Alexandria. This hard-line attitude towards Constantinople was maintained
by Felix’s successor, Gelasius I, but with the accession of the Chalcedonian
Justin I in 518 conditions were right for a settlement between the
churches. 86 Nevertheless, as the presence at Rome from the mid 490s of
the Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus shows, the Acacian schism had not
led to a complete severing of links between eastern and western churches.
Links between Rome and Constantinople persisted under the
Ostrogoths, but it was not until the last years of Theoderic’s reign that the
relationship – like that between Roman senators and the eastern capital –
was perceived to have had any political character. 87 With the accession of
Justinian, however, political co-operation between the papacy and the
empire grew stronger, as the emperor sought the advice of pope Agapitus
(535–6) on matters of orthodoxy. Yet the honeymoon did not last: following
the Fifth Oecumenical Council in 553, Agapitus’ successor, Vigilius,
found himself coerced into accepting the condemnation of the writing
known as the Three Chapters. Many western bishops – chief among them
the north Italians and Istrians led by Paulinus of Aquileia – now repudiated
the leadership of the papacy, initiating a schism that afflicted the Italian
churches until 607 and forcing the church of Rome into a deeper political
alliance with Constantinople. 88
After Vigilius’ death, the relationship between the papacy and the empire
was guided as much by secular as by ecclesiastical concerns. Under
Justinian, the weight of the Byzantine army in Italy was manoeuvred in
support of the papacy’s condemnation of the Three Chapters, as when
Narses acted as protector of Pelagius I’s investiture as pope in 556. With
the arrival of the Lombards, however, the relationship began to change. As
Byzantine concerns focused primarily on the defence of imperial territories
against Lombard encroachment, the papacy found that it was increasingly
thrown back on its own resources – and, for a time, those of the
84 Meyendorff (1989) 156–8, 179–84. 85 Leo I, Sermo 82. 1; Meyendorff (1989) 59–66, 148–58.
86 Dvornik (1966) 59–67; Richards (1979) 100–13. 87 Moorhead (1992) 235–42.
88 Herrin, Formation of Christendom 119–27; Meyendorff (1989) 235–45.
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