Calvin's Institutes.4.7.11. Falsification and Usurpation

Calvin’s Institutes, 4.7.11: Attitude of fifth- and sixth-century popes: Rome vs. Constantinople, 11-16.

4.7.11: Falsification and ursurpation.

Observations:

1. Calvin argues that Gratian’s Decretals were a patch-work of documents “patched together without discrimination” that “peddle the same smoke with which in an age of darkness they formerly deluded the simple-minded.

2. Leo the Great (400-461, bishop of Rome from 440-461) was eloquent, learned, but “immoderately fond of glory and dominion.”

3. Leo marked a development in the papacy for “centralization.” Various external factors were in play from heresies to the crumbling Roman Empires and various invasions.

a. Additional information is available at: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09154b.htm

b. Allegedly met Attila the Hun outside the gate of Rome and persuaded him to cease from further invasions.

c. Chosen by the emperor to resolve dispute between Aetuis and Albinus in Gaul.

d. He discovered that Pelagians were received into the diocese of Aquilea without repudiation of their errors; he rebuked them.

e. He corresponded with bishop Turrubius re: the advance of the Priscillianists in Spain, calling for a Spanish council to investigate; political circumstances forbad such.

f. Leo insisted that Alexandria follow Roman customs, but the Copts saw their Patriarchy as co-equal with Rome.

g. He rebuked Sicilian bishops for their practices of baptism and required them to send delegates to Rome for instruction.

h. Leo was opposed to the growing ecclesiastical influence of Constantinople. Leo wrote: "The care of the universal Church should converge towards Peter's one seat, and nothing anywhere should be separated from its Head.”[1]

i. Strong inter-diocesan struggles occurred between Leo in Rome and Patroclus of Arles.

j. Leo demanded that the second council of Ephesus be held in Rome. He was not heeded.

k. The council of Chalcedon, 451, made Constantinople equal with Rome; Leo rejected this.

l. The idea of “Petrine supremacy” comes out in his letters in the west.

1. In the establishment of vicariates, e.g. Arles, Gaul, he also granted them autocephalous jurisdiction.

[1] Leo the Great, Letter, XIV. 143 Letters exist.