Leo and Canon 28

In the autumn of 451 the Council of Chalcedon, in a session held after the Roman legates had withdrawn, enacted its twenty-eighth canon, granting the see of Constantinople, “New Rome,” privileges equal to those of Old Rome and second rank after it — on the ground that Constantinople is the city of the emperor and the senate. Pope Leo I confirmed the council’s doctrinal definition but, “by the authority of blessed Peter,” declared the canon null and void. This flagship file — governed by Methodology §4 — sets out the canon’s content and its imperial-city rationale, the canon of 381 behind it, the legates’ protest, Leo’s grounds for annulment in his letters of 452, and the deeper clash between the Petrine and the imperial-city principles as two ecclesiologies; the Roman reading and the Orthodox reading are each sourced — the Roman accurately in its own terms, the Orthodox as the reading in which the Church herself stands.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father / Latin)

The Canon and Its Rationale

The Council of Chalcedon (451) closed its doctrinal work with the Definition of Faith and the conciliar reception of Leo’s Tome (see The Council and the Tome). It then turned, in its later sessions, to disciplinary canons. The most consequential of these — Canon 28 — addressed the standing of the see of Constantinople. Its operative reasoning runs:

“The fathers rightly accorded prerogatives (presbeia) to the see of older Rome, since that is an imperial city; and moved by the same purpose the 150 most devout bishops apportioned equal prerogatives to the most holy see of new Rome, reasonably judging that the city which is honoured by the imperial power and senate and enjoying privileges equalling older imperial Rome, should also be elevated to her level in ecclesiastical affairs and take second place after her” (Chalcedon 451, Canon 28; ACO II.1.3, pp. 88–89; trans. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1, 99–100).

The canon thus did two distinct things. First, it accorded Constantinople equal privileges with Rome and the second rank after it. Second, it extended Constantinople’s metropolitan jurisdiction over the civil dioceses of Pontus, Asia, and Thrace, including the ordination of metropolitans there (Chalcedon 451, Canon 28; trans. Tanner, vol. 1, 100). The rationale offered for the first point is explicit and is the crux of everything that follows: the privileges of a see track the political dignity of its city. Rome was first because it was the imperial capital; Constantinople, the “New Rome,” seat of emperor and senate, was therefore to share its honour. This is the imperial-city principle — the accommodation of the Church’s order (taxis) to the order of the empire.

Canon 3 of 381 Behind It

Canon 28 did not invent this reasoning; it invoked it as already conciliar. The “150 most devout bishops” are the fathers of the First Council of Constantinople (381), whose third canon had decreed:

“The bishop of Constantinople shall have the prerogative of honour after the bishop of Rome, because Constantinople is New Rome” (Constantinople 381, Canon 3; ACO; trans. Tanner, vol. 1, 32; cf. NPNF 2nd ser., vol. 14, 178).

Canon 28 reads itself as the reaffirmation and extension of this earlier ruling. Already in 381 the rationale was the same — Constantinople’s honour rests on its being New Rome, the second imperial city — and already the see of Rome had not been a party to the decree. The fathers at Chalcedon understood themselves to be confirming a settled principle of Eastern ecclesiastical order; the Roman view, as will appear, was that no such principle existed and that the canon of 381 was itself irregular.

The Legates’ Protest

The procedural circumstances are themselves contested ground. Canon 28 was enacted at a session (numbered the sixteenth in the acta) at which the papal legates — Paschasinus of Lilybaeum, Lucentius, and the priest Boniface, with Bishop Julian of Cos — were not present, having withdrawn. When the canon was read to them at the following session, they protested formally, objecting that the matter had been transacted in their absence and against the instructions of the Apostolic See, and insisting that the canons of Nicaea be read against it (ACO II.1.3, pp. 95–99; Tanner, vol. 1, 98; Sotinel, in Chalcedon in Context; cf. NPNF 2nd ser., vol. 14, 287–295). The conciliar fathers and the imperial commissioners maintained the canon over the protest. Rome had not signed.

[Disputed: Roman position — the canon was passed irregularly, by a rump session in the legates’ absence and against their protest, and therefore never had conciliar force (Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, vol. 3, 411–429; Catholic Encyclopedia, “Council of Chalcedon”). Orthodox position — the canon was adopted by the assembled fathers in due session and signed by some two hundred bishops; the legates’ absence does not unmake a conciliar act, and the canon expresses the council’s own mind (L’Huillier, The Church of the Ancient Councils, 267–296).]

Confirmation of the Faith, Annulment of the Canon

Leo’s response distinguished sharply between the council’s doctrine and its canon. He confirmed Chalcedon’s definition of faith — his confirmation reached the East, and he was at pains to say that he ratified the council as regards the faith — while refusing the canon outright (Leo, Ep. 114; trans. Feltoe, NPNF 2nd ser., vol. 12). In a cluster of letters dated 22 May 452 he made the rejection formal: Ep. 104 to the Emperor Marcian, Ep. 105 to the Empress Pulcheria, and Ep. 106 to Anatolius, Patriarch of Constantinople (Leo, Epp. 104–106; PL 54:993–1011; trans. Feltoe, NPNF 2nd ser., vol. 12).

The decisive language is in the letter to Pulcheria. Leo grounds the annulment in Petrine authority and in the canons of Nicaea — the “318 bishops”:

“By the blessed Apostle Peter’s authority we absolutely dis-annul in comprehensive terms… those laws which the Holy Ghost set forth by the 318 bishops for the pacific observance of all priests, are violated” (Leo, Ep. 105.II–III; trans. Feltoe, NPNF 2nd ser., vol. 12).

The Latin tradition renders the act as in irritum mittimus / cassamus — “we send into nullity,” “we make void.” Leo’s claim is not that he disagrees with the canon but that, on the authority of Peter, it is void — it never bound.

Leo’s Grounds

Three grounds run through Epp. 104–106, and they must be kept distinct because they belong to different orders of argument.

The canons of Nicaea. Leo held that the rights of the great sees were fixed at Nicaea (325) by its “sixth canon” on the ancient sees of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, and that these Nicene rulings were the unalterable rule no later council could revise (Leo, Ep. 106.2–5; trans. Feltoe). It is relevant that the Roman canonical collections of the day carried a text of the Nicene canons prefixed with a clause asserting Roman primacy (the so-called Ecclesia Romana semper habuit primatum), so that Leo read Nicaea as already establishing what Canon 28 seemed to overturn (L’Huillier, The Church of the Ancient Councils, 280–285; Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 187–189).
The ancient apostolic sees. By raising Constantinople above Alexandria and Antioch, Canon 28 — in Leo’s reading — injured sees of genuine apostolic foundation in favour of one that had none, inverting the order the Church had received (Leo, Ep. 106.5; trans. Feltoe).
The Petrine principle against the imperial-city principle. Most fundamentally, Leo rejected the rationale of the canon. Ecclesiastical rank must rest on apostolic foundation, not on the secular standing of a city. That Constantinople was the imperial capital was, for Leo, simply the wrong kind of reason: “secular” greatness could not generate “ecclesiastical” privilege (Leo, Ep. 104.3; Ep. 106.2; trans. Feltoe). Anatolius replied in conciliatory terms, disclaiming personal ambition and laying the initiative on the council and clergy of Constantinople (Leo, Ep. 132, Anatolius to Leo; trans. Feltoe).

The Clash of Rationales: Two Ecclesiologies

Here the dispute opens out beyond procedure into a divergence of ecclesiologies already visible in the fifth century — and this is the heart of the matter.

Constantinople’s primacy is justified by the imperial-city principle: the Church’s order of honour is rightly accommodated to the political order, so that the second city of the empire holds the second place in the Church. Rome’s primacy is justified by the Petrine principle: Rome is first not because it was the capital but because it is the see of Peter, and primacy is therefore by apostolic — ultimately divine — institution, not by imperial grant (developed at length in The Petrine Theology). The two principles can coexist where they do not collide; in Canon 28 they collided directly, because the canon derived even Rome’s primacy from its having been “an imperial city” — precisely the ground Leo denied.

The Roman reading. Leo’s annulment vindicates the principle that no canon binds the universal Church without the consent of the Apostolic See, and that primacy is held by divine, Petrine right rather than conferred by councils or emperors. On this reading the episode shows the papacy exercising exactly the office Leo claimed for it: the firmitas of Peter judging and, where necessary, voiding the acts of a council in matters of order (Ullmann, Gelasius I, and A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages, 20–30; Catholic Encyclopedia, “Pope St. Leo I”). Rome’s consistent refusal of Canon 28 across the centuries is read as the consistency of a divinely-founded primacy.

The Orthodox reading. Canon 28 expresses the conciliar mind of the assembled Church and the principle that primacy is a primacy of honour within a synodal body ordered by taxis, not a universal jurisdiction lodged in one see. Leo’s rejection is read not as the operation of a primacy all recognized but as evidence that two ecclesiologies had already diverged: the East ordering the Church by conciliarity and the accommodation of taxis to the oikoumene, the West by the Petrine prerogative. On this reading the canon is a genuine conciliar act whose authority does not depend on Roman ratification, and the imperial-city rationale is not a denial of apostolicity but a recognition that the practical primacies of the Church had always followed the shape of the inhabited world (L’Huillier, The Church of the Ancient Councils, 267–296; Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions, 59–66, 148–152; Schmemann, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy, 119–125). This is continuous with the wider Orthodox account of Roman primacy treated in the St. Photius collection.

The two readings do not merely value the episode differently; they describe a different Church. That is why Canon 28 is the most contested single text of the pre-schism East–West relationship.

The Canon’s Survival in the East

Whatever Rome decided, Constantinople kept Canon 28 and lived by it. The see continued to order its jurisdiction over Pontus, Asia, and Thrace on its basis, and the principle was reaffirmed in the East by the Council in Trullo (Quinisext, 692), whose thirty-sixth canon renewed the rulings of 381 and 451 together:

“Renewing the enactments of the 150 fathers… and those of the 630 who met at Chalcedon, we decree that the see of Constantinople shall enjoy equal privileges with the see of Old Rome… and shall be second after it” (Quinisext 692, Canon 36; trans. NPNF 2nd ser., vol. 14, 382; cf. The Rudder [Pedalion], trans. Cummings, 388–389 — noting that St. Nikodemos’ commentary is not the canon text).

Rome never accepted Canon 28 — neither in 452 nor when it was renewed in 692, the latter refusal feeding directly into the Trullan controversy. The canon thus stands as a permanent fixture of Eastern canonical order and a permanent point of Roman objection: each tradition consistent with itself, and the disagreement structural rather than incidental.

The history above is reported evidentially, and both traditions invoke real principles — the integrity of apostolic foundation and the prerogative of Peter’s see on one side, the conciliar authority of the gathered Church and the legitimacy of ordering taxis to the oikoumene on the other. The ecclesiological question itself, however, is not an open one for this collection: the Orthodox Church has kept Canon 28 as part of her canonical order, and the universal jurisdiction by which Leo annulled it is a doctrine she has examined and not received. The divergence between the two readings, already explicit in 451–452, is the same divergence that the later centuries would name a schism.

References

Leo I, Epistulae 104, 105, 106, 114, 132 [PL 54:993–1011 and following]; trans. Charles Lett Feltoe, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. 12 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1895).
Council of Chalcedon (451), Canon 28; in Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, ed. E. Schwartz, tom. II, vol. 1, part 3, pp. 88–89; trans. Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1 (London/Washington: Sheed & Ward/Georgetown University Press, 1990), 99–100.
First Council of Constantinople (381), Canon 3; trans. Tanner, vol. 1, 32; cf. NPNF 2nd ser., vol. 14, 178.
Council in Trullo (Quinisext, 692), Canon 36; NPNF 2nd ser., vol. 14, 382; The Rudder (Pedalion), trans. D. Cummings (Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957), 388–389 (Nikodemos’ commentary distinguished from the canon text).
Peter L’Huillier, The Church of the Ancient Councils: The Disciplinary Work of the First Four Ecumenical Councils (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 267–296.
John Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions: The Church 450–680 A.D. (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1989), 59–66, 148–152.
Alexander Schmemann, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy, trans. Lydia Kesich (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1977), 119–125.
Leo Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325–787): Their History and Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990), 187–189.
Karl Josef von Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1883), 411–429.
Walter Ullmann, A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1972), 20–30.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.vv. “Council of Chalcedon” and “Pope St. Leo I” (New York: Robert Appleton, 1910).