Dr. Jalland's Book on the Papacy

Extract

We may now turn to some particular problems in which we feel more at home. In the fourth chapter we are given a lucid account of the events that led up to the Edict of Milan, but it raises one regret that Professor H. Grégoire of Brussels has not yet published his work on Constantine the Great, which was announced a few years ago. But there is a study published by the same author about 1930 in a Belgian review not widely known (information can be found in the Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique), where regarding Constantine’s policy he expresses views that alter in many ways the whole aspect of the problem and which Church historians would do well to study carefully.

The explanation of how the emperor came to the decision of convoking an Oecumenical Council makes plausible reading, but the author has evidently missed my study on the authority of the State in the Oecumenical Councils in the translation which apeared in 1934 in the ‘Christian East.’ There he would have found indications that would have facilitated his own researches and helped him to get a better understanding of the whole problem of Constantine, the Council of Nicea, the presidency of the Council and the squaring of historical facts with the theological conclusions on the papal primacy. Constantine simply borrowed the conciliar procedure from the proceedings of the senatorial sittings. Just as the Emperor presided in person or by deputy over the sessions of the Senate, led the debates and appointed their subjects, so he acted at the Councils, which were run like an ecclesiastical senate; but as the Emperor took ‘no part in the senatorial voting, so he abstained from voting with the bishops and he abode by their decisions.