For while this council omitted from the list of councils acknowledged to be general that held at Constantinople in 381, it likewise proclaimed the falsity of the ground alleged in the canon passed in that council, which gave to Constantinople the second rank in the episcopate because it was New Rome, which canon again was enlarged by the attempt at the Council of Chalcedon to put upon the world the positive falsehood asserted in the rejected 28th canon, that the fathers had given its privileges to the Roman See because it was the imperial city.
The significance of this decree at such a time cannot be exaggerated. While the emperor's own Church and bishop are separated by a schism from the Pope, while the Pope recognises the emperor as the sole "Roman prince," and in that capacity speaks of him as "pre-eminent in dignity over the human race," he states at the head of a council, in the most peremptory terms, that the Principate of Rome is of divine institution, _not_ the constitution of any council. The decree thus passed is a formal contradiction of the 28th canon which St. Leo had, forty years before, rejected.
When we come to the termination of the schism this fact is to be borne in mind as being accepted voluntarily by those whom it specially concerned, and whose actions during a hundred years immediately preceding it condemned. For the decree, besides, does not acknowledge the see of Constantinople as patriarchal. Acacius had been appointing those who were really patriarchs: here his own pretended patriarchate is shown to be an infringement on the ancient order of the Church. Here the Pope in synod, as before in his letter to the Illyrian bishops, declares of the see of Constantinople that "it holds no rank among bishops".
And, again, the Roman Council, in all its wording, censures the bishops who had been so weak as to accept a decree upon the faith of the Church from the hand of emperors, first the usurper Basiliscus, then Zeno, and at the time itself Anastasius. And under this censure lay not only Acacius, but the three following bishops of Constantinople--Fravita, Euphemius, and Macedonius. For though the last two were firm enough to suffer deposition, and afterwards death, for the faith of Chalcedon, they were not firm enough to refuse the emperor's imposition of an imperial standard in doctrine, the acceptance of which would have destroyed the essential liberty of the Church.