6th–9th centuries

Ecumenical councils, pentarchy and emperor: sources of church authority in the East

A special mark of the Church's universality was the ecumenical councils: Justinian recognized the authority of four councils, and Gregory I placed them on a par with the four Gospels. For Maximus the Confessor a council is a historical channel of tradition, but its authority is the authority of unchanging truth: a doctrine did not become orthodox because a council proclaimed it. The Eastern version of apostolic government is the pentarchy: authority is exercised by the agreement of the five patriarchs, and without it a council is not ecumenical; the West, however, held that the pope can act in the name of the whole Church. The iconoclast council of 754 called the emperors "equal to the apostles," while the orthodox objected that the emperor has no power to legislate for the Church; after 843, according to Pelikan, "caesaropapism gave way to the dual rule of emperor and patriarch."