Whether the patriarchal Churches then owed their uniqueness ultimately to their civil position or to their ecclesiastical traditions will be a question to which Chalcedon gives no answer, or rather gives two inconsistent ones. We are thrown back for the solution of the problem on Nicaea and its recognition of the pre-eminence of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. But since what was recognised at Nicaea was not created there, the investigation belongs rather to the pre-conciliar era of Christianity, and must for the moment be deferred.