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The history of the Roman Church in the first three centuries is
noteworthy for two things. First, there is really very little mention
of it at all -- for much of the period we have little more than the
names of its bishops. Secondly, whatever record of it has survived is
almost invariably concerned with its exercise of a supervisory
authority in the affairs of the other churches. It is in this role,
indeed, that the Roman Church makes its first entry into history with
the intervention at Corinth which is the subject of St. Clement's
celebrated letter. Later still, the exercise of this primatial power,
so to call it, and the reactions to that exercise, are the chief
matters of the history of some seventy years -- the years when in turn
Rome imperially corrects all the great churches of Africa and the East;
Ephesus in Polycrates, Carthage in St. Cyprian, Alexandria in St.
Denis. The Roman primacy, whatever the use its bishops made of it, is
one of the undeniable features of primitive church history. But it is
also a thing which functions only on special occasions.
There existed also, side by side with this universal jurisdiction of
the Roman Church, and in addition to its purely local authority over
its own actual members, the clergy and the faithful of the city of
Rome, yet a third and intermediate kind of jurisdiction whose sphere
was originally the bishops of Italy and which eventually grew to be,
what it is to-day, an effective, continuous, supervision over all the
churches of the Church Universal, really felt in the everyday life of
each. That development which has made the papacy of modern times the
source and centre of all Catholic life, and thanks to which the popes
can, and do, effectively control that life's every movement, has been
the work of the sixteen hundred years between Constantine and Pius XII,
Trent and the Council of 1870 being its latest stages.
Its first stages are to be observed in the first century in which the
Roman Church had any real opportunity to organise the administration of
its primacy, the century following Constantine's conversion. It was
also the last century, for very long indeed, in which political
conditions made any such organising really possible; for it closed with
the " Barbarian Invasions " and the dislocation, for generations more,
of all organisation but the most primitive. In what relation then --
beyond that of final and ultimate authority -- did the pope stand to
the bishops of the West in this last century before the West was
transformed into something new? [ ]
The bishops of Italy form the nearest group of extra-Roman churches
with whom the pope is in contact. Over them, so the canons of Nicea
(325) are witness, he exercises such a supervisory jurisdiction as that
possessed by the Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. Thirty years later the
Arian troubles have brought the pope of the day, Liberius, into
conflict with the emperor. He has been ordered into exile and an
imperialist, Felix, intruded into his see. The Bishop of Milan too, the
new Western capital which has now displaced Rome, is exiled for the
same good reason, and he, too, is given a successor, the notoriously
Arian Auxentius. And the imperial power has gone still further.
Henceforward it is the Bishop of Milan who exercises this
archiepiscopal jurisdiction over the bishops of northern Italy (the
civil diocese of Italia). To Rome are now left only the churches of the
civil diocese of Rome. Milan, it might seem, was to be an imperially
created rival to Rome in the West as Constantinople was about to become
in the East. But when the end of Auxentius' long episcopate (355-374)
came, he was succeeded by the most eloquent defender of the Roman
Supremacy the Church had yet known, St. Ambrose (374-397); also, within
seven years of that great man's death Milan had ceased to be the
capital. None the less, the metropolitan jurisdiction of the see
endured, save over such churches as it had lost to the new centres
Aquileia and Ravenna. Over the churches in central and southern Italy
and the islands, about 200 sees in all, the pope, during the fourth
century, continued to exercise, then, a close and continual
supervision.
Within this sphere no bishop is consecrated without the pope's consent.
The local church elects, but its choice must be ratified at Rome, and
the newly-elect must be consecrated by the pope. This is a discipline
much older than the letter of Pope Siricius (386) in which it is
formally recalled. It is the reason for the mention, in the notices of
these earlier popes in the Liber Pontificalis, of the number of those
they ordained. For example "This pope," it is Fabian, "held five
ordinations, [ordaining] 22 priests, 7 deacons, and 11 bishops for
various places." In later times the number grows. Damasus (366-384)
ordains 62 bishops, Innocent I (402-417) 54, and St. Leo I (440-461)
185! These bishops of the pope's special province meet annually at Rome
on the anniversary of the pope's own consecration (Natale Papae)
unless, for some special cause, they are explicitly dispensed. To Rome
they apply at every turn for advice in difficulties and the Roman
practice is a norm to which they endeavour to conform their own
administration. At Rome itself the administration is in the hands of
the seven deacons. They are the chiefs of the growing ecclesiastical
bureaucracy, and it is from their ranks that the pope is usually
chosen. The archdeacon is at this time the most important personage
after the pope, and the office is very often a last step before the
highest office of all. So was it, for example, with St. Leo the Great.
It is to the pope directly that complaints against these bishops are
addressed. He investigates, either personally or by delegates, and,
when necessary, he deposes the guilty bishop; and the basis and
justification of this authority, as the successive popes never tire of
repeating, is that they are the heirs of St. Peter.
In the affairs of the other churches of Italy, those subject now to the
metropolitan authority of Milan, of Aquileia, of Ravenna, the pope
interferes but rarely. Normally he has no share in the election of
their bishops nor does he consecrate them. Here, as between each church
and the Roman, there is yet no systematic centralisation. For all the
community of Faith and the full acceptance of the Roman Supremacy to
which, let us say, St. Ambrose witnesses, these churches in their
everyday administration went their own way. Only for the greater
councils did they go to Rome, and only in cases of disputes and appeals
did Rome intervene in elections. Otherwise there is a complete
administrative autonomy -- strikingly in contrast with the dependence
on Rome in matters of Faith.
Beyond the limits of Italy the churches divide into four main groups,
those of the (civil) dioceses of Spain and the Gauls, the churches of
Africa, and those of the two dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia. [ ] Like
those Italian churches which lie outside the sphere of Rome's special
supervision, these churches too enjoy a wide autonomy. Their bishops
are normally elected -- and if need be deposed -- without any reference
to Rome; and in their ordinary administration they follow each their
own interpretation of the traditions. Nevertheless, communication with
Rome is frequent, is even continual, and the relation in which these
churches all stand to Rome is undoubtedly one of subordination.
Spain, when the century opened, numbered close on fifty bishoprics. Its
bishops were represented in the several great councils of the century,
at Arles in 314 for example and at Sardica in 343 and one of them,
Hosius of Cordova, actually presided at Nicea. But though there were so
many sees, the higher organisation was defective. There were several
metropolitan sees around which the others were grouped provincially,
but there was no one central see and never any real unity among the
bishops. How extensive the effects of this disunion could be, the
troubles centering round Priscillian made very evident. The detail of
their history brings out, also, the role of the Roman Church in this
distant Western province. It is from Rome that the bishops seek counsel
when first they approach the question of Priscillian's orthodoxy; and
it is to Rome that Priscillian goes, for the declaration of the purity
of his faith that will reinstate him: "ut apud Damasum obiecta
purgarent" says the contemporary historian-Damasus, whom Priscillian
salutes as senior omnium nostrum, senior et primus. Later still, after
the executions of 385, there is again reference to Rome for direction
at every stage of the complex sequel, the question of the
reconciliation of Priscillian's followers, and the question, deriving
therefrom, of the ultra-rigorist Catholic opponents of the
reconciliation.
There is also the famous letter of Pope Siricius in 385. The Spanish
bishops had applied for a ruling on a whole series of important
matters. The evils to which the Council of Elvira was a witness, eighty
years before, still afflict the Church. There are still to be found
Christians who dabble in Paganism and clergy who, after ordination,
continue to live with their wives as before. The pope's reply is no
mere solution of a case of conscience. It is a peremptory reminder of
the law -- "the things the Apostolic See has decided". "We order," says
the pope, "We decree," and to coerce any reluctance to obey there is
the menace of excommunication from Rome, and for justification of the
threat and proof of the power there is the reminder that through
Siricius it is Peter who is speaking. The Roman Supremacy is writ large
all over this letter -- and Rome's consciousness of its universal
acceptance in the Church.
Nor is it otherwise in Roman Gaul, the vast tract that stretches from
the Rhine to the Pyrenees, whose capital is Treves on the Moselle. Gaul
was the one province of the West which Arianism had really troubled --
thanks to the manoeuvres of Constantius II and his Council of Arles in
353. The formation round Saturninus of Arles of a group of pro-Arian
bishops, the struggle with them and the easy task of reconciliation
once Constantius had disappeared (361) are the most important events of
the century which have come down to us. The hero of this struggle and
of the restoration was St. Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, one of the
greatest of the earlier Latin ecclesiastical writers, and -- himself,
for four years, an exile for his staunch defiance of the Arian emperor
-- the chief forerunner of St. Ambrose in the theoretical exposition of
the limits of Caesar's rights in the Church of Christ. Related to the
events of this restoration of Catholicism is the letter Ad Gallos
Episcopos, seemingly of Pope Damasus and dating from about 374.
Whatever pope wrote it -- one theory puts it down to Damasus' successor
Siricius -- the letter is a reply to an appeal for judgement. Some
sixteen points in all are dealt with, the question of consecrated
virgins who have broken their vow, of clerical celibacy, and of the
conditions requisite for the lawful ordination of clerics and the
consecration of bishops. In the reply the typical Roman notes are all
immediately observable-the insistence, for example, that no bishop be
consecrated without the consent of his metropolitan, since such would
be contrary "to the episcopal discipline of the Apostolic See." The
pope nowhere suggests that he is enacting a law. Everywhere he is but
reminding the bishops of Gaul of existing law, and yet he speaks as
though he were its author and the one primarily responsible for its
observance. Ten years later and Rome is again intervening to
excommunicate the Gallic bishops who had shared in the grave
irregularities which preceded the execution of Priscillian, and in 400,
fifteen years later still, a council of Italian bishops [ ] continues
to refuse these bishops recognition since they have not fulfilled the
conditions laid down years before by Ambrose (the late metropolitan of
the Italians) and the Roman bishop.
Two replies of Pope Innocent I (402-417) to Gallic bishops-Victoricius
of Rouen and Exuperius of Toulouse -- have passed into the very
foundations of the great corpus of the Canon Law; and the reign of his
successor Zosimus saw the papal intervention suddenly pressed forward
to a development that was revolutionary when that pope gave to the
Bishop of Arles a kind of superiority over all the metropolitans of
Gaul, decreeing that all ordinations of bishops should be referred to
him and that through him all the other bishops should henceforward
transact all their business with the Roman See. The policy was as
unpopular as it was unprecedented, and after a short twelve months it
was set aside by the new pope, Boniface I (418- 422), and the old
regime restored of autonomous provinces each under the rule of its own
metropolitan, the Bishop of Narbonne being specifically authorised to
disregard the extra-provincial jurisdiction of Arles and to proceed
"metropolitani iure munitus et praeceptibus nostris fretus." What the
pope was for the scattered churches of Gaul during this century is
aptly described in a letter of the pope whose reign brings it to a
close -- Celestine I (422-432). The pope, he declares, is in a post of
observation and general superintendence, to arrest untimely
developments, to decide and to choose, a post such that "no violation
of discipline escapes us" -- for so far there is but question of
discipline.
With Africa we come to what probably was the most Catholic province of
all the West -- certainly the province where the Church was most
completely organised. To begin with, it was a region extraordinarily
rich in bishops; at the time of the Council of 411 there were 470 of
them. And, unlike the bishops of Spain and Gaul, this vast assembly was
a well-organised body. The bishops of each of the six civil provinces
formed together an autonomous ecclesiastical province over which
presided, not the metropolitan of any fixed see, but the senior of the
bishops. But, in addition to this machinery of provincial councils, the
Bishop of Carthage had, since the beginning of the third century,
exercised a superior primatial jurisdiction over all. There was also
the Concilium Universale of all Africa, and this, meeting regularly
once a year, was, with the primacy of Carthage, a most potent means of
unity. The churches of Africa were the most perfectly organised of all,
and it is symbolical of that organisation that it was from this group
that there came the first code of canon law -- the Codex Canonum
Ecclesiae Africanae, published by the Council of Africa of 419.
The African Church had another distinction, the tradition of a singular
“insularity" in its activity. In the long fight with the Donatists, for
example, it never makes appeal for help to other churches; even in this
controversy which, more than any other, brings out African
understanding of the nature of the Roman primacy, a controversy in
which the fact of that primacy and African acceptance of it is the very
foundation of the Catholics' case, there is never an appeal to Rome for
assistance. And, it is to be noted, Rome allowed for this "insular"
habit when it permitted the Africans in the matter of reconciling the
Donatists to depart very seriously from the accepted discipline in such
matters. The relations with Rome are continuous and friendly. The faith
in Rome's supremacy is as evident here, and at this time, as in any
other part of the Church. But the administrative separation could
hardly be more complete. Before the period had ended, and the Vandals
come in to make an end for ever of Roman Africa, a series of crises
were to bring out very strikingly what a high degree of autonomy Rome
could allow in matters of administration and discipline where there was
no question of the unity of faith.
The history of Pelagius has shown the African bishops turning to Rome
once the controversy ceases to be merely local. In this matter where
the faith is at stake there is no mention of Milan, the capital, along
with Rome. It is to the pope they appeal because “ You, from the
Apostolic See, speak with greater persuasiveness." And in his reply
Innocent r greets them as one episcopate among many who come to drink
of the fons apostolicus. "Like yourselves, all bishops, whenever the
faith is in question, can do no more than refer it to Peter who is the
foundation of all episcopal dignity."
Under Innocent's successor, the rash and hasty Zosimus, the rare pope
of whom one is tempted to say he must have been a nuisance to all
concerned, the loyalty of the Africans was seriously tried. There was,
to begin with, his apparent eagerness to reverse his predecessor's
judgement on Pelagius; and next, when the firm and dignified protest
from Africa halted him, there was a conflict over appeals to Rome
which, for its intensity, recalls that of St. Cyprian with St. Stephen
I. The African Church -- by a singular exception to the general
practice -- had ceased to allow appeals to Rome from its final
judgements, and even menaced with excommunication whoever pursued such
appeals. Zosimus not only ignored this legislation, by receiving and
deciding appeals, but sent a commission into Africa itself to examine
the facts of the case and to bring the bishops to reverse their policy.
How the matter would have developed had he lived it is not easy to say,
but he died while the dispute was barely begun and his successor, busy
with the anxiety of a disputed election, went no further with it. But
six months-after Zosimus' death, the Council of Africa (May 419)
published its code -- and the law forbidding appeals to be taken
overseas, with its penalty for disobedience, appeared in its due place.
Seven years later the conflict broke out once more, and over the same
miserable person whose misdeeds had been the occasion of trouble in
419, the priest Apiarius. Pope Celestine acted just as Zosimus had
done. He received the appeal and he sent legates to Carthage. The
Bishop of Carthage agreed to reopen the case and then, while the Roman
legates were eloquently pleading for Apiarius, the wretched fellow made
a clean breast of his crimes. As far as Apiarius was concerned the
affair was ended. But not so for the African bishops. They determined
that the question of Roman intervention in disciplinary matters should
be settled once and for all. Accordingly, the Council of 426 made a
formal request to the pope that he would not for the future be so ready
to receive appeals, and that he would not receive to communion those
excommunicated by the African bishops, and that he would not restore
those whom the African bishops had in council deposed; that he would
not for the future send any more commissioners into Africa, much less
commissioners charged to enlist the services of the police, since
nowhere can the bishops find these things are allowed by the synods of
the past, nor should the pride of this world find any counterpart in
the Church of Christ. To this extraordinary remonstrance -- the most
extraordinary surely it has ever received -- Rome made no reply. As
with the Catholic council of Sardica's attempt to prescribe to Rome the
manner in which its primacy should function, [ ] so was it with the
attempt of these African bishops, equally loyal in faith. Rome made no
sign; but in her own time, and as opportunity called for it, she
continued to exercise in respect of Africans, as of Gauls, Egyptians
and Orientals, all the fullness of her right.
The prefecture of Illyricum completes the round of these more distant
churches of the West; and here, in the last half of the fourth century
Rome, to meet a wholly exceptional difficulty, created a really
exceptional regime. The difficulty arose from the transference to the
Eastern Empire, by Gratian in 379, of the civil dioceses of Dacia and
Macedonia. Henceforward in temporal matters they would be ruled from
Constantinople. The popes, however, did not intend that in spiritual
matters, too, these churches of what was now called Illyricum Orientale
should look to Constantinople; and to counteract any influence tending
to draw them thither, the popes established the bishop of the chief see
of the prefecture, Thessalonica, as their permanent representative for
these provinces. He was charged to supervise the elections of all the
bishops and, although the existing system of metropolitans was
retained, he was given authority over the metropolitans too. All the
business between the different bishops and metropolitans was to pass
through him, and his jurisdiction was enlarged to try appeals, with
discretion to decide himself what appeals were to go forward to Rome.
The Bishop of Thessalonica from the time of Pope Damasus (366-384) is
the papal agent, a kind of permanent legate, for these border provinces
where Greek and Latin meet, acting, as say the letters of Boniface I,
vice sedis apostolicae, vice nostra.
Inevitably the system met with opposition. Many of the bishops of
Illyricum disliked it, and not least from the barrier it raised against
all chance of making an ecclesiastical career via the court at
Constantinople. The emperor too, Theodosius II (408-450), showed
himself hostile and in 421 a rescript was published attaching the sees
of Illyricum to the jurisdiction of Constantinople. The pope, unable or
unwilling to make any open reprisal, persuaded the Western Emperor,
Honorius (395- 423), to intervene with his nephew and, Theodosius
giving way, the incident closed. But the ambition of Constantinople
persevered, as did also the desire of the Eastern Emperor to see no
exception to the rule that all the sees of his empire were grouped
around the three great sees of the East, Antioch, Alexandria and
Constantinople. The question of the Roman jurisdiction over Illyricum
Orientale remained, to be for the next two centuries one of the chronic
causes of trouble between West and East.
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