PAPACY
629
PAPACY
cide the case of the appealing bishop either through the bishops of the ecclesiastical province, or through his delegates, or in the exercise of liis own power. It was, however, only one party among the bishops which conceded to the bishop of Rome these excessive powers, for the other party, embracing the Oriental bishops, se- ceded from the synod, and lield distinct sessions in the neighboring city of Philippopolis. The wording of the resolutions appears, moreover, to indicate that the movers of the resolutions were aware that the latter were an innovation, and moreover that the superior jurisdiction which was accorded to the bishop of Home was intended for bishop Julius personally, not for his office. That at this time large portions of the Church did not know of, or at least did not recognise any claim of the Roman bishop to superior jurisdiction, is easily proved. The synods of the Church, even the oecumenical synods, were convoked, without an}'^ co- operation on the part of the Roman bishop, by imperial decree. At none of these synods did the bishop of Rome or his legates preside, and for no dogmatic de- cision did the ancient Cluirch appeal to Rome. The bishops of Rome, however, with great consistency and prudence, knew how to enlarge the precedence which had been accorded to the Church of the Imperial City, and the honors which for personal merits had been con- ferred upon individual occupants of the see into a per- manent ascendency, for which a divine origin was claimed, in order to make it an organic part of the doc- trinal system of the Church. Innocent I (402-417) en- deavored to put upon the canons of Sardica a far-reach- ing construction, and appealed to them for claiming a right of cognizance in all important ecclesiastical ques- tions. Zosimus (417-418) asserted that the fathers had conferred upon tlie Roman see the prerogative that his decision should be the last and decisive one. The fraudulent habit of ascribing the canons of the S^'iiod of Sardica to the first oecumenical Council of Nice be- came quite general in Rome. At the Sjaiod of Ephesus, in 431, the Roman legates declared tliat Peter, to whom Christ had given the power of binding and unbinding, was continuously living and judging through his suc- cessor.
The first pope, in the real sense of the word, was Leo I (440-4G1). Being endowed by nature with the old Roman spirit of dominion, and being looked upon by his contemporaries, in consequence both of his char- acter and his position, as the most eminent man of the age, he developed in his mind the ideal of an ec- clesiastical monarchy, with the pope at the head, and endeavored with great energy to transform the consti- tution of the Church in conformity with his ideal. As a theological writer, he used nearly all the arguments which the defenders of the papacy up to the present time have adduced from the Bible. As bishop of Rome, he carried througli his claims to supreme power over the whole Churcli with a greater energy than any of his predecessors. The bishops of the African and Span- ish churches submitted to his demands. Bishop Anas- tasius of Thessalonica applied to him to be confirmed, and when Leo granted his prayer, and extended his jurisdiction over all the Illyrian churches, Roman su- premacy thereby gained an important foothold even in the East. In Gaul, however, he met with a most determined resistance on the part of Hilarius, the met- ropolitan of Aries; and though he procured from tlic emperor Yalentinian III an edict which unconditionally subjected all bishops of the West Roman Empire to the primac)' of Rome, he obtained only a partial victory. At the fourth a3cumenical Council of Chalcedon (451) Leo's legates protest-ed against the famous twenty-eighth canon, which elevated the patriarch of New Rome, or Constantinople, to official ecpiality with the pope. But this protest, as well as that of Leo's successors, remain- ed without effect, and the Eastern half of the Christian Church learned to look upon the bishop of Constanti- nople as its highest dignitary, whose claims were sup-
ported by a council which Rome herself recognises as tt'cumenical. After the death of Leo, the pajial chair was for nearly one hundred and fifty years filled by weak, insignificant men, who reasserted the papal claims of Leo without possessing his energy to enlbrce them, and who encountered the unanimous resistance of the Eastern patriarchs. When Felix II (483-492) ventured to excommunicate the patriarch of Constantinople, a complete schism between the Western and Eastern Church took place, which lasted over thirty years. Gelasius I (41)2-49(!) mockingly called the patriarch of Constantinople the bishop of the irapoiKui of Herac- Ica, and proclaimed the princiiile that the pope's au- thority was higher than that of kings and emperors. When pope Symmachus (501 or 503) was acquitted by a sjmod held in Rome of the charges of adultery, of squandering the property of the Church, and other crimes, the partisans of the pope at this council declared that it did not behoove the council to pass judgment respecting the successor of St. Peter; and one deacon, Ennodius (subsequently bishop of Padua), vindicated this decision by asserting that the Roman bishop is above every human tribunal, and is responsible only to God himself.
Facts like these prove the existence at this early period of the germs of the extremest papal theory, but how little foundation they had in the real sentiments of the Church may be seen from the fact that for many centuries afterwards, even late in the Middle Ages, emperors and general councils deposed and appointed popes, and that the bulk of the Church, clergy as well as laity, felt no scruple in submitting to the popes thus set up. The struggle about Roman supremacy in this period was, however, chiefly a question of power. The orthodoxy of the popes was occasionally, without hesi- tancy, called into doubt by their own partisans. Anas- tasius II (49G-498) was suspected of consenting to mo- nophysitism, and the strictly papal writer, Barouius, ascribes his sudden death to an evident judgment of God. Vigilius (540-554) owed his elevation to the papal see to Eutychiau promises, and his entire admin- istration is characterized by vacillation between Eu- tychianism and orthodoxy. His successor, Pelagius (554-5G0), so greatly alienated by his Eutychian ten- dencies some of the Western and even Italian bish- ops (like those of Aquileja and Milan) that for some time they suspended all connection with Rome. Greg- ory I (590-604) was, next to Leo I, the greatest of the Roman bishops during this first period of their history. His claims in some respects appeared to be more mod- erate, and especially more modest, than those of Leo. He protested against the adoption by the Constantino- politan patriarch of the title of " universal bishop," and is said to have been the first among the Roman bishops who, with a humility strangely contrasting with the papal claims to a rule over the entire world, added to his name the title of Servus Servorum Dei. Gregory marks the transition of the patriarchal position of the Roman bishops into the strict papacy of the IMiddle Ages. He saw that the bishops of Rome could not enjoy the ecclesiastical supremacy at which they aimed until they threw off their political dependency, and he skilfully used the settlement of the Longobards in Italy to prepare the way for their independence. The tri- umph of the Catholic Church over Arianism in Spain, and the success of the Roman mission in England, greatly promoted the plans of Gregory; but he did not as yet actually possess the power of the medieval popes, and we therefore prefer to place him at the close of the first, and not, as is done by many historians, at the be- ginning of the second period in the history' of the pa- pacy. The last century of this first period of the papacy is also characterized by the beginning of that sj'stem of stupendous forgeries which furnished during the fol- lowing period the chief support of the boundless claims of the papacy, and the origin and tendency of which have only quite recently been fully explained by mod-