292 THIRD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590,
rnenical councils, also, know no other Western patriarchate than tlie Roman, and this was the sole medium through which the Eastern church corresponded with the Western. In the great theological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuriee the Roman hishop appears uniformly as the representative and the organ of all Latin Christendom.
It was, moreover, the highest interest of all orthodox churches in the West, amidst the political confusion and in conflict with the Arian Goths, Vandals, and Suevi, to bind themselves closely to a common centre, and to secure the powerful protection of a central authority. This centre they could not but find in the primitive apostolic church of the metropolis of the world. The Roman bishops were consulted in almost all important questions of doctrine or of discipline. After the end of the fourth century they issued to the Western bishops in reply, pastoral epistles and decretal letters,' in which they decided the question at first in the tone of ])aternal counsel, then in the tone of apostolic authority, making that which had hitherto been loft to free opinion, a fixed statute. The first extant decretal is the Epistola of Pope Siricius to the Spanish bishop Hinierius, a. d. 385, which contains, characteristically, a legal enforcement of priestly celibacy, thus of an evidently unapostolic institution ; but in this Siricius appeals to "generalia -decreta," which his predecessor Liberius had already issued. In like manner the Roman bishops repeatedly caused the assembling of general or patriarchal councils of the West {synodos occidentales)^ like the synod of Aries in 314. After the sixth and seventh centuries they also conferred the pallium on the archbishops of Salona, Ravenna, Messina, Syracuse, Palermo, Aries, Autun, Sevilla, Nicopolis (in Epirus), Canterbury, and other metropolitans, in token of their superior jurisdiction.*
' Epistola decreiales ; an expression, which, according to Gieseler and others, occurs first about 500, in the so-called decretum Gelasii de libris recipiendia ef non recipiendis.
' See the infoiioation 'oncerning the confening of the pallium in Wiltsch, L 68 gq. ^
CONFLICTS OF THE LATIN PAT RI ARCHA TE. 22'i
§ 59. Confldctd and Conquests of the Latin Patriarchate.
But this patriarclial power was not from tlie beginning and Lo a uniform extent acknowledged in the entire West. Not until the latter part of the sixth century did it reach the height we have above described.' It was not a divine institution, un changeably fixed from the beginning for all times, like a Biblical article of faith ; but the result of a long process of history, a human ecclesiastical institution under providential direction. In proof of which we have the following incontestable facts :
In the first place, even in Italy, several metropolitans maintained, down to the close of our period, their own supreme headship, independent of Roman and all other jurisdiction.' The archbishops of Milan, who traced their church to the apostle Barnabas, came into no contact with the pope till the latter part of the sixth century, and were ordained without him or his pallium. Gregory I., in 593, during the ravages of the Longobards, was the first who endeavored to exercise patriarchal lights there : he reinstated an excommunicated presbyter, who had appealed to him.^ The metropolitans of Aquileia, who derived their church from the evangelist Mark, and whose city was elevated by Constantine the Great to be the capital of Venetia and Istria, vied with Milan, and even with Rome, calling themselves "patriarchs," and refusing submission to the papal jurisdiction even under Gregory the Great.'' The bishop of Ravenna likewise, after 408, when the
This is conceded by Hefele, i. 383 sq. : "It is, however, not to be mistaken, that the bishop of Rome did not everywhere, in all the West, exercise /m/^ patriarchal rights ; that, to wit, in several provinces, simple bishops were ordained without hia cooperation." And not only simple bishops, but also metropolitans. See the text.
" AvTOKd(pa\oi, also aKi(pa.\oi, as in the East especially the archbishops of Cyprus and Bulgaria were called, and some other metropolitans, who were subject to bo patriarch.
^ Comp. Wiltsch, i. 234.
* Comp. Gregory I., Epist. 1. iv. 49 ; and Wiltsch, i. 236 sq. To the metropolia of Aquileia belonged the bishoprics of Verona, Tridentum (the Trent, since become BO famous), .(Emona, Altinum, Torcellum, Pola, Celina, Sabiona, Forum Julii, Bellu num, Concordia, Fcltria, Tarvisium, and A^iccntia.