29i THIKD PKUIOD. A.D. 311-590.
emperor Honorius selected that city for his residence, became a powerful metropolitan, with jurisdiction over fourteen bish oprics. ISIevertheless he received the pallium from Gregory the Great, and examples occur of ordination by the Koman bishop.'
The North African bishops and councils in the beginning of the fifth century, with all traditional reverence for the apostolic see, repeatedly protested, in the spirit of Cyprian, against encroachments of Rome, and even prohibited all appeal in church controversies from their own to a transmarine or foreign tribunal, upon pain of excommunication.^ The occasion of this was an appeal to Rome by the presbyter Apiarius, who had been deposed for sundry offences by Bishoj) Urbanus, of Sicca, a disciple and friend of Augustine, and whose restoration was twice attempted, by Pope Zosimus in 418, and by Pope Coelestine in 424. From this we see that the popes gladly undertook to interfere for a palpably unworthy priest, and thus sacrificed the interests of local discipline, only to make their own superior authority felt. The Africans referred to the genuine JS^icene canon (for which Zosimus had substituted the Sardican appendix respecting the appellate jurisdiction of Rome, of which the Niceue council knew nothing), and reminded the pope, that the gift of the Holy Ghost, needful for passing a just judgment, was not lacking to any province, and that he could as well inspire a whole province as a single bishop. The last document in the case of this appeal of Apiarius is a letter of the (twentieth) council of Carthage, in 424, to Pope Coelestine I., to the following purport:' '' Apiarius asked a new trial, and gross misdeeds of his were thereby brought to light. The papal legate, Faustinus, has, in the face of this, in a very harsh manner demanded the reception of this man into the fellowship of the Africans, because he has appealed to the pope and been received into fellowship by him.
* Baron. Ann. ad ann. 433 ; Wiltsch, i. 69, 87.
' Comp. the relevant Acts of councils in Giescler, i. 2, p. 221 sqq., and an ex tended description of this case of appeal in diccnwood, Cath. Petri, i. p. 299-310 and in Ilefele, Concilieu-Gesch. ii. 107 sqq., 120, 123 sq.
' Mansi, iii. 839 sq.
§ 59. CONFLICTS OF THE LATIN PATKIAKOnATE. 293
But this very thing ought not to have been done. At lasl lias Apiarius himself acknowledged all his crimes. The pope may hereafter no longer so readily give audience to those wlic come from Africa to Rome, like Apiarius, nor receive the excommunicated into church communion, be they bishops or priests, as the council of Nice (can. 5) has ordained, in whose direction bishops are included. The assumption of appeal to Bome is a tresp)ass on the rights of the African church, and what has been [by Zosimus and his legates] brought foi'ward as a Mcene ordinance for it, is not Nicene, and is not to be found in the genuine copies of the Nicene Acts, which have been received from Constantinople and Alexandria. Let the pope, therefore, in future send no more judges to Africa, and since Apiarius has now been excluded for his offences, the pope will surely not expect the African church to submit longer to the annoyances of the legate Faustiuus. May God the Lord long preserve the pope, and may the pope pray for the Africans." In the Pelagian controversy the weak Zosimus, who, in opposition to the judgment of his predecessor Innocent, had at first expressed himself favorably to the heretics, was even compelled by the Africans to yield. The N^orth African church maintained this position under the lead of the greatest of the Latin fathers, St. Augustine, who in other respects contributed more than any other theologian or bishop to the erection of the Catholic system. She first made submission to the Roman jurisdiction, in the sense of her weakness, under the shocks of the Yandals. Leo (440-461) was the first pope who could boast of having extended the diocese of Rome beyond Europe into another quarter of the globe.' He and Gregory the Great wrote to the African bishops entirely n the tone of paternal authority without provoking reply.
In Spain the popes found from the first a more favorable field. The orthodox bishops there were so pressed in the fifth century by the Arian Yandals, Suevi, Alani, and soon after by the Goths, that they sought counsel and protection with the bishop of Rome, which, for his own sake, he was always glad
' Epist. 87 ; Mansi vi. 120.