THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
POOR RELIEF. See Social Service op the Church.
POPE, PAPACY, PAPAL SYSTEM.
I. Development of the Papacy.
Roman Catholic Theory of the Papacy (§ 1).
Papacy in Pre-Carolingian Times (§ 2).
In Merovingian and Carolingian Periods (§ 3).
Tendency to Absolutism Checked (§ 4).
Spiritual and Temporal Supremacy Claimed (§ 5).
Primacy of Jurisdiction (§ 6).
Primacy of Honor (§ 7).
II. Election of the Pope. Development of Present Method (§ 1). The Conclave (§ 2).
The Election (§ 3). Procedure after Election (§ 4).
I. Development of the Papacy: Pope (Gk., pappas, " father ") designates the bishop of Rome in his position as supreme head of the Roman Catholic Church. According to the doctrine of that church, when Christ founded the Church as a visible institution, he assigned to the Apostle i. Roman Peter the precedency over the other Catholic apostles — making Peter his vicar, and Theory of constituting him center of the Church the Papacy, in that he conveyed to him alike the supreme priestly authority (see Keys, Power of the), the supreme doctrinal authority, and the supreme direction of the Church (Matt, xvi. 18, 19; Luke xxii. 32; John xxi. 15-17). But since the Church is a perpetual institution, Peter must needs have a successor, and the ecclesiastical succession is to be secured in that position for all futurity. On account of Peter's connection with the bishopric of Rome, which he is held to have established, this succession, with its derivative rights and titular primacy, is permanently attached to the Roman see ; though not, perforce, to its local site in the city of Rome. The succession devolves upon the actual bishop of Rome; and so Peter as vicar of Christ lives on in the Roman bishops, the popes. The doctrines thus outlined are dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church; and therefore they become immutable and fundamental principles of its formal constitution.
But in the light of objective historical contemplation, the pope's primacy appears to be solely the product of evolutionary centuries. It is not to be denied that even from the second century and in the third century the Roman con- 2. Papacy gregation and the Roman episcopal in Pre- see enjoyed a significant and positive Carolingian esteem in the West. The Roman Times, church not only stood accepted as founded by the Apostle Peter, but was also the sole church in the West which could boast of apostolic establishment, let alone the fact that its site was the pivot of the ancient world, and thus facilitated a vast range of communication with the other churches and congregations. Yet though even so early as in the third century the peculiar distinction and the precedency of the Roman church were based in Rome upon succession to the rights of Peter; nevertheless, not even the Council of Nicffla knows of a Roman primacy over the whole Church. But what really proved of decisive influence in winning legal prerogatives for the Roman bishop were the issues of the dogmatic controver-
sies that agitated the Church from the fourth century forward; since in these controversies the position of the bishop of Rome was of determining weight for the very reason of the high respect enjoyed by his church, because Rome supported the due maintenance of orthodox doctrine. The Synod of Sardica (343) permitted a bishop who had been deposed by the metropolitan synod to appeal to the bishop of Rome. Just as this implied a right of supreme jurisdiction on the part of that dignitary to uphold which appeal could soon be made to the Council of Nicffia, because the decrees of Sardica became consolidated with the canons of that council, so did Innocent I. (404) lay claim to a supreme right of adjudication in all " the more grave and momentous cases "; and about the same time, he claimed the right of issuing obligatory regulations for the several districts of the Church. At the outset, however, these were mere assumptions; nor could the bishops of Rome bring them to practical effect beyond Italy or in such countries as Illyria and southern Gaul, where the local situation happened to be favorable, and where there happened to be voluntary overtures in behalf of close connection with Rome. As a matter of fact, in the year 445, Leo I. obtained of Valentinian III. by an imperial law {Novella} Valentiniani, hi., tit. 16), recognition of primacy, in particular that of the supreme judicial and legislative right of the Roman see. However, this law was binding only on the West; and it involved neither a renunciation of the emperor's right of exercising the imperial prerogative to legislate in ecclesiastical affairs, nor any abolishment of the rights of councils convened under imperial authority. It was not by legislation, but principally by interfering in this or that special, important concern that, both before and after this law, the Roman bishop was able to substantiate his assumed supreme control of the Church, and even in the fifth century to play a deciding hand in affairs of the East. Still more significant becomes the status of the Roman bishop from the close of that century, when the Germans found separate kingdoms in Italy. But, at the same time, his local sphere of power became narrowed by the establishment of the Germans in Gaul, Spain, and England; a condition that arrested the progress of the centralizing process already started in those countries.
Especially in the most notable of these new states, in Merovingian " France," the direct control of ecclesiastical affairs through the Roman bishop was legally debarred. Any- 3. In thing of that kind could come about Merovingian only subject to royal approbation, aland though the pope was acknowledged to Carolingian be the first bishop in Christendom,
Periods, and the preservation of communion in the faith with him was accounted indispensable. But the king alone possessed the deciding authority respecting the law of the Church, jointly with the royal or national synod by him convened, the decrees of which could become binding on the state only by the king's approbation. A change in this respect did not set in till in course of the eighth century; when the Carolingian major-