1849); Denzinger, Ueber die Aechtheit der Ign. Briefe (Würzburg, 1849); Renan, i. Les Evangiles (Paris, 1877), ii. in Journal des Savants (1874); Uhlhorn, i. in Zeitschraft für hist. Theol. (1851, 283), ii. in Herzogs Encyc.; Funk, Op. Pat. Ap. (ed. 5, Tübing. 1878).
Cureton (Corp. Ign.) or (better still, except for Syriac scholars) Zahn (ii.) will furnish the student with all the documents and ancient testimonies. The special treatise of Zahn on Ignatius is, as Bp. Lightfoot remarks, little known in England, and is of an exhaustive character. The reader will understand that, while we have not hesitated to dissent from it where necessary, we have freely availed ourselves of its pages. The Epistles of Ignatius have been pub. in a cheap trans. by J. R. Srawley (S.P.C.K. 2 vols.)
[R.T.S.]
Innocentius (12) I., bp. of Rome, after Anastasius, from May 402, to Mar. 12, 417.
The circumstances of his time and the character and talents of Innocent render his pontificate important. Christianity had now for nearly a century been the religion of the emperors; paganism was fast becoming a system of the past; the capture of Rome by Alaric during his pontificate, regarded as the divine judgment on the heathen city and causing the dispersion and ruin of the remains of the heathen nobility, completed the downfull of the ancient order. With the ascendancy of the church had grown that of the hierarchy, and especially of the head of that hierarchy in the West, the Roman bishop. The need of centres of unity and seats of authority to keep the church together amid doctrinal conflicts; the power and importance hence accruing to the patriarchal sees, and especially to Rome as the one great patriarchate of the West, the see of the old seat of empire and the only Western one that claimed apostolic origin; the view now generally received of the bp. of Rome as the successor of the prince of the apostles; the removal of the seat of empire to Constantinople, leaving the pope, when there was but one emperor, the sole Western potentate, and when there were two, as in Innocent's time, the fixing of the imperial residence at Ravenna instead of Rome,—such were among the causes of the aggrandizement of the Roman see. The Western church had been comparatively free from the controversies which had divided the East, nor had the popes taken much personal part in them; but they had almost invariably supported the orthodox cause, received and protected the orthodox under persecution, and, after watching with quiet dignity the Eastern struggle, had accepted and confirmed the decisions of orthodox councils. Hence Rome appeared as the bulwark of the cause of truth, and its claim to be the unerring guardian of the apostolic faith and discipline gained extensive credence. Innocent himself was eminently the man to enter into, and make the most of, the position he was called to occupy. Unstained in life, able and resolute, with a full appreciation of the dignity and prerogatives of his see, he lost no opportunity of asserting its claims, and under him the idea of universal papal supremacy, though as yet somewhat shadowy, was already taking form. At his accession the empire had for seven years been divided between the two sons of Theodosius, Arcadius and Honorius; the latter, now 18 years of age, under the control of the great general Stilicho, ruling in the West. Two years after Innocent's accession (a.d. 404) he fixed his residence at Ravenna.
I. WEST. (i) Illyria.—Immediately after his election Innocent wrote to Anysius, bp. of Thessalonica, informing him of the event and giving him the oversight of the churches of eastern Illyria. The prefecture of Illyria had been dismembered since 388, the Eastern part, including Dacia and Macedonia, being assigned to the Eastern empire, but popes Damasus and Siricius had continued to claim ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the separated portion, delegating their authority to the bishops of Thessalonica. Innocent thus made no new claim, nor did he hereby assert any authority over the East generally (Innoc. Ep. 1; Galland. Bibl. Patr.). When Rufus, some years after, succeeded Anysius as bp. of Thessalonica, a letter was at once sent to him, reversing the vicariate commission, defining its extent, and reminding him that his jurisdiction was derived from the favour of the apostolic see only. In 414 we find Innocent exercising authority of a summary kind, without the intervention of the bp. of Thessalonica, in East Illyria. The bishops of Macedonia had sent him a synodal letter, desiring directions as to: (1) Whether persons ordained by one Bonosus, a deceased heretical bishop, might be admitted to the priesthood. (2) Whether persons who had married widows might be ordained and made bishops, for which allowance they pleaded the custom of their church. (3) They had asked leave to raise to the episcopate one Photinus, who had been condemned by Innocent's predecessors, and to depose a deacon called Eustatius. Some at least of these questions had already been decided by Innocent, for he expresses surprise and displeasure at their being again mooted. He then authoritatively decides them. Those who had married widows he debars from ordination, citing the prohibition of such marriages to the high-priest under the Mosaic law. Those ordained by Bonosus are debarred the priesthood by the law of the Roman church (lex nostrae ecclesiae), which admitted to lay communion persons baptized by heretics, but did not recognize their orders. The Nicene canon about the Novatianists, he says, applied to them only, and the condonation by Anysius had only been a temporary expedient. The question whether those who had married one wife before and another after baptism were to be accounted deuterogamists, and so incapable of ordination, he discussed at length also in other epistles.[1]He decides that they are to be so accounted, for baptism is not the commencement of a new life in such sort as to relax the obligations of a previous marriage. Though with hesitation and much anxiety, he allows the promotion of Photinus, notwith-
- ↑ Cf. Epp. ii. iii. Bibl. Patr. Galland. St. Jerome, in one of his letters, strongly maintains the opposite view to Innocent, and Jerome's view was probably the prevalent one at the time, for he speaks of the number of persons ordained, and even advanced to the episcopate, after marrying a second wife after baptism, being large enough to compose a council.
