Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/509

489 imperial office in the empire claimed for it by writers like Bellarmine. The comparative history of institutions would, in itself, incline us to look for a less precise and exalted conception of the office, as discharged by these early bishops, than when, after a lapse of centuries and a succession of varied experiences, its duties and responsibilities had become defined and developed; but it is also a fact of considerable significance that those who were elected to the office from the time of Clement were for the most part men whose very names would probably not have survived but for their appearance in these lists, and that, even when, in one or two instances, their individual careers emerge from the general obscurity, they themselves appear as speaking and acting in a manner which seems hardly compatible with those exalted prerogatives which, as some maintain, were inherent in the office from its first commencement. In nstleofthe recently recovered portion of the epistle of Clemens emens Romanus, above cited, it is, for example, highly signi- 1US ficant to find that the letter purports to emanate, not from the "bishop of Rome," but from "the church at Rome," and to find again that, even so late as the 2d century, this letter is in like manner referred to as emanating from the community, and not from the individual. This feature, indeed, is not a little suggestive with respect to the de velopment of the Roman supremacy. While the letter is wanting in anything that implies any special pre-eminence on the part of the Roman bishop, it is at the same time characterized by a certain admonitory tone, such as could hardly have been assumed if the community by whom it was sent had not been held to possess a recognized superi ority over the community to whom it is written, but this superiority is not greater than would naturally belong (not withstanding their common founder) to the church in imperial Rome as contrasted with the church at subject Corinth, to the church of the august capital from whence emanated the laws which governed the empire and the church of the fallen city which, two centuries and a half before, the Roman arms had well nigh effaced from existence. If again we accept as genuine the evidence afforded in l;ters of those seven letters of Ignatius which most critics are dis- latius. posed to accept as genuine, the relations of the Roman Church to the other churches of the empire appear to be of the same character. Ignatius, when on his way to Rome (probably early in the 2d century) to suffer martyrdom, addressed a letter to the Christian community in that city. In this letter there is again an equally direct reference to a certain primacy of the church in Rome, which is addressed as "she who hath the presid ency in the place of the region of the Romans." But this expression is immediately followed by a definition of this primacy which is altogether incompatible with the theory that it is derived from the episcopal succession in the church; it is spoken of as founded upon sentiments of Christian fellowship, with the additional considerations attaching to the dignity and superior advantages belong ing to the church of the capital. The conclusion to which the foregoing evidence points is again strongly confirmed by the general fact that, as each new pretension on the part of the Roman see was put forward, it was called in question and repudiated by some one or other section of the Christian community. I sage An obscure and doubtful passage inlrenaeus (Adv. If seres., jj bk. iii. c. 3) testifies, at most, to nothing more than a fuller recognition of the primacy of the Roman Church, oihe wn ^ le m the same writer, who, it will be remembered, was ttian bisn P of the church at Lyons, we have a notable instance s:]-em- of a distinct repudiation of the claims of the Roman bishop to dictate to the bishops of other dioceses. This was ,on the occasion of a sentence of excommunication which VICTOR I. (c. 190-202 A.D.) had pronounced upon certain bishops in the province of Asia Minor, 1 on account of their refusal to celebrate Easter at the particular time enjoined by the church in Rome. Victor appears not to have had recourse to this extreme measure until after he had consulted with his episcopal brethren in Palestine, Pontus, Gaul, and Corinth; but Irenaeus, notwithstand ing, remonstrates boldly with him on the rigour of his proceeding, and on the impolicy of thus cutting himself off from an important section of the church on a mere matter of ceremonial observance. We find again Tertullian, who during his residence in Rome had acquired a certain practical knowledge of the administrative characteristics of its church, implicitly intimating his disapproval in his treatise De Pudicitia (sec. i.) of the assumption by the Roman bishop of the titles of " pontifex maximus " and " episcopus episcoporum "; in another of his treatises (De Virgin, veland.; 2 Migne, Patrol., pp. 767-8), he distinctly impugns the claim made by ZEPHYRINTJS (202-218) of a certain superiority in the Roman see derived as a tradition from St Peter. The evidence with which we are presented for the rest of the 3d century is of a similar character. CALLISTUS (218-223), the successor to Zephyrinus, was originally a Christian slave in Rome during the bishopric of Victor, who (if we accept the narrative of Hippolytus) had been sent on account of his turbulence and dishonest practices to the mines in Sardinia. Victor, who was acquainted with the circumstances of his career, deemed him, not withstanding, so little deserving of commiseration that, when, through the influence of Marcia, the mistress of the emperor Commodus, he had succeeded in bringing about the liberation of a certain number of Callistus s Christian fellow-sufferers in Sardinia, he did not include in the list the name of Callistus himself. The latter, however, managed to regain his freedom, and ultimately himself became bishop of Rome. During his brief epis copate his administration, as well as that of his prede cessor Zephyrinus, was unsparingly criticized by Hip polytus, the well-known bishop of Portus. Against Callistus Hippolytus alleges the greatest laxity in the admission of candidates to ecclesiastical orders, and also undue connivance at marriages dishonourable to those pro fessing the Christian faith; while Zephyrinus is depicted as a man of but little intelligence and of ignoble aims. It is evident that when a suffragan bishop could venture thus to criticize his metropolitan the authority wielded by the latter, even in his own diocese, was very far from meeting with unquestioning obedience. The foregoing evidence, together with many other similar facts which cannot here be enumerated, points clearly to two important conclusions : first, that in the course of the 2d and 3d centuries the Church of Rome began to put forth unprecedented claims to a certain superiority among other churches; and, secondly, that these claims not unfrequently encountered considerable opposition as novel and unjustifiable. The circumstances Avhich contributed to bring about their ultimate establishment were various. The Roman Church itself had, from the first, been associated with that severer type of Christian belief which had its chief seat at Jerusalem; and, after the Holy City and its temple were Evidence afforded in the case of Callistus. Circum stances favouring the Roman claims. 1 An expression which, it must he noted, is to be understood with considerable qualification as applied to the Roman province. a The evidence afforded in the above two treatises carries the greater weight in that they were not written until after Tertullian had become a convert to the austere tenets of Montanism, when he must have been all the more inclined to favour the type of Christianity which then prevailed at Rome.

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