against which the gates of hell shall never prevail," because from him we receive "the certainty of faith." He also knows that no general council can be called, save under the Pope. He writes to Pope Leo III (795–816): "If they, arrogating authority, have not feared to summon a heretical council, who could not even summon an orthodox one without your authority, according to the ancient custom, how much more is it just and even necessary to hold a lawful one under your divine leadership."[1] Lastly, to be an orthodox Catholic we must be in union with Rome. "Now is the acceptable time," he tells the Emperor, "that we (the Byzantine Church riddled with Iconoclasm) … should unite ourselves with Rome, the summit of the Churches of God, and through her to the three other Patriarchs (Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem)."[2]
It is then with no uncertain voice that this Byzantine Church proclaims her faith in the Roman Primacy and Infallibility just before the tyranny of an Emperor and the ambition of an intruded Patriarch drag her into schism.
2. Appeals to Rome from the East.
This faith of the Eastern Churches did not remain a mere theory. The Fathers we have quoted not only proclaimed the Pope's universal jurisdiction; they continually made use of it to defend themselves against opponents; so that the long list of their appeals to Rome speaks even more eloquently than their words.
As far back as the second century "Irenæus relates that Polycarp, who was even then still alive, came to Rome while Anicetus presided over the Roman Church and conversed with Anicetus about the question of the day of Easter."[3] Anicetus reigned c. 157–168, St. Polycarp († c. 166), Bishop of Smyrna, had sat at the feet of St. John the Apostle himself.
The case of Pope Victor I (189–199) and the Quartodecimans is well known. It is hardly one of an appeal; but when he "pronounced" those Asiatic bishops "by letters to be outside the unity,"[4] although St. Irenæus wrote to advise him
- ↑ M.P.G. xcix. 1020.
- ↑ Ibid. 1309.
- ↑ Eus. H.E. iv. 1.
- ↑ Ibid. v. 24.
