any way abrogated, was modified by the first cross-principle of metropolitical authority and of civil precedence. The second of the cross-principles which modified the inherent equality of all bishops was the special influence which attached to those sees which had been founded by the apostles. These sees were called the Apostolic Sees, and the churches in which they were erected were called the Apostolic Churches. They were the original mother churches which had received their instruction in the faith directly from the apostles, and had been ordered by them in all matters of discipline, and had had their first bishops consecrated by them. Other churches, whether near or far away, in their first beginnings had received the light of the gospel either immediately or mediately from one or other of them. And a certain halo of sanctity and of special influence distinguished them from the churches which could not boast of an apostolic founder. When disputes arose in regard to matters of faith or discipline, and the question to be answered was, What was the teaching of the apostles? what was the custom of the apostles? it was a very common practice to consult the nearest apostolic church, not as if it were infallible, but as having received the apostolic deposit of faith and discipline at first hand from one or more of the apostles, and therefore as being more likely to have retained that deposit free from all alloy. Without pretending to give an exhaustive list of the Apostolic Churches, one might name the following in the order of the dates of their apostolic foundation: First, Jerusalem, "the mother of all churches," as the Fathers of the great Council of Constantinople, of the year 382, style it in their letter to Pope Damasus and the other Western bishops; then Antioch, that "most ancient and truly Apostolic Church," as the same council describes it; then Philippi, then Thessalonica, then Corinth, then Ephesus, then Rome, then Alexandria, then Smyrna. We cannot say for certain that any apostle was ever at Alexandria, but it was considered to be an apostolic see, either because its first bishop, S. Mark, had received his mission, and probably his consecration, from S. Peter, whose catechist and interpreter he had been; or, perhaps more probably, because S. Mark was, like his cousin, S. Barnabas, regarded as an apostle in an extended sense of that term; or finally because, in any case, S. Mark was what Tertullian calls-"an apostolic man" (compare P. 39). Similarly, Smyrna was apostolic because S. Polycarp was constituted bishop of that see by S. John. This is how Tertullian, arguing with heretics, speaks about 1 See Additional Note 3, p. 435. 2 the Apostolic Churches: "Come, now," he says, "thou that wilt exercise thy curiosity to better purpose in the business of thy salvation, go through the Apostolic Churches, in which the very seats of the apostles, at this very day, preside over their own places; in which their own authentic writings are read, speaking with the voice of each, and making the face of each present to the eye. Is Achaia near to thee? thou hast Corinth. If thou art not far from Macedonia, thou hast Philippi, thou hast the Thessalonians. If thou canst travel into Asia, thou hast Ephesus. But if thou art near to Italy, thou hast Rome, where we also (ie. we in Africa) have an authority close at hand." 1 No one ever suggested that the special influence which attached to the apostolic sees, and the reverence which was yielded to them, was a matter of positive divine appointment. It was the natural reverence of Christians for the holy apostles, and for everything which seemed in a special way to have come in contact with the apostles. So, to sum up this part of our subject, by divine right all bishops were inherently equal, but by custom and ecclesiastical legislation the bishops of the metropolitical sees acquired certain rights which were delegated to them by their brother bishops. Moreover, among the most important churches a certain order of precedence grew up, which corresponded with what may be called the civil dignity of the cities in which those churches existed; and, finally, the churches which were founded by the apostles were treated with peculiar reverence. If we now confine our attention to the more powerful churches which took the lead in ecclesiastical matters, it will be worth while to ask the question whether their influence mainly rested on what I have called the civil dignity of the city, or on the apostolic character of the see. I think that there can be no doubt that their influence mainly resulted from the civil dignity of the city. For example, during the greater part of the first three centuries the see of Jerusalem, which in the apostolic days had been the most influential of all sees, exerted very little influence on the general course of Church affairs. The city had been destroyed by Hadrian, and the new city was comparatively feeble and uninfluential. So, again, Philippi and Corinth, which were apostolical, had much less influence than Carthage, the capital of Africa, which made no pretence to an apostolic foundation. If we compare Antioch with Alexandria, we find that both S. Peter and S. Paul had spent some time in Antioch, whereas Alexandria could only trace back to S. Mark the Evangelist, and through him indirectly to S. Peter. Judged by apostolic pretensions, Antioch ought to have ranked before Alexandria; but 1 De Praescr. Haer, xxxvi. Alexandria was commonly regarded as the second city of the empire, and Antioch as the third,' and the order of reputed civil dignity governed the situation. The Church of Alexandria, though only quasi-apostolical, ranked second, and "the truly Apostolical Church" of Antioch ranked third. And doubtless as it was with all the other churches, so it was with Rome. If we ask why the Church of Rome ranked first, the true answer undoubtedly is that Rome was the imperial city, the capital of the civilized world. The primacy hinged on that. The fact that S. Peter and S. Paul had been the apostolic founders of the Roman Church, and had been martyred there, would never by itself have resulted in the primacy of that Church, any more than the fact of Jerusalem being the place where the Saviour died and rose again, and where the Church had come fully into existence on the day of Pentecost, availed in default of civil dignity to secure any commanding position for the Church of the holy city. The apostolicity of the Roman Church immensely added to its influence and helped to attract to it the reverence of Christians all over the world; but the imperial position of the city of Rome was the determining factor which secured for it the primacy. Undoubtedly the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon was historically right, when in its twenty-eighth canon it defined that "the Fathers properly gave the privileges to the throne of the elder Rome, because that was the imperial city." The position could not be more accurately stated. Tillemont (ii. 92) speaks of Alexandria as being "cette grande ville qui estoit la première de l'Empire après Rome." Dion Chrysostom, who flourished during the reigns of Nerva and Trajan, addressing the citizens of Alexandria, says (Orat. xxii. ad Alexandrinos, ed. Arnim, 1893, vol. i. p. 277), "Your city excels most exceedingly in size and situation, and is notoriously considered as the second among the cities under the sun." Josephus (De Bello Jud., iii. 2, Opp., ed. Havercamp, 1726, ii. 221, 222), speaking of Antioch, says that "in size and other advantages it indisputably held the third place in the Roman world.” Compare Aubé, L'Eglise et l'Etat, pp. 451, 452, ed. 1886. See Additional Note 4, p. 435. 3 Dr. Bright (Church Quarterly, vol. xlix. p. 14, note 1) says, "No doubt the connexion of both Peter and Paul with the Roman Church, did much to build up her 'primacy of honour and influence;' but its original basis was the grandeur of the 'Urbs' itself, as the centre of the Roman world." This statement seems to me to express the exact truth. The truth of the statement in the text does not in any way depend on the twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon being a canon of ecumenical authority. S. Leo, and the West following S. Leo, rejected the canon. But it still remains the fact that the council as a whole passed it, and that the East in practice obeyed it; and there can be no doubt that, whether the decree was or was not ecumenically binding, its statement about the origin of the privileges of the Roman see is historically correct. The divine origin of the jurisdiction claimed by the popes is a fundamental dogma among modern Roman Catholics, or rather it is, in their view, the fundamental dogma. One would think that Roman Catholic students of the canons must be somewhat puzzled to find a great Ecumenical Council, in which all manner of circumstances combined to give a most commanding position to the pope, passing a canon which lays down as an obvious undeniable truth that The primatial privileges of the Roman see were not of divine institution; they were "given by the Fathers," and they were given on the ground of the imperial authority and dignity of the city. To sum up what has been said in regard to the Roman Church. After the destruction of Jerusalem, which during the first forty years after Pentecost had been the natural metropolis of Christendom, the churches which had been constituted in the great cities of the empire took the lead in the order of the civil precedence commonly attributed to them, with the Church of imperial Rome necessarily in the first place. The mere fact of holding the first place was a cause of growing influence. One result of the pre-eminent influence of the Roman see was that the ecclesiastical province over which it acquired metropolitical jurisdiction was much larger than any other province in the Church, except that over which the see of Alexandria, ranking next to Rome in honour, presided. The see of Rome had also the glory of having been founded by the two great apostles, S. Peter and S. Paul, who were martyred outside the walls of the city, and whose bodies were reverently treasured and had in honour by the Roman Church. The Roman see was, therefore, very eminently an apostolic see, and it was the only apostolic see in the Western or Latin-speaking half of the Church. In the East apostolic sees in some sense abounded. In the West there was but one, and that one was the primatial see the privileges of the Roman see were given to it "by the Fathers," because Rome was the imperial city." For a good account of the enacting of the twentyeighth canon, and of the way in which, notwithstanding the pope's protests, the canon practically held its ground, see a powerful article in the Church Quarterly for October, 1889, entitled, A Roman Proselyte on Ancient Church History, pp. 131-133. Mgr. Duchesne, one of the most learned, if not the most learned, of living French ecclesiastics, and who, in everything that he writes, is refreshingly fair and straightforward, describes (Origines du Culte Chrétien, p. 24) how the popes refused to accept the canons of Constantinople and Chalcedon, which regulated the precedence and jurisdiction of the see of Constantinople; but he candidly adds, "mais leur voix fut peu écoutée; on leur accorda sans doute des satisfactions, mais de pure cérémonie." In ante-Nicene times even ceremonial satisfactions would have been refused, as the histories of Popes Victor and Stephen show. Mr. Richardson (What are the Catholic Claims? p. 93) attempts to reply to the Fathers of Chalcedon by asking the question, "Can any one point to a human grant of the primacy to Rome? The inconclusiveness of the argument implied in that question may be shown by asking another, "Can any one point to a human grant of the primacy over Africa to Carthage? or of the primacy over Palestine to Caesarea?" Yet who supposes that the jurisdiction of those sees was secured to them by the jus divinum? Compare the remarks of Möhler and of Father de Smedt, to which reference is made in the note on p. 7. It ought to be observed that, when the Fathers of Chalcedon attributed the privileges of the Roman see to the fact that it was the imperial city, they were merely repeating what the second Ecumenical Council had implied in its third canon, seventy years before (see Dr. Bright's Notes on the Canons of the First Four General Councils, p. 93, 1st edit.). " of the whole Church. No wonder that the Bishop of Rome was held in high honour, and was the natural person to take the initiative in movements affecting the whole body. But we must be careful not to exaggerate in this matter. There was a marked primacy of honour and influence, but there was no primacy of jurisdiction. The inherent jurisdiction of the Roman see was exactly the same as the inherent jurisdiction of every other see in Christendom. Its acquired or delegated jurisdiction was limited first to the whole of Italy, and then later, from about the middle of the fourth century, to the suburbicarian provinces of Central and Southern Italy with the adjacent islands. Outside those provinces, throughout the Church, but especially in the West, Rome had influence, but no actual jurisdiction,1 whether patriarchal or papal. Similarly the Bishop of Alexandria's acquired jurisdiction was limited to Egypt, Libya, and the Pentapolis, but his influence extended over the whole Church, and especially over the East. In the preceding statement I have tried to set before you a true view of the relations of the various sees to one another, and especially of the relation of the Bishop of Rome to his brothers and colleagues in the episcopate during the first three centuries. The justification of that statement will be perceived if the facts of early Church history and the writings of the early Fathers are studied. As I am giving a lecture, and not writing an exhaustive treatise, I can only discuss a small selection of facts and passages, but I honestly think that the selection which I shall make will be a fair selection. I propose, then, to consider 1. The Paschal controversy in the time of Pope Victor : 2. The famous passage of S. Irenaeus about the Roman Church: 3. The history of S. Cyprian of Carthage. The Paschal Controversy. The bishops of Proconsular Asia, the metropolis of which was Ephesus, had been accustomed ever since the time of the apostles to keep the feast of Easter on the day of the Paschal full moon, whether that day fell on a Sunday or on any other day of the week. The bishops in all, or almost all, the other provinces of the Church, both in the East and in the West, kept Easter on the Sunday following the Paschal full moon. The bishops of the province of Ephesus asserted that they had received their custom by tradition from S. John; and one can hardly doubt that that assertion of theirs was 1 See Additional Note 5, p. 436. |