already existing law. But often, under cover of declaring the old law, they really made new law. For example, old laws might belong to different categories. Some laws would be general laws binding the whole Church, or at any rate binding the whole West, others would be local laws or customs received only at Rome and in the suburbicarian circumscription. The popes, writing to distant provinces in Spain, Gaul, or elsewhere, might refer to local Italian customs as old laws, and set them forth as binding on distant churches,' and thus, by the authority of their decretal epistle, make them to become law in places where hitherto they had had no canonical force.

But it must be observed that this legislative or quasilegislative action of the popes through decretal epistles was confined to the West. It was a very rare thing for any Eastern prelate to write to Rome such letters of inquiry on matters of discipline as often came from Western churches. I do remember one such case. Alexander, Bishop of Antioch, wrote a letter of inquiry to Pope Innocent I. (circa 415); and Innocent sent an answer, but it never became part of the Eastern canon law. On the contrary, one very important portion of Innocent's letter, in which he laid down that the Bishop of Antioch ought to have patriarchal jurisdiction over the bishops of Cyprus, was practically annulled, if it ever had any force, by the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus held sixteen years afterwards, which declared that, if the statement of facts contained in the petition of the bishops of Cyprus was correct, they were to remain free, and (to use the technical expression) autocephalous. As may be supposed, the decision of the council prevailed over that of the pope; although that is hardly an accurate way of stating the case, for the pope's decretal could have had no legal or canonical force in the East; and moreover it avowedly proceeded upon an ex parte statement.3

It follows, from what I have said, that the quasi-legislative authority of Rome, which was exercised after the time of Damasus through the papal decretals, being an authority

1 Compare the letter of Pope Innocent I. to Decentius of Eugubium, in which he says that the churches throughout Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa, Sicily, and the adjacent islands ought to follow the customs of the Roman Church. He proceeds to give a number of liturgical and ritual directions, e.g. as to the point in the altar service, when the kiss of peace is to be given, and the like. He gives the Roman rule, and asserts that the Western churches ought to conform themselves to it (cf. Coleti, iii. 4). That was doubtless the papal view, but it was not carried out. The traditions of Gaul, Spain, and even of North Italy, were entirely opposed to such liturgical conformity. See Duchesne, Origines du Culte Chrétien, chap. iii. pp. 81-99, et passim.

2 The Church of Cyprus remains autocephalous to this day (see Duchesne, Origines du Culle Chrétien, p. 26).

See Dr. Bright's Roman See in the Early Church, p. 169.

which was only received in the West, was part of the pope's patriarchal power. It was not a power belonging to his primatial position with reference to the whole Church. The fact is, that as primate of the whole Church he had no jurisdiction, but only honour and influence: as State-made Patriarch of the West he had a jurisdiction derived from the Emperor : in those Western provinces, where the canons of Sardica were received, he had, over and above his State-given authority, a very limited jurisdiction derived from the synodical action of the Church and, finally, in the suburbicarian churches he had a very full and commanding metropolitical jurisdiction derived from ancient custom-that is to say, if we go to the bottom of the matter, derived from the delegation or concession of the bishops of Central and Southern Italy, and regulated and confirmed, as time went on, by the canons of councils.

As we have seen, it was in the time of Damasus that the State made the pope Patriarch of the West, and it was in the time of Damasus' successor Siricius that the first decretal epistle, having force of law anywhere outside the suburbicarian region, was issued. It was addressed to Himerius, Bishop of Tarragona in Spain. That letter to Himerius was the beginning of the long line of the genuine papal decretals. In later ages, when it was believed that the popes had always from the beginning been monarchs of the Church, men must have thought it strange that the decretals should begin with Siricius. And so in the ninth century the pseudo-Isidore forged decretals, which he attributed to the earlier popes, from S. Clement of Rome, who, according to the old mistake, was supposed to be S. Peter's immediate successor, onwards. But I must not be tempted into discoursing now about the forged decretals. If we fix our attention on the genuine decretals, we find that Pope Siricius and his successors were, as it would seem, ashamed to base their asserted legislative authority on the constitutions of the Emperors. As I intimated in my last lecture, they laid stress on their vague claim to be successors of S. Peter in his chair; and in their decretals they began to speak in a semi-mystical way of S. Peter living on in them, and acting and judging and defining through them. Let me give a few examples. Pope Siricius, in his first decretal to Himerius, says, "We bear the burdens of all who are heavily laden; or rather the blessed Apostle Peter bears them in us; for he, as we trust, in all things protects and defends us who are the heirs of his government."1 Similarly, Xystus III., who became pope about thirty-four years after the death of Siricius (viz. in A.D. 432), says in one of his letters that "the blessed

1 Coleti, Concilia, ii. 1213.

"2

Peter in his successors has delivered that which he received." 1 Thus the popes of that age taught that S. Peter was in some sense in them, his successors, bearing the burdens of the heavily laden, and delivering in them and through them the deposit of the faith which he had originally received. And this doctrine about S. Peter living and acting in the popes, which was being put forth by the popes, was naturally repeated by papal legates and by other persons closely connected with the Roman see. Thus we find Philip, one of the papal legates at the Council of Ephesus, saying that "the most blessed Peter, the prince and head of the apostles, ... up to the present time and always lives and judges in his successors." We must certainly say that all this is new doctrine; new and therefore false; an attempt to give a religious sanction to the great position which the Roman pontiffs had acquired mainly through the legislative action of the State. It would be easy to quote further illustrations of the increasing tendency to make large and baseless claims on behalf of the Roman see, which may be found in the letters of Pope Innocent (402-417), Pope Zosimus (417-418), Pope Boniface (418-422), and their successors; but what I have said under this head is, I think, sufficient. One more point, however, ought to be noticed. Practically these popes of the early part of the fifth century did not attempt to legislate for the East, or to exercise in any specially papal way jurisdiction over it. They probably knew that their claims would be ignored or repudiated. They pressed their new theories on the West, especially on those parts of the West which lay outside the suburbicarian provinces, and which had only recently been brought within their jurisdiction by the action of the State. They asserted their new claims on Gaul, and on Illyricum, and on Spain, and on Africa. Having no valid ground for this new jurisdiction of a religious or ecclesiastical character, all that they could do was to refer perpetually to S. Peter, and to the rights which they inherited from him. But of course, any divinely instituted rights coming to the popes from S. Peter as primate, if they existed at all, would be universal in their range. The popes were thus forced to lay down principles which applied to both East and West, though for the present they did not urge them on the East. They were building up a Western patriarchate; but the arguments which they used, if they were sound, really pointed to a universal patriarchate-in other words, to an ecumenical papacy. As time went on, they must have felt this; and when the opportunity presented itself in the time

1 Coleti, iii. 1697.

2 Ibid., iii. 1153.

of S. Leo, and still more in the time of S. Leo's successors,1 the claim to ecumenical jurisdiction came openly to the front.

But how did the Western provinces accept the new patriarchal yoke which was being pressed upon them? Naturally, the way in which it was received varied according to circumstances. Apparently, the patriarchal authority of Rome was received with least opposition in Eastern Illyricum, the most eastern division of the West.2 On the other hand, it met with the sturdiest rejection in Africa. The great Church of North Africa was at the height of its glory, and, one may add, of its sanctity. It had splendid traditions reaching back to the time of S. Cyprian and to the still earlier times of the second century. In the beginning of the fifth century, it was illuminated by the combined holiness and genius of S. Augustine. And S. Augustine was but one, although the greatest, among a number of saints; as, for example, to name two of them, S. Aurelius of Carthage and S. Alypius of Tagaste. The African Church had from early times been accustomed to act as one body under the leadership of the Bishop of Carthage. But the Bishop of Carthage, though leader, had no exaggerated authority. His relation to the African bishops was very different from the relation of the Bishop of Alexandria to the Egyptian bishops, and from the relation of the Bishop of Rome to the suburbicarian bishops. Everything in Africa seemed to bear on it the stamp of primitive freedom. Consequently, the African bishops were not at all disposed to accept meekly the new claims which were being put forth by the popes. I might illustrate this statement by referring to various episodes which occurred during the course of the Pelagian controversy, but for my present purpose I prefer to speak of the case of Apiarius.

Apiarius was a priest of the Church of Sicca, a city situated in what was called the proconsular province, of which Carthage was the metropolis. He fell into certain sins-we are not told the details in regard to them—and he was deposed and excommunicated, perhaps with some informality, either in the latter part of the year 417 or early

1 E.g. Felix III., Gelasius, Symmachus, and Hormisdas.

Ecclesiastically, Eastern Illyricum belonged to the West. Even there the bishops protested, when the popes first began to receive appeals from the decisions of the local synods. In the time of Pope Innocent I. (circa 414) the Macedonian bishops objected to the pope rehearing the cases of Bubalius and Taurianus, who had been condemned in Macedonia: see the eighteenth epistle of Innocent in Dom Coustant's collection of the Letters of the Roman pontiffs (i. 841, 842). Dom Coustant, commenting on the words of Innocent, says, "Hence we may conclude that Bubalius and Taurianus, having been judged by the Macedonians, had appealed to the apostolic see, and that the Macedonians were indignant that their judgement should be reviewed."

2

in 418, by Urban, Bishop of Sicca, who had been a pupil of S. Augustine. Apiarius appealed from his bishop to Pope Zosimus.1 Probably he knew that, if he appealed to the provincial synod, the witnesses of his crimes would be forthcoming, and his condemnation would undoubtedly be ratified. He therefore appealed to distant Rome. Cardinal Baronius tells us 8 that Zosimus received the appeal, and admitted Apiarius to communion, and restored him to the exercise of his priestly functions. Apparently, Apiarius, when he was in Rome, made various counter-accusations against his bishop Urban, poisoning thereby the mind of Pope Zosimus. Whereupon Zosimus sent three legates, Faustinus, Bishop of Potentia in the March of Ancona, and two Roman priests, Philip and Asellus. After their arrival in Africa a council was held in the autumn, either at Carthage, as is generally supposed, or at Caesarea in Mauritania Caesariensis, as Van Espen holds. At this council the Roman legates were present. They had brought with them a commonitorium from the pope, in which they were charged to treat with the African bishops on four points. They were to request (1) that the African bishops should be allowed to appeal to the Roman see; (2) that bishops should not go so often to the imperial court; (3) that priests and deacons, if rashly excommunicated by their bishop, should be allowed to appeal to the neighbouring bishops; (4) that Bishop Urban of Sicca should be excommunicated or even sent to Rome, if he did not amend his ways. They quoted, in support of the first point, the fifth (al. seventh) canon of Sardica, which, as I showed in a previous lecture, granted a very limited right of appeal to Rome. But the legates did not quote it as a canon of Sardica, but as a canon of the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. The canons of Sardica were not

1 Apiarius seems to have been the first African priest of his time who ventured to appeal, on a disciplinary question, from an African synod to Rome. He may have been emboldened to take this step by the apparently successful result of the appeals of the Briton Pelagius and of the Irishman Coelestius, on a doctrinal question, to Pope Zosimus. It is true that in 418 the pope condemned those heretics, but in the autumn of 417 he seemed to be taking their side. Moreover, in consequence of Zosimus' favourable attitude towards Pelagius and Coelestius, a very critical state of tension existed between the Churches of Africa and Rome, which lasted from October, 417, to May, 418. Apiarius may well have felt that an appeal to Rome from Africa at that particular time had every chance of success.

2 The appeal must have been made before the great council of May, 418; compare p. 195.

Annal. Eccl., s.a. 419, tom. v. pp. 463, 464, ed. 1648.

See Van Espen's Dissertat. in Synodos Africanas, § x. art. ii., Op. Posthum., ed. 1755, pp. 292–294. For my own part, I believe that this preliminary council was held at Carthage in November or December, 418, after S. Augustine's return from Mauritania.

The legates also quoted, in support of the third point, the fourteenth (al.