Early European History

by Hutton Webster

122. WESTERN CHRISTIANITY: RISE OF THE PAPACY

THE PAPACY

Christianity in the West presented two sharp contrasts to eastern Christianity. In the first place, the great heresies which divided the East scarcely affected the West. In the second place, no union of Church and State existed among western Christians. Instead of acknowledging the religious supremacy of the emperor at Constantinople, they yielded obedience to the bishop of Rome, the head of the Roman Church. He is known to us as the pope, and his office is called the Papacy. We shall now inquire how the popes secured their unchallenged authority over western Christendom.

[Illustration: PAPAL ARMS According to the well-known passage in Matthew (xvi, 19), Christ gave to St. Peter the "keys of the kingdom of heaven," with the power "to bind and to loose." These keys are always represented in the papal arms, together with the tiara or headdress, worn by the popes on certain occasions.]

ROME AN APOSTOLIC CHURCH

A church in Rome must have been established at an early date, for it was to Roman Christians that St. Paul addressed one of the Epistles now preserved in the New Testament. St. Paul visited Rome, as we know from the Acts of the Apostles, and there he is said to have suffered martyrdom. Christian tradition, very ancient and very generally received, declares that St. Peter also labored in Rome, where he met a martyr's death, perhaps during the reign of the emperor Nero. To the early Christians, therefore, the Roman Church must have seemed in the highest degree sacred, for it had been founded by the two greatest apostles and had been nourished by their blood.

ROME A "MOTHER-CHURCH"

Another circumstance helped to give the Roman Church a superior position in the West. It was a vigorous missionary church. Rome, the largest and most flourishing city in the empire and the seat of the imperial government, naturally became the center from which Christianity spread over the western provinces. Many of the early Christian communities planted in Spain, Gaul, and Africa owed their start to the missionary zeal of the Roman Church. To Rome, as the great "Mother-church," her daughters in western Europe would turn henceforth with reverence and affection; they would readily acknowledge her leading place among the churches; and they would seek her advice on disputed points of Christian belief or worship.

THE ROMAN CHURCH INDEPENDENT

The independence of the Roman Church also furthered its development. The bishop of Rome was the sole patriarch in the West, while in the East there were two, and later four patriarchs, each exercising authority in religious matters. Furthermore, the removal of the capital from Rome to Constantinople helped to free the Roman bishop from the close oversight of the imperial government. He was able, henceforth, to promote the interests of the church under his control without much interference on the part of the eastern emperor.

THE ROMAN CHURCH ORTHODOX

Finally, it must be noted how much the development of the Roman Church was aided by its attitude on disputed questions of belief. While eastern Christendom was torn by theological controversies, the Church of Rome stood firmly by the Nicene Creed. [13] After the Arian, Nestorian, and other heresies were finally condemned, orthodox Christians felt indebted to the Roman Church for its unwavering championship of "the faith once delivered to the saints." They were all the more ready, therefore, to defer to that church in matters of doctrine and to accept without question its spiritual authority.

THE PETRINE SUPREMACY

The claim of the Roman bishops to supremacy over the Christian world had a double basis. Certain passages in the New Testament, where St. Peter is represented as the rock on which the Church is built, the pastor of the sheep and lambs of the Lord, and the doorkeeper of the kingdom of heaven, appear to indicate that he was regarded by Christ as the chief of the Apostles. Furthermore, a well-established tradition made St. Peter the founder of the Roman Church and its first bishop. It was then argued that he passed to his successors, the popes, all his rights and dignity. As St. Peter was the first among the Apostles, so the popes were to be the first among bishops. Such was the doctrine of the Petrine supremacy, expressed as far back as the second century, strongly asserted by many popes during the Middle Ages, and maintained to-day by the Roman Church.