For the local administration of church affairs, the Catholic world was divided under the pope into several territorial subdivisions, (1) The patriarchates had been under patriarchs who had their sees [Footnote: "See," so called from the Latin sedes, referring to their seat or chair of office. Similarly our word "cathedral" is derived from the Latin cathedra, the official chair which the bishop occupies in his own church.] in such ancient Christian centers as Rome. Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch. and Constantinople. (2) The provinces were divisions of the patriarchates and usually centered in the most important cities, such as Milan, Florence, Cologne, Upsala, Lyons, Seville, Lisbon, Canterbury, York; and the head of each was styled a metropolitan or archbishop. (3) The diocese—the most essential unit of local administration—was a subdivision of the province, commonly a city or a town, with a certain amount of surrounding country, under the immediate supervision of a bishop. (4) Smaller divisions, particularly parishes, were to be found in every diocese, embracing a village or a section of a city, and each parish had its church building and its priest. Thus the Catholic Church possessed a veritable army of officials from pope and cardinals down through patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, to the parish priests and their assistants, the deacons. This hierarchy, because it labored in the world (sæculo), was called the "secular clergy."
[Sidenote: "Regular" Clergy]
Another variety of clergy—the "regulars"—supplemented the work of the seculars. The regulars were monks, [Footnote: The word "monk" is applied, of course, only to men; women who followed similar rules are commonly styled nuns.] that is, Christians who lived by a special rule (regula), who renounced the world, took vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and strove to imitate the life of Christ as literally as possible. The regular clergy were organized under their own abbots, priors, provincials, or generals, being usually exempt from secular jurisdiction, except that of the pope. The regulars were the great missionaries of the Church, and many charitable and educational institutions were in their hands. Among the various orders of monks which had grown up in the course of time, the following should be enumerated: (1) The monks who lived in fixed abodes, tilled the soil, copied manuscripts, and conducted local schools. Most of the monks of this kind followed a rule, or society by-laws, which had been prepared by the celebrated St. Benedict about the year 525: they were called therefore Benedictines. (2) The monks who organized crusades, often bore arms themselves, and tended the holy places connected with incidents in the life of Christ: such orders were the Knights Templars, the Knights Hospitalers of St. John and of Malta, and the Teutonic Knights who subsequently undertook the conversion of the Slavs. (3) The monks who were called the begging friars or mendicants because they had no fixed abode but wandered from place to place, preaching to the common people and dependent for their own living upon alms. These orders came into prominence in the thirteenth century and included, among others, the Franciscan, whose lovable founder Saint Francis of Assisi had urged humility and love of the poor as its distinguishing characteristics, and the Dominican, or Order of the Preachers, devoted by the precept of its practical founder, Saint Dominic, to missionary zeal. All the mendicant orders, as well as the Benedictine monasteries, became famous in the history of education, and the majority of the distinguished scholars of the middle ages were monks. It was not uncommon, moreover, for regulars to enter the secular hierarchy and thus become parish priests or bishops, or even popes.
[Sidenote: Church Councils]
[Sidenote: Conciliar Movement]
The clergy—bishops, priests, and deacons—constituted, in popular belief, the divinely ordained administration of the Catholic Church. The legislative authority in the Church similarly was vested in the pope and in the general councils, neither of which, however, could set aside a law of God, as affirmed in the gospels, or establish a doctrine at variance with the tradition of the early Christian writers. The general councils were assemblies of prelates of the Catholic world, and there had been considerable discussion as to the relative authority of their decrees and the decisions and directions of the pope. [Footnote: Papal documents have been called by various names, such as decretals, bulls, or encyclicals.] General church councils held in eastern Europe from the fourth to the ninth centuries had issued important decrees or canons defining Christian dogmas and establishing ecclesiastical discipline, which had been subsequently ratified and promulgated by the pope as by other bishops and by the emperors; and several councils had been held in western Europe from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries under the direct supervision of the bishop of Rome, all the canons of which had been enacted in accordance with his wishes. But early in the fifteenth century a movement was inaugurated by certain Catholic bishops and scholars in favor of making the councils superior to the pope and a regular source of supreme legislation for the Church. In this way, the councils of Constance (1414-1418) and Basel (1431 ff.) had endeavored to introduce representative, if not democratic, government into the Church. The popes, however, objected to this conciliar movement and managed to have it condemned by the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-1442). By the year 1512 the papal theory had triumphed and Catholics generally recognized again that the government of the Church was essentially monarchical. The laws of the Catholic Church were known as canons, and, of several codes of canon law which had been prepared, that of a monk named Gratian, compiled in the twelfth century, was the most widely used.
[Sidenote: The Pope and his Powers]
We are now in a position to summarize the claims and prerogatives of the bishop of Rome or pope. (1) He was the supreme lawgiver. He could issue decrees of his own, which might not be set aside by any other person. No council might enact canons without his approval. From any law, other than divine, he might dispense persons. (2) He was the supreme judge in Christendom. He claimed that appeals might be taken from decisions in foreign courts to his own Curia, as court of last resort. He himself frequently acted as arbitrator, as, for example, in the famous dispute between Spain and Portugal concerning the boundaries of their newly discovered possessions. (3) He was the supreme administrator. He claimed the right to supervise the general business of the whole Church. No archbishop might perform the functions of his office until he received his insignia—the pallium—from the pope. No bishop might be canonically installed until his election had been confirmed by the pope. The pope claimed the right to transfer a bishop from one diocese to another and to settle all disputed elections. He exercised immediate control over the regular clergy—the monks and nuns. He sent ambassadors, styled legates, to represent him at the various royal courts and to see that his instructions were obeyed. (4) He insisted upon certain temporal rights, as distinct from his directly religious prerogatives. He crowned the Holy Roman Emperor. He might depose an emperor or king and release a ruler's subjects from their oath of allegiance. He might declare null and void, and forbid the people to obey, a law of any state, if he thought it was injurious to the interests of the Church. He was temporal ruler of the city of Rome and the surrounding papal states, and over those territories he exercised a power similar to that of any duke or king. (5) He claimed financial powers. In order to defray the enormous expenses of his government, he charged fees for certain services at Rome, assessed the dioceses throughout the Catholic world, and levied a small tax—Peter's Pence—upon all Christian householders.
[Sidenote: Purpose of the Church]
So far we have concerned ourselves with the organization of the Catholic Church—its membership, its officers, the clergy, secular and regular, all culminating in the pope, the bishop of Rome. But why did this great institution exist? Why was it loved, venerated, and well served? The purpose of the Church, according to its own teaching, was to follow the instructions of its Divine Master, Jesus Christ, in saving souls. Only the Church might interpret those instructions; the Church alone might apply the means of salvation; outside the Church no one could be saved. [Footnote: Catholic theologians have recognized, however, the possibility of salvation of persons outside the visible Church. Thus, the catechism of Pope Pius X says: "Whoever, without any fault of his own, and in good faith, being outside the Church, happens to have been baptized or to have at least an implicit desire for baptism, and, furthermore, has been sincere in seeking to find the truth, and has done his best to do the will of God, such an one, although separated from the body of the Church, would still belong to her soul, and therefore be in the way of salvation.">[ The salvation of souls for eternity was thus the supreme business of the Church.
[Sidenote: Theology]