CHAPTER VIII
THE POPE
As Christianity spread through the world in the second and third centuries, churches, that is to say places in which the Christians assembled for worship, were established in many cities. In different parts of the Empire, as these parts were converted from paganism, overseers of the local churches were appointed and were called "episcopi," from a Greek word which is very literally translated by our word overseer. And our word "bishop" is formed from that word "episcopus." There was, of course, a bishop, an episcopus, at Rome.
If Jerusalem had not been, as we have seen that it was, so battered by war and so deserted by the inhabitants who were driven out of it, it is likely that Jerusalem would have been regarded as the chief Christian city, because Christ had taught and had suffered there. It was the centre and chief city of the religion on which Christianity was based and of that law which Christ Himself said that He came not to destroy but to fulfil. But Jerusalem itself was almost destroyed.
Rome was the chief city, the centre, of the Empire. At Rome, moreover, the apostle who did more than any other to spread Christianity among the Gentiles—that is to say, all over the world—St. Paul, had lived for some years, and had died.
Whether St. Peter ever came to Rome is still rather uncertain. The evidence is not clear. But the latest researches seem to make it probable that he did go to Rome, and perhaps died there, as martyr. For we must remember that all through the first centuries Christianity had to fight its way against great opposition from those of the pagan religion. Besides the hatred of Christianity which some felt because it was a new religion, it incurred the hatred of the rulers because the Christians seemed to be setting up for themselves another ruler than the Roman Emperor. Even during Christ's life we know that the Christians in Judæa were suspected of enmity to the Emperor. The Pharisees laid a trap for Jesus by asking Him whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Cæsar. So the Christians often had to meet for worship in secret, and thousands of them were cruelly put to death.
Rome, then, because it was the centre of the Empire—which, for all Rome's subjects, meant the centre of the Universe—and also because it was the place where certainly St. Paul, and very probably St. Peter also, lived and died, became naturally the place to which the Christians throughout the Empire looked as the chief place in which their God was worshipped, and the place to which they would bring for decision any difficult questions and differences of opinion which the bishop of the district in which such debate arose could not settle for them. These districts were named "dioceses" from a very early date.
The bishop of Rome
Thus the bishop of Rome came to have an authority above the others. And then the legend grew that to him St. Peter, who was supposed to be the keeper of the keys of the gate of Heaven, had bequeathed some, at least, of that authority which St. Peter himself had directly from Christ.
Thus it was, even before the Emperor Constantine confessed himself a Christian. You should observe that the Emperors themselves had been deemed to be in some degree divine, and to have the power and glory of gods, up to this time. Constantine, proclaiming Christianity as the State religion, gave up this claim to divinity for the Emperor. The time had not yet come when the Head of the Church—its Father, Papa, or Pope—should actually confer the Imperial authority on the Emperor by consecration in the great cathedral built in Rome to St. Peter's glory. That time was not yet; but it was not so very far distant. It came, about the year 800, with the consecration of Charlemagne after he had destroyed the kingdom of the Lombards and taken their territories for his own.