Papacy

Centrifugal Forces in the Catholic Church.

After the period of the persecutions had passed by, the great ecclesiastical capitals Carthage, Alexandria, Antioch and Constantinople, as secondary centres of organization and administration, drew to themselves and kept in their hands a share in ecclesiastical affairs. It was only under quite exceptional circumstances that any need was felt for oecumenical decisions. Further, the direction of affairs, both ordinary and extraordinary, tended to pass from the bishops to the state, which was now christianized. The Eastern Church had soon de facto as its head the Eastern emperors. Henceforth it receded more and more from the influence of the Roman Church, and this centrifugal movement was greatly helped by the fact that the Roman Church, having ceased to know the Greek language, found herself practically excluded from the world of Greek Christianity.

In the West also centrifugal forces made themselves felt. After Cyprian the African episcopate, in proportion as it perfected its organization, seemed to feel less and less the need for close relations with the apostolic see. In the 4th century the Donatist party was in open schism ; the orthodox party had the upper hand in the time of Aurelius and Augustine; the regular meeting of the councils further increased the corporate cohesion of the 'Victor's conduct in this matter was not approved by a number of bishops (including Irenaeus), who protested against it (tivrorapaKeXebovrat) in the interests of peace and Christian love (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. v. 24).--LED.1 African episcopal body. From them sprang a code of ecclesiastical laws and a whole judicial organization. With this organization, under the popes Zosimus, Boniface and Celestine the Roman Church came into conflict on somewhat trivial grounds, and was, on the whole, being worsted in the struggle, when the Vandal invasion of Africa took place, and for nearly a century to come the Catholic communities were subjected to very hard treat ment.

During the 4th century it is to be noticed that, generally speaking, the Roman Church played a comparatively insignificant part in the West. From the time of popes Damasus and Siricius various affairs were referred to Rome from Africa, Spain or Gaul. The popes were asked to give decisions, and in answer to those demands drew up their first decretals. However, side by side with the Roman see was that of Milan, which was also the capital of the Western empire. From time to time it seemed as if Milan would become to Rome what Constantinople was to Alexandria. However, any danger that menaced the prestige of Rome disappeared when the emperor Honorius removed the impe rial residence to Ravenna, and still more so when the Western emperors were replaced in the north of Italy by barbarian sover eigns, who were Arians.

In Spain, Gaul, Brittany and the provinces of the Danube, similar political changes took place. When orthodox Christianity

had gained the upper hand beyond the Alps and the Pyrenees, the episcopate of those countries grouped itself, as it had done in the East, around the sovereigns. In Spain was produced a fairly strong religious centralization around the Visigothic king and the metropolitan of Toledo. In Gaul there was no chief metro politan ; but the king's court became, even sooner than that of Spain, the centre of episcopal affairs. The Britons and Irish, whose remoteness made them free from restriction, developed still more decided individuality. In short, the workings of all the Western episcopates, from Africa to the ocean, the Rhine and the Danube, lay outside the ordinary influence of the Roman see. All of them, even down to the metropolitan sees of Milan and Aquileia, practised a certain degree of autonomy, and in the 6th century this developed into what is called the Schism of the Three Chapters. With the exception of this schism, these episcopates were by no means in opposition to the Holy See. They always kept up relations of some kind, especially by means of pilgrim ages, and it was admitted that in any disputes which might arise with the Eastern Church the pope had the right to speak as representative of the whole of the Western Church.

Rome and Constantinople.

This was the situation when St. Gregory was elected pope in 59o. We may add that in peninsular Italy, which was most clearly under his ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the Lombards had spread havoc and ruin ; so that nearly 90 bishoprics had been suppressed, either temporarily or definitively. The pope could act directly only on the bishoprics of the coast districts or the islands. Beyond this limited circle he had to act by means of diplomatic channels, through the governments of the Lombards, Franks and Visigoths. On the Byzantine side his hands were less tied; but here he had to reckon with the theory of the five patriarchates which had been a force since Justinian. According to Byzantine ideas, the Church was governed—under the supreme authority, of course, of the emperor—by the five patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Rome had for a long time opposed this division, but, since some kind of division was necessary, had put forward the idea of the three sees of St. Peter—Rome, Alexandria and Antioch —those of Constantinople and Jerusalem being set aside, as resulting from later usurpations. But the last named were just the most important; in fact the only ones which counted at all, since the monophysite secession had reduced the number of the orthodox in Syria and Egypt practically to nothing. This dissidence Islam was to complete, and by actually suppressing the patriarchate of Jerusalem to reduce Byzantine Christendom to the two patriarchates of Rome and Constantinople.