VATICAN (vat'T-kan), (Lat. vaticanus). This term denotes the magnificent assemblage of build ings on the Mons raticonns, or the Vatican Hill, at the extreme northwestern part of the city of Rome. It is often used to indicate the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. The grounds of the supremacy of the Church of Rome are briefly given in the article which follows, by the Rev erend T. J. Shahan, D. D., Professor of Church History in the Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C.
The three thousand souls who formed the nucleus of Christianity at Jerusalem (Acts ii:41) increased rapidly. Tacitus speaks of a "great multitude" of adherents at Rome (A. D. 64), and a letter of the younger Pliny to Trajan shows that the mission of Paul and Barnabas to Bithynia had made an impression on the entire society of that province. In his Apology, Tertullian appeals to the great number of the Christians of Africa. By the middle of the third century the episcopal sees were numerous in Central and Southern Italy, and the synod of Elvira (A. D. 300) shows that in Spain Christians were very numerous in every walk of life. There were Christian martyrs in Britain in the persecution of Diocletian. St. lrerucus and Tertullian speak as though the Britons of their time had heard the gospel. It is not probable that Christians were numerous in Gaul before the middle of the third century.
In the first decades of its history we find this so ciety divided into laity and clergy. "The layman is bound by the layman's ordinances," writes St. Clement (about A. D. 96), "and the apostles ap pointed their first fruits, when they had proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons unto them that should believe." From the beginning of the second century we find in all Christian com munities a bishop, priests and deacons, an em bryonic but uniform government in countries re mote from one another, at an epoch when the ac tion of the principal sees, notably Rome, was as yet weak and faint. This phenomenon easily sug gests the apostolic origin of the episcopate.
From the letters of St. Ignatius to the writings of St. Cyprian the bishop is head, shepherd, judge, representative of the Christian community, its presiding officer in worship, and its bond of union. The priests are counselors to the bishop, instruc tors of the faithful, and vicars of the bishop when lie is absent or incapacitated. The deacons, hier archically inferior to the priests, had a much greater influence ; the temporal administration was practically in their hands, as well as the immediate service of the bishop in divine worship, the dis tribution of the Eucharist, and occasional confer ring of baptism.
About the middle of the third century the min istry of the deacons was subdivided, and the "minor orders" introduced, first in the Church of Rome. The selection of all this clergy was left to the bishop with the counsel of his presbytery and the good will of the people. The bishop was elected by the local clergy; the assistance of three bishops was required for a licit consecration. The metropolitan and the bishops of the province con firmed the newly-elect. The support of this clergy came from weekly offerings of the Chris tians, from their own patrimony, or their labor. Certain qualities were required for entrance among the clergy, and certain impediments were soon established ; the age for the priesthood was thirty, that for the episcopate about fifty. Celibacy was held very desirable for the bishops, priests and deacons. After diaconal ordination clerics could not marry without renouncing the exercise of their order, but there seems to have been no apostolic law obliging to continency the married man who became deacon, and in time priest or bishop.
Each bishop governed the Christians of a mu nicipal district; as a rule, his authority ran parallel with the city territory; thus he had under him not only the municipal clergy, but also the deacons, and "rural bishops" who governed the remote hamlets or towns. The bishop of the provincial metropolis soon rose to the dignity of metropoli tan, because of the size of his city, the number of his flock, and the standing of its principal mem bers; great influence, too, accrued to him through the custom of holding frequent synods in his city —a custom as old as the fifth or sixth decade of the second century, and which argues a monarch ical episcopacy very widely spread. The metro politans were subject to certain higher dignitaries whose circles of influence, established long before the council of Nice (A. D. 325), corresponded to the great civil divisions of the empire. They were Alexandria, Antioch and Rome. Ephesus in proconsular Asia, Caesarea in Cappadocia, and Heraclwa in Thrace, were also centers of a su perior unity. This unity was an ideal deeply cher ished and practically preserved by means of the correspondence of bishops, annual synodal meet ings, excommunication of offenders against dis cipline or belief, letters or certificates of member ship, and the bond of filiation between churches.