There are three offices or dignities united in the person of the Roman pontiff. Ile is-1, the primate or head of the Roman Catholic world ; 2, he is bishop of Rome and metropolitan of its province ; 3, he is the temporal sovereign of the Papal State. His authority and the manner of his administration in the last-mentioned capacity are described under PAPAL STATES in the G!oo. Div. We may, however, here add, that in 1860 a very material alteration has taken place in the dominions of the Pope. The far greater part of the territories there mentioned as owning his sovereignty, have transferred their allegiance to Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia, and the power of the Pope is now nearly circumscribed within the Legation of Rome, and the Delegations of Ancona, Viterbo, and Civita Vecchia, and even there it is in effect only maintained by the presence of French troops.
Considered as pontiff and primate of the Roman Catholic church, the pope has a very extensive spiritual authority over the members, both clerical and lay, of that communion. The limits of this authority are however variously defined even by Roman Catholic theologians. We cannot do better than quote on this subject the definition given in a work of considerable repute and written with great discrimination, which is entitled Bibliotheque Saerde, ou Dictionuaire Universe!, Historique, Doginatique, Canonique, et Chronologique des Sciences Eccl4sialitiquee, par lea RevSrends Peres Richard et Giraud, Dominicains ; r6imprim6 avec additions et corrections par une Socidt6 d'Ecelesiastiques,' 20 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1822. Under the bead Pape,' section iii.,' De la Puissance etAuthorit4 du Pape,' we read as follows :-1. "All Catholics acknowledge:that the pope holds by divine right a primacy of honour, of precedence, and of authority and canonical jurisdiction in the whole church, because be is the successor of St. Peter, to whom Jesus Christ granted those privileges. (Matthew x. 2, and xvi. 17-19.) But Is the pope infallible in his decisions con cerning law or discipline ? Is he above the general council? Has he any power, direct or indirect, over sovereigns and kingdoms? Divines are very much divided in opinion upon these questions." 2. " We may consider the pope either as a private and individual doctor of the law, or as the sovereign pontiff speaking' ex cathedrA' in his quality of head of the universal church, to which church he proposes something to be believed an an article of divine faith, under pain of heresy, and this ho does after having prayed, having consulted the sacred college of cardinals, and employed the other customary means in order to ascertain the truth. Now the French theologians in general, agreeably to the fourth proposition of the Galilean church, maintain, that even in this case, when he speaks ex cathedra; the pope is not infallible, and that his decisions become infallible only after they have been accepted by the church, either in council assembled or dispersed in its various congregations throughout the world. The Italian divines on the contrary, commonly assert that the pope is infallible when he speaks ex cathedra; independently of the consent of the church. They ground their assertion on the passage in St. Matthew, Tu es Petrus,' &e. How,' say they, can the church be infallible, if the foundation upon which it is built be not infallible? Doesthe church rest upon Peter, or Peter upon the church ?' To this their opponents reply—I, that the rock upon which the church is built means faith, and not the person of Peter; 2, that the promise of infallibility was made to the whole church, and not to Peter individually; 3, that all the passages which are quoted from the Scriptures or the fathers in favour of the infallibility of the pope apply not to the individual who is seated on the chair of St. Peter, but to the chair itself, to the see of Rome, the Roman church, the whole succession of the Roman pontiffs, the universal church in short." The writer of the Bibliotheque Saerde ' winds up these conflicting statements by saying, "This question is not one of faith." To this remark however some will object, that the question is considered as one of faith at Rome, for as the Roman (or, as the French call them, the ultramontane) canonists assert the infallibility of the pope by divine right, it follows that they consider the belief in that infallibility, and in all the decisions ema nating from it, as matters of faith ; and as long as this controversy remains unsettled, a door is always open to schism, as it happened in the council of Basel, and the alleged unity of the Roman Catholic church is only nominal and precarious.
3. "The same theologians who assert the infallibility of the pope, assert also his superiority above the general councils, and that he has the right of dissolving them, transferring them to a different place, of approving or condemning, reforming or abrogating their decisions. Those divines, on the contrary, who maintain that the pope is not infallible, maintain also that he is subject to the general councils both SS to faith and discipline. This is the opinion of the French clergy, embodied in the second of the four propositions of the Gallican church, promulgated in 1682, which approves the decision of the council of Constance, declaring the councils general to be superior to the pope in spiritual matters.' The assertors of this proposition say that the pope is the head of the faithful nearly in the same manner as the general of a monastic order is the head of all the members of that order, to whom however be is subject when they are assembled in a general chapter.' It may be observed here, that besides the council of Constance, which decided this question of the superiority of the general councils over the pope, there is the council of Basel, which asserted the same principle, and that the council of Basel is reckoned by the French theologians among the legitimate councils of the church, but is not so reckoned by the canonists of Rome."
4. " There are some writers who pretend, that the pope has by divine right a direct power, both spiritual and temporal, over the whole world. Others maintain that he has at least an indirect power in temporal matters, inasmuch as he can dispose of kingdoms and crowns, and transfer them from one prince to another whenever that is required for the welfare of souls. Lastly, other divines are of opinion that neither the pope nor the church has any power, direct or indirect, in the temporal matters of kingdoms and states, that they cannot in any caso depose kings, nor release their subjects from their oath of allegiance. In support of ,their argument, these divines show that Jesus Christ made open profession of poverty, that be solemnly declared that his kingdom was not of this world, and they allege other passages as equally decisive; and they say that the Saviour bequeathed to the church a purely spiritual authority, to be exercised in preaching, baptising, ,instructing, and loosening or binding shiners. The early fathers have said that the church has only the spiritual sword to keep its children within the path of duty. The most celebrated universities of Germany, France, and Spain have confirmed this opinion, which is that of the Galilean church and of Bossuet himself. The contrary opinion, namely, that the popes have a temporal jurisdiction over kings and principalities, is not of older date than the time of Gregory Such are the statements of orthodox Roman Catholics in a work which condemns all heretics and Jansenism : for the Jansenists assert that the pope has no authority over the bishops, but only a superiority of rank ; that all the bishops are vicars of Christ, and that the pope is the first among them, and that his jurisdiction is not to confer epis copacy, but only to watch over the conduct of the other bishops, &c. These opinions of the Jansenists are found, among other works, in the Acts of the Synod of Pistoia held by De Ricci' ('Atti e Decreti del Concilio Diocesano di Pistoia dell' anno 1786 '), which were condemned by Pope Pius VI. As for the Protestant and Reformed churches, they do not acknowledge any authority or jurisdiction in the pope, except over his own diocese as bishop of Rome, or at most over the other dioceses of the province of Rome as metropolitan. The Greek, Armenian, Jacobite, and Nestorian churches likewise disclaim his authority. Several Roman Catholic writers have endeavoured to trace the growth of the supremacy of the Roman see over the churches of the West, which supremacy they assert was once limited to the pro since. which constituted, under the Christian emperors, successors of (Amstantine, the vicariate of Home, namely, Etruria, the March of Ancona, Valeria, Apulia, Calabria, l.ucania, the Abruzzi, Sicily, Sar dinia, and Cor'iica. There provinces were under the lay jurisdiction of an imperial vicar. The rest of Italy, with Illeetia, constituted the vicariate of Italy, of which Milan was the capital. Both vicariates were subject to the prefect of Italy, who had also under his authority the provinces of Africa and Illyria. The provinces which formed part of the vicariate of Rome were called " suburbicarke," and their die• crams acknowledged the bishop of Rome as their metropolitan.. Such is the opinion of Father Sirmond, and of Du Pin, in his Do antiquIL Eoelesize Discipline,' and of Giannone, in his ' Styria civile del liegno di Napoli.' They contend that until the reign of Valentinian III. the metrepolitan authority of the bishop of Rome did not extend beyond the auburbicarian provinces. Allatina, Baronius, Maimbourg, and others, on the contrary, contend that the bishop of Rome was by right the metropolitan of the whole West, if not of the whole Roman empire. Gregory I. (the Great), however, disclaimed the title of (Ecumenic or universal bishop, and in token of humility assumed that of " Servus Servorum Domini," the "Servant of the Servants of the Lord," which his successors have continued to place at the head of their briefs and decretals.
In his quality of bishop of Rome, the repo delegates his authority as ordinary to a prelate called Vice-Gerente, who is generally a bishop is partihns. in Lis quality of metropolitan of the province of Rome, he has under him the bishops called Suburbicarii of Ostia and Velietri, of Porto and Santa Rufina. of Sabina, of Frascati, of Albano, and of Patestrina As primate of the Roman Catholic church, he has under him all the cardinals, archbishops, and bishops of the Roman Catholic states ; those placed in states professing Reformed doctrines, and those is partibus, or having episcopal titles with a nominal see. The total number of people who profess tAe Roman Catholic religion in Europe is roughly calculated at about 112 millions, or about two-fifths of the population of Europe. The countries of which the established religion is Roman Catholic are—I, Italy ; 2, Spain ; 3, Portugal; 4, France; 5, Belgium ; 6, Bavaria. In South America, the states formed by Spanish and Portuguese settlers are also exclusively Roman Catholic. Roman Catholic congregations are scattered about various countries of Asia. but in small numbers.
For the manner in which the pope carries on the spiritual govern ment of this extensive flock, see CATHOLIC Cuuncit and CONCORDAT. The form of election of the pope is given under CONCLAVE. For the history of the most distinguished popes, see their respective names in the Biota Div. The reader may refer also to the ' Vitae et Res Gestu Pontificum Romanorum ab Initio nascentis Ecelesbe oscine ad Urban= VII.; by Ciaconio, Cabrera, and Vlttorello, fol., Rome, 1630. A list of the succession of the popes will be found in l'etau's Rationarium Temporum.