POPE
263
POPE
Clementine romance, has proved singularly unfor-
tunate. For it is now recognized that tiiis work be-
longs not to the second, but to the fourth century.
Nor is there the shghtest ground for the assertion
that the language of Irenaeus, III, iii, 3, implies that
Peter and Paul enjoyed a divided episcopate at Rome
— an arrangement utterly unknown to the Church at
any period. He does, it is true, speak of the two
Apostles as together handing on the episcopate to
Linus. But this expression is explained by the pur-
pose of his argument, which is to vindicate against
the Gnostics the validity of the doctrine taught in the
Roman Church. Hence he is naturally led to lay
stress on the fact that that Church inherited the teach-
ing of both the great Apostles. Epiphanius ("Haer.",
xx\-ii, 6, in P. G., XLI, 372) would indeed seem to sug-
gest the divided episcopate; but he has apparently
merely misunderstood the words of lrena;us.
(2) History bears complete testimony that from the very earliest times the Roman See has ever claimed the supreme head.ship, and that that headship has been freely acknowledged by the universal Church. We shall here confine ourselves to the consideration of the evidence afforded by the first three centuries. The first witness is St. Clement, a disciple of the Apostles, who, after Linus and Anacletus, succeeded St. Peter as the fourth in the list of popes. In his "Epistle to the Corinthians", written in 95 or 9G, he bids them receive back the bishops whom a turbulent faction among them had expelled. "If any man", he says, "should be disobedient unto the words spoken by God through us, let them understand that they will entangle themselves in no slight transgression and danger" (Ep. n. 59). Moreover, he bids them "render obedience unto the things ^Titten by us through the Holy Spirit". The tone of authority which inspires the latter appears so clearly that Lightfoot did not hesitate to speak of it as "the first step towards papal domination" (Clement, I, 70). Thus, at the very commencement of church history, before the last sur- vivor of the Apostles had passed away, we find a Bishop of Rome, himself a disciple of St. Peter, inter- vening in the affairs of another Church and claiming to settle the matter by a decision spoken under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Such a fact admits of one explanation alone. It is that in the days when the Apostohc teaching was yet fresh in men's minds the universal Church recognized in the Bishop of Rome the office of supreme head.
A few years later (about 107) St. Ignatius of An- tioch, in the opening of his letter to the Roman Church, refers to its presiding over all other Churches. He addresses it as "presiding over the brotherhood of love [■n-poKa6riij^vrj t^s dyiirrisl." The expression, as Funk rightly notes, is grammatically incompatible with the translation advocated by some non-Catholic writers, "preeminent in works of love". The same century gives us the witness of St. Irenaeus — a man who stands in the closest connexion with the age of the Apostles, since he was a disciple of St. Polycarp, who had been appointed Bishop of Smyrna by St. John. In his work "Adversus Ha?reses" (III, iii, 2) he brings against the Gnostic sects of his day the argument that their doctrines have no support in the Apostolic tradition faithfully preserved by the Churches, which could trace the succession of their bishops back to the Twelve. He writes: "Because it would be too long in such a volume as this to enumer- ate the successions of all the churches, we point to the tradition of that very great and very ancient and universally known Church, which was founded and established at Rome, by the two most glorious Apos- tles, Peter and Paul: we point. I say, to the tradition which this Church has from the Apostles, and to her faith proclaimed to men which comes down to our time through the succession of her bishops, and so we put to shame ... all who assemble in unauthor-
ized meetings. For with this Church, because of its
superior authority, every Church must agree — that is
the faithful everywhere — in communion with which
Church the tradition of the Apostles has been always
preserved by those who are everywhere [Ad banc
enim ecclesiam propter potentiorem principalitatem
necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam, hoc est eos
qui sunt undique fideles, in qua semper ab his qui
sunt undique, conservata est ea qua? est ab apostohs
traditio]". He then proceeds to enumerate the
Roman succession from Linus to Eleutherius, the
twelfth after the Apostles, who then occupied the see.
Non-Cathohc writers have sought to rob the passage
of its importance by translating the word convenire
"to resort' to", and thus understanding it to mean no
more than that the faithful /roni every side (undique)
resorted to Rome, so that thus the stream of doctrine
in that Church was kept immune from error. Such
a rendering, however, is excluded by the construction
of the argument, which is based entirely on the con-
tention that the Roman doctrine is pure by reason of
its derivation from the two great Apostolic founders
of the Church, Sts. Peter and Paul. The frequent
visits made to Rome by members of other Christian
Churches could contribute nothing to this. On the
other hand the traditional rendering is postulated by
the context, and, though the object of innumerable
attacks, none other possessing an}' real degree of
probability has been suggested in its place (see Dom.
J. Chapman in "R^vue Benedictine", 1895, p. 48).
During the pontificate of St. Victor (189-98) we have the most explicit assertion of the supremacy of the Roman See in regard to other Churches. A dif- ference of practice between the Churches of Asia Minor and the rest of the Christian world in regard to the day of the Paschal festival led the pope to take action. There is some ground for supposing that the Montanist heretics maintained the Asiatic (or Quarto- deciman) practice to be the true one: in this case it would be undesirable that any body of Catholic Christians should appear to support them. But, un- der any circumstances, such a diversity in the eccle- siastical life of different countries may well have constituted a regrettable feature in the Church, whose very purpose it was to bear witness by her unity to the oneness of God (John, xvii, 21). Victor bade the Asiatic Churches conform to the custom of the re- mainder of the Church, but was met with determined resistance by Polycrates of Ephesus, who claimed that their custom derived from St. John himself. Victor replied by an excommunication. St. Irenaeus, how- ever, intervened, exhorting Victor not to cut off whole Churches on account of a point which was not a matter of faith. He assumes that the pope can exercise the power, but urges him not to do so. Similarly the resistance of the Asiatic bishops involved no denial of the supremacy of Rome. It indicates solely that the bishops believed St. Victor to be abusing his power in bidding them renounce a custom for which they had Apostolic authority. It was indeed inevitable that, as the Church spread and developed, new prob- lems should present themselves, and that questions should arise as to whether the supreme authority could be legitimately exercised in tJiis or that case. St. Victor, seeing that more harm than good would come from insistence, withdrew the imposed penalty.
Not many years since a new and important piece of evidence was brought to light in Asia Minor dating from this period. The sepulchral inscription of Abercius, Bishop of Hieropolis (d. about 200), con- tains an account of his travels couched in allegorical language (see .AlBErcius, Inscription of). He speaks thus of the Roman Church: "To Rome He [sc. Christ] sent me to contemplate majesty: and to see a queen golden-robed and golden-sandalled." It is difficult not to recognize in this description a testimony to the supreme position of the Roman See. Tertullian's
