Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/36

 FATHERS

14

FATHERS

in the patristic period; the dogmas defined needed only a reference to antiquity. But again and again Rome had to impose lier dogmas on Byzantium — 519, 680, and 786 are famous dates, when the whole East- ern Church had to accept a papal document for the sake of reunion, and the intervals between these dates supply lesser instances. The Eastern Church had always possessed a traditional belief in Roman tra- dition and in the duty of recourse to the See of Peter; the Arians expressed it when they wrote to Pope Julius to deprecate interference — Rome, they said, was "the metropolis of the faith from the beginning". In the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries the lesson had been learnt thoroughly, and the East proclaimed the papal prerogatives, and appealed to them with a fervour which experience had taught to be in place. In such a sketch as this, all elements cannot be taken into consideration. It is obvious that Eastern the- ology had a great and varied influence on Latin Christendom. But the essential truth remains that the West thought more clearly than the East, while preserving with greater faithfulness a more explicit tradition as to cardinal dogmas, and that the West imposed her doctrines and her definitions on the East, and repeatedly, if necessary, reasserted and reimposed them.

(f) Discipline, Liturgy, Ascetics. — According to tradition, the multiplication of bishoprics, so that each city had its own bishop, began in the province of Asia, under the direction of St. John. The develop- ment was uneven. There may have been but one see in Egypt at the end of the second century, though there were large numbers in all the provinces of Asia Minor, and a great many in Phoenicia and Palestine. Groupings under metropolitan sees began in that cen- tury in the East, and in the third century this organi- zation was recognized as a matter of course. Over metropolitans are the patriarchs. This method of grouping spread to the West. At first Africa had the most numerous sees; in the middle of the third century there were about a hundred, and they quickly increased to more than four times that number. But each province of Africa had not a metropolitan see; only a presidency was accorded to the senior bishop, except in Proconsularis, where Carthage was the metropolis of the province and her bishop was the first of all Africa. His rights were undefined, though his influence was great. But Rome was near, and the pope had certainly far more actual power, as well as more recognized right, than the primate; we see this in TertuUian's time, and it remains true in spite of the resistance of Cyprian. The other countries, Italy, Spain, Gaul, were gradually organized according to the Greek model, and the Greek names, metropolis, patriarch, were adopted. Councils were held early in the West. But disciplinary canons were first enacted in the East. St. Cyprian's large councils passed no canons, and that saint considered that each bishop is answerable to God alone for the government of his diocese; in other words, he knows no canon law. The foundation of Latin canon law is in the canons of Eastern councils, which open the Western collections. In spite of this, we need not suppose the East was more regular, or better governed, than the West, where the popes guarded order and justice. But the East liad larger communities, and they had developed more fully, and therefore the need arose earlier there to commit definite rules to writing.

The florid taste of the East soon decorated the liturgy with beautiful excrescences. Many such ex- cellent practices moved Westward; the Latin rites borrowed prayers and songs, antiphons, antiphonal singing, the use of the alleluia, of the doxology, etc. If the East adopted the Latin Christmas Day, the West imported not merely the Cireek Epiphany, but feast after feast, in the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. The West joined in devotion to Eastern

martyrs. The special honour and love of Our Lady is at first characteristic of the East (except Antioch), and then conquers the West. The parcelling of the bodies of the saints as relics for devotional purposes, spread all over the West from the East; only Rome held out, until the time of St. Gregory the Great, against what might be thought an irreverence rather than an honour to the saints. If the first three centur- ies are full of pilgrimages to Rome from the East, yet from the fourth century onward \\'est joins with East in making Jerusalem the principal goal of such pious journej's; and these voyagers brought back much knowledge of the East to the most distant parts of the West. Monasticism began in Egypt with Paul and Anthony, and spread from Egypt to Syria; St. Atha- nasius brought the knowledge of it to the West, and the Western monachism of Jerome and Augustine, of Honoratus and Martm, of Benedict and Columba, always looked to the East, to Anthony and Pachomius and Hilarion, and above all to Basil, for its most per- fect models. Edifying literature in the form of the lives of the saints began with Athanasius, and was imitated by Jerome. But the Latin writers, Rufinus and Cassian, gave accounts of Eastern monachism, and Palladius and the later Greek writers were early translated into Latin. Soon indeed there were lives of Latin saints, of which that of St. Martin was the most famous, but the year 600 had almost come when St. Gregory the Great felt it still necessary to protest that as good might be found in Italy as in Egypt and Syria, and published his dialogues to prove his point, by supplying edifying stories of his own country to put beside the older histories o', the monks. It would be out of place here to go more into detail in these subjects. Enough has been said to show that the West borrowed, with open-minded simplicity and humility, from the elder East all kinds of practical and useful ways in ecclesiastical affairs and in the Christian life. The converse influence in practical matters of West on East was naturally very small.

(g) Historical Materials. — The principal ancient historians of the patristic period were mentioned above. They cannot always be completely trusted. The continuators of Eusebius, that is, Rufinus, So- crates, Sozomen, Theodoret, are not to be compared to Eusebius himself, for that industrious prelate has fortunately bequeathed to us rather a collection of invaluable materials than a history. His "Life" or rather "Panegyric of Constantine" is less remarkable for its contents than for its politic omissions. Euse- bius found his materials in the library of Pamphilus at Caesarea, and still more in that left by Bishop Alexander at Jerusalem. He cites earlier collections of documents, the letters of Dionysius of Corinth, Dionysiusof Alexandria, Serapion of Antioch, some of the epistles sent to Pope Victor by councils through- out the Church, besides employing earlier writers of history or memoirs such as Papias, Hegesippus, Apol- lonius, an anonymous opponent of the Montanists, the " Little Labyrinth " of H ippoly tus ( ?), etc. The princi- pal additions we can still make to these precious rem- nants are, first, St. Irena-us on the heresies; then the works of TertuUian, full of valuable information about the controversies of his own time and place and the customs of the Western Church, and containing also some less valuable information about earlier matters — less valuable, because TertuUian is singularly careless and deficient in historical sense. Next, we possess the correspondence of St. Cyprian, comprising letters of African councils, of St. Cornelius and others, besides those of the saint himself. To all this frag- mentary information we can add much from St. Epi- phanius, something from St. Jerome and also from Photius and Byzantine ehronographers. The whole Ante-Nicene evidence has been catalogued with won- derful industry by Harnack, with the help of Preu- Bchen and others, in a book of 1021 pages, the first