Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/515

Rh P O P E D O M 495 of Pope Zacharias, and he was anointed and crowned by Boniface a momentous precedent in relation to European history. In the following year, during the pontificate of STEPHEN III. (753-757) Aistulf, the king of the Lombards, invaded the duchy of Rome with the avowed purpose of adding the capital itself to his dominions. He seized Ravenna and the exarchate ; and Stephen, finding remon strance and entreaty alike unavailing, tied for protection to the Frankish territory and was received by King Pepin with every mark of sympathy and profound respect. Within a short time after, Pepin invaded the Lombard domain and wrested from its monarch an extensive terri tory embracing Ravenna and the Pentapolis; and at a council held at Quiercy, in the same year (754), he handed over this territory to Stephen, &quot; to be held and enjoyed by the pontiffs of the apostolic see for ever.&quot; Such appears to be the real origin of that &quot; donatio,&quot; or gift of terri tory (referred back, by the invention of after times, to the age of Constantino the Great), which constituted the pope a temporal ruler over what were subsequently known as the &quot; States of the Church.&quot; The munificence of Pepin was rivalled by that of his son. In the year 774, on the occasion of the visit of Charles (known as the Great) to Rome, the donation of his father was made the ground for soliciting and obtaining a yet larger grant, comprising much of the territory already bestowed, but extending to at least double the area stipulated for in the earlier donation. t! of It will thus be seen that, towards the close of the 8th inapal century, the germs of the chief papal claims were already as^at j n ex i b tence, and only needed for their full development 3 those favouring conditions which, with the lapse of time, try. character as an institution, the popedom itself was so well able to watch and wait. Already the pontiff claimed the dispensing power, i.e., the right to dispense with the observance of the existing canonical law under conditions determinable at his pleasure. Already he claimed the right to confer privileges a power subsequently wielded with enormous effect in enabling monastic and episcopal foundations to urge their encroachments on the rights and jurisdiction of the secular power. He assumed again, in Western Christendom at least, the rights of an universal metropolitan demanding that in all elections to bishop rics his sanction should be deemed essential ; and the arrival of the pallium from Rome was already awaited with anxiety by all newly-elected metropolitans. By the encouragement which was systematically given to appeal to Rome, what had before been the exception became the practice, and that &quot;extraordinary&quot; authority, as it was termed, which had been introduced, in the first instance, only under the pretext of providing a fixed court of appeal in cases of dispute which threatened otherwise to prove incapable of adjustment, developed into an immediate and ordinary jurisdiction into an authority, that is to say, which in all questions of graver import set aside that of the bishop, and even that of the metropolitan, and made reference to Rome the rule rather than the exception. In theory, although the claim was admitted neither by the rulers of Frankland nor by those of England, the Roman pontiff already claimed also to present to all benefices. Although he had not, as yet, assumed the distinctive insignia of his office the triple crown and the upright pastoral staff surmounted by the cross he more and more discouraged the application of the name of &quot;papa&quot; (pope) to any but himself. The title of &quot;universal bishop,&quot; which both Pelagius II. and Gregory the Great had dis claimed, seemed his by right after the decree of Phocas, and with the lapse of two centuries from that time was assumed by no other rival. The titles of &quot; apostolicus,&quot; &quot;claviger&quot; (the bearer of the keys), and &quot;servus ser- vorum Dei &quot; were claimed in like manner as exclusively his. One temporal potentate had already received his crown as a grant from the pontifical chair ; the occupant of that chair was already himself a temporal sovereign. That the mediaeval conception of the papal office was Develop- one of gradual and slow development appears accordingly meat of to be beyond all reasonable doubt, and this feature belongs ^ e in common to the whole hierarchical system. We find, for example, that the conception of the episcopal order and its functions grew with the increasing power and wealth of the church. In like manner if we compare the theory of the equality of bishops one with another, enunciated by Cyprian, with the prerogatives of a metro politan, as laid down at the council of Antioch (341), and subsequently further magnified, we are conscious of the introduction of what is tantamount to a new theory. And, finally, we become aware of yet another hierarchical order, as we see rising up the patriarchates of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, each invested by the church with an assigned order of preced ence. Something, however, was yet wanting which should crown the gradations thus successively created, and com plete the analogy to the Roman political organizations the institution of the monarchical dignity. It was for this supreme honour that Rome and Constantinople con tended, at a time when, from various causes and circum stances, the other patriarchates had sunk into an inferiority too marked to admit of rivalry. In this contest the patriarch of Constantinople rested his claim on what may be termed the traditional political foundation the honour due to the patriarch of the chief seat of empire ; this plea, although already sanctioned by the church, was met on the part of Rome by a counter appeal to the supreme reverence due to what was not merely an &quot; apostolica sedes,&quot; but a see founded by two apostles, of whom one was the chief of the apostolic order. In this remarkable abandonment of the ancient plea for pre-eminence and the limitation of the argument to that derivable from the claim to be an apostolic see, much of the difficulty and obscurity that belong to the earlier history of the papacy had probably its origin. And it seems but too probable that the endeavour to disguise this change, and to repre sent the claims advanced by Innocent I., by Leo I., by Gregory the Great, and by Hadrian II., as already virtu ally asserted and admitted in the tli century and in yet earlier times, has given rise to endless wrestings of isolated passages in writers of good authority, to deliberate falsi fication of genuine documents, and to what are allowed on all hands to be direct and palpable forgeries. Another feature, which has been made subservient to no small amount of misrepresentation, must not be overlooked. From their earliest appearance, the distinctive claims advanced by the Roman see can only be regarded as a series of encroachments on that original conception of the episcopal office maintained by Cyprian. And so long as the other patriarchates Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem maintained their ground, these encroachments wore a comparatively inoffensive guise, being little more than the assertion of the rights of a patriarch or supreme metropolitan within the Roman diocese. But, in addition to and distinct from the patriarchal supremacy, there was the theory of the primacy of the bishop of Rome over all the bishops, patriarchs, and metropolitans at first little more than an honorary distinction and carrying with it no definite authority or jurisdiction. When the patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem could no longer appear as rivals and Rome was confronted by Constantinople alone, this theory was brought much more prominently forward; while at the same time, in order
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