Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/276

 196 General History of Europe monarch, Christ says: "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and whatsoever THE ANCIENT BASILICA OF ST. PETER Of the churches built by Constantine in Rome that in honor of St. Peter was, next to the Lateran, the most important. It was constructed on the site of Nero's circus, where St. Peter was believed to have been crucified. It retained its original appearance, as here represented, for twelve hundred years, and then the popes (who had given up the Lateran as their residence and come to live in the Vatican Palace close to St. Peter's) determined to build the new and grander church one sees today. Constantine and the popes made constant use in their buildings of columns and stones taken from the older Roman buildings, which were in this way demolished thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." This the popes have always claimed as the divine sanction of their office and of the authority which they believed to be theirs. 310. The Roman Church the Mother Church. The Roman Church was therefore early looked upon as the "Mother Church" in the West. Its doctrines were considered the purest, since they had been handed down from its exalted founders. When there