Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/382

 CHAPTER XVI THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT I. THE PREEMINENCE OF THE CHURCH The most celebrated assertion of the supreme author- ity of the Church and of its head, the pope, is the bull Unam Sanctam, issued by Boniface VHIin 1302. 134. Bull That there is one holy Catholic and apostolic Church we Unam Sane- are impelled by our faith to believe and to hold this we face Vffl do firmly believe and openly confess and outside of this (1302). there is neither salvation nor remission of sins, as the bride- groom proclaims in Canticles, " My dove, my undented is but one ; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her." The Church represents one mystic body, and of this body Christ is the head ; of Christ, indeed, God is the head. In it is one Lord, and one faith, and one baptism. In the time of the flood there was one ark of Noah, prefiguring the one Church, finished in one cubit, having one Noah as steersman and commander. Out- side of this all things upon the face of the earth were, as we read, destroyed. This Church we venerate and this alone. ... It is that seamless coat of the Lord, which was not rent but fell by lot. Therefore, in this one and only Church there is one body and one head, not two heads as if it were a monster, namely, Christ and Christ's vicar, Peter and Peter's successor ; for the Lord said to Peter himself, " Feed my sheep." "My sheep," he said, using a general term and not designating these or those sheep, so that we must believe that all the sheep were committed to him. If, then, the Greeks, or others, shall say that they were not intrusted to Peter and his successors, they must perforce admit that they 346