Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/68



the case of Honorius we may pass clean away to the Scholastic period, when the great systematic theologians were gathering into consolidated form the developments of the Middle Ages. Six hundred years have elapsed since Honorius was condemned by the Episcopate. The relation of Papal to Episcopal power has greatly changed. To contrast the theology of the thirteenth century with that of the seventh is to realise a different atmosphere. Many elements contributed to the enormous increase of papal influence. The Mohammedan conquests and the isolation of the Apostolic Churches of the East left the Roman spirit to develop its governmental tendencies, unbalanced, unchecked by those more primitive conceptions which it was the mission of the unchanging East to retain. The calamitous severance between the East and West must have had disastrous influence on the proportionate development of Papal and Episcopal power.

The growth also of the temporal power of the Roman See falls within this period. It is neither our purpose nor permitted by our limits to dwell much on this aspect of papal claims. Yet a reference to the subject is necessary, because the growth of temporal power contributed to the general influences of the Papacy on the mediæval mind, and to no inconsiderable con-