Rise of the Papacy

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 26, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 25.

Rise of the Papacy.

AS EARLY as the first three centuries, the churches of the metropolitan cities had been held in peculiar honor. The Council of Nice, in its sixth canon, named especially three cities, whose churches, according to it, held an anciently established authority over those of the surrounding provinces. These were Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch. The political origin of this distinction may be discerned in the name which was at first given to the bishops of these cities; they were called exarchs, like the political governors. In later times they bore the more ecclesiastical name of patriarch. It is in the Council of Constantinople that we find this title first used. This same Council created a new Patriarchate, that of Constantinople itself, the new Rome, the second capital of the empire. Rome at this period shared the rank of patriarchate with these three churches. But when the invasion of Mahomet had swept away the bishoprics of Alexandria and Antioch, when the see of Constantinople fell away, and in later times even separated itself from the West, Rome alone remained, and the circumstances of the times causing everything to rally around her, she remained from that time without a rival.

New and more powerful partisans than all the rest soon came to her assistance. Ignorance and superstition took possession of the church, and delivered it up to Rome, blindfold and manacled.

Yet this bringing into captivity was not effected without a struggle. The voices of particular churches frequently asserted their independence. This courageous remonstrance was especially heard in proconsular Africa and in the East.

To silence the cries of the churches, Rome found new allies. Princes, who in those troublesome times often saw their thrones tottering, offered their adherence to the church, in exchange for her support. They yielded to her spiritual authority, on condition of her paying them with secular dominion. They left her to deal at will with the souls of men, provided only she would deliver them from their enemies. The power of the hierarchy in the ascending scale, and of the imperial power, which was declining, leaned thus one toward the other—and so accelerated their twofold destiny.

Rome could not lose by this. An edict of Theodosius II. and of Valentinian III. proclaimed the bishop of Rome "ruler of the whole church." Justinian issued a similar decree. These decrees did not contain all that the popes pretended to see in them. But in those times of ignorance it was easy for them to gain reception for that interpretation which was most favorable to themselves. The dominion of the emperors in Italy becoming every day more precarious, the bishops of Rome took advantage of it to withdraw themselves from their dependence.

But already the forests of the North had poured forth the most effectual promoters of papal power. The barbarians who had invaded the West and settled themselves therein—but recently converted to Christianity—ignorant of the spiritual character of the church, and feeling the want of an external pomp of religion, prostrated themselves in a half-savage and half-heathen state of mind at the feet of the chief priest of Rome. At the same time the people of the West also submitted to him. First the Vandals, then the Ostrogoths, a short time after the Burgundians and the Alans, then the Visigoths, and at last the Lombards and the Anglo-Saxons came bowing the knee to the Roman pontiff. It was the sturdy shoulders of the idolatrous children of the North which elevated to the supreme throne of Christendom, a pastor of the banks of the Tiber.

These events occurred in the West at the beginning of the seventh century, at the precise period that the Mahometan power arose in the East, and prepared to overrun another division of the earth.

From that time the evil continued increasing. In the eighth century we see the bishops of Rome on the one hand resisting the Greek emperors, their lawful sovereigns, and endeavoring to expel them from Italy; whilst on the other they court the French mayors of the palace, and demand from this new power now arising in the West, a share in the wreck of the empire. We see Rome establish her usurped authority between the East, which she repelled, and the West, which she courted, thus erecting her throne upon two revolutions.

Alarmed by the progress of the Arabs, who had made themselves masters of Spain, and boasted that they would speedily traverse the Pyrenees and the Alps, and proclaim the name of Mahomet on the seven hills—terrified at the daring of Aistolpho, who, at the head of his Lombards, threatened to put every Roman to death, and brandished his sword before the city gates—Rome, in the prospect of ruin, turned on all sides for protection, and threw herself into the arms of the Franks. The usurper, Pepin, demanded the confirmation of his claim to the throne; the pope granted it; and, in return, obtained his declaration in defense of the "Republic of God." Pepin recovered from the Lombards their conquests from the emperor; but instead of restoring them to that prince, he deposited the keys of the conquered cities on the altar of St. Peter's; and with uplifted hand, swore that it was not in the cause of man that he had taken arms, but to obtain from God the remission of his sins, and to do homage for his conquests to St. Peter. Thus did France establish the temporal power of the popes.

Charlemagne appeared. At one time we see him climbing the stairs of St. Peter's, devoutly kissing the steps; again he presents himself, but it is as master of all the nations composing the Western Empire, and of Rome itself. Leo III. decided to confer the rank on one who already possessed the power; and in the year 800, on Christmas-day, he placed the crown of the Roman emperors on the brow of the son of Pepin. From this period the pope belonged to the empire of the Franks, and his connection with the East was at an end, thus loosing his hold on a decayed tree, nodding to its fall, in order to graft himself upon a wild but vigorous sapling. Little could he then have dared to hope for the elevation that awaited his successors among the German nations, to which he thus joined himself.

Charlemagne bequeathed to his feeble successors only the wreck of his own power. In the ninth century disunion everywhere weakened the civil authority. Rome perceived that this was the moment to exalt herself. What better opportunity could offer for achieving the church's independence of the State, than when the crown of Charles was broken, and its fragments scattered over his former empire.

It was then that the pretended decretals of Isidorus appeared. In this collection of alleged decrees of the popes, the most ancient bishops, contemporaries of Tacitus and Quintilian, were made to speak the barbarous Latin of the ninth century. The customs and constitutions of the Franks were gravely attributed to the Romans in the time of the emperors. Popes quoted the Bible in the Latin translation of St. Jerome, who lived one, two, or three centuries after them. And Victor, bishop of Rome in the year 192, wrote to Theophilus, who was archbishop of Alexandria in 385. The impostor who had fabricated this collection, endeavored to prove that all bishops derived their authority from the bishop of Rome, who held his own immediately from Christ. He not only recorded all the successive acquisitions of the pontiffs, but carried them back to the earliest times. The popes did not blush to avail themselves of this contemptible imposture. As early as 865, Nicholas I. selected weapons from this repository to attack princes and bishops. This barefaced fabrication was for ages the arsenal of Rome.—D'Aubigné's History of the Reformation.