Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus II (Pars Altera): Demonstratio Catholica

Scarcely had Peter died when the Roman pontiffs claim for themselves and exercise the primatial office. Yet do not think that they at once employed the whole fullness and amplitude of primatial power. For "the kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man [i. e. Christ] took and sowed in his field: which is indeed the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is greater than all herbs, and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and dwell in its branches".¹ This parable must be applied to the whole Church and therefore also to the monarchical constitution of the Church. The monarchical government of the Church, like a grain of mustard seed, smallest from the beginning, grows and unfolds more and more according as its innate inner force and outward circumstances, favorable or adverse, allow. It suffices, therefore, to show that from the first centuries the grain of the Roman primacy was present and sprouted and gradually took growth, although surrounded and hindered by the greatest difficulties with which the Church contended in the time of the persecutions.

1. We discern the firstfruits of the Roman primacy in the letter which St. Clement, "a contemporary of the times of Peter and Paul",² sent to Corinth (between the years 93 and 96) to settle the dissensions that had arisen there against the rulers of the Church. From this first primatial letter we extract a few passages: "The Church of God which sojourns at Rome, to the Church of God which sojourns at Corinth … Owing to the sudden and successive calamities and adverse events which have befallen us [while the persecution of Domitian was raging], we think, brethren, that we have been slow to turn to the things that are desired among you, beloved, and to the impious and detestable sedition … Shameful, brethren, shameful and utterly unworthy of the Christian manner of life are the things that have been reported to us: that the most steadfast and ancient Church of the Corinthians is, because of one or two persons, raising sedition against the presbyters … You therefore, who laid the foundations of the sedition, be subject to the presbyters in obedience and accept correction unto repentance … But if they do not obey the things which he [Christ] has said through us, let them know that they will involve themselves in no small offense and danger; we, however, shall be innocent of this sin … You will afford us joy and gladness if, becoming obedient to the things we have written through the Holy Spirit, you cut off the illegitimate passion of your zeal according to the exhortation which we have made concerning peace and concord in this letter … And there will be witnesses between you and us [the legates sent to Corinth]. And this we have done, that you may know that all our care both has aimed and aims at this, that you may quickly arrive at peace."³

That St. Clement acts by virtue of the primatial office is already evident from the fact that the bishop of the West involves himself in the Corinthian affair, although the apostle John and the neighboring metropolitan were then still living. Indeed Clement even excuses himself for not having attended to the care of that church earlier; with authority he adjudicates the sedition and binds the seditious to punishment; he also sends legates as witnesses of obedience and of restored order. The Corinthians, however, and other Orientals did not take Clement's jurisdiction ill, but rather for a long time read his letter in the public assembly and extolled it with the greatest praises.⁴ Some have wrongly objected that Clement did not use his own authority, but wrote in the name of the Roman church. For the authority of the Church resides in the bishop and is exercised only by the bishop alone, as we know well from what we have said concerning the episcopate.

2. In the second century, when the controversy arose about the time of celebrating Easter, Victor I (c. 196) wrote a letter to Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, ordering him to convoke synods of all the bishops of Asia and of the neighboring provinces and to enjoin upon them that they follow the Roman usage, threatening that he would cut off all the Quartodecimans "from the fellowship of communion" and separate them "from the ecclesiastical covenant". Victor indeed did not carry out the excommunication, because the Quartodeciman bishops begged him "to have regard for concord and unanimity", and especially because Irenaeus, together with the other bishops of Gaul over whom he presided, dissuaded him from "cutting off from the unity of the body so many and such great churches of God".

The primatial power, however, by which Victor issued his mandate and threatened excommunication, no one called into doubt.⁵

3. In the third century Pope Stephen († 257) exercised the primacy. For, preaching that "by succession he held the chair of Peter",⁶ he gave a decree for the whole Church by which he acknowledged the baptism conferred by heretics as legitimate, and prescribed both to the Asians and to the Africans, under penalty of excommunication, that they desist from the contrary practice.⁷ To be sure, neither the Asians nor the Africans stood by Stephen's mandate. But although Firmilian of Caesarea and Cyprian, those two luminaries, were their leaders, the Church followed not these but Stephen. Indeed even Firmilian and Cyprian themselves strove to derogate from the decree only on subjective grounds, but by no means dared to weaken the objective foundation of the decree, namely Stephen's succession in the primacy of Peter.⁸

4. In the fourth century Julius I (341-342) reproaches the Eusebian bishops for having deposed Athanasius, the patriarch of Alexandria, without his knowledge, and for seeking the consent of the Roman pontiff only after the fact. "Do you not know", he says, "that this is the custom (ἔθος), that first it should be written to us, and that from here what is just should be decided? Certainly if any such suspicion fell upon the bishop of that city [of Alexandria], it should have been written to this church [of Rome]. But now they, the matter not having been made known to us, after having done what pleased them, wish us, to whom those charges are not known, to be at last their supporters. By no means are such things the statutes of Paul; not these things did the fathers hand down … For the things which we have received from the blessed apostle Peter, these I make known to you."⁹ Julius therefore decreed that the causes of bishops and even of the Oriental patriarchs themselves were to be adjudicated at Rome, on account of the primacy granted to the Roman pontiff by the blessed Peter.

5. Shortly after, when the Arian bishops had again deposed Athanasius and the emperor Constantius was driving Pope Liberius († 366) by force and fear to consent, Liberius resisted unconquered. Ammianus Marcellinus, a pagan writer, narrates the affair, explaining it from the primacy of the Roman pontiff: "Liberius, being admonished, at the command of the prince [Constantius], to cast this man [Athanasius] out of the priestly see by subscription, thinking the same as the others [the Arian bishops], stubbornly resisted, crying out that it was the utmost crime to condemn a man neither seen nor heard, plainly kicking against the emperor's decision. For he [Constantius], always hostile to Athanasius, although he knew that it had been fulfilled [by the Arian synod], nevertheless burned with an ardent desire that it should also be confirmed by the authority whereby the bishops of the eternal city are the more powerful; and since this was not obtained, Liberius, from fear of the people, who burned with love for him, could only with great difficulty be carried off in the middle of the night."¹⁰

6. Siricius (385), in his letter to Himerius, bishop of Tarragona, famously attributes to himself the primacy of jurisdiction over the whole Church in these words: "We do not deny a fitting response to your consultation, because, considering our office, it is not permitted to us to dissemble, we have not the freedom to be silent, we upon whom a greater zeal for the Christian religion lies than upon all. We bear the burdens of all who are weighed down; indeed the blessed apostle Peter bears these in us, who protects and guards us, as we trust, as heirs of his administration in all things … Let all priests [bishops] hold the aforesaid rule [which he had established concerning the administration of baptism], who are unwilling to be torn from the solidity of the apostolic rock, upon which Christ built the universal Church … What is henceforth to be followed by all the churches and what is to be avoided, we decree by a general pronouncement."¹¹ As many words, so many vindications of the Roman primacy!

7. Innocent I (417) answered the Carthaginian council: "Keeping the examples of ancient tradition and mindful of ecclesiastical discipline, you have strengthened the vigor of your religion with true reasoning no less now in consulting than before when you were pronouncing, since you have approved that judgment should be referred to us: knowing what is owed to the apostolic see, from which the episcopate itself and all the authority of this name has emerged, since we all, placed in this position, desire to follow the apostle himself. Following him, we know how to condemn evil things as much as to praise things worthy of praise. And this indeed, that, keeping the institutions of the fathers with priestly office, you judge that they are not to be trampled upon, because they decreed not by human but by divine sentence, that whatever was done, even in separated and remote provinces, should not be brought to an end before it came to the knowledge of this see, so that by its whole authority whatever pronouncement was just might be confirmed, and that from it the other churches should take what to prescribe, whom to wash clean, whom, as defiled with unwashen filth, the water worthy of clean bodies should avoid."¹² By these words St. Innocent teaches that, according to "ancient tradition" and "ecclesiastical discipline" divinely established, the judgments of the bishops of the whole world must be confirmed by the authority of the apostolic see, and that the other churches must take from the apostolic see whom they should prescribe, whom they should receive into penance and communion, whom they should reject as unworthy from the communion of the faithful. Behold the primacy of universal jurisdiction described in a concrete manner!¹³

8. Zosimus (418) writes to the African bishops: "Although the tradition of the fathers has given such great authority to the apostolic See that no one would dare to dispute its judgment, and has always preserved this through the canons and rules, and ecclesiastical discipline, still running in its own laws, pays to the name of Peter, from whom it itself also descends, the reverence which it owes … nevertheless, since there was so much authority in us that no one could retract our sentence, we have done nothing that we did not of our own accord refer to your notice by our letters."¹⁴ The authority of the apostolic See, as descending from Peter, is so great that no one dares to dispute the judgment of the Roman pontiff or can retract his sentence.

9. Boniface I (422) thus addresses all the bishops of Thessaly: "The establishment of the universal nascent Church took its beginning from the honor of the blessed Peter, in whom its governance and the sum of all things consist. For from his ecclesiastical discipline, through all the churches, with the cultivation of religion now growing, the fountain flowed … This [the Roman church] therefore it is certain is to the churches spread through the whole world as the head of its members, from which whoever cuts himself off becomes an exile from the Christian religion, since he has not begun to be in the same structure … Therefore the apostolic see holds the primacy, that it may freely accept the complaints of all … Let whoever recognizes himself as a bishop obey our ordination."¹⁵ Boniface therefore simply calls the Roman church the church of the blessed Peter, the head of all the churches, furnished with the supreme primacy, by which it adjudicates the complaints of all the faithful and to which all bishops must be obedient.

10. Celestine I (422-432), in his letters to the bishops of the province of Vienne and of Narbonne, confesses that he has been "placed by God on the watchtowers", so that "he may cut off the things that must be coerced and sanction the things that must be observed", and that his care extends to the whole Christian world;¹⁶ he orders Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople, to be excommunicated "by our, rather by the divine sentence of our Christ",¹⁷ and to his legates sent to the council of Ephesus he enjoins that "if it should come to a disputation, you must judge concerning their [the fathers of the ecumenical council] sentences, but not enter into a contest".¹⁸ The pope therefore, by virtue of the divine constitution, extends his jurisdiction to the whole Church, even to the Oriental patriarchs, indeed to the episcopate gathered in the ecumenical council.

11. Leo the Great (440-461) insists that he has inherited the fullness of the Petrine primacy: "In the person of my humility let him [Peter] be understood, let him be honored, in whom the solicitude of all the pastors perseveres together with the custody of the sheep commended to him, and whose dignity does not fail even in an unworthy heir."¹⁹ Concerning the hierarchy of bishops he writes: "It was provided by a great ordinance that not all [bishops] should claim all things for themselves, but that in each province there should be some, whose judgment among the brethren should be held first; and again that certain ones constituted in the greater cities should take up a more ample solicitude, through whom the care of the universal Church might flow together to the one see of Peter, and nothing anywhere should dissent from its head."²⁰ The 28th canon of the ecumenical council of Chalcedon, by which the first place after the Roman pontiff was conceded to the patriarch of Constantinople, Leo rejects with these words: "We declare it void and by the authority of the blessed apostle Peter we annul it by an entirely general definition."²¹ The Roman see, the see of Peter, remains; it perpetuates the primatial care of Peter; it presides over all the faithful, all the pastors, the universal Church, in such a way that no patriarch can in any manner be compared to the pope and that it is permitted to the pope to annul even the definitions of an ecumenical council.

With these things we bring the argument to an end. For from the middle of the fifth century even the adversaries do not deny that the Roman pontiffs attributed to themselves the fullness of the primacy. But that they already claimed for themselves the primatial rights in the first centuries is abundantly evident from the testimonies adduced thus far. The grain of primatial power entrusted by Christ to Peter was carefully guarded and watered by the successors of Peter, so that already in the earliest Christian age it grew into a great tree, under whose branches the universal Church dwelt.