Chapter 10: The Church and Papal Development (AD 461-1073)

A Review of the Church’s Organization
We have seen already in Chapter 5 how natural it was for one  of the elders (overseer, presbyter, episcopos) to take the lead and receive the title  of bishop.

The episcopal form of church organization was further developed in the Church’s struggle with Gnosticism and Montanism. A centralized structure of church organization was formed to determine what the Bible said and to state the orthodox position, since even heretics appealed to Scripture.

In Chapter 5 we learned that the bishops in the large cities came to be called metropolitan bishops and that the bishops of the ﬁve most important cities in the Empire acquired the title of patriarch. The bishop in Rome gradually came to be recognized by all the other bishops in the West as their superior. By the year 461, the year in which Leo I died, the papacy had become fully established.

As the centuries rolled on there were further developments in the organization or government of the Church. In the time of Charlemagne it became the custom to call the metropolitan bishops Archbishops. This title the Roman Catholic clergy of that rank still bear today. The archbishop has jurisdiction over the bishops in his territory.

In many denominations, including the Reformed and Presbyterian churches, a minister of a large city church has no power over a minister of a small country church. All ministers are of absolutely the same rank. Yet even today people are inclined to think that the man who holds the pastorate in a prominent city church is perhaps, because of his position, just a little more important than his fellow minister in the country. It was some such feeling as this that gave the ﬁrst impulse to the development of the papacy. In all the Roman Empire there was no city that could compare with the city of Rome. It was the city of the Caesars. Rome was the acknowledged mistress of the ancient world. The enormous and unequaled prestige of the city of Rome shed upon the man who was bishop of the church there a luster such as no other bishop had.

Gradually the other bishops got into the habit of appealing to the bishop of Rome for a decision when controversies arose. So it came about that after a while the bishop of Rome began to put forth claims to authority over the other bishops and over the entire Church. They appealed to history to prove that they had long been regarded as the ﬁnal court of appeal. They even claimed to have Scripture on their side. The belief grew that the church in Rome had been founded by the apostle Peter. Had not Christ said to Peter, "Feed my sheep; feed my lambs,” thereby putting Peter in charge of the entire ﬂock? To Peter moreover He had entrusted the power of the keys of the kingdom. That Peter was ﬁrst in importance among the apostles was generally believed at that time, and the idea grew that the bishops of Rome were the successors of Peter, who was said to have been the ﬁrst pope. This was the foundation of the papacy. The papal throne is often referred to by the Roman Catholic Church as "the chair of St. Peter.

Events in History Strengthen the Papacy
1.     Circumstances in a remarkable way favored the growth of papal power. The whole chain of historical events of that time seemed to lead to a gathering of authority in the bishopric at Rome.

First of all, the barbarians who invaded Italy had come under the spell of Rome. They had accepted Christianity and stood in awe of the bishops of Rome. When the emperor was unable to protect the people, the unarmed bishop of Rome had been able to shield them to a certain extent from the worst excesses of the barbarians. Pope Leo I had been able to restrain, in a measure at least, the ﬁerce Attila and the wrath of the Vandal Geiseric. Rome's extremity had proved to be the pope’s opportunity.

The destruction of the Roman Empire by the Germanic invaders gave a tremendous boost to papal prestige. There was no longer an emperor in Rome to over-shadow its bishop. The bishop of Rome now held the most important ofﬁce in the entire West.

Through the work of missionaries sent out from Rome, churches were founded among many tribes in the north of Europe. The great missionary Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, had stood in very close relation to the bishop of Rome, and had carried on his mission work in his name. A person who is converted under the preaching of a certain pastor will always hold that minister in special esteem. The churches founded through the labors of the Roman missionaries naturally regarded with gratitude amounting to veneration the head of the church in Rome, which had sent these missionaries to them.

The Muslim conquest of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt removed forever the patriarchs of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria as rivals to the bishop of Rome. The Muslim conquest of North Africa removed the bishop of Carthage as possible rival in the West to the bishop of Rome.

The Church had suffered some grave disasters, but those very disasters brought increasing power and authority to the head of the church in Rome. They all had the tendency to elevate, in the eyes of men, the bishops of the church in Rome to the headship of the entire Church.

Papal Power Aided by Deceit
The papacy was also aided by the scheming efforts of men who, through deceit and fraud, succeeded in strengthening the pope’s position and authority. Two instances will show how deceit was used to accomplish this.

Around the time of Charlemagne there appeared a strange document. It was called the "Donation of Constantine.” It told that the emperor Constantine was cured of leprosy by the prayers of Pope Sylvester. Thereupon Constantine out of gratitude to the pope decided to remove his residence from Rome to Byzantium on the Bosporus, the city later called Constantinople. His object in doing this was that the secular government of the emperor might not cramp the spiritual government of the pope. On leaving Rome Constantine, according to this document, ordered all officeholders in the Church to be subject to Pope Sylvester I and to his successors upon the papal throne. Furthermore he transferred to the popes the city of Rome and all the provinces, districts, and cities of Italy and of the western regions. So, according to this document, Constantine bestowed upon the popes sovereignty over the western half of the Empire.

Then somewhere around the middle of the ninth century there appeared a second mysterious document. It was called the “Isidorian Decretals,” because these decretals, or decisions, were claimed to have been collected by Isidore of Seville. This document consisted of decisions of popes and councils from Clement of Rome in the ﬁrst century to Gregory II in the eighth. Bishops, according to this document, could appeal directly to the pope, and neither bishops nor popes were subject to the control of secular governments. The “Donation of Constantine” was included in these decretals. The whole hierarchical system (a series of rulers, each subject to the one immediately above) was the result of a growth extending over several centuries. But this document, the "Isidorian Decretals,” represented it as something complete and unchangeable from the beginning. The great purpose of this document was to show that all the rights claimed by the popes in the ninth century had been exercised by the popes from the earliest times.

For hundreds of years these documents were accepted at face value and regarded as genuine. Nicholas de Cusa in 1433was the ﬁrst one to suggest that the decretals were a forgery. After that they came to be called the "Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals." (Pseudo means “false,” or “pretended.”) In 1440 Lorenzo Valla proved that the "Donation of Constantine” was a forgery. Today Catholic scholars agree with Protestant scholars that both documents are spurious.

Fictitious documents were nothing new. But these two are among the most colossal frauds ever carried out. However, the time when they were foisted upon the world was an age of extreme ignorance, and throughout the medieval centuries they were generally accepted as genuine. This gave the papacy sufﬁcient time to establish and entrench itself.

When in 1054 the eastern and western parts of the Church formally separated, the patriarch of Constantinople and the bishop of Rome could no longer be considered rivals. The bishop of Rome, now known as the pope, was supreme in the West. The patriarch of Constantinople was supreme in the East.

Pope Nicholas I
Nicholas I, who occupied the papal throne from 858 to 867, did much to lay the foundation of papal power and prestige in following centuries. The writings of St. Augustine had great inﬂuence throughout the Middle Ages. His book The City of God was the inspiration of the emperor Charlemagne. It had likewise made a deep impression upon the mind of Nicholas I. It was his ambition to apply its ideas to the life of his day.

He believed that the bishops are the agents of the pope, that the pope is the ruler of the entire Church, and that the Church is superior to all earthly powers. Nicholas I was able to make good his claims for the papacy only to a very limited extent. But he left these claims behind as an ideal after which later popes were to strive. The popes who came closest to fulﬁlling them were Gregory VII and Innocent III. But no pope ever made greater claims to papal power than did Nicholas I.