remorse of the "absurdities" (absona) of Pope Hadrian, who, they said, had commanded an heretical worship of images.1

1

No less light is thrown on the relations of Western bishops to the Pope by the Predestinarian controversy occasioned by the monk Gottschalk, and prolonged for ten years at Synods and in various writings. The first prelates of the day, Hincmar, Rhabanus, Amulo, Prudentius, Wenilo, and others, took opposite sides, Synod contended against Synod, and there seemed no possibility of coming to an agreement. Yet it never occurred to any one to appeal to the Pope's sentence, ready as he was to interpose in the affairs of the Frankish Church; only at the last Gottschalk himself made an unsuccessful attempt to get his hard fate mitigated by the Pope.

Up to the time of the Isidorian decretals no serious attempt was made anywhere to introduce the neoRoman theory of Infallibility. The Popes did not dream of laying claim to such a privilege. Their relation to the Church had to be fundamentally revolutionized, and the idea of the Primacy altered, before there could be any room for this doctrine to grow up; after that it

1 Mansi, Concil. xiv. 415 seq.

developed itself by a sort of logical sequence, but very slowly, being at issue with notorious historical facts.

§ V.-The Ancient Constitution of the Church. To get a view of the enormous difference in the position and action of the Primacy, as it was in the Roman Empire, and as it became in the later middle ages, it is enough to point out the following facts :

(1.) The Popes took no part in convoking Councils. All Great Councils, to which bishops came from different countries, were convoked by the Emperors, nor were the Popes ever consulted about it beforehand. If they thought a General Council necessary, they had to petition the Imperial Court, as Innocent did in the matter of St. Chrysostom, and Leo after the Synod of 449;1 and then they did not always prevail, as both the Popes just named learnt by experience.

(2.) They were not always allowed to preside, personally or by deputy, at the Great Councils, though no one denied them the first rank in the Church. At Nice, at the two Councils of Ephesus in 431 and 449, and at the Fifth General Council in 553, others presided; only at Chalcedon in 451, and Constantinople in 1 [The "Latrocinium" of Ephesus.—TR.]

680, did the Papal legates preside. And it is clear that the Popes did not claim this as their exclusive right, from the conduct of Leo I. in sending his legates to Ephesus, although he knew that the Emperor had named, not him, but the bishop of Alexandria, to preside.

(3.) Neither the dogmatic nor the disciplinary decisions of these Councils required Papal confirmation, for their force and authority depended on the consent of the Church, as expressed in the Synod, and afterwards in the fact of its being generally received. The confirmation of the Nicene Council by Pope Silvester was afterwards invented at Rome, because facts would not square with the newly devised theory.

(4.) For the first thousand years no Pope ever issued a doctrinal decision intended for and addressed to the whole Church. Their doctrinal pronouncements, if de-signed to condemn new heresies, were always submitted to a Synod, or were answers to inquiries from one or more bishops. They only became a standard of faith after being read, examined, and approved at an Ecumenical Council.

(5.) The Popes possessed none of the three powers which are the proper attributes of sovereignty, neither

the legislative, the administrative, nor the judicial. The Council of Sardica, in 343, gave them, indeed, a handle for the attempt to usurp the latter. Here it was decreed for the first time, and as a personal privilege to the then Pope, Julius, that he should be authorized to appoint judges for a bishop in the second instance to hear the cause on the spot, with the assistance of a Roman legate, and, in the event of a further appeal, to pronounce sentence himself. But this regulation was received neither by the Eastern Church nor the African, never observed by the former, and steadily rejected by the latter, and it never came into full force anywhere till after the Isidorian decretals were fabricated. The African bishops wrote to Pope Boniface I., in 419, "We are resolved not to admit this arrogant claim."

The Popes at that time made no attempt to exercise legislative power. For a long time, according to their own statement, no canons but those of the first Nicene Council obtained in the West, in the East only the canons of Eastern Synods. Declarations or ordinances issued by Popes in reply to questions of particular bishops could not be regarded as general laws of the

1 Epist. Fontif. (ed. Coust.), p. 113:-" Non sumus jam istum typhum bassuri."

Church, for the simple reason that they were only known to particular bishops and Churches. The spread of the Dionysian writings, with the second part composed of Papal documents, after the sixth century, began gradually to pioneer the way for the notion that certain decretals of the Roman bishops had the force of law, but their authority was still limited, as in the Spanish Church, to those issued by Roman Synods, or else was made dependent on their express acceptance by National Churches. Even if the Popes had attempted at that time to exercise a formal government over the Church, the thing was a sheer impossibility. Government cannot be carried on by occasional Synods, and there was no other means of governing. The Popes would have required a court, a system of clerical officials, congregations, and the like, but nothing of the kind was remotely dreamt of. The Roman clergy were organized just like every other; for all the offices and functions undertaken later, and still discharged by the court, there was then neither need nor occasion.

(6.) Nobody thought of getting dispensations from Church laws from the Roman bishops, nor was a single tax or tribute paid to the Roman See, for no court as yet existed. To make laws which could be dispensed for