Christianity in the West presented two sharp contrasts to
eastern Christianity. In the first place, the great heresies which divided the
East scarcely affected the West. In the second place, no union of Church and
State existed among western Christians. Instead of acknowledging the religious
supremacy of the emperor at Constantinople, they yielded obedience to the
bishop of Rome, the head of the Roman Church. He is known to us as the pope,
and his office is called the Papacy. We shall now inquire how the popes secured
their unchallenged authority over western Christendom.
ROME AN APOSTOLIC CHURCH
A church in Rome must have been established at an early
date, for it was to Roman Christians that St. Paul addressed one of the Epistles
now preserved in the New Testament. St. Paul visited Rome, as we know from the Acts
of the Apostles, and there he is said to have suffered martyrdom. Christian
tradition, very ancient and very generally received, declares that St. Peter
also labored in Rome, where he met a martyr's death, perhaps during the reign
of the emperor Nero. To the early Christians, therefore, the Roman Church must
have seemed in the highest degree sacred, for it had been founded by the two
greatest apostles and had been nourished by their blood.
