lsayre wrote: But wasn't the Bishop of Rome considered throughout history (Catholic at least) to be the Pope?
I wonder and thus hypothesize if references to 'Rome' are references to the Empire in toto or Constantine's Nova Roma ('New Rome'), or both, as much as reference to *Rome* - ie. the narrative we have now is more streamlined and singular than what really happened.
and I wonder if the narratives about early Church figures have been embellished to also streamline the narrative to give the impression the early church was more established and more streamlined and singular than it really was.
"The accession of Constantine was a turning point for early Christianity. After his victory, Constantine took over the role of patron of the Christian faith. He supported the Church financially, had an extraordinary number of basilicas built, granted privileges to clergy (eg. exemption from certain taxes), promoted Christians to high-ranking offices, returned property confiscated during the Great Persecution of Diocletian,[16] and endowed the church with land and other wealth[17] ...
"... the city began to employ overtly Christian architecture, contained churches within the city walls, and had no pre-existing temples from other religions.[18]
"In doing this, however, Constantine required those who had not converted to Christianity to pay for the new city.[17] Christian chroniclers tell that it appeared necessary to Constantine "to teach his subjects to give up their rites (...) and to accustom them to despise their temples and the images contained therein"[19]. This led to the closure of temples because of a lack of support, their wealth flowing to the imperial treasure;[20] Constantine did not need to use force to implement this.[17] "
Public office
"Many times imperial favor was granted to Christianity by the Edict [of Milan]; new avenues were opened to Christians, including the right to compete with other Romans in the traditional cursus honorum for high government positions, and greater acceptance into general civil society. Constantine respected cultivated persons, and his court was composed of older, respected, and honored men. Men from leading Roman families who declined to convert to Christianity were denied positions of power yet still received appointments: even up to the end of his life, two-thirds of his top government were non-Christian.
"... On March 7, 321, Sunday, the Day of the Sun, was declared an official day of rest ... this act did not change the Christian day of worship so much as it made the day an official Imperial holiday.
Early Christian Bibles
"In 331, Constantine commissioned Eusebius to deliver fifty Bibles for the Church of Constantinople.
Athanasius (Apol. Const. 4) recorded around 340 Alexandrian scribes preparing Bibles for Constans [Roman Emperor from 337 to 350]. Little else is known. It has been speculated that this may have provided motivation for canon lists, and that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are examples of these Bibles. Together with the Peshitta and Codex Alexandrinus, these are the earliest extant Christian Bibles.[29]
"The Fifty Bibles of Constantine were Bibles in Greek language commissioned in 331 by Constantine I and prepared by Eusebius of Caesarea. They were made for the use of the Bishop of Constantinople in the growing number of churches in that very new city. Eusebius quoted the letter of commission in his Life of Constantine, and it is the only surviving source from which we know of the existence of the Bibles.[1]
Biblical canon
"It is speculated that this commission may have provided motivation for the development of the canon lists ... There is no evidence among the records of the First Council of Nicaea of any determination on the canon; however, Jerome, in his Prologue to Judith, makes the claim that the Book of Judith was 'found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures'.[3]"
Some primitive communities were believed to have been founded by the immediate followers of Christ, the apostles. They were called "apostolic churches," and entitled to especial respect. Until the fifth or sixth century the Roman Church was just one of these "apostolic" churches. Its bishop was called "Pope" only because every bishop was called "Pope" (as every priest is in the East today) during the first few centuries.
But the Roman Pope had two peculiar advantages, and these formed the foundation of his ambition to rule the whole Church.
In the first place, Rome was the metropolis of the Empire, the greatest city of the world.
In the second place, it was somehow generally believed by the end of the second century, though there is no other serious evidence of the fact, that the Roman Church had been founded by Peter.
The ecclesiastical historian Eusebius tells us (bk. v, 34) that Bishop Victor, of Rome,(189-198) heard that the Churches of Asia Minor did not celebrate Easter on the same day as the Romans, and he commanded them to change. That was about the year 190. The bishops of Asia Minor told Victor, in very plain Greek, to mind his own business. Victor, haughtily, threatened to excommunicate them, whereupon even the bishops of the West "bitterly attacked Victor" (Eusebius says) for his arrogance, and declared that they would take no notice of his excommunication. Possibly they knew that, as Bishop Hippolytus tells us, Pope Victor was a friend of the mistress, Marcia, of the emperor Commodus (180-192).
Before the Council of Nicæa (325) only three bishops were called patriarchs, the Bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch in Syria.
Last edited by Huon on Tue Sep 08, 2015 12:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
Huon wrote:Some primitive communities were believed to have been founded by the immediate followers of Christ, the apostles. They were called "apostolic churches," and entitled to especial respect. Until the fifth or sixth century the Roman Church was just one of these "apostolic" churches. Its bishop was called "Pope" only because every bishop was called "Pope" (as every priest is in the East today) during the first few centuries.
That's interesting.
But the Roman Pope had two peculiar advantages, and these formed the foundation of his ambition to rule the whole Church.
In the first place, Rome was the metropolis of the Empire, the greatest city of the world.
In the second place, it was somehow generally believed by the end of the second century, though there is no other serious evidence of the fact, that the Roman Church had been founded by Peter.
Rome was the metropolis of the Empire until the middle of the 3rd century but, as I have outlined above, it ceased to be for quite a while; and was almost certainly not the center of the establishmentconsolidation of imperial Christianity: Constantinople was (as 'Nova Roma').
Last edited by MrMacSon on Tue Sep 08, 2015 1:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
"The city was attacked by the Visigoths, led by Alaric I. At that time, Rome was no longer the capital of the Western Roman Empire, having been replaced in that position by Ravenna in 402. Nevertheless, the city of Rome retained a paramount position as "the eternal city" and a spiritual center of the Empire.
" ... The Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II declared three days of mourning in Constantinople.[99]
Jerome wrote in grief: "If Rome can perish, what can be safe?"[100]
"The Roman Empire at this time was still in the midst of religious conflict between pagans and Christians. The sack was used by both sides to bolster their competing claims of divine legitimacy.[101] Paulus Orosius, a Christian priest and theologian, believed the sack was God's wrath against a proud and blasphemous city, and that it was only through God's benevolence that the sack had not been too severe. Rome had lost its wealth, but Roman sovereignty endured, and that to talk to the survivors in Rome one would think "nothing had happened."[102] Other Romans felt the sack was divine punishment for turning away from the traditional pagan gods to Christ. Zosimus, a Roman pagan historian, believed that Christianity, through its abandonment of the ancient traditional rites, had weakened the Empire's political virtues, and that the poor decisions of the Imperial government that led to the sack were due to the lack of the gods' care.[103]
"The religious and political attacks on Christianity spurred Saint Augustine to write a defense, The City of God, which went on to become foundational to Christian thought."
"Constantine I was a key figure in many important events in Christian history, as he convened and attended the first ecumenical council of bishops at Nicaea in 325, subsidized the building of churches and sanctuaries such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and involved himself in questions such as the timing of Christ's resurrection and its relation to the Passover.[5]
"The birth of Christian monasticism in the deserts of Egypt in the 3rd century*, which initially operated outside the episcopal authority of the Church, would become so successful that, by the 8th century, it penetrated the Church and became the primary Christian rule within ...
"Late Antiquity marks the decline of Roman state religion, circumscribed in degrees by edicts likely inspired by Christian advisors such as Eusebius to 4th century emperors, and a period of dynamic religious experimentation and spirituality with many syncretic sects, some formed centuries earlier, such as Gnosticism or Neoplatonism and the Chaldaean oracles, some novel, such as hermeticism."
The need for some form of organized spiritual guidance was obvious; and around 318 Saint Pachomius started to organize his many followers in what was to become the first Christian cenobitic or communal monastery. Soon, similar institutions were established throughout the Egyptian desert as well as the rest of the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Notable monasteries of the East include:
Mar Awgin founded a monastery on Mt. Izla above Nisibis in Mesopotamia (~350), and from this monastery the cenobitic tradition spread in Mesopotamia, Persia, Armenia, Georgia and even India and China.
St. Sabbas the Sanctified organized the monks of the Judean Desert in a monastery close to Bethlehem (483), now known as Mar Saba, which is considered the mother of all monasteries of the Eastern Orthodox churches.
[wiki]Saint Catherine's Monastery[/wiki] was founded between 527 and 565 in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt by order of Emperor Justinian I.
In the West, the most significant development occurred when the rules for monastic communities were written, the Rule of St Basil being credited with having been the first.
St. Basil drew up his Asketikon for the members of the monastery he founded about 356 on the banks of the Iris River in Cappadocia
