The Bishops of Rome,
the Popes,
42 AD-present

On the map we have the Roman Empire as it was partially restored at the death of Justinian I. The capital, of course, is Constantinople, with the recovered western areas ruled from Ravenna (Italy, the Exarchate of Ravenna) and Carthage (Africa and Spain, the Exarchate of Carthage). The Roman Church is governed through the Emperor and the Patriarchs, namely the Patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. The role of the Emperor in governing the Church is now called "caesaro-papism," i.e. an Emperor acting like a Pope. However, the Emperor had exercised his powers since Constantine I, while the familiar powers of the Pope were much later claims and inventions. It is thus much less anachronistic to characterize the claims of later Popes, not the Emperors, as the "caesaro-papism," i.e. the Pope trying to act like an Emperor. Chief among the powers of the Emperor was that of calling Church Councils -- as Constantine had called the Council of Nicaea in 325. The first Council called by a Pope was the Lateran Council I in 1123. To resolve the Great Schism, the Council of Constance, 1414-1418, was called by the Emperor Sigismund; but once a single line of Popes was secure in Rome again, they denied that the Emperor had any authority to call Councils. The last Emperor in any position, and with any need, to call a Council, Charles V, deferred to the Pope -- who then was the one to call the Council of Trent, 1545-1563. At the time of Justinian, the Pope was regarded as primus inter pares, first among equals of the Patriarchs, but that was all. The Patriarch of Constantinople was second in rank, although this was a bit resented by the other, older Patriarchates.

In this period there were four significant centers of Christianity outside what had ever been in the Roman Empire:  in the Caucasus, in Mesopotamia, in Ethiopia, and in Ireland. In the Caucasus were the Churches of Georgia and Armenia. Georgia was doctrinally in union with Rome, but Armenia had not accepted the decision of the Fourth Ecumenical Council. The Patriarchate of Armenia was thus regarded by the Roman Church as heterodox. Similarly heterodox was the Patriarchate of the East, seated at the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon, which had not accepted the decision of the Third Ecumenical Council. The authority of the Patriarch of the East already extended to Christians in India, and subsequently would reach all the way to China. Ethiopia was under the authority of the Patriarch of Alexandria and so, until the Fourth Ecumenical Council, was doctrinally in union with Rome -- later it would continue to follow the lead of the Coptic Church. Ethiopia has had its own autonomous Patriarchate just since 1959. That leaves Ireland, which traditionally was converted by St. Patrick after 432 AD. As communication between Ireland and the Empire became more tenuous, the Irish Church preserved literacy, as Britain itself fell out of history, and developed some of its own traditions -- though these never came to serious heterodoxy and any differences were later fixed up.

On the other hand, the moral standing of the Church now stands gravely challenged by scandals over priests who take advantage of their positions to sexually prey on children. In the most scurrilous of anti-Catholic rumor and libel, Catholics were required to provide children to priests for sexual purposes. However innocent of this, the Church put itself in a very false, immoral, and illegal position by often simply transfering priests accused of sexual crimes instead of turning them over to the police. Why the Church would be reluctant to respond appropriately is understandable, since it has been harder and harder, especially outside of Ireland and Poland, to get men to commit to a life of celibacy to become priests. The Church invests a great deal in the education and training of priests and is going to be reluctant to lose them. Also, the priesthood might unfortunately tend to attract men who might otherwise be uninterested in marriage, i.e. homosexuals and those sexually attracted to children. In principle, homosexuals are going to be in no worse position than heterosexual priests in that the Church has no objection to anyone being a homosexual, as long as they don't engage in homosexual sex. Since priests are expected to avoid any kind of sex, homosexual priests face temptations in much the same way as heterosexual priests. A priest tempted into homosexual sex may be committing a greater sin than a heterosexual priest, but at least it is not illegal. Child molesting is something else. While homosexual priests as such may not be the problem, conservatives sometimes think it is, since much of the abuse really isn't of children, but of teenage boys. Either way, however, these particular priests don't seem to be able to observe either their vows of celibacy, the Church's teachings on sexuality, or the laws about the age of consent.

A reasonable solution to all this, since the fundamental problem is the scarcity of parish priests, could be married priests. While priestly celibacy is founded on the text, Matthew 19:12, "and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it," it may be that the emphasis on celibacy in the Latin Church developed mainly to prevent priestly offices from becoming hereditary -- a grave danger in the Middle Ages, as seen recently also in Japan, where a married Buddhist clergy has resulted precisely in hereditary succession to Buddhist temples. This not likely to become a danger in the modern Catholic Church, however, and the Church would do well to adopt a somewhat more relaxed policy, as in the Greek Orthodox Church, where married priests are simply disqualified from advancing in the hierarchy.

The mythic beginning of the Papacy with St. Peter may not be quite as mythic as Protestants like to suppose. St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican is built over a 1st century Christian cemetery. Rebuilt over time, ever since the first version built by Constantine, the altar turns out always to have been over a particular grave, with its own humble monument, of a man whose bones date from the correct era. This may or may not really be Peter, but the antiquity of bones and tomb rule out the kind of crude mediaeval fraud that the sceptic might suppose.

Since St. Peter's and the Papacy really are so old, the opposite temptation, from the one of priestly fictions, is that the Popes know far more about history than anyone suspects. One favorite notion, which may or may not have originated in the novel Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins, is that the Vatican possesses the actual body of Jesus Christ. Since Christ is supposed to have risen from the dead and ascended to heaven, his body would be, to say the least, an embarrassment. But when one wonders whether these few bones are actually St. Peter, the intact mummy of Jesus seems rather less credible. Another conceit, apparently taken seriously by the 1999 movie Stigmata, is that the Vatican possesses texts of the Gospels, even in Aramaic (surviving Gospels are in Greek), which contradict various points of Catholic doctrine, like the existence of the Church. Stigmata, however, very much, perhaps inadvertently, overstates its case, since the sayings of Jesus it treasures as directed against the (not yet existing) Catholic Church could, at the time, have had no possible object other than the Temple of Herod in Jerusalem. The viewer of the movie, taking into account the historical context in which Jesus spoke, might therefore take it as an anti-Semitic rather than just an anti-Catholic screed.

The antiquity of the Papacy is perhaps often forgotten when it comes to the monuments of Rome. The mediaeval Popes did not live in the Vatican, but in the Lateran Palace, which had been seized from its private owners by, of all people, the Emperor Nero. Constantine then donated it to the Bishop of Rome and built adjacent to it the church of San Giovanni in Laterno, which has remained ever since the actual episcopal church of Rome (not St. Peter's). Most of the mediaeval Church councils in Rome are thus "Lateran" Councils, held at the Pope's residence (as the last two Councils have been "Vatican" Councils). Later, while the Popes were in Avignon, the Palace burned twice, in 1307 and 1361. Although the Palace was rebuilt, when the Popes returned, they never lived there again, settling at Santa Maria in Trastevere, then at Santa Maria Maggiore (also ancient; built in 432), and finally, as we all know, at the Vatican. What was left of the ancient Lateran Palace was removed by Sixtus V, who then built the smaller existing building.

The ability of the Popes to control the outlying territories, or even Rome itself, was, however, very uneven. Rome was often under the control of turbulent local aristocrats, and one reason for the Papal relocation to Avignon was to escape them. After the return of the Popes to Rome, it was some time before the territorial fortunes could be restored. The son of Alexander VI, Cesare Borgia, then conquered Romagna. This was for his own benefit; but the deaths of him and his father (who was perhaps trying to poison someone else) and the accession of the warrior Pope Julius II resulted in its being secured for the Papacy. Avignon was still a Papal possession, and there were some outlying holdings in Italy, like Benevento. This arrangement was then fairly stable until the French Revolution, when Avignon was lost, the Papal States temporarily annexed, and the Pope himself eventually imprisoned by Napoleon. The restorations of 1815 returned the Papal Italian territories, until the period of the unification of Italy, 1859-1870. This formally ended the political independence of the Papacy until the Concordat with Mussolini in