by himself or with his comprovincial bishops, any cause arising in another diocese.* He was not made a judge, but a sort of grand jury of one, to say whether a case should go to trial. Still less (if possible) is there any hint of any authority in the Bishop of Rome to call any case before him on his own motion. Simply, if a bishop feels that he has not had justice done him at home, and can not get it in these disturbed times, he may appeal to the chief bishop of the quieter part of the Church, and ask him to insist that an oppressed brother shall have a fair trial. Of course, if such a demand was disregarded, the Bishop of Rome would refuse his communion to those who should thus oppress the weak.

Just here, let me say that there is one more noteworthy thing in these Sardican canons. It is the phrase" Bishop of Rome."

It is an instinct of our nature to honor a very special office with a very special title. Metropolitan, Archbishop, Frimate, Exarch, Patriarch, Pope, all these names stand for things. Yes, and conversely, no great distinctive fact of power can long exist without giving birth to a title of corresponding dignity. It may seem a small matter, this reference to the head of the most dignified see

* For the meaning of “diocese,” as used here, see note on the next page.

in Christendom as "Bishop of Rome," as simply, as fraternally, as equally, as if it had been a bishop of Sardica, or a bishop of some obscure Eugubium, that was named. That little fact is a little straw showing the direction of the Church's mind, and that the Church had not been for nearly 300 years looking to the Bishop of Rome as having authority different from that of other Bishops in the affairs of the Church outside of Italy. In Italy he was metropolitan of his province, and Archbishop or Exarch of the Roman Diccese,* as the word was then used, i..., of the seven provinces of middle and southern Italy with the three of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, but to the rest of the Church Catholic he was simply "Bishop of Rome," no less, no more.

It is unhistorical to call any bishop of Rome "the Pope" down to the time of Nicholas I. (A D.

* In the fourth century what we now call a diocese was known as a parish, in Church Greek Tаpoikia, but it had no "Diocesan Convention" under any name, and was in fact so obscure and humble a member of the province to which it belonged that it is not often mentioned by any title at all. One of the few examples is in Canon XVIII. of Ancyra, which may be read in Fulton's Index Canonum. Single sees were grouped together into a province or eparchy (έnaрxía), and all their law-making was done by the council of bishops of the province, meeting once or twice a year. The province was originally a civil division of the Roman Empire, and the Church always adapted itself to the framework thus pro

858) and the promulgation of the false decretals as the law of western Christendom. Not till eight hundred years of Christian history had gone on record, did "the Bishop of the Church of the Romans" come to be an officer so different from other bishops as this title of "the Pope" implies. He was indeed "the Pope of the Romans." Every bishop was the Pope, the reverend father, of his own city. But he was not thought of, even at Sardica, as the only Pope in the world, nor as Pope of the whole Church, nor as Pope in any sense that distinguished him from other Popes.

There is a very striking bit of correspondence of the ninth century, that illustrates what I mean. The Roman bishop of the day (circa A.D. 833) rebukes certain bishops of Gaul for addressing him

vided. Every province of the civil government was also a province of the ecclesiastical.

The word diocese (dioiknous) was used for one of the greatest divisions of the Roman Empire, Egypt, for example, being a diocese, and the Pontic Diocese, in northern Asia Minor, being large enough to include thirteen provinces. The present writer ventures to think that the adoption of the civil diocese with its exarch as a model for the Church to follow in organization was one of the signs of growing secularization and of a failing sense of the independence and equality of all bishops. Yet our own country is naturally growing to be a diocese in that old sense, with many provinces of related sees, only that we may hope never to see any bishop admitted to be a governor over his peers.

as "pope" and "brother." He makes the point that the two words are incongruous; if he is their pope, he is not their brother. Very true, we may all say, and conversely, if their brother, not their pope. In the fourth century "the Bishop of the Church of the Romans" was a very important person, because of his important flock, but he was brother, not pope, of all bishops outside of the Roman diocese. Read persistently "the Bishop of Rome" instead of "the Pope," in studying in modern books the history of the first eight centuries, and it will make a great difference in the look of them. You will see them as they really were.*

*Pope was a common title of bishops so late as the sixth century. It is used of the bishops of Constantinople and Alexandria in the acts of the sixth General Council (of Constantinople, A.D. 681). Even at this day the official title of the bishops of Alexandria is no less than this: "Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria, Libya, Pentapolis, and all the preaching of S. Mark, and Ecumenical Judge."

The title of " Pope" was first decreed to belong to the Bishop of Rome exclusively, by a Roman council in the days of Gregory VII. Hildebrand), A.D. 1073. Of course the Eastern Church paid no heed to that piece of insolence.

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Returning to the phraseology of these Sardican canons, it is noteworthy that Bishop Hefele, scholarly and fair-minded as he is, regularly substitutes "Pope" for 'Bishop of Rome" and such like expressions, in his paraphrases. The real language of the fourth century is intolerable, or at least thoroughly unnatural, on his tongue.

III.

THE SARDICAN SCHEME NOT A PART OF THE CHURCH'S LAW BEFORE SARDICA, NOR

MADE SO AT SARDICA.

I. I have considered the motives that must have influenced the Sardican fathers and the actual features of their scheme. I have interpreted it as bearing marks of novelty on its face. I must now proceed to show that no such scheme was as a matter of fact a part of the Church's law in the preceding century.

Had the judicial appeal to Rome been an acknowledged right in the earlier and purer days of the Church? We are not without a sharp and definite answer. The great city of Rome was as much a central resort of scamps, scallawags, cranks, adventurers, visionaries, and men with a grievance, as London and New York are to-day.. Inventors of heresies, founders of schisms, deposed bishops, and priests with reputation hopelessly broken at home, poured into Rome as into a sewer. Generally they flattered the Roman bishop. Sometimes they met with an exceedingly kind reception. But I know no case in which any such protegé of Rome was ever in the first three centuries restored to his see, or to his priesthood, or to the communion of the home. Church from which he had been expelled, or even