Читать книгу Crises in the History of the Papacy. Lives and Legacy of the Most Influential Popes Who Shaped the Development & History of Church онлайн

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Toward the end of the second century the Roman Christians can hardly have numbered twenty thousand. Dr. Döllinger estimates their number at fifty thousand, but the letter of Bishop Cornelius, on which he relies, belongs to a later date and is not accurately quoted by him.8 The Bishop says that, in his time, the Roman Church had forty-four priests, fourteen deacons and subdeacons, and ninety-four clerics in minor orders. The crowd of acolytes and exorcists must not be regarded in a modern sense; most of them would never be priests. At that time, there was not a single public chapel in Rome and it would be an anachronism to regard each of the thirty or forty priests of Rome as a rector in charge of more than a thousand souls. The Christians gathered stealthily in the houses of their better-endowed brethren to receive the sacred elements from poor glass vessels, and Tertullian blushes to learn that they are found among the panders and gamblers who have to bribe the officials to overlook their illegal ways.9 The fact that they supported fifteen hundred poor, sick, and widows need not surprise us when we remember what an age of parasitism it was. At least a fourth of the citizens of Rome lived on free rations and had free medical service. There were, in fine, thirty years of development between the time of Cornelius and the time of Callistus.10