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

36 страница из 107

Ursicinus went to din his grievances into the ears of provincial bishops, and there seems to be good ground for the statement in the Libellus that some of these were indignant with Damasus. It is at least clear that Damasus went on to obtain from the Emperor a concession of the most far-reaching character. The imperial rescript making this concession—one of the really important steps in the history of the Papacy and of the Church—has strangely disappeared, but we find the bishops of a later Roman synod (in 378 or 379) writing to Gratian and Valentinian that, when Ursicinus was banished, the Emperors had decreed that "the Roman bishop should have power to inquire into the conduct of the other priests of the churches, and that affairs of religion should be judged by the pontiff of religion with his colleagues."33 A later rescript of Gratian indicates that the Bishop of Rome was to have five or seven colleagues with him in these inquiries34; and further light is thrown on the matter by St. Ambrose who observes35 that, by a decree of Valentinian, a defendant in a religious dispute was to have a judge of a fitting character (a cleric) and of at least equal rank. Possibly the truculent impartiality of Maximinus was the immediate occasion for asking this privilege, and Valentinian would not find it unseemly that bishops should adjudicate on these new types of quarrels. But we have in this last document the germ of great historical developments. The clergy were virtually withdrawn from secular jurisdiction; the spiritual court was set up in face of the secular. Moreover, if defendants were to be judged only by their equals, who was to judge the Bishop of Rome?