The history of the papacy captivates many scholars and ordinary people. Therefore, we propose to study in detail the role of the supreme hierarch, which the Pope always held at the head of the Roman Catholic Church. According to Catholic doctrine, it begins from the time of Peter and continues to this day.
Times of emperors
We begin by examining the role of the papacy in the history of medieval Europe. In the days of the Early Church, the bishops of Rome did not have temporary authority until the time of Constantine. In addition to the Roman, there were also the Ostrogothic papacy, Byzantine and Frankish. Over time, it consolidated its territorial claims on a part of the peninsula known as papal states. After that, the role of neighboring sovereigns was replaced by influential Roman families during the time of the saeculum obscurum. No matter how important the role of the Pope is, the history of the papacy was not determined by him alone.
Caesarepapism
From 1048 to 1257, the papacy experienced a growing conflict with the leaders and churches of the Holy Roman and Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire). The culmination of the latter was a split between East and West, which divided the Western and Eastern Church. In 1257–1377, the Pope, although he was a bishop in Rome, sometimes lived in other Italian cities and in Avignon. The return of the popes to Rome after the Avignon papacy was followed by a Western schism. That is, the division of the Western church between the two and for some time the three competing applicants. As follows from the history of the papacy of John Norwich, retold by him in a number of publications.
Patronage of the Arts
The papacy is known for its artistic and architectural patronage, raids on European power politics and theological challenges of papal authority. After the start of the Protestant Reformation, the Papacy of the Reformation and the Papal Baroque led the Catholic Church through the Counter-Reformation. Popes in the era of the revolution witnessed the largest confiscation of church property. The Roman question, which arose as a result of the unification of Italy, led to the loss of many states and the creation of the Vatican.
Historical roots
Catholics recognize the Pope as the successor to St. Peter, whom Jesus designated as the “stone” on which the Church was to be built. Although Peter never held the title “Pope,” Catholics recognize him as the first bishop of Rome. The official declarations of the Church indicate that the pontiffs occupy a position in the college of bishops similar to that which Peter held in the "college" of the apostles. He was the prince of the apostles, while the college of bishops is an excellent entity, regarded by some as a successor.
Many deny that Peter and those who claimed to be his immediate successors had universally recognized supreme authority over all the early churches, referring instead to the fact that the bishop of Rome was and remains “first among equals,” as the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church stated. in the 2nd century AD and again in the 21st century. However, what this form should take is the subject of controversy and disagreement to this day between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, which were one Church, at least for the first seven ecumenical councils, before the formal split over the papal primacy.
Many of the bishops of Rome in the first three centuries of the Christian era were obscure figures. Several people died a martyrdom during the persecution. Most of them participated in intense theological disputes with other bishops.
The origins
If you believe the "History of the papacy" S.G. Lozinsky, the legend of the victory of Constantine I at the Battle of Milvi Bridge (312) connects his vision of hi-ro and the text with iconic signs in the sky, and also reproduces this symbol on the shields of his troops. The following year, Constantine and Licinius proclaimed tolerance for Christianity by the Edict of Milan, and in 325 Constantine convened and headed the First Council of Nicaea, the first Ecumenical. However, this does not have much to do with the Pope, who was not even present at the council; in fact, the first bishop of Rome, who is also called the Pope, is Damas I (366–84). Moreover, between 324 and 330 years, Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Byzantium, the former Greek city on the Bosphorus. The power of Rome was transferred to Byzantium, which later, in 330, became Constantinople, and today - Istanbul.
Although the “Donation of Constantine” never happened, Constantine transferred the Lateran Palace to the Bishop of Rome, and around 310 AD the construction of the Constantine Basilica in Germany under the name Aula Palatina began.
The emperor also installed the Old St. Peter's Basilica, or the Constantine Basilica, St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, at the burial place of St. Peter, as is customary by the Christian community of Rome after his conversion to Christianity, as follows from the History of the Papacy by Gerge E.
Ostrogothic papacy
The Ostrogothic period lasted from 493 to 537 years. This time can be called the beginning of the history of the papacy in the Middle Ages. The election of the pontiff in March 483 was the first when the West Roman emperor did not exist. The papacy was strongly influenced by the Ostrogothic Kingdom if the Pope was not directly appointed by the Ostrogothic King. The selection and management of the Popes during this period were influenced by Atalarik and Theodadad. This period ended with the (re) conquest of Justinian I of Rome during the Gothic War, the inauguration of the Byzantine pontiff (537–752). This stage of the history of the papacy is extremely important.
The role of the Ostrogoths became clear during the first split. When on November 22, 498, two men were elected by the Pope. The subsequent triumph of Pope Symmachus (498–514) over Antipas, Lawrence is the first recorded example of symony in the history of the Pope. Symmachus also established the practice of the Popes, naming his successors, which lasted until an unpopular choice was made in 530, and contention continued until the choice in 532 of John II, the first to rename himself a legacy.
Byzantine papacy
This papacy was a period of Byzantine domination from 537 to 752, when the popes demanded the approval of the Byzantine emperors for episcopal consecration, and many pontiffs were chosen from apocrites (ties from the Pope to the emperor) or residents of Byzantine Greece, Syria or Sicily. Justinian I conquered the Italian peninsula in the Gothic War (535–54) and appointed the next three Popes, which would be continued by his successors and then delegated to the exarchate of Ravenna.
The Roman Duchy was a Byzantine district in the Exarchate of Ravenna, ruled by an imperial functionary with the title Dux. Within the exarchate, the two main districts were a country near Ravenna, where the exarch was the center of the Byzantine opposition to the Lombards, and the duchy of Rome, which encompassed the lands of Latsium north of the Tiber and Campania in the south until Garilliano There, the pope himself was the soul of the opposition.
In 738, the Lombard Duke Transamund Spoletsky captured the castle of Gallese, which defended the road to Perugia. With a large payment, Pope Gregory III forced the Duke to return the castle to him.
The imperial crown, once owned by the Carolingian emperors, was disputed between their broken heirs and local rulers; no one came out victorious until Otton I, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, invaded Italy. Italy became an integral kingdom of the Holy Roman Empire in 962, from then on emperors were Germans. As the emperors strengthened their positions, the northern Italian city-states divided into Guelphs and Ghibellines. Henry III, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, discovered three warring popes during a visit to Rome in 1048 due to the unprecedented actions of Pope Benedict IX. He overthrew all three and established his preferred candidate, namely Pope Clement II, as we know from a work written by Gergei.
Popes vs Caesars
History of the papacy from 1048 to 1257 will continue to be marked by a conflict between them and the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. First of all, a dispute about investments, a dispute about who - the pope or the emperor - could appoint bishops in the Empire. The walk of Henry IV to Canossa in 1077 to meet with Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), although not causing dispositions in the context of a larger dispute, became legendary. Although the emperor refused any right to invest in the Concordat of Worms (1122), the problem worsened again.
According to Lozinsky's History of the Papacy, long-standing differences between East and West also entered into a split between East and West and the Crusades. Both Western and Eastern prelates took part in the first seven Ecumenical Councils, but growing doctrinal, theological, linguistic, political and geographical differences ultimately led to mutual accusations and excommunication. The speech of Pope Urban II (1088–99) at the Council of Clermont in 1095 was a unifying call for the First Crusade.
Gallization of the papacy
After seventy years spent in France, the papal curia was naturally French in its respect and, to a large extent, in its state. There is some tension in Rome. A crowd of Romans, who were said to be in a menacing mood, demanded the Pope, or at least Italian. In 1378, the conclave elected Pope Urban VI, an Italian from Naples. His intransigence in office soon pushed the French cardinals away. And the behavior of the Roman crowd allowed them in retrospect to declare that his election was invalid, voted under duress. This is beautifully described in Lozinsky's book History of the Papacy.
The French cardinals went to their own conclave, where they elected one of their number, Robert of Geneva. He took the name Clement VII. By 1379, he returned to the Papal Palace in Avignon, while Urban VI remained in Rome.
Western schism
This was the beginning of a difficult period from 1378 to 1417, which Catholic scholars call the “Western schism” or “the great antipap dispute” (which some secular and Protestant historians call the “second great schism”). when parties within the Catholic Church were divided in their devotion between various candidates for the position of pope. The Council of Constance in 1417 finally resolved the dispute.
For a while there were even two papal curiae and two cardinals, each of whom elected a new pope for Rome or Avignon, when death created a vacancy. Each pope lobbied for support between kings and princes who opposed each other, changing decency depending on political advantage. The history of the papacy has always been characterized by this.
In 1409, a council was convened in Pisa to solve this problem. The Cathedral declared both existing popes schismatics and appointed a new one, Alexander V. But the existing popes were not convinced to resign, so there were three popes in the church.
Another council was convened in 1414 in Constance. In March 1415, the Pisan Pope John XXIII secretly hid from Constance; he was recaptured and overthrown in May. Pope Gregory XII voluntarily resigned in July.
Avignon Pope Benedict XIII refused to come to Constance. Despite the personal visit of Emperor Sigismund, he did not consider resignation. The Council finally overthrew it in July 1417. But he went to Spain and continued to rule the church as a pope, creating new cardinals and issuing decrees, until his death in 1423.
The Council in Constance, having finally cleared the field of dads and antipop, elected Pope Martin V as dad in November.
The era of colonialism
Popes called more often to resolve disputes between competing colonial powers than to resolve complex theological disputes. The discovery by Columbus in 1492 upset the unstable relations between the kingdoms of Portugal and Castile, whose struggle for possession of the colonial territories was regulated by the papal bulls of 1455, 1456 and 1479. Alexander VI answered with three bulls, dated May 3 and 4, which were very favorable for Castile; the third Inter Caetera (1493) granted Spain a monopoly on the subjugation and colonization of America.
According to Eamon Duffy, “the Renaissance papacy evokes images of Hollywood spectacle, decadence and attraction. Contemporaries looked at the Renaissance Rome in the same way that we now see Washington Nixon, a city of whores with expense accounts and political bribery, where everyone had a price where nothing and no one could be trusted. Dad seemed to set the tone. For example, Leo X said: “Let's enjoy the papacy, because God gave it to us.” Some of these popes took lovers and fathers, engaged in intrigue or even murder. Alexander VI had four recognized children: Cesare Borgia, Lucretia Borgia, Joffre Borgia and Giovanni Borgia before he became Pope.
Unification of Italy
Florence has been the provisional capital of Italy since 1865. After the defeat of the papal forces in 1870, the Italian government moved to the banks of the Tiber a year later. Victor Emmanuel settled in the Quirinal Palace. For the first time in thirteen centuries, Rome became the capital of a united Italy.
The creation of the Vatican
Popes of the 19th and 20th centuries showed their spiritual power with increasing energy and in all aspects of religious life. For example, in the most important pontificate of Pope Pius IX (1846–1878), papal control over the activities of Catholic missionaries around the world was firmly established for the first time in history.
The reign of Pius Eleventh was distinguished by lively activity in all directions and the release of many important documents, often in the form of an encyclical. In the diplomatic affairs, Pius was first helped by Pietro Gasparri, and after 1930, by Eugenio Pacelli (who replaced him as Pope Pius XII). The masterpiece of Cardinal Gasparri was the Lateran Treaty (1929), concluded with the Nazis. But the opinions of the Vatican and Mussolini regarding the upbringing of youth still differed. The culmination of this was a strong papal writing (Non abbiamo bisogno, 1931). Which claimed that it was impossible to be both a fascist and a Catholic. The relationship between Mussolini and the Pope all the time remained not very good, which is described in detail in the book of E. Gergei "History of the Papacy" (m 1996).
Interwar time
The papacy, before the war, either welcomed or condemned the fascist movements in Europe. Pius XI's document, entitled Mit Brennender Sorge, an encyclical condemning the view that “exalts a race, or people, or a state, or a certain form of state ... above their standard value and deifies them to the level of idolatry,” was written in German instead Latin. In addition, it was read as follows: in German churches on Palm Sunday 1937. The book "History of the Papacy" describes this in detail.
War, post-war time and our days
Although after many years of restoration, the Church flourished in the West and in most developing countries, it faced the most severe persecution in the East. Sixty million Catholics fell under regimes dominated by the Soviet authorities, in 1945 tens of thousands of priests and religious leaders were killed, and millions were deported to the Soviet and Chinese Gulag. Communist regimes in Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and China almost destroyed the Roman Catholic Church in their countries. The modern history of the papacy goes in the same direction as the last century: the gradual transformation into a commercial organization, liberalization and the adoption of Western political trends still determine the historical development of the Vatican.