I. The Earlier Growth of Papal Jurisdiction and Leo the Great

THE PAPACY of Leo the Great gives us a good halting place in papal history; it closes one period and leaves another to begin. The Bishop of Imperial Rome could never be a mere ecclesiastical official of the greatest city; while it had been the home of Emperors he had been often enough a trusted adviser to them; when it ceased to be their dwelling-place fresh responsibilities and new opportunities came to him. There is hardly need even to mention the change due to the foundation of a new Rome in the East, with its fresh magnificence, so largely brought from the Western capital, and with its political outlook on the richest and most important provinces. Moreover the wealth of the Roman Church had long been great and it was matched by its Christian generosity; its influence in this way had passed into a tradition, which grew steadily from the time of St Ignatius onward. In all the cities where a church had been founded there was Christian organisation, and the Roman episcopate could not but profit by the business-like methods of the imperial and civic governments. Roman ecclesiastics were naturally distinguished for the same characteristics as were the civilians. The gravitas Romana could be noted even in the eleventh century, and its mere existence would have given peculiar weight to the decisions of Roman bishops and the decrees of Roman councils. Everywhere throughout the provinces local churches and local municipalities had almost alone stood the shock of the barbarian hordes; these inheritances from the past were naturally much greater in Rome itself than elsewhere, and owing to the turns of history advantage from them fell mainly to the papacy. And for the most part the papacy did not fail the Western world; it faced its dangers and its duties boldly.