CHAPTER IV: THE ORGANIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY, AS BEARING UPON THE CHRISTIAN

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY, AS BEARING UPON THE CHRISTIAN MISSION [753]

Christian preaching aimed at winning souls and bringing individuals to God, "that the number of the elect might be made up," but from the very outset it worked through a community and proposed to itself the aim of uniting all who believed in Christ. Primarily, this union was one which consisted of the disciples of Jesus. But, as we have already seen, these disciples were conscious of being the true Israel and the ecclesia of God. Such they held themselves to be. Hence they appropriated to themselves the form and well-knit frame of Judaism, spiritualizing it and strengthening it, so that by one stroke (we may say) they secured a firm and exclusive organization.

But while this organization, embracing all Christians on earth, rested in the first instance solely upon religious ideas, as a purely ideal conception it would hardly have remained effective for any length of time, had it not been allied to local organization. Christianity, at the initiative of the original apostles and the brethren of Jesus, began by borrowing this as well from Judaism, i.e., from the synagogue. Throughout the Diaspora the Christian communities developed at first out of the synagogues with their proselytes or adherents. Designed to be essentially a brotherhood, and springing out of the synagogue, the Christian society developed a local organization which was of double strength, superior to anything achieved by the societies of Judaism.
[754] One extremely advantageous fact about these local organizations in their significance for Christianity may be added. It was this: every community was at once a unit, complete in itself; but it was also a reproduction of the collective church of God, and it had to recognize and manifest itself as such. [755]

Such a religious and social organization, destitute of any political or national basis and yet embracing the entire private life, was a novel and unheard of thing upon the soil of Greek and Roman life, where religious and social organizations only existed as a rule in quite a rudimentary form, and where they lacked any religious control of life as a whole. All that people could think of in this connection was one or two schools of philosophy, whose common life was also a religious life. But here was a society which united fellow-believers, who were resident in any city, in the closest of ties, presupposing a relationship which was assumed as a matter of course to last through life itself, furnishing its members not only with holy unction administered once and for all or from time to time, but with a daily bond which provided them with spiritual benefits and imposed duties on them, assembling them at first daily and then weekly, shutting them off from other people, uniting them in a guild of worship, a friendly society, and an order with a definite line of life in view, besides teaching them to consider themselves as the community of God.

Neophytes, of course, had to get accustomed or to be trained at first to a society of this kind. It ran counter to all the requirements exacted by any other cultus or holy rite from its devotees, however much the existing guild-life may have paved the way for it along several lines. That its object should be the common edification of the members, that the community was therefore to resemble a single body with many members, that every member was to be subordinate to the whole body, that one member was to suffer and rejoice with another, that Jesus Christ did not call individuals apart but built them up into a society in which the individual got his place--all these were lessons which had to be learnt. Paul's epistles prove how vigorously and unweariedly he taught them, and it is perhaps the weightiest feature both in Christianity and in the work of Paul that, so far from being overpowered, the impulse towards association was most powerfully intensified by the individualism which here attained its zenith. (For to what higher form can individualism rise than that reached by means of the dominant counsel, "Save thy soul"?) Brotherly love constituted the lever; it was also the entrance into that most wealthy inheritance, the inheritance of the firmly organized church of Judaism. In addition to this there was also the wonderfully practical idea, to which allusion has already been made, of setting the collective church (as an ideal fellowship) and the individual community in such a relationship that whatever was true of the one could be predicated also of the other, the church of Corinth or of Ephesus, e.g., being the church of God. Quite apart from the content of these social formations, no statesman or politician can hesitate to admire and applaud the solution which was thus devised for one of the most serious problems of any large organization, viz., how to maintain intact the complete autonomy of the local communities and at the same time to knit them into a general nexus, possessed of strength and unity, which should embrace all the empire and gradually develop also into a collective organization.

What a sense of stability a creation of this kind must have given the individual! What powers of attraction it must have exercised, as soon as its objects came to be understood! It was this, and not any evangelist, which proved to be the most effective missionary. In fact, we may take it for granted that the mere existence and persistent activity of the individual Christian communities did more than anything else to bring about the extension of the Christian religion. [756]

Hence also the injunction, repeated over and again, "Let us not forsake the assembling of ourselves together,"--"as some do," adds the epistle to the Hebrews (x. 25). At first and indeed always there were naturally some people who imagined that one could secure the holy contents and blessings of Christianity as one did those of Isis or the Magna Mater, and then withdraw. Or, in cases where people were not so short-sighted, levity, laziness, or weariness were often enough to detach a person from the society. A vainglorious sense of superiority and of being able to dispense with the spiritual aid of the society was also the means of inducing many to withdraw from fellowship and from the common worship. Many, too, were actuated by fear of the authorities; they shunned attendance at public worship, to avoid being recognized as Christians.
[757]

"Seek. what is of common profit to all," says Clement of Rome (c. xlviii.). "Keep not apart by yourselves in secret," says Barnabas (iv. 10), "as if you were already justified, but meet together and confer upon the common weal." Similar passages are often to be met with. [758] The worship on Sunday is of course obligatory, but even at other times the brethren are expected to meet as often as possible. "Thou shalt seek out every day the company of the saints, to be refreshed by their words" (Did., iv. 2). "We are constantly in touch with one another," says Justin, after describing the Sunday worship (Apol., I. lxvii.), in order to show that this is not the only place of fellowship. Ignatius,
[759] too, advocates over and over again more frequent meetings of the church; in fact, his letters are written primarily for the purpose of binding the individual member as closely as possible to the community and thus securing him against error, temptation, and apostasy. The means to this end is an increased significance attaching to the church. In the church alone all blessings are to be had, in its ordinances and organizations. It is only the church firmly equipped with bishop, presbyters, and deacons, with common worship and with sacraments, which is the creation of God. [760] Consequently, beyond its pale nothing divine is to be found, there is nothing save error and sin; all clandestine meetings for worship are also to be eschewed, and no teacher who starts up from outside is to get a hearing unless he is certificated by the church. The absolute subordination of Christians to the local community has never been more peremptorily demanded, the position of the local community itself has never been more eloquently laid down, than in these primitive documents. Their eager admonitions reveal the seriousness of the peril which threatened the individual Christian who should even in the slightest degree emancipate himself from the community; thereby he would fall a prey to the "errorists," or slip over into paganism. At this point even the heroes of the church were threatened by a peril, which is singled out also for notice. As men who had a special connection with Christ, and who were quite aware of this connection, they could not well be subject to orders from the churches; but it was recognized even at this early period that if they became "inflated" with pride and held aloof from the fellowship of the church, they might easily come to grief. Thus, when the haughty martyrs of Carthage and Rome, both during and after the Decian persecution, started cross-currents in the churches and began to uplift themselves against the officials, the great bishops finally resolved to reduce them under the laws common to the whole church.

While the individual Christian had a position of his own within the organization of the church, he thereby lost, however, a part of his autonomy along with his fellows. The so-called Montanist controversy was in the last resort not merely a struggle to secure a stricter mode of life as against a laxer, but also the struggle of a more independent religious attitude and activity as against one which was prescribed and uniform. The outstanding personalities, the individuality of certain people, had to suffer in order that the majority might not become unmanageable or apostates. Such has always been the case in human history. It is inevitable. Only after the Montanist conflict did the church, as individual and collective, attain the climax of its development; henceforth it became an object of desire, coveted by everyone who was on the look-out for power, inasmuch as it had extraordinary forces at its disposal. It now bound the individual closely to itself; it held him, bridled him, and dominated his religious life in all directions. Yet it was not long before the monastic movement originated, a movement which, while it recognized the church in theory (doubt upon this point being no longer possible), set it aside in actual practice.

The progress of the development of the juridical organization from the firmly organized local church [761] to the provincial church, [762] from that again to the larger league of churches, a league which realized itself in synods covering many provinces, and finally from that league to the collective church, which of course was never quite realized as an organization, though it was always present in idea--this development also contributed to the strengthening of the Christian self-consciousness and missionary activity. [763] It was indeed a matter of great moment to be able to proclaim that this church not only embraced humanity in its religious conceptions, but also presented itself to the eye as an immense single league stretching from one side of the empire to another, and, in fact, stretching beyond even these imperial boundaries. This church arose through the co-operation of the Christian ideal with the empire, and thus every great force which operated in this sphere had also its part to play in the building up of the church, viz., the universal Christian idea of a bond of humanity (which, at root, of course, meant no more than a bond between the scattered elect throughout mankind), the Jewish church, and the Roman empire. The last named, as has been rightly pointed out, became bankrupt over the church; [764] and the same might be said of the Jewish church, whose powers of attraction ceased for a large circle of people so soon as the Christian church had developed, the latter taking, them over into its own life. [765] Whether the Christian communities were as free creations as they were in the first century, whether they set up external ordinances as definite and a union as comprehensive as was the case in the third century-- in either case these communities exerted a magnetic force on thousands, and thus proved of extraordinary service to the Christian mission.

Within the church-organization the most weighty and significant creation was that of the monarchical episcopate. [766] It was the bishops, properly speaking, who held together the individual members of the churches; their rise marked the close of the period during which charismata and offices were in a state of mutual flux, the individual relying only upon God, himself, and spiritually endowed brethren. After the close of the second century bishops were the teachers, high priests, and judges of the church. Ignatius already had compared their position in the individual church to that of God in the church collective. But this analogy soon gave way to the formal quality which they acquired, first in Rome and the West, after the gnostic controversy. In virtue of this quality, they were regarded as representatives of the apostolic office. According to Cyprian, they were "judices vice Christi" (judges in Christ's room); and Origen, in spite of his unfortunate experience with bishops, had already written that "if kings are so called from reigning, then all who rule the churches of God deserve to be called kings" ("si reges a regendo dicuntur, omnes utique, qui ecclesias dei regunt, reges merito appellabuntur," Hom. xii. 2 in Num., vol. x. p. 133, Lomm.). On their conduct the churches depended almost entirely for weal or woe. As the office grew to maturity, it seemed like an original creation; but this was simply because it drew to itself from all quarters both the powers and the forms of life.

The extent to which the episcopate, along with the other clerical offices which it controlled, formed the backbone of the church, [767] is shown by the fierce war waged against it by the state during the third century (Maximinus Thrax, Decius, Valerian, Diocletian, Daza, Licinius), as well as from many isolated facts. In the reign of Marcus Aurelius, Dionysius of Corinth tells the church of Athens (Eus., H.E., iv. 23) that while it had well-nigh fallen from the faith after the death of its martyred bishop Publius, its new bishop Quadratus had reorganized it and filled it with fresh zeal for the faith. In de Fuga, xi. Tertullian says that when the shepherds are poor creatures the flock is a prey to wild beasts, "as is never more the ease than when the clergy desert the church in a persecution" ("quod nunquam magis fit quam cum in persecutione destituitur a clero"). Cyprian (Ep. lv. 11) tells how in the persecution bishop Trophimus had lapsed along with a large section of the church, and had offered sacrifice; but on his return and penitence, the rest followed him, "qui omnes regressuri ad ecclesiam non essent, nisi cum Trofimo comitante venissent" ("none of whom would have returned to the church, had they not had the companionship of Trophimus"). When Cyprian lingered in retreat during the persecution of Decius, the whole community threatened to lapse. Hence one can easily see the significance of the bishop for the church; with him it fell, with him it stood, [768] and in these days a vacancy or interregnum meant a serious crisis for any church. Without being properly a missionary, the bishop exercised a missionary function.
[769] In particular, he preserved individuals from relapsing into paganism, while any bishop who really filled his post was the means of winning over many fresh adherents. We have instances of this, e.g., in the cruse of Cyprian or of Gregory Thaumaturgus. The episcopal dignity was at once heightened and counterbalanced by the institution of the synods which arose in Greece and Asia (modelled possibly upon the federal diets), [770] and eventually were adopted by a large number of provinces after the opening of the third century. On the one hand, this association of the bishops entirely took away the rights of the laity, who found before very long, that it was no use now to leave their native church in order to settle down in another. Yet a synod, on the other hand, imposed restraints upon the arbitrary action of a bishop, by setting itself up as an ecclesiastical "forum publicum" to which he was responsible. The correspondence of Cyprian presents several examples of individual bishops being thus arraigned by synods for arbitrary or evil conduct. Before very long too (possibly from the very outset) the synod, this "representatio totius nominis Christiani," appeared to be a specially trustworthy organ of the holy Spirit. The synods which expanded in the course of the third century from provincial synods to larger councils, and which would seem to have anticipated Diocletian's redistribution of the empire in the East, naturally gave an extraordinary impetus to the prestige and authority of the church, and thereby heightened its powers of attraction. Yet the entire synodal system really flourished in the East alone (and to some extent in Africa). In the West it no more blossomed than did the system of metropolitans, a fact which was of vital moment to the position of Rome and of the Roman bishop. [771]

One other problem has finally to be considered at this point, a problem which is of great importance for the statistics of the church. It is this: how strong was the tendency to create independent forms within the Christian communities, i.e., to form complete episcopal communities? Does the number of communities which were episcopally organized actually denote the number of the communities in general, or were there, either as a rule or in a large number of provinces, any considerable number of communities which possessed no bishops of their own, but had only presbyters or deacons, and depended upon an outside bishop? The following Excursus [772] is devoted to the answering of this important question. Its aim is to show that the creation of complete episcopal communities was the general rule in most provinces (excluding Egypt) down to the middle of the third century, however small might be the number of Christians in any locality, and however insignificant might be the locality itself.

As important, if not even more important, was the tendency, which was in operation from the very first, to have all the Christians in a given locality united in a single community. As the Pauline epistles prove, house-churches were tolerated at the outset, (we do not know how long),
[773] but obviously their position was (originally or very soon afterwards) that of members belonging to the local community as a whole. This original relationship is, of course, as obscure to us as is the evaporation of such churches. Conflicts there must have been at first, and even attempts to set up a number of independent Christian thiasoi in a city; the "schisms" at Corinth, combated by Paul, would seem to point in this direction. Nor is it quite certain whether, even after the formation of the monarchical episcopate, there were not cases here and there of two or more episcopal communities existing in a single city. But even if this obtained in certain cases, their number must have been very small; nor do these avail to alter the general stamp of the Christian organization throughout its various branches, i.e., the general constitution according to which every locality where Christians were to be found had its own independent community, and only one community. [774] This organization, with its simplicity and naturalness, proved itself extraordinarily strong. No doubt, the community was soon obliged to direct the full force of its anti-pagan exclusiveness against such brethren of its own number as refused submission to the church upon any pretext whatsoever. The sad passion for heresy-hunting, which prevailed among Christians as early as the second century, was not only a result of their fanatical devotion to true doctrine, but quite as much an outcome of their rigid organization and of the exalted predicates of honour, which they applied to themselves as "the church of God." Here the reverse of the medal is to be seen. The community's valuation of itself, its claim to represent the ekklesia tou theou ("the church of God" or "the catholic church" in Corinth, Ephesus, etc.) prevented it ultimately from recognizing or tolerating any Christianity whatever outside its own boundaries. [775] __________________________________________________________________

[753] Cp. on this Von Dobschütz's Die urchristlichen Gemeinden (1902) [translated in this library under the title of Christian Life in the Primitive Church].

[754] We cannot discuss the influence which the Greek and Roman guilds may have exercised upon Christianity. In any case, it can only have affected certain forms, not the essential fact itself or its fixity.

[755] We do not know how this remarkable conviction arose, but it lies perfectly plain upon the surface of the apostolic and post-apostolic ages. It did not originate in Judaism, since--to my knowledge--the individual Jewish synagogue did not look upon itself in this light. Nor did the conception spring up at a single stroke. Even in Paul two contradictory conceptions still lie unexplained together: while, on the one hand, he regards each community, so to speak, as a "church of God," sovereign, independent, and responsible for itself, on the other hand his churches are at the same time his own creations, which consequently remain under his control and training, and are in fact even threatened by him with the rod. He is their father and their schoolmaster. Here the apostolic authority, and, what is more, the general and special authority, of the apostle as the founder of a church invade and delimit the authority of the individual community, since the latter has to respect and follow the rules laid down and enforced by the apostle throughout all his churches. This he had the right to expect. But, as we see from the epistles to the Corinthians, especially from the second, conflicts were inevitable. Then again in 3 John we have an important source of information, for here the head of a local church is openly rebelling and asserting his independence, against the control of an apostle who attempts to rule the church by means of delegates. When Ignatius reached Asia not long afterwards, the idea of the sovereignty of the individual church had triumphed.

[756] We possess no detailed account of the origin of any Christian community, for the narrative of Acts is extremely summary, and the epistles of Paul presuppose the existence of the various churches. Acts, indeed, is not interested in the local churches. It is only converted brethren that come within its ken; its pages reflect but the onward rush of the Christian mission, till that mission is merged in the legal proceedings against Paul. The apocryphal Acts are of hardly any use. But from 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, and Acts we can infer one or two traits. Thus, while Paul invariably attaches himself to Jews, where such were to be found, and preaches in the synagogues, the actual result is that the small communities which thus arose are drawn mainly from "God-fearing" pagans, and upon the whole from pagans in general, not from Jews. Those who were first converted naturally stand in an important relation to the organization of the churches (Clem. Rom. xlii.: hoi apostoloi kata choras kai poleis kerussontes . . . . kathistanon tas aparchas auton, dokimasantes to pneumari, eis episkopous kai diakonous ton mellonton pisteuein = Preaching throughout the country districts and cities, the apostles . . . . appointed those who were their firstfruits, after proving them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons for those who were to believe); as we learn from 1 Thess. v. 12 f. and Phil. i. 1, a sort of local superintendence at once arose in some of the communities. But what holds true of the Macedonian churches is by no means true of all the churches, at least during the initial period, for it is obvious that in Galatia and at Corinth no organization whatever existed for a decade, or even longer. The brethren submitted to a control of "the Spirit." In Acts xiv. 23 (cheirotonesantes autois kat' ekklesian presbuterous) the allusion may be accurate as regards one or two communities (cp. also Clem. Rom. xliv. ), but it is an extremely questionable statement if it is held to imply that the apostles regularly appointed officials in every locality, and that these were in all cases "presbyters." Acts only mentions church-officers at Jerusalem (xv. 4) and Ephesus (xx. 28, presbyters who are invested with episcopal powers).

[757] Cp. Tertullian, de Fuga, iii.: "Timide conveniunt in ecclesiam: dicitis enim, quoniam incondite convenimus et simul convenimus et complures concurrimus in ecclesiam, quaerimur a nationibus et timemus, ne turbentur nationes" ("They gather to church with trembling. For, you say, since we assemble in disorder, simultaneously, and in great numbers, the heathen make inquiries, and we are afraid of stirring them up against us").

[758] Herm. Simil., IX. xx.: houtoi hoi en pollois kai poikilais pragmateiais empephurmenoi ou kollontai tois doulois tou theou, all' apoplanontai ("These, being involved in many different kinds of occupations, do not cleave to the servants of God, but go astray"); IX. 26: genomenoi eremodeis, me kollomenoi tois doulois tou theou, alla monazontes apolluousi tas heauton psuchas ("Having become barren, they cleave not to the servants of God, but keep apart and so lose their own souls").

[759] Cp. Ephes. xiii.: spoudazete puknoteron sunerchesthai eis eucharistian, theou ("Endeavour to meet more frequently for the praise of God"); Polyc. iv.: puknoteron sunagogai ginesthosan ("Let meetings be held more frequently"); cp. also Magn. iv.

[760] The common worship, with its centre in the celebration of the Supper, is the cardinal point. No other cultus could point to such a ceremony, with its sublimity and unction, its brotherly feeling and many-sidedness. Here every experience, every spiritual need, found nourishment. The collocation of prayer, praise, preaching, and the reading of the Word was modelled upon the worship of the synagogue, and must already have made a deep impression upon pagans; but with the addition of the feast of the Lord's supper, an observance was introduced which, for all its simplicity, was capable of being regarded, as it actually was regarded, from the most diverse standpoints. It was a mysterious, divine gift of knowledge and of life; it was a thanksgiving, a sacrifice, a representation of the death of Christ, a love-feast of the brotherhood, a support for the hungry and distressed. No single observance could well be more than that, and it preserved this character for long, even after it had passed wholly into the region of the mysterious. The members of the church took home portions of the consecrated bread, and consumed them during the week. I have already (pp. 150 f.) discussed the question how far the communities in their worship were also unions for charitable support, and how influential must have been their efforts in this direction.--A whole series of testimonies, from Pliny to Arnobius (iv. 36), proves that the preaching to which people listened every Sunday bore primarily on the inculcation of morality: "In conventiculis summus oratur deus, pax cunctis et venia postulatur magistratibus exercitibus regibus familiaribus inimicis, adhuc vitam degentibus et resolutis corporum vinctione, in quibus aliud auditur nihil nisi quod humanos faciat, nisi quod mites, verecundos, pudicos, castos, familiaris communicatores rei et cum omnibus vobis solidae germanitatis necessitudine copulatos" ("At our meetings prayers are offered to Almighty God, peace and pardon are asked for all in authority, for soldiers, kings, friends, enemies, those still in life, and those freed from the bondage of the flesh; at these gatherings nothing is said except what makes people humane, gentle, modest, virtuous, chaste, generous in dealing with their substance, and closely knit to all of you within the bonds of brotherhood").

[761] Christians described themselves at the outset as paroikountes ("sojourners"; cp. p. 252); the church was technically "the church sojourning in the city" (he ekklesia he paroikousa ten polin), but it rapidly became well defined, nor did it by any means stand out as a structure destined to crumble away.

[762] How far this ascent, when viewed from other premises which are equally real, corresponded to a descent, may be seen from the first Excursus to this chapter.

[763] Tert., de Præscript. xx.: "Sic omnes [sc. ecclesiae] primae et omnes apostolicae, dum una omnes, probant unitatem communicatio pacis et appellatio fraternitatis et contesseratio hospitalis, quae iura non alio natio regit quam eiusdem sacramenti una traditio" ("Thus all are primitive and all apostolic, since they are all alike certified by their union in the communion of peace, the title of brotherhood, and the interchange of hospitable friendship--rights whose only rule is the one tradition of the same mystery in all").

[764] It revived, however, in the Western church.

[765] Ever since the fall of the temple, however, the Jewish church had consciously and voluntarily withdrawn into itself more and more, and abjured the Greek spirit.

[766] I leave out of account here all the preliminary steps. It was with the monarchical episcopate that this office first became a power in Christendom, and it does not fall within the scope of the present sketch to investigate the initial stages--a task of some difficulty, owing to the fragmentary nature of the sources and the varieties of the original organization throughout the different churches.

[767] Naturally, it came more and more to mean a position which was well-pleasing to God and specially dear to him; this is implied already in the term "priest," which became current after the close of the second century. Along with the higher class of heroic figures (ascetics, virgins, confessors), the church also possessed a second upper class of clerics, as was well known to pagans in the third century. Thus the pagan in Macarius Magnes (III. 18) writes, apropos of Matt. xvii. 20, xxi. 21 ("Have faith as a grain of mustard-seed"): "He who has not so much faith as this is certainly unworthy of being reckoned among the brotherhood of the faithful; so that the majority of Christians, it follows, are not to be counted among the faithful, and in fact even among the bishops and presbyters there is not one who deserves this name."

[768] This is the language also of the heathen judge to bishop Achatius: "a shield and succourer of the region of Antioch" ("scutum quoddam ac refugium Antiochiae regionis"; Ruinart, Acta Mart., Ratisb., 1859, p. 201): "Veniet tecum [i.e., if you return to the old gods] omnis populus, ex tuo pendet arbitirio" ("All the people will accompany you, for they hang on your decision"), The bishop answers of course: "Illi omnes non meo nutu, sed dei praecepto reguntur; audiant me itaque, si iusta persuadeam, sin vero perversa et nocitura, contemnant" ("They are ruled, not by my beck and call, but all of them by God's counsel; wherefore let them hearken to me, if I persuade them to what is right; but despise me, if I counsel what is perverse and mischievous."--Hermas (Sim., IX. xxxi.) says of the shepherds: "Sin aliqua e pecoribus dissipata invenerit dominus, vae erit pastoribus. quod si ipsi pastores dissipati reperti fuerint, quid respondebunt pro pecoribus his? numquid dicunt, a pecore se vexatos? non credetur illis. incredibilis enim res est, pastorem pati posse a pecore" ("But if the master finds any of the sheep scattered, woe to the shepherds. For if the shepherds themselves be found scattered, how will they answer for these sheep? Will they say that they were themselves worried by the flock? Then they will not be believed, for it is absurd that a shepherd should be injured by his sheep").

[769] For a distinguished missionary or teacher who had founded a church becoming its bishop, cp. Origen, Hom. xi. 4 in Num. [as printed above, p. 351].

[770] Cp. (trans. below, under "Asia Minor," § 9, in Book IV. Chap. III.) Tertull., de Jejunio, xiii.: "Aguntur per Graecias (for the plural, cp. Eus., Vita Const., iii. 19) illa certis in locis concilia ex universis ecclesiis, per quae et altiora quaeque in commune tractantur et ipsa repraesentatio totius nominis Christiani magna veneratione celebratur."

[771] I do not enter here into the development of the constitution in detail, although by its close relation to the divisions of the empire it has many vital points of contact with the history of the Christian mission (see Lübeck, Reichseinteilung and kirchliche Hierarchie des Orients bis zum Ausgang des 4. Jahrhunderts, 1901). I simply note that the ever-increasing dependence of the Eastern Church upon the redistributed empire (a redistribution which conformed to national boundaries) imperilled by degrees the unity of the Church and the universalism of Christianity. The church began by showing harmony and vigour in this sphere of action, but centrifugal influences soon commenced to play upon her, influences which are perceptible as early as the Paschal controversy of 190 A.D. between Rome and Asia, which are vital by the time of the controversy over the baptism of heretics, and which finally appear as disintegrating forces in the fourth and fifth centuries. In the West the Roman bishop knew how to restrain them admirably, evincing both tenacity and clearness of purpose.

[772] Read before the Royal Prussian Academy of Science, on 28th Nov. 1901 (pp. 1186 f.).

[773] We cannot determine how long they lasted, but after the New Testament we hear next to nothing of them--which, by the way, is an argument against all attempts, to relegate the Pauline epistles to the second century. For the house churches, see the relevant sections in Weizsäcke's History of the Apostolic Age. Hebrews is most probably addressed to a special community in Rome. Schiele has recently tried to prove, for reasons that deserve notice, that the community in question was developed from the Sunagoge ton Hebraion, for which there is inscriptional evidence at Rome (American Journal of Theology, 1905, pp. 290 f.), and I have tried to connect the epistle with Prisca and Aquila (Zeits. für die neutest. Wiss., 1900, pp. 16 f.). The one theory does not exclude the other.

[774] The relation of the Christian didaskaleia to the local church (cp. above, p. 356) is wrapt in obscurity. We know of Justin's school, of Tatian's, Rhodon's, Theodotus's, Praxeas's, Epigonus's, and Cleomenes's in Rome, of the transition of the Thedotian school into a church (the most interesting case of the kind known to us), of catechetical schools in Alexandria, of Hippolytus scorning the Christians in Rome who adhered to Callistus, i.e., the majority of the church (or a school), of various gnostic schools, of Lucian's school at Antioch side by side with the church, etc. But this does not amount to a clear view of the situation, for we learn very little apart from the fact that such schools existed. Anyone might essay to prove that by the second half of the second century there was a general danger of the church being dissipated into nothing but schools. Anyone else might undertake to prove that even ordinary Christianity here and there deliberately assumed the character of a philosophic school in order to secure freedom and safeguard its interests against the state and a hostile society (as was the case, we cannot doubt, with some circles; cp. above, p. 364). Both attempts would bring in useful material, but neither would succeed in proving its thesis. So much is certain, however, that, during the second century and perhaps here and there throughout the third, as well, the "schools" spelt a certain danger for the unity of the episcopal organization of the churches, and that the episcopal church had succeeded, by the opening of the third century, in rejecting the main dangers of the situation. The materials are scanty, but the question deserves investigation by itself.

[775] Celsus had already laid sharp stress on heresy-hunting and the passion with which Christians fought one another: blasphemousin eis allelous houtoi pandeina rheta kai arreta, kai ouk an eixaien oude kath' dtioun eis homonoian pante allelous apostugountes (V. lxiii.: "These people utter all sorts of blasphemy, mentionable and unmentionable, against one another, nor will they give way in the smallest point for the sake of concord, hating each other with a perfect hatred"). __________________________________________________________________

EXCURSUS I

ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATION AND THE EPISCOPATE (IN THE PROVINCES, THE CITIES, AND THE VILLAGES), FROM PIUS TO CONSTANTINE.

"In 1 Tim. iii. (where only bishops and deacons are mentioned) the apostle Paul has not forgotten the presbyters, for at first the same officials bore the name of presbyter' as well as that of bishop.' . . . . Those who had the power of ordination and are now called bishops' were not appointed to a single church but to a whole province, and bore the name of apostles.' Thus St Paul set Timothy over all Asia, and Titus over Crete. And plainly he also appointed other individuals to other provinces in the same way, each of whom was to take charge of a whole province, making circuits through all the churches, ordaining clergy for ecclesiastical work wherever it was necessary, solving any difficult questions which had arisen among them, setting them right by means of addresses on doctrine, treating sore sins in a salutary fashion, and in general discharging all the duties of a superintendent--all the towns, meanwhile, possessing the presbyters of whom I have spoken, men who ruled their respective churches. Thus in that early age there existed those who are now called bishops, but who were then called apostles, discharging functions for a whole province which those who are nowadays ordained to the episcopate discharge for a single city and a single district. Such was the organization of the church in those days. But when the faith became widely spread, filling not merely towns, but also country districts with believers, [776] then, as the blessed apostles were now dead, came those who took charge of the whole [province]. They were not equal to their predecessors, however, nor could they certify themselves, as did the earlier leaders, by means of miracles, while in many other respects they showed their inferiority. Deeming it therefore a burden to assume the title of apostles,' they distributed the other titles [which had hitherto been synonymous], leaving that of presbyters' to the presbyters, and assigning that of bishops' to those who possessed the right of ordination, and who were consequently entrusted with leadership over all the church. These formed the majority, owing, in the first instance, to the necessity of the case, but subsequently also, on account of the generous spirit shown by those who arranged the ordinations. [777] For at the outset there were but two, or at most three, bishops usually in a province--a state of matters which prevailed in most of the Western provinces until quite recently, and which may still be found in several, even at the present day. As time went on, however, bishops were ordained not merely in towns, but also in small districts, where there was really no need of anyone being yet invested with the episcopal office."

So Theodore of Mopsuestia in his commentary upon First Timothy. [778] The assertion that "bishop" and "presbyter" were identical in primitive ages occurs frequently about the year 400, but Theodore's statements in general are, to the best of my knowledge, unique; they represent an attempt to depict the primitive organization of the church, and to explain the most important revolution which had taken place in the history of the church's constitution. Theodore's idea is, in brief, as follows. From the outset, he remarks--i.e. in the apostolic age, or by original apostolic institution--there was a monarchical office in the churches, to which pertained the right of ordination. This office was one belonging to the provincial churches (each province possessing a single superintendent), and its title was that of "apostle." Individual communities, again, were governed by bishops (presbyters) and deacons. Once the apostles [779] (i.e. the original apostles) had died, however, a revolution took place. The motives assigned for this by Theodore are twofold: in the first place, the spread of the Christian religion, and in the second place, the weakness felt by the second generation of the apostles themselves. The latter therefore resolved (i.) to abjure and thus abolish [780] the name of "apostle," and (ii.) to distribute the monarchical power, i.e., the right of ordination, among several persons throughout a province. Hence the circumstance of two or three bishops existing in the same province--the term "bishop" being now employed in the sense of monarchical authority. That state of matters was the rule until quite recently in most of the Western provinces, and it still survives in several of them. In the East, however, it has not lasted. Partly owing to the requirements of the case (i.e., the increase of Christianity throughout the provinces), partly owing to the "liberality" of the apostles, [781] the number of the bishops has multiplied, so that not only towns, but even villages, have come to possess bishops, although there was no real need for such appointments.

We must in the first instance credit Theodore with being sensible of the fact that the organization of the primitive churches was originally on the broadest scale, and only came down by degrees (to the local communities). Such was indeed the case. The whole was prior to the part. That is, the organization effected by the apostles was in the first place universal; its scope was the provinces of the church. It is Judæa, Samaria, Syria, Cilicia, Galatia, Asia, Macedonia, etc., that are present to the minds of the apostles, and figure in their writings. Just as, in the missions of the present day, outside sects capture "Brandenburg," "Saxony," and "Bavaria" by getting a firm foothold in Berlin, Dresden, Munich, and one or two important cities; just as they forthwith embrace the whole province in their thoughts and in some of the measures which they adopt, so was it then. Secondly, Theodore's observation upon the extension of the term "apostle" is in itself quite accurate. But it is just at this point, of course, that our doubts begin. It is inherently improbable that the apostles, i.e., the twelve together with Paul, appointed the other "apostles" (in the wider sense of the word) collectively; besides, it is contradicted by positive evidence to the contrary, [782] and Theodore's statement of it may be very simply explained as due to the preconceived opinion that everything must ultimately run back to the apostles' institution. Further, the idea of each province having an apostle-bishop set over it is a conjecture which is based on no real evidence, and is contradicted by all that we know of the universal ecclesiastical nature of the apostolic office. Finally, we cannot check the statement which would bind up the right of ordination exclusively with the office of the apostle-bishop. In all these respects Theodore seems to have introduced into his sketch of the primitive churches' organization features which were simply current in his own day, as well as hazardous hypotheses. Moreover, we can still show how slender are the grounds on which his conjectures rest. Unless I am mistaken, he has nothing at his disposal in the shape of materials beyond the traditional idea, drawn from the pastoral epistles, of the position occupied by Timothy and Titus in the church, as well as the ecclesiastical notices and legends of the work of John in Asia. [783] All this he has generalized, evolving therefrom the conception of a general appointment of "apostles" who are equivalent to "provincial bishops." [784] "Apostles" are equivalent "provincial bishops"; such is Theodore's conception, and the conception is a fantasy. Whether it contains any kernel of historical truth, we shall see later on. Meantime we must, in the first instance, follow up Theodore's statements a little further.

He is right in recognizing that any survey of the origin of the church's organization must be based upon the apostles and their missionary labours. We may add, the organization which arose during the mission and in consequence of the mission, would attempt to maintain itself even after local authorities and institutions had been called into being which asserted rights of their own. But the distinctive trait in Theodore's conception consists in the fact that he knows absolutely nothing of any originally constituted rights appertaining to local authorities. He has no eyes for all that the New Testament and the primitive Christian writings, as a whole, contain upon this point; for even here, on his view, everything must have flowed from some apostolic injunction or concession--i.e., from above to below. He adduces, no doubt, the "weakness" of the "apostles" in the second generation--which is quite a remarkable statement, based on the cessation of miraculous gifts. [785] But it was in virtue of their own resolve that the, apostles withdrew from the scene, distributing their power to other people; for only there could the local church's authority originate! Such is his theory; it is extremely ingenious, and dominated throughout by a magical conception of the apostolate. The local church-authority (or the monarchical and supreme episcopate) within the individual community owed its origin to the "apostolic" provincial authority, by means of a conveyance of power. During the lifetime of the apostles it was quite in a dependent position. Even after their departure, the supreme episcopal authority did not emerge at once within each complete community. On the contrary, says Theodore, it was only two or three towns in every province which at the outset possessed a bishop of their own (i.e., in the new sense of the term "bishop"). Not until a later date, and even then only by degrees, were other towns and even villages added to these original towns, while in the majority of provinces throughout the West the old state of matters prevailed, says Theodore, till quite recently. In some provinces it prevails at present. [786]

This theory about the origin of the local monarchical episcopate baffles all discussions. [787] We may say without any hesitation that Theodore had no authentic foundation for it whatever. Even when he might seem to be setting up at least the semblance of historic trustworthiness for his identification of "apostles" with "provincial bishops," by his reference to Timothy, Titus, and John, the testimony breaks down entirely. We are forced to ask, Who were these retiring apostles? What sources have we for our knowledge of their resignation? How do we learn of this conveyance of authority which they are declared to have executed? These questions, we may say quite plainly, Theodore ought to have felt in duty bound to answer; for in what sources can we read anything of the matter? It was not without reason that Theodore veiled even the exact time at which this great renunciation took effect. We can only suppose that it was conceived to have occurred about the year: 100 A.D. [788]

At the same time there is no reason to cast aside the statements of Theodore in toto. They start a whole set of questions to which historians have not paid sufficient attention, questions relating to the position of bishops in the local church, territorial or provincial bishops (if such there were), and metropolitans. To state the problem more exactly: Were there territorial (or provincial) bishops in the primitive Period? And was the territorial bishop perhaps older than the bishop of the local, church? Furthermore, did the two disparate systems of organization denoted by these offices happen to rise simultaneously, coming to terms with each other only at a later period? Finally, was the metropolitan office, which is not visible till the second half of the second century, originally an older creation? Can it have been merely the sequel of an earlier monarchical office which prevailed in the ecclesiastical provinces? These questions are of vital moment to the history of the extension of Christianity, and in fact to the statistics of primitive Christianity; for, supposing that it was the custom in many provinces to be content with one or two or three bishoprics for several generations, it would be impossible to conclude from the small number of bishoprics in certain provinces that Christianity was only scantily represented in these districts. The investigation of this question is all the more pressing, as Duchesne has recently (Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, i., 1894, pp. 86 f.) gone into it, referring--although with caution--to the statements of Theodore, and deducing far-reaching conclusions with regard to the organization of the churches in Gaul. We shall require, in the first instance, to make ourselves familiar with his propositions [789] (pp. 1-59). I give the main conclusion in his own words.

P. 32: "Dans les pays situés à, quelque distance de la Mediterranée et de la basse vallée du Rhône, il ne s'est fondé aucune église (Lyon exceptée) avant le milieu du III^e siècle environ."

Pp. 38 f.: "Il en résulte que, dans l'ancienne Gaule celtique, avec ses grandes subdivisions en Belgique, Lyonnaise, Aquitaine et Germanie, une seule église existait au II^e siècle, celle de Lyon . . . . ce que nos documents nous apprennent, c'est que l'église de Lyon était, en dehors de la Narbonnaise, non la première, mais la seule. Tous les chrétiens épars depuis le Rhin jusqu' aux Pyrénées [790] ne formaient qu'une seule communauté; ils reconnaissaient un chef unique, l'évêque de Lyon."

P. 59: "Avant la fin du III^e siècle--sauf toujours la région du bas Rhône et de la Méditerranée--peu d'évêches en Gaule et cela seulement dans les villes les plus importantes, A l'origine, au premier siécle chrétien pour notre pays (150-250), une seule église, celle de Lyon, réunissant dans un même cercle d'action et de direction tous les groupes chrétiens épars dans les diverses provinces de la Celtique."

Duchesne reaches this conclusion by means of the following observations:--

1. No reliable evidence for a single Gallic bishopric, apart from that of Lyons, goes back beyond the middle of the third century. [791] Nor do the episcopal lists, so far as they are relevant in this connection, take us any farther back. Verus of Vienne, e.g., who was present at the council of Arles in 314 A.D., is counted as the fourth bishop in these lists; which implies that the bishopric of Vienne could hardly have been founded before ± 250 A.D.

2. The heading of the well-known epistle from Vienne and Lyons (Eus., H.E., v. 1) runs thus: hoi en Bienne kai Lougdouno tes Gallias paroikountes douloi Christou ("the servants of Christ sojourning at Vienne and Lyons"). This heading resembles others, such as Korinthon, Philippous, Smurnan, etc. ("the church of God sojourning at Rome, Corinth, Philippi, Smyrna'" etc.), and consequently represents both churches as a unity--at least upon that reading of the words which first suggests itself. [792]

3. In this epistle "Sanctus, deacon from Vienne, is mentioned--a phrase which would hardly be intelligible if it alluded to one of the deacons of the bishop of Vienne, but which is perfectly natural if Sanctus was the deacon who managed the inchoate church of Vienne, as a delegate of the Lyons bishop. In that event Vienne had no bishop of its own.

4. Irenæus in his great work speaks of churches in Germany and also among the Iberians, the Celts, and the Libyans. Now it is a well-established fact that there were no organized churches, when he wrote, in Germany (i.e., in the military province, for free Germany is out of the question). When Irenæus speaks of churches, he must therefore mean churches which were not episcopal churches. [793]

5. Theodore testifies that till quite recently there had been only two or three bishops in the majority of the Western provinces, and that this state of matters still lasted in one or two of them. Now, as a large number of bishoprics can be shown to have existed in southern and middle Italy, as well as in Africa, we are thrown back upon the other countries of the West. Strictly speaking, it is true, Theodore's evidence only covers his own period; but it fits in admirably with our first four arguments, and it is in itself quite natural, that bishoprics were less numerous in the earlier than in the later period.

6. Eusebius mentions a letter from "the parishes in Gaul over which Irenæus presided" (ton kata Gallian paroikion has Eirenaios epeskopei, H.E., v. 23). Now although, paroikia usually means the diocese of a bishop, in which sense Eusebius actually employs it in this very chapter, we must nevertheless attach another meaning to it here. "Le verbe episkopein ne saurait s'entendre d'une simple présidence comme serait celle d'un métropolitain à la tête de son concile. Cette dernière situation est visée dans le même passage d'Eusèbe; en parlant de l'évêque Théophile, qui présida celui du Pont, il se sert de l'expression proutetakto." In the present instance, then, paroikiai denote "groupes détaches, dispersés, d'une même grande église"--"plusieurs groupes de chrétiens, épars sur divers points du territoire, un seul centre ecclésiastique, un seul évêque, celui de Lyon."

7. Analogous phenomena (i.e., the existence of only one bishop at first and for some time to come) occur also in other large provinces, but the proof of this would lead us too far afield. [794] Duchesne contents himself with adducing a single instance which is especially decisive. The anonymous anti-Montanist who wrote in 192-193 A.D. (Eus., H.E. v.
16) relates how on reaching Ancyra in Galatia he found the Pontic church (ten kata Ponton ekklesian) absorbed and carried away by the new prophecy. Now Ancyra does not lie in Pontus, and--"ce n'est pas des nouvelles de l'église du Pont qu'il a eues à Ancyre, c'est l'église elle-même, l'église du Pont, qu'il y a rencontrée." Hence it follows in all likelihood [795] that the church of Pontus had still its "chef-lieu" in Ancyra during the reign of Septimius Severus (c. 200 A.D.). [796]

8. The extreme slowness with which bishoprics increased in Gaul is further corroborated by the council of Arles (314 A.D.), at which four provinces (la Germaine I., la Séquanaise, les Grées et Pennines, les Alpes Maritimes) were unrepresented. may be assumed that as yet they contained no autonomous churches whatever. [797]

Before examining these arguments in favour of the hypothesis that episcopal churches were in existence, which covered wide regions and a number of cities, and in fact several provinces together, let me add a further series of statements which appear also to tell in favour of it.

(1) Paul writes . . . . te ekklesia tou theou te ouse en Korintho sun tois hagiois pasin tois ousin en hole te Achaia (2 Cor. i. 1).

(2) In the Ignatian epistles (c. 115 A.D.) not only is Antioch called he en Suria ekklesia ("the church in Syria," Rom. ix., Magn. xiv., Trall. xiii.) absolutely, but Ignatius even describes himself as "the bishop of Syria" (ho episkopos Surias, Rom. ii.).

(3) Dionysius of Corinth writes a letter "to the church sojourning at Gortyna, with the rest of the churches in Crete, commending Philip their bishop" (te ekklesia te paroikouse Gortunan hama tais loipais kata Kreten, Philippon episkopon auton apodechomenos--Eus., H.E., iv.
23. 5).

(4) The same author (op. cit., iv. 23. 6) writes a letter to the church sojourning in Amastris, together with those in Pontus, in which he alludes to Bacchylides and Elpistus as having incited him to write . . . . and mentions their bishop Palmas by name" (te ekklesia te paroikouse Amastrin hama tais kata Ponton, Bakchulidou men kai Elpistou hosan auton epi to grapsai protrepsanton memnemenos . . . . episkopon auton onomati Palman huposemainon).

(5) In Eus., H.E., iii. 4. 6, we read that "Timothy is stated indeed to have been the first to obtain the episcopate of the parish in Ephesus, just as Titus did over the churches in Crete"; (Timotheos ge men tes en Epheso paroikias historeitai protos ten episkopen eilechenai, hos kai Titos ton epi Kretes ekklesion).

(6) "In the name of the brethren in Gaul over whom he presided, Irenæus sent despatches," etc. (ho Eirenaios ek prosopou hon hegeito kata ten Gallian adelphon episteilas, Eus., H.E., v. 24. 11); cp. vi. 46: Dionusios tois kata Armenian adelphois epistellei, hon epeskopeue Merouzanes ("Dionysius despatched a letter to the brethren in Armenia over whom Merozanes presided").

(7) "Demetrius had just then obtained the episcopate over the parishes in Egypt, in succession to Julian" (ton de en Aigupto paroikion ten episkopen neosti tote meta Ioulianou Demetrios hupeilephei--Eus., H.E., vi. 2. 2).

(8) "Xystus . . . . was over the church of Rome, Demetrianus . . . . over that of Antioch, Firmilianus over Cæsarea in Cappadocia, and besides these Gregory and his brother Athenodorus over the churches in Pontus" (tes men Rhomaion ekklesias . . . . Xustos, tes de ep' Antiocheias . . . . Demetrianos, Phirmilianos de Kaisareias tes Kappadokon, kai epi toutois ton kata Ponton ekklesion Gregorios kai o toutou adelphos Athenodoros.--Eus., H.E., vii. 14).

(9) "Firmilianus was bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, Gregory and his brother Athenodorus were pastors of the parishes in Pontus, and besides these Helenus of the parish in Tarsus, with Nicomas of Iconium," etc. (Phirmilianos men tes Kappadokon Kaisareias episkopos en, Gregorios de kai Athenodoros adelphoi ton kata Ponton paroikion poimenes, kai epi toutois Helenos tes en Tarso paroikias, kai Nikomas tes en Ikonio, etc.--Eus., H.E., vii. 28).

(10) "Meletius, bishop of the churches in Pontus" (Meletios ton kata Ponton ekklesion episkopos.--Eus., H.E., vii. 32. 26).

(11) "Basilides, bishop of the parishes in Pentapolis" (Basileides o kata ten Peneapolin paroikon episkopos.--Eus., H.E., vii. 26. 3).

(12) Signatures to council of Nicæa (ed. Gelzer et socii): "Calabria--Marcus of Calabria; Dardania--Dacus of Macedonia; Thessaly--Claudianus of Thessaly and Cleonicus of Thebes; Pannonia--Domnus of Pannonia; Gothia--Theophilus of Gothia; Bosporus--Cadmus of Bosporus (Kalabrias; Markos K.--Dardanias; Dakos Makedonias.--Thessalias; Klaudianos Th., Kleonikos Thebon.--Pannonias; Domnos P.--Gotthias; Theophilos G.--Bosporou; Kadmos B.).

(13) Apost. Constit., vii. 46: Kreskes ton kata Galatian ekklesion, Akulas de kai Niketes ton kata Asian paroikion ("Crescens over the churches in Galatia, Aquila and Nicetes over the parishes in Asia").
[798]

(14) Sozomen (vii. 19) declares that the Scythians had only a single, bishop, although their country contained many towns (cp. also Theodoret, H.E., iv. 31, where Bretanio is called the high priest, of all the towns in Scythia).

On, 1. I note that Duchesne's first argument is an argument from silence. Besides, it must be added that we have no writings in which any direct notice of the early Gothic bishoprics could be expected, so that the argument from silence hardly seems worthy of being taken into account in this connection. The one absolutely reliable piece of evidence (Cypr., Ep. lxviii.) [799] for the history of the Gothic church, which reaches us from the middle of the third century, is certainly touched upon by Duchesne, but he has not done it full justice. This letter of Cyprian to the Roman bishop Stephen, which aims at persuading the latter to depose Marcian, the bishop of Arles, who held to Novatian's ideas, opens with the words: "Faustinus, our colleague, residing at Lyons, has repeatedly sent me information which I know you also have received both from him and also from he rest of our fellow-bishops established in the same province" ("Faustinus collega noster Lugduni consistens semel adque iterum mihi scripsit significans ea quae etiam vobis scio utique nuntiata tam ab eo quam a ceteris coepiscopis nostris in eadem provincia constitutis"). It is extremely unlikely that by "eadem provincia" here we are meant to understand the provincia Narbonensis. For, in the first place, Lyons did not lie in that province; in the second place, had the bishops of Narbonensis been themselves opponents of Marcian and desirous of getting rid of him, Cyprian's letter would have been couched in different terms, and it would hardly have been necessary for the three great Western bishops of Lyons, Carthage, and Rome to have intervened; thirdly, Cyprian writes in ch. ii. ("Quapropter facere te oportet plenissimas litteras ad coepiscopos nostros in Gallia constitutos, ne ultra Marcianum pervicacem et superbum . . . . collegio nostro insultare patiantur"): "Wherefore it behoves you to write at great length to our fellow-bishops established in Gaul, not to tolerate any longer the wanton and insolent insults heaped by Marcian . . . . upon our assembly"; and in ch. iii. ("Dirigantur in provinciam et ad plebem Arelate consistentem a te litterae quibus abstento Marciano alius in loco eius substituatur"): "Let letters be sent by you to the province and to the people residing at Arles, to remove Marcian, and put another person in his place." Obviously, then, it is a question here of two (or three) letters, i.e., of one addressed to the bishops of Gaul, and of a second (or even a third) addressed not only to the "plebs Arelate consistens," but also to the "provincia" (which can only mean the provincia Narbonensis, in which Arles lay). It follows from this that the "coepiscopi nostri in Gallia constituti" (ii.) are hardly to be identified with the bishops of Narbonensis, which leads to the further conclusion that these "coepiscopi" are the bishops of the provincia Lugdunensis--a conclusion which in itself appears to be the most natural and obvious explanation of the passage. The provincia Lugdunensis thus had several bishops in the days of Cyprian, who were already gathered into one Synod, [800] and corresponded with Rome. We cannot make out from this passage how old these bishoprics were, but it is at any rate unlikely that all of them had just been founded. In this connection Duchesne also refers to the fact that bishop Verus of Vienne, who was present at the council of Arles in 314, is counted in one ancient list as the fourth bishop of Vienne; which makes the origin of the local bishopric fall hardly earlier than ± 250 A.D. But the list is not ancient. Besides, it is a questionable authority. And, even granting that it were reliable, it is quite arbitrary to assume a mean term of eighteen years as the duration of an individual episcopate; while, even supposing that such a calculation were accurate, it would simply follow that Vienne (although situated. in the provincia Narbonensis, where even Duchesne admits that bishoprics had been founded in earlier days) did not receive her bishopric till later. No inference could be drawn from this regarding the town of Lyons.

On 2. Duchesne holds that the heading of the letter (in Eus., H.E., v. 1: hoi en Bienne kai Lougdouno tes Gallias paroikountes douloi tou Christou) seems to describe the Christians of Vienne and Lyons as if they were a single church. But if such were the case, one would expect Lyons to be put first, since it was Lyons and not Vienne which had a bishop. Besides, the letter does not speak of ekklesiai or ekklesia but of douloi Christou, just as the address of the letter mentions "the brethren in Asia and Phrygia" (hoi kata ten Asian kai Phrugian adelphoi) and not "churches" at all. Hence nothing at all can be gathered from this passage regarding the organization of the local Christians. Though Vienne and Lyons belonged to different provinces, they lay very close together; and as the same calamity had befallen the Christians of both places, one can quite understand how they write a letter in common on that subject.

On 3. "Their whole fury was aroused exceedingly against Sanctus the deacon from Vienne" (eneskepsen he orge pasa eis Sankton ton [801] diakonon apo Biennes). It is possible to take this, with Duchesne, as referring to a certain Sanctus who managed the inchoate church of Vienne as a delegate of the Lyons bishop. But the explanation is far from certain. This sense of apo is unusual (though not intolerable),
[802] and the words may quite well be rendered, "the deacon who came from Vienne" [sc. belonging to the church of Lyons]. [803] But even supposing that Sanctus was described here as the deacon of Vienne, it seems to me hasty and precarious to infer, with Duchesne, that Vienne had only a single deacon and no bishop (not even a presbyter) at all. Surely this is to build too much upon the article before diakonon. Of course, it may be so; we shall come back to this passage later on. Meantime, suffice it to say that the explicit description of Pothinus in the letter as "entrusted with the bishopric of Lyons" (ten diakonian tes episkopes tes en Lougdouno pepisteumenos), instead of as "our bishop" or even "the bishop," does not tell in favour of the hypothesis that Lyons alone, and not Vienne, had a bishop at that period.

On 4. The passage from Iren., i. 10. 2 (kai houte hai en Germaniais hidrumenai ekklesiai allos pepisteukasin e allos paradidoasin, oute en tais Iberiais, oute en Keltois, oute kata tas anatolas oute en Aigupto, oute en Libue oute hai kata mesa tou kosmou hidrumenai = Nor did the churches planted in Germany hold any different faith or tradition, any more than do those in Iberia or in Gaul or in the East or in Egypt or in Libya or in the central region of the world) remains neutral if we read it and interpret it very sceptically. The language affords no clue to the way in which the churches in Germany and among the Celts were organized. But the most obvious interpretation is that these "churches" were just as entire and complete in themselves as the churches of the East, of Egypt, of Libya, and of all Europe, which are mentioned with them on the same level. At any rate, nothing can be inferred from this passage in support of Duchesne's opinion. It is a pure "petitio principii" to hold that complete churches could not have existed in Germany.

On 5. No weight attaches to Theodore's evidence regarding the primitive age. Yet even he presupposes that after the exit of the "apostles" (= provincial bishops) each separate province had two or three bishops of its own, while Duchesne would prove that the three Gauls had merely one bishop between them or about a hundred years.

On 6. At first sight, this argument seems to be particularly conclusive, but on a closer examination it proves untenable, and in fact turns round in exactly an opposite direction. The expression ton kata . . . . epeskopei cannot, we are told, be understood to mean episcopal dioceses over which Irenæus resided as metropolitan; it merely denotes scattered groups of Christians (though in the immediate context he paroikia does mean an episcopal diocese), as episkopein need only imply direct episcopal functions. Yet in H.E., vii. 26. 3, Eusebius describes Basilides as ho kata ten Pentapolin paroikion episkopos (see 11)), and Meletius (H.E., vii. 32. 26; cp. (10)) as ton kata Ponton ekklesion episkopos, and it is quite certain--even on the testimony of Eusebius himself--that there were several bishoprics at that period in Pentapolis and Pontus. [804] Episkopos paroikion, therefore, denotes in this connection the position of naetropolitan,
[805] and it is in this sense that paroikias episkoipein must also be understood with reference to Irenæus. The latter, Eusebius meant, was metropolitan of the episcopal dioceses in Gaul. So far from proving, then, that about 100 A.D. there was only one bishop in Gaul, our passage proves the existence of several bishops. [806]

On 7. This argument is quite untenable. The church of Pontus, we are told, had its episcopal headquarters in the Galatian Ancyra about 200 A.D.! But about 190 A.D. it already had a metropolitan of its own, for Eusebius mentions a writing sent during the Paschal controversy by "the bishops of Pontus over whom Palmas, as their senior, presided" (ton kata Ponton episkopon, hon Palmas hos archaiotatos proutetakto, H.E., v. 23). How Duchesne could overlook this passage is all the more surprising, inasmuch as a little above he quotes from this very chapter. Besides, this Palmas, as we may learn from Dionysius of Corinth (in Eus., H.E., iv. 23. 6; see below, p. 463), seems to have stayed not in Ancyra but in Amastris. Furthermore, in the passage in question topon (so Schwartz) must be read [807] instead of Ponton, despite the Syriac version. Ponton is meaningless here, even if the territorial bishop of Pontus resided at that time in Ancyra. Thus it is not in Pontus, but in Phrygia and Gaul, that we hear of Montanist agitations, and, moreover, one could not possibly have got acquainted with the church of Pontus in Ancyra, even if the latter place had been the residence of that church's head. Can one get acquainted in Alexandria nowadays with the church of Abyssinia?

On 8. Duchesne's final argument proves nothing, because it is uncertain whether the four recent provinces mentioned here had still no bishops by 314 A.D. Nothing can be based on the fact that they were not represented at Arles, for the representation of churches at the great synods was always an extremely haphazard affair. But even supposing that these provinces were still without bishops of their own, this proves nothing with regard to Lyons.

I have added to Duchesne's reasons fourteen other passages which appear to favour his hypothesis. Three of these (6), (10), (11) have been already noticed under 6., and our conclusion was that they were silent upon provincial bishops, being concerned rather with metropolitans. It remains for us to review briefly the other eleven.

We must not infer from 2 Cor. i. 1 that, when Paul wrote this epistle, all the Christians of Achaia belonged to the church of Corinth. In Rom. xvi. 1 f. Paul mentions a certain Phoebê, diakonos tes ekklesias tes en Kenchreais, speaking highly of her as having been a prostatis pollon kai emou autou, so that, while many Christians scattered throughout Achaia may have also belonged to the church at Corinth at that period, there was nevertheless a church at Cencheæ besides, which we have no reason to suppose was not independent.

Ignatius's description of himself as "bishop of Syria," and his description of the church of Antioch as he en Suria ekklesia, appear to prove decisively that there was only one bishop then in Syria, viz., at Antioch (2). Yet in ad Phil. x. we read how some of the neighbouring churches sent bishops, others presbyters and deacons, to Antioch (hos kai hai engista ekklesiai epempsan episkopous, hai de presbuterous kai diokonous), which shows that there were bishoprics [808] in Syria, and indeed in the immediate vicinity of Antioch, c. 115 A.D. The bishop of Antioch called himself "bishop of Syria" on account of his metropolitan position.

From Eus., H.E., iv. 23. 5-6, it would appear that there was only a single bishop (3), (4), in Crete and in Pontus c. 170 A.D., inasmuch as Dionysius of Corinth designates Philip as bishop of Gortyna and the rest of the churches in Crete, and Palmas bishop of Amastris and the churches of Pontus. But whether the expression be attributed to Dionysius himself, or ascribed, as is more likely, to Eusebius, the fact remains that the same collection of the letters of Dionysius contained one to the church of Cnossus in Crete, or to its bishop Pinytus (loc cit., § 7), while, as we have already seen (on 7), Palmas was not the sole bishop in Pontus. Philip and Palmas were therefore not provincial bishops but metropolitans, with other bishops at their side.

The statement of Eusebius (5) that Titus was bishop of the Cretan churches is an erroneous inference from Titus i. 5; it is destitute of historical value.

According to the habitual terminology of Eusebius (7), ton de en Aigupto paroikion ten episkopen tote Demetrios hupeilephei describes Demetrius as a metropolitan, not as a provincial bishop (see above, on (6)). Other evidence, discussed by Lightfoot (in his Commentary on Philippians, 3rd ed., pp. 228 f.), would seem to render it probable that Demetrius was really the only bishop (in the monarchical sense) in Egypt in 188-189 A.D.; but this fact is no proof whatever that the Alexandrian bishop was a "provincial" bishop, for it does not preclude the possibility that, while Demetrius was the first monarchical bishop in Alexandria itself, Egypt in general did not contain any churches up till then except those which were superintended by presbyters or deacons. The whole circumstances of the situation are of course extremely obscure. Nevertheless, it does look as if Demetrius and his successor Heraclas were the first bishops (in the proper sense of the term), and as if they ordained similar bishops (Demetrius ordained three, and Heraclas twenty) for Egypt. It is perfectly possible, no doubt, but at the same time it is incapable of proof, that the Egyptian churches were in a dependent position towards the Alexandrian church at a time when Alexandria itself had as yet no bishop of its own.

In both of the passages (8) and (9) where Gregory and Athenodorus are described as bishops of the Pontic church, the dual number shows that we have to do neither with provincial nor with metropolitan bishops. Eusebius is expressing himself vaguely, perhaps because he did not know the bishoprics of the two men.

In Eus., H.E., viii. 13. 4-5, two bishops who happen to bear the same name ("Silvanus") are described as bishops of the churches "round Emesa," or round "Gaza" (12). There can be no question of provincial bishops here however; as we know that these districts contained a large number of bishoprics. The position of matters can be understood from the history of Emesa and Gaza, both of which long remained pagan towns; we are told that they would not tolerate a Christian bishop. Bishops, therefore, were unable to reside in either place. But as the groups of Christian villages in the vicinity had bishops or themselves (so essential did the episcopal organization seem to Eastern Christians), there were probably bishops in partibus infidelium for Emesa and Gaza, although otherwise they were territorial bishops, over quite a limited range of territory.

As regards provincial bishops, it seems possible to cite the signatures to the council of Nicaea (13), viz., the five instances in which the name of the province accompanies that of the bishop. These are Calabria, Thessaly, Pannonia, Gothia, and the Bosphorus. [809] But in the case of Thessaly, bishop Claudianus of Thessaly is accompanied by bishop Cleonicus of Thebes, so that the former was not a provincial bishop but a metropolitan. Besides, it is quite certain that Calabria and Pannonia had more than one bishop in 325 A.D., although only the metropolitans of these provinces were present at Nicæa (as indeed was also the case with Africa, whose metropolitan alone was in attendance). Thus only Gothia and the Bosphorus are left. But as these lay outside the Roman Empire, and as quite a unique set of conditions prevailed throughout these regions, the local situation there cannot form any standard for estimating the organization of churches inside the empire. The bishops above mentioned may have been the only bishops there.

No value whatever attaches to the statements of the Apost. Constit. (14) and of the Liber Predestinatus. The former are based, so far as regards the first half of them, upon an arbitrary deduction from 2 Tim. iv. 10, while their second half is utterly futile, since several Asiatic city bishoprics are mentioned in the context. The latter statement is a description of metropolitans (i.e., so far as any idea whatever can be ascribed to the forger), as is proved abundantly by the entry, "Basilius, bishop of Cappadocia." Finally, the communication of Sozomen (15), which he himself describes as a curiosity, refers to a barbarian country.

The result is, therefore, that the alleged evidence for the hypothesis of provincial bishops instead of local (city) bishops and metropolitans throughout the empire, yields no proof at all. Out of all the material which we have examined, nothing is left to support this conjecture. The sole outcome of it is the unimportant possibility that in 178 A.D. (and even till about the middle of the third century), Vienne had no independent bishop of its own. Even this conjecture, as has been shown, is far from necessary, while it is opposed by the definite testimony of Eusebius, who knew of a letter from the parishes of Gaul c. 190 A.D.
[810] And even supposing it were to the point, we should have to suppose that the Christians in Vienne were numbered, not by hundreds, but merely by dozens, about the year 178, i.e., some decades later still.

It is certain (cp. pp. 432 f.) that an internal tension prevailed between two forms of organization during the first two generations of the Christian propaganda. These forms were (1) the church as a missionary church, created by a missionary or apostle, whose work it remained; and (2) the church as a local church, complete in itself, forming thus an image and expression of the church in heaven. As the creation of an apostolic missionary, the church was responsible to its founder, dependent upon him, and obliged to maintain the principles which he invariably laid down in the course of his activity as a founder of various churches. As a compact local church, again, it was responsible for itself, with no one over it save the Lord in heaven. Through the person of its earthly founder, it stood in a real relationship to the other churches which he had founded but as a local church it stood by itself, and any connection with other churches was quite a voluntary matter.

That the founders themselves desired the churches to be independent, is perfectly clear in the case of Paul, and we have no reason to believe that other founders of churches took another view (cp. the Roman church). No doubt they still continued to give pedagogic counsels to the churches, and in fact to act as guardians to them. But this was exceptional; it was not the rule. The Spirit moved them to such action, and their apostolic authority justified them in it, while the unfinished state of the communities seemed to demand it. [811] And in the primitive decision upon the length of time that an apostle could remain in a community, as in similar cases, the communities secured, ipso facto, a means of self-protection within their own jurisdiction. Probably the perfected organization of the Jerusalem church became, mutatis mutandis, a pattern for all and sundry Christian communities were not "churches of Paul" or "of Peter" (ekklesiai Paulou, Petrou); each was a "church of God" (ekklesia tou theou).

The third epistle of John affords one clear proof that conflicts did occur between the community and its local management upon the one hand and the "apostles" on the other. This same John (or, in the view of many critics, a different person) does not impart his counsels to the Asiatic communities directly. He makes the "Spirit" utter them. He proclaims, not his own coming with a view to punish them, but the coming of the Lord as their judge. But we need not enter more particularly into these circumstances and conditions. The point is that the apostolic authority soon faded; nor was it transmuted as a whole, for all that passed over to the monarchical episcopate was but a limited portion of its contents. The apostolic authority and praxis meant a certain union of several communities in a single group. When it vanished, this association also disappeared. But another kind of tie was now provided for the communities of a single province by their provincial association, and proofs of this are given by the Pauline epistles and the Apocalypse of John. The epistle to the Galatians, addressed to all the Christian communities of Galatia, falls to be considered in this aspect, and much more besides, Paul's range of missionary activity was regulated by the provinces; Asia, Macedonia, Achaia, etc., were ever in his mind's eye. He prosecutes the great work of his collection by massing together the communities of a single province, and the so-called epistle "to the Ephesians" is addressed, as many scholars opine, to a large number of the Asiatic communities. John writes to the churches of Asia. [812] Even at an earlier period a letter had been sent (Acts xv.) from Jerusalem to the churches of Syria and Cilicia. [813] The communities of Judaea were so closely bound up with that of Jerusalem, as to give rise to the hypothesis (Zahn, Forschungen, vi. p. 800) that the ancient episcopal list of Jerusalem, which contains a surprising number of names, is a conflate list of the Jerusalem bishops and of those from the other Christian communities in Palestine. Between the apostolic age and c. 180 A.D., when we first get evidence of provincial church synods, similar proofs of union among the provincial churches are not infrequent. Ignatius is concerned, not only for the church of Antioch, but for that of Syria; Dionysius of Corinth writes to the communities of Crete and to those in Pontus; the brethren of Lyons write to those in Asia and Phrygia; the Egyptian communities form a sphere complete in itself, and the churches of Asia present themselves to more than Irenæus as a unity.

Not in all cases did a definite town, such as the capital, become the headquarters which dominated the ecclesiastical province. No doubt Jerusalem (while it lasted), Antioch, [814] Corinth, [815] Rome, Carthage, and Alexandria formed not merely the centres of their respective provinces, but in part extended heir sway still more widely, both in virtue of their importance as large cities, and also on account of the energetic Christianity which they displayed. [816] Yet Ephesus, for example, did not become for a long while the ecclesiastical metropolis of Asia in the full sense of the term; Smyrna and other cities competed with it for this honor. [817] In Palestine, Aelia (Jerusalem) and Cæsarea stood side by side. Certain provinces, like Galatia and extensive, districts of Cappadocia, had no outstanding towns at all, and when we are told that in the provinces of Pontus; Numidia, and Spain the oldest bishop always presided at the episcopal meetings, the inference is that no single city could have enjoyed a position of superiority to the others from the ecclesiastical standpoint.

But the question now arises, whether the "metropolitans," [818] who had been long in existence before they were recognized by the law of the church or attained their rights and authority, in any way repressed the tendency towards the increase of independent communities within a province; and further, whether, in the interests of their own power, the bishops also made any attempt to retard the organization of new independent communities under episcopal government. In itself, such a course of action would not be surprising. For wherever authority and rights develop, ambition and the love of power invariably are unchained.

In order to solve this problem, we must first of all premise that the tendency of early Christianity to form complete, independent communities, under episcopal government, was extremely strong. [819] Furthermore, I do not know of a single case, from the first three centuries; which would suggest any tendency, either upon the part of metropolitans or of bishops, to curb the independent organization of the churches. Not till after the opening of the fourth century does the conflict against the chor-episcopate [820] commence; at least there are no traces of it, so far as I know, previous to that period. Then it is also that--according to our sources--the bishops begin their attempt to prohibit the erection of bishoprics in the villages, as well as to secure the discontinuance of bishoprics in small neighbouring townships--all with the view of increasing their own dioceses. [821]

Furthermore, we have not merely an "argumentum e silentio" before us here. On the contrary, after surveying (as we shall do in Book IV.) the Christian churches which can be traced circa 325 A.D., we see that it is quite impossible for any tendency to have prevailed throughout the large majority of the Roman provinces which checked the formation of bishoprics, inasmuch as almost all the churches in question can be proved to have been episcopal. We conclude, then, that wherever communities, episcopally governed, were scanty, Christians were also scanty upon the whole; while, if a town had no bishop at all, the number of local Christians was insignificant. Certainly during the course of the Christian mission, in several cases, whole decades passed without more than one bishop in a province or in an extensive tract of country. We might also conjecture, a priori, that wherever a district was uncultivated or destitute of towns--as on the confines of the empire and beyond them--years passed without a single bishop being appointed, the scattered local Christians being superintended by the bishop of the nearest town, which was perhaps far away. It is quite credible that, even after a fully equipped hierarchy had been set up in such an outlying district, this bishop should have retained certain rights of supervision--for it is a question here, not simply of personal desire for power, but of rights which had been already acquired. Still, it is well-nigh impossible for us nowadays to gain any clear insight into circumstances of this kind, since after the second century all such cases were treated and recorded from the standpoint of a dogmatic theory of ecclesiastical polity--the theory that the right of ordination was a monopoly of the original apostles, and consequently that all bishoprics were to be traced back, either directly to them, or to men whom they had themselves appointed. The actual facts of the great mission promoted by Antioch (as far as Persia, eastwards), Alexandria (into the Thebais, Libya, Pentapolis, and eventually Ethiopia), and Rome seemed to corroborate this theory. The authenticated instances from ancient history (for we have no detailed knowledge of the Bosphorus or of Gothia) permit us to infer, e.g., that the power of ordination possessed by the bishop of Alexandria extended over four provinces. Still, as has been remarked already, the original local conditions remain obscure. It is relevant also at this point to notice the tradition, possibly an authentic one, that the first bishop of Edessa was consecrated by the bishop of Antioch (Doctr. Addæi, p. 50), and that the Persian church was for a long while dependent upon the church of Antioch, from which it drew its metropolitans. [822] When this was in force, the imperial church had already firmly embraced the theory that episcopal ordination could only be perpetuated within the apostolic succession.

There are also instances, of course, in which, during the third century (for, apart from Egypt, no sure proofs can be adduce at an earlier period), Christian communities arose in country districts which were superintended by presbyters or even by deacons alone, instead of by a bishop. Such cases, however, are by no means numerous. [823] They are infrequent till in and after the age of Diocletian. [824] Previous to that period, so far as I know, there was but one large district in which presbyterial organization was indeed the rule, viz., Egypt. Yet, as has been already observed, the circumstances of Egypt are extremely obscure. It is highly probable that for a considerable length of time there were no monarchical bishops at all in that country, the separate churches being grouped canton-wise and superintended by presbyters. Gradually the episcopal organization extended itself during the course of the third century, yet even in the fourth century there were still large village churches which had no bishop. We must, however, be on our guard against drawing conclusions from Egypt and applying them to any of the other Roman provinces. It has been inferred, from the subscriptions to the Acts of the synod of Elvira, that some Spanish towns, which were merely represented by presbyters at the synod, did not possess any bishops of their own. This may so, but the very Acts of the synod clearly show how precarious is the inference; for, while many presbyters subscribed, these Acts, it can be proved that in almost every case the town churches which they represented did possess a bishop. The latter was prevented from being present at the synod, and, like the Roman bishop, he had himself represented by a presbyter or deputation of the clergy. Nevertheless it is indisputable, on the mind of the sixty-seventh canon of Elvira ("si quis diaconus gens plebem sine episcopo vel presbytero," etc.), that there were churches in Spain which had not a bishop or even a presbyter, although we know as little about the number of such churches as about the conditions which prevented the appointment of a bishop or presbyter. In any case, the management of church by a deacon must have always been the exception mainly an emergency measure in the days of persecution), since was unlawful for him to perform the holy sacrifice (see the fifteenth canon of Arles). It is impossible to decide whether the epichorioi presbuteroi mentioned in the thirteenth canon of Neo-Cæsarea mean independent presbyters in country churches, or presbyters who had a chor-episcopus over them. Possibly the latter is the true interpretation, since we must assume a specially vigorous development of the chor-episcopate in the neighbouring country of Cappadocia, which sent no fewer than five chorepiscopi to the council of Nicæa. On the other hand, it follows from the Testament of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste that there were churches in the adjoining district of Armenia which were ruled by a presbyter, and in which no chor-episcopate seems to have existed (cp. Gillmann, p. 36). Armenia, however, was a frontier province, and we cannot transfer its peculiar circumstances en masse to the provinces of Pontus and Cappadocia. The "priests in the country," mentioned in the eighth canon of Antioch (341 A.D.), are certainly priests who had supreme authority in their local spheres, but the synod of Antioch was held in the post-Constantine period, and the circumstances of 341 A.D. do not furnish any absolute rule for those of an earlier age. It is natural to suppose that the contemporary organization of the cantons in Gaul, [825] which hindered the development of towns, proved also an obstacle to the thorough organization of the episcopal system; hence one might conjecture that imperfectly organized churches were numerous in that country (as in England). But on this point we know absolutely nothing. Besides, even in the second century there was a not inconsiderable number of towns in Gaul where the local conditions were substantially the same as those which prevailed in the other Roman towns. [826]

It is impossible, therefore, to prove that for whole decades there were territorial or provincial bishops who ruled over a number of dependent Christian churches in the towns; we thus rather assume that if bishops actually did wield episcopal rights in a number of towns, it was in towns where only an infinitesimal number of Christians resided within the walls. Anyone who asserts the contrary with regard to some provinces cannot be refuted. I admit that. But the burden of proof rests with him. The assertion, for example, that Autun, Rheims, Paris, etc., had a fairly large number of Christians by the year 240 or thereabouts, while the local Christian churches had no bishop, cannot be proved incorrect, in the strict sense of the term. We have no materials for such a proof. But all analogy favours the conclusion: if the Christians in Autun, Rheims, Paris, etc., were so numerous circa 240 A.D., then they had bishops; if they had no bishops, then they were few and far between. In my opinion, we may put it thus: (1) It is quite possible, indeed it is extremely likely (cp. the evidence of Cyprian), that before the middle of the third century there were already some other episcopal, churches in Gaul, even apart from the "province"; (2) if Lyons was really the sole episcopal church of the country, then there was only an infinitesimal number of Christians in Gaul outside that city.

We come back now to one of Theodore's remarks. "At the outset," he wrote, "there were but two or three bishops, as a rule, in a province--a state of matters which prevailed in most of the Western provinces till quite recently, and which may still be found in several, even at the present day." This is a statement which yields us no information whatever. Theodore did not know any more than we moderns know about the state of matters "at the outset." The assertion that there were not more than two or three' bishops in the majority of the Western provinces "till quite recently," is positively erroneous, and it only proves how small was Theodore's historical knowledge of the Western churches; finally, while the information that several Western provinces even yet had no more than two or three bishops, is accurate, it is irrelevant, since we know, even apart from Theodore's testimony, that the number of bishoprics in the Roman provinces adjoining the large northern frontier of the empire, as well as in England, was but small. But this scantiness of contemporary bishoprics did not denote an earlier (and subsequently suspended) phase of the church's organization tenaciously maintaining itself. What it denoted was a result of the local conditions of the population and also the rarity of Christians in those districts. So far, of course, these local circumstances resembled those in which Christianity subsisted from the very outset over all the empire, when the Christians--and the Romans--of the region lived still in the Diaspora.

At this point we might conclude by saying that the striking historical paragraph of Theodore does not cast a single ray of truth upon the real position of affairs. But in the course of our study we have over and again touched upon the special position of the metropolitan or leading bishop of the province. [827] It is perfectly clear, from a number of passages, that the metropolitan was frequently described in the time of Eusebius simply as "the bishop of the province." The leading bishop was thus described even as early as Dionysius of Corinth or Ignatius himself. With regard to the history of the extension of Christianity--in so far as we are concerned to determine the volume of tendency making for the formation of independent churches--the bearing of this fact is really neutral. But it is not neutral with regard to our conception of the course taken by the history of ecclesiastical organization. Unluckily our sources here fail us for the most part. The uncertain glimpses they afford do not permit us to obtain any really historical idea of the situation, or even to reconstruct any course of development along this line. How old is the metropolitan? Is his position connected with a power of ordination which originally parse from one man to another in the province? Does the origin of the metropolitan's authority go back to a time when the apostles still survived? Was there any connection between them? And are we to distinguish between one bishop and another, so that in earlier age there would be bishops who did not ordain, or who were merely the vicars of a head bishop? [828] To all these questions we are probably to return a negative answer in general, though an affirmative may perhaps be true in one or two cases. Certainty we cannot reach. At least, in spite of repeated efforts, I have not myself succeeded in gaining any sure footing. Frequently the facts of the situation may have operated quite as strongly as the rights of the case; i.e., an individual bishop may have exercised rights at first, and for a considerable period, without possessing any title thereto, but simply as the outcome of a strong position held either on personal grounds or on account of the civic repute and splendour of his town churches.
[829] The state provincial organization and administration, with the importance which it lent to individual towns, may have also begun here and there to affect the powers of individual bishops in individual provinces by way of aggranizenient. [830] But all this pertains, probably, to the sphere of those elements in the situation which we may term "irrational," elements which do not admit of generalization or of any particular application to ecclesiastical rights and powers within the primitive age. No evidence for the definition of the metropolitan's right of jurisdiction can be found earlier than the age in which the synodal organization had defined itself, and presupposition of such a right lay in the sturdy independence, the substantial equality, and the closely knit union of all the bishops in any given province. All the "preliminary stages" lie enveloped in mist. And the scanty rays which struggle through may readily prove deceptive will-o'-the-wisps.

These investigations into the problems connected with the History of the extension of Christianity lead to the following result, viz., that the number of bishoprics in the individual provinces of the Roman empire affords a criterion, which is essentially reliable, for estimating the strength of the Christian movement. The one exception is Egypt. Apart from that province, we may say that Christian communities, not episcopally organized, were quite infrequent throughout the East and the West alike during the years that elapsed between Antoninus Pius and Constantine. [831] Not only small towns, but villages also had bishops. Cyprian was practically right when he wrote to Antonian (Ep. lv. 24): "Iam pridem per omnes provincias et per urbes singulas ordinati sunt episcopi" ("Bishops have been for long ordained throughout all the provinces and in each city") [832] And what was unique in the age of Sozomen (H.E., vii. 19), viz., that only one bishop ruled in Scythia, though it had many towns [833] --this would also have been unique a century and a half earlier.

In conclusion, it must be remembered that the whole of this investigation relates solely to the age between Pius and Constantine, not to the primitive period during which the monarchial episcopate first began to develop. During this period--which lasted in certain provinces till Domitian and Trajan, and in many other still longer--a collegiate government of the individual church, by means of bishops and deacons (or by means of a college of presbyters, bishops and deacons) was normal. How this passed over into the other (i.e. the monarchic control) we need not ask in this connection. But the hypothesis that wherever communities which are not episcopally organized are to be found throughout the third century, they are to be considered as having retained the primitive organization--this hypothesis, I repeat, is not merely incapable of proof, but incorrect. Such non-episcopal village churches are plainly recent churches, which are managed, not by a college of presbyters, but by one or two presbyters. They are "country parishes" whose official "presbyters" have nothing in common with the members of the primitive college of presbyters except the name. Here I would again recall how Egypt forms the exception to the rule, inasmuch as large Christian churches throughout Egypt still continue to be governed by the collegiate system down to the middle of the third century. Nothing prevents us, in this connection, from supposing that these churches did hold tenaciously to the primitive form of ecclesiastical organization. Yet alongside of the presbyters in Egypt, even didaskaloi would seem also to have had some share in the administration of the churches (Dionys. Alex., in Eus., H.E., vii. 24). __________________________________________________________________

[776] megistai de ou poleis monon alla kai choirai ton pepisteukoton esan; Lat. Version = repletae autem sunt non modo civitates credentium, sed regiones. Read, mestai therefore instead of megistai.

[777] dia men ten chreian to proton, husteron de kai hupo philotimias tos poiounton; Ambition, it might be conjectured, would be mentioned as the motive at work, but in that case ton poiounton would require to be away. Philotimia therefore must mean "liberal spirit," and this is the interpretation given in the Latin version: "Postea vero et illis adiecti sunt alii liberalitate eorum qui ordinationes faciebant." Dr Bischoff, however, proposes paroikounton for poiounton.

[778] See Swete's Theodori episcopi Mopsuesteni in epp. b. Pauli commentarii, vol. ii. (1882), pp. 121 f.

[779] This is the first point of obscurity in Theodore's narrative. "The blessed apostles" are not all the men whom he has first mentioned as "apostles," but either the apostles in the narrowest sense of the term, or else these taken together with men like Timothy and Titus.

[780] This has, to be supplied by the reader (which is the second obscure point); the text has merely baru nomisantes ten ton apostolon echein prosegorian. Theodore says nothing about what became of them after they gave up their name and rights.

[781] This is the third point of obscurity in Theodore's statement. By philotimia ton poiounton it seems necessary to understand the generosity of the retiring "apostles," and yet the process went on--according to Theodore himself--even after these apostles had long left the scene.

[782] Compare the remarks of Paul and the Didachê upon apostles, prophets, and teachers. The apostles are appointed by God or "the Spirit."

[783] It is even probable that he has particularly in mind, along with Tit. i. 5 f. and 1 Tim. iii. 1 f., the well-known passage in Clem. Alex., Quis Dives Salvetur, (cp. Eus., H.E., III. xxiii.), since his delineation of the tasks pertaining to the apostle-bishop coincides substantially with what is narrated of the work of John in that passage (§ 6: hopou men episkopous katasteson, hopou de holas ekklesias armoson, hopou de klero hena ge tina kleroson ton hupo tou pneumatos semainomenon = "Appointing bishops in some quarters, arranging the affairs of whole churches other quarters, and elsewhere selecting for the ministry some one of those indicated by the Spirit"; cp. also the description of how John dealt with a difficult case).

[784] Clem. Rom. xl. f. cannot have been present to his mind, for his remarkable and ingenious idea of the identity of "apostles" and "provincial bishops" would have been shattered by a passage in which it is quite explicitly asserted that the apostles kata choras kai poleis kerussontes kai tous hupakouontas te boulesei tou theou baptizontes kathistanon tas aparchas auton, dokimasantes to pneumati, eis episkopous kai diakonous ton mellonton pisteueinn (see above, p. 434), while xlii. describes a succession, not of apostles one after another, but of bishops.

[785] It seems inevitable that we should take Theodore as holding that the cessation of the miraculous power hitherto wielded by the apostles was a divine indication that they were now to efface themselves.--It was a widely spread conviction (see Origen in several passages, which Theodore read with care) that the apostolic power of working miracles ceased at some particular moment in their history. The power of working miracles and the apostles' power of working miracles are not, however, identical.

[786] Theodore seems to regard this original state of matters as the ideal. At any rate, he expresses his dislike for the village-episcopacy.

[787] All the more so that Theodore goes into the question of how the individual community was ruled at first (whether by some local council or by a single presbyter-bishop). He says nothing, either, of the way in which the monarchical principle was reached in the individual community. We seem shut up to the conjecture that in his view the individual communities were ruled by councils for several generations.

[788] Theodore adduces but one "proof" for his assertion that originally there were only two or three bishoprics in every province. He refers to the situation in the West as this had existed up till recently, and as it still existed in some quarters. But the question is whether he has correctly understood the circumstances of the case, and whether these circumstances can really be linked on to what is alleged to have taken place about the year 100.

[789] Duchesne, be it observed, only draws these conclusions for Gaul, nor has he yet said his last word upon the other provinces. I have reason to believe that his verdict and my own are not very different; hence in what follows I am attacking, not himself, but conclusions which may be drawn from his statements.

[790] The mention of the Pyrenees shows that Duchesne includes Aquitania and the extreme S.W. of France in the province of which Lyons is said to have formed the only bishopric.

[791] Arles alone was certainly in existence before 250 A.D., as the correspondence of Cyprian proves. But Arles lay in the provincia Narbonensis, which is excluded from our present purview.

[792] Certainly this argument is advanced with some caution (p. 40): "Cette formule semble plutôt désigner un groupe ecclésiastique que deux groupes ayant chacun son organization distincte: en tout cas, elle n'offre rien de contraire à l'indistinction des deux églises."

[793] It is in this way, I believe, that Duchesne's line of argument must be taken (pp. 40 f.). But its trend is not quite clear to my mind.

[794] P. 42: "D'autres églises que celle de Lyon ont eu d'abord un cercle de rayonnement très étendu et ne se sont en quelque sorte subdivisées qu'après une indivision d'assez longue durée. Je ne veux pas entrer ici dans l'histoire de l'évangélization de l'empire romain: cela m'entraînerait beaucoup trop loin. Il me serait facile de trouver en Syrie, en Égypte et ailleurs des termes de comparaison assez intéressants. Je les néglige pour me borner à un seul exemple," etc.

[795] Duchesne also mentions the allusions to Christians in Pontus which we find in Gregory Thaumaturgus.

[796] This is the period, therefore, in which Duchesne places the anonymous anti-Montanist. In my opinion, it is rather too late.

[797] A counter-argument is noticed by Duchesne. In Cypr., Ep. lxviii., we are told that Faustinus, the bishop of Lyons, wrote to Stephen the pope (c. 254 A.D.), not only in his own name but in that of "the rest of my fellow-bishops who hold office in the same province" ("ceteri coepiscopi nostri in eadem provincia constituti"). Duchesne admits that the earliest of the bishoprics (next to that of Lyons) may have been already in existence throughout the provincia Lugdunensis, but he considers that it is more natural to think of bishops on the lower Rhone and on the Mediterranean, i.e., in the provincia Narbonesis, which had had bishops for a long while.

[798] Merely for the sake of completeness let me add that the Liber Prædestinalus mentions "Diodorus episc. Cretensis" (xii.), "Dioscurus Cretensis episc." (xx.), "Craton episc. Syrorum" (xxxiii.), "Aphrodisius Hellesponti episc." (xlvii.), "Basilius episc. Cappadociae" (xlviii.), "Zeno Syrorum episc." (l.), and Theodotus Cyprius episc." (lvi.).

[799] See above, page 455.

[800] This must be the meaning of Cyprian's phrase, "tam a Faustino quam a ceteris coepiscopis nostris in eadem provincia constitutis."

[801] So, rightly, Schwartz.

[802] Cp. Eus., H.E., v. 19: Ailios Pouplios Ioulios apo Debeltou koloneias tes Thrakes episkopos ("Aelius Publius Julius, bishop of Debeltum, a colony of Thrace"). The parallel, of course, is not decisive, as Julius was at a gathering in Phrygia when he penned these words.

[803] Cp. what immediately follows--"against Attalus a native of Pergamum" (eis Attalon Pergamenon to genei), and also § 49 (Alexandros tis, Phrux men to genos, iatros de ten epistemen = a certain Alexander, of Phrygian extraction, and a physician by profession). Neumann, in his Röm. Staat und die allgem. Kirche, i. (1890), p. 30, writes thus: "As Sanctus, the deacon of Vienna, appears before the tribunal of the legate of Lyons, he must have been arrested in Lyons."

[804] In this very chapter Eusebius mentions the bishopric of Berenicê in Pentapolis.

[805] On Eus., H.E., vi. 2. 2, see below (p. 462).

[806] Thus the expression used by Eusebius in H.E., v. 24. 11 (ho Eirenaios ek prosopou hon hegeito kata ten Gallian adelphon episteilas--cp. (6)) is also to be understood as a reference to the metropolitan rank of Irenæus, since it is employed as a simple equivalent for the above expression in v. 23. Probst (Kirchliche Disziplin in den drei ersten christlichen Jahrhunderten, p. 97) and other scholars even go the length of including Gallic bishops among the adelphoi, an interpretation which is not necessary, although it is possible, and is on one strong piece of evidence in the "parishes" of v. 23.--The outcome of both passages relating to Irenæus and Gaul is that it is impossible to ascertain whether the Meruzanes mentioned in H.E. vi. 46 as the bishop of the Armenian brethren was the sole local bishop at that period or the metropolitan. See on (6).

[807] Prosphatos genomenos en Ankura tes Galatias kai katalabon ten kata topon (not Ponton) ekklesian hupo tes nias tautes . . . . pseudopropheteias diatethrulemenen ("When I was recently at Ancyra in Galatia, I found the local church quite upset by this novel form . . . . of false prophecy"). Kata Ponton is in one other passage of Eusebius a mistake for kata panta topon (iv. 15. 2).

[808] Some of the bishoprics adjoining Antioch, of which Eusebius speaks in H.E., vii. 30. 10 (episkopoi ton homoron agron te kai poleon), were therefore in existence by c. 115 A.D.--It seems to me impossible that Philadelphia is referred to in the expression of engista ekklesiai in Phil. x. ("the nearest churches"). Even Lightfoot refers it to Syria. To be quite accurate he ought to have said, "to the church in Antioch," as that church is mentioned just above.

[809] The signature Dardanias; Dakos Makedonias is obscure, and must therefore be set aside.

[810] If there were several (episcopal) parishes in Gaul c. 190 A.D., Vienne would also form one such parish. The hypothesis that a number of bishoprics existed in middle and northern Gaul in the days of Irenæus is confirmed by the fact that Irenæus (in a passage i. 10, to which I shall return) speaks, not of Christians in Germany, but of "the churches founded in Germany." Would he have spoken of them if these churches had not had any bishops? While, if they did possess bishops of their own,--and according to iii. 3. 1, the episcopal succession reaching back to the apostles could be traced in every individual church,--then how should there have been still no bishops in middle and northern Gaul? The passage iii. 3. 1 runs thus: "Traditionem apostolorum in toto mundo manifestatam, in omni ecclesia adest perspicere omnibus qui vera velint videre, et habemus annumerare eos qui ab apostolis instituti sunt episcopi in ecclesiis et successiones eorum usque ad nos. . . . . Sed quoniam valde longum est, in hoc tali volumine omnium ecclesiarum enumerare successiones," etc. ("All who desire to see facts can clearly see the tradition of the apostles, which is manifest all over the world, in every church; we are also able to enumerate those whom the apostles appointed as bishops in the churches, as well as to recount their line of succession down to our own day. . . . . Since, however, in a volume of this kind it would take up great space to enumerate the various lines of succession throughout all the churches," etc.).

[811] What they did, the churches also did themselves in certain circumstances. Thus, the Roman church exhorted, and in fact acted as guardian to, the Corinthian church in one sore crisis (c. 96 A.D.).

[812] By addressing himself also to the church at Laodicea, he passes on into the neighbouring district of Phrygia. But the other six churches are all Asiatic.

[813] The collocation of Christians from several large provinces in 1 Peter is remarkable. But as the address of this letter has been possibly drawn up artificially, I do not take it here into account.

[814] Cp. the very significant address in Acts xv. 23: hoi apostoloi kai hoi presbuteroi adelphoi tois kata te`n Antiocheian kai Surian kai Kilikian adelphois. For our present purpose, it does not matter whether the letter is genuine or not.

[815] According to the extract from the correspondence of Dionysius of Corinth, given by Eusebius (H.E., IV. 23), the bishop of Corinth seems to have stood in a different relation to the churches of Lacedæmon and Athens from that in which he stood towards communities lying outside Greece.

[816] This requires no proof, as regards Rome. But the church of Jerusalem also pushed far beyond Palestine; it gave Paul serious trouble in the Diaspora, and tried even to balk his plans. In the third century bishop Firmilian set up the "observations" of the Gentile Christian church at Jerusalem against those of Rome, thereby attributing to the former a certain prestige outside Palestine for the church at large. The bishop of Antioch, again, reached as far as Cilicia, Mesopotamia, and Persia; the bishop of Carthage as far as Mauretania; the bishop of Alexandria as far as Pentapolis. Cp. the second canon of the Council of Constantinople (381), which prohibits a bishop or metropolitan from invading another diocese, but at the same time expressly makes an exception of "barbarian" districts, on the ground of ancient use and wont (tas de en tois barbarikois ethnesin tou theou ekklesias oikonomeisthai chre kata ten kratesasan sunetheian ton pateron.--The sphere of Alexandria's influence, however, several times embraced Palestine and Syria, even prior to Athanasius, Cyril, and Dioscorus. It is very remarkable, e.g., that no fewer than three Alexandrians--Eusebius, Anatolius, and Gregory--occupied the see of Laodicea (Syr.) at the close of the third and the beginning of the fourth centuries (Eus., H.E., vii. 32; Philostorgius, viii. 17). There was already a sort of prescriptive right which afterwards passed into the division of the patriarchate. Thus, in the intercourse of, the churches the Roman bishop already, represented all the West (including Illyria afterwards); while the bishop of Antioch, as well as the bishop of Alexandria, seem to have had the prescriptive privilege of attending to the entire East. Apart from this privilege, however, the spheres of Alexandria (South) and Antioch (Middle and North) respectively. were delimited. Caesarea (Cappadocia) and Ephesus now attained positions of some independence

[817] All this was connected, of course, with the political organization of Asia.

[818] A learned treatise in Russian has just been published on the metropolitans by P. Giduljanow (Die Metropoliten in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten des Christentums, Moscow, 1905), which also contains ample material for ecclesiastical geography, besides a coloured map of "The Eastern Half of the Roman Empire during the First Three Christian Centuries." Special reference is made to the ecclesiastical arrangements and spheres in their relation to the political framework.

[819] As Ignatius cannot conceive of a community existing at all without a bishop, so Cyprian also judges that a bishop is absolutely necessary to every community; without him its very being appears to break up (see especially Ep. lxvi. 5). The tendencies voiced by Ignatius in his epistles led to every Christian community in a locality, however small it might be, securing a bishop, and we have every reason to suppose that the practice which already obtained in Syria and Asia corresponded to these tendencies. From the outset we observe that local churches spring into life on all sides, as opposed to uncertain transient unions, and while Christians might and did group themselves in other forms (e.g., mere guilds of worship and schools of thought), these were invariably attacked and suppressed. Neighbouring cities, like Laodicea, Colossê, and Hierapolis, had churches of their own from the very first. So had the seaport of Corinth, as early as the days of Paul, while the localities closely "adjacent to" Antioch (Syr.) had churches of their own in Trajan's reign (Ignat., ad Phil. x.), and not long afterwards we have evidence of village churches also. Then, as soon as we hear of the monarchical episcopate, it is in relation to small communities. The localities which lay near Antioch had their own bishops, and two decades afterwards we find a bishop quartered in the Phrygian village of Comana (Eus., H.E., 5.16). The Nicene Council was attended by village bishops from Syria, Cilicia, Cappadocia, Bithynia, and Isauria, who had the same rights as the town bishops. In the so-called Apostolic Constitutions (middle of second century) we read: "If the number of men be small, and twelve persons cannot be found at one place, who are entitled to elect a bishop, let application be made to any of the nearest churches which is well established, so that three chosen men may be sent who shall carefully ascertain who is worthy," etc. Which assumes that even in such cases a complete episcopal church is the outcome. We must therefore assume that it was the rule in some at least and probably in many, of the provinces to give every community a bishop. Thus the number of the local churches or communities would practically be equivalent to the number of bishoprics.

[820] Cp. Gillmann, Das Institut der Chorbischöpe im Orient (1903). The names of these clergy are chorepiskopoi, episkopoi ton agron (en tais komais e tais chorais), sulleitourgoi [i.e., of the town bishops]. Originally, as the name episkopoi shows, they stood alongside of the town bishops; but as a real distinct point--was drawn from the outset between the bishop of a provincial capital and the bishops of other towns, so a country bishop always was inferior to his colleagues in the towns, and indeed often occupied a position of real dependence on them (cp. Gillmann, pp. 30 f.).

[821] The chor-episcopi were first of all de-classed by their very name; then they were deprived of certain rights retained by the town bishops, including especially the right of ordination. Finally, they were suppressed. The main stages of this struggle throughout the East are seen in the following series of decisions. Canon xiii. of the Council of Ancyra (314 A.D.): chorepiskopous me exeinai presbuterous e diakonous cheirotonein ("Chor-episcopi are not allowed to elect presbyters or deacons"). Canon xiii. of the Council of Neo-Cæsarea: hoi chorepiskopoi eisi men eis tupon ton hebdomekonta; hos de sulleitourgoi dia ten spouden ten eis tous ptochous prospherousi timomenoi ("The chor-episcopi are indeed on the pattern of the Seventy, and they are to have the honor of making the oblation, as fellow-labourers, on account of their devotion to the poor"). Canon viii. of the Council of Antioch (341 A.D.): "Country priests are not to issue letters of peace [i.e., certificates) ; they are only to forward letters to the neighbouring bishop. Blameless chor-episcopi, however, can grant letters of peace." Ibid., canon x.: "Even if bishops in villages and country districts, the so-called chor-episcopi, have been consecrated as bishops, they must recognize the limits of their position. Let them govern the churches under their sway and be content with this charge and care, appointing lectors and sub-deacons and exorcists; let them be satisfied with expediting such business, but never dare to ordain priest or deacon without the bishop of the town to whom the rural bishop and the district itself belong. Should anyone dare to contravene these orders, he shall be deprived of the position which he now holds. A rural bishop shall be appointed by the bishop of the town to which he belongs" (cp. on this, Gillmann, pp. 90 f.). Canon vi. of the Council of Sardica (343 A.D.): "Licentia vero danda non est ordinandi episcopum aut in vico aliquo aut in modica civitate, cui sufficit unus presbyter, quia non est necesse ibi episcopum fieri, ne vilescat nomen episcopi et auctoritas. non debent illi ex alia provincia invitati facere episcopum, nisi aut in his civitatibus, quae episcopos habuerunt, aut si qua talis aut tam populosa est civitas, quae mereatur habere episcopum" (the contemporary Greek version does not correspond to the original; its closing part runs thus: all' hoi tes eparchias episkopoi en tautais tais polesi kathistan episkopous opheilousin, entha kai proteron etunchanon gegonotes episkopoi; ei de heuriskoito houto plethunousa tis en pallo arithmo laou polis, hos axian auten kai episkopes nomizesthai, lambaneto). "It is absolutely forbidden to ordain a bishop in any village or small town for which a single presbyter is sufficient--for it is needless to ordain bishops there--lest the name and authority of bishops be lowered. Bishops called in from another province ought not to appoint any bishop except in those cities where there were bishops previously; or if any city contains a population large enough to merit a see, then let one be founded there." Canon lviii. of the Council of Laodicea: "In villages and country districts no bishops shall be appointed, but only visitors (periodeutai), nor shall those already appointed act without the consent of the city bishop." By the opening of the fifth century this process had gone to such a length that Sozomen (H.E., vii. 19) notes, as a curiosity, that "there are cases where in other nations bishops do the work of priests in villages, as I myself have seen in Arabia and Cyprus and in Phrygia among the Novatians and Montanists" (en allois ethnesin estin hope kai en komais episkopoi hierountai, hos para Arabiois kai Kuprois egnon kai para tois en Phrugiais Nauatianois kai Montanistais. (According to Theodore of Mopsuestia--see Swete's ed., vol. ii. p. 44--this was still in force about the year 400 in the district which he supervised, much to his disgust). In Northern Africa, upon the other hand, no action was taken against the smaller bishops. Augustine himself (Ep. cclxi.) erected a new bishopric within his own diocese, whilst even after the year 400 it is plain that the number of bishoprics in Northern Africa went on multiplying. We may take it that in provinces where the village bishoprics were numerous (i.e., in the majority of the provinces of Asia Minor, besides Syria and Cyprus), the total number of bishoprics did not materially increase after 325 A.D. Probably, indeed, it even diminished.

[822] Hoffmann, Auszüge aus syrischen Akten persischer Märtyrer (1880), p. 46 and Uhlemann, Zeitschrift f. d. hist. Theol. (1861), p. 15. But the primitive history of Christianity in Persia lies wrapt in obscurity or buried in legend.

[823] No case is known, so far as I am aware, during the pre-Constantine period in Northern Africa. One might infer, from epistles i. and lviii. of Cyprian, that there were no bishops at Furni and Thibaris, but from Sentent. Episcop. (59 and 37) it is evident that even these churches were ruled by one bishop. Probably the see was vacant when Cyprian wrote epistle i.; but this hypothesis is needless so far as regards epistle lviii. The reference to Cypr., Ep. lxviii. 5, is extremely insecure. It is unlikely that even in Middle and Lower Italy churches existed without bishops during the third century. We must not use cpp. 4 and 7 of the letter written by Firmilian of Iconium (Cypr., Ep. lxxv.) as an argument in favour of churches without bishops, surprising as is the expression "seniores et praepositi" or "praesident maiores natu." There was such a church at the village of Malus near Ancyra (see Acta Mart. Theodot., 11. 12), but the evidence is almost worthless, as the Acta in question are not contemporary.

[824] We must not, of course, include cases in which presbyters, or presbyters and deacons, ruled a community during an episcopal vacancy. Even though they employed language which can only be described as episcopal (cp. the eighth document of the Roman clergy among Cyprian's letters), they were simply regents; see Ep. xxx. 8, "We thought that no new step should be taken before a bishop was appointed" (ante constitutionem episcopi nihil innovandum putavimus).

[825] See Mommsen's Röm. Gesch., v. 81 f. [Eng. trans., i. 92 f.], and also Marquardt's Röm. Staatsverwaltung, i. 7 f.

[826] Two systems prevailed in the civil government, as regards the country districts; the latter were either placed under the jurisdiction of a neighbouring town or assigned magistrates of their own (see Hatch-Harnack, Gesellschaftsverfassung der christlichen Kirchen, p. 202). The latter corresponded to the chor-episcopate, the former to the direct episcopal jurisdiction and administration of the town bishop. The blending of the two systems, with more or less independent country presbyters and reserved rights on the part of the bishop, was the latest development. Its earliest stage falls within the second half of the third century. A number of small localities were often united into a commune, whose centre was called metrokomia.

[827] Augustine once (Ep. xxii. 4) remarks of the Carthaginian church in relation the churches of the province; "Si ab una ecclesia inchoanda est medicina [i.e., the suppression of an abuse], sicut videtur audaciae mutare conari quod Carthaginiensis ecclesia tenet, sic magnae impudentiae est velle servare quod Carthaginiensis ecclesia correxit." This would represent a widely spread opinion, held long before the fourth century, with regard to the authority of the metropolitan church.

[828] We are led to put this question by learning that injunctions were laid down in the fourth century, which delimited the ordination rights of the chor-episcopi (see above, p. 471). Does this restriction go back to an earlier age? Hardly to one much earlier, though Gillmann (p. 121) is right in holding that the decisions of Ancyra and Neo-Cæsarea did not come with the abruptness of a pistol-shot; they codified what had previously been the partial practice of wide circles in the church. We must therefore look back as far as the period beginning with the edict of Gallienus. But we know nothing as to whether the country bishop was in any respect subordinate to the city bishop from the first (especially in the matter of ordination). A priori, it is unlikely that he was.

[829] One recollects at this point, e.g., the second epistle of Cyprian, mentioned already on pp. 175, which tells how the Carthaginian church was prepared to undertake the support of an erstwhile teacher of the dramatic art, if his own church was not in a position to do so. It is clear that the Carthaginian church or bishop would acquire a superior position amid the sister provincial churches, if cases of this kind occurred again and again. Compare also the sixty-second epistle, in which the Carthaginian church not only subscribes 100,000 sesterces towards the emancipation of Christians in Africa who had been carried off captives by the barbarians, but also expresses herself ready to send still more in case of need [cp. pp. 175 f., 301]. It is well known that the repute of the Roman church and its bishops was increased by such donations, which were bestowed frequently even on remote churches.

[830] The instructive investigations of Lübeck ("Reichseinteilung und kirchliche Hierarchie des Orients," in Kirchengeschichtliche Studien, herausgeg. von Knöpfler, Schrörs, and Sdralek, Bd. v. Heft 4, 1901) afford many suggestions on this point.

[831] Previous to the middle of the third century I do not know of a single case (leaving out Egypt). All the evidence that has been gathered from the older period simply shows that there were Christians in the country, or that country people here and there came in to worship in the towns; evidently they had no place of worship at home, and consequently no presbyters. Furthermore the original character of the presbyter's office, a character which can be traced down into the third century, excludes any differentiation among the individual, independent presbyters, each of whom was a presbyter as being the member of a college and nothing more (cp. also Hatch-Harnack, Gesellschaft. der christlichen Kirchen, pp. 76 f., 200 f.; the right of presbyters to baptize was originally a transmitted right and nothing more. Hatch refers the rise of parishes also to a later time). I should conjecture that the organization of presbyterial village churches began first of all when the town congregation in the largest towns had been divided into presbyters' and deacons' districts, and when the individual presbyters had thus become relatively independent. In Rome this distribution emerged rather later than the middle of the third century, and originally it sprang from the division into civic quarters (not the synagogue). The necessity of having clergy appointed for the country, even where there were no bishops, emerged further throughout the East wherever a martyr's grave or even a churchyard had to be looked after (cp. the Testament of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste). Again, we know from the history of Gregory Thaumaturgus and other sources (cp. the Acta Theodoti Ancyr.) that after the middle of the third century the great movement had begun which sought to appropriate and consecrate as Christian the sacred sites and cults of paganism throughout the country, as well as to build shrines for the relics of the saints. In these cases also a presbyter, or at least a deacon, was required, in order to take care of the sanctuary. Finally, the severe persecutions of Decius, Valerian, Diocletian, and Maximinus Daza drove thousands of Christians to take refuge in the country; the last-named emperor, moreover, deliberately endeavoured to eject Christians from the towns, and condemned thousands to hard labour in the mines throughout the country. We know, thanks to the information of Dionysius of Alexandria and Eusebius that in such cases communities sprang up in the country districts for the purpose of worship; naturally these were without a bishop, unless one happened to be among their number. It may be supposed that all these circumstances combined to mature the organization of presbyterial communities, an organization which subsequently, under the countenance of the town bishops, entered upon a victorious course of rivalry with the old chor-episcopate. Frequently, however, in the country the nucleus lay, not in the community, but in the sacred sites--and such were in existence even before the adoption and consecration of pagan ones, in the shape of martyrs' graves and churchyards. These considerations lead me to side with Thomassin in the controversy between that critic and Binterim: the "country parish" did not begin its slow process of development till after about 250 A.D. On the other hand, I disagree with Thomassin in thinking that the "country episcopate" is the older of the two. It can be traced back unmistakably in Phrygia to the beginning of the Montanist controversy. For the origin of the "country parishes" cp. the recent keen investigations by Stutz and his pupil (Stutz, Gesch. Des kirchl. Benefizialwesens I., 1895; Schäfer, Pfarrkirche und Stift im deutschen Mittelalter, 1903; and Stutz's review in Gött. Gel. Anz., 1904, No. 1, pp. 1-86, of Imbart de la Tour's Les paroisses rurales du 4e au 11e siècle, 1900). Although these studies do not touch the pre-Constantine period, they need to be collated by anyone who desires to elucidate the history of the primitive organization of the church.

[832] With this reservation, that in certain provinces the tendency to form independent communities proceeded more briskly than in others. This, however, is purely a matter of conjecture; it cannot be strictly proved. The Episcopal churches of the third century were most numerous in North Africa, Palestine, Syria, Asia, and Phrygia; and this tells heavily in support of the view that the Christians of these provinces were also most numerous. Africa is the one country where I should conjecture that special circumstances led to a rapid increase of independent i.e. of episcopal communities; but what those circumstances were, no one can tell.

[833] When Sozomen continues: en allois de ethnesin estin hope kai en komais episkopoi hierountai, hos para Arabiois kai Kutriois egnon kai para tos en Phrugiais Nauatianois kai Montanistais [cp. above, p. 473] we see that village bishops no longer existed in most of the provinces when he wrote (c. 430 A.D.). That they had been common at an earlier period is shown by the mere fact of their survival among the Phrygian adherents of Novatian and Montanus, since these sects held fast to ancient institutions. __________________________________________________________________

EXCURSUS II
THE CATHOLIC CONFEDERATION AND THE MISSION

Before general synods and patriarchs arose within the church, prior even to the complete development of the metropolitan system, there was a catholic confederation which embraced the majority of the Christian churches in the East and the West alike. It came into being during the gnostic controversies; it assumed a relatively final shape during the Montanist controversy; and its headquarters were at Rome. The federation had no written constitution. It did not possess one iota of common statutes. Nevertheless, it was a fact. Its common denominator consisted of the apostles' creed, the apostolic canon, and belief in the apostolical succession of the episcopate. Indeed, long before these were generally recognized as the common property of the churches, the maintenance of this body of doctrine constituted a certain unity by itself. Externally, this unity manifested itself in inter-communion, the brotherly welcome extended to travellers and wanderers, the orderly notification of any changes in ecclesiastical offices, and also the representation of churches at synods beyond the bounds of their own provinces and the forwarding of contributions. What was at first done spontaneously--and as a result of this, in many cases, both arbitrarily and uselessly--became a matter of regular prescriptive right, carried out along fixed lines of its own.

The fact of this catholic federation was of very great moment to the spread of the church. The Christian was at home everywhere, and he could feel himself at home, thanks to this inter-communion. He was protected and controlled wherever he went. The church introduced, as it were, a new franchise among her members. In the very era when Caracalla bestowed Roman citizenship upon the provincials--a concession which amounted to very little, and which failed to achieve its ends--the catholic citizenship became a significant reality. __________________________________________________________________

EXCURSUS III
THE PRIMACY OF ROME IN RELATION TO THE MISSION

From the close of the first century the Roman church was in a position of practical primacy over Christendom. It had gained this position as the church of the metropolis, as the church of Peter and Paul, as the community which had done most for the catholicizing and unification of the churches, and above all as the church which was not only vigilant and alert but ready [834] to aid any poor or suffering church throughout the empire with gifts. [835] The question now rises, Was this church not also specially active in the Christian mission, either from the first or at certain epochs of the pre-Constantine period? Our answer must be in the negative. Any relevant evidence on this point plainly belongs to legends with a deliberate purpose and of late origin. All the stories about Peter founding churches in Western and Northern Europe (by means of delegates and subordinates) are pure fables. Equally fabulous is the mass of similar legends about the early Roman bishops, e.g., the legend of Eleutherus and Britain. The sole residuum of truth is the tradition, underlying the above-mentioned legend that Rome and Edessa were in touch about 200 A.D. This fragment of information is isolated, but, so far as I can see, it is trustworthy. We must not infer from it, however, that any deliberate missionary movement had been undertaken by Rome. The Christianizing of Edessa was a spontaneous result. Abgar the king may indeed have spoken to the local bishop when he was at Rome, and a letter which purports to be from Eleutherus to Abgar might also be historical. The Roman bishop may perhaps have had some influence in the catholicizing of Edessa and the bishops of Osrhoene. But a missionary movement in any sense of the term is out of the question. Furthermore, if Rome had undertaken any organized mission to Northern Africa (or Spain, or Gaul, or Upper Italy) we would have found echoes of it, at least in Northern Africa. Yet in the latter country, when Tertullian lived, people only knew that while the Roman church had an apostolic origin, their own had not; consequently the "auctoritas" of the former church must be recognized. Possibly this contains a reminiscence of the fact that Christianity reached Carthage by way of Rome, but even this is not quite certain. Unknown sowers sowed the first seed of the Word in Carthage also; they were commissioned not by man but by God. By the second century their very names had perished from men's memory.

The Roman church must not be charged with dereliction of duty on this score. During the first centuries there is no evidence whatever for organized missions by individual churches; such were not on the horizon. But it was a cardinal duty to "strengthen the brethren," and this duty Rome amply discharged. __________________________________________________________________

[834] Evidence is forthcoming from the second and the third centuries, for Corinth, Arabia, Cappadocia, and Mesopotamia (cp. above, pp. 157, 185, 376; and below, Book IV.). In a still larger number of cases Rome intervened with her advice and opinion.

[835] A considerable amount of the relevant material is collected in my History of Dogma, I.(3) pp. 455 f. (Eng. trans., vol. ii. pp. 149-168), under the title of "Catholic and Roman." __________________________________________________________________