Pontifex Maximus
The particular status given to the Bishop of Rome – the Pope – is not found in the early Church. Church government was by local councils – synods – and even such a figure as St. Augustine rejected Rome’s claims to be a court of appeal against synod decisions.
Unfortunately the bishops decided to ‘sup with the devil’ by invoking the aid of the State to deal with outbreaks of heresy; this preserved orthodoxy, but blurred the frontier between the spiritual and the temporal.
As the Roman Empire in the West lapsed into chaos, some figure was needed to reassert authority. In Pope St. Leo the Great (+461), such a figure was found. From the safety of Constantinople, the Eastern Emperor, Valentinian III, called St. Leo the “Rock of the Church”. The bishop of Rome began to be associated with an earthly high priesthood, based on a succession from Peter, “prince of Episcopal rank”. St. Leo styled himself the “vicar of Peter”, the “grand bridge-builder” [pontifex maximus], an obsolete Imperial title. Peter and Paul were seen as a latter-day Romulus and Remus, the original, mythical, founders of Rome. Peter was the “prince of the apostles”, and it was even claimed that the other apostles had received their authority through him. Church authority under St. Leo, though highly effective, was being drawn ever more towards the centre.
Over a century later, another massively influential Pope, St. Gregory the Great (+604), had – as was perhaps appropriate for a Benedictine monk – rather less exalted claims to supremacy, studiously respecting local rights, and urging that bishops be elected by a consensus of clergy and laity. Meanwhile Islam swept across the Middle East and North Africa (Mohammed died in 632), effectively stifling the ancient Christian centres of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch.
It was now a case of Rome and Constantinople. In Rome, the last Greek-speaking Pope, Zacharias, died in 752; his successor was a Roman. A great split was looming.