264 INFALLIBILITY gates of hell shall not prevail against it." The assistance thus promised and its effect are a divine ordinance. It is further affirmed that before the definition of the Vatican council, the infallibility of the pontiff was a doctrine revealed by God, delivered by the constant tra- dition of the church, recognized in oecumenical councils, presupposed by the acts of the pon- tiffs in all ages, taught by all the saints, de- fended by every religious order, and by every theological school except the Galilean, and in that school only disputed by a numerical minority and during one period of its his- tory, and believed at least implicitly by all Catholics. The definition, Catholics believe, has added nothing to the intrinsic certainty of this doctrine, which is derived from reve- lation. It has only added the extrinsic cer- tainty of universal promulgation, binding the whole church to believe the dogma explicitly. The doctrine of pontifical infallibility, theo- logically considered, is intimately connected with the pontifical supremacy; and, consid- ered historically, it is seen that from the exer- cise of the supremacy was gradually evolved and finally asserted the prerogative of infalli- bility. The bishops of Rome at a very early period claimed a supreme and final authority in deciding all ecclesiastical disputes ; and this claim they founded on the fact of the see of Rome being the seat of Peter's authority, and of their being his successors with supreme jurisdiction over the entire church. On the other hand, the opposition to the exercise of this supremacy forms a parallel and continu- ous record in the early church down to the consummation of the Photian schism. Thus, in the ante-Nicene period Pope Victor I. (about 193) claimed to decide finally the controver- sy about the proper day for celebrating Eas- ter, and excommunicated the Asiatic churches which refused to abide by his decision; and Pope Stephen I. (253-257) decided against St. Cyprian and the churches of northern Africa, that baptism performed by heretics should not be repeated, and annulled the sentence of a Spanish synod against two bishops. But the decision of Victor was set aside by the Asiatic bishops; and in like manner the bishops of Africa and Spain persisted in upholding their own local customs and established rights. Ear- lier still Tertullian, in his treatise De Pudicitia, complained that the Roman pontiff issued per- emptory edicts, as if he were " bishop of bish- ops." From the time of Constantino the Great this exercise of supremacy, and the right on which it was founded, were brought into greater prominence by the part taken by the Christian emperors in convening councils and enforcing their decrees, by the conflicts which occurred between the councils themselves and the authority of the popes, and by the contests for preeminence waged by the see of Constan- tinople with the patriarchal sees of the East, and with Rome herself. Thus Leo the Great received the appeal of Celidonius, bishop of Besancon, deposed by Hilary of Aries, and restored him to his see ; thus, also, it is main- tained, his doctrinal letter was received as a final decision by the council of Chalcedon (451). Another document quoted by ultra- montane theologians as pointing to an exercise of supremacy, is a letter of Pope Gelasius in 493, in which it is said : " The canons them- selves refer the appeal of the whole church to the examination of this chair. They decree that from it there is no further appeal, and by it the whole church is judged ; it goes for judg- ment to none, nor can its judgment be judged, nor its sentence reversed." (Labbe, vol. iv., p. 11C9.) Against this claim of deciding all ecclesiastical causes without appeal, thus dis- tinctly formulated in the 5th century, is quo- ted the recently established fact of the Roman presbyter St. Hippolytus having been at the time of his death in opposition to the pope, his superior, as well as the instances in which popes fell into heresy or encouraged heretical opinions. Such were the cases of Zozimus, who commended the Pelagian teaching of Ce- lestius ; Julian, who affirmed the orthodoxy of the Sabellian Marcellus of Ancyra; Liberius, who subscribed (359) the Arian creed of Ri- mini ; Vigilius (547), who contradicted himself thrice on a question of faith ; and Honorius, who lent the whole weight of his authority (633) to the support of the nascent Monothelite heresy, and was solemnly excommunicated by an oecumenical council for doing so. Still the bishops of Rome persisted in their claims, while in the East the resistance to them grew as the patriarchs of Constantinople rose in power and influence among the eastern hierarchy, until the conflict of jurisdiction ended (879) in the disruption of Christendom. In western Europe the primacy of the Roman bishops con- tinued to be universally acknowledged after the separation of East and West; but their per- sonal infallibility was never maintained in a for- mal theological thesis till the time of Thomas Aquinas. He however does not employ the term infallibility; he says that the same se- curity from error in teaching, judging, and de- termining all that pertains to faith, which is ascribed to the church, belongs also to the Ro- man pontiff, by virtue of the promise made to Peter. The thesis, thus placed in distinct form before the great theological schools of Europe, soon acquired increased definiteness and interest from the contests between tem- poral princes and the popes, and between rival claimants for the papacy and the ecclesiastical assemblies convened to heal the great western schism. Philip the Fair in 1303 declared his intention of calling a general council to judge Pope Boniface VIII. In the council of Con- stance, where the French clergy largely pre- dominated, the French theologians D'Ailly and Gerson proposed the framing of a decree declaring an oecumenical council superior to the pope. In the council of Basel, soon after- ward, this superiority was urged against Euge-
