masterful Damasus, in the last years of a long life and a troubled
pontificate, to attempt what his predecessors had not yet attempted,
and to formulate in brief and incisive terms the doctrine of Rome upon
Creed and Bible and Pope. A council of 378 or 379, after reciting the
Nicene symbol, laid down the sober lines of Catholic theology as against
the various forms of one-sided speculation, Eunomian and Macedonian,
Photinian and Apollinarian, to which the confusions of the half-century
since Nicaea had given birth; and the East could do no better than
accept the Tome of Damasus, as seventy years later it accepted the Tome
of Leo. Another council in 382 published the first official Canon
of Scripture in the West—the influence of Jerome, at that time papal
secretary, is traceable in it—and the first official definition of papal claims.
Roman primacy (“ceteris ecclesiis praelata,” “primatum obtinuit”)
is grounded, with obvious reference to the vote of the council of 381 in
favour of Constantinople, on “no synodal decisions” but directly on the
promise of Christ to Peter recorded in the Gospel. Respect for Roman
tradition imposes next a mention of “the fellowship of the most blessed
Paul”; but the dominant motif reappears in the concluding paragraph,
and the three sees whose prerogative was recognised at Nicaea are
. transformed into a Petrine hierarchy with its “prima sedes” at Rome,
its “secunda sedes” at Alexandria, and its “tertia sedes” at Antioch.
St Augustine’s theory of the Civitas Dei was, in germ, that of the medieval papacy, without the name of Rome. In Rome itself it was easy to supply the insertion, and Jo conceive of a dominion still wielded from the ancient seat of government, as world-wide and almost as authoritative as that of the Empire. The inheritance of the imperial traditions of Rome, left begging by the withdrawal of the secular monarch, fell as it were into the lap of the Christian bishop. In this connexion it is a significant coincidence that the first description which history has preserved to us of the outward habit of life of a Roman pontiff belongs to the same period, probably to the same pope, as the formulation of the claim to spiritual lordship. Ammianus was a pagan, but not a bigoted one. He professes, and we need not doubt that he felt, a genuine respect for simple provincial bishops, whose plain living and modest exterior “commended them to the Deity and His true worshippers.” But the atmosphere of the capital, the “ostentatio rerum Urbanarum,” was fatal to unworldliness in religion. After relating that in the year 366 one hundred and thirty-seven corpses were counted At the end of the day in the Liberian basilica, on the occasion of the fight between the opposing factions of Damasus and Ursinus, the historian grimly adds that the prize was one which candidates might naturally count it worth any effort to obtain, seeing that an ample revenue, showered on the Roman bishop by the piety of Roman ladies, enabled him to dress like a gentleman, to ride in his own carriage, And to give dinner-parties not less well appointed than the Caesar’s.
