Tree; and the Latin or Roman Churches are but a branch of it. The Church of Rome was itself a Greek Church for the first three centuries of its existence.[1]
The Abbé has fixed on Hadrian I. as the first Pope; the editor has always preferred, for several reasons, to name Nicholas I. as the real founder of the Papacy; but, as it was a slowly developed institution, and may be dated, in its first stages, from the claim of a Universal Episcopate by Boniface III., it is always important to define what is meant by the term, when we pronounce any early bishop of Rome "a pope." The title Papa was common to all bishops, Greek and Latin, from the earliest times; but, the developed Papacy, as we now understand it, was not visible till the era of Charlemagne, under whose successors it was settled in Western Europe as the base of the Feudal system.
Every traveler and every man who reads, will find the historical facts with which this work will render him familiar of the very greatest utility. For want of this knowledge, the present aspect of Europe, and all the questions which are called "Eastern," are misapprehended grossly, and men, otherwise intelligent, add daily to popular ignorance by attempting to explain them. In America, the importance of understanding such matters is becoming deeply felt; and it is not too much to say that the Abbé Guettée will be found by
- ↑ See Milman's Latin Christianity.
