the keys of the kingdom of heaven, also the right of guiding the sheep, to Peter, then, or to his successor, we must refer whatever novelty is introduced into the Catholic Church by those who wander from the truth."[1] "Hear us," he writes again to Pope Paschal, "Apostolic Head, Shepherd set by God over the sheep of Christ, key-bearer of the kingdom of Heaven, Rock of the Faith, on whom is built the Catholic Church, for you are Peter, you who rule the See of Peter."[2] So to Rome all questions must go. "If the Emperor," he writes to the Sacellarius[3] Leo, "is not content, if, as he says, the Patriarch Nicephorus has wandered from the truth, both sides should send an embassy to the Roman (Patriarch), and should from him accept the certainty of faith."[4]
The Emperor Michael II (820–829) had summoned a synod of bishops at Constantinople to discuss the question of images. St. Theodore writes to him in the name of this synod: "If there be anything as to which your Magnificence doubts whether it can be rightly settled by the Patriarch, then order a declaration to be sent for from Old Rome, as heretofore and from the beginning has been the custom, according to the tradition of the Fathers. For she is the first of the Churches of God in which first sat Peter to whom the Lord said: Thou art Peter," &c.[5] When Paschal has answered, condemning the Iconoclasts, Theodore writes to a certain Naucratius: "Now, indeed, I say before God and men that the heretics have separated themselves from the Body of Christ, from the supreme see in which Christ has placed the keys of faith, against which the gates of hell have never prevailed, and never shall prevail till the end. Let the most holy, the Apostolic, the beloved Paschal rejoice; he has accomplished the work of Peter."[6] St. Theodore then knows that the Pope is universal Primate, that to him we must appeal in questions of discipline and of faith, because he has the "keys of faith
