to Catholics by far the most important of all concerning the Eastern Churches, and it is especially necessary as balancing what we have to consider in the last paragraph. We will only take the Eastern (chiefly Greek) writers, or cases that concern their Church into account, leaving out altogether all the Latin Fathers and Western Councils, as well as the very earliest writers (Apostolic Fathers and Apologists), in whose time one can hardly yet speak of an Eastern and a Western Church. Our Catena is then only a fragment; the historic argument for the Roman Primacy must be studied in one of the books written on that subject. It will be convenient first to see what the great Eastern Fathers and then the later Byzantine theologians say about the Papacy; secondly, to notice some cases in which we find the Primacy working; thirdly, to examine the relations between Popes and the councils that both Catholics and Orthodox accept as œcumenical; and, fourthly, to consider the other side of the question, the causes of ill-feeling between the Churches that prepared the schism.
1. The Eastern Fathers and the Papacy.
The great school of Greek and Syrian Fathers begins with the time of Constantine (Eusebius of Cæsarea, † c. 340), and lasts till about that of Marcian (450–457) and the Monophysite heresy—just over a century.
These Fathers in the first place believed that St. Peter was the Prince of the Apostles, and the Rock on which our Lord built his Church. They not only saw it in their New Testament, they had received the tradition from their forbears. Long ago Origen († 254) had written: "See what is said by the Lord to that great fundament and most solid rock on which Christ built his Church: Oh, thou of little faith, he says, why hast thou doubted?"[1] Eusebius, the Father of Church History († c. 340), writes, quoting Origen: "Peter on whom the Church of Christ is built up (οἰκοδομεῖ) left one Epistle generally received."[2] St. Basil († 379): "When we say Peter we mean the son of Jonas, brother of Andrew, who since he was the greatest in faith
- ↑ Hom. 5 in Exod. 4. M.P.G. xii. 329.
- ↑ H.E. vi. 25.
