The Quartodeciman Controversy
In a sense, this emergence of the Roman papacy was consecrated, in hardly a happy fashion, by Victor I’s conflict with the churches in Asia Minor over the date of Easter, our fifth matrix. (I should note as an aside that I do not accept the view that the controversy was merely a local dispute within the Roman church, a dispute that Eusebius later misunderstood or misrepresented.) In Victor (governed c. 189-98), we see for the first time the one bishop of the Roman church claiming authority over the churches in both East and West. Specifically, and somewhat amazingly, Victor claimed the authority to order the churches in Asia to change their observance of Easter to make it coincide with the date observed by Rome. Though the details of the controversy are unclear, apparently the intervention of Irenaeus was able to bring the dispute to a peaceful conclusion. Somewhat prophetically, Irenaeus emphasized that Rome had to distinguish between the unity of faith, which must be preserved, and the differing customs of local churches, which should be respected. This distinction is all the more remarkable since it is Irenaeus in his Adversus Haereses (3.3.2) who insists on the need for every church to agree with the Roman church on matters of faith. He bases this necessity on the unique position of the Roman church. According to Iraeneus, this church was founded by Peter and Paul (mentioned together, as in 1 Clement and Ignatius’ Epistle to the Romans); their apostolic tradition has been preserved in the succession of leaders appointed by them. Irenaeus sees these bishops of Rome as the successors of Peter and Paul, who are not themselves called bishops of Rome.
It is on the basis of this most distinguished apostolic pedigree that Irenaeus makes his weighty claim, whose precise meaning if much debated: “Ad hanc enim ecclesiam propter potentiorem principalitatem necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam.” Whatever one makes o this statement, which unfortunately we have in a Latin translation, not in the original Greek, one should remember two points: (1) Irenaeus recognizes other great churches as enjoying apostolic foundation and tradition. (2) Irenaeus is making this statement in regard to the essential apostolic faith, not liturgical customs that vary among local churches. As the fight over the date of Easter shows, Irenaeus did not think that other churches had to obey Rome in questions that did not touch on the apostolic faith. It is this faith that Peter and Paul and the church founded by them guarantee. A similar point it made slightly later by the Roman presbyter Gaius, who appeals in a dispute with some Montanists to the tropaia (victory monuments) of the apostles Peter and Paul, who founded the Roman church (Eusebius, E.H., 2.25.6-7). Whatever one thinks of the debate surroundings the excavations under St. Peters Basilica, the archaeological findings plus the text of Gaius make it likely that from the middle of the second century onwards, the graves, cenotaphs, or places of martyrdom of Peter and Paul were venerated in Rome, providing a very concrete expression, by way of popular devotion, of the historical and theological claims implied as far back as 1 Clement. To what extent the veneration of the apostolic tropaia was connected with the emergence of the monepiscopate in Rome must remain a matter of speculation. (John P. Meier, “Petrine Ministry in the New Testament and in the Early Patristic Traditions” in John F. Puglisi, ed. How Can the Petrine Ministry Be a Service to the Unity of the Universal Church? [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010], 13-33, here, pp. 30-31, italics in original)