It is necessary to point out that in Africa, Gaul, and
Spain, Rome gained a very considerable prestige from the earliest days of the
Christianization of these provinces. To be sure, the reason for this was first,
that the first missionaries to these countries were, for the most part, priests
sent by Rome. Quite naturally, this prestige was enhanced by the fact that Rome
was then the imperial residence and the capital of the Empire. Nor must we
forget that the young churches of these countries had also a great veneration
for St. Peter, the founder of the episcopal see of Rome, and for the bishops of
Rome who were his successors.
It is quite possible that the bishops of Rome up until
the fourth century drew sufficient authority and prestige from the fact that
their residence was in the capital of the Empire. Thus it was unnecessary to
invoke, in each case, the Petrine origin of their see. The idea that the
Apostles were, above all others, the teachers and masters sent by the Lord to
preach the Gospel throughout the world was equally well rooted in Rome as it was
universally accepted in the East. It is for this reason that the first
Christians were not accustomed to designate an Apostle as the first bishop of
the see where he had implanted the faith. The one who was considered the first
bishop was the one who had been ordained by an Apostle.
This custom was equally the practice in Rome. This
becomes clear from the first list of the Roman Bishops which was com- posed by
Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, who died as a martyr in 202. Irenaeus attributed the
foundation of the Church of Rome not only to Peter but also to Paul and he
wrote:
After having founded and established the Church, the holy
Aposdes confided to Linus the charge of the episcopate ... his successor was
Anacletus and after him, in the third place from the time of the Apostles, the
episcopate was entrusted to Clement, who had seen the Apostles. Clement’s
successor was Evaristus and Evaristus was followed by Alexander. Then as the
sixth bishop after the time of the Apostles there was Sixtus and after him,
Telesphorus, famous for his martyrdom. In turn there was Hyginus, Pius and
Anicetus. Soter succeeded Anicetus and was followed by Eleutherius who, at the
present time, occupies the episcopal see as the twelfth bishop since the time
of the Apostles.
According to this list it is clear that the Bishop of
Lyons did not count Peter among the number of the bishops of Rome. It is
possible that Irenaeus had used as his source the list of Hegesippus which was
older; all the same, it is possible that Hippolytus of Rome made use of the
list of Irenaeus. In this regard, the fashion in which Eusebius, in his Historia
ecclesiastica, treats the question of the apostolic succession in the
cities whose sees had been founded by the Apostles is particularly instructive.
He attributes the foundation of the bishopric of Rome to St. Peter and to St.
Paul, of Alexandria to St. Mark, and of Antioch to St. Peter, but he does not
put the Apostles at the head of the list of bishops of these cities. For him
the first bishop of Rome was Linus, the first of Alexandria Annianus and the
first bishop of Antioch was Evodius. (Francis Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman
Primacy [trans. Edwin A. Quain; New York: Fordham University Press, 1966], 40-41)
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