| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/theholysee06alliuoft |
AND
FROM ST. LEO I. TO ST. GREGORY I.
BY
AUTHOR OF THE "FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM"; "CHURCH AND STATE AS SEEN
IN THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM"; "THE THRONE OF THE FISHERMAN";
"A LIFE'S DECISION"; AND "PER CRUCEM AD LUCEM"
LONDON: BURNS & OATES, Limited
NEW YORK: CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO.
1888
Cardinal Mai has left recorded his judgment that, "in matter of fact, thewhole administration of the Church is learnt in the letters of thePopes".[1]
I draw from this judgment the inference that of all sources for the truthsof history none are so precious, instructive, and authoritative as theseauthentic letters contemporaneous with the persons to whom they areaddressed. The first which has been preserved to us is that of Pope St.Clement, the contemporary of St. Peter and St. Paul. It is directed to theChurch of Corinth for the purpose of extinguishing a schism which had therebroken out. In issuing his decision the Pope appeals to the Three DivinePersons to bear witness that the things which he has written "are writtenby us through the Holy Spirit," and claims obedience to them from those towhom he sends them as words "spoken by God throughus".[2]
If the decisions of the succeeding Popes in the interval of nearly twohundred and fifty years between[Pg vi]this letter of St. Clement, about the year95, and the great letter of St. Julius to the Eusebianising bishops atAntioch in 342, had been preserved entire, the constitution of the Churchin that interval would have shone before us in clear light. In fact, weonly possess a few fragments of some of these decisions, for there was agreat destruction of such documents in the persecution which occupied thefirst decade of the fourth century. But from the time of Pope Siricius, inthe reign of the great Theodosius, a continuous, though not a perfect,series of these letters stretches through the succeeding ages. There is noother such series of documents existing in the world. They throw light uponall matters and persons of which they treat. This is a light proceedingfrom one who lives in the midst of what he describes, who is at the centreof the greatest system of doctrine and discipline, and legislation groundedupon both, which the world has ever seen. One, also, who speaks not onlywith