Questions... (fwd)

[clevin@ripco.com (Craig Levin)]

Poster: clevin@ripco.com (Craig Levin)

Tristan:

> When was the position of "Pope" created, and was it known
> by something else before it was called "Pope"?

By pope, do you mean "Head of the Roman Catholic faith," or
"Bishop of Rome"? If the former, then the final break between the
Western and Eastern churches took place in the 1000', though the
iconoclastic heresy in the East and the addition of the filioque
clause in the West all but strained relations before. The bishops
of Rome before then were considered among the great patriarchs of
Christendom, along with the patriarchs of Constantinople,
Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Damascus (or Aleppo, I forget), but
were considered, at that time, first among equals, because of the
position of Rome in the ancient world, and because, supposedly,
Saint Peter was the first bishop. In the NT, Jesus calls Peter
forward to declare him the foundation of the religion he was
leaving after him (Tu es Petrus, and all that), and the bishops
of Rome built a lot on that reputation of being the successor of
Peter.

> And wasn't there something about a "Holy Roman Emperior" 
> that ruled over the Catholic faith in period??

Try to tell that to the kings everywhere else!

The Holy Roman Emperors often tried to claim that they were
superior to all of the other rulers in Christendom, but, at most,
it was a matter of ceremony. He didn't rule over the Catholic
faith-that's Caesaropapism, which was the effective practice in
Constantinople-the emperor there could basically appoint and
depose the patriarch of Constantinople. On the other hand, HREs,
kings, and popes fought contantly over who got to appoint whom to
what office, and several times, HREs went down to Rome and deposed
popes whom they found to be inconvenient-though this was not
really in the job description of the HRE (the pope set that up
very carefully in Charlemagne's day). Besides, kings of France
also tried to take over the office of pope in the fourteenth and
fifteenth century-at one point, there were three popes-one in
Avignon in France, one in Rome, and another in Aragon!

In Service,

Dom Pedro de Alcazar
Barony of Storvik, Atlantia
Drakkar Pursuivant
Argent, a tower purpure between 3 bunches of grapes proper

-- 
http://pages.ripco.com:8080/~clevin/index.html 
clevin@ripco.com
Craig Levin
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