Apostolic Origins Research Articles

Waldensianism Before Waldo: The Myth of Apostolic Proto-Protestantism in Antebellum American Anti-Catholicism

Between 1820 and 1850, American presses generated an enormous amount of literature devoted to the myth of apostolic Waldensianism. Though the Waldenses began as a lay reform movement in the twelfth century, speculations about their apostolic origin were popularized in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This historical construction gave American Protestants a versatile rhetorical weapon against an increasingly encroaching Roman Catholicism. The apostolicity of Waldensianism allowed Protestants to trace their teachings not only to scripture but through the middle ages and the early church, providing a ready answer to Catholic accusations of Protestant novelty. Additionally, re-narrating the history of Waldensian persecution at the hand of Catholics reinforced nativist conceptions of Catholicism as a violently tyrannical religion, and became a call to action for Protestants to resist Rome's attempt to gain power in the United States. Though the myth of apostolic Waldensianism was widely held by American Protestants, by 1850 it became largely untenable. Historians on both side of the Atlantic contextualized the group as a medieval phenomenon, rather than the remnant of apostolic Protestantism.

Mary as a New Eve in the Thought of St Paul

AbstractAlthough the theme of Mary as a new or second Eve is first explicitly found in the writings of Justin Martyr, there is an antecedent probability that it is of apostolic origin and familiar to St Paul. I argue that this theme helps to interpret several passages in the Pauline corpus that have remained without adequate explanation. The first and principal passage discussed is 1 Cor. 11:11-12, where the phrase ‘the man by the woman’ is put in parallel with the original formation of the woman ‘from the man’. Once it is thus accepted that St Paul understood the Virgin Mary through this typological lens, three others passages are seen to yield a more coherent and richer sense: ‘made of a woman’ in Gal. 4:4; ‘saved through child-bearing’ in 1 Tim. 2:14-15; and ‘each in his own “tagma”’ in 1 Cor. 15:23.

Tecla, Pablo y el frontal del altar de la catedral de Tarragona en el contexto creativo del tardorrománico hispano: propuesta de datación e interpretación

El imponente frontal de mármol que ornamenta el altar de la catedral de Tarragona permite ahondar en el dilatado proceso histórico de la restauración de la sede metropolitana. Los conflictos eclesiásticos generados a partir del proceso de segregación jurisdiccional respecto a la metrópolis de Narbona, la rivalidad con Toledo a propósito de la primacía hispánica y la voluntad de subrayar la fundación apostólica de la sede explican la dedicación a santa Tecla (discípula de Pablo, isoapóstolos y protomártir) y el extraordinario programa iconográfi co que plasma una versión de los Acta Pauli et Teclae. El prestigio de la caput ecclesiarum totius Citerioris Hispaniae (en palabras del arzobispo Oleguer) se refleja en la creación de una obra de calidad excepcional que se inserta en las innovadoras corrientes escultóricas del tardorrománico hispano. El objetivo principal de este trabajo es ofrecer una datación más temprana y una nueva lectura iconográfica para este altar.

Missiological Dimensions of Philosophy

This study demonstrates how and with what aim philosophy is received into the missionary activities of the apostles Paul and Luke as regards the Areopagitica in Acts 17. By an ingenious utilization of Greco-Roman learning and paideia, generally, and philosophy, particularly, Lukan Paul offers a context oriented cross-cultural model of preaching the kerygmatic word as of evangelization. A model for the inculturation of the power and meanings of the Gospel message is offered. In this a significant function is allocated to disciplined mindful reasoning, viz. philosophy. The author demonstrates the special ways in which contact-points are made, and common ground established, between the apostle Paul and Athenian philosophers. This allows him to observe that philosophy is endorsed by the primordial Church: both (a) as a dialectical (critical analytical) and rhetorical (per­suasive oratorical) science-skill of addressing significant intellectual others and (b) as a faith-friendly mode of the Christian’s practice of philosophy. The author infers a number of conclusions regarding the substantial role that philosophy acquires within the early Church. Moreover, the Christian endorsement of philosophy as a missionary tool has its grounding in the apostolic Church and, consequentially, it has its grounding in the New Testament. In this way philosophy, utilized and re-functionalized by the apostles Paul and Luke themselves, in its special way, participates in the “authoritative establishment of tradition by means of apostolic origin”. The missionary model laid-out in Acts 17:16-34 has lasting value and needs to be continuously re-actualized: the same follows suit for a faith-conducive practice of philosophy.

Sacrificing Josephus to Save Philo: Cesare Baronio and the Jewish Origins of Christian Monasticism

A first version of this note was delivered at the Reception of Josephus seminar in the spring of 2014. The author would like to thank all those present for their questions and suggestions, as well as Anthony Grafton and the convenors, Joanna Weinberg and Martin Goodman, for their invaluable comments on later versions of this text.

Jan-Markus Kötter.Zwischen Kaisern und Aposteln: Das Akakianische Schisma (484–519) als kirchlicher Ordnungskonflikt der Spätantike.

The Acacian Schism pitted the see of Rome against that of Constantinople for more than three decades (484–519). The schism started when Acacius of Constantinople accepted the so-called Henotikon of the Emperor Zeno, which sought to reunite the churches after the Council of Chalcedon. To Rome it meant a dangerous devaluation of the Fourth Ecumenical Council and the acceptance of heretics as orthodox. The schism ended with a compromise: Constantinople embraced the theology of the West as the basis of orthodoxy, whereas Rome accepted Constantinople as only second to itself. The schism has often been understood as one in the many battles about the legacy of Chalcedon and as a sign of the estrangement of East and West. This book by Jan-Markus Kötter, a reworked version of his 2011 Frankfurt PhD thesis, proposes to understand it as a conflict about the nature and organization of the Christian Church. To this end, he develops a theoretical model, which identifies three areas of potential conflict in the ancient church: dogma, hierarchy, and empire. If the first two were already operative before Constantine, conflict about the relation to the empire only becomes a theme when there is a “Reichskirche.” This term has often been understood as meaning a church under tutelage of the Roman Empire (for a critique of that idea, see Steffen Diefenbach, “Constantius II. und die “Reichskirche”—ein Beitrag zum Verhältnis von kaiserlicher Kirchenpolitik und politischer Integration im 4. Jh.,” Millennium 9 [2012]: 55–122), but Kötter proposes to understand it in a descriptive sense, namely as the coexistence of church and Christian Empire. The Acacian Schism should then be understood as a conflict about the correct organization of the church: whereas Rome founded its claims on its apostolic origins, Constantinople claimed leadership in the Eastern Church by virtue of being the residence of the emperor. In Kötter’s model, both sees represent two opposite poles, one that stakes its claim on the autonomy of the church, and another that relies on imperial, not ecclesiastical, arguments for its claims. If often expressed in sociological terms, Kötter’s approach can be said to shift our understanding of the Acacian Schism away from a purely dogmatic understanding (as a conflict about orthodoxy and heresy) to an ecclesiological one: which church represents the ideal Christian community? In this way, he follows an approach first introduced by Philippe Blaudeau (most recently, Le siège de Rome et l’Orient 448–536: étude géo-ecclésiologique [2012], which includes much of the same material). Just like Blaudeau, Kötter avoids focusing on just the two main players and restores agency to the sees of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. The thirteen chapters in the book offer two things: on the one hand, a narrative of the schism, and, on the other, a structural analysis of the aims and strategies of the various players involved. The narrative is clear and will be a point of reference for years to come. The analysis sometimes has a tendency to repeat things said earlier in the narrative. This is unavoidable given the set-up of the book, but it would have been a good idea to shift the exposition of the model from the very end to the beginning. A consequence of Kötter’s approach is that one learns little about the internal developments in the various sees. There may be too much focus on competition among the patriarchs at the expense of a discussion about how they addressed different constituencies within their bishoprics. A more prominent look at these local dynamics would have enriched the book. Kötter, however, succeeds in showing how the overarching aims of each see remain remarkably constant. His intention to offer a model sometimes leads him to some disputable over-generalizing statements. I would, for example, quarrel with the idea that apostolicity presupposes an ahistorical view of the world, according to which Rome’s position would be due to a once-and-for-all decision by God, whereas Constantinople’s position does more justice to human history. Apostolicity is, in fact, a choice for another point of reference, internal to the history of the church, and for a focus on distant origins. It is, moreover, a strong factor in the production of history, as a look at apocryphal stories shows. I therefore fail to see why it would have to be tied up with a “static perception” of history (194 n. 619). Such considerations do not subtract substantially from the value of this book. It is one of the few works available that goes beyond musing about the structural instability of the church in Late Antiquity and seeks to explain it.

Book Review: John Wesley in America: Restoring Primitive Christianity

John Wesley in America: Restoring Primitive Christianity. By Geordan Hammond. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. xvii + 237 pp. $85.00 (cloth).John Wesleys 1730s sojourn in Georgia ended badly: he fled the colony less than two years after arriving, his heart broken and a clutch of colonial magistrates pondering various charges against him. This story is typically narrated as Wesleys spiritual nadir, best known for prodding the young cleric into his Aldersgate experience of the assurance of his salvation, which in turn helped to enflame the successful evangelical mission that Wesley and his fellow Methodists would undertake in the decades to come. However, Geordan Hammond, Director of the Manchester Wesley Research Centre and Senior Lecturer in Wesley Studies at Nazarene Theological College, Manchester, England, believes there is more to be gleaned from this chapter in Wesleys life. John Wesley in America, based on Hammonds doctoral dissertation, argues that Wesley used his mission in Georgia to test his views of primitive Christianity. The colony, says Hammond, became Wesley's laboratory for introducing to a parish community what he believed to be the practices of the earliest Christians. While Wesleys attraction to Christian antiquity has been previously probed by scholars, and his Georgia mission is famous (or infamous), Hammonds approach is unique in interrogating the Georgia experience in light of Wesleys consuming passion for Christian primitivism. The result is an engaging work that offers a new lens for interpreting this difficult period in John Wesleys long and colorful life.The first chapter sets Wesleys devotion to primitive Christianity in the context of the priority assigned to apostolic Christianity by some eighteenthcentury Anglicans, particularly High Church Non-Jurors (clergy who had refused to swear an oath to William and Mary, having sworn allegiance to the deposed James II). Wesleys parents instilled a deep reverence for the early church in their children. John was determined to practice an authentic faith and, influenced by a radical wing of Non-Jurors, became an eager student of primitive Christianity. He studied the ante-Nicene theologians and pored over early ecclesiastical handbooks, especially the Apostolic Constitutions, which he took to be of apostolic origin (they have since been dated to the late fourth century). He began to pray the hours, to fast two days per week, and to include a prayer of oblation in his eucharistie celebrations.The next three chapters take us along on Wesleys Georgia mission, beginning with his four-month journey across the Atlantic with three fellow Oxford Holy Club members, and tracing his relations with Moravians and Lutheran pietists in Georgia. …

Les histoires ecclésiastiques de Provence (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles)

Ecclesiastical Histories of Provence (XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries) Seven histories of the diocese were published in Provence between 1629 and 1725. Their authors were all clerics and mostly canons of the Church. The majority of the histories were dedicated to the prelate who was occupying the see at the time they were produced. The books were in response to expectations, and were part of the intellectual ferment of an erudite milieu. These books do not totally distinguish between Church history and political history, but are mainly devoted to study of the prelates, their main objective being to demonstrate, in the face of protes-tantism, the continuity of episcopal succession. If they defended the apostolic origin of their earliest bishops, the advance of the spirit of criticism led them to concede that there were big gaps during the high Middle Ages. Their documentary base grew stronger and stronger and more diverse. We cite three brief examples of their manner of writing history, about the Saracens of Freinet, the thirteenth century heresies, and the Great Schism.

Trent: What Happened at the Council by John W. O’Malley (review)

Reviewed by: Trent: What Happened at the Council by John W. O’Malley Nelson H. Minnich, Francesco Cesareo, Franco Buzzi, Wim François, Violet Soen, Kenneth G. Appold, and John W. O’Malley S.J. Trent: What Happened at the Council. By John W. O’Malley (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013. Pp. xii, 335. $27.95. ISBN 978-0-674-06697-7.) Introduction by Nelson H. Minnich (The Catholic University of America) John W. O’Malley, who has distinguished himself as the preeminent historian of Catholicism in the early-modern period, has turned his attention to the most important event of that period, the Council of Trent (1545–63). Far from being a boring assembly of like-minded prelates and theologians who confidently reaffirmed traditional teachings and put order into a Church shaken by the challenge of Protestantism, The council, extraordinarily difficult to convoke, was even more difficult to hold on course. During it, animosities and substantive differences surfaced that brought the council again and again to the brink of disaster. At the end the council was able to arrive at a considerable measure of resolution, but only after navigating hazardous waters and surviving hurricane-strength storms. (p. 22) O’Malley has striven to produce an accessible introduction to the council for the general reader, making “no big claims” (p. 11); to dispel the myths surrounding it; and to distinguish the Council of Trent from postconciliar phenomena that were closely related to it but not grounded in the council itself and tagged as components of “Tridentinism” (pp. 11, 275). His account is a delight to read—full of drama, analyses of the hopes and fears of leading protagonists and of the limiting political context in which they moved, insightful character sketches, pithy quotes from participants, balanced but sympathetic presentations of Protestant positions, contemporary Catholic teachings and practice and their antecedents, identification of the key issues at stake, the use of silence as a typical method of compromise, the content of the decrees and the material not included, the decrees’ claims to apostolic origins, the interpretation of the council’s chapters and canons, and the implementation of Trent. His study is based primarily on the documents of the council with reference to relevant secondary literature. It is a remarkable synthesis of the best of previous historians of the council: the drama and wit of Paolo Sarpi’s Istoria del Concilio Tridentino (1619), the meticulous documentation of Pietro Sforza Pallavicino’s three-volume Istoria del Concilio di Trento (1656–64), and the prodigious scholarship of Hubert Jedin’s four-volume Geschichte des [End Page 749] Konzil von Trient (1949–75)—and all this in less than 300 very readable pages, enriched by appendices that provide a chronology of the council’s twenty-five sessions and a translation of the Tridentine Profession of Faith, plus thirty-four pages of notes. O’Malley is the masterful storyteller. What follows is a summary of his historical narrative and of the major themes of each chapter. He begins his account with a description of the city of Trent (technically located in the German Nation, but on the Italian side of the Alps, under the jurisdiction of a prince-bishop and with a majority Italian-speaking population) and the three periods of the council in Trent (1545–47, 1551–52, 1562–63—it relocated to Bologna during 1547–49). He provides an overview of those who came to the council such as their numbers (varying from fifteen to 280 prelates per session) and their nationalities (mostly Italian, but with a sizable Spanish contingent, a small but significant German presence during the second period, a notable French presence during the third period, and a few representatives from other nations who were living in exile). He describes how the council was financed (at times claiming 18 percent of the papal budget) and how it was meant to address problems (clarifying Catholic doctrine and practice, and eliminating abuses). Its doctrinal decrees were often divided into chapters that provided a positive statement of church teachings and into canons (concise statements ending with an anathema) that condemned the saying and doing of things considered inconsistent with the Church...

Hierarchia wschodnich biskupów w historiografii kościelnej V wieku

Francis Dvornik has expressed the view that, in the Eastern part of the Empire, the principle of accommodation dominated over the principle of the apostolic ori­gin. The situation, he maintained, resulted from the fact that the aforementioned area included excessively numerous sees which were either established by one of the Apostles or were considered to be somehow connected with their activities. Does the conclusion of the Czech researcher find any justification in the way the precedence of bishoprics is depicted in the Greek ecclesiastical historiography of the fifth century? The present article is to give an answer to the question. The analysis of the ecclesiastical historiography in question demonstrates that Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote in the IV th century, while setting a hierarchy of bishops was guided first and foremost by the principle of accommodation. The church historians, however, who compiled their works a mere century later put a decisively lesser stress on Eusebius’ predilection in that matter. Although the narrative of Philostorgius, since fragmentary, is hard to interpret, Socrates’ atti­tude displays a marked tendency of favoring the importance of the apostolic ori­gin, which was most probably taken over from Rufinus of Aquileia. Sozomen tended to tell the difference between the official hierarchy of bishops, which was based on the principle of accommodation, and the structure of bishoprics connec­ted with the Apostles. Theodoretus, in turn, tended to connect both the principles, however, preferring the idea of the Church originated by saint Peter, accordingly of the ecclesiastic structure based on the principle of the apostolic origin. As a consequence, and contrary to F. Dvornik’s thesis, it should be concluded that (at least) the authors of the Ecclesiastic Histories of the fifth century were in favor of the principle of the apostolic origin and maintained it was over the prin­ciple of accommodation.

The significance of the Sirmian and apostolic tradition in shaping Moravian episcopal organization

Based on an analysis of papal documents as well as the Vita Methodii, this work examines shifts in Methodius's status. The text analyses the significance of his titulature by a comparison with other eighth‐ and ninth‐century missionaries, and examines the way his new diocese was legitimized through legal and historical fictions dealing with the restoration of a long‐lost see and its apostolic origins. Finally, the article draws a comparison between the situation in Moravia and the importance of apostolic tradition in Rome, Constantinople, Metz, Compostela and Venice.

The Missionary and the Moorslayer: James the Apostle in Spanish Historiography from Isidore of Seville to Ambrosio de Morales

For over a millennium, the relics of James the Apostle (Santiago) were widely believed to lie in Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. A closely related legend was that James had traveled to Spain and preached the Gospel there in the first century. Both beliefs, firmly established by the ninth century, are usually thought to have prevailed until the critiques of the Counter-Reformation historians Bellarmine and Baronius in the later sixteenth century. The present study shows, however, that medieval Spanish historians did not consider Santiago the founder of the Spanish Church. While most historians writing between 1100 and 1450 upheld the tradition of the translation of the apostle’s relics to Compostela, they did not consistently maintain that he had come to Spain during his lifetime. The tradition of “the coming of the apostle” only become a central part of national historiography in the Renaissance, when humanist historians began to seek apostolic origins for Spanish Catholicism. The tradition was further consolidated during the Counter-Reformation, as part of a defensive response to Protestant challenges to the cult of the saints.

Renaissance Thought on the Celestial Hierarchy: The Decline of a Tradition?

Renaissance Thought on the Celestial Hierarchy:The Decline of a Tradition? Feisal G. Mohamed The Dionysian arrangement of the angels was dismantled on the one hand because its author was increasingly regarded as a "counterfait," and on the other hand because Protestants upheld the Bible's supremacy over all the "vain babblings of idle men." In consequence, those who like Spenser celebrated the "trinall triplicities," look back upon a great past that had provided a vision hallowed by time and graced by an impressive array of intellects. —C. A. Patrides1 It has been some forty years now since C. A. Patrides first argued in these pages that English Renaissance views on the celestial hierarchy constitute "the decline of a tradition," an argument made so convincing by his encyclopedic articles on the subject that scholars have been content to accept it. Indeed there is a good deal of evidence suggesting that the tradition of the ninefold hierarchy of angels associated with the Pseudo-Dionysius suffered serious injury at the hands of the Renaissance and Reformation. Subjected to the scrutiny of Renaissance scholarship and in light of the rediscovery of several Neoplatonists, particularly Proclus, it became quite clear that the Corpus Dionysiacum had been written centuries later than its author pretended. In the mid-fifteenth century Lorenzo Valla argued that because the Areopagus was a legal rather than a philosophical assembly, because none of the Greek or Latin fathers make mention of Dionysius, and because the claim in the letter to Polycarp to have witnessed [End Page 559] in Heliopolis the solar eclipse at the moment of Christ's death is a clear fabrication, placement of the Corpus in the first century should be doubted.2 These suggestions went largely unnoticed until Desiderius Erasmus, returning from England (where William Grocyn had begun murmurs regarding the Areopagitic origin of the Corpus), discovered in Louvain a manuscript of Valla's commentary on the book of Acts and incorporated its conclusions in his influential annotations on the New Testament.3 The discovery of Dionysius's pseudonymity and Erasmus's suggestion that Dionysian ceremonies could no longer be connected to the apostolic church would damage permanently the now Pseudo-Areopagite's influence. In a classic case of complicity between Renaissance humanism and Reformation theology—both Protestant and Catholic, it must be stressed—the sixteenth century turned away from Dionysian thought in general and from The Celestial Hierarchy in particular. The interrogation of apostolic origin begun by prominent Catholic thinkers like Erasmus and Cardinal Cajetan was most convenient to reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin, both of whom described the author of the Corpus as "Dionysius, whoever he was."4 Such an open-and-shut presentation of sixteenth-century Dionysiana, however, ignores several factors. One of them is that Renaissance scholars were not the first to question the dating of the Corpus: Peter Abelard fueled general perception of his heretical tendencies by suggesting that Dionysius may not have been the Pauline convert mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles.5 Much more important, however, is the number of Renaissance scholars for whom Dionysius was a formative influence. Despite his stance on the authenticity of the Corpus, Lorenzo Valla describes Dionysius in the peroration to his Encomium Sancti Thomae Aquinatis as playing the flute in a celestial symphony before the throne of God.6 For Nicholas Cusanus, as F. Edward Cranz describes [End Page 560] it, "Dionysius is the most important Christian theologian with no runner-up who is even close."7 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola saw Dionysius's writings as following directly from the teachings of Paul.8 Marsilio Ficino employed Dionysius in his comments on angels in the Theologia Platonica, translated and commented on The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology, and consistently endorsed first-century dating of the Corpus Dionysiacum.9 Ambrogio Traversari, who described Dionysius as "Apostoli disciplus," would also produce a fresh translation acceptable to humanist tastes in 1437, which would receive wide dissemination in the 1499 edition produced by Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples.10 Lefèvre saw the Corpus as apostolic in origin and authority and went so far as to endorse the traditional conflation of Dionysius with Saint...

Frescoes in the Virgin Peribleptos Church referring to the origins of the archbishopric of Ohrid

Frescoes in the Virgin Peribleptos Church referring to the origins of the archbishopric of Ohrid

From Peter to John Paul II

Saints s Sinners: A History of Popes. By Eamon Duffy. (New Haven: Yale University Press.1997. Pp. ix, 326. $37.50 clothbound; $ 18.95 paperback.) The Papacy. By Paul Johnson. Edited by Michael Walsh. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.1997. Pp. 224.) Duffy takes advantage of single-authorship to lend his narrative a boldness of conception and argument which volumes such as that edited by Michael Walsh simply cannot aspire to (notwithstanding distinguished contributions by R. A. Markus and Sheridan Gilley). With only a single volume at his disposition and where two hundred-plus (imaginatively chosen) illustrations reduce space available to him even more, Duffy has pulled off nothing less than a miracle of concision. This has been achieved without sacrificing anything of author's well-known talent for narrative, which is matched by a rare capacity (shared with Peter Brown) to put intangible into words, together with an unerring eye for telling detail. Moreover, Duffy is acutely aware of hubris implicit in his solo enterprise and insists right from start that there cannot be a single story line since the papacy has been at centre of too many human stories and enterprises (p. ix). Nevertheless, in reality, his approach would appear to be substantially indebted to a single idea: Hans Kung's belief that unity of Church must be understood not institutionally but theologically and that, indeed, unity of Church presupposes a multiplicity of churches. From this derives overarching argument of his book: that by historicizing Papacy and its origins one surely rules any absolutist understanding of nature of papal authority. These words are actually taken not from book under review but from Duffy's 1998 Tablet Open Day Lecture,The papacy and burden of history (printed in an abridged form in Tablet of July 4, 1998, pp. 871-873; quotation at p. 872), reading of which is essential for those who wish to understand rhyme of Duffy's reason. This brings him to conclude that the papacy is way things have worked out (p. 873); a conclusion which goes beyond historian's duty to rehabilitate contingent by questioning Divine institution of Papcy itself and to posit in its place a foundation myth (p. 871). For in his book he views emergence of a single bishop of Rome as not predating mid-second century and as being, above all, a response to pressure of heresy and seething diversity of multicultural city of Rome. In particular, Christian organization reflected, in its decentralized authority, Jewish community of which it had grown (p.6). It would appear from correspondence in Tablet provoked by his lecture, however, that Duffy has now modified his argument in crucial respects. (See in particular his letter in Tablet of October 24,1998, p.1397, where he concedes,So it seems likely that of Roman presbyters had special responsibility for relations with other Churches of [Roman] Empire.) The question at issue here is not Duffy's masterly evocation of ritual and doctrinal confusion which characterized Early Christian Rome, but rather whether there is anything in historical fact which negates faith enshrined in sixfoot high rendition of Matthew 16:18-19 that encircles dome of St Peter's and with which Duffy opens his first chapter: Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam et tibi dabo claves regni caelorum. Duffy thus predictably devotes considerable attention to how papacy met challenge of constructing continuity with its apostolic origins. A particularly striking and concrete early example of this is crypt of popes (begun ca. 230 AD..) in Catacombs of S. Callisto, situated off Appian Way just outside city walls: a three-dimensional counterpart to episcopal succession list drawn up in late-second century by Irenaeus of Lyon. …

Une liste latine d'apôtres et de disciples compilée en Italie du Nord

Analysis and edition (from MS. Barcelona Univ. 574, 15th cent.) of a Latin list of Apostles and disciples, credited to Jerome. This compilation reunites, inter al., the Breviarium apostolorum and one of the versions of the Index discipulorum of Pseudo-Dorotheus. This is the most important of the sources used by Milanese authors, from 1150, to exalt the apostolic origins of their Church.

A History of the Church in Ukraine, Volume I: To the End of the Thirteenth Century by Sophia Senyk

A History of the Church in Ukraine, Volume I: To the End of the Thirteenth Century. By Sophia Senyk. [Orientalia Christiana Analecta, Volume 243.] (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale. 1993. Pp. xvi, 471. Paperback.) author is a Basilian Sister of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and a full professor of church history at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome.This volume constitutes real progress in the area of ecclesiastical historiography of ScythiaRus'-Ukraine In it we find responsible care in the use of the original sources, combined with objective and scholarly judgments.There is no national ethnic or confessional prejudice or partisanship-so common among historians writing on Eastern Slavic church-related topics. However, there are some deficiencies. On page 8, the author has written: though the Apostle Andrew did not travel through Rus' . . and she upholds the legend of the Apostle Andrew. Today we must revise the historiography on St. Andrew in Scythia, for there is very strong evidence of his presence all round the Black Sea.The biblical, archaeological, patristic, conciliar, hagiographical, historical, and monastic evidence for a Christian presence in Scythia-Rus'-Ukraine from apostolic times to St.Volodymyr has been assembled and reviewed in my book: Apostolic Origin of the Ukrainian Church (Parma, Ohio, 1988).We only offer a few highlights here. Colossians 3:11 implies that St. Paul met Scythians who were Christians. Both St. Hippolytus in On the Twelve Apostles and Origen, quoted by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History, Book III, chap. 1, make it clear that the Holy Apostle Andrew received Scythia as his missionary territory. Tertullian in Adversus Judaeos, chap. 7, St. Athanasius in Concerning the Inhomization of the Word, chap. 51, St. Jerome in his Epistle to Laeta, and many other witnesses speak of Scythian Christians. St. Clement, Bishop of Rome, was banished and died in Crimea around 101 A.D. St. Martin I, Pope of Rome, was also banished to Crimea and died there in 655 A.D. St. Hermon, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the end of the third century, had jurisdiction over Scythia and ordained bishops for that region: Ephrem, Basil, Jepherius, and two others whose names are not preserved. In Tanais two churches have been uncovered: one from the first and one from the second century. Further, many Christian graves and burial sites from the second century are well documented.Thus in the face of early witnesses and subsequent commentary, we hold that the presence of St. Andrew in Scythia should be accepted as more than mere legend. In the case of Ukrainian Christianity, one might well see a fusion of possibly four apostolic traditions: (1) from St. Andrew personally; (2) from St. Peter, his brother, through Pope St. Clement; (3) from St. Paul, the Apostle of the nations, through St. Andronicus and his successors, down to SS. Cyril and Methodius; and (4) from St. James, brother of the Lord and first bishop of Jerusalem, through Hermon of Jerusalem, who ordained bishops for Chersonesus and other regions of Scythia. treatment of The Pagan Religion of Rus'(preferably Pre-Christian) consists of two and a half pages in which there are a few inaccuracies and shortcomings. …

Book Review: The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy

Book Review: The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy

The fourth-century origin of the gradual

The conventional view on the origin of the gradual was stated succinctly by Peter Wagner: ‘The Responsorial solo in the mass is of apostolic origin…in imitation of the Jewish liturgy a solo from the psalmist was inserted between the readings.’ The precise form this view has taken more recently in the works of both musical and liturgical historians can be summarised as follows. The early Mass or Eucharist consisted of two major parts. The essential part, the Eucharist proper, had its origins in the Last Supper, a Jewish ceremonial meal, possibly the Passover Seder. This was preceded by a ‘service of the Word’, made up of four elements: scripture reading, discourse on the reading, congregational prayer and psalms sung in response to the readings. This pre-eucharistic service was plainly and simply an adoption en bloc of the ancient synagogue service.

The Ecclesiastical Policy of King James I

In a sermon preached at Hampton Court on September 30, 1606, John King proclaimed that “our Solomon or Pacificus liveth.” James I had “turned swords into sithes and spears into mattocks, and set peace within the borders of his own kingdoms and of nations about us.” His care for the “Church and maintenance to it” was celebrated. All that remained was for his subjects to lay aside contentious matters and join “with his religious majesty in propagation of the gospel and faith of Christ.” The sermon was the last in a series of four preached—and later printed—at the king's behest before an unwilling audience of Scottish Presbyterians. The quartet outlined James's standing as a ruler by divine right and laid down the conceptual foundations of the Jacobean church. A godly prince, exercising his divinely ordained powers as head of church and state, advised by godly bishops, themselves occupying offices of apostolic origin and purity, would preside over a new golden age of Christian peace and unity. A genuinely catholic Christian doctrine would be promulgated and maintained; peace and order would prevail. James I was rex pacificus, a new Constantine, a truly godly prince. As he himself observed in 1609, “my care for the Lord's spiritual kingdom is so well known, both at home and abroad, as well as by my daily actions as by my printed books.”