A Short History of Italy

cial sense, was the Church to which Christ referred when He said to the apostle, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. " The bishops of Rome also derived immense advantage from the absence of a temporal prince; whereas their chief rivals, the patriarchs of Constantinople, were wholly eclipsed by the presence of the Emperor. The removal of the great offices of government to Constantinople and the absence of any real civil life, had left Rome even then a mere ecclesiastical city, and the head of the Church became the most important personage there. It was so generally acknowledged that Roman bishops were entitled to that precedence in rank over other bishops, which Rome enjoyed over other cities, that in 344 an Ecumenical Council submitted a most important question to the decision of the Roman See. One hundred years later the great pope, Leo I, merely gave utterance to the general opinion when he said: "St. Peter and St. Paul are the Romul