Ignatius of Antioch

I have been trying to read as much as possible of the Early Church Fathers in order to find out what they actually believed who were instructed by the Apostles, and also out of curiosity as to the truth of Protestant critiques which claim that the idea of a single bishop of Rome in the earliest days is total nonsense and that a "monarchical episcopate" (one chief bishop per city) simply didn't exist until the mid-2nd century, which if true may invalidate the idea of "apostolic succession". The blog post doesn't state the evidence for this, but does refer to various historians who think this is true, so I'll try to get some of those works. (Early Church Fathers, distilled: certainly not Protestant. Catholic or Orthodox? Maybe.) In the service of this I read the entirety of the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, who was pretty awesome, and whose works may be found here, courtesy of wikipedia.

Ignatius was a disciple of John the Apostle; according to some early traditions he was installed as bishop of Syria by Peter and was the child Christ called to him, telling his disciples "who wishes to enter the kingdom of Heaven must become as this little child". He was martyred around AD 107 (give or take a decade), and on his way from Syria to Rome to be fed to the lions he wrote a series of letters greeting people. His letter to Rome is notable because almost the entirety of it is him begging them not to free him or put in a good word for him or do anything to deprive him of his impending martyrdom, which he very much looked forward to. Just the chapter headings in the Roberts/Donaldson translation are awesome.

Ignatius, anticipating being eaten:

I beseech of you not to show an unseasonable good-will towards me. Suffer me to become food for the wild beasts, through whose instrumentality it will be granted me to attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rather entice the wild beasts, that they may become my tomb, and may leave nothing of my body; so that when I have fallen asleep [in death], I may be no trouble to any one. Then shall I truly be a disciple of Christ, when the world shall not see so much as my body...

May I enjoy the wild beasts that are prepared for me; and I pray they may be found eager to rush upon me, which also I will entice to devour me speedily, and not deal with me as with some, whom, out of fear, they have not touched. But if they be unwilling to assail me, I will compel them to do so.

I love the way he sees it almost as an occupational hazard that the wild beasts might be so intimidated by the sanctity of the martyr before them that they don't feel hungry anymore...

The Catholic encyclopedia claims that, in embryonic form, the primacy of Rome is mentioned in the letter because of the fulsome praise which is offered at the start of the letter. It is longer and more gushing than the introductions to the other letters, although that strikes me as somewhat circumstantial evidence. What's more curious is what he says a little further down in chapters III and IV:

Ye have never envied any one; ye have taught others. Now I desire that those things may be confirmed [by your conduct], which in your instructions ye enjoin [on others]... I do not, as Peter and Paul, issue commandments unto you. They were apostles; I am but a condemned man...

The Church in Rome is appealed to as a teacher (or former teacher - past tense), which has "never envied any one", possibly because of Peter and Paul having taught and died there, and also due to being plentifully supplied with other martyrs. It's hardly a proof of the Pope's apostolic authority even as the Orthodox understand it, let alone the Catholics; but it's not the case that Ignatius doesn't even hint at papal primacy, as some Protestants would insist. The curious thing is the way he denies having authority to tell the Romans what to do in the same way he does to the other churches; one could reasonably say "surely it goes without saying here, if Rome has some form of teaching office?"

(Ignatius' other letters mention the bishop as representing the local church, so that he considers himself to have met the membership of a church face to face after meeting the bishop; so if he were to discuss papal primacy he wouldn't necessarily talk about the bishop of Rome himself, but rather in terms of the Roman church's authority with the implication that it's the bishop who expresses it.)

The Catholic Encyclopedia article is here. "The convincing evidence which the letters bear to the Divine origin of Catholic doctrine is not conducive to predisposing non-Catholic critics in their favor... Catholic and Anglican scholars are ranged on the side of [the letters usually taken as genuine] whilst Presbyterians, as a rule, and perhaps a priori, repudiate everything claiming Ignatian authorship." Oooh, snap.

I also found an interesting Orthodox take on Ignatius' ecclesiology, by Fr. John Romanides, who also wrote extensively on why Catholicism is not only bad and wrong but represents a hostile takeover of Roman Orthodoxy by Franco-Latin forces with a deranged and mechanistic view of the Church, Divine justice and salvation. The Orthodox Roman popes resisted the Franco-Latins for a long time, but eventually got co-opted and taken over in the early 11th century - he gives the date of 1007 or 1012. This is when the Patriarchate of Rome was recovering from its nadir, the "Dark Age" of the 10th century, known also as the "pornocracy"; although his dating makes sense, as in 1012 there were two pretenders to the office of Peter: one was a layman (hastily consecrated), from the family of the Theophylacti (who were responsible for the pornocracy - "reign of harlots" - of the 10th century, so-called because of two theophylact noblewomen who spent half a century influencing the papacy by way of seduction, murder and intrigue), who called himself Benedict VIII; and another was Gregory VI. According to the wikipedia article on Benedict VIII, Benedict was thrown out of Rome and appealed to the emperor, who reinstated him. If this is true and Gregory had a proper claim, then this counts as the Holy !Roman Empire kicking out the true pope and installing a fake one, so Fr. Romanides would have a point.

(I say "if this is true" because the wikipedia article on Gregory VI (now listed as antipope; there was a pope Greg VI as well later), copied from the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1912, states that it was in fact Greg who was expelled from Rome and appealed to the emperor, who then confiscated his papal gear and told him to stop pretending to be pope. Also, again according to wikipedia, the Theophylacti were traditionally pro-Byzantine and anti-German, so not likely to be in league with the emperor. In fact, the next Theophylact pope (John XIX, B-8's brother, again a layman) tried awarding the title "ecumenical bishop" to the Patriarch of Constantinople, but was forced to drop the idea by popular rage.)

Certainly the papacy was in a pretty low state, though; after John XIX came Benedict IX, infamous for being the only pope in history to sell the position to someone else. Eventually there came along Pope Nicholas II, who stopped this kind of thing by issuing a papal bull to the effect that cardinal-bishops had priority in choosing popes, which stopped the rich and powerful from wangling the election to get their own family members made pope. (Well, at least until the Medicis and Borgias came along, but it worked for a few hundred years.) By that point, though, I think Fr. Romanides regards the Roman See as having utterly been taken over by the Franco-Latins and irreparably damaged; and the Great Schism had in any case begun, in 1054.

(In early times popes, as with other bishops, were chosen by popular acclaim, which worked great when regular persecution meant that the people expressing their opinions were devoid of power or political agendas. This mutated over time into being chosen by the acclaim of local aristocrats, merchants, powerful ecclesiastics, emperors, &c., and in the 10th and 11th centuries the Holy !Roman Emperors did a lot of meddling, deposing, and arbitrating disputes. Then one emperor died and his successor was a child, and the Pope took the opportunity to kick the emperor out of the pope-arbitration business and put the matter in the hands of the cardinals. There's an interesting article on all this at wikipedia.)