The Historians' History of the World 08 [Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy]

[84] Felix III, if the anti-pope Felix (356 A.D.) is reckoned as Felix II.

[85] [The office to which Gregory I was suddenly elevated in the year 590, included under it the three following distinct dignities. First, it included the actual episcopal charge of the city of Rome; the church of St. John Lateran with its haughty inscription: Omnium Urbis et Orbis Ecclesiarum Mater et Caput—being the cathedral church; and the adjoining Lateran palace, which tradition says was given by Constantine to Silvester I, being the place of residence. Secondly, it included the metropolitan or archiepiscopal superintendence of the Roman territory, with jurisdiction over the seven suffragan bishops, afterwards called cardinal bishops; the bishops of Ostia, Portus, Silva Candida, Sabina, Præneste, Tusculum, and Albanum. Thirdly, it included the patriarchal oversight of the suburban provinces, which were under the political jurisdiction of the Vicarius Urbis, viz., Campania, Tuscany with Umbria, Picenum, Valeria, Samnium, Apulia with Calabria, Lucania with Bruttium—in short, upper Italy, together with the three islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. As patriarch, the Roman bishop stood on the same footing as the four great patriarchs of the East, those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem; he enjoyed however the primacy of honour, and standing alone in the West, whereas four patriarchs divided the primacy of the East, his jurisdiction often seemed to extend to districts where he had no jurisdiction by right. For the vicariate of Rome was only one among four vicariates, into which the great prefecture of Italy was politically divided; the other vicariates being northern Italy, with its centre at Milan; western Illyricum, with its capital at Sirmium; and western Africa, with its capital at Carthage. So far were Gaul, Spain, and Britain from belonging to the vicariate of Rome, that they constituted together a separate prefecture, known as the prefecture of Gaul. Nevertheless, all these districts were in time drawn into the patriarchate of Rome, and indeed the whole of western Europe as it gradually came under the influence of Christianity.e]

[86] The absurd story about Gregory’s fish-ponds paved with the skulls of the drowned infants of the Roman clergy, is only memorable as an instance of what writers of history will believe, and persuade themselves they believe, when it suits party interests. But by whom, or when, was it invented? It is much older than the Reformation.