for those following along…I thought I would provide a nice quote further verifying what I have said about Peter and the founding of the Roman Church. I am, however, too lazy to type it myself and so “googled” a bit of the quote with the hope that I could find it on the web for copying and pasting purposes. Low and behold I found the quote on this
thread from late 2008 where Snow was good enough to do my typing for me. The quote is this:
“That Peter founded the Church in Rome is extremely doubtful and that he served as it’s first bishop (as we understand the term today) for even a year, much less the twenty-five-year period that is claimed for him, is an unfounded tradition that can be traced back to a point no earlier than the third century… The tradition is only vaguely discerned in Hegesippus and may be implied in the suspect letter of Dionysius of Corinth to the Romans (c. 170). By the third century, however, the early assumptions based upon invention or vague unfounded tradition have been transformed into “facts” or history. D. W. O’Conner, Peter in Rome, Columbia University Press, 1969, p207
The funny thing is that Guanophore even responded to the post…but he is still denying the consensus that was building back in 1969. Irish Polock will, no doubt, protest that the quote isn’t from the last 25 years, but then I could point out that Garry Wills repeated the quote with approval in 2000. I think Snow’s post merits repeating (given all the demands for more evidence that I have received on this thread)…so here is the rest of Snow’s summary:
*But for now, I’d like to post what I have run across in my studies about whether or not Peter was actually a monoepiscopal leader over the Church and Bishop of Rome.
He wasn’t - Catholic scholars agree:
- “Let’s see what St. Ireneaus has to say on the subject back in the second century between the period of 175-190 A.D.
Adversus Haereses (1:27:1):
“Credo was the one who took his system from the followers of Simon, and came to live in Rome at the time of Hyginus, who held the ninth place in the espiscopal succession from the Apostles downward.” note: 100 plus years after the fact
and
- An unquoted and un-cited and unquoted claim that Eusebius said that Peter was the 1st Bishops of Rome. (which would have been about 230 plus years after the fact.
I always enjoy the opportunity to add to my library and so a few trips to the bookstore and local library resulted in the following that indicate that I am far from alone in my assertion that the evidence for Peter as the first pope is lacking (and note that at minimum 5 of the historians below are Catholic - Cahill, McBrian, Duffy, Wills, Johnson, De Rosa - and a number of those were trained in the Catholic priesthood.)
- “Vatican propaganda notwithstanding, Peter was never the “bishop of Rome… The first man who can be designated “bishop of Rome” with historical certainty is Anicetus, who stands eleventh in the Vatican’s somewhat fanciful list of early “popes…” Thomas Cahill, Pope John XXIII, Penguin Books 2002, pp1-2
- Nothing is known of the length of his residence (in Rome): the story that it lasted 25 years is a 3rd century legend. Ignatius assumes that Peter and Paul wielded special authority over the Roman Church while Iraneus claimed they jointly founded it and inaugurated its succession of bishops. Nothing, however, is known of their constitutional roles, least of all of Peter as presumed leader of the community… In the late 2nd cent. the tradition identified Peter as first bishop of Rome.(J.N.D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, Oxford University Press, 1986 p6-7)
- “The papcy was to claim that Peter was the first bishop of the church at Rome… No proof exists.” Brian Maynahan, The Faith - A History of Christianity, Doubleday, 2002, p41
- “(The first succession lists, however, identified Linus, not Peter, as the first Pope. Peter was not regarded as the first Bishop of Rome until the late second or early third century.)” and “St. Irenaeus of Lyons (d. ca. 200) assumes that Peter and Paul jointly founded the church of Rome and inaugurated it’s succession of bishops (Against Heresies 3.1.2: 3.3.3). However, there is no evidence that Peter actually served the church of Rome as its first bishop even though the “fact” is regularly taken for granted by a wide spectrum of Catholics… Indeed, there is no evidence that Rome even had a monoepiscopal form of ecclesiatiscal government until the middle of the second century.” Richard P. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, Harper Collins 1997, pp29-30
- “Nor can we assume, as Irenaeus did, that the Apostles established there (Rome) a succession of bishops to carry on their work in the city, for all the indications are that there is no single bishop at Rome for almost a century after the death of the apostles. In fact, wherever we turn, the solid outlines of Petrine succession at Rome seem to blur and dissolve.” Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinner - A History of the Popes, Yale University Press 1997, pp1-2
- Peter and Paul, however, do not appear to have been monarchial bishops handing on office to their successors… The first bishop whose actions suggest monarchial status is Anicetus (c. 155-66).” Paul Johnson, The Papacy, Orion Publishing Group, 1998, p26 *
to be cont…
