God help me if I should fall into heresy because do not believe the above statement can officially be the doctrine of the Catholic Church. Concerning Primacy of the Roman Patriarch one must remember the Churches dormant tradition of the Pentarchy. An outstanding partisan of the Pentarchic idea was the patriarch Nicephorus. In his defense of the cult of images, after the passage in which he so clearly expressed the Primacy of Rome, the patriarch mentions that in addition to Rome, Constantinople and the three patriarchal and apostolic sees—apparently, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem-had equally condemned Iconoclasm. He then continued:
It is the ancient law of the Church that whatever uncertainties or controversies arise in the Church of God, they are resolved and defined by the ecumenical synods, with the assent and approbation of the bishops who hold the apostolic sees.
It is well known that it was at the Ignatian Council of 869-870 that this Pentarchic idea was particularly developed. It will suffice here to cite the words by which the patrician Baanes, the representative of Basil I, defined this idea:
God founded His Church on the five patriarchs and in the Gospels He defined that it could never completely fail because they are the chiefs of the Church. In effect Christ had said: "…and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her," which means: if two of them should happen to fail, they will turn to the three others, if three of them happen to fail, they shall address themselves to two others; and if by chance four of them come to failure the last who dwells in Christ Our God, the Chief of all, will restore again the rest of the body of the Church.
The idea of the Pentarchy has often been considered as being very dangerous for the Roman Primacy and in direct opposition to it, but this opinion is surely exagerrated. We must understand the problem from the Byzantine point of view. The Pentarchic idea was an expression of the universality (catholicos) of the the Church. This universality was no longer represented by the universality of the Empire, which at this period was considerably reduced by the loss of the eastern provinces. Besides the idea that the teaching of Our Lord should be defined and explained by the five patriarchs, each of them representing the bishops of his patriarchate, was aimed at safeguarding the rights of the Sacerdotium which the Imperium should never infringe. From this point of view the pentarchic idea represented great progress in the contest which the Sacerdotium had carried on for so long against the Imperium, since the latter continued to misunderstand the true spirit of Christian Hellenism and sought to usurp the rights of the Sacerdotium in matters of doctrine. it was a long struggle that the Eastern Church had to wage, and she was to suffer many defeats which happened, in patricular, when a large part of the hierarchy rallied to the side of emperors who were in heresy. However, they were always able to make a recovery with the aid of the Church of the West, represented by the papacy.
We should also recognize that the Pentarchic idea did not at all suppose absolute equality among the patriarchs. The see of the ancient city of Rome was considered the first. This is always made sufficiently clear by those who remained faithfully attached to the principle. We may cite for example the Patriarch Nicephorus who speaking of the condemnation of the Iconoclasts by the seventh ecumenical council, added:
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that the Iconoclasts have been rejected by the Catholic Church we know from the wise testimony and from confirmation in the letters which were, a short time ago, sent by the most holy and blessed archbishop of ancient Rome, that is to say the first Apostolic See.**
Furthermore, it is important to remember that the Pentarchic principle also expressed, according to the Byzantine mentality, the idea of the infallibility of the Church in matters of doctrine, a doctrine which the Orthodox church still professes today with firmess. Also the Pentarchic principle offered a certain foundation for a modus vivendi between Rome and Constantinople which sufficed for those times. This principle, no doubt, found its partisans even in Rome, as can be seen from what the famous Anastasius Bibliothecarius said in the preface to his translation of the Acts of the Council of 869-870. He defines the Roman conception of the Pentarchy in the following manner:
Just as Christ has placed in His body, that is to say, in His Church, a number of patriarchs equal to the number of the senses in the human body, the well being of the Church will not suffer as long as these sees are of the same will, just as the body will function properly as long as the five senses remain intact and healthy. And because, among them, the See of Rome has precedence, it can well be compared to the sense of sight which is certainly the first of the senses of the body, since it is the most vigilant and since it remains, more than any of the other senses, in communion with the whole body.
