tlie heir of the prhnacy. But resjDecting the nature and prerogatives of this primacy their views were very indefinite and various. It is remarkable that tlie reference of the rock to Christy which Augustine especially defended with great earnestness, was acknowledged even by the greatest pope of the middle ages, Gregory YII., in the famous inscription he sent with a crown to the emperor Eudolph : ^'-Petra [i. e., Christ] dedit Petro [i. e., to the apostle], Petrus [the pope] diadema RudoljphoP ' It is worthy of notice, that the j^ost-Nicene, as well as the ante-Nicene fathers, with all their reverence for the Poman see, regarded the heathenish title of Pome, xivhs ceterna, as blasphemous, with reference to the passage of the woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, Pev. xvii. 3." The prevailing opinion seems to have been, that Rome and the Roman empire would fall before the advent of Antichrist and the second coming of the Lord.^ 1. The views of the Latin fathers. The Cy^rianic idea was developed primarily in North Africa, where it was first clearly pronounced, Optatus, bishop of Milevi, the otherwise unknown author of an anti-Donatist work about a. d. 384, is, like Cyprian, thoroughly possessed with the idea of the A-isible unity of the church ; declares it without qualification the highest good, and sees its plastic expression and its surest safeguard in the im- movable cathedra Petri, the prince of the apostles, the keeper of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, who, in spite of his denial of Christ, continued in that relation to the other apostles, that the unity of the church might appear in outward fact as an unchangeable thing, invulnerable to human offence. All these ' Baronius, Annal. ad ana. 1080, vol. xi. p. 704. " Hieronymus, Adv. Jovin. lib. ii. c. 38 (Opera, t. iL p. 382), where he addresses Rome : " Ad te loquar, quae scriptam in fronte blasphemiam Christi confessioue delesti." Prosper: "iEterna cum dicitur quffi temporalis est, utique nomen est blasphemiae." Comp. Piper, 1. c. p. 46. ' So Chrysostom ad 2 Thess. ii. 7 ; Hieronymus, Ep. cxxi. qu. 11 (torn. i. p. 880 sq.); Augustine, De civh. Dei, lib. xx. cap. 19. 304 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. prerogatives have passed to the bishops of Rome, as the suc- cessors of this apostle.' Ambrose of Milan (f 397) speaks indeed in very high terms of the Roman chnrch, and concedes to its bishops a religious magistracy like the political power of the emperors of pagan Rome ; * yet he calls the primacy of Peter only a " primacy of confession, not of honor ; of faith, not of rank," ' and places the apostle Paul on an equality witli Peter.^ Of any dependence of Ambrose, or of the bishops of Milan in gene- ral during the iirst six centuries, on the jurisdiction of Rome, no trace is to be found. Jerome (f 419), the most learned commentator