The Position Of The Roman Commun

The Roman Church took very early a leading place in the Christian Church,

even before the rise of the Petrine tradition, and its importance was

generally recognized. Its charity was very widely known and extolled. It

was a part of its care for Christians everywhere, a care which found

expression later in the obligation of maintaining the faith in the great

theological controversies. On the position of the Roman Church in this

period, see the address of the Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans (ANF, I,

73), as also the relation of Polycarp to the Roman Church in connection

with the question of the date of Easter (see § 38, below).





Dionysius of Corinth, "Epistle to the Roman Church," in Eusebius, Hist.

Ec., IV, 23. (MSG, 20:388.) For text, see Kirch, n. 49 f.





Moreover, there is still current an Epistle of Dionysius to the Romans,

addressed to Soter, bishop at that time. But there is nothing like quoting

its words in which, in approval of the custom of the Romans maintained

until the persecution in our own time, he writes as follows: "For you have

from the beginning this custom of doing good in different ways to all the

brethren, and of sending supplies to many churches in all the cities, in

this way refreshing the poverty of those in need, and helping brethren in

the mines with the supplies which you have sent from the beginning,

maintaining as Romans the customs of the Romans handed down from the

fathers, which your blessed bishop Soter has not only kept up, but also

increased, helping the saints with the abundant supply he sends from time

to time, and with blessed words exhorting, as a loving father his

children, the brethren who come up to the city." In this same epistle he

also mentions the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, showing that from

the first it was read by ancient custom before the Church. He says,

therefore: "To-day, then, being the Lord's day we kept holy; in which we

read your letter; for reading it we shall always have admonition, as also

from the former one written to us through Clement." Moreover, the same

writer speaks of his own epistles as having been falsified, as follows:

"For when the brethren asked me to write letters, I wrote them. And these

the apostles of the devil have filled with tares, taking away some things

and adding others. For them there is woe in store. So it is not marvellous

that some have tried to falsify even the dominical scriptures [i.e., the

Holy Scriptures], when they have conspired against writings of another

sort."