<>The bishops of Rome Calixtus (217-222 AD) and Stephenus (254-257 AD) were the first representatives of the clerical authorities to claim the primacy of the bishops of Rome over the rest of the Christian churches in the world. In their opinion, the bishops of Rome should be recognized by the entire Christian world as de jure followers of the Apostle Peter, who died in Rome. The claim is based on an ambiguous text from Matthew’s Gospel (16:18), namely Jesus’ discussion with the apostle Peter in Caesarea-Philippi in northern Palestine (today: Banjas, Israel), with the entrustment of the symbolic succession key:
And I tell you: you are Peter (pun kephas-petrus = rock-stone) and on this rock I will build my ecclesia (ecclesia = assembly, not church in the later interpreted sense) (the word church comes from the Latin word basilica = temple, place of worship in Romans).
The ambiguity of the text was one of the reasons why the Orthodox and Reformed churches never recognized the primacy of the pope in Rome.
The great theologians of the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. accepted, admittedly, the special role of the apostle Peter in Rome, but they also advocated the idea of equal rights for all bishops in the West and patriarchs in the East.
The Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325 AD) recognized the equality of the four episcopates and patriarchates of the Christian world: Rome (Italy), Alexandria (Egypt), Jerusalem (Palestine) and Antiochia (Turkey).
In 375 A.D., the bishop of Rome, Damasus I (366-384 A.D.) again pronounced himself in favor of the primacy of the bishop of Rome, on the basis of the same ambiguous argument in the Gospel of Matthew (16:18), elevating, of his own accord, the episcopate of Rome to the rank of Apostolic See.
In 383 A.D., the Roman Empire was dismembered into 2 parts: the western part (with the capital in Rome) and the eastern part (with the capital in Constantinople). The title of Apostolic See for the bishop of Rome was immediately recognized by the emperor of the western part of the empire (Theodosius, 383-395). The Bishop of Rome (Siricius, 384-399) consequently issued the Decretalia constituta, by which he founded the primacy of the bishops of Rome.
Bishop Leo I (440-461) was the first Pope. The emperor of the western part of the empire (Valentinians III, 425-455) officially confirmed by an edict of 445 the so-called Primate of the bishops of Rome, but only for the western countries (Italy, Spain, southern France, North Africa).
In 451, Pope Leo I protested against the decision of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon, to which the bishops of Rome and Constantinople were equally entitled in religious matters. After this date, the struggle for power and for the division of spheres of influence and primacy in the Christian world began between the 2 heads of the Western (Rome) and Eastern (Constantinople) churches, a struggle that continues to this day.
Pope Symmachus (498-514) decreed by the Ordinance Constitutum silvestri that the holders of the Apostolic See of Rome could not be judged and condemned by ordinary people.
Pope Gregory I (590-604) extended the influence of the episcopate of Rome to the sphere of political affairs, first in Italy, then throughout the world, further deepening the discrepancy and misunderstandings between the churches of the West and the East. At the Council of Whitby (England, 664) Rome again repeated the claim of its supremacy over Constantinople.
At the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 680, the claim to papal primacy was contested, with a large part of the participants declaring themselves in favor of the equality of all bishops and patriarchs.
Pope Stephen II (752-757) founded the first religious state in the world (Patrimonium Petri) based in Rome, thus further distancing himself from the Eastern churches. A serious disagreement between the two competing churches (West and East) occurred in 863, during the lawsuit filed by the Western Catholic Church against the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch Photius.
In the 10th and 11th centuries the majority of the Russian population was Christianized. The Russian Church immediately subordinated itself to the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Pope Leo IX (1049-1054) and Patriarch Michael Cerularius of Constantinople (1004-1058) completed the definitive rupture between the two churches in 1054, following irreconcilable disagreements (struggle for supremacy in the Christian world, theological differences, etc.). This split has gone down in history as the Great Schism.
The Eastern Orthodox churches declared themselves autocephalous churches after the Great Schism, with the Patriarch of Constantinople considered by the Eastern churches to be the head of the Orthodox Church.
In 1589, however, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow also claimed to take on the leading role of Orthodox churches around the world, which produced new complications.
The Orthodox Church recognizes only the first 7 Christian Ecumenical Councils, rejects primacy and the papal institution, has its own liturgy and icon worship.
This church claims to be the only one that would have preserved unchanged over the centuries the dogmas, tradition, worship and organization of the Christian church, as they were in the first 8 centuries after Jesus.
The name Orthodoxy was definitively imposed after the Great Schism of 1054.
The Orthodox churches are governed by the hierarchical synodal principle, forming regional, autocephalous and autonomous churches.
The Romanian Orthodox Church declared itself autocephalous in 1864 (in 1925 it became a Patriarchate). ………………………………………………………………………