The Romans had never loved the Greeks, even when they most admired their art and subtle intellect, and now in the fourth century this persistent distrust was intensified when Greece usurped the glory that had been her conqueror’s. In the absence of an Emperor and of the many high officials who had gone to swell the triumph of his new court, Rome set up another idol. The symbols of material glory might vanish, but the Christian faith had supplied men with fresh ideals through the teaching of the Apostles and their representatives, the Bishops. Roman bishops claimed that the gift of grace they received at their consecration had been passed down to them by the successive laying-on of hands from St. Peter himself. ‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church ... and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ These words of Christ seemed to grant to his apostle complete authority over the souls of men; and Christians at Rome began to ask if the power of St. Peter to ‘bind and loose’ had not been handed down to his successors? If so _Il Papa_, that is, ‘their father’, the Pope, was undoubtedly the first bishop in Christendom, for on no other apostle had Christ bestowed a like authority. It must not be imagined that this reasoning came like a flash of inspiration or was willingly received by all Christians. Many generations of Popes, from the days of St. Peter onwards, were regarded merely as Bishops of Rome, that is, as ‘overseers’ of the Church in the chief city of the Empire. They were loved and esteemed by their flock not on account of special divine authority but because they stood neither for self-interest nor for faction, but for principles of justice, mercy, and brotherhood. Had a Roman been robbed by a fellow citizen, were there a plague or famine, was the city threatened by enemies without her walls, it was to her bishop Rome turned, demanding help and protection. Afterwards it was only natural that the one power that could and did afford these things when Emperors and Senators were far away should in time take the Emperor’s place, and that the Pope should appear to Rome, and gradually as we shall see to Western Europe, God’s very viceroy on earth. To the Church in Greece, Egypt, and Asia Minor he never assumed this halo of glory. Byzantium, the great Constantinople, was the pivot on which the eastern world turned, and the Bishop of Rome with his tradition of St. Peter made no authoritative appeal. Thus far back in the fourth century the cleft had already opened between the Churches of the East and West that was to widen into a veritable chasm.