Irenaeus added a reference to particular circumstance, viz., that in his time many communities turned to Rome in order to testify their orthodoxy.[323] As soon as we cease to obscure our vision with theories and keep in view the actual circumstances, we have no cause for astonishment. Considering the active intercourse between the various Churches and the metropolis, it was of the utmost importance to all, especially so long as they required financial aid, to be in connection with that of Rome, to receive support from her, to know she would entertain travelling brethren, and to have the power of recommending prisoners and those pining in the mines to her influential intervention. The evidence of Ignatius and Dionysius as well as the Marcia-Victor episode place this beyond doubt (see above). The efforts of Marcion and Valentinus in Rome have also a bearing on this question, and the venerable bishop, Polycarp, did not shrink from the toil of a long journey to secure the valuable fellowship of the Roman Church;[324] it was not Anicetus who came to Polycarp, but Polycarp to Anicetus. At the time when the controversy with Gnosticism ensued, the Roman Church showed all the rest an example of resolution; it was naturally to be expected that, as a necessary condition of mutual fellowship, she should require other communities to recognise the law by which she had regulated her own circumstances. No community in the Empire could regard with indifference its relationship to the great Roman Church; almost everyone had connections with her; she contained believers from all the rest. As early as 180 this Church could point to a series of bishops reaching in uninterrupted succession from the glorious apostles Paul and Peter[325] down to the present time; and she alone maintained a brief but definitely formulated _lex_, which she entitled the summary of apostolic tradition, and by reference to which she decided all questions of faith with admirable certainty. Theories were incapable of overcoming the elementary differences that could not but appear as soon as Christianity became naturalised in the various provinces and towns of the Empire. Nor was it theories that created the empiric unity of the Churches, but the unity which the Empire possessed in Rome; the extent and composition of the Graeco-Latin community there; the security--and this was not the least powerful element--that accompanied the development of this great society, well provided as it was with wealth and possessed of an influence in high quarters already dating from the first century;[326] as well as the care which it displayed on behalf of all Christendom. _All these causes combined to convert the Christian communities into a real confederation under the primacy of the Roman Church (and subsequently under the leadership of her bishops)._ This primacy cannot of course be further defined, for it was merely a _de facto_ one. But, from the nature of the case, it was immediately shaken,