12. From the time of Peter to Constantine the Great, thirty-two bishops occupied the chair of the Prince of Apostles. The number and character of the members of the Roman Church led to the selection of the ablest of the Western Christians to occupy that important office. These successive bishops, from the weight of their personal influence, transmitted a gradually increasing power. The labours of a few of these remarkable men who filled the Roman See, like Clement, Victor, Callistus, and Stephen, helped powerfully to lay the foundations for the Papacy. Clement's attitude was "almost imperious." Victor in his presumption on the Easter question, Zephyrinus on the assumption of his proud title of Pontifex Maximus and Bishop of Bishops, Callistus concerning lapsed heretics, and Stephen on the baptism of heretics, were all guilty of "hierarchical arrogance."[160:1] Cyprian (d. 258) looked upon Rome as the _Cathedra Petri_ and the Roman Church as the head of the universal Church.[160:2] Thus it may be accepted as an established fact that the Bishop of Rome was generally accepted as Peter's successor, at least in the West, when Emperor Constantine legalised the Christian religion and made it free to complete its organisation and to carry on its propagandism openly. He also increased the wealth and power of the Roman See and made its bishop the undisputed head of the Western Church. At the same time, in removing his capital to Constantinople, Constantine permitted the Roman Bishop to assume imperial prerogatives and encouraged the completion of the Church organisation after the imperial model. A comparison of the Church in 313 with the Apostolic Church reveals the fact that many pronounced changes and developments had occurred. In extent the Roman Church had spread from the Eternal City over the entire Italian peninsula and then to Spain, France, England, Germany, and Africa, and numbered perhaps 10,000,000 members. In organisation the Church had changed from a democracy to an absolute monarchy, from many local centres of authority to one great world power based on an imperial hierarchy, from communism to paternalism, from decentralisation to centralisation, from apostolic simplicity to worldly grandeur, and from a spiritual organisation to one largely political. The spiritual shepherd of the flock at Rome had come to claim and to exercise superior prerogatives over Western Europe and to serve the Roman Emperor as virtually his spiritual adviser. In wealth and culture, too, the Church had become a powerful social, industrial, and educational factor.