Papias of Hierapolis

“ John preclude Papias from having believed him to be the author of a Gospel Had he known of such a document he would surely have mentioned it as much as Matthew and Mark, and Eusebius would not have failed to reproduce the testimony.
Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, seems to have been a fair average specimen of the early Christian. Probably he was very devout and pious, but most certainly he was not strong in intellect, and was ready to give credence to old wives' tales concerning the Christ or his Apostles. ”

“ No fact is known inconsistent with c. 60–135 as the period of Papias’s life. Eusebius (iii. 36) calls him “bishop” of Hierapolis, but whether with good ground is uncertain.
Papias uses the term “the Elders,” or Fathers of the Christian community, to describe the original witnesses to Christ’s teaching, i.e. ”

“ We have ample evidence that within a very few years after Papias wrote, the differences between St John and the Synoptic Gospels had already begun to attract attention. The Muratorian writer is a competent witness to this, nor does he stand alone. Claudius Apollinaris, who succeeded Papias in the see of Hierapolis, perhaps immediately, certainly within a very few years, mentions that on the showing of some persons 'the Gospels seem to be at variance with one another' [207:1] . ”

“ Millenarians held by
the greatest Men in
the Church.| This Opinion was first broached about the Year 118. by Papias Bishop of Hierapolis, a Man of great Piety, honoured by the Church of Rome as a Saint [1101] . He declares, in the few Fragments of his Works, which have been conveyed to us by Eusebius [1102] , that, as he lived near the Times of the Apostles, he made it his chief Business to learn of their Disciples whatever they could recollect to have been done or said by them, on different Occasions, that was not recorded in Holy Writ. ”

“ The leading object of Papias therefore was not to substitute a correct narrative for an imperfect and incorrect, but to counteract a false exegesis by a true. But where did he find this false exegesis? The opening passage of Irenæus supplies the answer. This father describes the Gnostic teachers as 'tampering with the oracles of the Lord ( [Greek: ta logia Kuriou] ) , showing themselves bad expositors of things well said' ( [Greek: exêgêtai kakoi tôn kalôs eirêmenôn ginomenoi] ) [160:1] . Here we have the very title of Papias' work reproduced. ”

“ Harmodius takes art in earnest, and we should have the Emperor here before he had completed his sketches. Papias works with thirty assistants at anything that is ordered of him, so long as it brings him money. His last things certainly amaze me, particularly the Hygyeia for Dositheus the Jew, and the bust of Plutarch put up in the Caesareum. they are full of grace and power. But who can distinguish what is his work and what that of his scholars? Enough, he knows how things should be done; and if a good sum is to be got by it he will hew you out a whole sea-fight in marble in five days. ”

“ Papias gathered his information partly from the persons whom he calls
"the Elders," partly from their disciples. (2) The Greek word which we
render "the Elders" is presbyter. We cannot use this Greek word itself,
because it would be understood to mean, as it does still in the
Reformed Churches, leaders of a Christian community. But such an office
is no guarantee that its holder could give what Papias needed--reliable
memoranda of the Life of Jesus based as far as possible on personal
observation; such a guarantee could only be given by persons of great
age. Papias was born about 70 ”

“ Papias, the sculptor, introduced himself among the latest, though Pontius had written to him with his own hand that he had to communicate to him a very remunerative and particularly pressing commission for the Emperor, which might, perhaps, be taken in hand that very night. The matter in question was a statue of Urania, which must be completed in eight days by the same method which Papias had introduced at the last festival of Adonis, and to the scale which he, Pontius, indicated, in the palace of Lochias itself. ”

“ It is a dreadful thing to have to say of the most powerful of Popes, in whose time the Papacy, we are told, reached its highest climax of power in the affairs of men: he was successful once: in devastating a country and slaughtering by thousands its inhabitants in the name of God and the Church. All his attempts to set right the affairs of the world failed. He neither nominated an emperor, nor saved a servile king from ruin, nor struck a generous blow for that object of the enthusiasm of his age, the deliverance of Jerusalem. ”

“ But the Western princes, who had almost forgotten the existence of the Eastern Empire, see in him only a poor Greek king who has come to beg their protection against his enemies.
The Greeks then come to Ferrara and the Emperor enters the city under a great canopy at the head of his retinue, all decked out as sumptuously as possible. But the Patriarch is told he must kiss the Pope's foot. He says he will not dream of doing any such thing; if the Pope is older than he is he will treat him as a father, if the same age as a brother, if younger as a son. ”

“ Before passing on there is one other point to mention: Andrew of Cæsarea, in the preface to his Commentary on the Apocalypse, mentions that Papias maintained "the credibility" [———] of that book, or in other words, its apostolic origin. (1) His strong millenarian opinions would naturally make such a composition stand high in his esteem, if indeed it did not materially contribute to the formation of his views, which is still more probable. Apologists admit the genuineness of this statement, nay, claim it as undoubted evidence of the acquaintance of Papias with the Apocalypse. ”

“ The people had abhorred Gregory, had adored Pius, upon whom they looked as a saviour, as a liberator; finding themselves deceived, a mourning-veil had overshadowed their love. Still, had Pius remained here, and had courage to show himself on agitating occasions, his position as the Pope, before whom they had been bred to bow, his aspect, which had once seemed to them full of blessing and promise, like that of an angel, would have still retained power. Probably the temporal dominion of the Papacy would not have been broken up. He fled; the people felt contempt for his want of force and truth. ”

“ It has often been observed that the Papacy differs from other powers in the continued vitality of its members [174] long after the life has left it at the heart. Rome was weak at the centre, but strong at the extremity of its domain. The Emperor of Constantinople looked on the Pope as his representative in Church-affairs, ratified his election, and exacted tribute on his appointment. The Exarch of Ravenna, representing as he did the civil majesty of the successor of the Cæsars, looked down on him as his subordinate. ”

“ The alliance between renovated Hellenism and the Papacy was ratified a few years later, when the most intelligent of the Italian Humanists, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini of Siena, was raised to the throne under the name of Pius II., and became the most modern of medieval Popes. ”

“ At Rome the pope soon assumed a position which would have been impossible to him if the emperor had been residing there. While other cities—Trêves, Milan, Ravenna—subsequently became centres for the empire in the West, Rome was left severely alone, with the consequence that the pope was the first citizen and even came to take the place of the emperor as the chief centre of power and influence in the city. It would be grossly unfair to attribute the enormous power that has accreted to the papacy to nothing but the rapacity of popes. ”

“ If Pius IX and Leo XIII had resolved to imprison themselves in the Vatican, it was because necessity bound them to Rome. A pope is not free to leave the city, to be the head of the Church elsewhere; and in the same way a pope, however well he may understand the modern world, has not the right to relinquish the temporal power. ”

“ The Pope might be a captive at Constantinople, scorned, deceived, torn away even from the refuge of the altar, surrounded with spies, betrayed by subservient bishops and patriarchs, and, worst of all, be labouring under the stigma of an election originally enforced by arbitrary violence; a despotic emperor might do his worst, but the Pope's successors carried on his prerogatives unimpaired. The walls of Aurelian preserved Rome from the Lombard, but the Pontiff who kept guard over them was not contained in them. ”

“ The foundation of a Latin Patriarchate at Jerusalem, after the taking of that city in A.D. 1099, could not but be accounted an usurpation on the part of the Pope, which was, however, far surpassed in injustice by the erection of a Latin empire and a Latin Patriarchate in Constantinople itself, A.D. 1204. During the time that this oppressive arrangement lasted (i.e. till A.D. 1261) the rightful Patriarch took refuge at the court which the Eastern emperors held at Nicaea in Asia Minor, and the fugitives there clung to their national Church, and her rightful independence. ”

“ Paphos was the seat of the worship of Venus, the goddess of love, who was said to have been born of the foam of the sea at this very spot; and her worship was carried on with the wildest licentiousness. It was a picture in miniature of Greece sunk in moral decay. Paphos was also the seat of the Roman government, and in the pro-consular chair sat a man, Sergius Paulus, whose noble character but utter lack of certain faith formed a companion picture of the inability of Rome at that epoch to meet the deepest necessities of her best sons. ”

“ The last three places in Phrygia, which we think it necessary to note especially, we shall take together, as situate near one another, and, historically, closely connected. These cities are Hierapolis, Laodicea, (ad Lycum) , and Colossæ.
Hierapolis is chiefly remarkable for waters so loaded with petrifying materials as to have completely changed, by their deposits, the face of the country in the course of centuries; a result, noticed by 138many ancient authors, as Vitruvius, Pausanias, &c. ”

“ Florry, the trite adage, 'Truth is the hardest of all to bear,' is applicable to these prelates of papacy; who, knowing their danger, are fully resolved to guard the avenues of light and knowledge. The Pope of imperial Rome, surrounded as he is with luxury, magnificence, and hosts of scarlet-liveried cardinals, who stand in readiness to convey his mandates to the remotest corners of the earth, has been made to tremble on his throne by the pen of feeble woman. ”

“ The other four Patriarchs (of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem,) were entirely independent of their Roman colleague, and of each other. When John, Patriarch of Constantinople, towards the close of the sixth century, put forth a claim to supreme and universal rule in the Church, encouraged in this insolent pretension by the residence of the emperor within the limits of his See—the Popes of that period, Pelagius and Gregory the Great, resisted with great energy his pretensions ”

“ The Papacy itself had made Papal rule impossible to vigorous peoples. With curiously narrow ambition Popes have always preferred even limited temporal importance to unlimited spiritual sway. Two Popes, nay at one time three, had struggled not for the supremacy of religion but for merely personal pre-eminence. Popes had fought Popes, councils had fought councils, and each had called in the friendly infidel to fight the catholic enemy. The catholic sack of catholic Rome had been accompanied by greater lust and more copious bloodshed than the sack of Rome in olden time by northern Infidels. ”

“ Lord of Rome the emperor was called; Pope Gregory II. became in fact a glorious beginning of the papal rule. Not reckless force, not ambitious struggle and self-seeking formed the basis of this rule, but the free voice of the population in return for real protection, for duty steadfastly fulfilled, for never-failing courage, firm belief, and holy life. Put on the one hand the struggles, the [pg 332] fierce enmities, the treacheries, the revolts, the scenes of blood, the shifting of parties evoked by the Iconoclast storm in Italy and Rome, threatened by the two antagonists, Greeks and Lombards ”

“ They show us, besides, what a tendency there was in the power of the Patriarch continually to increase, as being the centre of appeal to so many, not only Bishops, but Metropolitans. Nay, at this very time, within less than a century, a rival power had grown up in the East, in the See of Constantinople, which, from a simple bishopric, under the Exarch of Heraclea, threatened to push aside the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch; and, by virtue of the Imperial residence at, or near Constantinople, to exercise as great an influence through the whole East, as Rome did in the West. ”

“ Art. Patriarch. In the years 637 to 640 Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch fell into the hands of the Saracen followers of Mohammed, which terminated their importance, and later the Greek schism separated the Patriarch of Constantinople from Rome; and thus the Patriarch of Rome was left in undisputed possession of the field and was soon recognized as universal head of the church. So under the symbol of this dread rider on a pale horse is portrayed the great hierarchal system by which the Papacy was fully developed in the West. ”