It was the great name of ROME, after all, which was the mysterious talisman that elevated the Bishop of Rome above other metropolitans.  Who can estimate the moral power of that glorious name which had awed the world for a thousand years?  Even to barbarians that proud capital was sacred.  The whole world believed her to be eternal; she alone had the prestige of universal dominion.  This queen of cities might be desolated like Babylon or Tyre, but her influence was indestructible.  In her very ruins she was majestic.  Her laws, her literature, and her language still were the pride of nations; they revered her as the mother of civilization, clung to the remembrance of her glories, and refused to let her die.  She was to the barbarians what Athens had been to the Romans, what modern Paris is to the world of fashion, what London ever will be to the people of America and Australia,—­the centre of a proud civilization.  So the bishops of such a city were great in spite of themselves, no matter whether they were remarkable as individuals or not.  They were the occupants of a great office; and while their city ruled the world, it was not necessary for them to put forth any new claims to dignity or power.  No person and no city disputed their pre-eminence.  They lived in a marble palace; they were clothed in purple and fine linen; they were surrounded by sycophants; nobles and generals waited in their ante-chambers; they were the companions of princes; they controlled enormous revenues; they were the successors of the high pontiffs of imperial domination.

Yet for three hundred years few of them were eminent.  It is not the order of Providence that great posts, to which men are elected by inferiors, should be filled with great men.  Such are always feared, and have numerous enemies who defeat their elevation.  Moreover, it is only in crises of imminent danger that signal abilities are demanded.  Men are preferred for exalted stations who will do no harm, who have talent rather than genius,—­men who have business capacities, who have industry and modesty and agreeable manners; who, if noted for anything, are noted for their character.  Hence we do not read of more than two or three bishops, for three hundred years, who stood out pre-eminently among their contemporaries; and these were inferior to Origen, who was a teacher in a theological school, and to Jerome, who was a monk in an obscure village.  Even Augustine, to whose authority in theology the Catholic Church still professes to bow down, as the schools of the Middle Ages did to Aristotle, was the bishop of an unimportant See in Northern Africa.  Only Clement in the first century, and Innocent in the fourth loomed up above their contemporaries.  As for the rest, great as was their dignity as bishops, it is absurd to attribute to them schemes for enthralling the world.  No such plans arose in the bosom of any of them.  Even Leo I. merely prepared the way for universal domination; he had no such deep-laid schemes as Gregory VII. or Boniface VIII.  The primacy of the Bishop of Rome was all that was conceded by other bishops for four hundred years, and this on the ground of the grandeur of his capital.  Even this was disputed by the Bishop of Constantinople, and continued to be until that capital was taken by the Turks.