It is in the acts of the Council of Sardica (343 A.D.) that we find the
first explicit recognition of the Pope as an arbiter and (we may almost
say) a judge of appeal. This council was merely a gathering of Western
bishops, and the canons which it passed were never accepted by the
Church of Africa. So doubtful was their validity that the Popes of the
next generation disingenuously asserted that they had been passed at the
earlier and more famous Council of Nicaea (325). Yet even at Sardica the
Pope was only endowed with one definite prerogative. Henceforward any
bishop condemned by a provincial synod might appeal to him; he could
then order a second trial to be held, and could send his legates to sit
among the judges; but he could not hear the case in his own court. More
striking than this decree are the words of the letter which the Council
addressed to Pope Julius: "It will be very right and fitting for the
priests of the Lord, from every province, to refer to their Head, that
is to the See of Peter." This recommendation was readily obeyed by the
Churches of Gaul and Spain. Questions from their bishops poured in upon
the Popes, who began to give their decisions in the form of open
letters, and to claim for these letters the binding force of law. Pope
Liberius (352-366 A.D.) appears to have commenced the practice, although
the earliest of the extant "Decretals" is from the pen of Pope Siricius
(385). Sixty years after Siricius' time, when the Western Empire was in
its death-agony, this claim to legislative power was formally confirmed
by the Emperor Valentinian III (445). But for some time after the
Council of Sardica the new prerogative was used with the greatest
caution. The Popes of that period use every precaution to make their
oracular answers inoffensive. They assure their correspondents that Rome
enjoins no novelties; that she does not presume to decide any point on
which tradition is silent; that she is merely executing a mandate which
general councils have laid upon her. Those who evince respect for her