Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Серия I. Богословие, философия (Dec 2021)
The issue of delegating prerogatives in the letter of Pope Innocent I to Rufus of Thessalonica
Abstract
The article analyses the letter of Pope Innocent I (402–417) to the Bishop of Thessalonica Rufus, sent in 412 and preserved as part of the so-called Collectio Thes salonicensis — a collection of papal letters to Illyrian bishops from the 4th–5th centuries. The letter was a document by which the pope gave to the bishop of Thessalonica the prerogatives to adjudicate ecclesiastical matters in Eastern Illyricum. The objective of the article is to study and clarify the composition and nature of these prerogatives, as well as the legal grounds, which allowed the Pope to believe that he possessed the power to delegate them. Innocent invests Rufus of Thessalonica with the right to consider appeals from the provincial churches “in pope’s place” (vice), which was the fact that gave researchers the reason to claim that Innocent, in fact, created a “papal vicariate” of Thessalonica. Innocent also prescribed to Rufus jurisdictional boundaries and the procedure for considering “church aff airs” within them. The article discusses which canonical and state-administrative decrees could enable the Roman bishop to believe that he possessed full ecclesiastical power, and how this attitude infl uenced the composition and nature of the prerogatives delegated to the bishop of Thessalonica. The popes’ idea that they possessed the fullness of power within the Church, by virtue of which they could delegate prerogatives to the lower (in their opinion) levels of church administration, is compared with the Roman state-legal system, within which the emperor had full power and delegated his judicial and administrative prerogatives to imperial offi cials, which were designated by the term vice sacra iudicantes. The author concludes that the Pope acted within the same logic. In the meantime, not all of the civilian offi cials vice sacra iudicantes were vicars. Therefore, it seems inappropriate to apply either to the bishop of Thessalonica the title of “papal vicar”, which is not attested in the sources, or the name of “papal vicariate” to the churches of Eastern Illyricum.
Keywords
