hose to
whom he sends them as words "spoken by God through us".[2]

If the decisions of the succeeding Popes in the interval of nearly two
hundred and fifty years between this letter of St. Clement, about the year
95, and the great letter of St. Julius to the Eusebianising bishops at
Antioch in 342, had been preserved entire, the constitution of the Church
in that interval would have shone before us in clear light. In fact, we
only possess a few fragments of some of these decisions, for there was a
great destruction of such documents in the persecution which occupied the
first decade of the fourth century. But from the time of Pope Siricius, in
the reign of the great Theodosius, a continuous, though not a perfect,
series of these letters stretches through the succeeding ages. There is no
other such series of documents existing in the world. They throw light upon
all matters and persons of which they treat. This is a light proceeding
from one who lives in the midst of what he describes, who is at the centre
of the greatest system of doctrine and discipline, and legislation grounded
upon both, which the world has ever seen. One, also, who speaks not only
with a great knowledge, but with an unequalled authority, which, in every
case, is like that of no one else, but can even be _supreme_, when it is
directed with such a purpose to the whole Church. Every Pope _can_ speak,
as St. Clement, the first of this series, speaks above, claiming obedience
to his words as "words spoken by God through us".

In a former volume I made large use of the letters of Popes from Siricius
to St. Leo. I have continued that use for the very important period from
St. Leo to St. Gregory. Especially in treating of the Acacian schism I have
gone to the letters of the Popes who had to deal with it--Simplicius,
Felix III., Gelasius, Anastasius II., Symmachus, and Hormisdas. I have done
the same for the important reign of Justinian; most of all for the grand
pontificate of St. Gregory, which crowns the whole patristic period and
sums up its discipline.

I am, therefore, indebted in this volume, first and chiefly, to the letters
of the Popes and the letters addressed to them by emperors and bishops,
stored up in Mansi's vast collection of Councils (1759, 31 volumes). I am
also much indebted to Cardinal Hergenroether's work _Photius, sein Leben,
und das griechische Schisma_, and to his _Handbuch der allgemeinen
Kirchengeschichte_, as the number of quota