Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV. Christian Rome In the Fourth Century. From the reign of Constantine to that of Justinian the local churches (or dioceses) in the entire Empire attained the number of 1800; and the income of their Prelates (no doubt varying in proportion to the dignity or opulence of the several cities) has been estimated at an average of 600 pounds per annum ( Decline and Fall , c. XX). It seems impossible to ascertain with anything like exactness the Christian population of the Empire at the period of Constantine's incipient conversion. Different writers have conjectured it at amounts varying between one fifth and one twentieth in the entire census; whilst some assume that, among thirty millions, the supposed population of the provinces under that Emperor's immediate government, the Christians, within those limits, formed about one fifth. At Rome the wealth of the Bishopric probably surpassed by far that of all other sees; the whole clerical body there consisting of forty-six priests (or presbyters , their more proper designation), seven deacons, seven subdeacons, forty-two acolytes, fifty-two exorcists, readers. and ostiarii (door-keepers), engaged in the serving of at least forty churches, exclusive of those under the same Prelate in suburban districts; and in her regular charities this local Church supported fifteen hundred widows or other poor. The primacy so early obtained by the Roman Bishop seems jn igreat part due to the prestige of position and the high claimsof that City—the urbs par excellence—in which his chair was placed; also to the generally assumed superiority of St. Peter and St. Paul, co-founders of that See, among other Apostles; and we find remarkable expression of the idea of ecclesiastic pre-eminence deriving simply from local advantages in a canon of the seco...