Note 340 — Chapter XII · RECAPITULATION

“The re-establishment of metropolitans in their ancient rights,” says the bishop of Novarra, “confers the means of providing, without any injurious delay, for the vacant churches. It was for this purpose that the famous council of Nice conferred on the metropolitan alone the ordination of bishops: all the succeeding councils have been unwilling to recognize as bishop him who was not ordained by the decree of his metropolitan. The Roman pontiffs themselves have asserted this general doctrine of the church to the year 1051; and it was religiously observed during upwards of a thousand years. The bishop consecrated by the metropolitan and by his suffragans proceeded at once to the government of his church, and was installed by the clergy of the vacant see. Antiquity knew of no canonical institution or oath of fidelity to the Roman pontiffs, to which they would subject the episcopacy in these latter times, and by which they restricted its divine and original authority. Such are the true and invariable principles, is the constant and pure doctrine, of the church.” Address of the bishop of Novara to his His Imperial Highness the prince Viceroy of Italy. Moniteur 11th February 1811. The bishop of Forli professes the same principles. “The ordinary power of bishops,” says he, “is derived immediately from Christ.... In whatsoever place a bishop is to be found, whether at Rome, at Gubbio, at Constantinople, at Reggio, at Alexandria, or at Favi, he has the same character and posseses the same authority. All are equally successors of the apostles, so says St. Jerome.... After the abdication of Necturius, the council of Ephesus wrote to the clergy of Constantinople to take charge of this church, in order to render account thereof to him who by the divine will should be ordained thereto by command of the emperor....For upwards of a thousand years, no canonical investment was known in the church, nor oath of fidelity to the pope; obligations fatal to the ordinary authority of the episcopacy,” &c.—Moniteur, 16 Feb. 1811. “I am perfectly satisfied,” says the bishop of Verona, “that the spiritual jurisdiction which a bishop exercises is derived to him immediately from God, and that he may be placed in his see by the competent power, in virtue of the canonical decrees of the universal church....Bishops are not the vicars of the sovereign pontiff, but the true ordinaries of their dioceses....In the council of Trent, the most learned bishops strongly defended the prerogatives of the episcopacy.”—Moniteur, 1st of March, 1811. The bishop of Verona, whose expressions we have above transcribed, published about thirty years since a volume in 4vo, entitled ‘De Finibus Sacerdotii et Imperii,’ a learned and judicious work which the court of Rome hastened to condemn.—For original see Appendix C.