#62 | Papal Snapshot: St. Isidore of Seville on the Greater Authority of St. Peter, Letter 8 (early 600s)

Related Resources

• #61 | Papal Snapshot: St. Isidore of Seville on Obedience to the Pope, Letter 6 (early 600s)

Introduction

This “Papal Snapshot” concerns assertions by St. Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636), a great Western Church Father, in his Letter 8 to Bishop Eugenius about the biblical roots of the papacy, particularly Christ’s establishment of St. Peter over the other Apostles, and that he (St. Isidore) and all bishops owe obedience to the Pope as St. Peter’s successor.

As I noted in our first Papal Snapshot about St. Isidore, I was initially inspired to cover what his writings indicate about the papacy by a prominent protestant apologist who attempted to quote St. Isidore in such a way as to deny papal authority, in both St. Peter and later Popes. Having read a great deal of St. Isidore, I knew this claim was false, and–as must often take place in the never-ending game of wack-a-mole against protestant misrepresentations and (sometimes) lies about the Church–I decided to devote several Papal Snapshots to the writings of St. Isidore. This is the second of those Papal Snapshots.

Roadmap

With that background in mind, our Roadmap is as follows:

• Our thesis is that St. Isidore of Seville’s Letter 8 exhibits Catholic belief about the papacy, and in particular its origin in the establishment of St. Peter by Christ over the other Apostles. We will show this by:
• Providing historical context for the letter; then
• Quoting and analyzing relevant sections from the letter; then
• Summarizing the conclusions we believe can be reached.

Historical Context

St. Isidore wrote Letter 8 to a “Bishop Eugenius.” In all likelihood, this refers to either Eugenius I, Archbishop of Toledo, or St. Eugenius II, who was his successor.

As mentioned in a previous Papal Snapshot on his Letter 6, St. Isidore was the Archbishop of Seville and a leading intellectual of the time. He played an important role in the early decades of the Visigothic Kingdom’s conversion to the Catholic Faith from Arianism, and offered counsel to various royal officials, nobles, and ecclesiastical leaders on theological and other issues. He presided over the Second and Third Synods of Seville (in 619 and 624 respectively), and the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633 (which was for all of Spain, given that Toledo served as the capital of the Visigothic Kingdom).

St. Isidore of Seville, Letter 8: To Bishop Eugenius

In Letter 8, St. Isidore appears to be responding to some theological inquiries from Bishop Eugenius, in particular about the position of St. Peter with respect to the other Apostles, and the implications this has for the authority of the Pope.

In section 2, St. Isidore addresses the question of St. Peter’s authority over the other Apostles, and how this authority is now exercised by the Bishop of Rome (§2)¹:

But concerning the question of the equality of the Apostles, Peter takes precedence over the others because he deserved to hear from the Lord: “You will be called Cephas; you are Peter” (John 1:42) and other things; and he first received in the Church of Christ the honor of the priesthood not from any other but from the very Son of God and the Virgin. It was said to him even after the resurrection of the Son of God by the same: “Feed my lambs” (John 21:15). Christ designated the prelates of the churches by the name of lambs. Although his dignity of power is transferred to all Catholic bishops, yet in a special way and with a singular privilege it remains forever higher to the bishop of Rome as the head than to all the other members.

We can see from this short paragraph several key assertions by St. Isidore with respect to the papacy:

1. St. Peter had precedence over the other Apostles.
2. Christ Himself directly established this precedence, which St. Isidore confirms by citing two places in St. John’s Gospel: Christ’s renaming of Simon to “Cephas” or “Peter” (meaning “Rock”) in John 1, and His entrusting of His flock to him after His Resurrection in John 21.
3. The “lambs” over whom St. Peter had charge were the other bishops.
4. While other bishops possess the same “dignity of power” of St. Peter, the Bishop of Rome, as the successor of St. Peter, possesses a dignity of power that is unique and singular to him.
5. The “precedence” of St. Peter over the other Apostles will exist “forever” in the Bishop of Rome in a “special way and with a singular privilege.”
6. The Pope relates to the other bishops as head to members.

Many non-Catholics often depict statements about the other Apostles and/or bishops possessing the same “dignity of power” (or something similar) as St. Peter and/or the Pope as a point against the Catholic Church. But this is not so, as we see from St. Isidore’s letter. The Catholic Church has always believed that every bishop in some sense exercises the power of the keys bestowed by Christ on St. Peter. However, they do so through St. Peter, in whom they find the origin of their authority and the unity of the apostolic college. Thus, they cannot exercise this power contrary to St. Peter’s own (or the Pope’s).

For example, in each Catholic diocese throughout the world, every Catholic is under a bishop who, like the Pope, exercises the authority of the keys to teach, govern, and sanctify the Church. Thus, in the day-to-day, their bishop exercises the same authority of the keys over them that the Pope exercises over his own flock in the diocese of Rome. This reality is in no way incompatible with the reality of the Pope possessing a superior key authority, as the ultimate holder of those keys. It is obvious that St. Isidore saw no tension between these two realities: that every bishop possesses a degree of authority that is the exact same as the Pope’s, and also that the Pope’s authority remains unique, singular, and if need be, superior.

This is confirmed by the fact that St. Isidore also affirms that the precedence of St. Peter over the other Apostles will exist “forever” in the Bishop of Rome over all other bishops. This precedence is, he says, analogous to the precedence of the head over the members of the body. Likewise, the fact that he says this precedence will last “forever” due to a “special” and “singular privilege” directly bestowed by Christ is a remarkable statement in favor of the Catholic doctrine of the indefectibility of the Church, which teaches that the Church will never be essentially destroyed in its existence, structure, or teaching to the end of the world. Once more, while not explicitly affirming papal infallibility, it would be quite absurd to think that St. Isidore believed Christ would establish papal authority for His Church “forever,” require it to be obeyed (at least normatively), and not at the same time preserve that authority by preventing it from binding the Church to error. This would undermine the essential purpose of establishing an authority for the whole Church that would exist “forever,” as St. Isidore says.

In the third and final section of his short letter, St. Isidore asserts that failing to obey the Pope results in the schism of the “Acephali,” or the “headless” (§3)²:

Thus whoever, separated from the head, does not reverently exhibit the due obedience to him, renders himself subject to the schism of the Acephali [“headless”], inasmuch as the Holy Church approves and defends the following statement of holy Athanasius concerning the belief in the Holy Trinity, as if it were an article of the Catholic faith: “Unless everyone believes this faithfully and 47 | 49 firmly, he will not be able to be saved.”

This fits neatly with St. Isidore’s earlier analogy of the Pope being the “head” of the bishops (i.e. “members”) of the Church, which would undoubtedly include all Christian laymen as well.

Conclusion

From this short letter, we can see that St. Isidore of Seville believed the following about the papacy:

1. Christ Himself gave St. Peter precedence over the other Apostles in a “special way and with a singular privilege.”
2. This precedence has been passed on to St. Peter’s successors, the Bishops of Rome, who relate to the other bishops of the Church as “head” to “members.”
3. The Bishops of Rome will retain this precedence “forever,” which logically supports the Catholic doctrines of the indefectibility of the Church and papal infallibility.
4. If anyone separates from the Pope by failing to render him obedience, he has fallen into the schism of the “headless.”

Thus, we see once more that St. Isidore had a thoroughly Catholic understanding of the papacy.

Footnotes

1. St. Isidore of Seville, Gordon B. Ford, Jr., trans., The Letters of St. Isidore of Seville, 2nd rev. edition (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1970), 47. ↩︎
2. St. Isidore of Seville, Gordon B. Ford, Jr., trans., The Letters of St. Isidore of Seville, 2nd rev. edition (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1970), 47, 49. ↩︎