ST. PETER AND APOSTOLIC JURISDICTION
The Holy Father’s action in teaching that the bishops of the
Catholic Church receive their power of jurisdiction from Our Lord
through the Roman Pontiff rather than immediately from the
Saviour Himself must inevitably focus the attention of theologians
upon a question intimately related to that of the immediate source
of episcopal jurisdiction. Theologians must look with renewed
interest upon that section of their science which deals with the
immediate source of that power of jurisdiction within the kingdom
of God on earth enjoyed by the apostles themselves. Did the
original members of the apostolic collegium receive their power of
jurisdiction over the faithful immediately from Our Lord or did
they possess it as something coming to them from Christ through
Peter?
This question has had a long and highly interesting history
in the literature of scholastic theology. The Dominican Cardinal
John de Turrecremata, writing in the fifteenth century, and the
Jesuit theologian James Laynez, writing in the sixteenth, both
taught that the other members of the apostolic collegium received
their episcopal “ordination” from St. Peter rather than directly
from Our Lord Himself. They held that St. Peter alone had been
raised to episcopal or pontifical dignity directly by Christ. Neither
claimed the status of a complete and perfect theological conclusion
for his thesis. Both, however, obviously considered their teaching
on this point much more probable than its opposite.
John de Turrecremata devoted three chapters of the second book
of his Summa de ecclesia to a consideration of this question.1 The
thirty-second chapter is given over to an enumeration and ex­
planation of the various reasons brought forward in support of his
thesis. The next chapter lists the various objections presented by
the adversarii. Turrecremata, incidentally, takes cognizance of
twelve of these objections. The thirty-fourth chapter answers each
one of these objections in detail. In line with his usual procedure,
Turrecremata employs the chapter which is primarily intended to
answer objections in such a way as to bring out the full meaning
of his own teaching. The procedure by which he attempts to
1 Cf. Summa de ecclesia (Venice, 1561), pp. 144r ff.

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establish his thesis is an interesting example of fifteenth-century
theological method. It brings out both the deficiencies and the
strong points characteristic of activity within the sacred sciences
during that period.
Turrecremata brings forward nine distinct reasons in direct sup­
port of his contention. Curiously enough, however, he makes no
effort to introduce any very strict kind of order in the arrangement
of these auctoritates and rationes. His first two auctoritates tum
out to be statements contained in the Pseudo-Isidorean decretals,
statements attributed to Pope St Anacletus. In one of these
proofs he mentions the teaching of Remigius of Auxerre as con­
firming the doctrine attributed to Anacletus.
His third auctoritas is the famous Petrine text in the twentyfirst chapter of the Gospel according to St. John.2 He cites a
passage from the last of St John Chrysostom’s homilies on this
Gospel to show that Our Lord passed over the other apostles in
order to confide this task to St. Peter alone. Turrecremata, in­
cidentally, deals very briefly with this third argument, the only one
of his proofs ex auctoritate which has any objective theological
value. The fourth and fifth arguments are, like the first two, ap­
peals to pseudographic sources, the one ascribed to Pope St. Clement I and the other to Pope St. Marcellus I.
We must not forget that Turrecremata was trying to prove more
than merely the derivation of the other apostles’ jurisdiction from
that of St. Peter. It was his contention that St. Peter, alone among
the apostles, had been consecrated and given episcopal orders as
well as jurisdiction by Our Lord Himself. He was convinced that
St. Peter had not only granted their episcopal jurisdiction to the
other members of the apostolic collegium, but that he had also
consecrated them as bishops. This view comes to the fore in his
sixth argument, in which he draws a comparison between the case
of Paul and Barnabas and that of St Peter’s original associates
in the apostolate.
The Dominican Cardinal regarded it as perfectly evident that
St. Peter had given episcopal consecration to both Paul and
Barnabas. He was convinced that the prince of the apostles was
one of those who imposed hands upon the two great missionaries
to the Gentiles after the local Church at Antioch had received the
21:15-17.

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divine revelation that they had been set apart for special work for
God’s kingdom. Turrecremata reasoned that if St. Paul, whose
apostolic vocation and mission came immediately from Our Lord
stood in need of episcopal consecration at the hands of St. Peter,
then surely all the other members of the apostolic company required
the same ordination.
In the seventh of his arguments, Cardinal John de Turrecremata
appeals, surprisingly enough, to the venerable theological principle,
which he ascribes to both St. Jerome and St. Augustine, according
to which it is wrong to enunciate about God any statement which
cannot be demonstrated from the testimony of the divine Scriptures
or from reason. He then asserts that there is neither authority nor
reason for stating that any of the apostles other than St. Peter had
been made a bishop immediately and directly by Our Lord Himself.
He gives a detailed and astonishing powerful account of this ratio.
He takes cognizance first of the divine promise made to the
apostolic group as a whole, the promise described in the eighteenth
chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew.3 These words, he
contends correctly, certainly did not give the members of the
apostolic collegium either episcopal orders or episcopal jurisdiction
at the very moment they were uttered. St. Peter, he tells us, was
definitely not constituted a bishop by a similar and even a greater
promise previously made to him alone. Moreover, he insists, the
apostles had not as yet received the basic priestly dignity and thus
they could not have possessed the episcopal character. He appeals,
furthermore, to the basic fact that the words in question are those
of promise rather than of actual collation.
·
Turrecremata is likewise firm in his insistence that the power
granted to the apostles at the Last Supper was not of an episcopal
nature. He claims that the words “Do this in commemoration of
me” gave the assembled apostles merely presbyteral rather than
episcopal power. They made the Twelve capable of performing the
act which Our Lord had just performed, the act of the Eucharistic
sacrifice. The Dominican ecclesiologist is convinced that it would
be absolutely incorrect to assume that by His words at the Last
Supper Our Lord gave the apostles any power other than what
was either directly or by way of concomitance signified in the
formula itself. He likewise refuses to believe that Our Lord’s
3 Matt. 18:18.

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words to the apostles, empowering them to forgive sins, can be
interpreted as a grant of episcopal power. He adverts to the fact
that this phrase is employed in the ordination of a priest rather
than in the consecration of a bishop in the Catholic Church.
The eighth argument for this thesis brought forward in the
Summa de ecclesia is a kind of ratio convenientiae. The author
draws a parallel between the unity of the human race and that of
the true Church of Jesus Christ Turrecremata reasons that it is
fitting to believe that God would not have given the Church a type
of unity less effective than that which He placed in the human
family as such. Since the unity of the human family depends upon
its descent from one common father, he believes that the unity of
the Church must derive ultimately from one bishop, who conferred
episcopal power upon all the others, rather than from many original
possessors of the episcopal dignity. The ninth and final argument
is based upon a comparison between the unity of the Church in the
New Testament with that of the synagogue in the old dispensation.
Since Moses gave pontifical power immediately and directly only
to one man, it follows, according to Turrecremata, that it is more
probable that Our Lord gave this dignity immediately and directly
only to one of the apostles.
In his answers to the twelve distinct objections cited against his
thesis Turrecremata gives ample evidence of his stature as a
theologian. He is aware of the difficulty for his own contention
latent in the characteristically Cyprianic statement that Our Lord
had given “like power to all the apostles after the resurrection.”
He did not draw his objection from St Cyprian's De unitate, how­
ever, but from a passage in Gratian’s Decretum embodying much
the same meaning. Gratian’s canon is taken from the PseudoIsidorean collection. It is attributed to Pope St Anacletus.
Turrecremata remarks that the objection drawn from a passage
of this sort loses its effectiveness in the light of its own context
Obviously, according to the canon with which he is concerned (and
according to the manifest teaching of the Catholic Church), the
other apostles were not fully equal to St Peter in all of his
prerogatives. Furthermore, Turrecremata insists that, although
this teaching means all of the other apostles had episcopal powers,
as Peter himself had, it says nothing whatsoever about the question
under consideration. The thesis defended k ^qrrecremata in-

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sisted as forcefully as any other that all of the apostles’ powers came
from Our Lord. The question remained. Did the other apostles
receive their episcopal character from Christ through Peter or
directly from Our Lord Himself?
Turrecremata’s Summa de ecclesia is chronologically the first
relatively complete theological manual on the true Church of Jesus
Christ. Before his time most of the material now dealt with in
scholastic ecclesiology had been set forth only in the science of
canon law. Hence by far the most important immediate source
employed in the Summa de ecclesia is the Corpus juris canonici.
Another text very frequently used by Turrecremata is the scholastic
commentary on the scripture, the Glossa ordinaria. These sources
provided him with material which was very often pseudonymous.
The net effect of these pseudonymous writings, as they were
employed by Turrecremata, was merely to attribute genuine teach­
ings of Catholic tradition to the wrong literary sources. The doc­
trines which the Dominican Cardinal believed to have been set
down in writing by some great figures in the early Church were
actually taught and written by others. Ultimately Turrecremata’s
thesis is merely his way of explaining the truth actually propounded
by St. Leo the Great, the truth that “whatever He [Our Lord]
did not withhold from others, He only gave through him [St
Peter].” 4 Here as elsewhere, the False Decretals contributed no
decisive element for the elaboration of Catholic theology.
A century after Turrecremata had written his Summa de ecclesia
his thesis was presented to the Tridentine Fathers by the eminent
Jesuit theologian, James Laynez.8 His treatment of the subject,
however, differed somewhat from that of his predecessor. Tur­
recremata was primarily interested in bringing out all the theo­
logical teachings about the true Church of Jesus Christ. Hence
he was able to allocate this thesis as one portion of his material on
the primacy of St. Peter. Laynez, on the other hand, was pre­
eminently concerned with the thesis that the jurisdiction of bishops
in the Catholic Church comes to them from Our Lord through the
Holy Father. His teaching on the immediate origin of the apostles’
4 From the sermon on the second anniversary of his elevation to the pon­
tificate. MPL, 54, 149.
®Cf. Grisar's edition of the Disputationes Tridentinae (Innsbruck, 1886),
I, 77 ff.

ST. PETER AND APOSTOLIC JURISDICTION

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jurisdiction serves primarily as a kind of introduction to the other
question. Indeed, Laynez was not directly interested at all in
deciding whether or not the other apostles had actually received
episcopal consecration at the hands of St. Peter. He set out to
defend merely as more probable the opinion that the jurisdiction
of the other members of the apostolic collegium was derived im­
mediately from St. Peter. The question of episcopal orders, on
which he was in agreement with Turrecremata, enters his work
only incidentally.
The thesis is immeasurably better presented in the Disputationes
Tridentinae than it is in the older work. Laynez arranged the
elements of his demonstration much more effectively. He brings
out a much more complete and pertinent set of auctoritates, thus
giving tangible evidence of the enormous advances in patristic
studies made during the time which had elapsed since the writing
of the Summa de ecclesia. He was unaware, however, of the
falsity of what is now known as the Pseudo-Isidorean collection,
and so texts from this source appear in his proof side by side with
authentic pronouncements of the Fathers. Laynez appeals to the
writings of previous theologians, citing brief passages from
St. Thomas, from Richard of Middleton, and from Durandus.
Strangely enough, in this thesis he makes no mention of Turrecre­
mata, although his “proof from reason” is much the same as that
previously elaborated by the Dominican Cardinal.
The thesis defended by Turrecremata and by Laynez met very
serious opposition at the hands of two outstanding Dominican
theologians, Thomas de Vio Cardinal Cajetan and Francis de
Victoria. Cajetan was quite moderate in his teaching. He is of
the opinion that Our Lord gave immediately both episcopal orders
and episcopal jurisdiction to the other apostles as well as to St
Peter but in such a way that these other apostles received as a
favor what they were going to receive in the ordinary way from St
Peter. He is perfectly firm in his contention that “the power of
order and of jurisdiction eame to the other apostles and to all
ordinarie” from St Peter himself? He by no means rules out
the possibility that the other apostles actually received their epis­
copal consecration at the hands of St Peter. His main concern
® Cf. Cajetan’s De comparatione auctoritatis Papae et Concilii, c. 3, in the
Scripta theologica, edited by Pollet (Rome: The Angelicum, 1936), I, 27.

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was obviously to show that the thesis of Turrecremata with refer­
ence to the immediate source of jurisdiction in the rest of the
apostolic collegium was in no way necessary as a part of a demon­
stration that the Roman Pontiff exercised a genuine primacy of
jurisdiction over the entire Church of God on earth.
Victoria, on the other hand, was primarily interested in a thesis
which he admitted “was not going to please all the doctors, in law
or in theology, and which certainly would not please the Cardinals
Turrecremata and Cajetan.”7 He was trying to prove that any of
the apostles, and, for that matter, any bishop of the Church, could
validly choose a successor, and that this successor would be validly
a ruler in the Church apart from any consultation of St Peter.
The fact that Cajetan had refused to support the basic teaching
oi Turrecremata in this respect, however, had important repercus­
sions in the field of theology. Dominic Soto asserted that Turrecremata’s doctrine that the other apostles had received their power
of jurisdiction from St. Peter was unacceptable. "Veritati non
consonat," was Soto’s laconic qualification of this thesis.8 The
brilliant Spanish Dominican was convinced that all the other
apostles were Peter’s equals with reference to the apostolic func­
tion, except for the fact that Peter was their leader, empowered
to convoke a council and to perform the other acts a leader must
perform. Soto held that St. Peter possessed a plenitude of juris­
diction within the Church, not only as an apostle, but also as Our
Lord’s vicar. Those who succeeded St Peter in the government
of the local Church in Rome took his place as vicars of Christ rather
than as apostles. The other bishops in the Catholic Church (Soto
is manifestly speaking of residential bishops exclusively), receive
their apostolic authority only through the Roman Pontiff.
Like Dominic Soto, St Robert Bellarmine tried to prove that
it was not necessary to suppose that the other apostles had received
their jurisdiction immediately from St Peter in order to hold that
all the other residential bishops of the Catholic Church derived their
power of jurisdiction immediately from the Roman Pontiff. St
Robert appealed to four rationes in his attempt to show that the
other apostles had received their power of jurisdiction immediately
T Cf. Victoria’s Refectiones undecim (Salamanca, 1565), ρ. 73τ.
• 8Cf. Soto’s Commentaria in quartam sententiarum, {Venice, 1569), d, 20,
q. 1, a. 2, conclusio 4, p. 991.

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from Our Lord.® First, he cited the words in St. John's Gospel,
"As the Father hath sent me, I also send you,”10 and pointed to
commentaries on this text by St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril of
Alexandria, and Theophylactus. St. Robert’s second argument is
an appeal to the case of St. Matthias: his third, a mention of that
of St. Paul. The fourth element in this proof consists of two
propositions, that Our Lord chose the apostles and that these men
possessed jurisdiction.
Francis Suarez followed St. Robert on this question, teaching
that the power of jurisdiction had been given by Our Lord to the
other apostles “immediately, although in a different and less perfect
way” than to St. Peter.11 Francis Sylvius arrived at the same con­
clusion. Sylvius, incidentally, interpreted the text from St Leo
the Great to have reference merely to the bishops who are suc­
cessors of the apostles, and not to the apostles themselves.12 He
seems, however, to have seen more clearly than many of his fellow
theologians the inherent strength of Turrecremata’s thesis.
The late Cardinal Louis Billot made a definite and noteworthy
contribution to this particular section of sacred theology.1’ He
taught that all of the apostles were equal in their power of orders
and in their special apostolic charism of founding the Church mili­
tant of the New Testament He also held that the other apostles'
power of jurisdiction was exercised in two different ways. The
apostles other than St Peter had ordinary jurisdiction over in­
dividual local Churches. At the same time they all were com­
petent to issue commands to other Churches, and even to the
universal kingdom of God on earth.
Billot held that their ordinary jurisdiction, their power to rule
over the individual local Churches founded by them or otherwise
submitted to their direct control as individuals, was in a sense
derived from the plenitude of Peter’s universal pastoral power.
Their power to command other Churches, and even the universal
Church of Christ, on the other hand, must be considered, according
® Cf. De Romano Pontifice, 1.4, c. 23.
10 John, 2021.
u In his De fey®»·, L A c X
12In his Controversiae, L4,q,2,a.5.
13 Cf. Billot’s De ecclesia, 5th edition (Some: The Gregorian, 1927), 1,
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to Billot, as purely vicarial in nature. They possessed this power
only as the delegates of St. Peter.
Cardinal Billot’s thesis does away with the difficulties inherent
in the earlier hypotheses. Turrecremata had tried to bring out
the essential unity of apostolic jurisdiction, but his explanation
involved a series of claims to which the sources of divine revela­
tion gave no backing. Cajetan and his followers, on the other hand,
in their anxiety to bring out the immediacy of the apostolic mission
in each one of the apostles failed to stress the essential oneness
of the visible authority Our Lord had placed over His faithful.
Future progress in this thesis will depend in large measure upon
the advance already made by Louis Billot.

Joseph Cliffobd Fenton
The Catholic University of America,
Washington, D. C.

Love for the Church

Now, if the natural law enjoins us to love devotedly and to defend
the country in which we were bom and raised, so that a good citizen
will not hesitate to face death for his native land, it is very much more
the duty of Christians to be always inspired by similar affections towards
the Church. For the Church is the Holy City of the living God, bom
of God Himself, and built up and established by Him. Upon this
earth, it is true, it is now in pilgrimage. But, by instructing and guiding
men, it summons them to eternal happiness.
We are bound, then, to love dearly the country from which we have
received the means of enjoyment this mortal life affords, but we have a
much more urgent obligation to love with an ardent affection the Church,
to which we owe the life of the soul, a life that will endure forever. For
it is fitting to prefer the well-being of the soul to the good of the body,
since duties towards God are of â far more hallowed character than
those towards men. Moreover, in point of fact, the supernatural love
for the Church and the natural love of our own country proceed from
the same eternal principle, since God Himself is the Author of both.
—Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Ereunte lam anno, issued on Christmas
Day, 1888.

Answers to Questions
THE REPOSITORY ON HOLY THURSDAY

Question: (1) Is there any regulation as to how the repository
is to be set up for Holy Thursday? (2) What should be the shape
of the repository? (3) What material or materials should be
used in the construction of it? (4) What are the correct symbols
to be used in its ornamentation?
Answer: To reply, per modum unius, to the four questions
above, we should suggest the following:
The liturgical regulations governing the repository of Holy
Thursday are contained in the Missal and the Memoriale rituum.
The former says simply that a suitable place be prepared in some
chapel or altar in the church, adorned with hangings and lights,
where the chalice with the consecrated Host can be reserved until
the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday. The Memoriale
rituum adds that this place of reservation is to be apart from the
high altar, that it be hung with veils of precious material, not black
in color, that flowers as well as lights be used in its adornment but
no relics or images of saints. It makes mention also of a coffer
or chest (capsula) of elegant design and capable of being locked
with a key as the resting place of the chalice with the Host The
Missal casually names this capsula without giving any details about
its construction. The rubrics, both of the Missal and the Memoriale
rituum, say nothing of the opening in the coffer being a door. Ac­
cording to the latter authority, it might well be covered with a lid,
provided this can be securely locked.
Decrees of the Congregation of Sacred Rites (2873, ad 2 ; 3939,
ad 1) make it clear that the repository on Holy Thursday may be
properly called a sepulchre, as it is frequently denominated in
Europe, since the burial of Our Lord is commemorated in it along
with the institution of the Blessed Sacrament. The same Sacred
Congregation, however, (3939, ad 2) has legislated that mortuary
symbols or statues of the soldiers on guard or of the holy women
coming to anoint the body of our Lord, or of St. John, or the Blessed
Virgin are not to be used in the setting of the Holy Thursday
Sepulchre. Where the bishop, however, judges that this custom