Thyatira represents then Medieval or Papal Church,

A Brief History of the Papacy

Pope means “Papa,” or “Father.” Initially it applied to all Western bishops, but at about 500 A.D. it began to be restricted to the Bishop of Rome (for 500 years the Bishops of Rome were NOT popes).

Peter

The Roman Catholic tradition that Peter was the first pope is fiction, without any historical (or Biblical) basis whatsoever. There is no evidence that Peter was ever a Bishop of Rome. (His own foreboding over successors appears in 1 Pet 5:3: “Neither as being lords over [God’s] heritage, but being ensamples to the flock.”) Early Roman Bishops attempted to influence and control other bishops, but with no significant effect.

Silvester I (314-335) was Bishop of Rome when Constantine virtually made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. Constantine regarded himself as head of the church, calling and presiding over the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325). The Bishops of Alexandria and Antioch were accorded full jurisdiction over their provinces, as was the Roman Bishop over his, without even a hint that they were subject to Rome.

By the end of the 4th century the churches and bishops had come to be largely dominated from five primary centers: Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria.

These Bishops had come to be called Patriarchs, of equal authority, each in control of their own province. After the division of the Empire (A.D. 395), Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexander came to acknowledge the leadership of Constantinople. Subsequently, the struggle between Constantinople and Rome began.

The Struggle for Supremacy

Siricius (395-398), Bishop of Rome, in his lust for worldly power claimed universal jurisdiction over the church. But unfortunately for him, in his day the Empire divided (395 A.D.) into two separate empires, East and West.

[This struggle remains to this day: it is the root of the bloodshed in the Croatia-Bosnian-Serbian conflict in the region of Yugoslavia today. There are three ethnic traditions, three religions, three different sources of support: the Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Muslims. There is no “high ground”: they all have accumulated atrocities over the past 1500 years.]

Leo I (440 – 461)

These “jawbone” attempts continued until Leo I (440-461), whom some historians regard as the first pope. The east was beset with controversies; the west, under weak emperors, was breaking up before the barbarians. He obtained from Emperor Valentinian III imperial recognition for his claim as Primate of All Bishops (445). In 452 he persuaded Attila the Hun to spare the city of Rome. In 455 he induced Genseric the Vandal to have mercy on the city. His reputation was made. He declared himself Lord of the Whole Church, advocated exclusive universal papacy, resistance to his authority was a sure path to Hell, and he advocated the death penalty for heresy. However, the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451), composed of bishops from all over world, had given the Patriarch of Constantinople equal prerogatives with the Bishop of Rome.

Fall of Rome

Simplicius (468-483) was the Roman “Pope” when the Western Empire came to an end (476). Free of civil authority, the fragmented kingdoms of the barbarians left ample opportunity for individual advantageous alliances, and, ironically, the Pope became the most commanding figure in the West.

Gregory I (590-604) is regarded by many as the first Pope. He appeared at a time of political anarchy throughout Europe. His conspicuous leadership over the various kings stabilized the times. He labored unceasingly over the purification of the church, deposed neglectful or unworthy bishops, opposed the sale of offices (“simony”), etc. In his personal life he was a good man, one of the purest and best of the popes. If more had been as he was the world would have a different estimate of the papacy.

Charlemagne

Zacharias (741-752) was instrumental in making Pepin, father of Charlemagne, King of the Franks (a Germanic people occupying western Germany and northern France). Stephen II (752-757) requested Pepin to lead his army to Italy and conquer the Lombards, which had pillaged Italy. He succeeded and gave a large part of central Italy to the Pope, which was the beginning of the Papal States, a temporal dominion which continued for 1100 years (until King Victor Immanuel returned these lands to the Kingdom of Italy in 1870.) Pepin’s son, Charlemagne, (who was also the grandson of Charles Martel, who had saved Europe from Islam by his victory at the Battle of Tours, 732) was one of the greatest rulers of all time. He reigned 46 years with many wars and conquests of vast magnitude. His realm included what is now Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, and parts of Spain and Italy.

He helped the Pope and the Pope helped him. He was one of the greatest influences in bringing the Papacy to a position of world power. After Charlemagne’s death, the Treaty of Verdun (843) divided his empire into what became the foundations of Germany, France and Italy, and a ceaseless struggle between the Popes and the German and French kings began. The “Holy Roman Empire” lasted 1000 years until Napoleon brought it to an end in 1806.

The Isidorian Decretals

Nicholas I (858-867) was the first Pope to wear a crown. It was about this time (857) that a book appeared, “The Isidorian Decretals,” which purported to be letters and decrees of Bishops and Councils of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. (Centuries later they were discovered to be deliberate forgeries.) They were designed to exalt the power of the Pope, stamping the Papacy with the authority of antiquity, antedating the Pope’s temporal power by five centuries. They are regarded as the most colossal literary fraud in history.

The Great Cleavage

Up to 869 all Ecumenical Councils had been held in or near Constantinople, and in the Greek language. Nicholas undertook to interfere in the affairs of the Eastern Church. He excommunicated Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who in turn excommunicated him. The claims of the Roman Church became unbearable and the East finally separated itself. (The breach became wider through the centuries. The brutal treatment of Constantinople by the armies of Pope Innocent II during the Cru- sades, and the creation of the dogma of Papal Infallibility in 1870 deepened the chasm even more.)

9th century: Eastern Church separated itself from the West (Rome). The East: Primitive Christianity + Greek & Oriental paganism. The West: Primitive Christianity + Greek & Roman paganism.

The Rule of the Harlots (904-963)

The 200 years between Nicholas I and Gregory VII (870-1050) are called the “midnight of the Dark Ages.” Bribery, corruption, immorality, and bloodshed mark this blackest chapter of the church.

Sergius III (904-911) had a mistress, Marozia. She, her mother Theodora, and her sisters filled the Papal chair with paramours and bastard sons and turned the Papal den into a den of robbers. This is called in history “the Rule of the Harlots” (904-963).

John X (914-928) was brought from Ravena to Rome and made Pope by Theodora for her more convenient gratification. He was smothered to death by Marozia, who then in succession raised to the Papacy Leo VI (928 929), Stephen VII (929-931), and John XI (931-936), her own illegitimate son.

Another of her sons appointed the four following Popes: Leo VII (936- 939), Stephen VIII (939 942), Martin III (942-946), and Agapetus II (946- 955). John XII (955-963), a grandson of Marozia, was guilty of almost every crime; he violated virgins and widows, lived with his father’s mistress, made the Papal Palace a brothel, and was killed while in the act of adultery by the woman’s enraged husband.

The Descent Continues (1012-1047)

Benedict VIII (1012 -1024) and John XIX (1024-1033) bought the Office of the Pope with open bribery. Benedict IX (1022-045) was made Pope as a boy 12 years old, through a money bargain with the powerful families that ruled Rome. He committed murders and adulteries in broad daylight; robbed pilgrims on the graves of martyrs; a hideous criminal, the people drove him out of Rome. Some call him the worst of all the Popes.

There were three rival Popes in 1045 – 1046: Benedict IX. Gregory VI, and Sylvester III. Rome swarmed with hired assassins; the virtue of pilgrims was violated. Clement II (1046-1047) was appointed Pope by Emperor Henry III of Germany “because no Roman clergyman could be found who was free of the pollution of simony and fornication.”

Golden Age of Papal Power (1049-1294)

The cry for reform was answered by Hildebrand who led the Papacy into its Golden Age (1049-1294). He controlled five successive administrations prior to his own: Leo IX (1049-1054); Victor II (1055-1057); Stephen IX (1057-1058); Nicolas II (1059 1061); and Alexander II (1061-1073). He became Gregory VII (1073-1085) and undertook a major reform, especially simony. Practically all bishops and priests purchased their offices from the kings and this brought him in conflict with King Henry IV, Emperor of Germany. Devastating wars followed and Italy was devastated by the opposing armies. Gregory was eventually driven from Rome and died in exile. But he had succeeded in making the Papacy independent of Imperial power.

Innocent III (1198-1216)

Innocent III (1198-1216) was the most powerful of all the Popes. He claimed to be “Vicar of Christ,” “Vicar of God,” “Supreme Sovereign over the Church and the World.” “All things on earth and in heaven and in hell are subject to the Vicar of Christ.” The kings of Germany, France, England, and practically all the monarchs in Europe obeyed his will, including the Byzantine Empire. Never in history has any one man exerted more power. He ordered two crusades; decreed transubstantiation, confirmed auricular confession, declared papal infallibility, condemned the Magna Carta, forbade the reading of the Bible in the vernacular, instituted the Inquisition, ordered the extermination of heretics, etc. More blood was shed under his direction and that of his immediate successors than in any other period of church history (except in the Papacy’s effort to crush the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries).

The Inquisition

Called “The Holy Office,” it was instituted by Pope Innocent III and perfected by Pope Gregory IX. Under it everyone was required to inform against heretics. Anyone suspect was liable to torture, without knowing the name of his accuser. The proceedings were secret. The Inquisitor pronounced sentence and the victim was turned over to civil authorities to be imprisoned for life or to be burned. The victim’s property was confiscated and divided between the church and the state.

The Inquisition claimed vast multitudes of victims in Spain, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands and did its most deadly work against the Albigenses.

The Albigenses, or Carthari, in southern France, northern Spain and northern Italy preached against the immoralities of the priesthood, worship of saints and images, completely rejected the clergy and their claims, opposed the claims of the Church of Rome, made great use of the Scriptures, and lived self-denying lives with a great zeal for moral purity. By 1167 they embraced a majority of the population of southern France and were very numerous in northern Italy. In 1208 Pope Innocent III ordered a crusade in which the bloody war of extermination utterly wiped out town after town—the inhabitants murdered without discrimination—until all of the Albigenses were utterly wiped out.

The Waldenses, a similar but not identical group in the same region emphasizing Bible reading and rejecting clerical usurpation and profli- gacy were similarly wiped out (but for the few survivors in the Alpine Valleys southwest of Turin who are now the leading Protestant body in Italy). It is recorded that in the 30 years between 1540 and 1570 no fewer than 900,000 Protestants were put to death by the Pope’s war for the extermination of the Waldenses.

For 500 years the Inquisition was the most diabolical thing of human history. For its record, none of the subsequent line of “holy” and “Infallible” Popes have ever apologized. Rather, their leadership and instigators have been elevated to sainthood.

Boniface VIII (1294-1303)

Boniface VIII (1294-1303), in his famous Bul, Unam Sanctam, he said, “We declare, affirm, define, and pronounce that it is altogether necessary for salvation that every creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” (However, he was so corrupt that Dante, who visited Rome during his pontificate, called the Vatican a “sewer of corruption,” and assigned him, along with Nicolas III and Clement V, to the lowest parts of Hell.)

French Control of the Papacy (1305-1377)

The Papacy had been victorious in its 200-year struggle with the German Empire, but met their match in Philip the Fair, King of France, with whom the history of modern France begins

After the death of Pope Benedict XI, the Papal Palace was removed from Rome to Avignon on the south border of France and for 70 years the Papacy was the mere tool of the French Court (1305-1377)

For the next 40 years there were two sets of Popes, one at Rome and one at Avignon, each claiming to be “Vicar of Christ,” hurling anathemas and curses at each other.

Renaissance Popes (1410-1503)

John XXIII (1410-1415), called by some the most depraved criminal who ever sat on the Papal throne, was guilty of almost every crime. As Cardinal in Bologna, 200 maidens, nuns and married women fell victim to his amours; as Pope he violated virgins and nuns; lived in adultery with his brother’s wife; was guilty of sodomy and other nameless vices; bought the Papal Office; sold Cardinalates to children of wealthy families; and openly denied the future life.

Pius II (1458-1464) was said to have been the father of many illegitimate children, spoke openly of the methods he used to seduce women, encouraged young men, and even offered to instruct them in methods of self indulgence. Paul II (1464-1471) “filled his house with concubines.” Sixtus IV (1471-1484): sanctioned the Spanish Inquisition, decreed that money would deliver souls from Purgatory, was implicated in a plot to murder Lorenzo de Medici and others who opposed his policies, and used the Papacy to enrich himself and his relatives. He made eight of his nephews Cardinals while some of them were mere boys. In wealth and pomp he and his relatives surpassed the old Roman families.

Innocent VIII (1484-1492) had 16 children by various married women. He multiplied church offices and sold them for vast sums of money, decreed the extermination of the Waldenses, appointed the brutal Thomas of Torquemada Inquisitor General of Spain, and ordered all rulers to deliver up heretics to him.

Alexander VI (1492-1503) is called the most corrupt of the Renaissance Popes: licentious, avaricious, depraved; he bought the Papacy, made many new cardinals for money, had a number of illegitimate children whom he openly acknowledged and appointed to high church office while they were yet children—and they with their father murdered cardinals and others who stood in their way. He had for a mistress a sister of the cardinal who became the next Pope, Pius III (1503).

Martin Luther

In the year 1483 in Eisleben, Saxony, a baby boy was born to a poor coal miner. As he grew up and observed the poverty of his father, this boy, named Martin, chose to pursue a different vocation. He decided to become a lawyer and, in 1501, entered the University of Erfurt, where he excelled in his studies.

As he came to the end of his schooling in 1504, an event took place which changed his life. While he was walking the campus grounds, a storm broke so forcefully that Martin fell on his face in fear. The thunder was deafening and lightning struck all around him, including a tree next to him. Instinctively, he cried out to the patron saint of coal miners, whose name he had heard invoked during his childhood, “Saint Anne! Save me from the lightning. If you save me I will become a monk.” Shortly thereafter the storm stopped.

Being a man of his word, Martin withdrew from Law school and entered an Augustinian monastery where he applied himself so diligently that he obtained a Doctorate of Theology within a few years. But the more he studied, the more troubled his heart became; for although he was becoming an expert in theology, he lacked peace personally. The question he repeatedly wrote in his diary was: “How can a man find favor with God”?

Disillusioned by a visit to Rome, Habbakuk 2:4 become his life text and on Oct 31, 1517, Luther nails 95 theses to the door at Wittenburg College. On. Dec 10, 1520, Bull excommunicated Luther, “retract within 60 days or death.” Luther burned it publicly and the Reformation is born.

The Centuries of Wars

Diet of Worms: 1521; Charles V, Emperor of “the Holy Roman Empire” (Germany, Spain, Netherlands and Austria) summoned Luther to appear. “Here I stand; I can do naught else; so help me God.”

The Centuries of Wars began:

• The war on the German Protestants (1566-1609)
• War on Protestants of Netherlands (1566-1609)
• Huguenot Wars in France (1572 -1598)
• Philip’s attempt against England (1588)
• Thirty Years War (1618-1648)

All these wars were started by Roman Catholic Kings urged on by the Pope and Jesuits for the purpose of crushing Protestantism. The thousands killed at the hands of the Caesars of Pagan Rome are dwarfed by the millions killed at the hands of the Vatican.

The Reformation Popes

Julius II (1503-1513) was called the Warrior Pope. The richest of the cardinals with vast income from numerous bishops and church estates, he bought the Papacy. He attained and personally led vast armies and issued indulgences for money.

Leo X (1513-1521) was Pope when Luther started the Protestant Refor- mation. He was made an Archbishop at 8; a Cardinal at 13; was appointed to 27 different church offices, which meant vast income, before he was 13. He appointed Cardinals as young as 7. He maintained the most luxurious and licentious court in Europe. This voluptuary reaffirmed the Unam Sanctam, in which it is declared that every human being must be subject to the Roman Pontiff for salvation. He issued indulgences for stipulated fees and declared the burning of heretics a divine appointment. Adrian VI (1522-1523). Paul III (1534-1549) had many illegitimate children. A determined enemy of the Protestants, he offered Charles V an army to exterminate them.

The Jesuits

Rome’s answer to the Lutheran secession: the Inquisition under the leadership of the Jesuits, an order founded by Ignatius Loyola, a Spaniard, on the principle of absolute and unconditional obedience to the Pope, having its object the recovery of territory lost to Protestants and Muslims and the conquest of the entire heathen world for the Roman Catholic Church. Their supreme aim: the destruction of heresy—that is, thinking anything different from what the Pope said or thought. For this accomplishment anything was justifiable: deception, immorality, vice, even murder.

In France they were responsible for St. Bartholomew’s Massacre; persecution of the Huguenots, revocation of the Toleration Edict, and the French Revolution. In Spain, Netherlands, south Germany, Bohemia, Austria, Poland, and other countries they led in the massacre of untold multitudes, and thus saved the Papacy from ruin.

St. Bartholomew’s Massacre

St. Bartholomew’s Massacre: Catherine de Medici, mother of the King, an ardent Romanist and willing tool of the Pope, gave the order and on the night of August 24, 1572, 70,000 Huguenots were massacred. There was great rejoicing in Rome. The Pope and his College of Cardinals went in solemn procession to the Church of San Marco and ordered the Te Deum to be sung in thanksgiving; he then struck a medal in commemo- ration of the massacre and sent a Cardinal to Paris to bear the King and Queen-Mother the congratulations of the Pope and Cardinals.

Evangelicals & Catholics Together

The most significant event in 500 years of church history: March 29, 1994: Joint declaration “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium.” The compromise of the Gospel lies at the heart of the agreement. But the Gospel hasn’t changed.

A Surprising Acknowledgment

May 21, 1995: the Pope asked forgiveness for all wrongs and crimes committed and permitted by the Roman Catholic Church throughout their history.