The First Pope of the Catholic Church | Overview & Importance
Who was the first pope of the Catholic Church?
Peter was the first pope of the Catholic Church. He was one of Jesus' 12 disciples. He traveled to Rome in order to spread Christianity.
When did the first pope start?
The first pope, Peter, led the early Christians and traveled to Rome sometime between the years 30 AD and 70 AD. We do not know the exact dates since there are few records from that era.
Who was the first Roman pope?
There are several possible answers to this question. All popes were subjects of the Roman Empire, so one can say that St. Peter was the first Roman pope.
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The pope is the head of the Catholic Church. So, who was the first pope of the Catholic Church? The first pope was was Saint Peter. Peter's real name was Simon. When he became an apostle of Jesus Christ (the founder of the Christian faith), Jesus gave him the name "Cephas," meaning "rock" in the Aramaic language. Petros is the Greek translation of the same word. The reason we use the Greek term is because Greek was the language used to write the New Testament of the Bible. Almost everything we know about Peter comes from the New Testament. There are very few objective historical documents about his life.
Like the rest of Jesus' apostles, Peter was an Aramaic-speaking Jew from the Roman province of Judaea (a land that more or less corresponds to the modern nation of Israel). Peter's brother Andrew was another one of Jesus' apostles, and both men are considered to be saints by the Catholic Church.
According to the Bible, Peter and Andrew, who were both fishermen, became followers of Jesus after Jesus helped them catch a copious amount of fish. (The earliest Christian symbol was an image of the fish. A similar story in the Bible occurs after Jesus's resurrection.)
One of the most important stories about Peter recounts how he denies knowing Jesus three times in order to escape persecution for being one of Jesus's followers. However, after Jesus's death and later resurrection, Christ appears to Peter before any of his other disciples. For this reason, and many others, Peter was the most important of Jesus' disciples. It was to Peter that Jesus entrusted the founding of his church. This belief rests on the following passage from the New Testament:
"And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.' Matthew 16:18
Catholics believe that this passage indicates that Jesus gave Peter the "keys to the kingdom" and the authority to establish a church in the name of Christ himself. This part of the Bible, more than any other, is used to justify the establishment of the Catholic Church and its legitimacy as the supreme Christian authority on earth. This belief is called the Petrine doctrine, named after Peter.
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The Early Catholic Church
Sometime after Christ's death, Peter traveled to the city of Rome in order to spread the faith. Rome was the capital of the Roman Empire and the seat of power in the Mediterranean world. Spreading the faith in Rome would, therefore, seem like a logical thing to do if one wanted to spread the message of Jesus to the world.
The word "pope" is derived from pappas, the Greek word for father. Peter, who was the first pope of the Catholic Church, was therefore regarded as the father of the Catholic Church.
During the first century AD, the Romans severely persecuted Christians. They saw Christians as a dangerous and fanatical sect. Peter was himself caught and executed by the Romans during the reign of the emperor Nero. He is believed to have died sometime around the decade of the 60s in the first century AD. No one knows the exact dates, though, of his birth and death.
The Romans practiced a polytheistic religion, and the monotheistic faith of the Christians seemed alien to the majority of the Roman people. At first, the religion was not very popular, but over the next two centuries, it spread rapidly throughout the Mediterranean region. It simultaneously gained respectability as more and more prominent Romans left their traditional beliefs behind to convert to Christianity.
Linus, who was the first pope after Peter, reigned until about the year 76 AD.
Here is a list of the next 10 popes that followed Linus:
- Anacletus
- Clement I
- Evaristus
- Alexander I
- Sixtus I
- Telespherus
- Hyginus
- Pius I
- Anicetus
- Soter
We know very little about the lives and teachings of the early popes. The fact that Christianity was a persecuted sect meant that there were very few written records produced that have survived. Much of the information we have about the early Christians comes from archaeological remains found in Rome and elsewhere. Among these are the catacombs in Rome: underground burial chambers that contain a number of Christian graves.
It should also be noted that during the first millennium of the history of the Christian faith, there were a number of competing Christian sects. The bishop of Rome was not recognized by all Christians as their leaders. These competing sects would sometimes come into conflict with Catholic authorities. One sect in particular, the Arians, would go on to present a problem for the popes of the Early Middle Ages. Arianism was popular among many of the Germanic tribes that had invaded the Roman Empire. Converting Arian Christians to Catholicism later would prove to be a challenge.
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Constantine, Rome, and the Catholic Church
The Roman emperor Constantine (272-337) decreed official toleration for Christians throughout the empire. He converted to Christianity himself on his deathbed. This act was a transformative event for the history of Christianity. By the end of the 4th century, Christianity was made the official religion of the empire and began to truly thrive. This act made the pope a powerful political and religious leader, a role he would maintain even after the fall of the Roman empire in 476 AD. It was also in the 5th century that Rome, more than any other city, became the most important Christian center in the Mediterranean region.
Constantine's action established a firm foothold for the church that it would retain until the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. The Catholic Church remained the most powerful in Europe for nearly 1200 years. Even today, it is the largest Christian denomination on Earth.
The modern pope lives in the Vatican City, a small nation located entirely within the boundaries of the city of Rome. This nation is the remnant of a much larger political entity called the Papal States. The Papal States once encompassed a larger area in Central Italy, but the Papal States were shrunken after Italian became a unified nation in 1861. Today, the pope's political power is limited to the confines of the smallest country on Earth; he is, however, still the spiritual leader of nearly 1 billion people, a position he was partially able to secure because of the prior political patronage of Constantine and his successors.
St. Peter was the first pope of the Catholic Church. He was one of Jesus's original 12 disciples. He traveled to Rome, the center of the Roman Empire and one of the major hubs of Early Christianity, sometime after the death of Jesus in order to spread the religion. Christians were originally a persecuted sect, but the conversion of the emperor Constantine in the 4th century AD allowed for official toleration of the religion. By the 5th century AD, Rome had gained primacy over the other centers of Christianity, and the pope became the most important figure in the Christian religion.
Video Transcript
The Early Papacy
Have you ever been to Vatican City? The halls of the Vatican, and specifically St. Peter's Basilica, are some of the grandest and most ornate edifices in the world, a testament to the grandeur of the Catholic Church and the global religion that is based there. A country unto itself, the home of the Catholic Pope is completely surrounded by the city of Rome. Considering what it is today, it's hard to believe that the Pope and Christianity were once routinely persecuted inside the city's walls. In this lesson, we'll explore just how that changed through examining the changing nature of the Catholic Church's highest office, the Pope.
St. Peter & Rome
The current papacy traces its lineage all the way back to Jesus' most revered apostle, Peter. Prior to Jesus' crucifixion, Jesus purportedly gave the reins of his budding religion to Peter, symbolically gifting him the 'keys to the kingdom'. Peter is therefore recognized by the modern Catholic Church as the first Pope. Peter and the other Apostles after Jesus' crucifixion traveled across the Roman countryside spreading the teachings of Jesus and gaining followers along the way. Eventually, Peter set up his personal ministry in Rome, in the capital of the Empire.
However, it was not all travel and happy converts for the early Christians, especially in Rome. Christianity was considered a small religious cult during the Roman Empire, and Christians were subject to intermittent but brutal bouts of persecution at the hands of Roman authorities and Roman mobs. Some were tortured and killed for refusing to pray to the Roman gods or acknowledge the authority of the Roman Emperor, while others were fed to lions and tigers as part of Roman sporting events.
Because of this, early Christians were rather secretive in their worship. The great cathedrals that dot the landscapes of Europe and North America today were nonexistent in Roman times; instead, Christian worship was often conducted inside the homes of Christians. As such, there was no large, overarching organizational structure as there is today in the Catholic Church.
The Church in Rome, founded by Peter, Paul, and other Apostles, was considered a bishopric of the early Christian Church, but it was only one of several. Other important bishoprics existed in Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and other ancient metropolises. Because of this, the Popes of the first few centuries A.D. were actually little more than bishops of Rome rather than Popes in the traditional sense. What we know of them shows many of them engaging in intense theological debates with the bishops of other cities while simultaneously conducting regular mass for their followers. With Christianity still a small religious cult inside Rome, many of these early Popes died for their beliefs, martyred alongside their followers during episodes of persecution at the hands of Roman authorities.
After Constantine
The profile of Christianity and the Church in Rome changed significantly in the early 4th century A.D., soon after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine. Constantine had been enamored with Christianity as soon as he learned of it, and in approximately 313 A.D., he purportedly saw a Christian vision the night before a battle, commanding him to fight in the name of the Christian god. After adorning his soldiers' shields with Christian symbols and winning the battle, Constantine declared himself a Christian. Within the century, Christianity was the state religion of the Roman Empire.
With the institution of Christianity as Rome's state religion, the profile of the Roman bishopric was similarly raised. For the first time, open and large Christian churches were built inside Rome and in the countryside, whose size and importance soon eclipsed the temples to the old Roman gods. By the 5th century A.D., the Bishop of Rome and other major fathers in the Catholic Church began to claim Rome's primacy over other important bishoprics of the Church. Though this occurred not without argument, many other Church fathers accepted this claim because of its original establishment by Peter, the Apostle Jesus charged with spreading Jesus' word after His death. Over the following centuries, various Popes consolidated their control over the rest of the Church hierarchy and made political alliances with Roman politicians and later, leaders of the Holy Roman Empire, which enhanced the stature of Rome and the Church.
Lesson Summary
The Pope today is considered the supreme leader of the Catholic Church. In fact, common Church doctrine even states that the Pope is infallible! However, the Pope in Rome did not always have the power he has today, and it was not always certain that the Pope would necessarily be in Rome. After the death of Jesus, Christianity grew across the Roman Empire as Peter, Paul, and other disciples spread the word and converted Romans to Christianity. As Christianity grew, the churches and the bishops who led them in major Roman cities - Rome included - were on relatively equal footing. After the conversion of Constantine, however, the bishop in Rome gained primacy over the others, in part because of the importance of the Apostle Peter who not only died in Rome, but started its Christian Church. Popes in Rome after the conversion of Constantine made additional political maneuvers, which solidified Rome's spot as the most important church in Christendom and made the Pope of Rome the supreme leader of Christianity.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the video, your goal should be to:
- Recall who was considered the first Pope
- Examine the history of early Christianity and the papacy in Rome
- Consider how the Church in Rome changed after Constantine's conversion
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