• Start
  • Werke
  • Einführung Anleitung Mitarbeit Sponsoren / Mitarbeiter Copyrights Kontakt Impressum
Bibliothek der Kirchenväter
Suche
DE EN FR
Werke Alexander von Alexandrien (250-328) Epistula ad Aeglonem (fragmenta) Notes and Elucidations to Alexander of Alexandria

II.

(Since the body of the Catholic Church is one, etc., p. 296.)

As so shortly preceding the meeting of the Great Council, this letter is most important as a clear testimony to the meaning the first council attached to that article of the Creed which affirms "one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church." We must compare the Treatises of Cyprian for the West, with this and the Letter of Firmilian 1 for the East, as clearly elucidating the contemporary mind of the Church, and hence the meaning of those words which reflect their mind in the Creed. To make any reflections of my own would be out of place, save only, negatively, as I compare it with the modern creed of the Council of Trent (Pius IV.), which defines the Catholic Church to be the communion which acknowledges the Church of Rome as "the mother and mistress of churches."

The concluding section of this letter is decisive as to the absolute autonomy of the Alexandrian dioecese. 2 To all the other churches Alexander merely communicates his sentence, which they are all bound to respect. Whether the Christian Church at this period reflected the Apostolic Institutions is not the question, but merely what its theory was in the fourth century, and how far East and West accorded with the theory of Cyprian.


  1. Vol. v. p. 390, this series. ↩

  2. See the force of this spelling, p. 240, supra. ↩

pattern
  Drucken   Fehler melden
  • Text anzeigen
  • Bibliographische Angabe
  • Scans dieser Version
Übersetzungen dieses Werks
Epistle to AEglon, Bishop of Cynopolis, Against the Arians
Kommentare zu diesem Werk
Notes and Elucidations to Alexander of Alexandria

Inhaltsangabe

Theologische Fakultät, Patristik und Geschichte der alten Kirche
Miséricorde, Av. Europe 20, CH 1700 Fribourg

© 2023 Gregor Emmenegger
Impressum
Datenschutzerklärung