ABSTRACT
Throughout the Middle Ages the Papacy occupied a central position in the life of the Western Church. The supremacy of the Bishop of Rome might be challenged at various times by secular rulers jealous of his authority within their kingdoms, by bishops who resented papal interference within their dioceses, or by dissident heretical groups who questioned the fundamental premisses on which papal claims were based; yet from the period of the conversion to Latin Christianity of the various Germanic tribes until the Reformation, no area of Western Europe was immune from the doctrinal and jurisdictional authority of Rome, and the history of the Papacy provides a common thread running through a long period of dogmatic and ecclesiological development.
