ABSTRACT
THE MEASURE BY which the Emperor Constantine the Great not only granted the Christian Church freedom of religious worship in 313, but also decreed the return of ecclesiastical goods confiscated during the persecutions, had necessarily far-reaching consequences for the local church of Rome. Throughout the preceding century and a half this church had assumed some position of leadership in doctrinal religious questions. The Constantinean settlement acknowledged this state of affairs. Moreover, the Roman church had been credited with some preeminence by a number of earlier writers and theologians who applied certain biblical texts, notably in the New Testament, to this church. It is nevertheless worthy of remark that this biblically based pre-eminence of the Roman church was asserted by writers and ecclesiastics outside Rome. This is important to bear in mind if the historical situation is to be properly assessed: there was neither before nor for some considerable time after the Constantinean peace any reference by the church of Rome itself to any biblical basis of its pre-eminent role among Christian communities.
