S7 POPE. 



not exceeding four from each kirk session in the city, and certain 

 elected persons according to a number and qualification fixed by the 

 board of supervision. In parishes where there is no assessment, the 

 management is to continue under the old system. There is thus in 

 this Act no machinery for levying or exacting a rate for the poor, 

 unless in those parishes where the persons more immediately concerned 

 agree to such a measure. It is held, however, that the facilities which 

 the statute gives the poor for exacting from the respective parochial 

 authorities the relief to which they are entitled, will render it neces- 

 sary to put more extensive funds at the disposal of the distributors of 

 relief, and this can only be accomplished through the system of 

 assessment. When persons apply for relief, it is provided that, though 

 they have no settlement, if the claim would be just in the case of their 

 having one in the parish where it is made, subsistence must be afforded 

 them till it is determined what parish is liable. When relief is refused, 

 the applicant may apply to the sheriff, who may grant an order for 

 temporary relief, and then hear parties, and decide whether the appli- 

 cant is or is not entitled to relief. In this form, however, neither the 

 sheriff nor any other judge can decide on the adequacy of relief. The 

 initial step to any judicial appeal against the amount of the relief 

 afforded, is by an application to the board of supervision ; and on that 

 body reporting its concurrence, the applicant is placed on the poor-roll 

 of the court of session, where he has the privilege of the question being 

 discussed gratis. By this Act, provision is made for medical attend- 

 ance and medicines, being part of the system of pauper relief, and for 

 the education of pauper children. It is provided, that for the purposes 

 of the Act, parishes may be united into " combinations." By a special 

 clause, nothing in the Act is to be construed as entitling the able-bodied 

 to relief, and their claim is thus left in the state of doubt in which it 

 stood before the passing of the Act. Men deserting their wives and 

 children are made liable to punishment as vagrants, a provision which 

 it is hoped may afford a remedy to a defect which has long charac- 

 terised the law of Scotland the absence of any means by which 

 deserted wives can make effectual claim on their husbands for suste- 

 nance to themselves and their children, without a regular action in the 

 court of session. By the new Act, a new and more specific mode of 

 apportioning the assessment between landed and other property has 

 been attempted to be established ; but this provision is already a fruit- 

 ful source of dispute and litigation. The time necessary to acquire an 

 industrial settlement is increased from three to five years. 



POPE (Papa, in Latin) is the title assumed by the bishop of Rome 

 as head of the Roman Catholic Church. The word papa, or papas, 

 meaning " father," is used by the Greeks to denote a presbyter. In 

 the early ages of the church it was given to the bishops hi general. 

 (Ducange, ' Gloasarium ; ' Moreri, ' Dictionnaire Historique.') Gregory 

 VII., in a council held at Rome, A.D. 1076, decreed that the title Papa 

 -li'mM be 'given only to the bishop of Rome, as a mark of superior 

 respect. 



There are three offices or dignities united in the person of the 

 Roman pontiff. He is 1, the primate or head of the Roman Catholic 

 world ; 2, he is bishop of Rome and metropolitan of its province ; 3, he 

 is the temporal sovereign of the Papal State. His authority and the 

 manner of his administration in the last-mentioned capacity are 

 described under PAPAL STATES in the Gioo. Div. We may, however, 

 here add, that in 1860 a very material alteration has taken place in the 

 dominions of the Pope. The far greater part of the territories there 

 mentioned as owning his sovereignty, have transferred their allegiance 

 to Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia, and the power of the Pope is now 

 nearly circumscribed within the Legation of Rome, and the Delegations 

 of Ancona, Viterbo, Orvieto, and Civita Vecchia, and even there it is 

 in effect only maintained by the presence of French troops. 



Considered as pontiff and primate of the Roman Catholic church, 

 the pope has a very extensive spiritual authority over the members, 

 both clerical and lay, of that communion. The limits of this authority 

 are however variously defined even by Roman Catholic theologians. 

 We cannot do better than quote on this subject the definition given hi 

 a work of considerable repute and written with great (liscriminatiun, 

 which in entitled ' Bibliothdque Sacr4e, ou Dictionnaire Univerael, 

 Historique, Dogmatique, Canonique, Ge'ographique, et Chronologique 

 -i Ecclesiastiques, par lea Reverends Peres Richard et 

 1, I I'uninicains ; reimprime' avec additions et corrections par une 

 > (5 d'Ecclesiastiques,' 20 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1822. Under the head 

 ' Pape,' section iii., ' DC la Puissance et Authority du Pape,' we read as 

 follows : 1. " All Catholics acknowledgejthat the pope holds by divine 

 right a primacy of honour, of precedence, and of authority and canonical 

 jurisdiction in the whole church, because he La the successor of St. 

 Peter, to whom Jesus Christ granted those privileges. (Matthew x. 

 2, and xvi. 17-19.) But is the pope infallible in his decisions con- 

 cerning law or discipline ? la he above the general council ? Has he 

 any power, direct or indirect, over sovereigns and kingdoms ? Divines 

 are very much divided in opinion upon these questions." 



2. " We may consider the pope either as a private and individual 

 doctor of the law, or as the sovereign pontiff speaking ' ex cathedra ' in 

 his quality of head of the universal church, to which church he proposes 

 something to be believed as an article of divine faith, under pain of 

 heresy, and this he does after having prayed, having consulted the 

 sacred college of cardinals, and employed the other customary means in 

 order to ascertain the truth, Kow the French theologians in general, 



POPE. 



638 



agreeably to the fourth proposition of the Gallican church, maintain, 

 that even in this case, when he speaks ' ex cathedra,' the pope is not 

 infallible, and that his decisions become infallible only after they have 

 been accepted by the church, either in council assembled or dispersed 

 in its various congregations throughout the world. The Italian 

 divines on the contrary, commonly assert that the pope is infallible 

 when he speaks ' ex cathedra,' independently of the consent of the 

 church. They ground their assertion on the passage in St. Matthew, 

 ' Tu es Petrus,' &c. ' How,' say they, ' can the church be infallible, if 

 the foundation upon which it is built be not infallible ? Doesthe church 

 rest upon Peter, or Peter upon the church ? ' To this their opponents 

 reply 1, that the rock upon which the church is built means faith, 

 and not the person of Peter ; 2, that the promise of infallibility was 

 made to the whole church, and not to Peter individually ; 3, that all 

 the passages which are quoted from the Scriptures or the fathers in 

 favour of the infallibility of the pope apply not to the individual who 

 is seated on the chair of St. Peter, but to the chair itself, to the see of 

 Rome, the Roman church, the whole succession of the Koman pontiffs, 

 the universal church in short." The writer of the ' Bibliotheque 

 Sacre'e ' winds up these conflicting statements by saying, " This 

 question is not one of faith." To this remark however some will 

 object, that the question is considered as one of faith at Rome, for as 

 the Roman (or, as the French call them, the ultramontane) canonists 

 assert the infallibility of the pope by divine right, it follows that they 

 consider the belief in that infallibility, and in all the decisions ema- 

 nating from it, as matters of faith ; and as long as this controversy 

 remains unsettled, a door is always open to schism, as it happened in 

 the council of Basel, and the alleged unity of the Roman Catholic 

 church is only nominal and precarious. 



3. " The same theologians who assert the infallibility of the pope, 

 assert also his superiority above the general councils, and that he has 

 the right of dissolving them, transferring them to a different place, of 

 approving or condemning, reforming or abrogating their decisions. 

 Those divines, on the contrary, who maintain that the pope is not 

 infallible, maintain also that he is subject to the general councils both 

 as to faith and discipline. This is the opinion of the French clergy, 

 embodied in the second of the four propositions of the Gallican church, 

 promulgated in 1682, which 'approves the decision of the council of 

 Constance, declaring the councils general to be superior to the pope in 

 spiritual matters." The assertors of this proposition say that ' the 

 pope is the head of the faithful nearly in the same manner as the 

 general of a monastic order is the head of all the members of that 

 order, to whom however he is subject when they are assembled in a 

 general chapter.' It may be observed here, that besides the council of 

 Constance, which decided this question of the superiority of the 

 general councils over the pope, there is the council of Basel, which 

 asserted the same principle, and that the council of Basel is reckoned 

 by the French theologians among the legitimate councils of the church, 

 but is not so reckoned by the canonists of Rome." 



4. " There are some writers who pretend that the pope has by divine 

 right a direct power, both spiritual aud temporal, over the whole world. 

 Others maintain that he has at least an indirect power in temporal 

 matters, inasmuch as he can dispose of kingdoms and crowns, and 

 transfer them from one prince to another whenever that is required for 

 the welfare of souls. Lastly, other divines are of opinion that neither 

 the pope nor the church has any power, direct or indirect, in the 

 temporal matters of kingdoms and states, that they cannot in any case 

 depose kings, nor release their subjects from their oath of allegiance. 

 In support of their argument, these divines show that Jesus Christ 

 made open profession of poverty, that he solemnly declared that his 

 kingdom was .not of this world, and they allege other passages as 

 equally decisive ; and they say that the Saviour bequeathed to the 

 church a purely spiritual authority, to be exercised in preaching, 

 baptising, instructing, and loosening or binding sinners. The early 

 fathers have said that the church has only the spiritual sword to keep 

 its children within the path of duty. The most celebrated universities 

 of Germany, France, and Spain have confirmed this opinion, which is 

 that .of the Gallican church and of Bossuet himself. The contrary 

 opinion, namely, that the popes have a temporal jurisdiction over 

 kings and principalities, is not of older date than the time of 

 Gregory VJI." 



Such are the statements of orthodox Roman Catholics in a work 

 which condemns all heretics and Jansenism : for the Jansenists assert 

 that the pope has no authority over the bishops, but only a superiority 

 of rank ; that all the bishops are vicars of Christ, and that the pope is 

 the first among them, and that his jurisdiction is not to confer epis- 

 copacy, but only to watch over the conduct of the other bishops, &c. 

 These opinions of the Jansenists are found, among other works, in the 

 ' Acts of the Synod of Pistoia held by De Ricci ' (' Atti e Decreti del 

 Concilio Diocesano di Pistoia dell' anno 1786 '), which were condemned 

 by Pope Pius VI. As for the Protestant and Reformed churches, they 

 do not acknowledge any authority or jurisdiction in the pope, except 

 over his own diocese as bishop of Rome, or at most over the other 

 dioceses of the province of Rome as metropolitan. The Greek, 

 Armenian, Jacobite, and Nestoriau churches likewise disclaim his 

 authority. Several Roman Catholic writers have endeavoured to trace 

 the growth of the supremacy of the Roman see over the churches of 

 the West, which supremacy they assert was once limited to the pro- 



