"The historical reality, of course, is not quite so simple. The most famous of all 'papal' bible texts, Matthew 16:18 - "You are Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my Church...and I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven' - is quoted in no Roman source before the time of the Decian persecution in the middle of the third century, and the very roots of what may be called the foundation myths of the papacy are uncomfortably complicated."

"Christianity established itself in Rome some time in the AD 40s. Historians are now by and large agreed that for the best part of the century that followed there was nothing and nobody in Rome who could properly be called a pope."

"The earliest surviving succession list of the Roman bishops was recorded towards the end of the second century by St. Irenaeus of Lyon, as part of a general argument that the best way to refute heretics was to refer them to the doctrine that the bishops of the great apostolic churches had received from the Apostles."

"It reached its most famous expression in the early fourteenth century with Boniface VIII, whose bull Unam sanctam declared that it was 'altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff'. Everything the modern papcy claims, and very much more besides, such as the papal deposing power, was claimed for the post then."

"In a real sense it is, rather, the result of historical catastrophe, the French Revolution. The Revolution swept away the Catholic kings who had appointed bishops and ruled churches, and once more made the popes seem the embodiment of ancient certainties."

"The most crucial and important practical power possessed by modern popes is arguably the right to appoint the bishops of the world, and thereby to shape the character of the local churches. It is salutary to remind ourselves taht the popes did not possess this unchecked power in canon law until 1917, and the practice of direct papal appointment of bishops did not become general until the nineteenth century."

Eamon Duffy is an orthodox, and in fact very traditional, Irish Catholic, he is not challenging, criticizing or attacking the Papacy, the Church as a whole or Catholic teaching...a fact which is very much in evidence if you read his more theologically oriented books

Church history and the development of the papacy are a complex topic.

It's not saying that the quotation is invented. Even the craziest of Bible "scholars" would agree that the passage in question was in Matthew long before the middle of the third century, and there's no real question among reputable scholars that the quotation is part of the original text of Matthew.

What Duffy is saying is that there are no records of that passage being cited in support of the papacy before the 3rd Century. That may or may not be true (Duffy is a careful scholar, so I tend to think it is), but that doesn't mean it was wrong for the Church to recognize what that passage meant even after several centuries had gone by.

What he is referring to as "foundation myths" are, I think, the whole story of how the Church came to recognize what all is entailed with the office of the Bishop of Rome.

Thanks for the reply, Obi.

Again, I get what you're saying (to a large extent). But against the backdrop of the rest of the introduction it doesn't seem congenial to the traditional "Catholic Narrative".
In the context it appears to be some ad hoc reasoning to justify the papacy.

EVERYTHING we know about the Church at Rome in its first century or so points in the same direction, to a community which certainly thought of itself as one Church, but which was in practice a loose and often divided federation of widely different communities, each with its own pastors and its own distinctive and often conflicting liturgies, calendars and customs. It was in fact the threat of heresy within this seething diversity, and the Roman need to impose some sort of unity and coherence on the Church in the city, that led to the emergence of the Roman episcopate, and the firming up of the Roman community?s pride in the life and death among them of the two greatest apostles, into a succession narrative. By the 160s the graves of Peter and Paul had shrines built over them and were being shown to Christian visitors to Rome: by the early third century the bishops of Rome were being buried in a single crypt in what is now the catacomb of San Callisto, as a sort of visible family tree stretching back, it was believed, to the apostolic age. But all this was a construct, tidying the mess and confusion of real history into a neat and orderly relay race, with the baton of apostolic authority being handed from one bishop to another.

Tidiness was the keynote of this process. The earliest surviving successionlist of the Roman bishops was recorded towards the end of the second century by St. Irenaeus of Lyon, as part of a general argument that the best way to refute heretics was to refer them to the doctrine that the bishops of the great apostolic churches had received from the Apostles. Irenaeus's list started with the earliest bishop of Rome, Linus, and went up to the contemporary incumbent, his own friend Pope Eleutherius. And conveniently, this apostolic pedigree had exactly twelve names, the number of the tribes of Israel and the twelve Apostles, and the sixth was called Sixtus - or 'Mr. Six'!

To be fair, Eamon Duffy, while orthodox and a good scholar, does have certain Gallican tendencies. He is a bit reactionary in some of hiw writings against "ultra montanism" "

Is it unreasonable to ask if this undermines papal succession? If it seems that the papal seat, papal authority appears to become some after the fact measure not motivated by all concerns biblical/tradition?

I'm not trying to rabble rouse. I'm a devout Catholic. But these quotes, to a large extent, seem bothersome.

He's not saying that the succession in the Papacy is illegitimate, he is saying that our knowledge of how the succession of the Popes happened in the earliest days and our evidence of how the earliest Christians regarded succession is rather limited. One thing to understand is that this book is in a sense an abridgement of his earlier, more extensive work 'Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes' in which he goes into this topic in a lot more depth.

I'm glad you said it is some sort of an abridgement of SAINTS AND SINNERS. Does it contain enough new material that I should get it?

GKC

Honestly: not really....I don't think there is a single thing in this book that is not also in Saints and Sinners in more depth....not that 'Saints and Sinners' is itself all that comprehensive, 2,000 years of Papal history compressed into 396 pages, obviously it's discussions are of a somewhat cursory nature....

Is it unreasonable to ask if this undermines papal succession? If it seems that the papal seat, papal authority appears to become some after the fact measure not motivated by all concerns biblical/tradition?

I’m very sorry my little book has caused you some uneasiness, but I don’t really think you need be concerned. You might find it helpful to look at the opening chapter of my larger full-scale history of the Popes, Saints and Sinners, which treats the issues you raise in more detail.

But if I can address your worries briefly: two issues seem clear enough: the new testament attributes a distinctive and primary role to the apostle Peter, which he received from Christ himself: and from the earliest point at which there is evidence, it was assumed in the early Christian world that in some sense or other, the apostolic authority of BOTH Peter and Paul inhered in the church at Rome: so by the third and probably by the late second century, churches elsewhere in the mediterranean were referring problems and seeking guidance from the Church at Rome, and deferring (if not absolutely!) to its authority. By the third century, that assumption of apostolic authority had become the subject of overt theological reflection and debate, and at that point bible texts, including “Thou art Peter....” get cited in its favour. The fact that those texts aren’t cited in the way familiar to modern RCs like you and me till then, doesn’t , so far as I can see, bring into question the validity of the Roman Church’s claims – after all, the doctrine of the Divinity of the Holy Spirit didn’t get defined till the 5th century , but we don’t for that reason doubt the truth of the doctrine. Theological reflection takes time to articulate the faith the Church had been practising before anyone got round to working out how you would justify or explain it.

As for the succession of popes, I think the key thing to grasp is that the inheritor of the Apostolic charism at Rome was the CHURCH at Rome: the early documents are all clear that it is the community as a whole which carries the weight of apostolic authority, though in practice that was inevitably exercised by and expressed through the leaders, in a hierarchic sense, of the Roman church. There must always have been some kind of leadership and oversight (which is what the word “bishop” means) after the age of the apostles, but for historical and sociological and ethnic reasons there were always a range of Christian communities at Rome, so that oversight, or episcopacy, seems to have been exercised at first through a number of presbyters, what we would now call a College, and only gradually focussed as everywhere else in the person of a single “monarchic” bishop, a process which seems to have been completed in Rome by about 160 or so, and which was probably slower to settle there than in many other christian communities, because Rome was so vast a place, and the churches reflected the social reality of the city, so full of ethnic and linguistic diversity as the greatest and most cosmopolitan city in the ancient world . I myself see no problem about taking that process of settlement, and the establishment of a single unitary authority over the various churches in the city – as a providential evolution, in continuity with the ministry of the Apostles, and I can’t see myself that this prevents us seeing the popes as the rightful inheritors of the Apostolic ministry. But the fact that it was the community, the Church of Rome, in the first instance, and only secondarily the individual bishops of that Church of Rome, who were understood as inheriting the Apostolic role, is a salutary check on some absolutist understandings of what the papacy is and how it should be exercised. You might like to look at the very fine (and short!) book on all this, just titled The Bishop of Rome, by the distinguished Dominican theologian, Jean Tillard (now, sadly, dead) .

I hope some of that is helpful to you
All good wishes
Eamon Duffy