This was done for the first time, in 1870, at the Vatican Council, whose decrees, recognizing the universal episcopate and the infallibility of the pope, marked the triumph of that ultramontane doctrine by which they had been long anticipated.
And his immediate successors was aimed not only at the episcopate but also at the capitulary bodies and monastic clergy, it, too, could but tend to a considerable extension of the authority of the successors of to St Peter, for it struck an irremediable blow at the ancient Christian hierarchy.
For this exercise of the primacy as for the others, we must conceive of the pope and the episcopate united to him as a continuation of the Apostolic College and its head Peter.
In the 13th century the native episcopate had disappeared.
Even when introduced, the monarchical episcopate was not thought necessary for the ordination of other bishops or presbyters.
But as the claims of the church to be the guardian through its episcopate of the apostolic tradition, of the Christian faith itself, were magnified, and unity in practice as well as in doctrine came to be regarded as essential, this distinction became a theoretical rather than a practical one.
It would be impossible to enumerate here all the Gallic councils which contributed towards the canon law of that country; we will mention only the following: - Arles (314), of great importance; a number of councils in the district of Arles, completed by the Statuta Ecclesiae antiqua of St Caesarius; 2 the councils of the province of Tours; the assemblies of the episcopate of the three kingdoms of the Visigoths at Agde (506), of the Franks at Orleans (511), and of the Burgundians at Epaone (517); several councils of the kingdoms of the Franks, chiefly at Orleans; and finally, the synods of the middle of the 8th century, under the influence of St Boniface.
The record of his episcopate is to be found in the two volumes of the Ada Ecclesiae Mediolanensis (Milan, 1599).
The Lutheran Bugenhagen, who was in priest's orders, ordained seven superintendents, afterwards called bishops, for Denmark in 1527, and Norway, then under the same crown, derives its present episcopate from the same source.
He had, ten years before this, only escaped promotion to the episcopate by a very questionable stratagem - which, however, he defends in his instructive and eloquent treatise De Sacerdotio.